SHAREOK Repository
Not a member yet
49261 research outputs found
Sort by
Goddesses, dreamers, and witches: the politics of women in The Wild Hunt
Get PDFThe Wild Hunt is a folklore motif with variants including a group of beings traveling through the night air with a central figure leading them. When we consider the motif of those who were involved in, and specifically those who led the Wild Hunt, a gendered difference becomes more evident during the Late Middle Ages. Existing studies tend to ignore the gendered context and the myriad ways women's existence is objectified, instrumentalized, marginalized, and erased in the motif. This leaves us not understanding why the motif was popular in early penitentials and the political, economic, and cultural reasons why the motif shifted in the particular way it did. This paper examines how European leaders used this motif to divide men and women of the lower classes and ensure the expropriation of women's agency for the benefit of protocapitalist accumulation of labor. I will situate women within European culture throughout the Middle Ages by looking at legal documents, church records, and literature about women and discuss those presentations through an intersectional feminist lens to explore the political cause and function of the gendered difference. When examined at the macro level, a pattern emerges which seems to suggest a correlation between the economic changes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that necessitated the subjugation of women. This confirms my position that the use of the motif was intentional. Understanding exactly how women have been historically instrumentalized as a way to support developing Western capitalist structures is necessary as America's economic shift into late-stage capitalism and the concurrent disintegration of women's rights to reproductive health care remind us of similar events centuries before. Further research might include the digitization of medieval records, more complete demographic analysis, records of patronage, revealing historical biases as well as ethnographies that might reveal information about the early believers
How do adults who experienced complex childhood trauma describe their progression through school?
Get PDFComplex trauma is considered the most severe form of trauma. It is characterized by multiple harmful events that typically begin early in a child’s life, are chronic and prolonged, result in highly adverse developmental effects, and tend to be perpetrated by a family member or closely associated person. Disconcertingly, research indicates that individuals who have experienced complex trauma may not complete a high school education or go on to post-secondary institutions. They may have a more difficult time maintaining consistent employment and, at times, have shown to have a shorter life expectancy than those who do not have a history of complex trauma. The existing body of literature suggests that schools are potentially an important setting for those who are dealing with complex trauma, but it remains unclear what supports might be effective if used in the school setting. The purpose of this study is to examine how adults who experienced childhood complex trauma describe the influence of school experiences on their ability to progress through school. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with fourteen participants who completed professional treatment for or were in professional treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because of childhood complex trauma. Findings strongly suggested that having one positive school-based relationship with an adult and feeling a sense of community through friendships and extracurricular activities increased their resiliency, whereas relationships with adults who lacked empathy or adults who did not recognize or understand the symptoms of complex PTSD (CPTSD) led to decreased student motivation to achieve academically. The evidence highlighted other hindering factors that the participants felt reduced their motivation for academic progression including the loud noises of schools, raised voices, lack of access to supportive school personnel such as a nurse or counselor, and negative classroom environments. This study seeks to contribute to the literature by identifying perceived potential school support for traumatized youth that may lead to an increase in positive effects of school despite their experience with childhood complex trauma, as well as suggest hindering factors that could lead to lowered student achievement, decreased attendance rates, or dropout.
Keywords: complex trauma, childhood trauma, interpersonal trauma, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), PTSD, CPTSD, student perceptions, resilience, Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Theor
Biochemical insights into the unconventional approaches to energy conservation and electron transport in syntrophic metabolism
No full textMethane produced from anaerobic digestion of organic wastes has great potential as an alternative to fossil fuels. Anaerobic digestion combines the production of renewable energy with environmental benefits, including the reduction of greenhouse emissions, controlled waste disposal, and recycling of nutrients. Biomethanation or anaerobic digestion relies on fermenting bacteria, syntrophs, and methanogens working synergistically to break down large organic molecules to produce methane and carbon dioxide. Within this process, syntrophic metabolism is the rate-limiting step due to its low Gibbs free energy change and the reliance on methanogens to degrade the syntrophic by-products. Therefore, methane production requires efficient metabolic coordination of syntrophic and methanogenic organisms in energetically limiting conditions. While much is known about the physiology and metabolism of methanogens, large knowledge gaps remain surrounding the metabolic processes of syntrophic microorganisms due to the difficulty of cultivation and growth in pure culture. A deeper understanding of the enzymes and metabolic mechanisms utilized by model syntrophs will inherently allow for an increase in the controlled biological production of methane, which can then be used as a source of energy. In this dissertation, two vital mechanisms involved in energy conservation and electron transport within the model syntrophic organisms, Syntrophus aciditrophicus strain SB and Syntrophomonas wolfei were characterized.
