Concentration of fluorspar ores in the Illinois-Kentucky District

The object of this investigation is to study the means of beneficiating fluorspar ores in order that a marketable product may be made --Preface, page v

Environmental justice considerations in heavy-vehicle traffic within the landscape of Austin, Texas

Freight trucking is an industry whose impacts remain under-discussed in planning spheres with regard to social equity. Despite literature detailing the varied and unique impacts of heavy vehicle traffic to nearby communities, decision makers are slow to separate freight and its effects from traffic at large. This leads in turn to a lack of awareness detailing the environmental justice issues accompanying freight traffic. While in recent years, freight generating land uses have come to be accepted under the same political pretext of other locally unwanted land uses, the ways in which freight is distributed on the roadways has gone mainly un-examined, despite research clearly showing racial and economic disparities in the populations nearby major routes. To provide understanding of these issues in a regional context, heavy-vehicle traffic on Austin roadways was analyzed to reveal the possible existence of these disparities in Austin. The analysis reveals Hispanic populations to be disproportionately within the impact of heavy vehicle traffic, further legitimizing the need for local and regional decision-makers to take action towards remedying environmental injustice in areas surrounding major Austin roadways. Distribution of heavy-vehicle traffic within Austin must be understood as a clear consequence of historic and continued structural racism within Austin area policy and infrastructure.Community and Regional Plannin

Modeling Joint Exposures and Health Outcomes for Cumulative Risk Assessment: The Case of Radon and Smoking

Community-based cumulative risk assessment requires characterization of exposures to multiple chemical and non-chemical stressors, with consideration of how the non-chemical stressors may influence risks from chemical stressors. Residential radon provides an interesting case example, given its large attributable risk, effect modification due to smoking, and significant variability in radon concentrations and smoking patterns. In spite of this fact, no study to date has estimated geographic and sociodemographic patterns of both radon and smoking in a manner that would allow for inclusion of radon in community-based cumulative risk assessment. In this study, we apply multi-level regression models to explain variability in radon based on housing characteristics and geological variables, and construct a regression model predicting housing characteristics using U.S. Census data. Multi-level regression models of smoking based on predictors common to the housing model allow us to link the exposures. We estimate county-average lifetime lung cancer risks from radon ranging from 0.15 to 1.8 in 100, with high-risk clusters in areas and for subpopulations with high predicted radon and smoking rates. Our findings demonstrate the viability of screening-level assessment to characterize patterns of lung cancer risk from radon, with an approach that can be generalized to multiple chemical and non-chemical stressors

Exploring Non-traditional Attitudes to Gender Through Children's Picture Books.

Children’s picture books play a crucial role in the education and socialisation of the young child, giving them both critical insight into literature, and ideas about life and its possibilities outside of their own immediate experience. In this thesis I have chosen to look more closely at portrayals of so termed ‘non-traditional’ gender identities and behaviours in children’s picture books. I undertook an analysis of 8 books depicting various non-traditional manifestations of gender, covering atypical gendered behaviour, transgender identity or genderlessness along with 6 interviews with educators and parents of children under the age of 7, The thesis explores how these books and ideas fit into an English speaking, European society, in this case based in Finland. The interviewee’s and analysis highlighted areas in which the stories could be problematic within the given context. Issues such as the subject matter, the style and tone were all held to be too controversial for young readers. Looking at the stories through an intersectional lens, they showed little diversity outside of the gender topic. Overall the analysis demonstrated the disconnect between the books and the English speaking, European society in Finland. These findings made it clear that the possibility of children in this context gaining access to stories where gender is not always seen as a finite and binary concept was low. As a final conclusion I created a story of my own. With a protagonist who does not conform to any gender at all, the story was created as the product of the interviews and analysis of the original 8 picture books, with the idea that it could be comfortably read to a class of children within the European, English speaking community in Finland