Creating Community: Examining Black Identity and Space in New Guinea, Nantucket

In the late 18th century, the abolition of slavery through manumission initiated a period of enormous change in the lives of people of African descent living on Nantucket, MA. Newly free, people of color living on the island immediately began to establish families and purchase property. At the end of the 1700s, they founded the community of New Guinea, located on the southwestern edge of the town of Nantucket. Though enslavement had been abolished and the whaling industry brought economic opportunity to Nantucket, the people of New Guinea continued to experience evolving forms of racial inequality, discrimination, and violence. To better understand New Guinea as a free Black community, this research examined deed records, census records, and maps from 1750-1850, bringing together spatial, locational, and demographic data utilizing GIS. These data demonstrated how the embrace of a Black identity and the creation of community space on Nantucket were essential to the formation and persistence of New Guinea. Community space and Black identity also became critical tools in facilitating Black resistance, survival, and empowerment on Nantucket

The Mended Heart is the Strongest

The Mended Heart is the Strongest A poem accompanied by an original illustration from the same author

Determinants of the carbon footprint of German swimmers

The current climate situation is placing our planet and future generations at risk, which demonstrates the urgency to combat climate change and conduct research to support this effort. Calculating the carbon footprint of active sport participation represents an important opportunity to conduct additional research. This study examined the environmental attitudes and practices of swim club members in Germany. The study had three goals: First, to calculate the total and partial carbon footprint of German swimmers; second, to understand how sport organizations induce participants to engage in pro-environmental behavior; and third, to analyze various factors associated with carbon footprint, such as age, environmental consciousness, gender, level of education, income, and famous athlete’s environmental behavior. An online questionnaire was conducted, which led to 470 complete responses of German swim club members, between the ages of five and 76. The results of this study showed that a club’s environmental practices increase athletes\u27 internalization of the club’s values. Once this internalization takes place, athletes are likely to adapt their environmental attitudes to align with the club’s values, but not their behavior. Results also indicate that age, environmental consciousness, gender, and educational level influence environmental attitudes. The individual’s income had no effect. These results advance the research on environmental impacts of sport, particularly by focusing on active sport participants of all ages, including child participants, and considering the influence of pro-environmental behavior of swim clubs on the environmental practices and attitudes of their athletes. The results of this study may be used to incentivize sport clubs to adopt environmentally sutainable [sic] practices as a means of influencing the attitudes of their athletes, with a view of ultimately creating positive change

Shuttle Performance Augmentationwith the Titan Liquid Boost Module

The projected 24000 pound payload lift capability for the baseline Space Shuttle, with anticipated arbiter and external tank weight savings programs implemented, will not meet the 32000 pound payload requirements for the DOD Mission 4 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, NASA has selected the Titan Liquid Boost Module (LBM) to provide thrust augmentation during the boost phase sufficient to meet and provide margin for the defined Mission 4 requirements. The LBM will use Titan 34D Stage I engines and a cluster of four Titan derived 10 foot diameter tanks. The module will be attached to the aft end of the ET. This paper will provide a description of the LBM and discuss some of its advantages and capabilities

Towards an Agile Biodigital Architecture: Supporting a Dynamic Evolutionary and Developmental View of Architecture

Architecture and biology are fields of high complexity. Generative design approaches provide access to continuously increasing complexity in design. Some of these methods are based on biological principles but usually do not communicate the conceptual base necessary to appropriately reflect the input from biology into architecture. To address this, we propose a model for analysis and design of architecture based on a multistaged integrated design process that extends the common morphological process in digital morphogenesis with a typology-based ontological model. Biomimetics, an emerging field to strategically search for information transfer from biology to technological application, will assist in delivering a frame of reference and methodology for establishing valid analogies between the different realms as well as integration of the biological concept into a larger framework of analogy to biological processes. As the biomimetic translation of process and systems information promises more radical innovation, this chapter focuses on the dynamic perspectives provided by biological development and evolution to model the complexity of architecture. The proposed process was used to inform five parallel workshops to explore dynamic biological concepts in design. The potential of the process to investigate biomimetic processes in architecture is then discussed, and future work is outlined