IDA Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital Archive
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Empty Homes, Homeless People: The Politics of Vacant Housing in the United States
No full textThe United States is facing a housing affordability crisis. Housing costs continue to rise,
outpacing both inflation and wage growth. In December of 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau
estimated that over forty percent of American renter households—over nineteen million
households—were rent-burdened, meaning they spent over thirty percent of their income on
rent. Harvard University’s State of the Nation’s Housing report estimated that thirty percent of
all households—including those who own their own homes—spend more than thirty percent of
their income on rent or mortgage payments. In such a broadly unaffordable housing market, it
becomes pertinent to analyze where homes are being left empty. Vacant and underutilized
housing is a perplexing problem that underscores the pitfalls of the commodification—
specifically the hyper-commodification—of housing. The number of vacant housing units in the
United States far exceeds the homeless population, according to data collected by the US Postal
Service in partnership with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In response to
this paradox, housing reclamation movements have sprung up across the country, practicing a
highly politicized form of squatting. My thesis asks: what are the causes of vacant housing in the
United States, what can municipalities and state governments do to address vacant housing, and
what activist work is being done in response to vacant housing? Ultimately, I argue that vacant housing exists in the United States because of the hyper-commodification of housing. The
relationship between housing hyper-commodification and vacant housing manifests itself in a
two-tiered process: in low-income areas, homes are abandoned because their owners are unable
to extract monetary value from them in the private housing market, and in high-cost cities, out-of-
town real estate investors purchase homes for investment purposes and do not live in them.
These two processes have disparate impacts on surrounding communities: in low-income areas,
vacant and abandoned properties create blight and encourage further disinvestment, while in
high-cost cities, out-of-town home purchases exacerbate cities’ existing affordability crises as
empty condominiums eliminate the use of these crucial and often sparse housing resources.
Government redresses to vacant housing must be targeted to the type of housing vacancies an
area deals with. However, policy choices that aim to remedy the prevalence of housing vacancies
in both contexts contribute to the partial decommodification of housing. Finally, housing
takeovers and political squatting in low-income communities raise the fundamental contradiction
between homelessness and vacant housing and, if expanded, have the potential to disrupt our
profit-based housing system, further promoting the decommodification of housing.Politic
Studying inflated calyx syndrome in Physalis grisea
No full textPhysalis grisea, also known as groundcherry, is a member of the
Solanaceae family and possesses a striking morphological novelty called inflated
calyx syndrome (ICS). The inflated calyx is a modified version of sepals, which
transform into a balloon-like husk that encases the fruit after the flower is
fertilized. Because the genetic underpinnings of this trait remain unclear, the
purpose of my project was to understand the genes controlling ICS in P. grisea. I
focused on four homeotic genes from the MADS-box family, each one regulating
an aspect of floral organ development. These genes are MPF3, DEF, TAG1, and
EJ2, and previous research in other members of Physalis and the Solanaceae
suggests that they are implicated in ICS development. I analyzed the floral
morphology and genome sequences of four P. grisea CRISPR-edited mutant
lines, each of which had one of the four genes of interest had been knocked out.
