JBC Commons (New College of Florida)
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Estimating the Above Ground Biomass and Carbon in New College of Florida’s Food Forest
No full textThe New College Food Forest and Carbon Farm, as it was originally coined, was a thesis project planned and installed by Jay McWilliams and Orion Morton in 2016. The intention of the food forest was not only to create a space for fruit and food production, but also to replace the existing lawn area and sequester as much carbon as possible. By estimating the amount of biomass stored and carbon that the FF has been able to sequester since its establishment, the ability of this urban food forest system to combat climate change can be quantified. The litter in the FF was found to contain an average of 1236 ± 116.5 s.e gC/m^2 for a total of 638.023 ± 60.044kgC. The AGB and C stored by the plants in the food forest totals 1357.38 (kg) and 675.56 (kg) respectively with an average annual carbon sequestration rate of 1.88 Mg C ha−1 yr−1 over its .127 acres
SEE US
No full textSee Us is a series of paintings based on the interviews and intimate objects brought in by New College of Florida students living with invisible chronic illnesses. Recognizing the current environment in art regarding chronic illness, as well as its history, I investigate ways to represent health in painting. Interviews are used to capture the individual stories of those who suffer with these illnesses today. I hope that by converting the stories I collected into paintings, that they help the viewer recognize the impacts of invisible chronic illness
AMALGAM: Queering and Decolonizing Genre and Music Practice
No full textThis project examines why and how, musically, and in creative praxis, I began my journey towards a decolonized, genre-less approach to creation through the process of writing, recording, and producing my first studio album. AMALGAM, the paper, and the accompanying album, aims to assess the intricate relationships and challenges that exist intersectionally between music, creativity, and the world\u27s many oppressive social systems which come as a result of our colonized conditionings. The goal of the praxis and messages explored in this work is to engage in a queering process of our relationships to genre and music as they have been structured in our society. A closer look into this framework clues us into a specific and powerful realization that gender operates almost identically to genre to limit and categorize people and ideas. Such an analysis of topics and application of practice requires an intentional and radical path of methodologies which lie outside our current colonized understandings. In addressing the impacts and intricacies of dominant culture and institutions, avenues of transformation that lie outside of our current colonized structures are necessary to implore. This address calls for real and radical change in action, thought pattern, creation, and nuanced understanding of several kinds of socio-conceptual relations, which I engage in and explain throughout the entire project through various explorations of literature and experiences
The “Thing” about Bodies: Accessing the Grotesque Body through Carnival Puppets
No full textThis thesis proposes the carnivalesque as potentially subversive when placed outside of the time and space of the carnival due to the unrestrained body’s status in society as perverse and potentially dangerous. The first chapter discusses Mikhail Bakhtin’s “grotesque body” in the carnival in conversation with both the Russian Carnival puppet Petrushka as it existed prior to and during the Russian revolutions in 1905 and 1917 against Tsar Nicholas II as well as Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (or King Ubu), conceptualizing similarities between the puppet and the body under the contexts of subversive entertainment. Jarry’s Ubu Roi is placed within late 19th-century drama through comparisons to both Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and its naturalistic stance on the body, and to symbolist drama’s representations of the body. The second chapter compares Petrushka’s rather 2-dimensional plot and comedic form to the puppets of the horror-comedy Youtube web series “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared”, who seem to have a more complicated ontology and reality than that of Petrushka, which I argue places them in the realm of the uncanny, and therefore the subversive. I compare the puppets of “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” to Jim Henson’s “Muppets” in order to place it, at least initially, in a realm of the familiar so that the subsequent breaking of this familiarity may be explored. The way these puppets are portrayed, both as complicated and horrifying as well as familiarly comedic, proves the “uncanny” to be subversive in a way unlike Jarry’s Ubu Roi, which repelled its 19th-century French audience
The Effects of Whitening Agents in Toothpastes on Stained Natural and Stained Acrylic Teeth
No full textDental aesthetics plays an important role in a person’s life. It is important to have a good oral health. A nice-looking smile is associated with good dental health. Dental cosmetics recently experienced a sharp rise in popularity. The visual appearance of prosthetic restorations is one of the most crucial elements for the visual appearance. The color of the teeth is the most important factor that affects the aesthetics of the tooth. In this study, I discuss the various factors that affect the color of teeth. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of whitening toothpastes on the staining of natural teeth and acrylic teeth. The first and the second trials included eight natural and eight acrylic teeth that were stained with coffee. Four of them from both trials were rinsed with water only. Both sets of teeth were stained with coffee, then brushed with a whitening toothpaste. The results of this experiment showed that brushing natural and acrylic teeth with whitening toothpaste did not remove all of the stains, and the shades of each set of teeth was still darker than the shade before stain. This implies that these whitening products are not as effective as they are claimed to be and that the claims stated in the commercials for whitening toothpaste are deceptive
ALTERING THE HOST RANGE OF THE FIRST DISCOVERED LYTIC STAPHYLOCOCCUS PSEUDINTERMEDIUS BACTERIOPHAGES
