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Book Review: Sara Ahmed\u27s Complaint!
Get PDFAptly named, Sara Ahmed’s (2021) Complaint! exposes the institutional processes through which feminist complaints and allegations of racism and sexism, among other forms of oppression, are silenced, redirected, and displaced. Drawing from her own experience as a woman of color who resigned from her university post “in protest about the failure of the institution to hear complaints” as well as narratives from others who have complained, Ahmed seamlessly interweaves testimonials and lived experience with theory (p. 8). This poetic and nuanced interplay of theory and praxis constructs a vision of institutions as simultaneously complaint graveyards and complaint collectives. In the face of institutional strongholds against complaint, Ahmed asks her audience to consider enacting a “feminist ear” or being attuned to mechanisms that enable feminist complaint— those who make them, and those who refuse to listen (p. 3)
Investigation into Oxygen Diffusion as it Relates to Alpha Case Formation in Ti-6Al-4V Based on Different Forging Thermal Cycles
Get PDFAn investigation into the growth kinetics of alpha case in Ti-6Al-4V in the presence of oxygen was conducted for different forging thermal cycles. This was done to determine whether the alpha case should be removed after each thermal cycle or as the final step after forging. The thermal cycles consisted of four hours at 1750 °F. Samples were subjected to this treatment one, two, three, and four times along with a continuous sixteen hour hold. Four cycle and Hold samples were subjected to an additional thermal cycle above the beta transus at 1925 °F. These then went through a final stress relieve cycle at 1350 °F for four hours. The alpha case depth was measured for each of these samples using three methods. These include area fraction analysis using ImageJ, visual estimations, and Vickers microhardness testing. Each of these three methods showed a large initial case growth followed by diminishing growth rates. Area fraction was the most conservative measurement resulting in significantly higher values for depth than the other two methods. Visual estimations and Vickers hardness corroborated each other’s values. After one four hour thermal cycle at 1750 °F the case depth by visual estimation is 250 micrometers. The second, third, and fourth thermal cycles are 366, 388, 392 micrometers respectively. After four thermal cycles at 1750 °F, samples were heated to 1925 °F for half an hour resulting in a decrease in case depth to 292 micrometers, and a subsequent heat treatment at 1350 °F for four hours resulting in a depth of 263 micrometers. The sixteen hour hold samples undergo the same 1925 °F and 1350 °F cycles with similar results. The Hold has a depth of 537 micrometers, which first decreased to 318 and then to 281 micrometers
A FIRE PROTECTION AND LIFE SAFETY ANALYSIS OF AN OUPATIENT HEALTHCARE SYSTEM BUILDING
Get PDFThe subject building of the report is an outpatient healthcare system building that is a two stories in height and 184,670 SF building. This building offers primary, specialty, and mental health outpatient care to patients throughout its state of location.
The facility is a mixed occupancy building with business as the primary occupancy, a surgery suite that classifies as an ambulatory health care occupancy, and assembly uses in the conference rooms, kitchen, and canteen. The Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) has adopted the National Fire Codes (NFC) published by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and throughout this report, the life safety features of the building are assessed against the requirements of Life Safety Code, NFPA 101.
The facility is fully sprinklered, with sprinklers appearing to be provided in all areas. There is also an analog addressable fire alarm system that is electrically supervised by a central station monitoring service. Per NFPA 220, Standard on Types of Building Construction, Table 4.1.1 Fire Resistance Ratings for Type I through Type V Construction (hour), this facility appears to be constructed in accordance with the requirements of a Construction Type II (000) rating. The NFPA Type II (000) rating corresponds to an IBC Construction Type IIB.
In the following analysis, the facility was evaluated from both prescriptive and performance based design perspectives.
The total occupant load for the facility was calculated as 3390 persons in accordance with NFPA 101 Chapter 7. Most spaces were determined to have adequate exit capacity. However, the canteen only has one valid exit and does not meet the required two exits per NFPA 101 for assembly occupancies. All other floors and spaces were determined to have adequate number of exits, separation of exits, and measured travel distances as required by NFPA 101.
Code discrepancies were also discovered for fire detection and notification. A discrepancy was discovered between the mounting heights of manual pull stations required by NFPA 72 and those of the fire alarm and detection shop drawings. Pull station placement should be verified. Notification devices in the mechanical penthouses appear to be undersized from a visual notification perspective. Further, audible notification devices in these mechanical penthouses may also be undersized. Field verification of the existing ambient sound levels should be performed.
