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THE ORDER OF PROTECTION
No full textThe Order of Protection is a work of original fiction that focuses on intercultural communications seen through a messy interracial marriage set in New York City. The narrative illustrates an observation by C. S. Lewis who writes that, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with worldly ambitions when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are easily pleased.” Or easily deceived, we might add; deceived into thinking, like the protagonist of this story, that we have the right to conquer the world.Creative writingAmerican literatureAmerican historyAfrican cultures, Feminism, Inter cultural communication, New York City, World travelsLiteratureDegree Awarded: M.F.A. Literature. American Universit
Performing Queer History: Creating Community and Identity through Biographical Theatre
No full textTheatre and performance offer a unique opportunity to involve the queer community in the making of their stories and connect with an audience in an immediate and impactful way. Theatre can exist at all levels, from living room performances to national tours. It connects queers by offering a place to gather and a way to relate as a community. By telling their own stories, or watching their story performed, queer people can form bonds and learn from each other. This paper looks at works by Marvin Carlson, Elizabeth Freeman, Heather Love, and Ann Cvetkovich, focusing on understanding how queers relate to one another. The texts this paper examines deal with queer haunting and the need for a shareable, legitimate queer history.TheaterLGBTQ studiesPerforming artsBiographical Theatre, Queer Haunting, Queer Theatre, Queer Theory, Theatre TheoryDramaDegree Awarded: M.A.--Drama. The Catholic University of Americ
Investigation of the effect of resin infiltration on the electrical response of an individual carbon nanotube yarn
No full textInvestigation of the effect of resin infiltration on the electrical response of an individual carbon nanotube yarnIan Guay, M.S.E.Directors: Jandro L. Abot, Ph.D., and Francis Avilés-Cetina, Ph.D.This thesis work was carried out to investigate the effect of resin infiltration into a carbon nanotube yarn during curing of a vinyl ester resin, on the electrical response of the yarn. When a single carbon nanotube yarn is fully embedded into a thermosetting (vinyl ester) resin, during resin curing, several phenomena such as wetting, wicking, gelling, exothermic reactions, and shrinkage occur, which cause distinctive changes in the electrical resistance of the yarn. The changes in the electrical resistance of the yarn are driven by changes in the structural and morphological constitution of the porous yarn, as well as influenced by physicochemical interactions with the resin. The combination of these interactions during resin curing and infiltration into the yarn produced non-monotonic changes in the measured electrical resistance, that were attributed to key phenomena of the polymerization process. The effect of curing kinetics on the electrical response of the carbon nanotube yarn was investigated by varying the concentration of initiator of the reaction mixture. Concentration mixtures of 0.6 wt.% (low) and 0.9 wt.% (nominal) initiator experienced long gel times and small peak exotherms. In contrast, higher initiator mixtures (1.2 wt.%) had shorter gel times and larger peak exotherms. The variations in gel time and exotherm could be attributed to the amount of free radicals generated within the reaction mixture. An increase in initiator concentration effectively increased the amount of free radicals generated, which increased the rate of monomer conversion, and in turn, increased the rate of resin viscosity change, to a point of gelation. Free radicals simultaneously acted as dopants that produced an initial transient decrease in the carbon nanotube yarn’s electrical resistance, for all initiator concentration experiments. As free radicals within the system became depleted, electrical resistance measurements stabilized. The relatively long gel times of the low and nominal initiator concentration mixtures provided an increased amount of time for resin infiltration into the yarn. Experiments with low and nominal initiator concentrations were characterized by a subsequent increase in electrical resistance due to a relatively higher degree of infiltration, compared to the high initiator concentration that gelled faster, and whose electrical resistance monotonically decreased during curing. After gelling, a decrease in electrical resistance was observed, which was attributed to polymer shrinking, exerting radial compressive stresses on the carbon nanotube yarn. The effect of resin viscosity on infiltration was investigated by varying the styrene concentration of the reaction mixtures. An increase in styrene monomer concentration shifted the resistance curve upwards, to less negative values of resistance, which was indicative of a higher degree of infiltration. The explanation of the underlying phenomena and proper separation of the contributing effects provided herein assists in advancing towards a better understanding of the electrical response of the yarn when embedded into polymer composites, as sensors for polymer curing.Materials ScienceMaterials Science and EngineeringDegree Awarded: M.S.E. Materials Science and Engineering. The Catholic University of Americ
Gender, peer advising, and college success
No full textThis study leverages a natural experiment in which peer advisors (PA) were quasi-randomly assigned to first-year university students. Male students assigned to male peer advisors were significantly more likely to meet with their assigned PA, persist into the second year of postsecondary schooling, and graduate within four years. We find no such effect on male students’ academic performance, nor do we find a same-sex PA effect on female students’ use of the PA program or on subsequent academic outcomes.Published in: Labour Economics, Volume 62, January 2020, Article number 101775
