Finding a rhythm : how tribalism creates identity in Erdrich's The painted drum

This thesis focuses on the connection between “tribalism” and identity, and then analyzes the connection in Louise Erdrich’s most recent work, The Painted Drum (2005). It examines Erdrich’s four primary characters and elaborates on the influence tribalism has in each of their stories. Erdrich’s novel tells the story of a tribal drum and its return to the reservation. In the process, the drum brings together Erdrich’s main characters. On the night of the drum’s return, Erdrich’s characters tell the story of the drum’s creation. Their exposition brings the group closer together as a tribe and serves to modify their individual identities into communal and tribal identities. It is my contention that Erdrich’s novel emphasizes the importance on tribal identities within Native American communities. The goal of my thesis is to clarify the role tribalism plays in Native American identity, and to shed light not only on the role it plays in Erdrich’s The Painted Drum, but the role of the drum within the novel and how it ties into the concept of tribalism

Examining the effect of health behaviors on wages and healthcare utilization in models with endogeneity

This dissertation contains three essays on applied health economics. Although each essay is independent of the others, all three address the issue of estimating models where the relationship of interest is confounded by factors that are unobservable to the researcher. The first essay is an econometric simulation study while essays 2 and 3 address behavioral health topics. Essay 1 compares the accuracy and efficiency of parametric count data specifications paired with the Extended Olsen Model (EOM; Terza, 1998, 2009). The EOM is a nonlinear instrumental variables approach that allows for consistent estimation of model parameters when the data suffer from binary endogenous switching (e.g., endogenous sample selection or endogenous treatment). Count data models are ubiquitous in the health literature for estimating non-negative, discrete outcomes such as physician visits, hospital admissions, cigarettes smoked, etc. Essay 1 provides insight into the model selection process by informing practitioners which specification is likely to provide the most accurate parameter estimates under a variety of data configurations. Essay 1 also demonstrates the applicability of the Conway-Maxwell Poisson (CMP), a flexible count model developed in the field of industrial engineering that has yet to be utilized in the economic literature. In Essay 2 I apply a count version of the Extended Olsen Model to estimate the relationship between marijuana use disorder (MUD) and ER visits among US Medicaid recipients. This essay is the first in the literature to estimate the relationship between marijuana consumption and the demand for ER visits in isolation from other illicit drugs, thus providing an important addition to the ongoing policy regarding the potential relaxation of marijuana regulation. This study is also the first in the illicit substance literature to use an instrumental variables count data model to estimate the full distribution of ER visits, thus accounting for unobserved factors that may be jointly correlated between individual propensity for MUD and demand for ER visits. I fail to find a positive relationship between MUD and ER visits, instead uncovering suggestive, but inconclusive, evidence that MUD and ER visits may rather be negatively correlated. Essay 3 considers the relationship between wages and obesity. Although prior literature has firmly established a negative relationship between wages and obesity, it is equivocal with regard to the underlying pathway(s) through which obesity results in lower wages. Using firm-level data that gives me unique access to proxies for productivity and discrimination against obese individuals, I find that inputs to productivity, particularly health, are important confounders of the wage-obesity relationship. I fail to find any evidence of discrimination against obese employees, but I do find that among females the negative relationship between wages and obesity exists only among mothers

Suffering and liberation: the personal poetics of Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg

