ACCESS TO URBAN FOOD OUTLETS AS A PREDICTOR OF DIABETES
Author:
Philippe Amstislavski
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Background and problem statement:There is an unprecedented rise in diabetes in urban populations worldwide. A relationship between spatial concentration of other metabolic diseases and poor access to healthy foods in some underserved urban neighborhoods have been reported. Concurrently, a relationship between increased risk of developing diabetes and consumption of unhealthy foods and has been shown to exist. Neighborhood food contexts hypothesized to lead to developing diabetes need to be studied.
West Side Stories: Everyday Life and the social space of West Forty-Sixth Street
Author:
Christian Anderson
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
This is an ethnographic study of macro-structural change from the vantage point of everyday life on a few blocks of a single street in the Hell's Kitchen/Clinton neighborhood of New York City. The study tells stories from daily life on several blocks of West Forty-Sixth Street between Eighth Avenue and the Hudson River as documented over three years of close observation. These stories show how the actions of some residents serve to lubricate outcomes like privatization, rising housing costs, discriminatory policing, displacement, and eviction. These outcomes then negatively affect others who have less power--particularly undocumented migrants, the elderly, the poor, and people of color. This finding is complicated by the fact that people here are not acting malevolently, but more often than not out of well-intentioned common sense ideas about community, quality of life, and progress. What this means, I contend, is that processes like gentrification, neoliberalization, and inequitable urban development are not simply imposed from outside by macro forces such as real estate capital or top-down urban policy. I argue that these processes are also deeply contingent on everyday life--on the daily actions, ideas, and subjectivities of ordinary people in places such as West Forty-Sixth--which act as a kind of social infrastructure. This situation presents a mash-up of spatial, political, and structural questions about hegemony and power that span the intimate and the global in scope while complicating existing understandings of urban space and everyday life.
Public Market to La Marqueta: Shaping Spaces and Subjects of Food Distribution in New York City, 1930-2012
Author:
Anne Babette Audant
Year of Dissertation:
2013
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
From Public Market to La Marqueta: Shaping Spaces and Subjects of Food Distribution in New York City, 1930 to 2012
And Then the Neighborhood Changed: Jewish Intra-Urban Migration and Racial Identity in the Bronx, NY
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Advisor:
Marianna Pavlovskaya
The major research goal is to explain the causes of urban Jewish migration from the West Bronx to Riverdale and determine how it impacted their racial identity. I ask the following questions: Why did Jews leave the West Bronx? Why did they move to Riverdale? How did moving between these places affect the racial identity of Jews?
Cryospheric Teleconnections: The Response of Northern Hemisphere Snow to the Atmospheric and Arctic Sea Ice Variations
Year of Dissertation:
2011
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
The primary focus of this dissertation is the land-surface snow cover, which plays a significant role in modulating the earth's surface energy balance. It is an indicator of climatic variations as well as a part of the earth's system of feedback mechanisms that control the climate. The main goal of the thesis is to contribute to our understanding of the factors causing variations in snow. In order to fulfill this goal, specific objectives are formulated with a particular focus on an under-utilized snow pack metric, i.e. the snow depth. These objectives include the spatially robust explanation of climate-driven North American snow depth variability as well as the investigation of any evidence of a climate change signal and/or Arctic sea ice loss signal in the Northern Hemisphere snow cover record.
Tiebout Sorting and Jurisdictional Homogeneity: Empirical Validity and Ethical Implications
Year of Dissertation:
2011
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
In a seminal paper, Tiebout (1956) argues that a large number of small local governments will function as a market in local services, leading to efficient allocation of local public goods. This result only obtains if households actually move in response to local fiscal differences. Spatial dependence of socioeconomic variables confounds attempts to infer Tiebout-motivated residential choice from observed socioeconomic homogeneity. I correct for this by focusing on socioeconomic difference across local government borders. In an investigation of socioeconomic sorting in Queens and Nassau Counties, NY, I find strong evidence of income sorting at the level of small suburban municipalities and of racial sorting across school districts. There is no evidence of income sorting across school districts, which I attribute to NYS school districts' lack of control over zoning.