Syntrophus aciditrophicus strain SB is a model syntroph and is representative of syntrophic bacteria that have an essential role, along with fermentative and methanogenic organisms, in the anaerobic recycling of organic matter to methane and carbon dioxide. Previous studies showed that S. aciditrophicus shares a core set of reversible enzymes for the benzoate and cyclohexane-1-carboxylate metabolic pathways. Within these metabolic pathways, S. aciditrophicus utilizes a novel mechanism to synthesize ATP via an AMP-forming acetyl-CoA synthetase (SaAcs1). AMP-forming acetyl-CoA synthetases (Acs) typically synthesize acetyl-CoA and AMP from acetate and ATP in two consecutive steps: an adenylate-forming step and a thioester-forming step. However, SaAcs1 favors the reverse reaction, resulting in ATP synthesis. One goal of this dissertation was to structurally characterize SaAcs1 to investigate the role that the structure of the enzyme has on the function, as well as functionally characterize the enzyme using kinetics alongside the exploration of the role of specific amino acids within the enzyme that allow it to favor ATP production.
A 2.2 Å resolution structure of SaAcs1WT bound to acetyl-AMP in the adenylation conformation was resolved using X-ray crystallography. The structural alignment of SaAcs1WT with previously described Acs-family proteins revealed key structural differences from other known members of the protein family. The noted structural differences in SaAcs1 provide insight into the molecular mechanisms that may bias it to operate in the reverse, less thermodynamically favorable direction. The primary structural difference involved in the repositioning of a well-conserved loop region in the CoA substrate binding pocket. The structure of SaAcs1WT in the adenylation conformation contributes to the body of research on Acs-family proteins. Currently, in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), only two organisms have published structures of the Acs protein in the adenylation conformation, while there are over a dozen published Acs structures in the alternate or thioester-forming conformation. Additionally, enzyme activity and kinetics assays performed on SaAcs1 confirmed SaAcs1 favorably functions in the ATP-forming reaction compared to other Acs enzymes, which favor the typical AMP-forming reaction. Additionally, this work is the first to compare the activity of Acs-family proteins in the ATP-forming direction.
To determine whether specific amino acid residues are important for SaAcs1 to function in the ATP-forming direction, site-directed mutagenesis was utilized to create SaAcs1 variants with single amino acid substitutions into residues hypothesized to be critical to function. The variants were grouped into four categories based on the region of the targeted mutations: at the beginning/within the CoA loop, the conserved residues within the CoA loop, within the ATP-binding pocket, and at the hinge position. Four structures of the SaAcs1 variants were also resolved using X-ray crystallography and the kinetic activity of all variants was measured in the ATP-forming and AMP-forming directions. These substitutions either resulted in no change of activity from the wild-type or a change of activity – increased activity, decreased activity, or no enzyme activity. Both structural and kinetic data of the SaAcs1 variants confirmed that the loop next to the CoA binding pocket of SaAcs1WT impacts the function of the enzyme to favor the ATP-forming reaction.
Syntrophomonas wolfei serves as a model for the syntrophic metabolism of the short-chain fatty acids such as butyrate to the methanogenic substrates: hydrogen, formate, and acetate. One important but poorly understood process in syntrophic metabolism is the generation of electrons from the oxidation of acyl-CoA intermediates coupled to the production of hydrogen or formate or the process of reverse electron transfer. The S. wolfei genome has three gene clusters encoding for Etf, all of which accept electrons from an acyl-CoA dehydrogenase. The structure of electron transfer flavoprotein (EtfAB3) from Syntrophomonas wolfei was resolved to 2.5 Å with a bound novel ADP ligand and FAD. The genes encoding for the SwEtfAB3 complex are associated with the Fix complex genes and were proposed to have a role in electron transfer during β-oxidation. The structural characterization of SwEtfAB3 contributes to understanding the unique metabolic machinery of syntrophic metabolizers and their ability to produce hydrogen or formate from high redox potential electrons.
