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Menendez de Aviles and La Florida
No full textThe present volume is a translation of Solis de Meras and Barrientos, Menendez de Aviles y La Florida: cronicas de sus expediciones, edition, notes, and introduction by Juan Carlos Mercad
Mathematics Teachers’ Occupational Well-Being in PISA 2022: Cross-Country Patterns, Links to Student Mathematics Achievement, and Moderating Effects of Teacher and School Contexts
No full textThis dissertation examined mathematics teachers’ occupational well-being, its cross-country variation, and its relationship with student mathematics achievement across three distinct but interconnected studies that built on one another. Using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 data, the studies included more than 7,000 teachers from seven countries. Study 1 validated a four-dimensional framework of teachers’ occupational well-being (cognitive, subjective, social, and physical/mental) across these countries, supported by confirmatory factor analysis and evidence of measurement invariance. Descriptive and regression results revealed cross-country variation, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) reporting the highest well-being scores and Korea among the lowest. Regionally, Asia and Latin America reported lower well-being, whereas the Middle East reported higher well-being compared to Europe. OECD partner countries also reported higher well-being than other countries, pointing to the influence of systemic factors.
Building on the framework from Study 1, Study 2 examined whether school-level mathematics teacher variables predicted student mathematics achievement and whether these associations varied across countries and teacher characteristics. A multilevel modeling approach was applied to the large-scale assessment data, controlling for key student and teacher covariates. Across all countries, student socioeconomic status was the strongest predictor of mathematics performance. Direct effects of school-level teacher well-being on mathematics achievement emerged in the UAE (negative) and Colombia (positive). Among the school-level teacher characteristics, mathematics subject qualification negatively moderated the well-being–achievement association in Korea, while teacher education completion showed negative moderation effects in the UAE, Colombia, and Korea. Weekly work hours displayed negative interactions in Brazil and Korea but a positive interaction in Portugal.
Study 3 investigated teacher and school contextual moderators of the school-level well-being–achievement link. A negative interaction with teachers’ openness to creativity was identified in Korea, whereas teachers’ use of creative pedagogies showed positive interactions in the UAE and Germany. Creative school climate demonstrated a negative interaction in the UAE, and teacher appraisals showed a positive interaction in Germany. Compared with public schools, private schools indicated a positive interaction in Malaysia and Colombia but a negative interaction in Portugal. Finally, professional development opportunities demonstrated a positive interaction in Colombia.
The three studies aimed to provide comprehensive comparative insights into how teachers’ occupational well-being varied internationally, how it related to student achievement, and how its influence depended on nuanced teacher and school contexts. The findings suggest that while teacher characteristics mattered, social and economic realities along with cultural and systemic factors such as workload, policy orientation, and organizational conditions may play a more critical role in supporting mathematics teacher well-being and student mathematics achievement
The Radical Political Possibilities of Asexuality and Aromanticism
No full textThis study explores the radical political potential of Asexuality and Aromanticism within queer theory, emphasizing their roles in destabilizing normative constructs of sexuality and romantic relationships. Employing mixed methods, including literature review, digital ethnography of online communities, and analysis of graphic narratives, the research examines how these identities challenge systemic systems such as compulsory sexuality, amatonormativity, and racialized discourses. Findings reveal that Asexual and Aromantic communities utilize flexible definitions and taxonomies to assert their identities, disrupt hegemonic gender and sexual norms, and foster coalitional politics that advocate for systemic change. The study underscores the importance of recognizing Asexuality and Aromanticism as integral to queer activism, offering new theoretical frameworks for understanding human intimacy beyond traditional paradigms. Ultimately, this work gestures towards a reimagined societal framework wherein the diverse experiences of love, desire, sex, and intimacy are valid and supported, advancing the discourse on Asexuality and its potential to transform contemporary societal constructs
Sugar-Induced Cell Death is a Common Phenomenon in Yeast Mediated by the Production of Broad-Spectrum Antimicrobial Compounds
No full textWhen Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells are transferred to water alone, they remain viable for many days. However, when transferred to glucose-only solutions, they exhibit a rapid decline in viability. This phenomenon is termed sugar-induced cell death (SICD). Cell death is thought to be triggered by an increase in intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) and is associated with a decline in extracellular pH, an increase in plasma membrane potential, and leakage of small molecules. SICD shares similarities with mammalian cell death. When stationary-phase cells are transferred to glucose-only solutions, cell death resembles apoptosis. However, when exponential-phase cells are transferred to glucose-only solutions, cell death resembles primary necrosis. A similar response is observed in mammalian cells exposed to high glucose, particularly in cases of diabetes and hyperglycemia, raising the possibility that this mechanism is conserved in higher eukaryotes.
Since glucose is a universal energy source and signaling molecule for yeast, we propose that glucose does not directly cause cell death but instead signals the production of inhibitory compounds that result in the death of both clonal and neighboring cells. If this hypothesis is supported, these compound(s) could be developed into potential antifungal agents.
