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Human Suboptimal Choice: Identifying Alternative Procedures
No full textSuboptimal choice refers to choices that result in leaner schedules of reinforcement over richer schedules (Spetch et al., 1990). This has been demonstrated with non-human animals using procedures wherein two alternatives correspond to different stimuli and different probabilities of receiving rewards. In a previous study (Cronin, 1980), pigeons engaged in suboptimal choice when stimuli paired with food (conditioned reinforcers) followed responses that resulted in no food. This effect, though, has not been demonstrated with humans. The present study aims to replicate the results of the Cronin (1980) study to determine whether the manipulation of stimulus presentations could result in suboptimal responding with humans. This data could provide information regarding the components that maintain suboptimal choice with humans
The Margins of the Market: Women Writers and the US Publishing Industry in the Long 1950s
No full textThis dissertation examines the intersection between the literature of the long 1950s "1945 through 1963" and the industry changes in the publishing world that shaped the experiences of authors and impacted the works making it to market. I examine how women authors and the field of publishing responded to the increasingly conservative culture from the end of WWII through the early 1960s. In addition to looking at how women authors operated within a restrictive cultural climate to retain access to the public market for their works and their careers, I also unpack the ways publishers responded to women writers and how women writers are portrayed in the public market. Utilizing the methodologies of book history and literary scholarship, I scrutinize the complexities of textual creation and how this process "one often imagined as purely creative" is shaped by market and cultural conditions, and how authors' responses to these conditions can produce texts that have the potential to reshape the market and culture. Throughout this dissertation, I examine the undercurrents of raced-, classed-, and gendered-expectations affecting women's authorship and the market for women's work. Through archival research, I uncover how authors' interactions with their publishers, editors, and agents were shaped by gendered and raced market pressures. I also explore reviews, marketing materials, interviews, and book covers to see how authors were marketed to either fit with or challenge expectation and appeal to certain cultural values given the site of publication and generic conventions. And lastly, I evaluate how publicity and authorship are portrayed in women writers' fiction, how this was undergirded by the threat of violence, and how this violence was countered or subverted. The authors I consider here" Ann Petry, Dorothy B. Hughes, Laura Z. Hobson, Shirley Jackson, Carson McCullers, and Dorothy West" represent a spectrum of authors published in both trade and mass-market fiction. In Chapter One, I look at author-publisher relationships as evidenced through material in the Houghton Mifflin archive to determine how these relationships are shaped by gender, race, and notions of literary prestige. Through centering archival materials pertaining to three Houghton Mifflin authors" Carson McCullers, Ann Petry, and Dorothy West" this chapter finds that authors' perceived levels of cultural or literary prestige affect their interactions with Houghton Mifflin. I trace the publisher relationships of Petry, West, and McCullers through the archival materials, demonstrating that while the publisher desired them as authors because of the potential for profit or prestige, they often treated these authors with contempt because of their gender or race, working at odds with supporting successful authorship. Chapter Two focuses on Shirley Jackson's magazine work, primarily in Good Housekeeping and Woman's Home Companion , where she published numerous domestic fiction stories that emphasized her role as wife and mother rather than as author. By participating in the domestic fiction genre in these magazines, Jackson realigns the concerns she forefronts about womanhood and patriarchy in her longer fiction for distinctly different audience expectations. This chapter combines a study of the context of the women's magazine industry with Jackson's domestic fiction to investigate how Jackson both pushes against and functions within these gendered and raced confines, using humor to subvert expectation and examine the limited conventions of womanhood, and the consequences of these limitations. I find that this undervalued venue allowed Jackson to use humor to construct a site of identification for middle-class white women where personal dissatisfaction could be raised collectively and addressed as indicative of a social problem in need of public address. In Chapter Three, I look at how women authors functioned within the mass market by examining genre fiction. I focus on Laura Z. Hobson and Dorothy B. Hughes, both of whom wrote popular genre fiction embedded with cultural critique. I forefront the gendered expectations of genre to articulate how authorship was shaped by 