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    Vehicle Dynamics Modeling for Electric Vehicles

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    Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2017-06Electric vehicles have become more popular in the last few decades due to governmental regulations and environmental awareness. This increased demand has allowed manufacturers to explore new methods of controlling vehicle motion. One technique called torque vectoring allows independent electric motors to output different torques without the use of a mechanical differential. This process necessitates the use of a robust dynamic model of vehicle motion to better predict how a car will respond to changes in torque and to control the stability of the vehicle. This thesis presents equations of motion for two-wheel and four-wheel models of a vehicle and applies them to lane changes, turns, and vehicle roll. The models can be applied to a vehicle with torque vectoring capabilities to aid in the creation of a controls algorithm

    His Story: Reconciling the Old-Young Man

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    Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2017-06The history and mythology of the male form is a central concern to my practice. How it repeats and manifests throughout time fuels my work. Through a menagerie of plastic materials, stories and sculptural motifs, my research has parsed what I refer to as the old-young man. Strongly related to the Jungian archetype of the puer aeternus, or eternal boy, my work has been an attempt to locate my own identity in a larger continuum of figurative sculpture. Whether organizing my work with attention to material or narrative, the strategies employed in my studio relate to what I identify as two forms of time. Acknowledging linear time, I embody the shadow of the puer, the senex. Grappling with cyclical time, I assert that the structure of myth points to an eternal narrative repeated generationally. My efforts throughout my study attempt to resolve the dissonance between both. Story serves as much as a material as clay, plaster, or wax, and when utilized in the present, can condense time reaching as far back as antiquity

    Engaging the Public in Management: Voluntary Practice, Citizen Complaints, and Deliberating Oil and Gas Risk

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    Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2017-06Management of emerging technological risks is challenged by scientific uncertainty about relevant impacts and frequent gaps between expert and lay perceptions of risk. Engaging in deliberation can help to foster learning about interests, values and concerns among diverse stakeholders, resulting in policies that reflect not only scientific knowledge but stakeholder values and concern. Where policy arrangements are flexible, the benefits of deliberation may be most evident. My dissertation project demonstrates that engagement between firms, citizens, and governments can be used in managing emerging risks, but that government managers play an important role in structuring deliberation and ensuring firms respond to resident concerns. I evaluate oil and gas management policies in the State of Colorado as a case of using engagement and deliberation to manage emerging risks. It studies two engagement processes in detail. Specifically, I first study the voluntary adoption of engagement by individual operating firms as a management practice. I then study the filing of citizen complaints with the State oil and gas regulatory agency as a citizen-led engagement mechanism. In the first chapter, I evaluate whether firm voluntarily adoption of engagement and deliberation strategies alters the odds of citizens filing complaints. Using a spatial case control model, I demonstrate that engagement and deliberation have the potential to mitigate the increased risks of complaints. At wellsites where companies adopt more restrictive practices, use of engagement and deliberation is associated with relative reductions in complaint behavior. Additionally, I find that larger companies are most likely to adopt engagement practices.In the second chapter I test firm motivations for adopting voluntary management practices including engagement. I explicitly focus on how firms might learn from complaints and choose to adapt practices. I make novel use of text similarity methods to evaluate firm level change in practices in relation to motivations and potential feedback sources. The results demonstrate that using information from complaints, fines, warnings, towards practice changes requires firms to be motivated to do so. Potential motivations identified as critical include coercive pressure from regulatory agencies and pressures from other firms. Relying on the first project for case selection, in the third chapter of the dissertation I evaluate the psychological and contextual foundations of complaint behavior. The paper is hypothesis generating, and suggest five hypotheses about how complaints are driven by contexts and perceptions of oil and gas development. Based on 17 semi-structured interviews with citizen complainants, I find that while complaints are behavioral response to observed threats, they are not necessarily a strong reflection of violations of official rules. Instead, citizens file may file complaints in order to convey perceptions and concerns to regulators and firms. This finding provides an indication that engagement may increase compliant behavior as engagement with firms can make evidence recorded via complaining useful within deliberations. In the conduct of research, I found that complaints, themselves, fostered direct discussion between citizens and firms. The fourth chapter builds on Chapter Three to propose hypotheses about what enables complaining to foster deliberation and learning. I find that institutions play a critical role in motivating deliberation between residents and firms. However, science-based evidence may detract from the development of deliberation as it provides yes/no conclusions on regulatory standards. This suggests that government actors play a key role even in motivating voluntary engagement by structuring rules and motivations for industry outreach

