Boom

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 33).This thesis is about my relationship to technology through the medium of my body. By implication it is about how our culture and society view and interact with technology's various manifestations. I use my voice as the medium of this exploration. Boom is a sound and video insertion embodying and re-presenting my vocal arguments and mergings with the machines of a cement pour at the Big Dig in Boston in the spring of the year 2000. Boom offers noise, physical auditive immersion, and hopefully a provocative and meaningful perspective on relating with machines. It creates temptations and in draughts of air around the metaphysical ideas it conjures with the humor and poetry of anarchy. By merging and falling out, struggling and capturing, losing and regaining, the machines and I are negotiating our relationship, our take on each other, our roles, our positions relative to each other. Each machine becomes an extension of my body, as I am resonating within its cavities and it is resonating within me. There is a constant arbitration of who is driving whom, my voice driving the machine's motor and/or the machine's vibrations moving my body, feelings, and perceptions of self within space. As I follow a machine's vibratory lead, try to keep up, to match, to catch, through matching vocalizations, I access previously unacknowledged places within myself. Something like the mantras of other cultures - magical brutal mysterious consonance expressed in broad daylight. Communication occurs through the correspondence of internal and external vibrations. Emanating and absorbing. The tones have an acupunctural precision, able to vibrate certain organs, interstitial tissues, cells, thereby accessing the body's warehouses. The performances of myself with the construction machines in the city throw new perspectives on how we conceive of not only the gigantic machines in our environments, but of other elements of technology as well, such as the intimate integration with small electronic devices being cultivated everywhere within our reach.by Kelly E. Dobson.S.M

Magnetic properties of a diferrous-water complex and ligands for modeling the active site of MMOH

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry, 2004.Vita.Includes bibliographical references.Chapter 1: The Importance of Modeling Diiron Sites in Nature.There are a variety of metalloenzymes that have nearly identical carboxylate-bridged diiron active sites. An example is sMMOH, an enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of methane to methanol. A detailed description of the active site of sMMOH[red] is given and attempts at reproducing its structure in a model complex are discussed. Chapter 2: A Diiron(II) Diaqua Complex: Modeling Water in the Active Site of sMMOH[red]. There are water molecules in the first and second coordination spheres of the diiron centers in sMMOH[red]. A carboxylate-bridged diferrous complex, [Fe₂...(THF)₂], was synthesized to incorporate the presence of water in a model complex and to investigate the function(s) of these water molecules. The synthesis, structural characterization and magnetic properties of this complex are presented. Chapter 3: Ligands for Modeling the Syn Disposition of Nitrogen Atoms in the Active Site of MMOH. The active sites of a variety of carboxylate-bridged diiron metalloenzymes are very similar and feature the syn disposition of two histidine ligands with respect to the iron-iron vector. This orientation has not yet been modeled in a diiron complex with four carboxylate ligands and a stable yet flexible platform. Such geometry may be necessary to replicate the functions of these enzymes. The syntheses of ligands intended to enforce this syn disposition are described and directions for future ligand design are outlined.by Amy E. Kelly.S.M

Hyperglycemia and Hyperlipidemia Act Synergistically to Induce Renal Disease in LDL Receptor-Deficient BALB Mice

Diabetic nephropathy is the leading cause of end-stage renal disease in Western countries, but only a portion of diabetic patients develop diabetic nephropathy. Dyslipidemia represents an important aspect of the metabolic imbalance in diabetic patients. In this study, we addressed the impact of combined hyperlipidemia and hyperglycemia on renal pathology. Kidneys from wildtype (WT) or LDL receptor-deficient BALB/cBy mice (BALB. LDLR -/-) were examined at 22 weeks of age. Diabetes was induced by administration of streptozotocin and mice were randomly assigned to either standard chow or Western diet. Chow fed BALB. LDLR -/- mice did not demonstrate renal abnormalities, whereas BALB. LDLR -/- mice fed a Western diet showed occasional glomerular and tubulointerstitial foam cells. Diabetic WT mice had modestly increased glomerular cellularity and extracellular matrix. Hyperlipidemic and diabetic BALB. LDLR -/- mice exhibited an increase in glomerular cellularity and extracellular matrix, accumulation of glomerular and tubulointerstitial foam cells and mesangial lipid deposits. The tubular epithelium demonstrated pronounced lipid induced tubular degeneration with increased tubular epithelial cell turnover. Hyperlipidemia and hyperglycemia seem to act synergistically in inducing renal injury in the BALB. LDLR-/- mouse. This model of diabetic nephropathy is unique in its development of tubular lesions and may represent a good model for hyperlipidemia-exacerbated diabetic nephropathy. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel

Lessons from Area-Wide, Multi-Agency Habitat Conservation Plans in California

How can the Endangered Species Act and other conservation programs cope with population and development pressures, the current biodiversity crisis, and climate change? Over 30 years ago, public and private partners in California pioneered the concept of inter-governmental habitat conservation planning in an attempt to balance the competing demands of developing desirable land and the need to provide sufficient habitat to protect species at risk. The evolution of this early innovation in governance provides valuable insights for the many ensuing and emerging federal and state initiatives seeking to promote landscape-level inter-agency planning. This report, prepared by the University of California, Irvine Law Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources (CLEANR), explores the key challenges of promoting effective and comprehensive conservation governance through the experience of area-wide, multi-agency habitat conservation plans, with a particular focus in California. Based on interviews with seasoned practitioners and intensive collaborative dialogues co-convened with the Center for Collaboration in Governance as part of CLEANR\u27s innovative Workshop Roundtable series, the report identifies the tradeoffs between plan scale, depth, duration, cost, certainty, and efficacy. However, close attention to these underlying tradeoffs — along with recognition of when appropriate conditions exist and careful institutional design choices — can maximize the likelihood of effective, multi-jurisdictional, large-scale, and adaptive conservation planning