We have successfully demonstrated, for the first time, that SICD occurs in a variety of Candida species, including multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogens: Candida albicans, Candida auris, and Candida glabrata. Additionally, SICD is highly dependent on temperature, occurring mainly at physiological temperature (37 °C). SICD in S. cerevisiae was also found to be highly regulated when induced by low concentrations of glucose and can be prevented either by disrupting apoptotic pathways or by supplementing with essential or non-essential nitrogen sources.
More interestingly, we found that culture supernatants from cells undergoing SICD demonstrate potent antimicrobial activity against clonal cells, MDR Candida spp. (including C. auris), molds, and both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. Strikingly, SICD culture supernatants induce a cell death phenotype that closely resembles that of cells undergoing SICD, thereby supporting our hypothesis that SICD is caused by the production of inhibitory compound(s).
Our metabolomic analysis suggests that the active compound(s) in the culture supernatants are less than 3 kDa in molecular weight and are hydrophilic, negatively charged, and volatile. We conducted bioassay-guided fractionation to reduce the pool of candidates to 44 metabolites, most of which were unidentified.
Taken together, our data suggest that SICD results in the production of inhibitory compounds with potent antimicrobial activity. Additionally, SICD is highly regulated and occurs primarily at physiological temperature; therefore, this pathway may be of interest not only for the discovery of new antimicrobial agents but also for identifying novel targets in the fight against drug resistance
Sometimes I Picture You Dreaming: How American Female Directors Use Women-in-Prison Films as a Pathway for Public Education and Activism in the Era of Mass Incarceration
No full textThis thesis examines the role of female directors in creating media that showcases how prisons perpetuate sexism or gender-based violence. As mass incarceration began to take off in the 1970s, this paper begins with an analysis of Jack Hill’s The Big Doll House (1971), which often served as the model for women-in-prison (WIP) exploitation films. While Hill perpetuated the white and male gaze in The Big Doll House, Stephanie Rothman subverts oppressive gazes in her WIP film, Terminal Island (1973), and demonstrates a concern with the historical gendered realities of prison – moving beyond representations of prison on the screen in the ‘70s that were only used for figurative or narrative device purposes – while simultaneously asking viewers to think critically about media constructions of criminality. Lastly, this paper examines Prison Stories: Women on the Inside (1991), a television-movie consisting of three episodes, primarily concerned with women’s abilities to mother while incarcerated. In this paper, I will analyze two episodes: “Esperanza” directed by Donna Deitch and “Parole Board” directed by Joan Micklin Silver. In doing so, I will highlight how Deitch and Micklin Silver show how the legal justice system criminalizes survivors of domestic abuse: either through charges like “accomplice liability,” or through self-defense. In doing so, I hope to illuminate the ways that directors who are women have been influenced by their positionalities – including their experiences navigating a predominantly male-dominated film industry – to create movies that serve as a call to action for gender-responsive legal justice reform
Role of Long-Range Interactions in Structure and Dynamics of Carbohydrates
No full textCarbohydrate oligomers play crucial roles in a variety of biological processes, including energy storage, intercellular communication, and the formation of structural polymers. The conformational dynamics of carbohydrates, which facilitates these diverse functions, is generally considered to be governed primarily by interactions between adjacent monomer units. As a first part of the thesis, I employ molecular dynamics simulations to investigate how interactions between non-adjacent monomers influence the overall structure of model oligosaccharides and N-glycans. In the second part of the thesis, I investigate a potential of targeting N-glycans for development of novel antiviral drugs. A deeper understanding of the role of long-range interactions in the structural organization and dynamics of carbohydrates will advance the development of new simulation techniques and force fields and will also enable practical applications such as the discovery of novel biomaterials and the design of innovative carbohydrate-binding drugs.
To quantify the impact of the interactions between non-adjacent monomers, I will use the difference between the conformational dynamics of a polymer and those of its disaccharide constituents, as reflected in the equilibrium distribution of glycosidic bond dihedral angles. I used CHARMM36 parameters to construct 384 unique structures of glucose, galactose, and mannose disaccharide and trisaccharide models and run molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for 500 ns each. The difference between the distribution of glycosidic bonds in trisaccharides and respective disaccharides was quantified using the Bhattacharyya distance function. Systematic analysis of different small oligomers show that some structures experience non-negligible differences in the equilibrium distribution of the glycosidic bonds, and the effect was most pronounced in branched oligosaccharides which have glycosidic bonds at neighboring positions and for 1 → 6 glycosidic linkages.
Next, we examined the impact of such long-range interactions between monosaccharides non-adjacent in sequence space in several biological systems: N-glycans, O-glycans, and lewis antigens. For the N-glycans system, I constructed 33 common N-glycans, as well as 16 disaccharides and 30 trisaccharides fragments. For the O-glycans system, I constructed 20 common O-glycans, and 20 disaccharide fragments. Finally, for lewis a and x I investigated 12 structures, and eleven constituting fragments. N-glycans, when compared to the di- and trisaccharide constituents, showed differences only for specific glycosidic bonds such as ω1-3 and ω1-6 glycosidic bond between mannose monosaccharides in the GlcNAc2Man3 pentasaccharide core, and in the presence of core fucosylation, bisecting GlcNAcs, and in the sialic-acid terminated antennae. The impact of long-range interactions in O-glycans, compared with disaccharides, was most pronounced for the β1 → 6 glycosidic bonds between GlcNAc and GalNAc, but was overall much smaller than other glycans. Finally, dynamics of lewis antigens experienced a significant deviations from the conformational equilibrium of its fragments, which highlights the signaling functions of these structures.
