Showing 361 - 370 of 583 Items
From “a Journey for Peace” to the “Butchers of Beijing”: How Presidents have Used Rhetoric about China to Win the Two-Level Game
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Juliet Halvorson-Taylor
Access: Open access
- This thesis is an exploration of how American presidents have used rhetoric for strategic ends in the US-China relationship. Whenever a president speaks, he is speaking to multiple audiences at the same time, yet he also must balance a number of important considerations. I used Robert Putnam’s “Two-Level Game Theory” as a framework for understanding the conditions surrounding a moment of significance in US-China relations in order to decipher a president’s rhetorical choices. The project is divided into five main parts. First, I used the UCSB American Presidency Project to identify broad trends in rhetoric towards China across presidencies. I found that every president has spoken more about China than his predecessor since the 1980s and that presidents are increasingly using negative rhetoric when talking about China. Then, I conducted three case studies, within the Putnam framework, on important points in three presidencies: Truman’s decision to withdraw aid from the KMT, Nixon’s visit to China, and Clinton’s reversal on the issue of MFN status for China. Lastly, I concluded that when “win-sets” on both sides (in these examples: on both the American and Chinese sides) are either large or small, a president should speak about China more frequently. I also looked at Trump’s presidency and the beginnings of Biden’s in order to see how these trends are playing out currently.
Effects of Alkalinity and Ocean Acidification on Clam Shell Development in Phippsburg, ME
Date: 2014-08-01
Creator: Bailey Moritz
Access: Open access
- With increased CO2 in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, more is absorbed into the surface ocean, causing a reaction that leads to lower pH. This process is known as ocean acidification, which has raised global concern. Over the past decade, the clam flat near Head Beach in Phippsburg has been reduced to approximately a sixth of its former productive area. The town of Phippsburg allots money every spring to seed the clam flat with juvenile soft-shell clams (Mya arenaria) in order to support the local clamming economy, but the clams are no longer growing in much of the mud flat. A possible explanation for this loss is acidification. In order to understand if ocean acidification is the cause, I collected water samples from the mud to test for alkalinity along a transect of 5 sites spanning productive and non-productive areas of the flat. Alkalinity is a measurement of the waters ability to buffer pH changes. Lower alkalinity could mean that clams would have more difficulty forming their calcium carbonate shells due to dissolution in low pH waters. Combined with the pH measurements gathered by my peer, Lloyd Anderson ‘16, we were able to calculate aragonite saturation state. Water with a saturation state below 1 is capable of dissolving calcium carbonate (aragonite) shells. A large portion of this research project was figuring out the best methodology to use for collecting data on the clam flat. The tested water needs to represent that which the clams are actually using while they are embedded in the mud. Additionally, juvenile clams only live in the upper centimeter or so of sediment. We followed methodologies used in past studies in Maine (Green et al 2013). Three pore water samples from each site were extracted and brought back to the lab to be filtered on 7 separate days throughout July. We began sampling 2 hours prior to low tide. I determined alkalinity using an automated titration system. Average alkalinity ranged from 2200-2500 μeq/kg. The results indicated that there was not a significant difference or pattern in alkalinity or saturation state between productive and unproductive areas of the clam flat (Fig. 1). Error bars in the figure represent variability at each site over the entire study period, while analytical reproducibility was ± 9.04 μeq/L. Large changes were observed merely from one day to another. Coastal ecosystems are complex and variations such as time of day, temperature, or productivity may have influences on the porewater characteristics (Duarte 2013). While ocean acidification does not appear to be the primary driving force behind the clams’ decline at this location, the saturation state was consistently quite low ( Final Report of research funded by the Rusack Coastal Studies Fellowship.