    The information lives of immigrant and refugee youth acting as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Wayfarers

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    Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2017-08The Center for Immigration Studies reported in October 2016 that immigration to the U.S. had reached historic numbers. According to the U.S. Census estimates, 59.1 million immigrants live in the U.S.; this numbers includes 16.7 million American-born children who are under the age of 18. Thus, approximately one in five U.S. residents is an immigrant or minor child of an immigrant parent. This is a significant challenge facing many industrialized countries since the tools and frameworks to better integrate immigrants by a host country are evolving and are not currently designed to deal with the substantial number of people fleeing conflict and wars. Though libraries offer information and internet access and public educational institutions provide instructional support for immigrants, they are not adequate to scale to the ever-increasing tide of documented and undocumented immigrant and refugee flow coming into the United States. Since the flow of new immigrants is not decreasing, there is urgency to develop frameworks that can fluidly facilitate immigrant transition into the societies of the U.S. or other industrialized countries. Helping immigrant communities to transition into an unfamiliar environment and society continues to be an intractable, sometimes called a wicked or tricky problem in the literature because there is no way of knowing if the proposed solutions can offer a viable solution until the solution is actually implemented. Most international programs run by industrialized countries focus resources on preparing adults, and therefore indirectly their families, to adapt and become employable in cultures that differ considerably from their home countries. This adult training focus does not address the significant social, psychological and cultural barriers facing people who need to understand the structural, cultural and functional attributes of a different country. It is insufficient to make immigrants employable at a skilled job if they cannot also deal with the significant cultural differences that they face. Most programs do not include, or focus on, youth as communicators to transition immigrant knowledge needed to become functional members of a newly adopted country. This research explored whether immigrants would adapt faster to their new environments if they functioned as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Wayfarers between their families and their new host country. This research should also identify whether some immigrant youth are already functioning as Positive Deviants within their community. The approach used in this study was to focus on male/female immigrant and refugee youth, ages 14-19, who are on their journey to become brokers and experts of language, technology, media, and culture. The goal of this study was to determine how, why, and when, or whether these youth act in the role of immigrant youth ICT wayfarers. The primary method fused in this study was the creation of an evolving participatory framework and youth engagement model called Teen Design Days (TDD). Teen Design Days emerged from observations and workshops conducted between 2011 and 2014 at libraries, churches, and neighborhood centers located in immigrant communities in South Seattle in Washington State. This study showed that using a unique participatory framework (TDD) does capture the voices of the youth as well as was able to identify Positive Deviants in the youth population. It also showed how combining a strategic use of design thinking and design artifacts was effective in offering insights into the Information Worlds (technology, social, information) of ICT Wayfaring youth and their ethnic communities. This research focused on creating and then evolving the TDD participatory engagement model using a pre-pilot, pilot (TDD I) and two youth participatory/co-design workshops (TDD II, II). The results of this study show the importance of youth in facilitating their parents’ and communities’ adjustment to their new environments by becoming seekers and sharers of their newly acquired skills and knowledge needed to function in a new country. Without these Wayfaring youth, immigrants arriving in the U.S. would face more challenges to adapt to their new environments. This research demonstrated how each Wayfaring youth had a different model for how they contributed to information sharing and how they facilitated their parents to become comfortable with their new surroundings. Immigrant youth need to balance adapting to a new culture but also retaining their home country traditions if they are going to be effective ICT wayfarers. This study found that immigrant and refugee youth within their ethnic communities had a near unlimited capacity and willingness to help family, peers, community overcome many types of technical, cultural, and social