My findings indicate that MPF3, TAG1, and EJ2 each affect ICS differently: mpf3
led to stunted inflated calyces; tag1 was correlated with a lack of calyx inflation,
likely due to male infertility from the transformation of stamens into petaloid
organs; and ej2 disrupted ICS development by altering sepal identity and number.Biological Science
Relative Levels of Drice Expression During Metamorphosis In Larval Fat Bodies of Drosophila melanogaster
No full textProgrammed cell death (PCD) is the self-destruction of a cell as part of development or maintaining homeostasis. The main drivers of apoptosis are a family of enzymes called caspases. The two main caspases in Drosophila are Dronc and Drice. Dronc is an apical caspase, which means it is directly activated by apoptotic signals and in turn activates Drice. Drice is an effector caspase, which means it cleaves certain molecules in the cell which lead to cell death. During Drosophila pupation, larval salivary glands die at 10-12 hours after puparium formation (APF). Unlike most larval tissues, the larval fat bodies of Drosophila do not undergo apoptosis. Instead, they remodel, going from a sheet of fat cells to individual cells at around 12 hours APF. Therefore, it would be expected that larval fat bodies would have much lower levels of Drice than larval salivary glands. In this project, relative levels of Drice protein between Drosophila larval salivary glands and larval fat bodies at 0, 6, 10, and 12 hours APF were measured using Western blotting. It was hypothesized that at all time points levels of Drice protein would be lower in the fat bodies than in the salivary glands. Unfortunately, difficulties with the Western blotting protocol and the antibody used led to a lack of statistically significant results. However, troubleshooting of the experiment did lead to revisions of the Woodard Lab Western blotting protocol that will increase the efficacy and efficiency of future blots. Despite the issues with the project, future study in this area would be very valuable and should make use of the updated Western blotting protocol.Biological Science
Being Realistic About Reducing Incarceration: Political Approaches to Incarceration Reform in Michigan, What Works, and What Does Not
No full textMichelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness took the criminal justice space by storm. Published in 2010 just as states began reversing War on Drugs policies, the book transformed the way activists and policymakers think about prison and the state’s role in incarceration. The book’s core premise posited that incarceration’s purpose is to systematically and intentionally disenfranchise African American men. My research challenges the dominance of Alexander’s narrative on the carceral system and aims to answer the question: what is the most effective political approach to getting criminal justice reform policy passed that significantly reduces the incarcerated population given existing political conditions in Michigan and other states with similar conditions? My research draws on interviews with state policymakers and activists, political messaging in newspaper articles, press releases, and legislative hearings, and successful and unsuccessful legislation passed in Michigan’s 100th and 101st state legislative sessions to create a comprehensive analysis of when and where certain political approaches succeed and fail. I argue that Alexander’s “race approach” is not the most effective political approach to reducing incarceration on a messaging or policy basis. I argue instead for the success of the “economic approach” in passing reform legislation. This economic approach aims to ameliorate the effects of the carceral system, both by making it easier for offenders to access socioeconomic resources after incarceration and through preventative but piecemeal measures before incarceration, such as increasing funding for an individual program or resource. I argue that while the economic approach has achieved the most success from a messaging and policy standpoint thus far, mass redistribution into working- and middle-class communities is needed to truly shrink the carceral state. This thesis categorizes and measures different political approaches to carceral reform, which previous scholars have not done, and creates a political framework for how legislators in purple states can get reform legislation passed.Politic
Kariakoo Market Design: Smart Food Systems
No full textAs of 2020, Eastern Africa has faced a food insecurity crisis affecting millions of people due to factors such as economic instability, high food prices, and climate change. Tanzania, in particular, has a large population that depends on smallholder farming, which faces challenges due to stagnant production, climate change, and limited access to food by marginalized families. The recent fire that destroyed the Kariakoo Market, the largest and busiest market - and one of the biggest retail spaces for fresh produce - in Dar es Salaam, has highlighted the need for innovative approaches to urban agriculture that can ensure food security and sustainability.
This project reimagines the Kariakoo marketplace as an urban farming and distribution center that integrates hydroponics and circular food economy principles, using HARVEST, a plugin for urban food production simulations. The aim is to explore viable options for controlled environment agriculture in urban spaces in Tanzania, explore the practicality of climate-smart agriculture, and ensure food and nutrition security while reducing emissions and improving economic viability. The study builds on the growing trend of urban agricultural systems that have made a difference in how food systems are approached globally, including highly technical installations that are environmentally friendly and result in a high yield (Benis, and Ferrão).