Towards a new history of European law
No full textPublished in: Contemporary European History, 21, 3 (2012), pp. 305–318.This article introduces the special issue on the new history of European law. Its intention is
to provide our audience with the intellectual context that the contributions seek to address and
some of the underlying conclusions from the fields of political science and legal scholarship that
the archive material synthesised here will recast. Each of the individual contributions will be
described and located in the new field of scholarship, and the intentions and current limitations
of our findings will be delineated
Re-imagining the marketplace: Addressing race in academic marketing research
No full textPublished in: CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE, 2019, VOL. 22, NO. 1, 91–100.Race is a marketplace icon. How so? By holding true to an icon’s defining
characteristics: high visibility, divisiveness, and uncritical devotion. In this
brief musing, we describe how despite its centrality to market activities,
race is uncritically addressed in academic marketing research. We next
introduce the Race in the Marketplace (RIM) Research Network, a newly-
formed interdisciplinary collective of scholars and scholar-activists that
seek to break race of its iconic standing and bring greater equity to
markets by disseminating critical, collaborative, and transdisciplinary
race-based market research that supports liberatory public policies and
community actions. We close with a call to join our effort to reimagine
the marketplace through the critical examination of what has been a
perpetually overlooked icon in marketing academia
Pervasive properties of the genomic signature
No full textPublished in: BMC Genomics 3, 23 (2002).Background: The dinucleotide relative abundance profile can be regarded as a genomic signature
because, despite diversity between species, it varies little between 50 kilobase or longer windows
on a given genome. Both the causes and the functional significance of this phenomenon could be
illuminated by determining if it persists on smaller scales. The profile is computed from the base
step "odds ratios" that compare dinucleotide frequencies to those expected under the assumption
of stochastic equilibrium (thorough shuffling). Analysis is carried out on 22 sequences, representing
19 species and comprised of about 53 million bases all together, to assess stability of the signature
in windows ranging in size from 50 kilobases down to 125 bases.
Results: Dinucleotide relative abundance distance from the global signature is computed locally
for all non-overlapping windows on each sequence. These distances are log-normally distributed
with nearly constant variance and with means that tend to zero slower than reciprocal square root
of window size. The mean distance within genomes is larger for protist, plant, and human
chromosomes, and smaller for archaea, bacteria, and yeast, for any window size.
Conclusions: The imprint of the global signature is locally pervasive on all scales considered in the
sequences (either genomes or chromosomes) that were scanned
Loudness and loudness discrimination
No full textPublished in: Perception & Psychophysics, 1980,28 (5), 398-406.A model is developed which holds that pure-tone intensity discrimination and suprathreshold
loudness judgments are based on the same sensory representation. In this model, loudness
is a power function of sound intensity. When two tones are presented sequentially, each gives
rise to a loudness value along the sensory continuum. In intensity-discrimination experiments,
threshold is reached when the loudness difference between the tones exceeds a criterial value.
For suprathreshold presentations of tone pairs, judgments of loudness differences are based
on the loudness difference between the two tones. The model is shown to accord well with
data from both classes of experiments
"Friendship and Portraiture: The Early Portraits of Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning"
No full textResearch paper submitted to American University in partial fulfillment of the Degree of Master of Arts; approved as non-thesis optio
Associations between obesity, obesogenic environments, and structural racism vary by county-level racial composition
No full textPublished in: Int J Environ Res Public Health., 2019 Mar, 16(5), 861.Obesity rates in the U.S. are associated with area-level, food-related characteristics. Studies have previously examined the role of structural racism (policies/practices that advantaged White Americans and deprived other racial/ethnic minority groups), but racial inequalities in socioeconomic status (SES) is a novel indicator. The aim of this study is to determine the associations between racial inequalities in SES with obesity and obesogenic environments. Data from 2007–2014 County Health Rankings and 2012–2016 County Business Patterns were combined to assess the associations between relative SES comparing Blacks to Whites with obesity, and number of grocery stores and fast food restaurants in U.S. counties. Random effects linear and Poisson regressions were used and stratified by county racial composition. Racial inequality in poverty, unemployment, and homeownership were associated with higher obesity rates. Racial inequality in median income, college graduates, and unemployment were associated with fewer grocery stores and more fast food restaurants. Associations varied by county racial composition. The results demonstrate that a novel indicator of structural racism on the county-level is associated with obesity and obesogenic environments. Associations vary by SES measure and county racial composition, suggesting the ability for targeted interventions to improve obesogenic environments and policies to eliminate racial inequalities in SES