Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis study investigates how racial battle fatigue manifests itself for African American and Mexican American students and investigates the most utilized coping strategies students employ to combat racial battle fatigue. The study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate the differences in racial battle fatigue for African American and Mexican American students. The study responds to an empirical need by examining an under-researched area in higher education, namely, researching the effects of racial microaggressions on students' psychological, physiological, and behavioral stress responses and how students cope with racialized stress. Findings suggest that both African American and Mexican American students are negatively impacted by racial microaggressions and those microaggressions negatively impact stress responses. The impact of racial microaggressions varies across groups. Secondly, the study found that adaptive coping strategies may help alleviate the impact of racial microaggressions within the racial battle fatigue framework. Implications suggest that universities need to immediately provide services to Students of Color that account for racism as the universities try to address hostile climates and cultures. At the same time, universities need to create opportunities to disrupt Whiteness. That way White students, faculty, and staff are more aware of their privilege to help change the culture of institutions

Trump and an Anti-Immigrant Climate: Implications for Latinx Undergraduates

Historically minoritized students regularly report hostile campus climates and cultures, but the election of Donald J. Trump and the rise of conservative guest speakers on campuses have contributed to greater unrest. Using campus climate and culture literature as a framework, this paper investigates the impact of anti-Latinx rhetoric and race/ethnic unconscious policies on Latinx undergraduates. Findings from focus groups highlight eight themes: 1) Power of Political Rhetoric and Trump, 2) Coded Language, 3) Unsafe Academic Spaces, 4) Racialization of Immigration as a Latinx/Chicanx Issue, 5) Burnout, Stress, and Racial Battle Fatigue, 6) Balancing Academic Commitments and Social Activism, 7) The Reactive University, and 8) Students Doing the Work of the Administration. This study adds to this body of research by offering a peek into the future of campus climate under a Trump presidency and challenges assumptions that we live in a “color-blind” era

The banks that said no: banking relationships, credit supply and productivity in the UK

This paper uses a large firm-level dataset of UK companies and information on their pre-crisis lending relationships to identify the causal links from changes in credit supply to the real economy following the 2008 financial crisis. Controlling for demand in the product market, we find that the contraction in credit supply reduced labour productivity, wages and the capital intensity of production at the firm level. Firms experiencing adverse credit shocks were also more likely to fail, other things equal. We find that these effects are robust, statistically significant and economically large, but only when instruments based on pre-crisis banking relationships are used. We show that banking relationships were conditionally randomly assigned and were strong predictors of credit supply, such that any bias in our estimates is likely to be small

Characterization of a pre-curved needle for use in distal tip manipulation mechanism

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-61).The knowledge and technical expertise required for the development of telerobotic systems capable of needle distal tip manipulation is the focus of this thesis. An extensive prior literature review was conducted to examine (1) the current medical devices available to pulmonary radiologists and (2) the current steerable mechanism state of the art. Interviews were also conducted with interventional radiology and cardiology physicians at the Massachusetts General Hospital to define the mechanism functional requirements for a telerobotic system and a first order analysis was undertaken to evaluate three strategies. The selected strategy was based on the concept of deploying a flexible pre-curved stylet from a concentric straight cannula. Analytical models were developed to (1) understand what material properties are required to recover from the imposed strains, (2) compare stylet stiffness relative to each other and the cannulas, and (3) calculate the deployment and retraction forces required for moving the stylet relative to the cannula. Sixteen Nitinol stylets were prototyped and experiments were performed with four different diameter cannulas and an experimental setup and methodology was developed to measure the deployment and retraction forces. The data collected for 48 permutations of stylet diameter, stylet bend radius, and cannula gauge were compared to the analytical model. Retraction forces were measured between .277 and 13.9N, and deployment forces were measured between .191 and 6.95N. For a given cannula it was found that force increases as stylet diameter increases and bend radius decreases. The analytical model better matched the experimental retraction and deployment measurements for the smaller stylet diameters (0.508 and 0.635 mm) with low friction, retraction and deployment forces. It was found that the retraction and deployment force does not necessarily increase or decrease with cannula diameter and it was found that the stylets drawn through the 16 gauge cannula consistently had the lowest deployment and retraction forces recorded across the four cannulas tested. Ultimately, the experimental and analytical tools developed in this thesis helped us select appropriate needle materials and mechanism components for use in a telerobotic system that is under development.by Jeremy Contini Franklin.S.B

The Passive Journalist: How sources dominate the local news

This study explores which sources are “making” local news and whether these sources are simply indicating the type of news that appears, or are shaping newspaper coverage. It provides an empirical record of the extent to which sources are able to dominate news coverage from which future trends in local journalism can be measured. The type and number of sources used in 2979 sampled news stories in four West Yorkshire papers, representing the three main proprietors of local newspapers in the United Kingdom, were recorded for one month and revealed the relatively narrow range of routine sources; 76 per cent of articles cited only a single source. The analysis indicates that journalists are relying less on their readers for news, and that stories of little consequence are being elevated to significant positions, or are filling news pages at the expense of more important stories. Additionally, the reliance on a single source means that alternative views and perspectives relevant to the readership are being overlooked. Journalists are becoming more passive, mere processors of one-sided information or bland copy dictated by sources. These trends indicate poor journalistic standards and may be exacerbating declining local newspaper sales

The banks that said no: the impact of credit supply on productivity and wages

This paper estimates the effects of changes in bank credit supply on the real economy. We use UK firm-level data around the global financial crisis and information on pre-existing bank lending relationships to isolate exogenous credit supply shocks. We find some evidence that contractions in credit supply substantially reduce labour productivity, wages, and capital per worker within firms, and increase the chance firms will fail. Our results have implications for the welfare costs of financial crises, and for the costs of policy measures affecting credit supply at other times