barriers. They also had the capability to design and find unique solutions for the many beneficiaries they serve each day. The Center for Immigration Studies reported in October 2016 that immigration to the U.S. had reached historic numbers. According to the U.S. Census estimates, 59.1 million immigrants live in the U.S.; this numbers includes 16.7 million American-born children who are under the age of 18. Thus, approximately one in five U.S. residents is an immigrant or minor child of an immigrant parent. This is a significant challenge facing many industrialized countries since the tools and frameworks to better integrate immigrants by a host country are evolving and are not currently designed to deal with the substantial number of people fleeing conflict and wars. Though libraries offer information and internet access and public educational institutions provide instructional support for immigrants, they are not adequate to scale to the ever-increasing tide of documented and undocumented immigrant and refugee flow coming into the United States. Since the flow of new immigrants is not decreasing, there is urgency to develop frameworks that can fluidly facilitate immigrant transition into the societies of the U.S. or other industrialized countries. Helping immigrant communities to transition into an unfamiliar environment and society continues to be an intractable, sometimes called a wicked or tricky problem in the literature because there is no way of knowing if the proposed solutions can offer a viable solution until the solution is actually implemented. Most international programs run by industrialized countries focus resources on preparing adults, and therefore indirectly their families, to adapt and become employable in cultures that differ considerably from their home countries. This adult training focus does not address the significant social, psychological and cultural barriers facing people who need to understand the structural, cultural and functional attributes of a different country. It is insufficient to make immigrants employable at a skilled job if they cannot also deal with the significant cultural differences that they face. Most programs do not include, or focus on, youth as communicators to transition immigrant knowledge needed to become functional members of a newly adopted country. This research explored whether immigrants would adapt faster to their new environments if they functioned as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Wayfarers between their families and their new host country. This research should also identify whether some immigrant youth are already functioning as Positive Deviants within their community. The approach used in this study was to focus on male/female immigrant and refugee youth, ages 14-19, who are on their journey to become brokers and experts of language, technology, media, and culture. The goal of this study was to determine how, why, and when, or whether these youth act in the role of immigrant youth ICT wayfarers. The primary method fused in this study was the creation of an evolving participatory framework and youth engagement model called Teen Design Days (TDD). Teen Design Days emerged from observations and workshops conducted between 2011 and 2014 at libraries, churches, and neighborhood centers located in immigrant communities in South Seattle in Washington State. This study showed that using a unique participatory framework (TDD) does capture the voices of the youth as well as was able to identify Positive Deviants in the youth population. It also showed how combining a strategic use of design thinking and design artifacts was effective in offering insights into the Information Worlds (technology, social, information) of ICT Wayfaring youth and their ethnic communities. This research focused on creating and then evolving the TDD participatory engagement model using a pre-pilot, pilot (TDD I) and two youth participatory/co-design workshops (TDD II, II). The results of this study show the importance of youth in facilitating their parents’ and communities’ adjustment to their new environments by becoming seekers and sharers of their newly acquired skills and knowledge needed to function in a new country. Without these Wayfaring youth, immigrants arriving in the U.S. would face more challenges to adapt to their new environments. This research demonstrated how each Wayfaring youth had a different model for how they contributed to information sharing and how they facilitated their parents to become comfortable with their new surroundings. Immigrant youth need to balance adapting to a new culture but also retaining their home country traditions if they are going to be effective ICT wayfarers. This study found that immigrant and refugee youth within their ethnic communities had a near unlimited capacity and willingness to help family, peers, community overcome many types of technical, cultural, and social barriers. They also had the capability to design and find unique solutions for the many beneficiaries they serve each day