1950s conventions of gender and how this surfaces in the literature. I find that mass-market publishing created an opening for women authors, but that this opening was shaped by expectations of gendered and classed readership. Through close readings of Hobson's Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and Hughes's In a Lonely Place (1947), along with examinations of promotional materials and interviews, I demonstrate how the gendering of genre shaped both the portrayal of authorship and the construction of texts. I argue that Hobson, working in a feminized genre, created an authorial persona and characters who conform more explicitly to gender roles, while Hughes, working in a masculinized genre, erased the importance of gender from both herself and her novels, in line with gendered generic expectations. Lastly, Chapter Four examines how the fictional portrayal of public space represents women's authorship in the postwar period as complicated by concerns of public violence and private invasion. While the first three chapters emphasize the context of publication, this chapter turns toward literary analysis to focus on Petry's The Street (1946) and Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). Complimenting examinations of Petry's and Jackson's publishing experiences in previous chapters, I demonstrate how gendered pressures of mid-century publishing erupt in their texts through violence and spatial regulation. This chapter draws correlations between the experiences of being made public" being exposed for dissection during a period of intense pressure to conform to impossible standards" with the violence depicted in Petry's and Jackson's novels. I look at the double edge of publicity, using the notion of the public market as a site of struggle for power, the right of representation, and independence
2023 Nevada High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS): Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Special Report
Get PDFThis surveillance project was partially supported by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC-PS18-1807). Supplemental funding was also provided by the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health
Overview of Estimation using L-moments
Get PDFTraditional estimation methods such as maximum likelihood or method of moments do not work very well for heavy tailed distributions often present in water resources research. In addition, they usually require relatively large samples to provide reason- ably accurate estimates. To remedy these shortcomings, Hosking (1990) introduced the method of L-moments for estimation of parameters. The motivation was the need to estimate high quantiles of precipitation and stream flow data using relatively small samples of observations. This work explores the benefits of L-moments based esti- mation for a variety of distributions. In addition, we define a new model for weather (or climate) episodes based on dependent sequence of observations and explore the L-moments in that setting
"It Took Courage All Right": Gender, Labor, and Ethnicity within Basque Women's Migration Experiences in the American West (1849-Present)
No full textThe aim of this dissertation is to provide an exploration of Basque women's migration experiences and their everyday lives in the American West, starting with the beginning of modern Basque migration to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. The focus is on women's paid and unpaid labor in both the public and private spheres as foundational for the creation and maintenance of Basque communities in northern Nevada and southern Idaho. By highlighting individual migrants' stories, it aims to illuminate their agency in migration decisions and their labor contributions in their new societies. The study integrates gender, migration, labor, and ethnicity into a broader historical context of both sending and receiving areas, enhancing the cultural history of the Basque Country and the American West. Little has been written about the everyday lives of Basque women migrants in the United States outside of their work in boardinghouses and their cultural contributions. However, these women worked in a variety of professions, and balanced motherhood and domestic labor while oftentimes picking up a second shift in the paid economy to add to the household budget, like many migrant and non-migrant women of these eras. This dissertation aims to demonstrate how Basque women's labor in public and private spheres was integral to the support networks necessary for the maintenance of the Basque agricultural workforce as well as for the creation and endurance of Basque communities in the U.S
