Dams, Roads, and Bridges: (Re)defining Work and Masculinity in American Indian Literature of the Great Plains, 1968-Present

This master\u27s thesis explores the intersections of labor, socioeconomic class, and constructed American Indian masculinities in the literature of indigenous writers of the Great Plains published after the Native American Renaissance of the late 1960s. By engaging scholars and theorists from multiple disciplines--including Native labor historians such as Colleen O\u27Neill and Alexandra Harmon, (trans)indigenous studies scholars such as Chadwick Allen and Philip Deloria, and Native literary and cultural critics such as Gerald Vizenor and Louis Owens--this thesis offers an American Studies approach to definitions and expressions of work, wealth, and masculinity in American Indian literature of the Great Plains. With chapters on D\u27Arcy McNickle\u27s posthumous Wind From an Enemy Sky (1978), Carter Revard\u27s poetry and mixed-genre memoirs, and Thomas King\u27s Truth and Bright Water (1999), this thesis emphasizes the roles of cross-cultural apprenticeships for young Native protagonists whose socioeconomic opportunities are often obstructed, threatened, or complicated by dams, roads, and bridges, both literal and metaphorical, as they seek ways to engage (or circumvent) the capitalist marketplace on their own terms. In highlighting each protagonist\u27s relationship to blood (family and community), land, and memory, the chapters reveal how the respective Native authors challenge and reimagine stereotypes regarding Native workers and offer more complicated and nuanced discussions of Native traditions in modernity. (173 pages

Disability Identity: An Investigation of The Relationship Between Stigma, Quality Of Life, and Psychological Distress

The purpose of this study was to investigate disability identity and the role that it may play in moderating the effect of disability-related stigma on both quality of life and psychological distress among persons with disabilities (PWDs). With respect to this purpose, it was hypothesized that disability identity would significantly moderate both the relationship between disability-related stigma and quality of life and the relationship between disability-related stigma and psychological distress. Further, this study aimed to investigate various aspects specific to one\u27s life experience that may impact the presence or absence of disability identity. To this regard, it was hypothesized that aspects related to the experience of one’s disability including, the obviousness of one’s disability, the functional impact of one’s disability, and the onset of one’s disability each would be a significant predictor of one’s strength of disability identity. Participants were recruited through convenience sampling from a regional Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) Center for PWDs living in the Rocky Mountain region. In sum, a total of 873 adults with disabilities completed a brief demographics questionnaire in addition to measures of disability identity, disability related stigma, quality of life, and psychological distress. After survey completion, data were compiled and analyzed using a hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The results of this study indicated that the presence of disability identity significantly moderated the negative impact of disability-related stigma on a PWD’s quality of life. In other words, the presence of a positive disability identity was a protective factor leading to a higher quality of life among those impacted by disability-related stigma. However, the strength of one’s disability identity did not have a significant moderation effect on the relationship between disability-related stigma and psychological distress. Further, the results of this study also showed how a greater presence of disability identity was predicted by lower levels of functional impairment from one’s disability, less obviousness of one’s disability, and among those whose onset of disability was congenital rather than acquired later in life. Finally, other aspects of an individual\u27s identity, including their gender, level of education, and current employment status, each significantly predicted the strength of disability identity, providing further context for future researchers to examine how certain intersectional aspects of one\u27s identity impact their experience of disability. It is anticipated that future researchers and mental health clinicians can use the results of this research to help expand their understanding and considerations of disability as an aspect of human diversity rather than as a deficit that may only cause difficulties in one\u27s life. In doing so, mental health practitioners may be better able to determine how an individual identifies with their disability and how this may or may not contribute to their overall presenting mental health concerns. These results may also help clinicians be better able to applicably select and adapt clinical interventions tailored for affirmation of one’s disability, promoting the development of a positive disability identity where appropriate. Overall, an increased understanding of the protective effect of disability identity should push clinicians to use more affirmative models of care and provide improved culturally informed services for PWDs

Certifying non-existence of undesired locally stable equilibria in formation shape control problems

A fundamental control problem for autonomous vehicle formations is formation shape control, in which the agents must maintain a prescribed formation shape using only information measured or communicated from neighboring agents. While a large and growing literature has recently emerged on distance-based formation shape control, global stability properties remain a significant open problem. Even in four-agent formations, the basic question of whether or not there can exist locally stable incorrect equilibrium shapes remains open. This paper shows how this question can be answered for any size formation in principle using semidefinite programming techniques for semialgebraic problems, involving solutions sets of polynomial equations, inequations, and inequalities.Comment: 6 pages; to appear in the 2013 IEEE Multiconference on Systems and Contro

Attitudes Toward Farmed Animals in the BRIC Countries

We completed a multi-national “BRIC” study to compare attitudes and behavior regarding farmed animals and veg*nism across five different countries (including the U.S.). The BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India, and China — are rapidly increasing their consumption of animal products, yet there is little research for these countries. The research revealed that most BRIC residents favor better farmed animal welfare laws, and much more

Privacy-preserving scoring of tree ensembles : a novel framework for AI in healthcare

Machine Learning (ML) techniques now impact a wide variety of domains. Highly regulated industries such as healthcare and finance have stringent compliance and data governance policies around data sharing. Advances in secure multiparty computation (SMC) for privacy-preserving machine learning (PPML) can help transform these regulated industries by allowing ML computations over encrypted data with personally identifiable information (PII). Yet very little of SMC-based PPML has been put into practice so far. In this paper we present the very first framework for privacy-preserving classification of tree ensembles with application in healthcare. We first describe the underlying cryptographic protocols that enable a healthcare organization to send encrypted data securely to a ML scoring service and obtain encrypted class labels without the scoring service actually seeing that input in the clear. We then describe the deployment challenges we solved to integrate these protocols in a cloud based scalable risk-prediction platform with multiple ML models for healthcare AI. Included are system internals, and evaluations of our deployment for supporting physicians to drive better clinical outcomes in an accurate, scalable, and provably secure manner. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such applied framework with SMC-based privacy-preserving machine learning for healthcare

