Engineering Internship at Dynetics

STEP Category: InternshipsI worked at Dynetics in Huntsville, AL during Summer 2019 as an Assembly, Integrate, and Test Engineer for the Environmental Control and Life Support System on the Orion Spacecraft. I designed assembly components, worked in a class 10,000 (ISO 7) cleanroom, and performed a literature survey for Cryogenic Fluid Management (CFM), focusing on Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI).The Ohio State University Second-year Transformational Experience Program (STEP)Academic Major: Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineerin

Measuring Moral Development

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, heightened awareness of ethical issues has sparked increased efforts toward moral education within universities and businesses. In many cases, psychological tests are used to measure whether moral development occurs. As long as we understand moral development as synonymous with moral progress, this may seem like a good sign: it would appear that such tests give us a handle on moral progress. Alas, moral development and moral progress are two very different things. And although we know a lot about moral development, what we know has little to do with moral progress. Let’s untangle both concepts

Gandhi\u27s Other Daughter: Sarala Devi and Lakshmi Ashram

In 1946, Sarala Devi, formerly Catherine Mary Heileman of London, founded a Gandhian training center for women and girls in Kumaon, in what was then the Himalayan region of the United Provinces, India. She and her students challenged conventions regarding gender, sexuality, and appropriate roles for colonial women. This essay analyzes Sarala Devi’s translocal work and shifting subjectivity in the context of her transnational position as she negotiated colonial, modernist, feminist, Gandhian, and village discourses in her mission to “uplift” women. It identifies and analyzes the varied historical contexts, ideologies, and discourses that created the possibility for Sarala Devi’s life and work in the Kumaon Himalaya

Existence of stationary vacuum solutions of Einstein's equations in an exterior domain

A proof is given for the existence and uniqueness of a stationary vacuum solution (M, g, ξ) of the boundary value problem consisting of Einstein's equations in an exterior domain M diffeomorphic to R × Σ (where Σ = R3\B(0, R)) and boundary data depending on the Killing field ξ on ∂Σ. The boundary data must be sufficiently close to that of a stationary, spatially conformally flat vacuum solutio

Moral Philosophy and the ‘Ethical Turn’ in Anthropology

Moral philosophy continues to be enriched by an ongoing empirical turn,mainly through contributions from neuroscience, biology, and psychology. Thusfar, cultural anthropology has largely been missing. A recent and rapidly growing‘ethical turn’ within cultural anthropologynow explicitly and systematically studiesmorality. This research report aims to introduce to an audience in moral philosophyseveral notable works within the ethical turn. It does so by critically discussing theethical turn’s contributions to four topics: the definition of morality, the nature ofmoral change and progress, the truth of moral relativism, and attempts to debunkmorality. The ethical turn uncovers a richer picture of moral phenomena on theintersubjective level, one akin to a virtue theoretic focus on moral character, withstriking similarities of moral phenomena across cultures. Perennial debates are notsettled but the ethical turn strengthens moral philosophy’s empirical turn and itrewards serious attention from philosophers

Faith, once again

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). I\u27ve questioned a dozen times how I can be absolutely sure of things that I only hope for and how I can be completely convinced of things I have never seen. There isn’t an easy answer other than I AM absolutely sure of the hope of good coming from bad situations and I AM absolutely convinced that there is a mighty and loving God seated in the Heavenly Realm working in and around our lives. I have no mathematical formula that proves this. I have no scientific proof that either is correct or right, but I have no doubt whatsoever. When there is proof there is no need for faith. Living a life in which everything is certain is meaningless

Omnivores and Synthesisers: Academic Philosophers as Interdisciplinary Specialists

I stipulate that an academic discipline is societally relevant insofar as it helps to resolve a society’s real problems. What makes such a view correct depends on meta-normative views. I show how one’s meta-normative view significantly determines the likelihood that disciplinary philosophy is of societal relevance. On normative non-naturalism, normative naturalism, and normative scepticism, the societal relevance of philosophy is in doubt. I then argue that philosophers should aim for two remedies. They should be what I call omnivores and 'synthesisers, aiming for empirically sound knowledge and interdisciplinary integration to achieve societal relevance independently of the correct meta-normative view

Sticks and Stones: A Case Study in Attempted Electoral Subversion

On January 6th, 2021, a mob of rioters stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to disrupt the ceremonial certification of electors and install former President Donald Trump as the winner of the 2020 election; the citadel of democracy was vandalized, the lives of members of Congress were put in immediate danger, and multiple Capitol police officers died from injuries sustained in defending the American republic from her own citizens. This paper uses this dramatic and unusual event to examine the role of political leaders in fomenting violence to keep or regain power. More specifically, I examine whether the rhetoric deployed by former President Trump during the 2020-2021 Interregnum is causally related to the violence that occurred at the Capitol during the certification of electors. This case was selected for two major reasons. First, the role of the former president during the electoral process stood out as extraordinary in modern presidential politics. Indeed, during the Interregnum, former President Trump made history as the first president to not accept the results of the election while making repeated claims of fraud. Second, while studies of the role of political leaders in instigating violence to retain power often use cases from autocracies and young democracies, largely from the developing world, the attack on the Capitol took place in Western democracy. Identifying whether former President Trump played a role in the seditious acts of that day is both vital in understanding this fateful moment in American history, but also in studying election violence beyond non-democratic and non-Western countries. The study uses a mixed method approach as it relies on qualitative data drawn from the transcripts of remarks made by former President Trump between November 3rd, 2020 (Election Day) and January 6th, 2021, and on quantitative data derived from the archived tweets sent from the personal account of former President Trump. The evidence supports the argument that former President Trump directly incited the violence at the Capitol through his rhetoric in the days leading up to and the morning of January 6th. The former president sought to overturn the election by engaging in three strategies: he crafted and convinced his supporters of a false narrative surrounding the 2020 election, he manifested animosity against an enemy (i.e., Democrats and ‘fake’ Republicans), and he issued a call to action that directly pointed to the impediment of the certification of electors on January 6th. These findings imply that political leaders can play a critical role in democratic stability, regardless of the strength of democratic institutions or the place where violence against these institutions take place

Strengthening Resilience by thinking of Knowledge as a nutrient connecting the local person to global thinking: The case of Social Technology/Tecnologia Social

In this chapter, we describe the Knowledge as a Nutrient framework that emerged from these conversations. We describe how it relates to the Tecnologia Social policy approach to sustainability, developed in Brazil (Dagnino et al. 2004, Fundação Banco do Brasil 2009, Costa 2013), which is not well known in the anglophone world. Tecnologia Social was both inspired by and rooted in Paulo Freire’s pedagogical thinking (2000, Klix 2014).   We show how this framework has the potential to increase community resilience and adaptive capacity, not only for communities that face and must adapt to climate change but for all communities in the throes of complex social, ecological, economic and political transitions.This research was supported by the International Development Research Centre, grant number IDRC GRANT NO. 106002-00