This dissertation examines Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg's personal poetry. While both poets attend to the random details of daily life, thereby establishing common ground as autobiographical writers, they differ markedly in their perspectives about the value of those details. Lowell possesses a stark, often nihilistic view, attesting to the irredeemable suffering of humanity; Ginsberg ascribes to a self-confident, sometimes larger-than-life persona, believing that complete freedom from fear is possible for everyone. My approach is roughly chronological, beginning when both poets committed themselves to personal, autobiographical poetry during the 1950s. The temporal frame of the study, with a few exceptions, spans from the early 1950s through the l970s. I give due attention to each poet's "breakthrough" work in the 1950s--like Ginsberg's Howl and Lowell's Life Studies--but I also place both poets on a larger continuum that began before they wrote their breakthrough works and lasted beyond their initial success. I explain Lowell and Ginsberg's place in the broader literary history of the modern poets that immediately preceded them. Each found the tenets of modern poetry limiting to his personal approach and found it necessary to resuscitate the value of individual, personal subjectivity, something that countered the prevailing notions of objective poetry as put forth most notably by T. S. Eliot. Lowell's commitment to personal poetry came after he had already established his reputation in the 1940s, so his break into personal poetry was highly self-conscious; Ginsberg committed to it early and he never wavered in his approach. Most importantly, I bring the two poets together historically. Throughout, I make clear that their poetry embodies certain changes that occur simultaneously in American society and culture. In chapter 4, I examine a set of poems they wrote in relation to the Vietnam War protests of the late 1960s. Their opinions and strategies in these poems are consistent with their general views on humanity and emerge in relation to larger social views of the time. In addition, I bookend my study with two historical moments: the first and the last times that the poets were together. My prologue discusses their first meeting, in 1959, when they two were just beginning to gain their reputations as influential autobiographical poets: Ginsberg had just made a great splash with Howl in a volume that came to represent beat poetry, and Lowell was making his own bold statement with Life Studies in a volume that came to define confessional poetry. At this time, they criticized each other and thought more about their perceived differences in style and perspective than they did about the common ground they shared as personal poets. My epilogue discusses the only reading that the two poets ever gave together, in 1977, a time when they seemed less and less polar opposites to each other and more and more, as Lowell quipped at the time, "opposite ends of William Carlos Williams." In essence, my study is itself an extension of this claim. This study therefore mirrors the way that these two poets committed themselves to and pursued a personal aesthetic. They began by rigorously examining themselves as the subjects of their poems and they ended with the same strategy. As Ginsberg wrote in Howl, "the absolute heart of the poem" should be "butchered out of their own bodies"; as Lowell reflected in his "Epilogue," "why not say what happened?" This study explores what happened along the road, so to speak, with particular emphasis on the contrast between Lowell's belief that humankind's condition is turmoil and Ginsberg's that we can ultimately liberate ourselves from pain. The manner in which Lowell and Ginsberg treated the individual subject, one they usually assumed to be themselves, led to their own particular explorations of pain and liberation. As Lowell delved more deeply into his own turmoil, he came to write about the pain associated with sight: he seemed to see a world as it plainly presents itself in everyday reality, yet he suffered more and more as a result of his inability to accurately explain what he saw. As Ginsberg sought out ways to liberate himself and others, he made an example of himself as one who could remove what he believed to be social masks forced upon all human beings. He therefore wrote many poems aimed to alleviate basic fears about society and its norms, fears that he thought everybody experienced and must overcome. These authors' unconventional dedication to personal poetry asks that we constantly reconsider how suffering and liberation can play vital roles as we negotiate our own identity and move between our own private and public selves, broadening the scope of discourses that define the role of the individual in literature

The Ageing of μPlasma Modified Polymers:the Role of Hydrophilicity

Thermoplastic polymers exhibit relatively limited surface energies and this results in poor adhesion when bonded to other materials. Plasma surface modification offers the potential to overcome this challenge through the functionalisation of the polymer surfaces. In this study, three polymers of differing hydrophobicity (HDPE, PA12, and PA6) were subjected to a novel, atmospheric, μPlasma surface treatment technique, and its effectiveness at increasing the surface energies was evaluated via measurement of the contact angle. To characterise the physical and chemical changes following μPlasma surface modification, the surface morphology was observed using atomic force microscopy (AFM), and the functionalisation of the surface was evaluated using infrared spectroscopy. Immediately after treatment, the contact angle decreased by 47.3° (HDPE), 42.6° (PA12), and 50.1° (PA6), but the effect was not permanent in that there was a pronounced relaxation or ageing phenomenon in operation. The ageing process over five hours was modelled using a modified stretched exponential function Kohlrausch–Williams–Watts (KWW) model, and it was found that the ageing rate was dependent on the hydrophilicity of polymers, with polyamides ageing more rapidly than polyethylene

Chemical mass transport between fluid fine tailings and the overlying water cover of an oil sands end pit lake

NSERC Grant No. CRDPJ 476388; NSERC Grant No. IRCPJ 428588–11Peer ReviewedFluid fine tailings (FFT) are a principal by-product of the bitumen extraction process at oil sands mines. Base Mine Lake (BML)—the first full-scale demonstration oil sands end pit lake (EPL)—contains approximately 1.9 3 108 m^3 of FFT stored under a water cover within a decommissioned mine pit. Chemical mass transfer from the FFT to the water cover can occur via two key processes: (1) advection-dispersion driven by tailings settlement; and (2) FFT disturbance due to fluid movement in the water cover. Dissolved chloride (Cl) was used to evaluate the water cover mass balance and to track mass transport within the underlying FFT based on field sampling and numerical modeling. Results indicated that FFT was the dominant Cl source to the water cover and that the FFT is exhibiting a transient advection-dispersion mass transport regime with intermittent disturbance near the FFT-water interface. The advective pore water flux was estimated by the mass balance to be 0.002 m^3 m^-2 d^-1, which represents 0.73 m of FFT settlement per year. However, the FFT pore water Cl concentrations and corresponding mass transport simulations indicated that advection rates and disturbance depths vary between sample locations. The disturbance depth was estimated to vary with location between 0.75 and 0.95 m. This investigation provides valuable insight for assessing the geochemical evolution of the water cover and performance of EPLs as an oil sands reclamation strategy

“I Don’t Know What’s Racist”: White Invisibility Among Explicitly Color-conscious Volunteers

"Americans are increasingly aware of structural racial disadvantages, and especially aware of Black disadvantage. In turn, this paper asks to what degree do whites interested in undermining systems of oppression and privilege understand their own place within those systems (if at all)? Based on participant observation of four grassroots organizations serving the unhoused and 30 semi-structured interviews with volunteers, I show that even explicitly color-conscious white volunteers, many of whom spoke about structural inequality and systemic racism without prompting, struggled to see how their race was important in their day-to-day service interactions. A general inability to speak about interracial interactions despite many interracial service experiences highlights the pervasive power and privilege embedded in the taken-for-granted nature of whiteness and provides empirical support to the idea that racialized social systems discourage racial self-awareness among whites. These findings have implications for social justice- and/or service-oriented whites who seek to undermine the systems they identify as problematic and emphasize that antiracism is a continuous process.

