Showing 211 - 220 of 317 Items
Modeling Coupled Disease-Behavior Dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Using Influence Networks
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Juliana C. Taube
Access: Open access
- SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has caused significant human morbidity and mortality since its emergence in late 2019. Not only have over three million people died, but humans have been forced to change their behavior in a variety of ways, including limiting their contacts, social distancing, and wearing masks. Early infectious disease models, like the classical SIR model by Kermack and McKendrick, do not account for differing contact structures and behavior. More recent work has demonstrated that contact structures and behavior can considerably impact disease dynamics. We construct a coupled disease-behavior dynamical model for SARS-CoV-2 by incorporating heterogeneous contact structures and decisions about masking. We use a contact network with household, work, and friend interactions to capture the variation in contact patterns. We allow decisions about masking to occur at a different time scale from disease spread which dramatically changes the masking dynamics. Drawing from the field of game theory, we construct an individual decision-making process that relies on perceived risk of infection, social influence, and individual resistance to masking. Through simulation, we find that social influence prevents masking, while perceived risk largely drives individuals to mask. Underlying contact structure also affects the number of people who mask. This model serves as a starting point for future work which could explore the relative importance of social influence and perceived risk in human decision-making.
The Congressional Database: Designing a Web Application Using an HCI Approach
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Liam R. Juskevice
Access: Open access
- The activities of the United States Senate are a topic of interest for researchers and concerned members of the public alike. Websites such as GovTrack and Congress.gov allow people to research specific bills among many other offerings. However, they have significant weaknesses regarding their ease of use and the way they organize and store data. The Congressional Database Project aims to provide an intuitive user experience navigating government data while storing the data in a consistent database. We approach this project from an HCI perspective in order to determine the best ways to improve the user experience. We have conducted a qualitative user study to test the effectiveness of our design and identify potential areas of improvement. This paper provides an in-depth overview of the design of the Congressional Database on the front end and back end. It then explains the methodology of our user study and discusses the implications of its findings.
Reactions Responsible for Aging in Wood-Based Pyrolysis Oil: Synthesis and Characterization of a Coniferyl Alcohol Dimer
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Alejandro Garcia
Access: Open access
- The negative environmental impact and the diminishing supply of fossil fuels demand a renewable alternative. Pyrolysis oils produced from the decomposition of biomass, like wood, are a potential fuel substitute for energy production and a feedstock alternative for manufacturing value-added chemicals. The possibilities offered by pyrolysis oils are offset by oil instability. The oils contain reactive compounds, such as small aldehydes, conjugated aromatics, and acids that over time react and produce higher molecular mass products. This instability manifests as an increase in viscosity by a process referred to as aging. One chemical component, coniferyl alcohol, is proposed to react with formaldehyde under the acidic oil conditions to produce a dimer. In our lab, researchers have detected the coniferyl alcohol dimer in authentic oil samples and have simulated the reaction under conditions that removes the complexity of the pyrolysis oil matrix. This study focused on the synthesis, isolation, and characterization of the dimer structure by employing NMR analysis. GC/MS analysis of a successful synthesis of the dimer showed multiple dimers were produced, but there was one principal product. The NMR analysis of this dimer was used to elucidate the geometry, providing evidence that the product has E stereochemistry for the double bond and trans stereochemistry in the acetal ring. Confirmation of the principal structure provides support for the dimerization mechanism and will allow for future research to address instability of pyrolysis oils.
Hot Boy Summer? Analyzing Managerial Reactions to Season-long Fluctuating Player Performance In Major League Baseball
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: John Rodgers Hood
Access: Open access
- This paper suggests numerical weights that a Major League Baseball (MLB) manager may use when comparing player performance across multiple past performance periods to predict future performance. By the end of the MLB regular season, current season performance becomes more predictive than prior season performance for pitchers but not hitters. After estimating weights for different past time periods of performance, this paper compares the weights with how managers value performance in high-stakes situations across these same time periods. I find that MLB managers overreact to recent performance by both hitters and pitchers in postseason settings.
Enlightenment as Global History: The Reception of Confucianism in Eighteenth-Century France
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Rachel Yang
Access: Open access
- While the Enlightenment was once seen as a unique product of Western intellectual heritage, recent scholars have started to challenge this Eurocentric notion with the concept of a “global Enlightenment” by considering how it was shaped by cross-cultural encounters. To contribute to this body of scholarship, I trace the reception history of Confucianism in eighteenth-century France and examine how Chinese philosophy played a part in shaping and stimulating Enlightenment discourse. My research starts with the Jesuit missionaries who served as the intellectual intermediaries between China and Europe. Through a close reading of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, a Latin translation of Confucian classics, I demonstrate how the Jesuits produced a Christianized reading of Confucianism that they could leverage for their spiritual and political ambitions. Then, I examine how some of the most notable figures of the French Enlightenment, such as Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau appropriated Confucian ideals to criticize religious orthodoxy and debate about subjects such as universalism, religious tolerance, and civilization. While the French thinkers mostly weaponized Confucianism for their own ends, their appropriation allowed this imported philosophy to become relevant in a new context and tangibly shape Enlightenment conversations. This understanding helps us see the Enlightenment as a junction, or even product, of a cross-cultural fertilization of ideas rather than an isolated European phenomenon.
