An Investigation to Compare Blood Pressure and Pulse Before and After Concentrative Meditation

The purpose of this study was to understand if meditation over a short period of time, thirty days, can result in a significant reduction in stress. Does meditation decrease blood pressure, heart rate, and stress levels concerning undergradu-ate college students? The participants of this research consisted of (N=5) undergraduate college students. Blood pressures were taken on the first day of the study before and after meditation, and on the final day of the study before and after meditation. Participants recorded their heart rate each day over the 30 day study. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS14) was administered at the beginning of the study and at the close of the study to measure the participants’ stress level over the time of the study. The results of this study showed that the participants’ blood pressure and pulse rate were reduced after partaking in concentrative meditation before and after each day of the study and over the course of the study. Stress levels were also reduced over the thirty day period.https://digitalcommons.mtech.edu/stdt_rsch_day_2013/1008/thumbnail.jp

The effects of trophic transfer and environmental factors on microplastic uptake by plaice, Pleuronectes plastessa, and spider crab, Maja squinado

Microplastic pollution is apparent throughout the marine environment from deep ocean sediments to coastal habitats. Most of this is believed to originate on land, although marine activities, such as fishing and shipping, also contribute to the release and redistribution of microplastic. The relative importance of these maritime plastic sources, the manner by which they are distributed in the environment, and their effect on uptake by marine organisms are yet to be fully quantified. In this study, the relative impact of fishing activities on microplastic uptake by demersal fish and crustaceans was explored. Local fishing intensity, proximity to land and mean water velocity are compared to microplastic uptake in plaice, Pleuronectes platessa, and spider crab, Maja squinado, from the Celtic Sea. Observations were also made of microplastic contamination in ingested sand eels, Ammodytes tobianus, to establish a potential route of trophic transfer. This study is the first to identify microplastic contamination in spider crab and to document trophic transfer in the wild. Individuals were sampled from sites of varied fishing intensity in the Celtic Sea, and their stomach contents examined for the presence of microplastic. Contamination was observed in 50% of P. platessa, 42.4% of M. squinado, and 44.4% of A. tobianus. Locations of highest plastic abundance varied between P. platessa and M. squinado, indicating that different factors influence the uptake of microplastic in these two taxa. No significant link was observed between fishing effort and microplastic abundance; however, proximity to land was linked to increased abundance in M. squinado and Observations of whole prey demonstrate ongoing trophic transfer from A. tobianus to P. platessa. The lack of significant difference in microplastic abundance between predator and prey suggests that microplastic is not retained by P. platessa

Allyship in the Academy: The Girlhood Project and Redefining Girlhood

The emerging field of Girl Studies reflects increasing interest in social justice programming and research in higher education. Yet much girl-centered work has tied the concept of allyship to traditional service models, without examining the power structures reinforced by top-down service practices. Academia, social movements, and larger society have historically failed to center the voices of girls or the diversity of girlhood(s). In partnership with The Girlhood Project, this project utilizes practice rooted in theory to deconstruct those power systems which reinforce hegemonic identity and deny agency. Using qualitative data from coconstructive discussions about allyship and girlhoods, “Allyship in the Academy” examines enacted themes of identity, relationship, and oppressive social norms

Preventing and Repairing Ego Depletion Through Humor

The theory of ego depletion views the capacity for self-control as a finite internal resource that declines with continual use. As the levels of this resource decline, performance within a host of domains is impaired, resulting in negative behavioral outcomes. Previous studies have sought to find ways to address the decline in the self-control resource and the accompanying reduction in performance in a variety of different ways. One method that has been found to be effective in reducing ego depletion is the use of humor, specifically the viewing of humorous videos following an ego-depleting task. However, prevention of ego depletion using humor prior to an ego-depleting task has not been examined. In the current study, a humorous video was used in an attempt to reduce the effects of ego depletion relative to a control condition viewing a neutral video. The video was seen either before the ego-depletion task (prevention) or after the ego-depletion task (reparation). It was expected that the humorous video would buffer against ego depletion when shown regardless of whether participants viewed the video before or after the ego-depletion task. Although the humorous video did not alter ego depletion, mood was enhanced relative to the neutral-video condition

Finite-Temperature Green's Function Methods for ab-initio Quantum Chemistry: Thermodynamics, Spectra, and Quantum Embedding