Uncertainty Quantification-Based Switching Control Method for Vision-Based Object Tracking in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Get PDFEnsuring safe aerial robotics has become paramount with the increasing utilization of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) in dense urban environments. Machine Learning-based object detection methods that process camera sensor images have become essential in planning and navigating UAVs through these environments. However, like any machine learning tool, the object detection model is prone to aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties. This thesis introduces a perception-control framework incorporating a switching controller to improve robustness against uncertain measurements processed by an object detector. The proposed mechanism enables switching between different controllers based on the level of uncertainty quantified. This approach aims to enhance the reliability and safety of UAV operations in challenging environments. We tested this framework using a simulated environment where a UAV tracks an object using the YOLOv5 object detector. Our results demonstrate that the proposed control framework can mitigate the uncertainties of the machine learning perception by decreasing the system gain from the sensor noise to the output of the vehicle dynamics
Water Usage and Efficiency in Intensive Beef Cattle Systems: Data Driven Sustainable Production
Get PDFSustainable intensification of livestock production systems in arid and semi-arid rangelands present a unique opportunity for affording food security and economic competency of developing communities globally. Around 40% of the world is considered arid or semi-arid (depending on classification/definition), and most of this land is often non-arable. Considering the projected growth of populations, ensuring robust food security for these communities is of paramount importance. Therefore, this dissertation attempts to establish mechanisms relevant to livestock production in these systems by examining key aspects of ruminant nutrition and production efficiency in resource-limited settings related to water. We investigate how livestock nutrition, performance, and data can be utilized to better understand systems, and how modeling strategies play an important role in translating data and systems to application and solutions to guide production systems to be more profitable and sustainable. The main topics include water utilization, production performance, and sustainable management strategies. The thesis is divided into four main chapters. The first chapter provides a brief review of literature about the use of water in arid systems and introduces the utilization of cattle as a sustainable tool to produce high quality food in resource-limited environments (briefly mentioning their unique adaptations). The second chapter introduces water requirements of beef cattle raised in arid systems, while evaluating water intake equations for beef cattle, emphasizing the importance of physiological status instead of environmental parameters. The third chapter will then investigate how management strategies, such as hormonal implants in beef cattle, can assist intensification and increasing sustainability of operations. This chapter will examine the performance and efficiency of implanted and non-implanted steers in arid environments, addressing key factors affecting production in these settings. Lastly, chapter four investigates how data from intensive systems can be utilized to develop better predictions, and a more thorough and mechanistic understanding of biological processes through modeling and data-driven decision making. The fourth chapter will integrate findings from previous chapters and propose strategies for optimizing cattle concludes conclude with a summary of key findings, implications for future research, and recommendations for stakeholders involved in ruminant production and management in arid environments. The general message this dissertation attempts to examine and accurately quantify water use in livestock production systems to map water requirements and water use. By better understanding water use, we can overcome misleading and misreported unrealistic values criticizing water use by cattle, and therefore, assist in shifting the narrative of cattle being a part of the problem to a part of the solution to sustainable food security globally
Examining the Impacts of the COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders on Mental Illness, Substance Use Disorders, and Suicide Attempts in the United States
Get PDFPsychiatric diagnoses are common in the United States (U.S.) and a couple of common consequences of certain psychiatric diagnoses are suicide attempts and completed suicides. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11th, 2020, and most states in the U.S. employed a population-based quarantine (i.e., stay-at-home orders [SAHOs]) to contain and prevent the spread of COVID-19. Prior research on quarantines has shown the use of quarantines can lead to increases in psychiatric diagnoses and symptoms, which can correspond to an increase in suicidality. Few studies have examined previous outbreaks and epidemics' impact on psychiatric outcomes such as psychiatric diagnoses and suicide attempts. The growing body of causal literature on SAHOs focuses on SAHOs' impact on population mobility and the spread of COVID-19, but not on psychiatric outcomes. The purpose of this dissertation was to empirically test the effects of SAHOs, as implemented during COVID-19, on the development of new psychiatric diagnoses and suicidality. Data were drawn from the COVID-19 Research Database which contained national medical claims from all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Chapter 