    Viability of Fulfilling the Nuclear-Nonproliferation Treaty in a Post-Cold War World

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    The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has an end goal of complete disarmament. Despite the creation of successful programs - such as Megatons to Megawatts between the United States and Russia - which have aimed at the gradual reduction of surplus nuclear stockpiles, the prospect of the total elimination of nuclear weapons now seems fleeting as it is no longer a bilateral issue between two hegemonic powers, but one that is widespread among states with varying interests. This paper examines why we are struggling to successfully fulfill the NPT by stressing the issues of deterrence, modernization, and noncompliance in our current political climate, which has seen increases in proliferation as opposed to gradual disarmament. I also address potential solutions, such as the creation of an international fuel bank, the use of irreversible safeguards agreements, and a program dedicated to the global recycling nuclear fuel for clean energy rather than using it for further proliferation

    Investigating the Relationship Between the Gas-Phase Structures of Protein Ions and Their Charge States

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    Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2017-06This dissertation explores the utility of cation-to-anion proton transfer reactions (CAPTR) in native mass spectrometry, and investigates the relationship between the charge state (z) and collision cross section (Ω) of gas-phase protein ions from native-like and denaturing conditions. In CAPTR, protein cations are generated via nano-electrospray ionization (nESI) and reacted with stored anions via proton transfers. The products of those reactions are then studied using ion mobility (IM), which measures the Ω of an ion-neutral pair, and mass spectrometry (MS), which measures the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) of an ion. Chapter 1 discusses those reactions involving native-like protein and protein complex ions. Those results indicate that CAPTR may be used to aid in z determination, and separate mixtures of ions in m/z. The following several chapters then explore the relationship between z and Ω of denatured and native-like proteins and native-like protein complexes. Charge states of ubiquitin from denaturing conditions were m/z selected for CAPTR. The results indicate that the ions compact following each reaction, and that the Ω of the product ions depends on the product ion charge state (C) and is independent of the precursor charge state (P). Energy-dependent experiments indicate that product ions of the same C, but from different P, have different subpopulations of ions. Similar experiments were performed with cytochrome C from native-like and denaturing conditions, which showed that the lowest C ions from those experiments have similar Ω. Additionally, the Ω of native-like cytochrome C CAPTR product ions depend more weakly on C than their denatured counterparts. The Ω of CAPTR products of lysozyme from native-like, denaturing/reducing and denaturing/disulfide intact solution conditions are also similar at the lowest C measured. Energy-dependent experiments reveal the importance of disulfide bonds on the gas-phase structure of lysozyme ions. Ω of the CAPTR products of native-like protein and protein complexes were also studied using IM-MS, energy-dependent pre-CAPTR collisional activation, and energy-dependent post-CAPTR collisional activation experiments. Those studies reveal the stabilities of the product ions, and that their Ω weakly depends on C compared to protein ions from denaturing conditions. CAPTR was also performed on poly-ubiquitin ions from native-like and denaturing solution conditions. The Ω of poly-ubiquitin ions from native-like solutions were used to develop coarse-grained models to interpret the domain structure of the CAPTR products of poly-ubiquitin ions from denaturing conditions. Further, figures of merit were used to quantitate the Ω of poly-ubiquitin ions from denaturing conditions as a function of C. Lastly, trajectory method calculations were performed to investigate how ion-induced dipole interactions may affect Ω of native-like and denatured protein ions

    Envisioning Mothers: Visualizations and the Invisibility of Motherhood

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    Women in the U.S. and Canada pay a substantial social and economic penalty for becoming mothers. And though the existence of a "motherhood penalty" has been extensively demonstrated, motherhood itself has not been widely recognized as a marginalized identity. In this article, I review several popular visualizations (graphical representations, imagery, infographics, etc.) used to depict inequality and oppression to propose that-despite mothers paying a motherhood penalty-motherhood remains an invisible category in current representations of social inequity. I suggest that by subsuming mothers under the category of "women," current visualizations obscure how gender discrimination (particularly economic discrimination) results from women's status as "mothers" rather than their status as "women." As a result, we miss the central role that motherhood plays in women's social and economic oppression. Motherhood is rarely recognized as an identity that contributes to women's inequality, and I argue here that this is partially due to its invisibility in popular visualizations of oppression. As a result, I argue that motherhood should appear as an analytic category in our popular visualization of oppression to increase its visibility as a marginalized identity. Such visibility would increase social justice activism around issues of motherhood and would raise public awareness of motherhood as a significant social identity within the context of oppression and inequality