The facility is fully sprinklered, with sprinklers appearing to be provided in all areas. Most of the facility is protected by an automatic wet sprinkler suppression system. There is a small dry sprinkler system located at the loading dock, where the system is subject to freezing conditions. The system appears to have been designed per the AHJ’s Fire Protection Design Manual and NFPA 13-2003.
The flow and pressure at the base of the riser (BOR) required to meet the sprinkler system demand is 273.3 gpm and 67.6 psi. The hose stream allowance was previously determined to be 250 gpm. Therefore, the total system demand is 523 gpm at 67.6 PSI. This value exceeds the available water supply of a static pressure of 62 psi, a residual pressure of 20 psi, and 1940 gallons of flow. A computer based analysis should be performed to refine the understanding of the complex hydraulics at the facility.
The first floor occupant load was calculated to be 839 persons. Using the hydraulic approximation, the egress time for the first floor was evaluated. If all of the 839 occupants on the first floor start evacuation at the same time, the persons on the first floor will require approximately 1.23 minutes to pass through the exit. The total minimum evacuation time for the 839 persons located on floor 1 is estimated at 5.1 minutes.
The second floor occupant load was calculated to be 1210 persons. The second floor exit capacity was calculated to be 1231 persons, which just exceeds the second floor occupant load of 1210 persons. The total minimum evacuation time for the 1231 persons located on floor 2 is estimated at 8.2 minutes. The assumptions used in hydraulic approximation model all tend to optimize egress times and therefore will tend to underestimate actual egress times.
The occupant characteristics of these user groups within the facility’s building population were reviewed, and the key characteristics of the groups were evaluated. Since the purpose of this outpatient clinic is to provide medical care to patients, a conservative approach is necessary to protect occupants that may have preexisting medical conditions. Employees regularly participate in fire drills and can typically be expected to efficiently respond to the fire alarm system and start evacuating. However, careful consideration of pre-movement times is especially important with employees as they can be prone to social influence, and procedural requirements. Patients are the most likely to have an issue perceiving an alarm, interpreting the alarm, and deciding on a course of action.
Three different design fires were evaluated for this facility. Design Fire #1 investigates the impact of large fuel load of palletized computer equipment on egress in a first floor corridor. Egress is expected to be highly compromised. This design fire is similar to NFPA 101 5.5.3.2 Design Fire Scenario 2 which has the characteristics of an ultrafast developing fire, in the primary means of egress.
Design Fire #2 investigates the impact of a Christmas Tree in the building’s main atrium. This fire offers the opportunity to evaluate the impact of a real life fuel load on one of the primary egress paths. This design fire is similar to NFPA 101 5.5.3.1 Design Fire Scenario 1 and is an occupancy specific fire representative of a typical fire for the occupancy.
Design Fire #3 evaluates the impact of a large fuel load of furniture in a storage room that is adjacent to the facilities 6 combinable conference rooms. The worst-case scenario for this space is the potential for migration into the adjacent hallway and affecting egress for the nearby conference rooms. This design fire is similar to NFPA 101 5.5.3.3 Design Fire Scenario 3 which includes a fire that starts in a normally unoccupied room, potentially endangering a large number of occupants in a large room or other area.
Performance criteria for tenability was investigated, and reference values were proposed. The selected tenability criteria include 13 m for visibility, an FED of 1 for Carbon Monoxide, 60 °C for exposure temperature, and 1.7 kW·m-2 for radiant heat exposure. Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) was used to model Design Fire #1, which presented an abnormally large fuel load of computer equipment in a hallway outside of the Supply Chain Management office. This fire provides an ultrafast developing fire, in the primary means of egress, and addresses a concern regarding a reduction in the number of available means of egress.
Visibility is the first tenability criteria to be reached in a time frame of 92 seconds, followed by exposure temperature at 105 seconds. The reality of this ultrafast fire is that egress for the Supply Chain Management Office will be severely compromised, and may not provide ample time for the occupants of the Supply Chain Management Office to escape. Further modeling could be performed with additional information on the building\u27s construction materials, ventilation systems, and fire suppression systems. The response of the fire suppression system, and its effectiveness on the fuel load should be evaluated and could potentially help egress from the Supply Chain Management Office. Since the calculated Required Safe Egress Time (RSET) is calculated 12.72 minutes, and the Available Safe Egress Time (ASET) is 92 seconds, egress for the Supply Chain Management Office can be expected to be compromised.
