SHAREOK Repository
Not a member yet
49261 research outputs found
Sort by
An Archaeological and Historical Examination of the Sulphur Fork Factory, 1817-1822
Get PDFThe United States Indian Factory System, an early experiment in public enterprise, was a late addition to the North American Fur Trade phenomenon. Created by an act of Congress in 1795, the factory system established a total of thirty-one trading posts, a majority of which were located along the Mississippi River and its western tributaries. It was part trade, part foreign policy, and part expansionist ideology. And it was among the earliest legislated acts governing relations with native peoples. This thesis focuses on the history and archaeology of the Sulphur Fork Factory (1817-1822), strategically located in present day southwest Arkansas. The Sulphur Fork Factory was identified and uncovered by an amateur archaeologist in 1988 and recorded as site 3M1266. With the development and utilization of ceramic chronology we can identify the site’s period of occupation, which spanned around 100 years. A period of use well beyond the Sulphur Fork Factory’s eight years of government occupation and operation. The record – both historical and archaeological – for factory store sites in the southeastern United States is limited. This thesis inches forward and documents one factory’s role in the region
"It's Not A Treaty, It's A Legal Binding Agreement": Fort Lawton, Red Power, and the Struggle for Indigenous Land Reclamation
Get PDFIn 1970, over one hundred Native American activists occupied the Fort Lawton military base in Seattle, Washington. The protestors, disgruntled over the federal government’s termination of tribal lands and lack of support for urban Indians, demanded that the base be given to Seattle’s Native community. Combining confrontation with negotiation, the demonstrators scored an unexpected victory when government officials returned twenty of the base’s acres. Despite this success, Fort Lawton receives only limited attention in scholarship concerning the Red Power Movement and its assertion of Native sovereignty. Most often, it is overshadowed by the two protests that bookended it: the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island and the 1972 occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters. These protests also sought the return of Indigenous land and used direct action to secure a platform from which to negotiate. However, the Alcatraz and BIA protestors failed to procure any concessions when they remained committed to demonstration. This thesis compares Fort Lawton with these better-known events, illustrating that confrontation and compromise could work in tandem to advance Native land rights
Preliminary survey of the information preservation needs of the marine conservation community
Get PDFObservations of environmental degradation, ecosystem change, fisheries collapses, and biodiversity loss have raised concerns over our ability to preserve marine communities. Knowledge plays a key role in any attempt to preserve these ecosystems. However, the basic natural history knowledge necessary to understand these systems has also degraded as the discipline of ecology has evolved in response to technological pressure and changing funding priorities within science. To make matters worse significant species losses occurred before many ecosystems were monitored making it difficult to determine the nature of undisturbed systems. This thesis analyzes the data currently being produced by the marine ecologists and conservationists in order to describe to librarians and information scientists what efforts can be taken to preserve data critical for ongoing conservation efforts. Description of data generated for the purposes of aquatic ecology was obtained through a domain analysis of the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. Three years of data generation was recorded for all full-length research articles published between 2016-2018. The data is heterogeneous; however, important trends were uncovered. There is a large amount of geographic data being produced within the context of determining biodiversity. Physical sampling of the environment means that adequate data preservation requires museum resources play a part in preserving specimens. Accessibility of data will determine its utility to ongoing studies, and online resources can easily facilitate needed accessibility
(Multi-)Persistent Homology and Topological Robotics
Get PDFAfter developing the relevant background and proving some general results in the early chapters, the main novel content of this thesis is the computation of the -th homology groups of the second configuration spaces of metric graphs and , with two restraint parameters. These configuration spaces are filtered by the poset (\mathbb{R},\leq)^{\op}\times(\mathbb{R},\leq). We study the persistence modules and where , since higher homology vanishes for these spaces. Next, we construct a new representation over the poset given by the hyperplane arrangement of the configuration spaces of the finite graph. There is no loss of information when we restrict to the poset of chambers because the functor factors through the poset of chambers. Using this machinery and the homology groups we calculated, we find the direct sum decomposition of the -parameter persistence modules and , where each summand is indecomposable. In particular, we show that and can be written as a direct sum of polytope modules
Hybrid swarming of Neosho Bass with non-native smallmouth bass in the Upper Illinois River basin of Oklahoma, and implications for individual growth