In this dissertation, the key mechanisms to support the syntrophic metabolism of S. aciditrophicus and S. wolfei were investigated to understand the complex and dynamic microbial processes associated the ability of syntrophs to exploit small free energy changes and the systems involved in electron flow. The primary objective of this dissertation was to provide additional information on novel ATP synthesis from Syntrophus aciditrophicus (Sa) strain SB. Additionally, the characterization of core genes involved in reverse electron transport from S. wolfei provides additional information on the proposed mechanisms involved in syntrophic metabolism. Although some research has been conducted to study metabolic syntrophy in anaerobic environments, there is still missing information on how energy is conserved in syntrophic metabolism. An increasingly demanding research field involves engineering systems to improve controlled biological production of methane and thus increase energy production. With these pursuits, a fundamental understanding of syntrophic metabolism is necessary to develop novel systems that improve small and large-scale biomethanation
Examining Warning Response Among Spanish Speakers in the United States to Enhance Multilingual Wireless Emergency Alerts
Get PDFAs one of the fastest growing groups in the United States, the Spanish-speaking population of 41.2 million represents one in ten Americans today. Spanish-speaking communities in the United States come from diverse backgrounds in Latin America, Europe, and Africa, each with unique cultural practices and hazard experiences tied to their places of origin. Such diversity, while enriching, poses considerable challenges for risk communicators trying to engage with multilingual populations in disaster contexts. Addressing the linguistic and cultural needs of these communities demands evidence-based research to establish best practices in our current emergency system.
This dissertation has two objectives aiming to enhance emergency communication systems and messages for the U.S. Spanish-speaking public. First, by integrating intercultural communication concepts, this qualitative dissertation investigates the role of cultural factors—such as disaster subcultures, dialects, and immigration status— in the understanding of warning systems by multilingual speakers in the United States. Second, by employing two risk communication frameworks, I examine how Spanish speakers in the United States respond to existing mobile, multilingual emergency warnings known as Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs). More specifically, I employ the warning response model (WRM) and the extended parallel process model (EPPM) to examine both the cognitive processes of warning reception and the emotional behaviors involved in decision making. To achieve these goals, I conducted 27 think-aloud and semi-structured interviews with members of the Spanish-speaking population.
Through subsequent constant comparative analysis, my results from the two objectives unravel how language disparities and cultural disconnect exacerbate vulnerabilities for non-English speaking populations. First, I found that Spanish speakers in the United States interpret their local warning systems through multiple perspectives. Foreign-born immigrants experienced culture shock upon encountering U.S. warning systems for the first time and reported similar adaptation processes overall. U.S.-born Spanish speakers understood warning systems not only through their local geography but also through cultural experiences derived from their community and ethnic origins in Latin America. Spanish speakers living in border communities experienced differing and sometimes conflicting warning systems between the United States and Mexico. Undocumented immigrants resisted adapting to U.S. warning systems, recognizing the systemic injustices underlying these emergency systems. Second, I discovered that clear, consistent, culturally competent, and jargon-free messages empower Spanish speakers to take protective action against natural hazards like tornadoes. These effective messages were almost always the 360-character WEA messages, as they provided the necessary contextual information.
I use these insights to provide recommendations for a more inclusive multilingual emergency system in the United States. I advocate for increased coordination between governmental agencies, community leaders, and international entities, fostering a learning environment to better tailor messages for multilingual groups. Additionally, I propose the implementation of WEAs in multilingual settings to reach more underserved communities. Based on insights from my participants, I propose slight modifications to 360-character Spanish-language WEAs, which were overwhelmingly favored by my respondents. Through these recommendations, I outline a vision for a future multilingual emergency system, highlighting the key cultural and linguistic factors that need to be considered to ensure warning equity for all
Understanding the Impact of Mortality Salience on Threat Perception
Get PDFWith the development of higher cognitive faculties comes the ability to ask “the big questions.”
Some questions, such as “How can life have meaning when everything will eventually die?” are
profoundly unsettling. Approaches such as terror management theory have argued that we have
tools to suppress the immediate impact of such dilemmas. However, these tools are imperfect, and
the dilemma manifests uniquely. Understanding these manifestations is imperative for improving
the performance of individuals who work in fields that regularly encounter death. This dissertation
examines the impact of mortality salience, or death awareness, on aspects of emotion recognition.