Based on the results of modeling Design Fire #1, it is recommended to relocate the commodity to a warehouse. The surveyed fuel load is inappropriate for an exit corridor in a Business Occupancy
Analysis and Usage of Natural Language Features in Success Prediction of Legislative Testimonies
Get PDFCommittee meetings are a fundamental part of the legislative process in whichconstituents, lobbyists, and legislators alike can speak on proposed bills at thelocal and state level. Oftentimes, unspoken “rules” or standards are at play inpolitical processes that can influence the trajectory of a bill, leaving constituentswithout a political background at an inherent disadvantage when engaging withthe legislative process. The work done in this thesis aims to explore the extent towhich the language and phraseology of a general public testimony can influence avote, and examine how this information can be used to promote civic engagement.
The Digital Democracy database contains digital records for over 40,000 realtestimonies by non-legislator public persons presented at California Legislaturecommittee meetings 2015-2018, along with the speakers’ desired vote outcomeand individual legislator votes in that discussion. With this data, we conduct alinguistic analysis that is then leveraged by the Constituent phraseology AnalysisTool (CPAT) to generate a user-based intelligent statistical comparison betweena proposed testimony and language patterns that have previously been successful.
The following questions are at the core of this research: Which (if any) lan-guage features are correlated with persuasive success in a legislative context?Does the committee’s topic of discussion impact the language features that canlend to a testimony’s success? Can mirroring a legislator’s speech patterns changethe probability of the vote going your way? How can this information be used tolevel the playing field for constituents who want their voices heard?
Given the 33 linguistic features developed in this research, supervised classifi-cation models were able to predict testimonial success with up to 85.1% accuracy,indicating that the new features had a significant impact on the prediction ofsuccess. Adding these features to the 16 baseline linguistic features developedin Gundala’s [18] research improved the prediction accuracy by up to 2.6%. Wealso found that balancing the dataset of testimonies drastically impacted theprediction performance metrics, with 93% accuracy achieved for the imbalanceddataset and 60% accuracy after balancing. The Constituent Phraseology AnalysisTool showed promise in the generation of linguistic analysis based on previouslysuccessful language patterns, but requires further development before achievingtrue usability. Additionally, predicting success based on linguistic similarity to alegislator on the committee produced contradictory results. Experiments yieldeda 4% increase in predictive accuracy when adding comparative language featuresto the feature set, but further experimentation with weight distributions revealedonly marginal impacts from comparative features
2022/2023 Robert E. Kennedy Library Annual Report
Get PDFThis year’s Annual Report is the first “outside” edition of Inside 35 following the closure of the library’s home, Building 35, in June 2023. Kennedy Library remains an active partner in Cal Poly’s curricular and scholarly endeavors from many locations across campus. Learn about our Librarian-Scholars collaborating with students and colleagues on research projects across several disciplines. Discover the comprehensive collection of the works of Joe D’Ambrosio that was generously donated to Special Collections and Archives in 2019. Read an update on the building transformation project and meet the Design-Build Team of Hensel-Phelps and the Miller Hull Partnership. Kennedy Library is focused on the future and all the exciting opportunities and partnerships that lie ahead
Building Community, Competency, and Creativity in Calculus 2: Summary of a pilot year of project implementation
Get PDFIn light of the COVID-19 pandemic, instructional modes at our institution moved to fully online and remote, then fully online but on campus, and back to in-person learning in fall 2021. To combat perceived issues in student engagement, we piloted using group projects in place of exams at the natural content break points in Calculus 2
Centering Equity in STEM Teaching: STEM Ideas that Change the World
Get PDFNo discussion on equity/inequity makes sense without bringing power into that discussion. As instructors we need to ask questions such as “who decides and controls what knowledge is”, “whose identities are empowered and whose are erased”, “who has access and opportunity and who doesn’t”. Traditional teaching in STEM, including mathematics, assumes knowledge is objective, transmittable, repeatable to everyone. When educators follow a traditional curriculum, just like their teachers before them, they do so thinking their methods ensure equality and objectivity. These practices not only deny the role that Western patriarchal cultures have played in creating these so-called equitable practices, but they also excuse these practices from being examined. This article will showcase a culturally responsive teaching assignment that could be incorporated into a college STEM classroom
Soil Burn Severity and Environmental Covariate Effects on Soil Health Two Years Postfire in the Sierra Nevada