Using an analytic network process model to incorporate qualitative factors into multi-criteria global modal choice decisions

This research develops and evaluates an Analytic Network Process (ANP) model to choose the correct mode of global transportation in the presence of complicating qualitative influences. The ANP model effectively combines important qualitative and quantitative factors into a global modal choice model. Although there is a great deal of research in the area of modal choice, the research often focuses singularly on cost or time factors. This research incorporates security, public opinion, and customer opinion into modal choice. One of the most difficult choices a transportation planner faces is deciding when qualitative factors outweigh the quantitative ones. A reliable tool to validate choice by including the important qualitative factors with the quantitative is quite valuable in military operations, humanitarian support, and disaster relief

Benthic algae control sediment-water column fluxes of organic and inorganic nitrogen compounds in a temperate lagoon

Coastal lagoons are a common land-margin feature worldwide and function as an important filter for nutrients entering from the watershed. The shallow nature of lagoons leads to dominance by benthic autotrophs, which can regulate benthic-pelagic coupling. Here we demonstrate that both microalgae and macroalgae are important in controlling dissolved inorganic as well as organic nitrogen (DIN and DON) fluxes between the sediments and the water column. Fluxes of nitrogen (NH4+, NO3-, DON, urea, and dissolved free and combined amino acids [DFAA, DCAA]) and O-2 were measured from October 1998 through August 1999 in sediment cores collected from Hog Island Bay, Virginia. Cores were collected from four sites representing the range of environmental conditions across this shallow lagoon: muddy, high-nutrient and sandy, low-nutrient sites that were both dominated by benthic microalgae, and a mid-lagoon site with fine sands covered by dense macroalgal mats. Sediment-water column DON fluxes were highly variable and comparable in magnitude to DIN fluxes; fluxes of individual compounds (urea, DFAA, DCAA) often proceeded simultaneously in different directions. Where sediment metabolism was net autotrophic because of microalgal activity, TDN (total dissolved nitrogen) fluxes, mostly comprised of DIN, urea, and DFAA, were directed into the sediments. Heterotrophic sediments, including those underlying macroalgal mats, were a net source of TDN, mostly as DIN. Macroalgae intercepted sediment-water column fluxes of DIN, urea, and DFAA, which accounted for 27-75% of calculated N demand. DON uptake was important in satisfying macroalgal N demand seasonally and where DIN concentrations were low. Up to 22% of total N uptake was released to the water column as DCAA. Overall, macroalgae assimilated, transformed, and rereleased to the water column both organic and inorganic N on short (minutes-hours) and long (months) time scales. Microalgae and macroalgae clearly regulate benthic-pelagic coupling and thereby influence transformations and retention of N moving across the land-sea interface

Microbial mediation of \u27reactive\u27 nitrogen transformations in a temperate lagoon

Coastal lagoons positioned along the land margin may play an important role in removing or transforming \u27reactive\u27 nitrogen during its transport from land to the ocean. Hog Island Bay is a shallow, coastal lagoon located on the ocean-side of the Delmarva Peninsula in Virginia (USA). External nitrogen inputs are derived primarily from agriculturally enriched groundwater, and these support, in part, the high production of benthic macroalgae and microalgae as the dominant primary producers. This study focuses on processes in the water column (phytoplankton and bacterial) and in the sediments (microalgal and bacterial) responsible for transformations of dissolved inorganic and organic nitrogen (N). Sediment-water exchanges of dissolved inorganic and organic N were measured as well as sediment gross and net mineralization of organic N. Net changes in dissolved inorganic nitrogen concentrations were greater in the water-column incubations than in the incubations including sediment and water. In the water column, metabolism resulted in net uptake of NH4+ during all seasons and in net uptake of NO3- during most seasons. In the sediments, gross mineralization, which ranged from 0.9 to 6.5 mmol N m(-2) d(-1), resulted in short turnover times (\u3c 1 d) for the sediment NH4+ pool; however, sediment-water fluxes of both NH4+ and NO3- were either negligible or directed into the sediments. The NH4+ produced by gross mineralization was rapidly consumed in the dark. Biological processes potentially responsible for removal of sediment NH4+ and NO3- include coupled nitrification-denitrification, dark uptake by benthic microalgae, and immobilization by heterotrophic bacteria. In the absence of dark uptake of NH4+ by benthic microalgae, potential nitrification calculated as the difference between gross mineralization and NH4+ fluxes, would range from 1.5 to 6.4 mmol N m(-2) d(-1), similar to rates observed in a range of other systems. Similarly, potential denitrification rates estimated as the difference between calculated nitrification rates and measured NO3- fluxes would vary from 1.88 to 5.16 mol N m(-2) d(-1) and fall within the range of rates reported for similar systems. However, since calculated benthic microalgal N demand (2.51 to 16.11 mmol N m(-2) d(-1)) exceeded NH4+ release by gross mineralization at all sites and during all seasons, this suggests that dark benthic microalgal uptake was likely to be an important sink for mineralized N. Finally, sediment bacterial N immobilization may also be important given the relatively high C/N of sediment organic matter. These estimates of the potential consumptive processes for mineralized sediment N indicate that the lagoon is likely to retard and or remove \u27reactive\u27 N during its transport to the coastal ocean