“The Contempt of the Poor:” A Closer Look into New York City Almshouses in the Nineteenth-Century and the Treatment of the Lower Class

George Beverstock’s poem, “The Silver-Key: or A fancy of TRUTH, and a Warning to YOUTH: Showing the Benefit of MONEY, and the Contempt of the Poor, under the term of a Silver-Key,” emphasizes both the importance of wealth and power and the embarrassment and shame associated with poverty.During the American Revolutionary era and the New Republic, happiness and prosperity, according to Beverstock, were rooted in wealth and power, as symbolized by the silver key. Without wealth, life was meaningless, and families were subject to a lifetime of poverty and hardship. The word “contempt” insinuates that those living in poverty were deemed worthless by society. The upper class controlled the standard of living for the community at large, as represented by the stanza that reads “the Silver Key doth bear the way, where men are good or bad; if you have lost the silver key, but little can be had.”Beverstock suggests that the upper class was seen as the only population worthy of happiness and prosperity, especially compared to those experiencing poverty. This depiction shows a lack of empathy and compassion for the poor. As a result, almshouses began their efforts to try and aid those deemed undesirable in mid-eighteenth-century New York City

Class Day 1963 Speech Transcript: A Time to Reflect

Mr. Chairman, Doctor Jacobs, members of the Administration, Faculty, guests, and class of 1963. Today is an important day in our lives..

Experimental designs for multiple-level responses, with application to a large-scale educational intervention

Educational research often studies subjects that are in naturally clustered groups of classrooms or schools. When designing a randomized experiment to evaluate an intervention directed at teachers, but with effects on teachers and their students, the power or anticipated variance for the treatment effect needs to be examined at both levels. If the treatment is applied to clusters, power is usually reduced. At the same time, a cluster design decreases the probability of contamination, and contamination can also reduce power to detect a treatment effect. Designs that are optimal at one level may be inefficient for estimating the treatment effect at another level. In this paper we study the efficiency of three designs and their ability to detect a treatment effect: randomize schools to treatment, randomize teachers within schools to treatment, and completely randomize teachers to treatment. The three designs are compared for both the teacher and student level within the mixed model framework, and a simulation study is conducted to compare expected treatment variances for the three designs with various levels of correlation within and between clusters. We present a computer program that study designers can use to explore the anticipated variances of treatment effects under proposed experimental designs and settings.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-AOAS216 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Psychological stress measurement through voice output analysis

Audio tape recordings of selected Skylab communications were processed by a psychological stress evaluator. Strip chart tracings were read blind and scores were assigned based on characteristics reported by the manufacturer to indicate psychological stress. These scores were analyzed for their empirical relationships with operational variables in Skylab judged to represent varying degrees of situational stress. Although some statistically significant relationships were found, the technique was not judged to be sufficiently predictive to warrant its use in assessing the degree of psychological stress of crew members in future space missions

Prototype home loan packages selection decision support system using financial model

The process of choosing home loan packages is an important process for homebuyers. However, the process of choosing home loan packages is still being done manually. Actually, the traditional method used in the home loan packages choosing process is time consuming and troublesome to the homebuyers. However, the rapid growth of web technology has enabled proposed system to be applied as a competitive method to overcome the problem. Internet has become the channel for people to receive and convey information between each other in the decision making process. Prototype Home Loan Packages Selection Decision Support System Using Financial Model (HSDSS) is support system that using mathematical model (financial method) to allow user to explore the impact of available options. The optimal solution is obtained by using blind search with complete enumeration to check all the alternatives. This searching approach works together with weighted point system, so that the alternatives will have their weight of points after the searching is done. Based on the result of the ranking of the alternatives, HSDSS provides advices to the homebuyers on the matter of selecting suitable home loan packages. The use of this system will speed up and simplify how homebuyers make decision in choosing home loan packages, in addition to improving the competitive advantage for real estate service providers. As a conclusion, this system is capable in solving the current problems associated with choosing best suit home loan packages

Skillful long-range forecasts of North American heat waves from Pacific storm propagation

2017 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Extreme heat poses major threats to public health and the economy. Long- range predictions of heat waves offer little improvement over climatology despite the continuing improvements of weather forecast models. Previous studies have hinted at possible relationships between tropical West Pacific convection and subsequent anomalous near-surface air temperature and rainfall over the North American Plains. We show that the later stages of propagation of the Boreal Summer Intraseasonal Oscillation (BSISO) can be used to skillfully hindcast a number of Great Plains heat waves between 1948 and 2016 with a three-month lead time. Possible teleconnection mechanisms are investigated, with the most likely being related to a BSISO-induced reduction in Plains spring rainfall and subsequent land-atmosphere feedbacks. Our results are the first to demonstrate that a West Pacific weather event can be used to skillfully forecast US Plains heat waves with a lead time of three months

Quantifying and understanding current and future links between tropical convection and the large-scale circulation

