Understanding Open Defecation in the Age of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: Agency, Accountability, and Anger in Rural Bihar.

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, India's flagship sanitation intervention, set out to end open defecation by October 2019. While the program improved toilet coverage nationally, large regional disparities in construction and use remain. Our study used ethnographic methods to explore perspectives on open defecation and latrine use, and the socio-economic and political reasons for these perspectives, in rural Bihar. We draw on insights from social epidemiology and political ecology to explore the structural determinants of latrine ownership and use. Though researchers have often pointed to rural residents' preference for open defecation, we found that people were aware of its many risks. We also found that (i) while sanitation research and "behavior change" campaigns often conflate the reluctance to adopt latrines with a preference for open defecation, this is an erroneous conflation; (ii) a subsidy can help (some) households to construct latrines but the amount of the subsidy and the manner of its disbursement are key to its usefulness; and (iii) widespread resentment towards what many rural residents view as a development bias against rural areas reinforces distrust towards the government overall and its Swachh Bharat Abhiyan-funded latrines in particular. These social-structural explanations for the slow uptake of sanitation in rural Bihar (and potentially elsewhere) deserve more attention in sanitation research and promotion efforts

Orion\u27s Eyes

The following manuscript is a thesis in poetry and poetics. The goal of the thesis was to generate poems which investigate perception and to develop a nascent sense of my own poetics. The manuscript is invested in the exploration of poetry’s sonic qualities as a primary constitutive force behind a poem’s meaning. Inspired by Zukofsky’s declaration that the highest order of poetry is music, the poems are rooted in the expressive capacity of the voice. The critical introduction draws attention to how that vocal expressivity functions in the poems as a meaning-making element. The poems included in Orion’s Eyes were written between 2020 and 2022 and explore perception through sound and imagery. They exhibit an interest in phenomenology and the natural world as explored through word- and phrase-based sound patterning. Indebted to Merleau-Ponty’s writings on the inseparability of the senses, the poems enact certain forms of repetition and variation to generate aural patterns that are echoed in the imagery and matter described. Many of the poems also show, in their subject matter, direct interest in questions of voice; the concentrated interest in the formal presence of sound as a constructive device for the poems naturally led to a reflective interest in the aural realization of those sounds. The poems are divided into three sections gathered under the thematic groupings of “music,” “light,” and “harmony,” and are populated by ten black and white illustrations by Casey Forest. The critical introduction elaborates my drafting and revising processes and is presented from a reflective standpoint. By analyzing the opening poem of the manuscript, the introduction explains what decisions were made during the writing process and what literary influences were behind those decisions. In foregrounding my influences, I hope to make apparent the adherence of my poetics to a inspirational lineage that is loosely attributable to a line of speech-based-poetics, but is diverse in genre. In the readings of my poems, I primarily elucidate formal craft elements and how these elements would be reflected in a vocal recital of the poem

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationGasification of coal provides society with electricity, commodity chemicals, substitute natural gas, and consumer products. With the continued use of coal in the United States and abroad, the utilization of this fuel must be optimized with the aid of continued research on laboratory, pilot, and industrial scales in addition to responsible government regulation and legislation. This study aims to forge a relationship between laboratory measurements and gas-phase data collected from a pressurized entrained-flow gasifier. Experiments utilizing a wire-mesh reactor and thermogravimetric analyzer lay the groundwork for extracting hot, pressurized gases from an entrained-flow gasifier by using a novel sampling system developed as part of the work presented here. Models for entrained-flow gasification of coal complement the experimental endeavors and aid in data analysis. A novel pressurized wire-mesh reactor was used to determine the extent to which temperature, pressure, hold time, and heating rate influence coal devolatilization and associated char yields. Pressurized thermogravimetric studies were performed to determine the influence of pressure and gas composition on char conversion rates under a range of partial pressures of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. The resulting yields and devolatilization rates measured in the pressurized wire mesh heater and char conversion rates from the thermogravimetric analyzer were used to create a model for the entrained-flow gasifier and predict useful synthesis gas and gasification metrics. To sample the reaction zone of the gasifier, a sample system was fabricated, allowing for radial measurements of gas composition at variable operating conditions. Key laboratory-scale results indicate that volatiles yields increase with temperature and hold time (residence time), and decrease with pressure, but to a lesser degree. During char gasification, high pressures were concluded to decrease the gasification rate, which was further inhibited by higher carbon monoxide partial pressures. Pilot-scale data show that syngas compositions change with temperature and carbon monoxide and hydrogen yields decrease as temperature increases. Conversely, higher temperatures increase carbon dioxide yields. A significant conclusion is that gas concentrations do not change radially in the pilot-scale entrained-flow gasifier. Correlations of laboratory-scale data provide a context for data acquired during the pilot-scale gasifier operation in addition to modeling endeavors. A developed additive reaction model characterizes char burnout characteristics and extends to devolatilization behavior and drying. This model yields residence times that corresponds within an order of magnitude to a one-dimensional model that tracks syngas composition, residence time, and coal conversion as a function of gasifier length. These results agree within 50% of the experimental data acquired from the entrained-flow gasifier at temperatures above 2650 ℉ (1438 ℃) and is recommended as a tool to predict gasifier behavior and metrics