Get PDFRecent molecular investigations support the distinctiveness of the Neosho Bass (Micropterus velox) of the Ozark Highlands from Smallmouth Bass (M. dolomieu). Like other endemic black basses, Neosho Bass are threatened by hybridization with non-native Micropterus forms. Non-native Smallmouth Bass were stocked in Lake Tenkiller in 1991 and 1992, resulting in introgressive hybridization with Neosho Bass in areas upstream of the impoundment. To inform management and conservation efforts, the main objectives of this thesis were to 1) characterize the spatial extent and directionality of introgressive hybridization, and 2) examine the influences of genetic identity on individual growth. From 2019-2021, specimens were collected longitudinally from localities along the Illinois River, Baron Fork, Caney Creek, Flint Creek, and Lake Tenkiller. We genotyped 1,272 fish with a SNP panel designed to identify Smallmouth Bass, Neosho Bass, and interspecific hybrids. Assignment of genotypes with STRUCTURE, NewHybrids, and introgress revealed an ongoing hybrid swarm in the Illinois River mainstem, with some areas of non-hybrid Neosho Bass remaining in far upstream reaches of smaller tributaries. For the second objective, three independent readers estimated the age of 650 fish using transversely sectioned sagittal otoliths. Fish ranged 67-536 mm in total length and estimated ages of these fish 0-10 years. Length-at-age data was then coupled with genetic results to parameterize von Bertalanffy growth functions. Analyses of von Bertalanffy growth functions revealed that estimated total length of non-hybrid Smallmouth Bass is noticeably larger than that of non-hybrid Neosho Bass beginning at age-1 and becomes increasingly divergent with age. The results of this thesis can be used to guide conservation plans for Neosho Bass across their narrow native range and to inform future management decisions regarding population dynamics of the sport fishery. In the future, we plan to couple our results with mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing to provide additional insights into maternal ancestry of hybrids and the potential for directional introgression
On the problem of resolving monopoly holdouts without requiring eminent domain
Get PDFThe purpose of this study is to explore practical alternatives for resolving monopoly holdouts, i.e., without requiring eminent domain. Berman v Parker (1954) first set formal precedent by allowing eminent domain to be used for taking strictly non-blighted property. Kelo v City of New London (2005) simply reaffirmed Berman, authorizing the use of eminent domain to overcome seven monopoly holdouts, including that of Ms. Susette Kelo, for a new Pfizer Corporation headquarters, on grounds that creating new jobs and tax revenues constituted “Public Benefits” under the Takings Clause. Heller (1998) argued that using direct government intervention in this manner simply transfers monopoly ownership rights between private individuals, i.e., while leaving scarce public resources persistently underutilized as “anticommons” property… a classic market failure. Following Coase’s landmark research on free riders, this study conducted formal IRB interviews with members of AUREO [Association of University Real Estate Officials] who willingly discussed their direct participation, i.e., during ongoing campus expansion projects at four respective public universities across the US. Chapters 3 and 4 fully document the firsthand narrative accounts provided by these real-world practitioners, who described the host of innovative bargaining mechanisms they routinely employed, i.e., enabling them to successfully resolve monopoly holdouts without requiring eminent domain. As a practical alternative to longstanding policy orthodoxy, this study finds that by systematically negotiating reciprocal, mutually beneficial [Coasean] bargaining agreements with recalcitrant landowners, it is possible to successfully resolve monopoly holdouts without requiring eminent domain. While these results may seem pedestrian to the layperson, their practical implications for the practice of Regional/City Planning are profound. By employing these same innovative bargaining mechanisms, it enables urban planners/designers/administrators to continually seek out local innovators (of all stripes), partner them with youthful entrepreneurs, and create new economic, social, and political synergies, i.e., enabling any local municipality to achieve the same urban growth/redevelopment/revitalization renaissance pioneered in so-called “College Towns”.
Keywords: Coase Theorem; Market Externalities: Holdout Problem; Anticommons; Pigouvian Taxation; Takings Clause: Eminent Domain Alternatives; Market Failure Theory; Samuelson Condition; Nash Equilibrium; Sustainability; Land Assembly
Essays in Blockchain Economics
No full textThis dissertation consists of three essays (chapters) concerning blockchain economics. Chapter 1 is a study of a decentralized lending platform. Decentralized Financial (DeFi) lending applications allow users to take leveraged positions in risky cryptoassets without the use of a financial intermediary, mimicking the functionality of a margin trading account without a centralized broker. This decentralization comes at a cost; leveraged traders must pay blockchain transaction fees to miners/validators and, absent an intermediary, third parties must be incentivized to perform liquidation transactions on positions with insufficient collateral. I provide evidence suggesting that volatile blockchain transaction fees can effectively “price out” a significant portion of market participants engaged in DeFi leveraged trading, forcing these traders to temporarily abandon their leveraged positions. Meanwhile, I show that the market liquidation incentive disciplines leveraged traders with riskier positions, inducing them to take more conservative positions. These results highlight the limitations of blockchain/DeFi technologies in their current state and have interesting policy implications concerning the regulation of leveraged traders.
Chapter 2 paper provides an empirical overview of the largely unexplored public blockchain ecosystem, coauthored with Felix Irresberger, Kose John, and Fahad Saleh. Our overview highlights that only a few blockchains dominate the ecosystem although no single blockchain, not even Bitcoin, dominates uniformly. We explain our empirical findings with a simple theoretical framework that establishes three key economic attributes - adoption, scale, and security - as the determinants of blockchain user utility. We examine each blockchain along those dimensions empirically. We then theoretically establish that whether a blockchain could be welfare enhancing for some user type can be determined by a comparison across our attributes; in turn, applying the comparison empirically yields that only a few blockchains could be optimal for some user type. Our results thus provide an explanation for why only a few blockchains dominate the broader blockchain ecosystem. Moreover, our work provides an empirical framework from which to evaluate progress within the blockchain ecosystem.
