Re-Imagining the Spooner Railroad Park as a Center for Community and Railroad History, Recreation, and Edutainment

Creative ThesisLike many turn-of-the-20th century US towns, the architectural and cultural history of Spooner, WI started with a railroad. But remnants of that history are fading with the passage of time as are members of the community with personal experiences and insights tied to shared community memories. This thesis explores existing design precedencies and local Spooner personas to create a spatial design approach which reconnects Spooner’s railroad past with present-day historical and culturally relevant experiences. One of the last remaining examples of railroad architecture, the Spooner Roundhouse, has been selected as the dedicated space for this design approach. The design is delivered within the context of two visitor experiences to accommodate community gatherings, historical time travel and unstructured learning approaches. Finally, a mobile exhibition trailer has been designed and built to communicate the vision for long-term planning and investments

Thermoreflectance for the Instantaneous Measurement of Temperature at a Wall-Vapor Interface

Annular flow is a two-phase internal flow regime consisting of a vapor core with entrained droplets, surrounded by a thin liquid film. This type of flow is very common in heat exchanger systems. At high heat flux, the liquid film may dry out, resulting in a sharp reduction in the heat transfer coefficient of the flow. During the transition to complete dryout, cyclic re-wetting and dryout events are observed. Our long term goal is to characterize the heat transfer during these cyclic dryout events and to better understand what triggers the transition to dryout completion. To characterize heat transfer during these cyclic dryout events, a non-invasive and instantaneous optical thermometry technique based on thermoreflectance was developed. This technique infers the temperature at the wall-vapor interface by measuring the reflectance of an incident laser beam—an optical quantity dependent on the vapor density and incident beam angle. By combining this technique with thermoreflectance at a wall-liquid interface and pressure measurements, the time-varying heat-transfer coefficient during cyclic dryout events was estimated. Due to the small change in refractive index (±0.0015) in the temperature and pressure range of interest, a highly rigid and accurate experimental setup has been designed to reduce noise in the measurements. Potential sources of error between experimental heat transfer coefficient data and a literature model were identified. The R245fa working fluid used in this work does not have well-documented optical properties. A refractometer was developed as part of this work to provide accurate refractive index values as a function of fluid density. The method measures the critical angle of an incident point source of light at the interface of a glass substrate and the fluid, at various fluid densities. The resulting data from a validation process of the refractometer using 2-propanol—a fluid with well-known optical properties—show the promise of this method. Several sources of error that may cause discrepancies with published data are discussed

Accipiter Hawk Occupancy In Metropolitan Areas Driven By Avian Prey Biomass Across The United States

Many raptor species declined during the mid-20th century due to the proliferation of organochlorine pesticides, habitat destruction, and persecution. Yet thanks to protection and conservation efforts, raptor populations have repatriated former habitats and simultaneously colonized metropolitan areas. Our goal was to determine the factors that allowed accipiter hawks, a woodland raptor, to occupy metropolitan areas throughout the United States. To do so, we used observations of accipiter hawks amassed by thousands of volunteers as part of Project FeederWatch. We combined information of hawk occurrence and prey availability with satellite-based observations of urban land cover, tree canopy cover, imperviousness, and climate data, and identified the factors associated with hawk occupancy in 30 metropolitan areas across North America during the winters of 2015 to 2018. We hypothesized that patterns of hawk occupancy varied due to inter-city differences in land cover, prey availability and climate. We predicted that accipiter hawks were more likely to occupy metropolitan areas with lower imperviousness, higher tree canopy cover, colder climate, and higher prey biomass. Across the top thirty metropolitan areas participating in Project FeederWatch, accipiter hawk overall occupancy rates varied from 23.7% - 61.6%. Based on model selection, we found that the best model of accipiter occupancy included prey biomass and open agriculture area. Accipiter hawks were more likely to occupy sites within cities that supported a higher prey biomass and more agriculture than cities that supported lower prey biomass and little-to-no agriculture. Among the two factors, available prey biomass was by far the best predictor of accipiter hawk occupancy. In contrast, accipiter hawks occupied major metropolitan areas irrespective of climate, imperviousness, tree canopy cover, and other land cover features so long as there was sufficient prey. Our findings advance the understanding of how recovering raptor species occupy metropolitan areas as a further evaluation of whether human-modified landscapes can provide critical habitat for species of conservation concern

A Discovery of Witches: Sorcery, Courtly Love, Heresy, and the Divine in the Middle Ages

The modern recounting of witch trials tend to focus on the implausibility of the supernatural. This disdain for witchcraft as a concept has seeped through the documentation of its history. Whether through the soaring heights of courtly love or the crashing lows of demonic pacts, women were substituted for the divine often within the ambient magical worldview of the Middle Ages. The revilement of witches was not primarily due to their employment of magic, but for the transgressive sexuality which treatises associated with their practice and the innately harmful nature of maleficium. Through historiographical documentation of the study of witchcraft and its stages, combined with analysis of the ambient magical worldview of the middle ages, this research highlights the ways in which religious fervor and the exoticism of mystic traditions has impacted our knowledge of witchcraft on every level and argues for the place of the witch in serious studies of Medieval and Renaissance history

Oral History Interview, Bill Kurtz (2340)

