“Nothing’s been the same since New York” : the Marvel Cinematic Universe's engagement with 9/11 and the War on Terror

textThis thesis explores how the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has engaged with 9/11 and the War on Terror since its inception in 2008. This thesis examines industrial and cultural factors affecting the way these post-9/11 superhero films engage with contemporary sociopolitical concerns and argues that the Marvel Studios films both attempt to engage with said concerns and also sanitize and rework references to terrorism, war, torture, and destruction in order to remain palatable for the widest possible audience (including a family audience and a growing international market). In contrast to other superhero franchises, several of which intentionally play on post-9/11 feelings of vulnerability and terror, the MCU films and television series use a combination of humor, a brightly colored comic book aesthetic, and impressive visual spectacles in order to ensure that the primary focus is on entertainment. This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the characters, ideological content, and visual elements of the MCU as they relate to 9/11 and the War on Terror.Radio-Television-Fil

On the subduction of upwelled waters in the California Current

We use 20 years of hydrographic data from the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) program off southern California to search for water mass signatures of subducted upwelled waters. A search for secondary oxygen maxima in more than 6000 water column profiles identified 629 cases of deep oxygen inversions. The additional criteria of a minimum magnitude of the deep oxygen inversion and an accompanying reduction in dissolved nutrients identified 106 (∼17%) of these as subduction signatures. The physical and chemical characteristics of these water masses suggest that they had been photosynthetically modified in the euphotic zone, and perhaps ventilated at the surface, before being subducted and eventually advected downstream within the California Current. Surface waters with similar physical characteristics as the subduction signatures (∼8.5°C, S∼34.0 psu, σ∼26.4 kg m−3) were observed during the spring-summer upwelling period at a shore station upstream from the CalCOFI grid. Even with conservative search criteria and coarse spatial-temporal sampling, subduction signatures were observed in all seasons and in each year of the record. These results imply that the processes leading to the subduction, cross-shore transport, and downstream advection of upwelled water masses are common and persistent in the California Current. This has important implications for the transport of coastal waters, and resident planktonic organisms and organic carbon, out of the coastal euphotic zone, and provides a mechanism for frequent ventilation of the upper thermocline of the California Current

Tracking Sentiments toward Fat Acceptance over a Decade on Twitter

The fat acceptance (FA) movement aims to counteract weight stigma and discrimination against individuals who are overweight/obese. We developed a supervised neural network model to classify sentiment toward the FA movement in tweets and identify links between FA sentiment and various Twitter user characteristics. We collected any tweet containing either “fat acceptance” or “#fatacceptance” from 2010–2019 and obtained 48,974 unique tweets. We independently labeled 2000 of them and implemented/trained an Average stochastic gradient descent Weight-Dropped Long Short-Term Memory (AWD-LSTM) neural network that incorporates transfer learning from language modeling to automatically identify each tweet’s stance toward the FA movement. Our model achieved nearly 80% average precision and recall in classifying “supporting” and “opposing” tweets. Applying this model to the complete dataset, we observed that the majority of tweets at the beginning of the last decade supported FA, but sentiment trended downward until 2016, when support was at its lowest. Overall, public sentiment is negative across Twitter. Users who tweet more about FA or use FA-related hashtags are more supportive than general users. Our findings reveal both challenges to and strengths of the modern FA movement, with implications for those who wish to reduce societal weight stigma

Acoustic Observation of Living Organisms Reveals the Upper Limit of the Oxygen Minimum Zone

Background: Oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) are expanding in the World Ocean as a result of climate change and direct anthropogenic influence. OMZ expansion greatly affects biogeochemical processes and marine life, especially by constraining the vertical habitat of most marine organisms. Currently, monitoring the variability of the upper limit of the OMZs relies on time intensive sampling protocols, causing poor spatial resolution. Methodology/Principal Findings: Using routine underwater acoustic observations of the vertical distribution of marine organisms, we propose a new method that allows determination of the upper limit of the OMZ with a high precision. Applied in the eastern South-Pacific, this original sampling technique provides high-resolution information on the depth of the upper OMZ allowing documentation of mesoscale and submesoscale features (e.g., eddies and filaments) that structure the upper ocean and the marine ecosystems. We also use this information to estimate the habitable volume for the world’s most exploited fish, the Peruvian anchovy (Engraulis ringens). Conclusions/Significance: This opportunistic method could be implemented on any vessel geared with multi-frequency echosounders to perform comprehensive high-resolution monitoring of the upper limit of the OMZ. Our approach is a novel way of studying the impact of physical processes on marine life and extracting valid information about the pelagic habitat an

Northborough Composting: A Peri-Urban Land Conflict

Since the 2014 waste disposal ban, Northborough, Massachusetts has experienced an ongoing land-use conflict. Neighbors are concerned about an agricultural composting operation at the Davidian Brothers Farm. In order to help resolve this conflict, we spoke with neighbors, farm owners, state agencies and legislators, and other experts to gain an understanding of the situation and knowledge of its causes and results. Our project culminated in providing the Office of Senator Harriette Chandler with two videos and an informational matrix and website to educate food waste recycling operations on methods to mitigate concerns and create positive relations with their surrounding communities. We also detailed recommendations for the town and farm to aid in the resolution of their land-use conflict