Bioculture Journal
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Connecting people for development: Why public access ICTs matter
No full textLibraries, telecenters, and cybercafés play a critical role in extending the benefits of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to a diverse range of people worldwide. However, their ability to contribute to development agendas has come into question in recent times. The Global Impact Study was designed to address this debate by generating evidence about the scale, character, and impacts of public access ICTs in eight countries: Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Lithuania, the Philippines, and South Africa. This report summarizes the study’s key findings, situating public access in the context of national development, discussing some disputed issues, and providing recommendations for policymakers, public access practitioners and researchers. The results show that a central impact of public access is the promotion of digital inclusion through technology access, information access, and development of ICT skills. Both users and non-users report positive impacts in various social and economic areas of their lives.The Global Impact Study was implemented by the University of Washington's Technology & Social Change Group with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and a grant to IDRC from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Learn more at globalimpactstudy.org
Political discussion and deliberative democracy in immigrant communities
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013In this dissertation, I set out to build our understanding of how Latino immigrants learn to participate in and talk about politics in the United States. First, I develop a framework for analyzing political discussion from the perspective of social norms, and speculate about what may be the prevailing political discussion norms in the American public sphere. Next, I unite the literatures on political socialization, Latino and immigrant politics, and political discussion, along with scholarship on social groups and networks, to create a theoretical model for how Latino immigrants become socialized into a political system. I test this model with three empirical studies. In the first, I use quantitative survey data to test whether Latino immigrants report different sources of political socialization than the general population. The second study relies on qualitative interviews and focus groups with Mexican-heritage immigrants in Arizona and Washington aimed at their early and notable political experiences. The final study reports the results of a national quantitative survey of Mexican-heritage Americans and a comparison sample of whites. My key findings are that Latinos rely less on the traditional socializing influences of parents and teachers, and rely more on spouses, children, and the media. Many Latinos focus on learning about issues rather than debating in their political discussion, though those talking with other Latinos were open to arguing. Overall, I find notable differences in both the socialization channels and discussion norms between Latinos and whites in the U.S
The Regulation of Brown Adipose Tissue Activation by Multiple Phosphodiesterases
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013Brown adipose tissue is a highly thermogenic, energy "wasting" organ that converts glucose and lipids into heat. Many of the critical metabolic and gene transcriptional processes, such as uncoupling protein-1 (UCP1) mRNA expression, lipolysis and glucose uptake are regulated by the β-adrenergic receptor-dependent signaling cascade through the second messenger, adenosine-3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (cAMP). Cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases (PDEs) are enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of cAMP, and thereby regulate the duration and magnitude of this signal. Yet, neither the types of PDEs that are expressed in BAT nor how they regulate the major processes that lead to thermogenesis have been well characterized. In this dissertation, I present evidence that BAT activity is largely regulated by several different PDEs working in concert. In the basal state, it required a combination of PDE3 and PDE4 inhibitors to fully induce UCP1 mRNA expression and activate lipolysis in brown adipocytes, whereas neither inhibitor had any substantial effect when administered alone. Furthermore, when injected into mice, the combination of PDE3 and PDE4 inhibitors stimulated glucose uptake in BAT under thermoneutral and fasted conditions. This response was further potentiated by the global ablation of PDE8A. On the other hand, when brown adipocytes were co-stimulated with a β-adrenergic agonist, a PDE3 inhibitor could potentiate UCP1 mRNA expression, but not lipolysis; whereas a PDE4 inhibitor could not potentiate UCP1 mRNA expression, but did potentiate lipolysis and cAMP accumulation. This suggests a differential role for these PDEs when β-adrenergic receptors are activated. Due to its high metabolic inefficiency, BAT has been implicated as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of obesity and its various comorbidities. It is thought that increasing the amount and/or the activity of brown fat could lead to increased energy expenditure and a decrease in body weight, a phenomenon that has been demonstrated in rodent models. However, selective pharmacological activation of brown adipose tissue in humans has remained elusive due to a lack of adipocyte-specific adrenergic receptors expressed on its surface. In light of this, new alternative approaches are required to translate this hypothesis to the clinic. Taken together, the results presented here provide a new conceptual basis for the development of therapeutics that activate BAT by selectively targeting a combination of PDEs