This thought project aims to contribute to the creation of more resilient and sustainable food systems in Tanzania and potentially beyond. The imagined scenario presents an opportunity for urban agriculture initiatives to help bridge the gap and improve food security in the city. It is possible that there have been changes to these numbers since then, and more up-to-date information would require further research.Architectural Studie
Geopolitics at Play: Trans and Intersex Athletes in Elite Sports
No full textAt the foundation of many iterations of the conversation around trans and intersex athletes in competitive sports, there is a common foundational understanding that there ‘must be a male winner and a female winner,’ thus justifying the exclusion of trans women from competing. In attempting to combat this kind of exclusion, I was struck by the question, ‘Why is that? What is at stake?’ In this project, I work to investigate the gendered, racialized, and geopolitical implications of winning, especially considering competitive sports’ position on an international scale and its connections to what Earl Smith defines as the Athletic Industrial Complex (AIC). The AIC is an institution with immense influence to produce/reinforce imperial hegemony due to its location in the global economy and its entanglements with other institutions of power (Smith, 2014, p. 72). I conduct a discourse analysis on the sensationalized stories of elite athlete Caster Semenya and high school student-athletes Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood. In this process, I engage with Black Feminist, Marxist, Critical Trans and Critical Sports theorizers to frame the continuums and congruences connecting capital and imperial interests of transmisogynoir-istic legislation across time and space.
The first chapter historicizes the social construction of biological sex dimorphism to disrupt the notion that dimorphic sex is based in an unbiased, objective truth. Black Feminist and Marxist analyses of sex and gender help frame sex and gender as inextricably racialized and classed with serious material consequences that allows for exploited gendered labor to persist as well as (re)inforces pathologization of Black people’s bodies. The second chapter begins our discussion about Semenya, Miller and Yearwood and point out the ways that their treatment is connected to/occuring in the afterlife of slavery, thus informing the basis for their subjugation. Reading the discourse of these athletes together contours the boundaries between liberal conceptualizations of human and non-human subjectivities and their relation to the state. The third chapter explores the ways in which winning is embroiled in accumulation of capital and alienates the production of labor from athletes – particularly racialized athletes. In this chapter, I also investigate the connections of winning, nationalism, knowledge production, and imperialist hegemony. Finally, in framing the question of what is to be done, I problematize inclusionary-based politics within our current neoliberal capitalist context, particularly as it is positioned as liberatory.Gender Studie
Understanding the Relationship Between Ecdysone Signaling and the Lipin Protein in Drosophila melanogaster
No full textDrosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, undergoes four major
stages of development: embryonic stage, larval stage, pupal stage, and adult stage.
During the larval stage, individuals increase in size and consume nutrients, which
are then stored in the cells of the fat body. When the larva reaches critical weight,
the formation of the pupal case or pupariation occurs over four days and
undergoes a transformation from its larval form to its adult form. During these
four days, the pupa will not consume any external nutrients and is reliant on the
nutrients stored in the cells of the fat body as a result. The pupal stage is an
energetically expensive process.
In Drosophila, there is a single lipin gene orthologue known as dLipin.
Lipin is a protein that is encoded by the lipin gene. Lipin is considered essential
for normal adipose tissue development and triacylglycerol (TAG) storage. dLipin
is linked to energy metabolism and is considered to be crucial under nutrient
deprivation conditions. dLipin also plays a role in insulin sensitivity in the larval
fat body (Lehmann, 2018). Ecdysone is a steroid hormone that acts through a
receptor to regulate the transcription of specific target genes. This steroid
hormone is the central regulator of developmental transitions in Drosophila and
leads to pupariation at the beginning of metamorphosis. I hypothesize that
ecdysone signaling activates the transcription of the dLipin gene during
metamorphosis.