In his 2024 interview with Troy Reeves, Bill Kurtz ('73) recalls his time as an undergraduate student in the 1970s. To learn more about this oral history, download & review the index first (or transcript if available). It will help determine which audio file(s) to download & listen to.In his 2024 interview with Troy Reeves, Bill Kurtz ('73) recalls his time as an undergraduate student in the 1970s. He mentions how he was a transfer student from Milwaukee and describes his dreams of going to UW-Madison and how he paid for his education. He fondly recalls living on the Lakeshore side of campus in Adams Hall and recalls a couple of professors and classes he took. His biggest extracurricular involvement was as a sports writer for the Daily Cardinal student newspaper, and he provides detailed anecdotes about notable games he remembers, his time in the press box, and talks a bit about the football, basketball, and baseball teams. He also mentions the merger and how students navigated the new transfer opportunities and details how he and other students traveled using the ride share board at the Union. This interview was conducted for the Class of 1973 Reunion Project for inclusion into the UW-Madison Archives and Records Management oral history collection

FLOWERING COVER CROPS TO SUPPORT WILD POLLINATORS IN ANNUAL CROPPING SYSTEMS IN WISCONSIN

The expansion and intensification of agriculture in the last century has reduced natural habitat, contributing to the decline of wild insect pollinator communities, and potentially destabilizing pollination services for crop production. Land management practices can effectively increase floral resources across the landscape, but few of these practices fit into the current arable agricultural systems as well as flowering cover crops. Flowering cover crops that can overwinter in harsh climates, such as winter camelina (Camelina sativa), can provide key resources for spring-emerging pollinators and fit into forage cropping systems in the Northern Corn Belt region of the US where corn silage production is an important source of dairy forage. Importantly, there is also growing interest from farmers on how to diversify cover crop selection. However, the amount of floral cover and length of time that cover is available, as well as the practicality of camelina in annual forage cropping systems, depends on fall planting time and cover crop mix. In this study, we performed a plot-scale, randomized block experiment to measure spring floral cover and pollinator visitation of winter camelina and uncultivated flowers. This experiment occurred across 2 years in 3 cover crop mixes: 1) camelina monoculture, 2) camelina, triticale, hairy vetch, and 3) camelina, cereal rye, hairy vetch. In the second yard of the study 3 camelina monocultures were planted at three different fall planting times, which constituted additional treatments: 4) early (Sep 17), 5) mid (Sep 28-29), and 6) late (Oct 18). We included an unseeded, i.e., no cover crop, control for comparison. Cover crop mixes and camelina in monoculture planted at the same time (mid-fall plantings) all provided equal amounts of floral cover and supported comparable insect visitation rates the following spring. For monocultures, camelina planted earlier in the fall had the highest spring floral cover and the latest planting provided virtually none, although dandelions provided some floral cover. Despite the large proportion of total floral cover attributed to dandelion in many plots, pollinator visitation exclusively increased with camelina floral cover. There does appear to be an upper asymptote at which adding more camelina does not further increase visitation. This study demonstrates that winter camelina can provide abundant resources for pollinators in early spring when planted in a monoculture or mix before the previous October. We show that although some uncultivated plants may provide floral cover this early in the growing season, spring-blooming cover crops may be more attractive to pollinators and therefore provide a crucial floral resource

PERCEIVED REALISM IN THE CULTIVATION PROCESS: USE OF LITTLE RED BOOK AND USERS’ PERCEIVED APPEARANCE INVESTMENT

Along with the widespread use of social media today, there is an emerging line of research regarding social media effects on users’ body image. However, prior studies focused on users’ view of self-body and employed social comparison theory to explore the underlying mechanism that accounts for how social media influences one’s moods, feelings, perceptions, and attitudes towards their own body. Moreover, few of them have been conducted beyond Western contexts or concerned with an understudied body image construct—appearance investment. To expand the literature, this study applies cultivation theory to examine a rarely-studied mechanism in this line of literature and assess the potential moderating role of perceived realism. Moving beyond previous research foci, this study tests if frequent use of Little Red Book (LRB)—a popular appearance-focused social media in China—results in distorted perceptions of appearance investment (including behavioral investment and cognitive investment) in the general population, and if perceived realism of LRB content can reinforce this association. Media literacy is also tested for its potential to protect users from harmful social media effects. The results offer partial support for cultivation theory. While LRB use consistently and positively predicts one’s prevalence estimate of behavioral investment in society, it is not the case for that estimate of cognitive investment. Instead, perceived realism is the strongest, positive, independent predictor for the prevalence estimate of cognitive investment. The results found no support for either perceived realism or media literacy as an effective moderator. These findings suggest that it is still inconclusive whether cultivation theory is an appropriate framework that explains the social media effects on body image and in which condition it is applicable

“Childish Things” — Narnia, Susan Pevensie, and the Nature of Adulthood

Many have spoken about the “Problem of Susan”-- arguments spanning the full range of reactions to her permanent ejection from Narnia, from frustration with C.S. Lewis’s cruelty to certainty that Susan must have deserved her exile. Through careful analysis of The Chronicles of Narnia, as well as Lewis’s other writings, this research argues that Susan was not cast aside for her love of clothes, makeup, and parties. Instead, Lewis’s handling of the Pevensie children implies that, in order to be a morally sound adult, one must preserve a belief in creativity. Susan Pevensie was always an adult drawn in the shape of a child— forced to grow up too quickly by the war and her parents’ absence— and, as she runs toward adulthood because of those pressures, she loses both her family and her own identity. Susan’s story, combined with the public’s reaction to it, clarifies that children’s stories are an essential part of the process of growing up, and that our commentary on their existence is itself part of the coming-of-age they describe