Master of Science

thesisWhile pyrolysis of coal is a well-studied thermal process, little is known about pressurized pyrolysis of coal and petroleum coke. This study aims to interpret the major differences of pyrolysis via high temperature and high pressure studies with a bituminous coal, a lignite coal, and a petroleum coke. The findings of these studies will be able to expand on the narrow quantity of petroleum coke pyrolysis and offer methods of devolatilization via bench-scale laminar entrained-flow and pressurized wire-mesh heaters. In addition, the findings for the two coal ranks will add to the breadth of knowledge already published, and lend credibility to conclusions made concerning petroleum coke. The first method explored in characterizing coal and petroleum coke pyrolysis was tests conducted at high temperature (1000 ? to 1400 ?) and atmospheric pressure (13 psia). Varied oxygen content was used to switch from pyrolysis to gasification conditions and chosen based on a statistical Design of Experiments approach. Previous studies indicate that as temperature or heating rate increase, so do volatiles yield and particle swelling ratio. The second set of experiments performed was at high temperatures as well (1000 ? to 1200 ?, but the pressure was greatly increased (13 to 915 psia). This is because many industrial gasifiers are operated at higher pressures to achieve greater efficiency. The data generated will be used to predict gasifier behavior in The University of Utah?s entrained-flow gasifier and hopefully aid in commercial applications like the large dual entrained-flow gasifiers housed by Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, Tennessee

Induction of Estrus and Fertility in Anestrous Ewes

Mites are a major concern to the national agricultural economy and as such share with insects a position of pest importance to the economy of South Dakota. This bulletin includes: (1) species of plant feeding mites collected in past years in so0uth Dakota and reported I the state insect survey reports, and (2) systematic phytophagous mite collections since 1964 as part of south Dakota Experiemtn Station project No. 433

A pulse-width modulation controlled wire-mesh heater apparatus for investigation of solid fuel pyrolysis

pre-printA novel wire mesh heater apparatus has been developed to study the devolatilization of solid fuels under pressurized conditions at well-controlled heating rates on the order of 1000 K/s. The apparatus combines direct current and pulse-width modulation with a fast-acting and high current-capacity relay to achieve operating frequencies up to 2000 Hz. This frequency allows much quicker feedback and tighter control of temperature than conventional ac-based systems that operate at 50 to 60 Hz. The present apparatus has been successfully operated at 63 bars with final temperatures of 1473 K and heating rates of 1100 K/s

Sharp-interface problem of the Ohta-Kawasaki model for symmetric diblock copolymers