To test this hypothesis, I am using the wild-type genotype as a control, and
Cg-Gal4; UAS-EcR-DN flies as an ecdysone-signaling-deficient experimental
genotype. Results of the Real-Time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction
(qRT-PCR) indicate the opposite of the hypothesis and that ecdysone signaling
instead inhibits the transcription of the dLipin gene. Ecdysone deficient
Drosophila resulted in up-regulation of dLipin compared to the wild-type
Drosophila. Studying lipin in the Drosophila model will help lead to an
understanding of the basic function of lipin in metazoans and lipin’s role in fat
cell function and energy metabolism (Schmitt, 2015).Biological Science
LIVE NOW: Assessing "Parasocial" Relationships Through the Evolution of the Dream SMP Fandom Space
No full textSociology & Anthropolog
Memory Deficits and Cytokines in the Hippocampus in a Rat Model of ADHD
No full textAttention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a complex behavioral disorder characterized by hyperactivity, impulsivity, inattention, and deficits in working memory and time perception. While animal models have contributed to our neurobiological understanding of this condition, there are limited and inconsistent data on working memory and memory for time deficits. Inflammatory signaling has been identified as a key factor in memory and cognitive impairments, but its role in ADHD remains unclear. Additionally, the disproportionate investigation of male subjects in ADHD research has contributed to a poor understanding of the disorder in females. This study sought to investigate the potential connections between memory, neuroimmunology, and ADHD in animals of both sexes. Specifically, we utilized the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR), one of the most extensively studied animal models of ADHD. Compared to their control, the Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats, male SHR have been previously reported to exhibit several behavioral phenotypes associated with ADHD, including hyperactivity, impulsivity, and poor sustained attention, along with impairments in learning and memory. As the hippocampus is a key brain region for learning and memory, we examined the behavior of male and female SHR and WKY rats in multiple hippocampal-dependent memory tasks. Our findings revealed that SHR had delay-dependent working memory deficits that were similar to, albeit less severe than, those seen in hippocampal-lesioned rats. We also observed impairments in elapsed time processing in female SHR, particularly in longer time durations. To investigate the impact of inflammatory signaling on memory in these rats, we analyzed the levels of several cytokines in the dorsal and ventral hippocampus of SHR and WKY. Though we found some sex and genotype differences, concentrations were generally similar between groups. Taken together, our results indicate that SHR exhibit deficits in spatial working memory and memory for time, as well as some differences in hippocampal cytokine concentrations. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the neurobiological basis of ADHD and may inform future research aimed at developing effective treatments for the disorder. Nonetheless, the potential mediating role of neuroinflammation in the memory symptomatology of SHR requires further investigation.Neuroscience and Behavio
Synthesizing Reactive Oxygen Species Sensitive Drug Delivery Vehicles
No full textDrug delivery vehicles can be designed to provide a more efficient and effective tactic for delivering therapeutic payloads to their sites of activity by protecting their cargo until degradation conditions are met. Because of the association between high concentrations of reactive oxygen species with a variety of inflammatory diseases, the reactive oxygen species superoxide and hydrogen peroxide are appealing targets for payload release. The compound trifluoromethyl sulfonate has been found to degrade in the presence of superoxide (Chen, et al. 2019). Modification of dextran polymer with trifluoromethyl sulfonate is expected to confer hydrophobicity to the polymeric material and exposure to superoxide reverts it back to a hydrophilic material. The hydrophobic-modified dextran will form nanoparticles upon precipitation into an aqueous solvent. However, characterization by proton NMR and apparent solubility suggests that improvements need to be made in future synthesis, as the modification was unsuccessful.
Boronic esters have been widely used to trigger degradation in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, and pinacol is an especially common esterifying diol used (Broaders, et al. 2011). Recent studies have found that dextran polymer-based delivery vehicles modified with pinanediol, a rigid diol, are more stable and soluble in organic solvents than their pinacol counterparts (Manaster, et al. 2019). Pinacol delivery vehicles (Pin-B Dex) can be made multifunctional through the addition of diols conjugated to therapeutic or fluorescent molecules via boronic ester transesterification reactions. Pinacol was successfully added to dextran, confirmed by H-NMR, and addition of pinanediol confirmed that Pin-B-Dex can be modified. In order to add more functional modifications, fluorescence, or therapeutic molecules, the modification molecule of choice will be attached to nopol diol enabling its addition onto Pin-B Dex. One such modification was synthesized through the addition of pyrenebutyric acid, a fluorescent molecule, onto nopol diol. Pin-B-Dex was successfully modified according to H-NMR; however, the small yield of the product suggests that improvements could be made in future syntheses.Biochemistr