In Chapter 3, I model the entry and exit decisions of cryptocurrency miners. I argue that miners using Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) equipment, with a lower salvage value, have asymmetric reactions to price shocks, while miners using Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) equipment, with a higher salvage value, have more symmetric reactions to price shocks. Estimating the long-run equilibrium relationship between cryptocurrency price and hashrate (the aggregate computing power of miners), I show that Bitcoin miners, who use ASIC equipment, respond only to negative disequilibria (when hashrate is relatively low compared to price). Meanwhile, Ether miners, when using GPU equipment, respond symmetrically to disequilibria. These results have both practical and theoretical implications for cryptocurrency pricing and applications of blockchain technology
Culture of Honor and Female Incarceration
Get PDFSome states in the U.S. maintain higher than usual rates of female incarceration. Prior research suggests that these incarceration rates are determined by poverty, education, or racial makeup. However, these explanations have not considered the role that culture may play on attitudes towards the punishment of women. Therefore, in two studies, I investigate the role of culture of honor on attitudes towards the incarceration of women. In Study 1, I compared female incarceration rates between states with honor status and non-honor status in the U.S. Honor status predicted female incarceration after controlling for a variety of important covariates. In Study 2, I tested the assumption that endorsement of culture of honor and gender roles interact to predict attitudes towards the incarceration of women, but not men. Using a gendered crime vignette stimulus, I found that participants who scored high in culture of honor and gender norms were more likely to punish women, not men, for the same drug related crime
Experimental testing, image-based analysis, and finite element simulation of the tricuspid valve: towards personalized management of hypoplastic left heart syndrome
No full textIn this dissertation, the tricuspid valve (TV) is researched from three perspectives - in vitro experimental testing, in vivo image analysis, and in silico modeling.
Starting with the in vitro studies, we build upon our previous biaxial mechanical characterization studies to provide a deeper understanding of the microstructure-mechanics relationships. In one study, we performed a three-step experimental procedure for quantifying the mechanical contributions of the collagen and elastin constituents to the bulk tissue function: (i) biaxial testing of the TV leaflets; (ii) treatment of the tissue with an enzyme to remove either the collagen or elastin constituent; and (iii) biaxial testing of the same enzyme-treated tissue to facilitate comparisons within the same specimen. For the collagen-removal testing, we found a greater compliance in the high-tension regime of the stress-strain behaviors in the enzyme-treated tissues, providing experimental evidence of collagen as the primary load-bearing component. Meanwhile, in the elastin-removal testing, we observed a significant increase in tissue stiffness post-treatment, suggesting that the elastin plays a crucial role in the transition between low and high tensions, such as by acting as a regulator of the collagen fiber kinematics. In the next in vitro study, we used a polarized light-based imaging modality in conjunction with biaxial testing to evaluate the affine fiber kinematics (AFK) assumptions for the TV leaflets. We found that the AFK theory generally underpredicted the fiber reorientations subject to the equibiaxial loading, with larger errors occuring when the tissue was subjected to the applied non-equibiaxial loading. Furthermore, larger AFK errors were observed with increasing collagen fiber reorientations, suggesting the AFK theory is better suited for relatively smaller fiber reorientations.
As a next step in the TV-focused research, we focused on quantifying the in vivo mechanics of the TV, with specific emphasis on a congenital condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), in which underdevelopment of the left side of the heart causes significantly increased cardiac burden on the right side of the heart. Specifically, we developed a framework for analyzing echocardiograms to analyze the TV annulus mechanics and geometric properties, and performed comparisons of these metrics between newborns with and without HLHS. In this study, we found the HLHS-afflicted TV annulus is larger in circumference, area, and antero-posterior diameter, and becomes more circular and bent during valve closing than its healthy counterpart. From an engineering mechanics perspective, tissue strains did not differ significantly between the cohorts, which may provide an indication that the TV remodels in the HLHS condition to maintain tissue homeostasis throughout the cardiac cycle.
To further progress our understanding of the in vivo TV function, we performed in silico studies in the context of inverse finite element analysis. Specifically, we performed an exploratory study to assess how different factors affect the objective function search space. From this exploration, we found that: (i) an exponential-type material model yields a valley of nearly equivalent solutions; (ii) that the presence of noise in the comparison data (e.g., image-segmented point cloud data) can increase the width of this valley; and (iii) that a novel ``leaflet free-edge displacement" boundary condition provides a more desirable optimization search space than the typical in vivo-emulating scenario where the chordae tendineae are simulated. Along with this novel idea for simulating the TV closing, we also provided a demonstration of the use of Bayesian optimization for solving the inverse analysis problem in computationally tractable manner.
Overall, the research performed in this dissertation provides significant progress in three major areas of interest for understanding tricuspid valve function. Firstly, refined understandings of the microstructure-mechanics relationships and the collagen fiber kinematics will lead to the development of more accurate constitutive model forms. Secondly, the in vivo TV annulus image analysis framework can be used to perform long-term studies of valve function to understand tissue development in both healthy and diseased scenarios. Finally, the developed in silico analysis methods provide the next steps for fully realizing patient-specific treatments via simulation frameworks