Earlier work in this area, have primarily focused on identifying accuracy differences driven by
mortality salience. The pattern of accuracy and reaction times were consistent with previous
emotional recognition and mortality salience research. Drift diffusion modelling was used to
decompose performance indicators into additional measures such as bias towards a decision, the
ability to detect evidence, and differences in non-processing time. Significant improvements in the
ability to discern emotional indicators were observed for participants who were in anxiety evoking
conditions. However, other predicted differences such as decisional biases, non-processing times,
and advantages to processing non-threatening features were not found. Potential future avenues of
research and applications of the utilized paradigm are discussed
Evaluation of Flash Drought Identification with Machine Learning Techniques
No full textDroughts are extreme dry events that decrease an ecosystem’s and society’s availability of water resources, leading to impacts on vegetation health and agricultural production and food shortages. Of particular note are droughts that develop on a more rapid timescale (about 1 month), termed flash droughts. Flash droughts have gained increasing attention in the past decade, because they can result in more rapid desiccation, or deterioration in crop health, than what would normally be expected. Research into flash drought events have found certain key variables, such as soil moisture and evaporation from the soil and plants, and potential evaporation are among the key variables driving flash drought events. Varying approaches have resulted in the creation of multiple methods for identifying and quantifying flash droughts, each using different variables and thresholds (for the rapid intensification) to define them.
Machine learning (ML) techniques have been growing in popularity in the environmental sciences due to their ability to accurately represent different environmental phenomena, including drought. However, the use of ML for rapidly developing droughts remains largely unexplored. Thus, this dissertation aims to investigate the ability of various ML techniques to identify flash drought phenomena. Because ML use in flash drought is largely unexplored, this dissertation explores how multiple ML algorithms, such as random forests, support vector machines, several deep learning methods (e.g., several types of artificial neural networks), can identify flash drought events. The ML algorithms were trained on key variables known to drive flash drought events – soil moisture, evaporation, potential evaporation, temperature, precipitation, and the change in soil moisture, evaporation, and potential evaporation. Lastly, feature importance (the importance of each variable to the ML algorithms) was determined from Shapely values and permutation importance methods to give the ML algorithms interpretability and explainability. Results showed ML is capable of representing flash drought events, with boosted trees and recurrent neural networks showing the most skill. However, the ML algorithms thought flash droughts were more active in the hotspot regions, and the more likely in the late growing season than observations actually show. Feature importance in the ML algorithms showed that the algorithms were relying heavily on soil moisture, precipitation, and potential evaporation to predict flash drought, explaining why they over-emphasized the seasonality. Global representation of flash drought were also be investigated to determine how well the ML models generalize and represent flash drought over vastly varying ecosystems, and to examine rarely examined flash drought events. Global results showed that ML models trained at local scales were significantly more skillful than at the global scale. The skill ML has shown can allow us to not only push our understanding of flash droughts forward, but can also help represent flash droughts in numerical models and allow us to identify flash droughts in real time, and potentially lead to flash drought predictions
SUPPORTING DUAL LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN HEAD START: PEER AND TEACHERS’ LANGUAGE CONTEXT
Get PDFOral language skills have been defined as a set of communication skills and cognitive tools to convey and understand meaning effectively, and one of the key predictors of future academic success. For Dual Language Learners (DLLs), consistent disparities were found in their oral language skills compared to their non-DLL peers. To reduce these gaps this study first explored understanding DLLs’ unique oral language skill development and exposure and interaction with teachers and peers in a classroom context among English-, Spanish-, and Burmese-speaking children using a sample of Head Start children. Analysis revealed disparities in the exposure and interaction, and yearlong oral language growth between Spanish- and Burmese-speaking DLLs and their peers and teachers in the classroom environment. Initially, Spanish-speaking and Burmese-speaking children showed lower English vocabulary skills than their English-speaking peers. However, by the subsequent spring, Spanish-speaking children notably narrowed this gap, while for Burmese-speaking children, the disparity in vocabulary skills widened. Notably, significant differences were observed in the oral language interactions and exposures between DLLs and their peers, with peer interaction emerging as a particularly influential factor. In conclusion, evidence-based culturally responsive teaching strategies are proposed to enhance the oral language development of DLLs within the preschool classroom. These strategies aim to address the observed differences in interaction patterns and exposure, thereby fostering more equitable language development opportunities for DLLs across diverse linguistic backgrounds
