People already live here: an ethnographic case study of employed residents of New York City's Graham Public Housing Project

2011 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis explores the attitudes and sentiments of employed residents of the Graham Public Housing Development or, "Project" in New York City. In order to understand life in public housing, past and current public housing policies are examined for both the United States and the City of New York. Additionally, the history of how public housing is portrayed in the media and in academia is discussed. Data for this thesis was collected using a variety of qualitative techniques including participant and non-participant observation and in-depth interviews. A total of twenty-five (N=25) interviews were conducted. Fifteen (N=15) interviews were conducted with employed mothers of African descent of the Graham Development. The remaining ten interviews were conducted with informed experts (N=5) and community leaders (N=5). It was hypothesized, bolstered by current academic work concerning the benefits of residing in public housing, that employed respondents would desire to remain residents of their development because of social ties. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that this decision would be tempered by the housing scarcity in New York City and the overall safety of the neighborhood in which the Graham Development is located. This hypothesis was largely not supported as all respondents expressed a desire to eventually leave their homes. Factors identified as prompting respondents to want to leave include the stigma associated with residing in public housing, social isolation, safety, maintenance, and desire for home ownership. However, despite the fact that all respondents reported that they eventually wanted to leave public housing, respondents reported that they would like for society to understand that "real" people reside in public housing. Additionally, although respondents claim to be socially isolated from others in their development, they also state that they feel as though there are social benefits to living in a mixed community. The research presented in this work makes a contribution to the growing body of literature concerning public housing in the United States as it focuses on only employed residents of public housing while most other studies treat all public housing residents as a homogenous group. Additionally, information gathered from the employed respondents can be utilized to offer a critique of the public housing policies associated with the City of New York

An apparatus to measure frictional, inelastic, and viscous behavior in ice at temperate and planetary conditions

In this paper, we describe a cryogenic, servo-controlled biaxial friction apparatus designed to measure the deformational behaviors of ice. The apparatus is specifically designed to accurately achieve and measure the low differential stresses applicable to deforming ice on earth and on icy satellites. We can apply loads in the range ∼2–1800 kPa and velocities up to 4 mm/s, with resolution of 39 Pa and 0.7 μm, respectively. Precise temperature control, measurement, and insulation allow testing at constant temperature (from −2 to −30 °C) for prolonged periods of time. The apparatus is tested with various plastics as well as with polycrystalline ice samples and the results are consistent with previously published values. Critical components of the instrument are described along with examples of data collection schemes and preliminary results. The flexibility of the design allows for both glaciological and planetary applications over a range of deformational behaviors including friction, anelastic, and viscous

Surviving in Ocean Worlds: Experimental Characterization of Fiber Optic Tethers across Europa-like Ice Faults and Unraveling the Sliding Behavior of Ice

As an initial step toward in situ exploration of the interiors of Ocean Worlds to search for life using cryobot architectures, we test how various communication tethers behave under potential Europa-like stress conditions. By freezing two types of pretensioned insulated fiber optic cables inside ice blocks, we simulate tethers being refrozen in a probe’s wake as it traverses through an Ocean World’s ice shell. Using a cryogenic biaxial apparatus, we simulate shear motion on preexisting faults at various velocities and temperatures. These shear tests are used to evaluate the mechanical behavior of ice, characterize the behavior of communication tethers, and explore their limitations for deployment by a melt probe. We determine (a) the maximum shear stress tethers can sustain from an ice fault, prior to failure (viable/unviable regimes for deployment), and (b) optical tether performance for communications. We find that these tethers are fairly robust across a range of temperature and velocity conditions expected on Europa ( T = 95–260 K, velocity = 5 × 10 ^−7 m s ^−1 to 3 × 10 ^−4 m s ^−1 ). However, damage to the outer jackets of the tethers and stretching of inner fibers at the coldest temperatures tested both indicate a need for further tether prototype development. Overall, these studies constrain the behavior of optical tethers for use at Ocean Worlds, improve the ability to probe thermomechanical properties of dynamic ice shells likely to be encountered by landed missions, and guide future technology development for accessing the interiors of (potentially habitable ± inhabited) Ocean Worlds