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The Unconscious Truth: How Language in the Media Exacerbates Racial Bias and Criminalization of the Black Community
Get PDFThesis advisor: Paula Mathieu"If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” (Orwell). America's English language is a major contributing factor that perpetuates and orients us toward racial inequality. If American culture is racist, it is only logical that the language our culture uses to communicate would also be racist. This thesis will investigate how language in the media shapes and exacerbates racial bias, contributing to the criminalization of the Black community. The American English language, which includes all forms of written and spoken communication, is how America has shaped its identity (Smalls et al., 152). Language is how we communicate and express ourselves; it is the indispensable transmitter, shaping and creating ideas, social customs, religions, and culture. While many factors contribute to the ongoing struggle of racial inequality in America, my thesis will focus on the history and language of America’s racial biases toward Black people, their impact on societal attitudes, and how the media is using such language to criminalize the Black community.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: English
Global, Local Zeta Function and p-adic Integration
Get PDFThesis advisor: Dubi KelmerIn complex analysis, analytic continuation is a common and important tool to study the properties of complex functions. In this paper, we will introduce and define the global zeta function with an associated function f, where f is a polynomial with n variables with integer coefficients. With the usage of p-adic integration, we can conclude that the global zeta function is analytically continued to all s ∈ C when f is the sum of squares with n variables.Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Mathematics
The Gentlemen's Game: Essays on Golf
No full textThesis advisor: Susan Roberts"The Gentlemen's Game: Essays on Golf" is a collection of seven nonfiction pieces about a historically wealthy pastime. Drawing from his personal experience as a player, caddie, and fan, the author seeks to portray golf’s most compelling stories as well as its many problems. Subjects include stars such as Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth, as well as lesser-known pros like Mark Baldwin, who travels the country in pursuit of the PGA Tour. The thesis also explores golf’s issues with environmentalism and inclusivity, which have followed the sport for decades. This collection of essays is a testament to the value of the game, despite its reputation for tedium and elitism.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: English
Sexual minority adolescents: Understanding disparities in sex education and parent communication about sex
No full textThesis advisor: Susan Kelly-WeederBackground: Sexual minority youth experience many sexual health inequities compared to heterosexual youth. Research conducted over the past several decades has concluded that both parent-adolescent sex communication and school-based sex education are effective in reducing levels of sexual risk behavior in heterosexual youth. A much smaller number of studies have examined the experiences and effectiveness of sex education or PASC among sexual minority youth.
Purpose: This three-manuscript dissertation seeks to extend understanding about the experiences of sexual minority and heterosexual youth with learning about sex and sexuality at school and at home and how these learning experiences affect sexual risk behavior. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine parent-adolescent sex communication from the perspective of sexual minority youth and their parents, assess the impact of different types of sex education on sexual intercourse and contraceptive behavior of sexual minority and heterosexual adolescent females, and revise and extend a scale designed to measure sexual minority youth perceptions of sexual-minority-inclusivity in sex education.
Methods: In the first manuscript, we conducted an integrated review that described how parents and SGM youth perceive their sex communication experiences and synthesized findings about the associations between parent-adolescent sex communication and sexual health outcomes among SGM youth. In the second manuscript, we used National Survey of Family Growth data to describe the total sex education content received by an individual, examine the impact of different sex education types on sexual intercourse and contraceptive behavior of adolescent females, and examine differences by sexual identity. In phase one of the last study, we revised a scale to measure SMYA perceptions of sexual minority-inclusivity in school-based sex education received before the age of 18 years. Phase two involved implementing a pilot study to measure the reliability and conduct a Rasch analysis of the revised scale.
Results: The integrated review results suggest that parent-adolescent sex communication was complicated by barriers to communication and was limited, heteronormative, and influenced by SGM disclosure. Parent-adolescent sex communication may improve sexual health outcomes, but adequate parental education/guidance is lacking. Secondary data analysis results suggest that compared to their heterosexual peers, sexual minorities were more likely to report no sex education and less likely to report receipt of abstinence-only education. Nearly all types of education had a statistically significant effect on sexual behavioral outcomes (intercourse in the past 12 months and type of contraceptive use) as compared to no sex education. Scale revision and psychometric analyses suggested that the new scale has strong psychometric properties, including reliability, content validity, and measurement precision.