Description of electron correlation is crucial to chemical accuracy in quantum chemical calculations. However, the interaction of electrons in a system is an insoluble many-body problem. Constructing approximations to describe electron correlation is a challenging task, but there has been success in the quantum chemistry community using wavefunction methods and density functional theory. However, there are still challenges to be overcome in areas such as theoretical solid state chemistry, which requires description of large systems and the use of finite temperature. Large system sizes and finite temperature can be difficult to treat solely with the currently available methods. Therefore, a new class of methods, based on the temperature-dependent Green's function, is implemented and explored. This thesis is toward investigating the use of temperature-dependent Green's functions for ab-initio quantum chemistry. That is, we are treating a quantum chemical Hamiltonian with realistic electron interactions. While this formalism has been applied to model systems in the condensed matter community, its has been used much less by the quantum chemistry community. Therefore, the numerical behavior and accuracy of Green's function methods for quantum chemical calculations is relatively unknown. This work investigates the ability of the temperature-dependent Green's function, which is an ensemble formalism, to give access to temperature dependent thermodynamic quantities such as free energy and entropy when calculated in a second-order and perturbative manner (GF2). We find that this method is able to give good accuracy for lower temperatures and excellent accuracy for higher temperatures for a molecular case and is able to qualitatively describe a simple model of a solid. The results of this work are presented in chapter 3. Although Green's functions have a clear connection with spectra at zero temperature, it is not straight forward to obtain spectra from the finite temperature Green's function, which is calculated on the imaginary frequency axis. Therefore, we must investigate methods to obtain spectral quantities in a consistent and reliable manner from the imaginary axis. Chapter 4 investigates several methods to do so and we compare our results with experimental and highly accurate benchmark data. We find that it is possible to obtain spectral quantities that can differ by several electron volts, even if the same level of theory is used to obtain the Green's function. This reiterates that finding a spectrum from the imaginary axis is nontrivial and that one must exercise caution when comparing spectral quantities that were calculated using different techniques, even if they are treated with the same theoretical accuracy. Accessing larger systems with the Green's function requires the use of quantum embedding. Quantum embedding describes nontrivial electron interaction between a highly accurate ``active space'' or ``impurity'' and a larger, lower level ``environment''. It is challenging to construct an impurity solver that is reliable at low temperatures. In chapter 5 of this work, we implement and test a temperature dependent configuration interaction impurity solver for quantum embedding. This solver can be used in quantum embedding schemes such as dynamical mean field theory and self-energy embedding theory for larger systems. Overall, this thesis has made progress toward using Green's functions for ab-initio quantum chemistry at finite temperature. Groundwork has been laid for using this formalism to calculate thermodynamics and spectra using a Green's function with realistic electron interactions and to explore quantum embedding using an impurity solver at low temperatures.PHDChemistryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146034/1/welden_1.pd

Animal infrastructures: a more-than-human geography of animals and/in/as nature-based solutions

From the reintroduction of beavers for natural flood management to the managed grazing of cattle for biodiversity gain, the inclusion—or use—of nonhuman animals in/as environmental interventions is gaining traction in Britain, often associated with the policy turn towards ‘Nature-based Solutions’ (NbS) to climate change and biodiversity loss. NbS are defined by the IUCN as actions that protect, manage, or restore ecosystems while addressing societal challenges (Cohen-Shacham et al., 2016), often involving humans ‘working with nature’ (Seddon et al., 2021). In this thesis, I build upon my past work on NbS (Welden, 2023; Welden et al., 2021), forming a critique of the NbS concept with animals at the centre and demonstrating how this concept necessarily enrols, enmeshes, and enfleshes certain animals as infrastructure. While infrastructure is ‘conceptually unruly’ (Larkin, 2013), I define it as material relation with (environmental) objects in the (re)production of an organised practice. Drawing from a year of fieldwork with beaver restorationists, regenerative farmers, organisation directors, and the beavers and cattle themselves, I explore the different ways in which beavers and cattle are made to be the infrastructure of Nature-based Solutions. Weaving together animal geographies, more-than-human geography, political ecology, and biopolitics, I develop a typology of the process of making animal infrastructure: Enrolment, Enmeshment, and Enfleshment, the latter two expanding upon language from Barua (2021)’s ontology of nonhuman infrastructure. Enrolment traces how beavers and cattle are discursively framed as infrastructure, evoking diverging ‘natures,’ framed in relation to humans and technologies, and enroled as the infrastructure of ‘solutions,’ obscuring differences between animals and species. Enmeshment explores the ways in which animals are choreographed in their material relations with technologies that both hold them in place and make them move, enmeshing their bodies in relation to produce ‘solutions.’ Enfleshment shows how the cyclical labours (for life) of ‘ecosystem engineers’ enfleshes their bodies as infrastructure, producing both themselves and the ‘solution.’ The thesis then concludes with reflections on the real futures that are opened up or closed down for animals enroled, enmeshed, and enfleshed as infrastructure of NbS, and lays out a speculative future in NbS policy that acknowledges animal infrastructuralisation in NbS interventions

Timber Cruising On A Private Operation in The Pacific Northwest

Porteous and Company have evolved a new system of cruising which seems to be gaining favor in the western states. It is a comparatively new system being first tried out experimentally during the fall of 1919 on a job which the Porteous Company had secured in the Gray\u27s Harbor District mapping and cruising sections. As stated the work was to a great extent experimental and consisted in working out Mr. Porteous’ theory which was an improvement and simplification of the Lacey system. As finally worked out, the cruising system used by Porteous and Company which I shall call the Porteous system, is a three run strip system. That is, there are three cruise lines through each forty, and all that trees on a strip a chain wide are tallied. This is in contrast to the block system, in which the trees on a block of an acre are counted every ten chains. The strip system gives a better average, and the timber is more easily and accurately divided into types