Radical Student Activism in the 1930s and Its Comparison to Student Activism During Occupy Wall Street

In order to understand the present we must first understand the past. The United States may be a country founded on principles of democracy and republicanism, but students in universities across the nation have aligned themselves, historically, with some heterodox philosophies over the years. Whether it was Communism or Socialism in the 1930’s, or left libertarianism and direct democracy during the recent Occupy protests, students have long considered whether the policies of the United States government were really working in their best interests. On campus in Depression-era America, Leftist student groups began to rise up and attempted to change the course of American politics. These Leftist groups were strongly rooted in Socialist and Communist alternatives to American capitalism, which they believed had failed the American people. By organizing and recruiting middle class college students, the Leftist groups on campus grew membership rates into the thousands. No greater was their impact felt than at the CCNY campus in New York City. Occupy Wall Street began as a movement of American citizens who felt disaffected by their government after the sweeping bank and automotive industry bailouts of 2008 and 2009. Believing that the United States government had abandoned them in favor of following a too-big-to-fail doctrine, the members of Occupy Wall Street organized in Zucotti Park to protest high unemployment, the failure of American capitalism, excessive government spending on foreign wars, and the continued inaction of the government to improve economic conditions in the United States. The movement was quickly embraced by students who feared that when they graduated college they would be left jobless and saddled with massive student loan debt. The student response to Occupy Wall Street was immense and their demonstration of solidarity impressive, especially in New York. This paper’s objective is to explore the connections between radical, left-leaning student activism in 1930’s New York and the student activists who have come out in support of Occupy Wall Street. This is important because Occupy Wall Street is a unique movement. Massive sit-in protests in Zucotti park, where people from across the region stood together united by their cause: putting to an end economic inequality and stopping the United States government from continually propagating a pro-corporate agenda while Main Street and the 99% are left footing the bill. It is important for us to understand that, while Occupy Wall Street is a unique movement, it is not the first time people united, firmly, against their country to protest its policies

Structural Racism, Institutional Agency, and Disrespect

In recent work, Joshua Glasgow has offered a definition of racism that is supposed to put to rest the debates between cognitive, behavioral, attitudinal, and institutionalist definitions. The key to such a definition, he argues, is the idea of disrespect. He claims: φ is racist if and only if φ is disrespectful toward members of racialized group R as Rs. While this definition may capture an important commonality among cognitive, behavioral, and attitudinal accounts of racism, I argue that his attempt to expand the definition to cover institutional or structural racism is less persuasive. Alternatively, I argue that structural racism must be understood in terms of injustice rather than disrespect. This involves giving a fuller account of how institutions are related to the beliefs, actions, and intentions of individuals, and thus how they can come to embody a certain kind of agency

Dynamics and calcium association to the N-terminal regulatory domain of human cardiac troponin C: a multiscale computational study.

Troponin C (TnC) is an important regulatory molecule in cardiomyocytes. Calcium binding to site II in TnC initiates a series of molecular events that result in muscle contraction. The most direct change upon Ca(2+) binding is an opening motion of the molecule that exposes a hydrophobic patch on the surface allowing for Troponin I to bind. Molecular dynamics simulations were used to elucidate the dynamics of this crucial protein in three different states: apo, Ca(2+)-bound, and Ca(2+)-TnI-bound. Dynamics between the states are compared, and the Ca(2+)-bound system is investigated for opening motions. On the basis of the simulations, NMR chemical shifts and order parameters are calculated and compared with experimental observables. Agreement indicates that the simulations sample the relevant dynamics of the system. Brownian dynamics simulations are used to investigate the calcium association of TnC. We find that calcium binding gives rise to correlative motions involving the EF hand and collective motions conducive of formation of the TnI-binding interface. We furthermore indicate the essential role of electrostatic steering in facilitating diffusion-limited binding of Ca(2+)

Developing a sustainable business model for theatres : a case study of Kansas City's Starlight Theatre

Dissertation supervisors: Drs. Cheryl Black and David Crespy.Includes vita.The business of theatre is a profitable yet volatile industry. Typically, organizations are considered successful or unsuccessful, with the latter organizations theatres frequently going out of business. This study adapts methodology from the tourism field to give deeper insight into the viability of a given theatre. By examining the sustainability of an organization's business practices, this new approach produces a model to serve as an x-ray for the theatre and can identify strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, this study will help to identify "best practices" for theatres, theatre-specific areas of sustainability, refine the research methodology for similar studies, and provide data that will assist in the formulation of future sustainable business models for theatres. This case study will provide the opportunity to take a micro and macro look at business practices of one theatre (Starlight Theatre) within three established dimensions of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental. By narrowly focusing on Starlight Theatre, this case study will provide the most in-depth case study of a single theatre utilizing the three dimensions of sustainability. The selection of Starlight Theatre, a not-for-profit, continually-producing theatre with established practices, allows this study to primarily focus on how Starlight Theatre is sustainable, rather than if. The practices and managerial approaches examined in this case study can be used to identify key concepts of sustainability, usable by future researchers to determine how other theatres may approach the topic.Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-279)

Simulation of ultrasonic lamb wave generation, propagation and detection for an air coupled robotic scanner

A computer simulator, to facilitate the design and assessment of a reconfigurable, air-coupled ultrasonic scanner is described and evaluated. The specific scanning system comprises a team of remote sensing agents, in the form of miniature robotic platforms that can reposition non-contact Lamb wave transducers over a plate type of structure, for the purpose of non-destructive evaluation (NDE). The overall objective is to implement reconfigurable array scanning, where transmission and reception are facilitated by different sensing agents which can be organised in a variety of pulse-echo and pitch-catch configurations, with guided waves used to generate data in the form of 2-D and 3-D images. The ability to reconfigure the scanner adaptively requires an understanding of the ultrasonic wave generation, its propagation and interaction with potential defects and boundaries. Transducer behaviour has been simulated using a linear systems approximation, with wave propagation in the structure modelled using the local interaction simulation approach (LISA). Integration of the linear systems and LISA approaches are validated for use in Lamb wave scanning by comparison with both analytic techniques and more computationally intensive commercial finite element/difference codes. Starting with fundamental dispersion data, the paper goes on to describe the simulation of wave propagation and the subsequent interaction with artificial defects and plate boundaries, before presenting a theoretical image obtained from a team of sensing agents based on the current generation of sensors and instrumentation

Exploring the Photophysical Properties of Molecular Systems Using Excited State Accelerated ab Initio Molecular Dynamics.

In the present work, we employ excited state accelerated ab initio molecular dynamics (A-AIMD) to efficiently study the excited state energy landscape and photophysical topology of a variety of molecular systems. In particular, we focus on two important challenges for the modeling of excited electronic states: (i) the identification and characterization of conical intersections and crossing seams, in order to predict different and often competing radiationless decay mechanisms, and (ii) the description of the solvent effect on the absorption and emission spectra of chemical species in solution. In particular, using as examples the Schiff bases formaldimine and salicylidenaniline, we show that A-AIMD can be readily employed to explore the conformational space around crossing seams in molecular systems with very different photochemistry. Using acetone in water as an example, we demonstrate that the enhanced configurational space sampling may be used to accurately and efficiently describe both the prominent features and line-shapes of absorption and emission spectra