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PFAS Environmental Contamination in Central Maine
No full textPFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative chemicals that are used in a variety of consumer products and industrial applications. Paper mills across the state of Maine have used PFAS in their industrial paper making processes, and their wastes often flow for treatment into municipal sewage treatment facilities. PFAS contaminated municipal wastewater from the general use of PFAS consumer products are also processed by these plants. Liquid waste is condensed into solid waste septage and sludge, and in what was thought to be an environmentally friendly repurposing practice, municipal sludge and septage has been spread on plots of land, including farm fields, as fertilizer, across the state of Maine. Testing in recent years has uncovered that this sewage and sludge was highly contaminated with PFAS chemicals and is the cause of statewide PFAS contamination of surface water, groundwater— notably many residential wells— soil, plants, animals, animal products, and people. This study builds on prior studies to further characterize surface water, groundwater, snow and drinking water contamination in the greater Waterville area. Martin Stream, Messalonskee Stream and Fish Brook are contaminated with PFAS, and contamination is moving from Fairfield to Waterville via contaminated stream water. Groundwater sampling results suggest that groundwater-surface water mixing is occurring. Snow samples taken at Quarry Road Trails, a recreational area adjacent to Messalonskee Stream, after a ski race where no PFAS-containing ski waxes were used showed much less contamination than two years ago when fluoro waxes were used at this same race. Sampling on the Kennebec River suggested that industrial sites on the river may be sources of local PFAS contamination, although more study is needed. Seasonality affects the pattern of specific PFAS analytes in streams. PFAS detected in the municipal water supply provided by Kennebec Water District show that contamination is the same in intake water and finished water, suggesting that KWD is not filtering out PFAS at its treatment plant. Effective simple filtration mechanisms such as a Brita pitcher or water bottle filler station can eliminate PFAS from drinking water
Award-Wining Playwright Bess Welden Amplifies Marginalized Voices
Get PDFAs playwright Bess Welden followed stories filed by her sister-in-law, a photojournalist covering the 2015 migrant crisis in Greece, she was captivated by a photo of an unaccompanied minor. She wondered how anyone could keep an emotional distance from a child like this
Rapid Response: CAT-scan machine and 3D printers vital in COVID-19
Get PDFColby’s Assistant Professor of Biology Josh Martin is using his expertise and sophisticated scientific equipment to create face shields, respirator masks, and air filter cartridges for local first responders and hospitals in need of equipment that is crucial to treating patients with COVID-19
Philosophy and Music: A Search for Truth
No full textFor early Wittgenstein, and perhaps the early analytic tradition, the scope of philosophy is almost synonymous with the limit of language. The quietist doctrine thus abandons all metaphysical inquiry. In the history of philosophy, some German philosophers around the 19th century showed us how we can arrive at the ontological truth in ways other than with language. For these German philosophers, aesthetics and art are vital tools in searching for truth. In response to the Wittgensteinian quietism and in search of other ways of philosophizing besides through the use of language, my thesis focuses specifically on the art of music and aims to explore how music can help us arrive at truth. Looking at Kant, the Romantics, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Mahler\u27s music, I hope to demonstrate how people might philosophize, or gain access to truth, through music
Epistemic Classism in Elite College Mathematics Education
No full textI observed a single introductory calculus class at an elite college, conducted three rounds of interviews throughout the semester with ten students, interviewed the professor, and took limited field notes during class time. In line with Bernstein’s (1964) work on social class and language, I found that there were codes of mathematical language that differed by social class, with more upper-class students fluent in elaborated mathematical code. More working-class students had to learn this language throughout the semester, as they were surprised at how abstract the class was. Working-class students saw math as not valuable, which can be viewed through Anyon’s (1981) themes of resistance. Meanwhile, upper-class students saw math as a way of conceptualizing the world. Finally, I found that math has a special status in society as compared to other disciplines. It is regarded as a difficult area of study, making grades especially important to showcase status. This was internalized by all students, while ‘math is for everyone’ was a strictly upper-class belief.
Lastly, I framed my findings using the philosophy of epistemic virtues. I found that the elite values math and reason in and of itself, and thus have a self-justifying epistemic virtue of rationality which has high social status. It was imposed on students of all social classes by the class and the elite institution of the college. More working-class students had an epistemic virtue of rationality that was not as self-justifying. This imposition, this ignored mathematical epistemological mismatch between the college and its students, is epistemic classism
A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, and National Identity in Second World War Britain
No full textDuring the early years of the Second World War, a typically unofficial and loose coalition of British newspapers, publishers, propagandists, and booksellers mobilized Britain’s imagined literary past and present as a part of the war effort. They defined the nation through its imagined literary proclivities— its penchant for literary production and consumption, and its “unique” attitude toward literary freedom— and in opposition to the literary tyranny of Nazi Germany. Marshaling the nation’s mythological literary heritage, they enlisted Shakespeare and Milton in the war effort, portraying them as temperate and civilian English heroes. While the rhetoric of “British bookishness” hardly went uncontested— book recycling programs, questions surrounding “enemy” literature, issues of censorship, and the persistence of issues of class and gender in the wartime setting each offered rather blatant contradictions to the rhetoric of literary nationalism in Second World War Britain— the Ministry of Information, National Book Council, and the ranks of British publishers, booksellers, and newspapermen largely succeeded in nationalizing notions of bookishness within the wartime context
Dare Northward
No full textThe physical and mental well-being of Colby’s students is one of the College’s top priorities. Your gift through the Colby Fund directly supports services that ensure students are able to fully enjoy and be enriched by their experience on Mayflower Hill, while also building strong habits for a healthy and happy life
Decomposing Manifolds in Low-dimensions: from Heegaard Splittings to Trisections
No full textThe decomposition of a topological space into smaller and simpler pieces is useful for understanding the space. In 1898, Poul Heegaard introduced the concept of a Heegaard splitting, which is a bisection of a 3-manifold. Heegaard diagrams, which describe Heegaard splittings combinatorially, have been recognized as a powerful tool for classifying 3-manifolds and producing important invariants of 3-manifolds. Handle decomposition, invented by Stephen Smale in 1962, describes how an n-manifold can be constructed by successively adding handles. In 2012, Gay and Kirby introduced trisections of 4-manifold, which are a four-dimensional analogues of Heegaard splittings in dimension three. Trisection diagrams give a simple way of understanding and studying 4-dimenisonal spaces. This thesis is intended to give a friendly introduction to the analogies between the theory of Heegaard splittings of 3-manifolds and trisections of 4-manifolds. The way we introduce these two decompositions is based on Gay’s “From Heegaard splittings to trisections; porting 3-dimensional ideas to dimension 4”, which is a summary and expansion on a mini-course given at CIRM in 2018
The Colby Echo (October 6, 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