Digital Market Concentration: An Institutional and Social Cost Analysis
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Jack Shane
Access: Open access
- In this thesis, I develop an analysis of the industry concentration seen in digital markets today. I begin with a description and argument for the use of institutional economics. This framework allows for the integration of an interdisciplinary approach to economics. My analysis details the socioeconomic and political impacts, as well as the underlying market dynamics that have pushed digital markets towards concentration. I offer novel explanations for the lack of firm behavior that should theoretically increase profit, the existence of barriers to competition, and consumer behavior that focus on the role of social institutions. I also detail many of the social costs of these concentrated markets, such as their impact on democracy, power to influence social institutions, and the impact they have on concentration in other markets. This is done to show that the fears surrounding monopolies do not end with prices. Even in digital markets, where many times prices are very low, if not zero, there are reasons that monopoly is economically inefficient and socially sub-optimal. However, due to the path-dependent nature of the extreme benefits associated with digital markets, policymakers cannot reasonably propose breaking up these companies. Instead, they must use the power of the government to counteract the conglomerations of social power seen in these private companies in search of an optimal outcome.
James Joyce’s Prose Pedagogy: Language in Freirean Dialogue
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Jack McDermott Wellschlager
Access: Open access
- My project concerns the pedagogical nature of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Across the various styles and forms of Ulysses’ chapters, or “episodes,” I theorize the pedagogy of James Joyce’s prose by tracking the ways that the text demands readers participate in a Freirean dialogue. I will also discuss how Ulysses understands language as a practice of resistance: the novel’s characters have personal linguistic practices that help them open up the worlds that occupy them. I will appreciate the control these characters take of their world as I argue, through Paulo Freire’s work, that no true change occurs without the presence of a cooperative worldbuilding effort.
Modeling and Testing Consumer Engagement in the U.S. Organic Food Market
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: John L Anderson
Access: Open access
- This study specifies the types of consumers that participate in the U.S. organic market and investigates their revealed preferences. I propose three theoretical consumer types – indifferent consumers, informed organic food lovers, and uninformed organic food lovers – and conduct cross-sectional and time-trend analyses utilizing organic fruit purchase data compiled by The Neilsen Company. The cross-sectional analysis is estimated with a two-stage Heckman selection model, while the time-trend analysis uses simple descriptive statistics and a differenced OLS regression technique. Households are most likely to participate in the organic fruit market if they have a well-educated white or Asian head, are located in a metropolitan area on the West coast, have higher income, have young children, are married, and are making decisions in the spring, summer, or fall. However, households are estimated to purchase more organic fruit, conditional on participating, if they live in a rural area in regions other than the West coast. Having a higher income, being married, having a child less than six years old, being college-educated, and living in a metropolitan area on the West coast are all associated with more dedication to the organic fruit market over time. Households who increased their organic expenditures from 2011 to 2012 likely lived in metropolitan areas on the West coast. Average per-household contribution to the nationwide increase in organic fruit expenditures from 2011 to 2012 on the extensive and intensive margins is estimated to have been about $7 and $14, respectively. I posit relationships between empirical results and the theoretical consumer types.
Dietary diversity correlates with the neuromodulatory capacity of the stomatogastric nervous system in three species of majoid crabs
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Elise Martin
Access: Open access
- This project sought to answer the following question: what is the relationship between the extent of neuromodulation in a nervous system, and the behavioral demands on that system? A well-characterized CPG neuronal circuit in decapod crustaceans, the stomatogastric nervous system (STNS), was used as a model circuit to answer this question. The stomatogastric ganglion (STG) in the STNS is responsible for muscular contractions in the stomach that aid in digestion. It has been shown that the neural networks in the STG are subject to neuromodulation. One feature of neuromodulation is that it enables circuit flexibility, which confers upon a system the ability to produce variable outputs in response to specific physiological demands. It was hypothesized that opportunistic feeders require more extensively modulated digestive systems compared to exclusive feeders, because opportunistic feeders require a greater variety of digestive outputs to digest their varied diets. In this study, Chionoecetes opilio and Libinia emarginata, the opportunistic feeders, showed greater neuromodulatory capacity of the STNS than Pugettia producta, the exclusive feeder. The hypothesis that neuromodulatory capacity of the STNS correlates with dietary diversity was supported. The results detailed in this study lend credence to the idea that evolutionary basis for neuromodulatory capacity of a system is related to the behavioral demands on that system.
Effects of Picrotoxin Application on the Cardiac Ganglion of the American Lobster, Homarus americanus
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: John T Woolley
Access: Open access
- Picrotoxin (PTX) has been employed extensively as a tool within the crustacean stomatogastric nervous system (STNS) for its efficacy in blocking K+ and Cl+ currents gated by both GABA and glutamate. Through blocking some currents in the STNS, PTX allows for examination of other components without their presence. However, effects of PTX are relatively unknown within the lobster’s cardiac ganglion (CG). As an incredibly small nervous system of only nine neurons, the lobster CG presents an excellent model system for studying neural circuits. Given that the chemical synapses in the CG are mediated by glutamate, the present study aimed to investigate the action of PTX in the lobster CG with the intent of better understanding its pharmacological impacts as a potential tool for studying the system. Therefore, this study aimed to establish the effects of PTX on CG responses to the application of exogenous GABA or glutamate. When data from both modulators were pooled, PTX applied at a concentration of 10-5M had significant effects on burst duration but not duty cycle or burst frequency of the CG. PTX did suppress GABA (5x10-5M) mediated inhibition of burst duration and duty cycle. PTX did not have any significant effects on burst duration, duty cycle, or frequency compared to exogenous glutamate application. These results indicate that glutamatergic inhibitory synapses are not present in the CG and PTX partially suppresses only GABAergic responses in this system.