“How the World Could Be in Spite of the Way That It Is”: Broadway as a Reflection of Contemporary American Sociopolitical Life
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Isabel Thomas
Access: Open access
- Drawing on the plays and musicals of the 2018-2019 Broadway season, this thesis examines how theatre responds to the sociocultural, economic, and political conditions of society. Sociologists have largely overlooked theatre’s cultural influence, but Broadway productions act as social reflection by reproducing the conversations and inequalities of their context. Access to Broadway is limited, in various manners, by socioeconomic class, race, gender, ability, and age. As conversations about equity expand and audiences increasingly demand diversified representation, Broadway begins to shed the restraints of its conventions. In many regards, the recent changes fail in meaningfully transforming the Broadway institution. Those who control the stories on Broadway stages—producers, directors, writers—are disproportionately white and men, and the stories themselves predominantly uphold white privilege and heteronormativity. Economic pressures keep Broadway producers focused on high profit and cultural capital, at the expense of artistic and political risk. Broadway has particular affective power, employing the uniquely provocative effect of live theatre for unparalleled numbers of people. This influence is accompanied by responsibility to contribute to society’s progress rather than its stagnation, a responsibility which Broadway falls behind in fulfilling.
Advanced Mammals Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Emma Bezilla
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Human Today, Posthuman Tomorrow in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Benjamin Bousquet
Access: Open access
- Human Today, Posthuman Tomorrow explores the relationship between the human and the nonhuman in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy through the lens of posthuman theory. Atwood’s trilogy depicts a dystopian, anthropocentric world that hinges upon an apocalyptic, man-made epidemic known as the Waterless Flood. Through posthuman theory, this thesis looks at ways to reconcile the oppositional and hierarchical relationship between the human and the nonhuman. The thesis is split into three main chapters, each of which engages a different posthuman theory. The first chapter addresses the concept of hybridity as it is elaborated by Rosi Braidotti’s The Posthuman. Next, the thesis turns to Donna Haraway’s “The Companion Species Manifesto” to address the ways human-animal relations in the trilogy are imagined as mutual and non-hierarchical. The last chapter turns to the pigoon/human relationship through Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of becoming to understand the ways in which humans and pigoons build a new, non-oppositional relationship. In all, this thesis works to understand the stakes of the trilogy through posthumanism to argue that only through a posthuman understanding of the world are we able to erode oppositional differences between humans and nonhumans and create a future inhabitable for all.
Cell Adhesion in Arabidopsis thaliana Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Natasha Ann Belsky
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Investigating the Effects of Climatic Change and Fire Dynamics on Peatland Carbon Accumulation in Coastal Labrador, Canada
Date: 2014-08-01
Creator: Anna Hall
Access: Open access
- High-latitude peatlands store a large stock of carbon in accumulated belowground biomass, estimated at 500 ± 100 Gt C (Yu 2012). For comparison, the atmospheric C pool is estimated at about 775 Gt (IPCC 2007) making the peatland carbon pool a potentially significant player in the global carbon cycle. Peatland carbon storage is controlled by a balance between plant productivity and decomposition, with plant matter produced during the summer months accumulating from year to year rather than fully decomposing. Peatlands are sensitive to changes in climatic regime and have the potential to shift from a net sink of atmospheric C to a net source of C with future disturbance by climate warming (Yu 2012).There are two major predictions as to how climate change could affect peatland C accumulation. Warmer temperatures could cause faster decomposition of plant biomass and lead to C release to the atmosphere and a positive feedback effect on climate change (Schuur et al. 2008). If this is the case, current warming trends suggest that peatlands could release up to 100 Gt C to the atmosphere by the year 2100 (Davidson and Janssens 2006). Alternatively, warmer summer temperatures and a longer growing season could lead to faster peat production and therefore CO2 drawdown from the atmosphere, somewhat mitigating the effects of climate change (Schuur et al. 2008). A detailed study of past C accumulation rates over a known historical warm