Agora Phone

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-77).AgoraPhone is a communications sculpture combining private and public social mores. Utilizing the existing telephone infrastructure, AgoraPhone allows people to call from any phone anywhere and engage the installation's physical public space. This thesis describes the process of designing, making, and installing the project, as well as some observations of AgoraPhone in use. The work is in relation to the culture's contemporary zeitgeist that reflects a society of people who on the one hand highly value a private lifestyle, and on the other hand produce and subscribe to a media culture which is characterized by extreme sacrifice of privacy; the push-pull relationship of private and public life establishes the setting for AgoraPhone.Kelly Dobson.S.M

Machine therapy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. [137]-146).Machine Therapy is a new practice combining art, design, psychoanalysis, and engineering work in ways that access and reveal the vital, though often unnoticed, relevance of people's interactions and relationships with machines. Machine Therapy will be illustrated through the construction of several systems including re-appropriated domestic devices such as Blendie, wearble apparatuses such as ScreamBody, and body-signal-based companion machines - Umo, Amo, and Omo - that function through visceral interactions including breathing and non-verbal sounds. These systems will be used to explore themes of human-machine relations in terms of visceral, cathartic, and reflexive expressions and communications. This work incorporates elements from my technical research in digital signal processing, machine learning, mechanical engineering, and sensor design. Combining these areas of research and practice, I have been able to help manifest new objects and relationships that are unique in some aspects while maintaining quotidian familiarity in other aspects. These apparatuses enable unusual explorations of what we interact with when we interact with machines. I hypothesize that the answer will turn out to be much more than the machine itself, and will include our sense of self, agency in the interpersonal and political world, and our shared psychological, emotional, cultural, and perceptual approaches to the world. The importance of the parapractic elements and also the therapeutic properties of the Machine Therapy machines will be evaluated in studies of participants' interactive engagements with the machines as well as their affective responses to the machines.Kelly Dobson.Ph.D

I am Smart, Therefore I Can: Examining the Relationship between IQ and Self-efficacy across Cultures

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between intelligence (IQ) and self-efficacy in children and adolescents living in the United States and Nicaragua. The sample consisted of 90 (46 male, 44 female) students (mean age = 11.57 years, SD = 3.0 years) referred by school administrators and faculty. United States (US) participants (n = 27) resided in rural counties in the Northwest. The other group consisted of 63 students from Central America. A comparison between groups revealed that in the US, sample higher grades and IQ scores are typically associated with higher levels of self-efficacy. However in the Nicaraguan sample, both IQ scores and grades were not associated with self-efficacy, although age was correlated with self-efficacy. Results suggest that the construct of self-efficacy might change depending on whether one belongs to an individualistic or collectivistic society. Additionally, the effects of socioeconomic factors might influence perceived ability even more than intellectual abilities

Effects of oral contraceptives on spatial cognition depend on pharmacological properties and phase of the contraceptive cycle

The central nervous system effects of oral contraceptives (OCs) are not well-documented. In a set of 3 studies, we investigated a specific cognitive function, mental rotation, in healthy women currently using OCs for contraceptive purposes (n = 201) and in medication-free controls not using OCs (n = 44). Mental rotation was measured using a well-standardized and extensively validated psychometric test, the Vandenberg Mental Rotations Test (MRT). In an initial study (Study 1), current OC users (n = 63) were tested during the active or inactive phases of the contraceptive cycle in a parallel-groups design. Studies 2 and 3 were based on an archival dataset (n = 201 current OC users) that consisted of data on the MRT collected in real-time over a 30-year period and compiled for purposes of the present work. The OCs were combined formulations containing ethinyl estradiol (10-35 ug/day) plus a synthetic progestin. All 4 families of synthetic progestins historically used in OCs were represented in the dataset. Cognitive performance was evaluated during either active OC use (‘active phase’) or during the washout week of the contraceptive cycle (‘inactive phase’) when OC steroids are not used. The results showed a significant phase-of-cycle (POC) effect. Accuracy on the MRT was mildly diminished during the active phase of OC use, while scores on verbal fluency and speeded motor tasks were modestly improved. The POC effect was most evident in women using OCs that contained first- or second-generation progestins (the estrane family of progestins or OCs containing levonorgestrel), but not in women using OCs containing recently developed progestins and lower doses of ethinyl estradiol. Using independently established ratings of the estrogenic, androgenic, and progestogenic intensities of the different OC formulations, each brand of OC was classified according to its distinct endocrine profile. Multiple regression revealed that the effects of OC use on the MRT could be predicted based on the estrogenic strength of the contraceptives used. Estrogenic potency, not androgenic or anti-androgenic effects of the OC pill, may underlie the effects of OC usage on spatial cognition