Conclusion: Overall, this dissertation has highlighted the ways that home and school-based sources of sexual health information do not currently meet the needs of SM youth. The sexual health education of SM youth is complicated by a lack of comfort, knowledge, and resources experienced by both teachers and parents. Qualitative studies suggest that both sources of sexual health information tend to be focused on heterosexual needs, leaving SMY feeling frustrated and invisible. This dissertation has also highlighted the need for quantitative measures to extend understanding of the impact of parent-adolescent sex communication and sex education on sexual minority youth. The revised scale presented in Chapter 4 provides a promising measurement tool to inform the development and evaluation of sexual minority-inclusive sex education programs. The results of this dissertation will ultimately contribute to the development of programs and interventions to support SM-inclusivity in school-based, family-based, and healthcare provider-based sexual health education.
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing.Discipline: Nursing
Light-Driven Selective Dissociation of Biomolecules:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Krzysztof KempaIt is well established that molecules can be driven to dissociation via ionizing radiation, and this has various uses in medicine. The drawback is that ionizing radiation has little spectral resolution when applied to the human body. Consequentially, ionizing radiation damages target biological cells and healthy biological cells indiscriminately. If a truly non-invasive and selective dissociation method is desired, it is necessary to consider non-ionizing radiation for additional specificity. The first part of this thesis proposes that a selective dissociation of biomolecules is possible with non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation on the basis of nonlinear driving of molecular resonances. The second part is devoted to a “Trojan horse”-type of strategy. Experimentally, we demonstrate that visible light at moderate power levels damages metastatic cancer cells when they are sensitized with biocompatible polymeric nanoparticles. Efficient photothermal conversion of nanoparticles triggers hyperthermia-induced lysis in cells in a target-selective manner.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Physics
Not All Emissions Are Created Equal: A Multidimensional Approach to Examining Human Drivers of Climate Change
No full textThesis advisor: Andrew JorgensonGlobal climate change is among the greatest crises facing humanity in the 21st century. Mitigating the impacts of climate change requires a substantial reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Despite the urgency, climate actions are lacking in many nations. A rich body of cross-national research on human drivers of emissions is devoted to identifying effective leverage points for emission abatement, which primarily focuses on aggregate emission measures such as production-based accounts and consumption-based accounts. However, a nation’s carbon-emitting activities are not monolithic, but can instead be classified into distinct components based on important characteristics such as the supply chain stage to which they belong. These emission components likely have heterogeneous relationships with certain anthropogenic drivers or mitigation measures. Yet, analyses using aggregate emission measures are unable to detect such heterogeneity or inform the unique strategy that might be required to effectively mitigate each emission component. I address this gap using the three empirical chapters of this dissertation. In the first empirical chapter, I propose an analytical framework of Multidimensional Emissions Profile (MEP), which situates nations’ contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions into four distinct components: (1) emissions generated by domestic-oriented supply chain activities; (2) emissions embodied in imports; (3) emissions embodied in exports; and (4) direct emissions of end user activities. I then apply the MEP framework to analyze the relationships between national affluence and the four emission components for 34 high-income nations. I find that as these nations grow wealthier, affluence is increasingly decoupled from direct emissions of end user activities but remains positively associated with the other three emission components in various ways. The findings suggest that emission-suppressing mechanisms associated with growing affluence are effective in mitigating direct end user emissions—typically the smallest component—but not the other three emission components. Therefore, high-income nations should prioritize mitigating emissions generated by supply chain activities outside the end use stage. The second empirical chapter is an examination of how renewable energy deployment is related to these emission components in high-income nations. I find that renewable energy deployment mitigates emissions by domestic-oriented supply chain activities, and with increasing effectiveness over time; yet it remains ineffective in curbing the other three emission components, indicating the existence of structural barriers that prevent the decarbonization effect of renewables from spilling over to these three emission components. These barriers must be overcome in order to achieve the full decarbonization potential of renewable energy deployment. In the third empirical chapter, I investigate the time-varying relationships between domestic income inequality and the four emission components, in order to unpack the multiple pathways linking income inequality to emissions. The results suggest that the relationships change over time, vary across emission components, and differ between measures of income inequality, which indicate variations in the causal pathways, both over time and across emission components. The findings from all three empirical chapters support the validity of the MEP framework. The relationships between greenhouse gas emissions and national affluence, renewable energy deployment, and domestic income inequality are multidimensional: these anthropogenic forces curb some emission components but spur others. Climate policies targeting these anthropogenic forces should optimize their decarbonization benefits while neutralizing the mechanisms through which they drive growth in emissions.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Sociology