Roads Less Traveled: Access, Automobiles, and Recreation in Mount Rainier National Park's Wilderness Areas
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2013
Establishing paleorecords in the galapagos using hydrogen isotope ratios as a proxy for climate change
No full textSenior thesis written for Oceanography 445[author abstract] Global climate is heavily influenced by the hydrology of the tropical Pacific, which is
characterized by a band of heavy precipitation at ~10°N in summer (~3°N in winter) known as the
Intertropical Convergence Zone. Characterized by warm underlying sea surface temperatures and strong
convection, the seasonal migrations of the Intertropical Convergence Zone alter the precipitation patterns
of the tropical Pacific, as well as global climate. This study in Lake Escondida, Isabela
Island, Galapagos, used the isotopic composition
of aquatic and terrestrial biomarkers in sediments
to reconstruct paleoclimates in the Galapagos. The results are consistent with previous studies, and also show
evidence for a northern migration of the ITCZ after 1850 AD.University of Washington School of Oceanograph
The Asian Role in the Arctic's Development
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2013Due to the Arctic's warming climate, the region is developing at a record pace. Fueled by the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and natural resources, commerce in the Arctic is expanding to include non-Arctic states, most notably China, South Korea, and Japan. This paper examines the factors that facilitate Asian involvement in the Russian Arctic. The paper finds three major factors: the Asian demand for energy and Russia's willingness to supply energy; Russia's increasing business ties with Asian industries for Arctic equipment and investment; and each country's regard for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Arctic Council. The paper concludes that these trends are likely to continue for the near future and that Asia's involvement in the Russian Arctic will be an enduring feature of Arctic politics
Polymer / Transparent Electrode Interface Studies with Applications for Organic Solar Cells
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013The field of organic photovoltaics continues to progress through a combination of improved materials selection and a deeper understanding of operational mechanisms. We contribute to advances in both areas through study of the interface between the semiconducting polymer and the transparent electrode. This interface is the site of charge injection and extraction, and this thesis specifically focuses upon nanoscale modification of interfacial properties resulting in measurable changes in bulk device performance and ultimately leading to a deepened understanding of device operation. The polymer / transparent electrode interface is modified through use of phosphonic acid self-assembled monolayers (PA SAMs). Using micro-contact printing, we deposit PA SAMs and spatially modulate the work function of the transparent conductive oxide, indium tin oxide (ITO). The contact potential difference on and off the SAM shows strong contrast and high resolution despite only sub-nanometer variations in topography. We incorporate the patterned ITO into a light-emitting diode as a way to visually confirm changes in charge injection resulting from changes in ITO work function. The patterned electroluminescence is stronger in regions where the SAM is present, indicating locally improved charge injection. We also use monolayers of PA SAMs (on the order of approximately 1nm thick) to modify the work function of the hole-extracting contact, ITO, in polymer/fullerene bulk heterojunction solar cells. We observe a linear dependence of the open-circuit voltage of these organic photovoltaic devices on the modified ITO work function when using a donor polymer with a deep-lying highest-occupied molecular orbital (HOMO). We measure charge carrier lifetimes using transient photovoltage and charge extraction in a series of SAM-modified devices. As expected, these measurements show systematically longer carrier lifetimes in devices with higher open-circuit voltages; however, the trends provide useful distinctions between different hypotheses of how transient photovoltage decays might be controlled by surface chemistry. We interpret our results as being consistent with changes in band-bending at the ITO/bulk heterojunction interface which have the net result of altering the internal electric field to help prevent electrons in fullerene domains from recombining at the hole-extracting electrode
Promiscuous Contextualities: Race, Sex, Gender, and the Problem of the Stereotype in the Politics of Representation
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013Abstract Jason Morse Promiscuous Contextualities: Race, Sex, Gender, and the Problem of the Stereotype in the Politics of Representation My dissertation project deals with the problem of the stereotype in the sexualized racialization of African Americans in the U.S. since Reconstruction. The stereotype has thus far been primarily understood as a social psychological problem rectifiable only by correcting stereotypes as "false" representations in people's minds. More recently, postcolonial and performance studies have focused instead on its deconstructive "productive ambivalence" and the theoretical possibilities of critically inhabiting the stereotype in parodic, disidentificatory performance. I argue, however, that these treatments remain corrective, invested in the idea that a re-presentation of the stereotype will "correct" it (as if this correction would quell its representational powers or that a