3 examined whether the COVID-19 SAHOs impacted the development of new psychiatric diagnoses among adults without a history of psychiatric diagnoses in the U.S. Results indicated that the COVID-19 SAHOs had small but significant marginal effects on the development of new psychiatric diagnoses. Some evidence was found that SAHOs impacted suicide attempts among adults and adolescents. Chapter 4 examined whether the COVID-19 SAHOs impacted suicide attempts among adults in the U.S. Among the states with shorter duration SAHOS, two of the sub-groups of states with longer duration SAHOs, and adults with a psychiatric diagnosis, there was a slope decrease and level increase in suicide attempts compared to states without SAHOs. Among the longer duration SAHOs, the state with an SAHO lasting April - August 2020 had a significant slope increase in suicide attempts compared to states without SAHOs. Chapter 5 examined whether the COVID-19 SAHOs impacted suicide attempts among adolescents in the U.S. Among the states with shorter duration SAHOS, there was a slope decrease and level increase in suicide attempts compared to states without SAHOs. Among states with longer duration SAHOs, there was only one state with an SAHO that had a significant slope change which was a slope increase in suicide attempts compared to states without SAHOs. SAHOs that had penalties written into the order had a slope increase. Even though the marginal effects were small, the findings were still significant. They provided some evidence of the negative ramifications of implementing population quarantine methods such as the COVID-19 SAHOs. The results from all three studies highlight the importance of having adequate mitigation strategies to account for impacts on psychiatric outcomes when an infectious outbreak, epidemic, or pandemic occurs
Quantification of Carbon Footprint of the Reno-Stead Water Reclamation Facility
No full textDue to the steadfast rate greenhouse gases (GHG) are being emitted globally, alliances worldwide are calling for to improve energy efficiency and decrease emissions generated. Water reclamation facilities (WRFs) contribute notably to the carbon footprint of municipal operations, and are also important to reduce carbon footprint of the water sector through biogas recovery from wastewater. A review of recent critical literature highlights the protocols, models, and direct measurement methods used to quantify the carbon footprint at the WRF level. The methodologies include the International Panel on Climate Change Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, the Local Government Operations Protocol (LGO) for Greenhouse Gas Assessments, and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The LGO Protocol is the main methodology used within the United States to quantify carbon footprint of municipal facilities; thus, it is used to estimate the Reno-Stead Water Reclamation Facility's (RSWRF) carbon footprint in this research. Carbon footprint calculations take into consideration the emission factors and global warming potentials of primary GHGs, including N 2 O, CH 4 , and CO 2 . Scope 1 emissions from WRFs include nitrification/denitrification processes, effluent discharge, stationary combustion of natural gas and on-site generator electricity generation, and mobile combustion sources from the vehicle fleet. Scope 2 emissions include electricity purchased from an outside provider. Scope 3 emissions, not included in this study of the RSWRF, may include GHG emissions from employee commutes, upstream energy emissions, and chemical footprint of the plant. The estimated combined Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon footprint of the RSWRF is 1,051 �" 1,064 MT CO 2e/yr . Five other WRFs in the U.S. were compared with the RSWRF to account for the variability between their respective carbon footprints and to assess decarbonization strategies. Analyses show that four main factors influence the carbon footprint and justify variability among the WRFs: facility utilization versus installed capacity, permitted effluent limits, individual unit operations/processes employed, and sludge processing methods. Potential strategies to achieve decarbonization goals include optimization of unit processes to reduce energy inputs, implementation of UV disinfection, use of alternate energy sources, and resource recovery through advanced water reclamation. Further research is necessary to improve the quantification of the carbon footprint of the RSWRF. Recommendations include acquiring sensors to measure nitrous oxide emissions through a flux-chamber method over a minimum one-year period at the RSWRF. A spreadsheet model was developed during this study for the Reno-Stead Water Reclamation Facility to track its carbon footprint as it increases its utilization. Finally, analysis of additional case studies of WRFs within the United States and their respective carbon footprints is crucial to future research on decarbonization of RSWRF. More data on facilities with nuances such as non-potable reuse to potable reuse will aid in identifying decarbonization strategies at the RSWRF, which intends to send effluent to the Advanced Purified Water Facility in the future