Ribbon cobordisms:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Joshua E. GreeneWe study ribbon cobordisms between 3-manifolds, i.e. rational homology cobordisms that admit a handle decomposition without 3-handles. We first define and study the more general notion of quasi-ribbon cobordisms, and analyze how lattice-theoretic methods may be used to obstruct the existence of a quasi-ribbon cobordism between two given 3-manifolds. Building on this and on previous work of Lisca, we then determine when there exists such a cobordism between two connected sums of lens spaces. In particular, we show that if an oriented rational homology sphere Y admitsa quasi-ribbon cobordism to a lens space, then Y must be homeomorphic to L(n, 1), up to orientation-reversal. As an application, we classify ribbon χ-concordances between connected sums of 2-bridge links. Lastly, we show that the notion of ribbon rational homology cobordisms yields a partial order on the set consisting of aspherical 3-manifolds and lens spaces, thus providing evidence towards a conjecture formulated by Daemi, Lidman, Vela-Vick and Wong.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Mathematics
Banks’ Internal Review Policies and Analysts’ Information Production: Evidence from Oversight Committees
No full textThesis advisor: Mark BradshawI examine the effect of banks’ internal review policies on analysts’ information production. To overcome the lack of observability of these policies, I exploit a requirement in the Global Settlement that mandates sanctioned banks establish oversight committees to review material target price revisions. Some banks implemented 10% bright-line thresholds for these revisions, whereas others did not. I find that analysts at banks with bright-line thresholds issue absolute target price revisions below the 10% threshold to avoid triggering a review. I also find that the review process, when triggered, decreases the timeliness of analysts’ revisions. However, despite oversight committees’ mandate to monitor research quality, I find little evidence that the reviewed target price revisions are less optimistic.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management.Discipline: Accounting
University Student Experiences with Food Insecurity During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFThesis advisor: Summer Sherburne HawkinsBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity among American households. There is limited knowledge on how university students, who were vulnerable to food insecurity prior to the pandemic, have been impacted by COVID-19. This study aimed to measure the prevalence of food insecurity at a private university during the pandemic and identify student coping strategies.
Methods: An online survey was distributed via REDCap to university undergraduates. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Security Survey was utilized to determine the prevalence of food insecurity during the fall 2021 semester and 2020-2021 academic year. The survey collected information on student demographics and strategies students used to obtain food. Interviews were conducted with 6 survey participants to gather richer information about student experiences.
Results: 292 student responses were analyzed. The prevalence of food insecurity during fall 2021 was 36.7%, and 34.6% during the 2020-2021 academic year. The strongest predictors of food insecurity (in fall 2021) were working 11+ hours/week (OR: 4.42, 95% CI: 1.73-11.7), previous participation in the National School Lunch Program (OR: 4.04, 95% CI: 1.43-12.2), and receiving financial aid (OR: 3.79, 95% CI: 1.70-8.86). Themes highlighted in interviews included barriers to accessing food, the impact food insecurity has on overall wellbeing, and programs that students would like implemented.
Conclusions: Approximately a third of undergraduates at this university experience food insecurity, with financially disadvantaged students being at highest risk. Barriers to obtaining food for university students needs to be addressed with institutional, statewide, and federal policies.Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Biology
Development and Applications of Genetic Code Expansion Platforms for Eukaryotes:
No full textThesis advisor: Abhisheck ChatterjeeThe genetic codon expansion (GCE) is a technique that uses an orthogonal tRNA/aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (aaRS) pair to incorporate noncanonical amino acids (ncAA) into proteins, to enable more protein-based chemistry. In the past two decades, more than 200 ncAAs have been site-specifically introduced into proteins in E. coli, and facilitated studies of protein structures, functions and interaction with other molecules. Although a large variety of ncAAs are available for incorporation in the bacterial systems, significantly fewer ncAAs are accessible for incorporation in eukaryotic cells. An expanded GCE toolbox will be beneficial for numerous applications in eukaryotic systems. Currently, introducing ncAAs in eukaryotes predominantly relies on the archaeal pyrrolysyl tRNA/aaRS pair. Such a strong dependence on a single platform has precluded genetic encoding of many desirable ncAAs, including structural mimics of many important post-translational modifications. The work presented in this thesis first developed an engineered E. coli leucyl tRNA/aaRS pair to enable site-specific incorporation of citrulline, an important PTM, into proteins expressed in mammalian cells. This technology was used to reveal the role of citrullination on site R372 and R374 of PAD4. Additionally, aiming at genetically encoding more diverse ncAAs, all 20 E. coli derived tRNA/aaRS pairs were screened for their ability to suppress TAG and TGA in mammalian cells. This study revealed several tRNA/aaRS pairs that are suitable for ncAA incorporation in mammalian cells, including those selective for phenylalanine, lysine, arginine, serine and glutamine. Efforts are currently under way to engineer these pairs to genetically encode new structural classes of ncAAs.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Chemistry