pre-existing, non-stereotypical "reality" exists), while also seeming to be inadequate for understanding the stereotype's paradoxical efficacy in the present moment's hegemony of post-racial, colorblind, and/or multicultural discourses that purport to have moved beyond stereotypical thinking. Promiscuous Contextualities builds upon this stereotype scholarship and insights from woman of color feminism and 1980-90s cultural studies' theories of representation to ask questions about the stereotype's representational intractability. Promiscuous contextualization names a reading practice that takes as axiomatic that stereotypes' empirical correction is impossible and so focuses instead on understanding how stereotypes represent. This project looks to cultural production as a site from which to develop a reading practice that dwells not on "undoing" stereotypes, but instead on understanding how their protean, often contradictory, representational logics - including deploying historical narratives to produce ahistorical "natural" definitions, producing and simultaneously disavowing their own truth value, and fixing bodies to particular social definitions while remaining themselves adaptable to changes in social attitudes - might reveal their role in the relations of power that instigate them, and, more broadly, their role in framing relations of desire and identity formation as well as historiography and historical narrative and other forms of scholarship that focus on racial, gender, and sexual formation. To do so, this project tracks the role of stereotypes in the gendered sexualization of African Americans in the historical period between the post-Reconstruction era and the emergence of the African American Civil Rights Movement. The "American dilemma" of re-signifying black bodies from enslaved property to emancipated subjects involved a war of representation that forged America's most dangerous and enduring stereotypes, such as the "Black Buck/Rapist" and the "Mammy." The chapters progress as a series of interfaces between these stereotypes, how they are represented in cultural texts, and how these representations are engaged by scholars. I read these texts against the grain of their usual readings as correctives to stereotypes, readings that I argue are framed by particular understandings of stereotypes. Each chapter models a promiscuous contextualization of a cultural text while also showing how the texts perform their own promiscuous contextualizations of the stereotypes they engage. The first chapter reads James Baldwin's Another Country as a theory and experiment in reading the "Black Rapist" stereotype that makes apparent its inescapability within relations of interracial desire. Baldwin's promiscuous contextualization maps the circulation of the stereotype in these relations and in so doing reveals the extent to which his audience must reconcile their complicity with the way stereotypes frame their reading practice. I then read Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices as a re-narrativization of the history that defines African Americans as "Primitive" Others to U.S. progress. In his re-historicization, Wright figures men as historical agents while continuing to define Black women as the gendered, sexual stereotype of the Mammy, as the "Primitive" Others to the now-progressive Black men. Re-contextualizing this feminist reading within the documentary discourse of the U.S. state reveals the problem of trying to undo the stereotype's historical indexicality. The final chapter understands Ida B. Wells's anti-lynching pamphlets and speeches as the conditions of possibility for later work like Baldwin and Wright. I argue that most scholarship reads Wells's anti-lynching writings as a de-bunking the Black Rapist stereotype, which requires centering this stereotype within the lynching narrative as "truthful" in ways that Wells seems to trouble. I read Wells as using evidence from the white press to carefully disarticulate the relationship between the material practice of lynching and the "Black Rapist" stereotype in order to show how the white press produces this relationship
Development of Practical Synthetic Tools Using Copper and Gold Catalysis
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013The use of transition metal catalysis in the synthesis of complex organic molecules has dramatically expanded the role of synthetic chemistry across a broad spectrum of applications including drug discovery, chemical biology, and materials science. This is due in large part to the development of practical, transition-metal-catalyzed techniques for: 1) the construction of synthetically challenging molecular structures and 2) the selective activation of strong bonds. Our contribution in the first area has focused on the functionalization of C-C multiple bonds using copper and gold catalysts. I will begin by discussing the development of a convenient method for the asymmetric synthesis of cyclic ethers containing highly-substituted stereocenters: complex structures which are found in a wide variety of natural products. Our efforts in the second area have been directed at C-O bond activation using copper catalysts. I will describe our investigation of the copper-catalyzed reduction of alkyl triflates, and how this technique was applied in a new approach to the selective deoxygenation of primary alcohols that offers significant advantages over traditional methods. Finally, I will present an extension of this strategy to the copper-catalyzed reduction of primary and secondary halides which proceeds through a non-radical mechanism
Brechemin Scholarship Winners Recital, April 3rd, 2013
No full textConcert Program for Brechemin Scholarhsip Winners Recital, April 3rd,
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