The Ohta-Kawasaki model for diblock-copolymers is well known to the scientific community of diffuse-interface methods. To accurately capture the long-time evolution of the moving interfaces, we present a derivation of the corresponding sharp-interface limit using matched asymptotic expansions, and show that the limiting process leads to a Hele-Shaw type moving interface problem. The numerical treatment of the sharp-interface limit is more complicated due to the stiffness of the equations. To address this problem, we present a boundary integral formulation corresponding to a sharp interface limit of the Ohta-Kawasaki model. Starting with the governing equations defined on separate phase domains, we develop boundary integral equations valid for multi-connected domains in a 2D plane. For numerical simplicity we assume our problem is driven by a uniform Dirichlet condition on a circular far-field boundary. The integral formulation of the problem involves both double- and single-layer potentials due to the modified boundary condition. In particular, our formulation allows one to compute the nonlinear dynamics of a non-equilibrium system and pattern formation of an equilibrating system. Numerical tests on an evolving slightly perturbed circular interface (separating the two phases) are in excellent agreement with the linear analysis, demonstrating that the method is stable, efficient and spectrally accurate in space.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figure

Evaluating Maintainability Prejudices with a Large-Scale Study of Open-Source Projects

Exaggeration or context changes can render maintainability experience into prejudice. For example, JavaScript is often seen as least elegant language and hence of lowest maintainability. Such prejudice should not guide decisions without prior empirical validation. We formulated 10 hypotheses about maintainability based on prejudices and test them in a large set of open-source projects (6,897 GitHub repositories, 402 million lines, 5 programming languages). We operationalize maintainability with five static analysis metrics. We found that JavaScript code is not worse than other code, Java code shows higher maintainability than C# code and C code has longer methods than other code. The quality of interface documentation is better in Java code than in other code. Code developed by teams is not of higher and large code bases not of lower maintainability. Projects with high maintainability are not more popular or more often forked. Overall, most hypotheses are not supported by open-source data.Comment: 20 page

Optical Continuum and Emission-Line Variability of Seyfert 1 Galaxies

We present the light curves obtained during an eight-year program of optical spectroscopic monitoring of nine Seyfert 1 galaxies: 3C 120, Akn 120, Mrk 79, Mrk 110, Mrk 335, Mrk 509, Mrk 590, Mrk 704, and Mrk 817. All objects show significant variability in both the continuum and emission-line fluxes. We use cross-correlation analysis to derive the sizes of the broad Hbeta-emitting regions based on emission-line time delays, or lags. We successfully measure time delays for eight of the nine sources, and find values ranging from about two weeks to a little over two months. Combining the measured lags and widths of the variable parts of the emission lines allows us to make virial mass estimates for the active nucleus in each galaxy. The virial masses are in the range 10^{7-8} solar masses.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

A Density Functional Study of Atomic Hydrogen and Oxygen Chemisorption on the Relaxed (0001) Surface of Double Hexagonal Close Packed Americium

Ab initio total energy calculations within the framework of density functional theory have been performed for atomic hydrogen and oxygen chemisorption on the (0001) surface of double hexagonal packed americium using a full-potential all-electron linearized augmented plane wave plus local orbitals method. Chemisorption energies were optimized with respect to the distance of the adatom from the relaxed surface for three adsorption sites, namely top, bridge, and hollow hcp sites, the adlayer structure corresponding to coverage of a 0.25 monolayer in all cases. Chemisorption energies were computed at the scalar-relativistic level (no spin-orbit coupling NSOC) and at the fully relativistic level (with spin-orbit coupling SOC). The two-fold bridge adsorption site was found to be the most stable site for O at both the NSOC and SOC theoretical levels with chemisorption energies of 8.204 eV and 8.368 eV respectively, while the three-fold hollow hcp adsorption site was found to be the most stable site for H with chemisorption energies of 3.136 eV at the NSOC level and 3.217 eV at the SOC level. The respective distances of the H and O adatoms from the surface were found to be 1.196 Ang. and 1.164 Ang. Overall our calculations indicate that chemisorption energies in cases with SOC are slightly more stable than the cases with NSOC in the 0.049-0.238 eV range. The work functions and net magnetic moments respectively increased and decreased in all cases compared with the corresponding quantities of bare dhcp Am (0001) surface. The partial charges inside the muffin-tins, difference charge density distributions, and the local density of states have been used to analyze the Am-adatom bond interactions in detail. The implications of chemisorption on Am 5f electron localization-delocalization are also discussed.Comment: 9 Tables, 5 figure