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TheRight Justice Captain Rock: Law, Violence, and Policing in an Irish Agrarian Insurgency
Get PDFThesis advisor: Guy BeinerThe Rockite insurgency, purportedly led by the mythic Captain Rock, enacted a campaign of intimidation and violence which terrorized much of southern Ireland from 1821 to 1824. While the Rockite movement was not the first agrarian redresser movement in Ireland, it was unique for the intensity of its violence, as informed by the political ideology of the movement’s participants, the Rockites. This work argues that the Rockite insurgency was political, as manifested in the Rockites’ assertion of an alternative law and their attacks against police as representatives of the state. The intervention into the historiography of agrarian redresser violence is therefore threefold. First, the politics of the Rockites were informed by both the communal morals of rural Irish society and the popular politicization of the 1790s. Second, the violence enacted in the course of the Rockite movement was not due to lawlessness, but rather an allegiance to the ‘law of Captain Rock’ instead. Lastly, the conflict between the Rockites and the state can be exemplified in their clashes with the police, not only as hostile individuals but also as representatives of the state apparatus. Focusing on County Limerick in the year 1821, this work relies on the little-used State of the Country Papers in the Chief Secretary’s Office Registered Papers collection.Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: History
An Analysis of Areas of Knowledge and Methods of Assessments as Seen on Entrance Exams from Around the World:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Rebecca SchendelHigher education institutes have seen massive growth over the decades in terms of student enrollment. To maintain the quality of education provided to students, scholars, and practitioners have advocated for students to submit an entrance exam as a part of the admission application. This study analyzed trends in all national and standardized entrance exams (N= 119) to see which areas of knowledge and methods of assessments are most commonly utilized in entrance exams around the world. The areas of knowledge that were looked at in this study: English, Language Arts, Math, History, Government Studies, Religion, and Hard Science. The methods of assessment that were looked at in this study: Supplied response, Selected response, Practical, and Oral. Data was collected through publicly available documents and entered into a database to then analyze and recognize trends. The findings of this study show that the most common area of knowledge that is tested is Language Arts (N = 107) and the most common method of assessment is supplied response (N = 81).Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
TheRelationship between brain network organization and variability in episodic memory outcomes and abilities:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Maureen RitcheyThesis advisor: Elizabeth KensingerOur brains afford us the remarkable ability to remember past events from our lives, to travel back in time in our minds' eye and relive our memories anew. What are the brain processes that support this ability? In this thesis I investigated this question across three experiments. In Chapter 1, I examined how the brain regions previously linked to episodic cognition (i.e., the hippocampus, parahippocampal cortex, retrosplenial cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, angular gyrus, and medial prefrontal cortex) support recollection by building a model that incorporates both region-specific and network-level contributions. I found that these brain regions form ventral and dorsal subnetworks and that their contributions to recollection outcomes are largely explained by subnetwork-level rather than region-specific engagement. In Chapter 2, I used an openly available MRI dataset to test whether individual differences in functional connectivity were related to individual differences in memory ability, finding that network connectivity outside of the classic episodic networks supports individual differences in our ability to remember. In Chapter 3, I tested a neuroscience inspired hypothesis that individuals would have different capacities to bind their memories around social-emotional and visual-spatial content, ultimately finding inconclusive evidence for or against my hypothesis. Together, these results help to solidify our understanding of the brain as an interconnected network of brain regions and shed new light on how these networks support individual differences in memory.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Psychology
Salt Marsh Response to Dynamic Environmental Change:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Gail KinekeThesis advisor: Noah SnyderSalt marshes are some of the world’s richest ecosystems and provide a plethora of benefits to coastlines and bays in terms of storm protection and chemistry. To ensure salt marsh survival under increasing rates of sea level rise, management practices have been trending towards natural sustainability measures to increase marsh resilience. To benefit these efforts, it is necessary to understand how natural salt marshes respond to environmental change in terms of sediment deposition and evolution of vegetation and open water. This study uses aerial image digitization to understand how Nauset Marsh in Cape Cod MA, a protected salt marsh on Cape Cod National Seashore, has responded to sea level rise and half a century of inlet migration. Digitized images from 1974-2019 were used to track changes to vegetation extent and open water features during study periods of different inlet migration stages. Observed changes were used to ascertain trends of marsh loss or adaptation based on previous research on ponding cycles and vegetation extent. Results indicate that Nauset Marsh has been relatively stable over the last half century, with the most significant change observed in Vegetated Marsh loss of 6.71% ± 3.19 primarily due to edge erosion near the present-day inlet. Despite net feature stability, significant differences in feature evolution trends were observed during different stages of inlet migration. Most notably, inlet breaching and migration correlated with dynamic feature changes throughout the marsh, while the static inlet period correlated with expansion of open water features near the inlet location. The evolution of Nauset Marsh suggests that inlet migration improves marsh resilience through periodic increases in sediment deposition in a natural salt marsh with sufficient sediment supply.Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences
The Immediate Financial Impact of Donald Trump’s Tweets Related to China During the U.S.-China Trade War