In the second part of the thesis, I examine the binding between ten Synthetic Carbohydrate Receptors (SCRs) and a library of more than 30 N-glycans and 20 O-glycans, some of which are common to viral proteins. To estimate the binding affinity between the SCR and N-glycan and O-glycan I monitored the distance between the two molecules throughout the simulation and used the ratio of the number of bound and unbound structures to calculate the association quotient. Analysis of the association quotient showed that some SCRs do not bind, some are promiscuous, and some are selective toward specific N-glycans, and they show very little binding towards O-glycans. Systematic variations in N-glycans, O-glycans and receptor structure would allow the search for and SCR design rules for the proposal of new receptors that could selectively bind to desired glycans. According to MD, it is possible for envelope glycans, which are currently considered “undruggable”, could become viable targets for new therapeutic strategies
Open to the Public(s): Privatized Public Space, Technology, and Aspirational Wealth at Hudson Yards
No full textUsing the publicly accessible plaza at the Hudson Yards development in New York City as a backdrop, this dissertation provides an examination of mechanisms by which public spaces—already under pressure from a range of factors including privatization and securitization—are further transformed via processes associated with the notion of smart cities initiatives, or platform urbanism. Following a literature review and presentation of relevant contextual background related to the history and configuration of the site, the data chapters present a range of operational and material mechanisms that cumulatively establish a class-based strategic provision of narrow boundaries for visitor access and activities oriented toward shaping passive consumption patterns and the mobilization of visitor labor in support of reproduction of the luxury brand of the development. Theories associated with the field of environmental psychology—particularly the notion of behavior settings—are applied to contribute to academic literature in support of furthering understanding of how public spaces are changing and how smart cities projects often come bundled with ever increasing opportunities for the exacerbation of growing economic inequality and the further erosion of traditional notions of public spaces
Empirical Essays on Socioeconomic Inequality in the United States
No full textThis dissertation presents three empirical essays on socioeconomic inequality, focusing on the roles of circumstances, work arrangements, and intergenerational transmission of income in the United States and Germany. The first essay proposes measurement of inequality of opportunity in the United States by integrating social-interactions models from spatial econometrics into the standard parametric framework. Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data for cohorts around 2000 and 2010, I decompose income inequality into effort- and circumstance-related components under both ordinary least squares and spatial-lag specifications. Accounting explicitly for spatial autocorrelation modestly changes the level and composition of inequality of opportunity, but consistently indicates that a nontrivial share of overall income inequality is driven by circumstances and peer environments rather than individual effort alone. The second essay examines how the rapid adoption of remote work has reshaped the wage distribution in the United States. Leveraging the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA), I document a sizable wage premium for remote workers relative to otherwise similar traditional workers. Oaxaca–Blinder decompositions at the mean and Recentered Influence Function (RIF) regressions across the wage distribution show that most of this premium reflects differences in returns to characteristics rather than differences in worker composition. The premium is largest at the top of the wage distribution, implying that the diffusion of remote work is likely to reinforce wage inequality unless countervailing forces emerge. The third essay develops a new welfare-based measure of intergenerational mobility that extends Atkinson’s one-dimensional framework to a multivariate, correlation-averse setting. Using PSID and German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data on fathers and sons, my co-authors and I construct a mobility index based on an intergenerational immobility premium and compare it to standard intergenerational earnings elasticities. Both approaches suggest slightly higher intergenerational mobility in the United States than in Germany, in contrast to much of the existing literature. Together, these essays contribute new tools and evidence for understanding how opportunity, work arrangements, and intergenerational linkages shape the evolution of income inequality
Examination of an Article on Cultural Racism in Light of COVID-19
No full textThis final exam requires students to critically analyze Qian Julie Wang’s New York Times article, “Anti-Asian Racism Isn’t New,” through the lens of American Cultural Pluralism and the Law. Students will examine how the COVID-19 pandemic intensified anti-Asian racism in the United States by drawing on key course concepts, including cultural racism, racialization, borders, belonging, citizenship, identity formation, and white dominance. The assignment includes two components: a visual mind map that organizes theoretical frameworks and evidence, and a structured 800-word essay that integrates at least three peer-reviewed in-class readings using APA citation style. Through this process, students will demonstrate their ability to apply socio-political theories of race and culture to contemporary events while constructing a clear, evidence-based argument
Annotated Bibliography Assignment
No full textThis assignment engages students in comparing AI-generated and human-generated annotated bibliographies. Students first read a psychology research article and create their own annotated bibliography summarizing the study’s purpose, literature, hypotheses, design, findings, and implications. They then use ChatGPT to generate an AI-based bibliography and critically compare it to their own work, evaluating accuracy, completeness, and usability. The exercise emphasizes critical reflection on the capabilities and limitations of AI for research tasks, while encouraging students to integrate effective AI strategies into their scholarly practices without compromising independent analysis