2020 Fall.Includes bibliographical references.Tropical deep convection plays an important role in the variability of the global circulation. The Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a large tropical organized convective system that propagates eastward along the equator. It is a key contributor to weather predictability at extended time scales (10-40 days). For example, variability in the MJO is linked with variability in meteorological phenomena such as landfalling atmospheric rivers, tornado and hail activity over parts of North America, and extreme temperature and rainfall patterns across the Northern Hemisphere. Links between the MJO and atmospheric variability in remote locations are heavily studied. This is in part because the current skill of weather forecasts at extended time scales is mediocre, and because of evidence suggesting that the potential predictability offered by the MJO may not be fully captured in numerical prediction models. In the first part of this dissertation, I develop a tool for these types of studies. The "Sensitivity to the Remote Influence of Periodic Events" (STRIPES) index is a novel index that condenses the information obtained through composite analysis of variables after a periodic event (such as the MJO) into a single number, which includes information about the life cycle of the event, and for a range of lags with respect to each stage of the event. I apply the STRIPES index to surface observations and show that the MJO signal is detectable and significant at the level of individual weather stations over many parts of North America, and that the maximum strength of this signal exhibits regionality and seasonality. Tropical convection affects the extratropics primarily through the excitation of Rossby waves at the places where the upper-tropospheric divergent outflow associated with deep convection interacts with the background wind. In a future warmer climate, the strength of the mean circulation and convective mass flux is expected to weaken. A potential consequence is a weakening of Rossby wave excitation by tropical convective systems such as the MJO. In the second part of this study, I analyze a set of idealized simulations with specified surface warming and superparameterized convection and develop a framework to better understand why the mean circulation weakens with warming. I show that the decrease in the strength of the mean circulation can be explained by the slow rate at which atmospheric radiative cooling intensifies relative to the comparatively fast rate that the tropical dry static stability increases. I also show that despite a decrease in the mean convective mass flux, the warming tendency of the convective mass flux over the most deeply- convecting regions is not constrained to follow that of the global mean. In the final part of this dissertation, I consider how changes in the MJO and of the mean atmospheric state due to warming from increases in greenhouse gas concentrations may lead to changes in the MJO's impact over the North Pacific and North America. Specifically, I show that changes to the atmosphere's mean state dry static energy and winds have a larger impact on the MJO teleconnection than changes to MJO intensity and propagation characteristics

Barium and lithium in foraminifera: glacial-interglacial changes in the North Atlantic

The trace element content of calcareous foraminifera provides a powerful tool to the study of glacial-interglacial changes in the physical and chemical properties of the ocean. Foraminifera incorporate barium in direct proportion to its concentration in seawater. Using barium as a nutrient proxy, Ba/Ca in benthic Planulina wuellerstorfi is used to reconstruct changes in thermocline ventilation and mid-depth circulation in the North Atlantic during the last glacial and deglacial time. Rivers are concentrated in barium compared to surface seawater. Therefore, barium in planktonic Neogloboquadrina pachyderma is used to identify deglacial meltwater in the Arctic Ocean. Foraminiferal Li/Ca was analyzed to elucidate factors influencing incorporation behavior, including interspecies differences, temperature, pressure, dissolution, and shell mass. To investigate the use of lithium isotopes as a proxy for paleo-seawater chemistry, d6Li was determined in planktonic Orbulina universa. During the last glacial maximum, nutrients in the thermocline and the intermediate water of the North Atlantic was lower than today due to increased ventilation and the presence of nutrient-depleted Glacial North Atlantic Intermediate Water (GNAIW). During deglacial time, GNAIW was replaced by southern component water, resulting in an enrichment of nutrients in the mid-depth Atlantic water. Increased Ba/Ca in the surface Arctic Ocean indicates an increase in meltwater discharge between 12.4 and 11.3 14C ka BP. This may have triggered an increase in the export of freshwater to the North Atlantic, contributing to a shutdown in GNAIW production, and leading to the onset of the Younger Dryas. A second meltwater event at 9.4 14C ka BP may be the result of glacial Lake Agassiz draining through the Clearwater spillway to the Mackenzie River. Foraminiferal Li/Ca shows systematic glacial-interglacial variation coincident with d18O. The incorporation behavior of lithium in foraminifera does not appear to be dominated by changes in temperature, pressure, dissolution, or shell mass, but is potentially controlled by changes in growth conditions, including calcification rate. Preliminary work indicates that d6Li remained constant throughout the Holocene and the last glacial maximum at 30.5 ± 1.1‰. Further developmental studies are necessary to fully engage lithium isotopes as a tracer of seawater composition

Keeping What You Sow: Intellectual Property Rights for Plant Breeders and Seed Growers

Over the last 150 years, the food system in the present-day United States has undergone a transformational restructuring, from a diversified, decentralized, network of farmers and seed growers, to one in which the majority of crop production is controlled by a few industrial corporations. The consolidation of power has been under-girded by the application of intellectual property rights (IPR)—especially utility patents—to plant varieties and genetic traits, which are leveraged to exclude small-scale seed growers from accessing quality germplasm. Patents and restrictive licensing agreements recapitulate colonial structures by appropriating common and traditionally community-held resources for profit, and by creating reliance on the companies that have the power to pursue and defend legal strategies. Plant breeders and seed growers who operate outside of the agricultural-industrial complex, and especially those who associate with agroecological and organic principles, are left to navigate the complex and expensive legal arena of IPR to source, market, and protect their seeds—decisions which have direct implications on relationships between individuals and companies operating on a small- to medium- scale. This paper consolidates current and relevant information about intellectual property rights as they pertain to seeds in the US and provides a road map for plant breeders and seed growers confronting the issue in their own work. By interviewing people directly involved in alternative seed networks, I draw on common questions, concerns, and paths forward as illuminated by those with lived experience. I then analyze those interviews around the core tenets of an ethical seed system based on themes set forth by the Organic Seed Alliance Seed Ethics Intensive in 2020: transparency along the seed value chain, ethical recognition, ethical compensation, and the stewardship of biodiversity. These agreements, while yet uncodified, could serve as guiding principles for the exchange of seeds in the absence of policy change that could more holistically resolve the pressures coming from mainstream agriculture