BIODEGRADATION OF FUEL OXYGENATES IN NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES AQUIFERS WITH AN ANALYSIS OF UNDERGROUND STORAGE TANK LEAKS
Author:
Gordon Hinshalwood
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Abstract
The Work of the Urban Commons: Limited-Equity Cooperatives in Washington, D.C.
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Advisor:
Marianna Pavlovskaya
This research theorizes the work of the urban commons through close examination of a group of ten limited-equity housing cooperatives in Washington, D.C. Limited-equity co-ops, or LECs, are a noncommodified resource that is collectively owned and maintained by their members. I argue that LECs are a manifestation of the commons, and that they represent a specific form of the commons - the urban commons. In this research, I ask: how does the urban commons - as manifested in this case by limited-equity housing cooperatives - function? The commons, as I theorize it, is a space that both provides a basis for life outside of (or at least less dictated by) capitalism, and that requires collective work to build and maintain. The commons, Peter Linebaugh (2008) argues, is constituted through commoning - the many overlapping practices of being-in-common that allow for a collective approach to life. The urban commons, I argue, is constituted through work, and future theorizing and action around the commons needs to take work seriously.
SYSTEMATICS ON VIAPHACOPS MAXIMOVA, 1972 FROM BOLIVIA AND PALEOBIOGEOGRAPHY OF THE SUBFAMILY PHACOPINAE HAWLE & CORDA, 1847 FOR THE LOWER AND MIDDLE DEVONIAN, WITH A PARTICULAR EMPHASIS ON THE GENUS PACIPHACOPS MAXIMOVA, 1972
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
The Subfamily Phacopinae Hawle & Corda, 1847 occurs stratigraphically from the Upper Ordovician to the end of the Devonian, spanning an approximately 85 million year interval. Its global distribution allowed extensive studies and a number of monographs have been published since the mid-1800s. The first chapter analyzes Viaphacops Maximova, 1972 which is one of the genera occurring in the Lower to Middle Devonian. New material from Bolivia enabled three new species (Viaphacops spinoedgecombei, V. newelli, and V. pirovanoi) and two in open nomenclature to be described here, in addition to the four described previously. With the examination of these species, the generic diagnosis of Viaphacops is revised. Cladistic analysis was conducted for the Bolivian Viaphacops together with 8 North American species to test their monophyletic relationship. It is found that two geographically separate groups Viaphacops, those from North America and those from the Malvinokaffric Realm in Bolivia, are non-monophyletic (Bolivian species either being a basal grade or nesting in otherwise North American clades), and that the difference in environmental settings for these regions did not seem to have affected the developmental constraints of the species. The second chapter treats the phacopid biogeography for the Lower and Middle Devonian, and follows the model of rugose coral biogeography of Pedder and Oliver (1990). More than 300 species belonging to 32 established genera were analyzed. Otsuka, Dice, and Jaccard Coefficient faunal similarity indices at the generic level were used for the 15 phacopid biogeographic units. Together with an area cladogram of Paciphacops, Maximova, 1972, strong connection was established between southeastern Australia and Bolivia-Argentina by the circumpolar circulation within southern Panthalassa. The position of Kazakhstan is still unresolved, however, both Otsuka Coefficients and the Paciphacops area cladogram show its connection with Australia and South America.
Fate, Reaction and Transport of Groundwater Arsenic during Discharge to Waquoit Bay, USA and Meghna River, Bangladesh
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Program:
Earth & Environmental Sciences
A field, laboratory, and modeling study of As in groundwater discharging to Waquoit Bay, MA, shed light on coupled control of chemistry and hydrology on reactive transport of As in a coastal aquifer. Precipitation of Fe(III) oxides, along with oxidation and adsorption of As occur at the redox interfaces above or below the reducing plume migrating toward the bay. Batch adsorption of As(III) onto orange, brown and gray sediments follows Langmuir isotherms, and can be fitted by a surface complexation model (SCM) assuming a diffuse double layer for ferrihydrite. The SCM simulated the observed dissolved As concentration better than a parametric approach based on Kd.