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It’s Just Another Thing”: Perceptions of Well Water Quality and Barriers in an Arsenic Hot Spot
No full textPrivately owned water is the primary source of drinking water for 43 million Americans. Although residential or private wells are susceptible to a variety of contaminants, the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 positions individuals as responsible for the testing, remediation, and management of this water. Despite the elevated presence of arsenic in Maine, which is linked to various cancers, cardiovascular disease, and neurological damage, little is known about how private well owners perceive the safety and quality of their own water.
This study takes a qualitative approach to understanding concerns and opinions by conducting semi - structured interviews with private well users in the Blue Hill Peninsula, a known arsenic hot spot in Hancock County. We examined water testing and remediation behaviors, contamination concerns, opinions on government intervention, and well owners’ barriers to accessing clean drinking water. Results show that health concerns, new home ownership, and fear of ongoing contamination motivate water testing.
Perceptions of water safety are largely motivated by sense of place and social - cognitive factors. The largest barrier to accessing clean water is cost, but those who never tested previously are more likely to mention personal barriers, such as lack of time or capacity to test their water. The biggest sources of arsenic awareness include social networks, rather than government campaigns or media outlets . Participants overwhelmingly support greater government intervention. Ensuring clean drinking water, even within private wells, is widely regarded as a collective responsibility
“…To Represent the Needs of the Residents—Not the Needs of the Outsiders” California’s Housing Crisis and the Dilemma of Local Control
No full textThis thesis examines the role played by city-level governments in determining the availability of housing within their locale. I propose an overarching hypothesis that features of government which provide greater opportunity for the public to influence their local governments will lead to a decreased availability of housing. This hypothesis is tested over the course of two chapters. First, through an analysis of cities throughout California, the effect of different structural features of government are tested against several dependent variables which measure housing availability in a series of linear regressions. A statistically significant positive correlation is found between the presence of term limits for elected officials, and a city’s vacancy rate. While no other hypotheses are confirmed to the degree of statistical significance, several trend in the hypothesized direction, suggesting a need for further research with a larger sample size. Second, the effect of recent efforts by the state of California to coerce cities into increasing housing construction is examined qualitatively. I find that enforcement of these laws will likely induce greater housing availability statewide
“Green” Marketing in the Apparel Industry: The Spectrum of Veracity
No full textApparel companies’ propensity for manipulation in their marketing of environmental initiatives contributes to immense environmental pollution from petrochemical textile material production. Public scrutiny pressures these businesses to adopt “green” initiatives to avoid losing devoted consumers. In some cases, these initiatives disguise the real operations of a company or claim benignity for the company when this is not the reality. Previous business ethics research analyzed the emergence of “greenwashing” in corporations and thus concluded that corporations market themselves as eco-friendly to portray commodification as sustainable. In the form of case studies, this paper scrutinizes four companies: Zara, Patagonia, Lululemon, and Pact. Through discourse and visual analyses on the social media platform, Instagram, from 2016 until 2021, and annual reports from 2016, 2018, and 2020, the paper analyzes how each company narrates its environmental consciousness. My findings indicate that Zara and Lululemon elicit consumer support through strategies of ambiguous discourse and nature visuals while Pact and Patagonia emphasize their third-party certifications and data substantiated results. In sum, this research brings awareness to marketing narratives of apparel companies in hopes of informing consumers that company claims may mask the true environmental effects of a company’s production processes
Understanding the Role of Race in American Medicine
No full textLong running inequity in health care and outcomes in the United States stem from failure to acknowledge the underlying role of the Transatlantic slave trade as it manifests in all facets of American society and commerce. This paper focuses specifically on the American medical system and its foundations to understand the precursors to generational trends in lack of access to healthcare and poor health for Black communities. This paper uses a three-pronged approach to understand the racist cycle of inequity, highlighting the history and origins of racism in American medicine, personal accounts and statistical evidence of inequity, and community and policy initiatives that orient conversations towards change and progress. The goal of this paper is to highlight historical and ongoing barriers to healthcare access for Black folks in the United States, and to push for accountability as well as inspire immediate action for the alleviation of identifiable stressors
Modeling Jadera haematoloma’s Phenotypic Variation in the Context of its Developmental Plasticity
No full textPhenotypic plasticity is the ability of an organism to integrate information from environmental cues to inform the development of its phenotype and remains understudied in biology. Models of plasticity are needed because evolution in the presence of plasticity is poorly understood. Jadera haematoloma, a hemimetabolous true bug, is an excellent animal model of plasticity, exhibiting a non-linear plastic response to juvenile nutrition that biases adult development into groups with differences in flight capability, wing shape, and fecundity. However, there is a lack of literature consensus regarding the range of developmental outcomes in the species. Some publications report the presence of long-wing adults that develop without flight muscle, while others take the presence of short or long wings to be an absolute indicator of flight capability. Even within publications, there is uncertainty as to whether variation in flight muscle development is discrete or continuous. Moreover, it is unclear how beak length, a trait central to the study of J. haematoloma’s rapid population divergence on introduced host plants, is affected by the species’ developmental plasticity, and whether environmental factors beyond juvenile nutrition influence development. Therefore, I used geometric morphometric analysis, functional analysis of flight capability, and anatomical study of thoracic interiors to investigate whether wing shape predicts flight capability and flight muscle development. In addition, I took linear measurements of beak length to determine how the trait varies by sex and wing shape. I concluded by attempting to bias development by manipulating environmental conditions and gene expression. I find that wing shape does not completely predict flight capability and that the range of adult J. haematoloma phenotypes cannot be encapsulated by a simple two-morph system, resulting in significant implications for the future study of development in the species and the study of developmental plasticity in general
First There Was One
No full textColby’s first female graduate, Mary Caffrey Low, set a standard for excellence and achievement
Colby Museum of Art: Faith Ringgold “Story Quilt” Acquired
No full textThe Colby Museum of Art adds a coveted Faith Ringgold story quilt to its collection
The Colby Echo (November 17, 2022)
No full textPublished by the students of Colby College since 1877, The Colby Echo is the weekly, editorially independent student-run newspaper of Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Published monthly, 1877-1886; semi-monthly, 1886-1897; and weekly during the academic year, 1898-present