No full textWith the rising prevalence of antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus strains, utilization of lytic bacteriophages, or simply phages, is gathering interest among the scientific and biomedical communities. Three novel lytic phages for Staphylococcus pseudintermedius were recently discovered in canine microbiomes from skin, hair, and fecal samples. In this study, these three S. pseudintermedius phages DH2, DH5, and DS10 were challenged against a dozen strains of S. aureus and S. pseudintermedius strains permissive to at least one of the phages. A modified Appelmans Protocol, which functions to alter the host range of phages, was employed to attempt host range changes for the three phages. After 6 rounds of host range expansion experiments, the evolved DH2 phage, DH2-A, had a significant increase in both host range and efficacy of plating (EOP) values, the measure of a phage’s infectivity, on tested strains. DH5-A experienced significant decreases to host range and EOP values while DS10-A experienced a modest increase in host range at the cost of infectivity efficiency. Overall, the application of experimental evolution protocols to alter the host range of bacteriophages was shown to be possible, but not guaranteed, with success varying on a species-by-species basis
Medical Relevancy of Cancer-Related Tweets and Their Relation to Misinformation
No full textThe purpose of this study was to understand the medical relevancy of cancer-related tweets, and to explore whether they contained misinformation. We created a dataset of 494 tweets and labeled them according to their medical relevancy: medically relevant, not medically relevant, or unrelated to cancer. We then ran logistic regression and support vector machine models on them. We studied the differences between medically relevant and not medically relevant tweets with respect to word choice, and additional differences so found differences between tweets based on medical relevance word choice, and time. Additionally, our exploratory analysis identifies some patterns among misinformation that could be useful for further exploration
EVOLVING ENEMIES: RED GUARDS AND VICTIMHOOD IN MAO’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION (1966-1976)
No full textThis thesis examines the complex and evolving relationship the Red Guards had with the concept of victimhood during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Motivated by Mao’s anti-bourgeois rhetoric, young students in cities across China expressed their beliefs in the form of public humiliation and beatings directed towards class enemies during the period of continuous social upheaval initiated by Mao in the Cultural Revolution. Though there is a diversity of topics covered in modern scholarship on the subject, much of it follows the mainstream narrative of the Red Guards as a group of adolescents committing brutal arts of violence upon the bourgeois enemies of the Chinese Communist Party. While plenty of information has been given on first-hand Red Guard accounts and the detailing of various events throughout the Cultural Revolution, the scholarship fails to explicitly connect the Red Guards to the cycle of victimhood they experienced during this time. This thesis intends to fill the gap between the common portrayal of the Red Guards as simply violent attackers and the often neglected fact that they also experienced persecution from both external and internal forces. It first discusses the Red Guards’ violent attacks against their extraneous enemies, moves on to detailing the factional infighting of the Red Guards attacking each other, and concludes with the examination of the Red Guards’ exile at the hands of Mao. Through these different perspectives, this thesis argues that the Red Guards’ role as either an enemy or victim was never static, frequently changing in Mao’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution
With Brains Like These Who Needs Enemies: How to Write a Play When Your Brain Fights You at Every Step
No full textDemonstrating the mind on stage is a difficult task and often depends on the use of staging different bodies. When a character is not saying every thought out loud, it is nearly impossible to tell what exactly is happening inside their heads. In this thesis, I explore the relationship between memory and stage, mind and body, and art and artist. Through the analysis of biographical works and plays that display interactions of the mind and body on stage, I was able to craft a play of my own that demonstrates the same explorations. Within these texts you can find that the number of bodies on stage is not the most important but rather how you use the bodies on stage to establish a set of rules which the audience can follow to understand how the mind is being shown and what is happening. Whether it is the single body of Kate Borstein representing 6 people, or multiple bodies representing a single mind; establishing a mind on stage is a fickle but doable task that many artists, including myself, have tried to do
PERFORMING THE SHIFT: JEWISH RACIAL IDENTITY IN AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE AND ITS SOCIAL CONTEXT IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
No full textThis thesis approaches the subject of Jewish racial identity in America through the lens of vaudeville performance. By combining the study of race with the study of performance, the distinctions made between white, Anglo-Saxon Americans and Others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are explored in a multifaceted manner. I argue that said division is inherently visible in the notion of national identity that performers and audiences formed in the presentation of otherness in onstage performance. Vaudeville, specifically, presents simultaneous methods of resistance and receptivity toward the prospering divisions in whiteness. Beginning by contextualizing the shift in perceptions of whiteness that occurred in response to the Second and Third Waves of European immigration in the nineteenth century, I first argue that both internal and external methods of analysis are significant in the exploration of Jewish racial self-identity. Then, I argue that Jewish performers embodied the shift by partaking in American national identity and the racial othering of Jewish immigrants. Additionally, the establishment of Jewish immigrants as a distinctive race informed the performance of Jewish caricature on stage by the performers David Warfield, Joe Welch, and Ben Welch. Finally, I approach the complex nature of race in performance through an exploration of the dualistic identities of the Jewish vaudeville performer Sophie Tucker. Tucker’s career exemplified the simultaneous subversion and furthering of the divisions in whiteness that appeared on vaudeville stages. Her use of blackface aligned with the presentation of otherness that informed American national identity and brought her closer to full whiteness, in some regard. Then, her abandonment of blackface in favor of the comedic and shocking presentation of her Jewishness acknowledged and subverted the racial othering of Jews in America. Ultimately, this thesis shows the variety of ways in which vaudeville in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries existed as a microcosmic representation of the mass of societal racial tension and the methods performers and audiences utilized to manage it