Get PDFThesis advisor: Rosen ValchevThis thesis explores the impact of Donald Trump’s tweets related to China on the financial markets in the United States and China, particularly during the U.S.-China trade war period. The study collects financial variables of interest, including the USC-CNY exchange rate and several stock indices from both countries, at hourly intervals from January 2018 to December 2020, and uses OLS regression models to examine the immediate impact of Trump’s tweets on these variables. The study finds that Trump’s tweets related to China had an immediate impact on several financial variables, including a slight negative impact on the USD-CNY exchange rate, the U.S. stock market (S&P 500), the Chinese A-share stock market (CSI 300), and the U.S. industrials sector (MSCI USA Industrials index). Multiple regression analyses show that the number of tweets has a significant impact on the U.S. stock market and the U.S. industrials sector, while the number of retweets appears to be more market-moving than the number of favorites. The study concludes that Trump’s tweets during the trade war period were perceived by the market as a signal of a potential shift in U.S. trade policy towards China, leading to uncertainty and volatility in the financial markets.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Economics
Development, application, and expansion of VADER, a platform for directed evolution in mammalian cells:
No full textThesis advisor: Abhishek ChatterjeeThesis advisor: Eranthie WeerapanaIn nature, just twenty canonical amino acids are responsible for the creation of nearly all proteins. Genetic code expansion (GCE), or the incorporation of noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs) into living cells, is a powerful tool that expands the studies we are capable of performing using proteins. This technology relies on engineered aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (aaRS)/tRNA pairs that are orthogonal to the host cells’ endogenous aaRS/tRNA pairs, and one of the main limitations of GCE arises from the inefficiency of these suppressor tRNAs when expressed in a foreign host cell. To address this limitation, we have previously reported a strategy for the virus-assisted directed evolution of tRNAs (VADER) which is uniquely capable of addressing the specific needs of tRNA evolution. In order to advance the capabilities of VADER, we made a number of modifications to the VADER selection scheme. First, we designed and executed a modified VADER selection that enabled the evolution of a new class of tRNAs, and with this VADER selection, we were able to generate a first-generation E. coli tyrosyl tRNA (tRNATyr) variant that was three times as active as its wild-type equivalent. Next, we introduced a number of refinements to the VADER strategy to generate VADER 2.0, an improved workflow capable of screening larger libraries and libraries encoding more active variants. Using VADER 2.0, we created second-generation tRNAPyl and tRNATyr mutants that achieved incorporation efficiencies that were greater than five-fold higher than their wild-type equivalents across a wide variety of substrates, enabling exciting GCE experiments that would not be possible otherwise.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Chemistry
" Eating Clean”: Negotiations of Power, Politics, and Knowledge within Alternative & Fringe Health Movements in the US
No full textThesis advisor: Stephen PfohlThesis advisor: Natasha SarkisianThis dissertation explores the ideological undercurrents of fringe and alternative health movements throughout US history and within today’s wellness industry - specifically the "detox" movement. By investigating health behavior and health ideologies that deviate from or exist in opposition to mainstream medicine, the project examines what is communicated through these movements beyond claims about health. It explores how alternative practitioners discern between good and bad information, how they build knowledge and networks, and how they are driven by broader political ideologies to participate in alternative practices. Using historical analysis, interview data, and case studies of radicalized wellness influencers, the project considers the potential and the limitations of alternative health movements. Because research took place during the Covid-19 pandemic, both the regulatory environment and ideological debates about healthcare were heightened; this enabled an exploration of radicalization pathways within alternative health movements as well. Overall, the project characterizes and evaluates the norms that govern information-seeking within alternative health movements and identifies elements of the “radicalization pipelines” that exist within fringe movements. The first chapter uses historical data to explore how alternative health movements throughout history have been shaped by both epistemological values and bids for class, gender, and race supremacy. The second chapter describes and evaluates the norms that govern information quality and expert legitimacy outside of traditional channels of expertise within today’s wellness industry. And the third chapter investigates radicalization pathways within these movements.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Sociology
Making Room for Opponents as the Mission of the Elect: Reconciling Divine Election in the Hebrew Bible and Political Elections in Contemporary Ivory Coast
Get PDFThesis advisor: Andrew DavisThesis advisor: Ernesto ValienteThesis (STL) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry.Discipline: Sacred Theology
The Privilege of Dying Well: Inequity in Access and Community Development of Palliative Care
Get PDFThesis advisor: Andrea ViciniThesis advisor: Daniel DalyThesis (STL) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry.Discipline: Sacred Theology
From Moral Psychology to Methods Morale: How Studying Moral Obligation Turned into a Duty to Study Methods
Get PDFThesis advisor: Liane YoungThesis advisor: Hiram BrownellWhen (moral) psychologists make a claim (e.g., “Participants judged X as morally worse than Y”), how many participants are represented? Such claims are often based exclusively on group-level analyses; here, psychologists often fail to report, or perhaps even investigate, how many participants judged X as morally worse than Y. More troubling, group-level analyses do not necessarily generalize to the person-level. This dissertation first investigates a moral cognition hypothesis about the relation between perceptions of relationship obligations and moral evaluations of helping behavior. It is found that people, on average, judge agents who help strangers as more morally good than agents who help family members, but people also judge agents who help strangers instead of family members as less morally good than agents who help family members instead of strangers. Second, methodological issues with these studies are assessed, fixed, and thus the original psychological effect is retested with better experimental designs, measures, and analyses. Third, it is discovered that the moral cognition hypothesis consistently describes the psychology of only a minority of participants. Moreover, it is discovered that most psychologists misinterpret typical group-level analyses as revealing how prevalent a psychological phenomenon is. Finally, a set of simple and flexible methodological and statistical options are offered to better align typical psychological hypotheses with appropriate analyses, enabling researchers to confront this “group-to-person generalizability” problem in their own work.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Psychology