Phosphorylation of histone H3(T118) alters nucleosome dynamics and remodeling

Nucleosomes, the fundamental units of chromatin structure, are regulators and barriers to transcription, replication and repair. Post-translational modifications (PTMs) of the histone proteins within nucleosomes regulate these DNA processes. Histone H3(T118) is a site of phosphorylation [H3(T118ph)] and is implicated in regulation of transcription and DNA repair. We prepared H3(T118ph) by expressed protein ligation and determined its influence on nucleosome dynamics. We find H3(T118ph) reduces DNA–histone binding by 2 kcal/mol, increases nucleosome mobility by 28-fold and increases DNA accessibility near the dyad region by 6-fold. Moreover, H3(T118ph) increases the rate of hMSH2–hMSH6 nucleosome disassembly and enables nucleosome disassembly by the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeler. These studies suggest that H3(T118ph) directly enhances and may reprogram chromatin remodeling reactions

The co-evolutionary relationship between energy service companies and the UK energy system: Implications for a low-carbon transition

The Energy Service Company (ESCo) business model is designed to reward businesses by satisfying consumers' energy needs at less cost and with fewer carbon emissions via energy demand management and/or sustainable supply measures. In contrast, the revenue of the incumbent Energy Utility Company (EUCo) model is coupled with the sale of units of energy, which are predominantly sourced from fossil fuels. The latter is currently dominant in the UK. This paper addresses two questions. First, why has the ESCo model traditionally been confined to niche applications? Second, what role is the ESCo model likely to play in the transition to a low-carbon UK energy system? To answer these, the paper examines the core characteristics of the ESCo model, relative to the EUCo model. The paper then examines how ESCos have co-evolved with the various dimensions of the energy system (i.e. ecosystems, institutions, user practices, technologies and business models) to provide insight into how ESCos might help to shape the future UK energy system. We suggest that institutional and technological changes within the UK energy system could result in a more favourable selection environment for ESCos, consequently enabling the ESCo model to proliferate at the expense of the EUCo model. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd

Structural basis for high-affinity binding of LEDGF PWWP to mononucleosomes

Lens epithelium-derived growth factor (LEDGF/p75) tethers lentiviral preintegration complexes (PICs) to chromatin and is essential for effective HIV-1 replication. LEDGF/p75 interactions with lentiviral integrases are well characterized, but the structural basis for how LEDGF/p75 engages chromatin is unknown. We demonstrate that cellular LEDGF/p75 is tightly bound to mononucleosomes (MNs). Our proteomic experiments indicate that this interaction is direct and not mediated by other cellular factors. We determined the solution structure of LEDGF PWWP and monitored binding to the histone H3 tail containing trimethylated Lys36 (H3K36me3) and DNA by NMR. Results reveal two distinct functional interfaces of LEDGF PWWP: a well-defined hydrophobic cavity, which selectively interacts with the H3K36me3 peptide and adjacent basic surface, which non-specifically binds DNA. LEDGF PWWP exhibits nanomolar binding affinity to purified native MNs, but displays markedly lower affinities for the isolated H3K36me3 peptide and DNA. Furthermore, we show that LEDGF PWWP preferentially and tightly binds to in vitro reconstituted MNs containing a tri-methyl-lysine analogue at position 36 of H3 and not to their unmodified counterparts. We conclude that cooperative binding of the hydrophobic cavity and basic surface to the cognate histone peptide and DNA wrapped in MNs is essential for high-affinity binding to chromatin

Структурно-семантичний аналіз еврісемантів української мови (на матеріалі лексико-семантичного поля "річ")

В статье рассматриваются лексико-семантические особенности эврисемантов в украинском языке, осуществляется их семантическая классификация, методом компонентного анализа проводится структурный анализ. Представлен фрагмент иерархично упорядоченной парадигмы широкозначных имен существительных, состоящий из ЛСГ "Предмет" и "Дело".У статті розглядаються лексико-семантичні особливості еврісемантів української мови, здійснюється їх семантична класифікація, за допомогою компонентного аналізу проводиться структурний аналіз. Подається фрагмент ієрархічно впорядкованої парадигми широкозначних іменників, представлений ЛСГ "Предмет" та "Справа".In this article lexica-semantic peculiarities of everysemantical nouns in Ukrainian are considered. It was made semantic distinguishing and structural analysis of those elements. The everysemants of a lexica-semantic field "Thing", represented by two groups "Subject" and "Work", are disposed in specific hierarchy