Get PDFWildfires have been steadily increasing in both size and severity in recent decades. This global trend is most evident in California, especially the North Coast and Sierra Nevada. Although these trends are rising, there is little known about the effects of these wildfires on forest soils. Soil is the 2nd largest C sink on the planet, and the largest terrestrial bank. Without understanding the implication of rising wildfire severities on these soils, we cannot understand how to help protect this resource in the future. Due to the rapid increase in wildfire size and intensity, there is little known about the effects these “megafires” have on overall soil health, and even less known about these effects in the California Sierra Nevada region. This study aimed to understand both how field SBS and soil forming factors, represented through environmental covariates, effects soil health. 117 samples at a depth of 0-5cm were collected, then processed for sampling. Twelve soil health indicators (Total C, POXC, MinC, C/N ratio, pH, Total N, NO3N, K, P, CEC, Ca, and Mg) were selected and samples were tested in lab for each indicator. Field-validated SBS levels were assigned to each sample, and through ANOVA testing in R, where four variables were significant with SBS (Total C, C/N Ratio, NO3N, and K). Linear regression modeling was then used to observe the effects of environmental covariates on the samples. Environmental covariates were chosen to represent various soil forming factors including terrain, climate, and organisms. Each of the twelve soil health indicators were significant with at least one, if not more, environmental covariates. This information is critical in that soils are the result of not one, but several soil forming factors and processes
San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum Accessibility Ramp
Get PDFThe San Luis Obispo’s Railroad Museum is a local organization that aims to preserve the history of the Southern Pacific Railroad and educate the community. The mission of this organization is to collect and display various historic artifacts for the public to see. This project serves to aid in the development of a 1923 boxcar into a future exhibit for the museum by creating a ramp that bridges the platform of the station to the boxcar. The ramp was constructed out of pressure treated lumber, angle iron to bind the lumber together, and hinges to allow it to fold. Both end pieces of the ramp were attached with aluminum flashing that allowed for a seamless transition between the platform, ramp, and boxcar. This project included estimating, planning, coordinating with SLORRM Board of Directors, along with constructing, and assembling. Over the course of construction various challenges in design, building, and planning were present and created many learning opportunities. This project will benefit the community by giving SLORRM access to develop a historic exhibit which will eventually be on display for all to see. Additionally, the project enriched my construction management skills by providing real world experience
Physical Treatments To Modify The Functionality Of Carrot Pomace And The Development Of An Enhanced Beef Patty
Get PDFApproximately one-third of the global food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted somewhere along the food chain. Carrots are one of the most important and widely produced root vegetables grown worldwide; they are rich in many beneficial bioactive compounds such as dietary fiber and carotenoids. Every year, an estimated 29% of processed carrots are lost as waste. The U.S. is the 3rd largest producer of carrots worldwide, 85% of which come from California. During carrot juice processing, up to 50% of the raw material remains as carrot pomace. Carrot pomace may contain up to 55% total dietary fiber, which is thought to have important functional properties such as water holding and fat binding. The objectives of this project were to: 1) Investigate how physical pretreatment and drying treatment affect the functional and chemical properties of carrot pomace, 2) evaluate the impact that carrot pomace as a functional ingredient will have on the physical and chemical properties of beef patties, and 3) validate the developed beef patties using a consumer sensory test to ensure that the products have acceptable sensory attributes.
High shearing and hydraulic pressing pretreatments (HSHP) increased the swelling capacity of freeze-dried carrot pomace by 59% and dehydrated carrot pomace by 34%. Freeze-dried carrot pomace also retained 33% more carotenoids compared to dehydrated pomace. The drying method significantly impacted the functional properties of carrot pomace. Freeze drying improved the water holding capacity by 22% and fat binding capacity by 194% over dehydrated carrot pomace. The addition of dried carrot pomace increased the cooking yield and water-holding capacity of beef patties by 5-15% and 12%, respectively, without significantly changing their textural properties or chemical composition. Eighty-six (86) consumers took part in sensory testing to evaluate beef patties formulated with carrot pomace. Overall, there were no significant differences in liking scores between the carrot pomace patties at 1% & 3% and the control patty. Scores were not changed significantly when patties were consumed with a bun. These results suggested that carrot pomaces may be physically modified to be utilized as a functional ingredient in the food industry