    Running out of Indian Time

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    Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2017-06For Native women poets, writing into a poetic tradition and in a language, English, that has been part and parcel of their oppression, poetic techniques act as new time-keeping devices. Poets such as Joan Kane, Esther Belin, Natalie Diaz, and Joy Harjo utilize creative agency to reinscribe temporality, making present the power of both traditional and contemporary Indigenous knowledge. By reimagining time, these writers create multiple temporalities, each one with a different poetic possibility of a future. The restitching of time that occurs through Native poetry brings together the reservation and the city, stillness and motion, the cycles of the seasons and the cycles of the female body

    Biotic and Abiotic Influences on Bull Kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) Abundance and Distribution in the Salish Sea

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    Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2017-08Bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana, is an annual species of subtidal marine macroalgae that serves as major biogenic habitat in the Salish Sea of Washington State. Kelp forests are ecologically important because they provide structure for a variety of other organisms and contribute substantial primary production to food webs within and below the photic zone. Like all kelp, N. luetkeana has a complex life history with alternating macroscopic sporophyte and microscopic gametophyte life stages. The mature sporophyte reaches up to 30 meters in length and is the most recognizable life stage, but the surface of a bull kelp bed only hints at the complexity below. Juvenile bull kelp need light and space and must compete with perennial understory kelp as soon as they begin to grow. Additionally, survivorship is low for those recruits that do begin to grow; the narrow stipes and single blades of bull kelp recruits are likely far more vulnerable to damage by herbivores than mature bull kelp with thicker stipes and many blades. Conversely, adult bull kelp have ample access to light, but are far more susceptible to the effects of current flow and the accompanying drag than juveniles. Because juvenile bull kelp sporophytes (stipe length < 40 cm) face very different biotic and abiotic pressures than adult bull kelp that have reached the surface, it is crucial to improve our understanding of this canopy-forming kelp across multiple life stages. The four major goals of this dissertation are: 1) track the appearance and survivorship of N. luetkeana recruits across seasons 2) examine how propagule availability and removal of competitors influence N. luetkeana recruitment at two sites within and across seasons; 3) quantify how morphology and material properties of N. luetkeana change across ontogeny, investigating morphological scaling of both juvenile and mature bull kelp and testing how juvenile stipes fail; and 4) determine feeding patterns of the Northern Kelp Crabs (Pugettia producta) in laboratory experiments and assess how protecting juvenile N. luetkeana from large consumers in the field influences growth

    Strategic Green Infrastructure Planning: A Geodesign-based Planning Support Approach

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    Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2017University of Washington Abstract Strategic Green Infrastructure Planning: A Geodesign-based Planning Support Approach Mary J. Roderick Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Robert Mugerauer Department of Urban Design and Planning Green infrastructure is increasingly utilized to improve and restore ecosystem function and ecosystem services in urban areas; however, it is often implemented in a piecemeal, opportunistic, single-purpose fashion. This dissertation uses the Steinitz geodesign framework to demonstrate a systematic approach for analyzing synergies and trade-offs between different types of green infrastructure across multiple scales and functions, a novel application of the framework, to enable strategic green infrastructure planning at the city scale. The focal geography and jurisdiction for this research is Seattle, WA. While regional or landscape-driven approaches (e.g. Puget Sound Regional Council, Puget Sound Partnership, WA Department of Ecology Watershed Resource Inventory Areas) to planning are important, the city scale affords the administrative, regulatory and financing mechanisms needed to implement green infrastructure programmatically across multiple infrastructure systems. By iterating through the geodesign framework, the complex picture of green infrastructure planning across multiple scales, functions, and departments with a broad range of requirements driven by many different influences is successively simplified to narrow in on a few key systems and questions. However, the geodesign process and outcomes should be transparent, collaborative and accessible to multiple groups of stakeholders. A further contribution of this dissertation is a detailed examination of the tools and technologies needed to cyber-enable the full spectrum of the geodesign framework. Tools like GeoPlanner and Geodesign Hub have already been developed to digitally support some of the analysis and modeling aspects of the framework, and technologies like web services and geoportals already exist to increase their flexibility and extend their data management and analytic capabilities. Other aspects like conceptual modeling, and structured participation methods for analytic-deliberative decision-making also have IT system precedents, but all of the existing tools and technologies need further development on the basis of a shared ontology for geodesign to realize the potential of a comprehensive, interoperable geodesign support system

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