period gives insight into how peatlands may respond to future climate warming. This project focuses on C accumulation in peatlands in Labrador, Canada, over the past 8,000 years. Because Canadian peatlands store approximately 150 Gt C, approximately 1/3 of the global peatland carbon pool, it is important to understand how the dynamics of these peatlands could be affected by present and future climate warming (Tarnocai 2006). However, the majority of research has focused on central Canada, leaving significant knowledge gaps surrounding coastal Eastern Canada (vanBellen et al. 2012). Particular emphasis in this study was given to the Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM) which occurred from 4-6 thousand years ago in Labrador, when summer temperatures were 0.5 – 1°C warmer than at present (Kerwin et al. 2004). This study also attempts to determine the effect of fires on rates of C storage in these peatlands. Lightning-ignited peat fires have the potential to consume stored biomass and release significant CO2 to the atmosphere (Tarnocai 2006). Six peat cores (out of a total of 14 collected in Labrador in 2013) were used for this study. Throughout the following year, calibrated radiocarbon dates, bulk density, and percent carbon were used to calculate carbon accumulation rates. This summer, areal charcoal concentration (a measure of macroscopic charcoal used as a proxy for fire severity) was used to determine the influence of fires in this region. From 8,000 years ago to the present, rates of C accumulation averaged 23.1 ± 6.7 gC m-2 yr-1. Accumulation rates were highest during the HTM, averaging 29.6 ± 2.4 g C m-2 yr-1. Samples containing macroscopic charcoal had an average concentration of 0.62 mm2 cm-3 with a maximum concentration found of 3.51 mm2 cm-3. These consistently low charcoal concentrations indicate that fire was neither common nor severe in Labrador peatlands. While Kuhry (1994) and Payette et al. (2012) found that fires in Canada occurred twice as frequently during the HTM than at present, no trends in fire severity were found in these cores, and there was no evidence that fires had a significant influence on C accumulation. Therefore, the C accumulation trend we see in Labrador is not controlled by fire and is likely either a direct result of temperature variation or of vegetational and hydrological shifts caused by changes in climate. This work supports a growing body of evidence from high latitude peatlands suggesting that future warming conditions could lead to increased soil C sequestration. Final Report of research funded by the Freedman Coastal Studies Fellowship.
Honors Projects
- The honors project offers seniors the opportunity to engage in original scholarship under the supervision of a faculty member in their major department or program and results in a written thesis and/or oral defense, artistic performance or showing, depending on the student’s field of study.
Mythologies modernes : à la recherche des écrivaines dans la capitale littéraire de Paris de l’entre-deux-guerres This record is embargoed.
- Embargo End Date: 2029-05-16
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Stephanie Ruth McCurrach
Access: Embargoed
Reactions Responsible for Aging in Wood-Based Pyrolysis Oil: Synthesis and Characterization of a Coniferyl Alcohol Dimer
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Alejandro Garcia
Access: Open access
- The negative environmental impact and the diminishing supply of fossil fuels demand a renewable alternative. Pyrolysis oils produced from the decomposition of biomass, like wood, are a potential fuel substitute for energy production and a feedstock alternative for manufacturing value-added chemicals. The possibilities offered by pyrolysis oils are offset by oil instability. The oils contain reactive compounds, such as small aldehydes, conjugated aromatics, and acids that over time react and produce higher molecular mass products. This instability manifests as an increase in viscosity by a process referred to as aging. One chemical component, coniferyl alcohol, is proposed to react with formaldehyde under the acidic oil conditions to produce a dimer. In our lab, researchers have detected the coniferyl alcohol dimer in authentic oil samples and have simulated the reaction under conditions that removes the complexity of the pyrolysis oil matrix. This study focused on the synthesis, isolation, and characterization of the dimer structure by employing NMR analysis. GC/MS analysis of a successful synthesis of the dimer showed multiple dimers were produced, but there was one principal product. The NMR analysis of this dimer was used to elucidate the geometry, providing evidence that the product has E stereochemistry for the double bond and trans stereochemistry in the acetal ring. Confirmation of the principal structure provides support for the dimerization mechanism and will allow for future research to address instability of pyrolysis oils.