How the Medical, Legal, and Religious Systems Shaped Gender for Hermaphrodites and Gender Nonconformists to Suppress Trans Presence and Enforce Heterosexuality
Get PDFAlthough sexuality is widely accepted across the United States, being transgender or a gender nonconformist is not. Those across the LGBTQ+ spectrum are not on equal footing and many wonder why. Members of the transgender community are often subject to immense backlash, both socially and systemically. There are hundreds of anti-trans laws active in the United States, ranging from topics such as healthcare to sports. Many believe that being transgender is a new trend caused by the passing of gay marriage. However, this is far from the truth. Although being transgender is not a new trend, it is a historically quieted one. This paper seeks to look at the ways that the medical, legal, religious systems suppressed the transgender presence in order to enforce heterosexuality. To examine this, the memoirs of Herculine Barbin, and 18the century hermaphrodite are used. Other works used include Michel Foucualt’s History of Sexuality Vol. 1 and Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, and Pleasure and Efficacy by Grace Lavery. Through the analysis of these works, I come to the conclusion that the medical, legal, and religious systems, represented through their individual actors, worked in conjunction with one another for mutual advantage in order to suppress the transgender presence for the enforcement of heterosexuality. I also conclude that these systems are still operative today in similar ways. The conclusions of this study show that being transgender is not a new trend, but rather one that has been historically suppressed
On Designing Public Policy as an Evolving Cyber Physical Social System
Get PDFCyber Physical Social Systems (CPSS) represent a dynamic landscape where contemporary challenges
often take the form of enigmatic "Wicked Problems." These problems are marked by their complexity,
with incomplete information and multiple stakeholders, each with different views and goals. This
necessitates the incorporation of human judgements and abilities compounded through computational
capabilities to carry interpretive and evidentiary analysis to frame wicked problems. One prominent
area where these problems arise is in the realm of public policy. Public policies require a nuanced
approach that recognizes their inherently complex nature and employs appropriate methods to navigate
these intricacies. Viewed through the systems thinking lens, social issues, particularly wicked
problems, resemble evolving CPSS. Understanding the evolving nature of CPSS is fundamental for
designers, as it lays the foundation for comprehending their intricate dynamics, characteristics, and
requirements, serving as a prerequisite for navigating these complex domains.
In this context, the hypothesis is that public policy is an evolving CPSS. To design effective
public policies, one must grasp the interaction between social integration strategies, problem structure,
and the social environment. This holistic understanding not only frames wicked problems and
integrates the foundational knowledge required for evolving CPSS but also illuminates the concept of
public policy as a dynamic and evolving entity. This enlightenment empowers a comprehensive
approach to design public policy and synthesizing design options that address multifaceted societal
challenges within a systems framework.
The primary objective through this thesis is to define a Ph.D. proposal that will be submitted to
the National Science Foundation (NSF) and will anchor in research gaps which I will address in my
dissertation. The key takeaways from this thesis include a deeper understanding of effectively framing
wicked problems, establishing foundational knowledge for designing evolving cyber-physical-social
systems, and exploring the foundational approach for holistic design of public policy. This is anchored
in establishing the characteristics of evolving CPSS and identifying the requirements list to aid
designers to design evolving CPSS. Said that, the further stage lies in developing a cognitive map for
evolving CPSS from the perspective of design based decision support to design public policies and
assist policy makers to make better informed decisions. This is furthered by establishing an approach
and a conceptual map to design public policies that is defined technically in the proposal as the
outcome of this thesis
Inclusive Metadata through bibliographic control
Get PDFAs the Metropolitan Library System was implementing Aspen, an open-source discovery system, we decided to complete our first authority and bibliographic control project. An RFP was written, and two vendors responded with quotes. Backstage was chosen as the vendor, and we started the process in August 2023. A major focus of this project was to move from homegrown genre headings to Library of Congress genre headings. As we were working to update all our records to current cataloging standards, we also made inclusive metadata a top focus. Backstage provided headings from Homosaurus ; a local authority file for Indigenous peoples and incorporating the work of the Xwi7Xwa (whei-wha) Library and the Greater Victoria Public Library