The holy grail of pure Wissenschaft: University ideal and university reform in post World War II Germany

Pepin, Craig Kristian Duke University 2001 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

After 1945, German university professors drew on traditional university ideals of apolitical science and individual self-cultivation (<italic>Bildung </italic>) to deny the involvement of their scholarship, and the universities, with National Socialism. These traditional university values furnished both the cognitive categories and the discursive strategies through which professors constructed an exculpatory interpretation of the recent past. They based this exonerating narrative on a rigid conceptual separation between “political” Nazism and “objective” scholarship, and a focus on spiritual and cultural renewal. On an individual level, these discursive strategies allowed academics to claim that during the Nazi period they had focused purely on their research and remained separate from politics and Nazism. By “proving” the scholarly nature of their work, they could then escape punishment in the denazification courts. Professors also reemphasized the individual character of self-cultivation by claiming that individual spiritual renewal, an internal rededication to traditional university ideals, offered the best response to Nazism in the universities. Such a move displaced questions of university reform from an institutional to an individual level, and effectively blocked administrative or structural change. This in turn reinforced the traditional power of senior professors within the universities, ensuring their position as privileged interpreters of the past. The reassertion of traditional power relationships allowed professors to perpetuate this exculpatory narrative and marginalize those who offered competing, more negative interpretations of the universities' recent past. The first part of the dissertation establishes the context in which this discourse was articulated by examining the German philosophy of higher education in the Weimar and Nazi eras, the changes in higher education imposed by the Nazis, and the American approach to occupation and reeducation. The remainder uses both published and archival material to examine the arguments used by German academics in denazification court trials, administrative meetings, and public venues to defend themselves as individuals, and to defend the institutions of the German university.

Natural history of monitor lizards (family Varanidae) with evidence from phylogeny, ecology, life history and morphology

Pepin, David Jon Washington University 2001 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

The causes of variation in life histories are a central theme in evolutionary biology. In this thesis, hypotheses regarding variation in morphology and life histories are tested using phylogenetic relationships among monitor lizards (genus <italic>Varanus</italic>). Monitor lizards (Family Varanidae) are a group of 50 species that possess variation in morphology, life-history traits, and ecology. The phylogeny for 37 species of monitor lizards and their closest outgroups are inferred from mitochondrial DNA sequence data. The influence of allometry on life-history traits is explored to understand the relationship between variation in life-history traits and in body size. Trade-offs between life-history traits are tested to see if variation in these traits coevolves independent of body size. It is predicted that a trade-off between clutch number and hatchling size should be found among monitor species. Morphological variation independent of size (shape) should be related with habitat use (ecomorphology). Then, in turn, it is predicted that similarities in morphology and ecology should lead to predictable life-history strategies. The use of phylogeny is crucial to conduct rigorous tests of these hypotheses and to understand how different traits evolved in relationship to each other, the environment and common ancestry through the history of the lineage. Understanding the relationship between life-history variation and morphology, specifically body size, in monitor lizards will greatly enhance our knowledge of life-history evolution.

Essays in Public Economics

Pepin, Gabrielle Michigan State University ProQuest Dissertations & 2020 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

This dissertation consists of two empirical studies in public and labor economics. In the first chapter, I estimate the effects of the Child and Dependent Care Credit (CDCC) on paid child care participation and parents’ labor market outcomes. In the second chapter, I estimate the effects of time limits in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program on access to financial resources as proxied by welfare use, labor supply, income, and participation in other safety net programs.I: The Effects of Child Care Subsidies on Paid Child Care Participation and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Child and Dependent Care CreditThe Child and Dependent Care Credit (CDCC), a tax credit based on taxpayers’ income and child care expenses, reduces families’ child care costs. The nonrefundable federal CDCC is available to working families with children younger than 13 years old in all states, and nearly half of states supplement the federal credit with their own child care credits. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act expanded the federal CDCC in 2003, and this led to differential increases in CDCC generosity across states and family sizes. I document CDCC eligibility and expenditures over time and across income and demographic groups. Using data from the March Current Population Survey, I find that a 10 percent increase in CDCC benefits increases annual paid child care participation by five percent among households with children younger than 13 years old. I also find that CDCC benefits increase labor supply among married mothers. Increases in labor supply among married mothers with very young children suggest that CDCC benefits may generate long-run earnings gains.II: The Effects of Welfare Time Limits on Access to Financial Resources: Evidence from the 2010sThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 established the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program within the United States. TANF mandated 60-month lifetime time limits for federal cash assistance dollars. Because states reserve the right to set their own stricter or more generous time limits, the 60-month lifetime limit did not bind in many cases. In recent years, however, several states imposed TANF time limits for the first time or made existing time limits more stringent. Using administrative and survey data, I find that stricter time limits decrease annual TANF participation by 24 percent and annual transfer income by four percent. Consistent with binding TANF work requirements and increases in employment among those on the welfare caseload, stricter time limits tend to decrease employment and earnings among single mothers in states without generous TANF programs at baseline. Decreased TANF generosity diminishes these families’ access to financial resources.

On the use of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar for Characterizing the Response of Reservoirs to Fluid Extraction and Injection at Wells

Pepin, Karissa Suzanne ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Stanford Universit 2022 해외박사(DDOD)

소속기관이 구독 중이 아닌 경우 오후 4시부터 익일 오전 9시까지 원문보기가 가능합니다.

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is a powerful tool used to measure displacements of the Earth's surface over expansive areas and with high temporal (6-24 days) and spatial (5-20 m) resolution. One important application is the management of natural resources and hazards related to the injection and production of fluids. Ground deformation begins within the reservoir as a response to changes in fluid pressure, and propagates to the surface as either subsidence (ground sinking) or uplift. This deformation can damage infrastructure, produce ground fissures, induce earthquakes, and affect fluid availability. InSAR can be used to identify these hazards and characterize the reservoir response to well activity, knowledge which can be used to develop tailored management practices. However, our analyses are only as good as the data we work with.We first identify and characterize an overlooked error source in InSAR and its derived time series: aliasing during 2D phase unwrapping. Phase unwrapping refers to the process of transforming the InSAR measurement -- the phase difference between two satellite passes, wrapped to a 2π ambiguity -- to the absolute phase relative to a reference point. We show that aliasing occurs when we do not adequately sample the true displacement field, resulting in a reconstructed (unwrapped) phase field that is different than the true signal. Our work demonstrates the condition that lead to aliasing, namely, when true phase gradients greater than π radians form a closed loop. Importantly, aliasing results in a biased magnitude-loss that is proportional to the number of high-gradient (> π) loops encircling the pixel. Given a displacement field, the occurrence of a high-gradient loop in an interferogram is influenced by the radar system wavelength, spatial resolution, imaging geometry, and the local noise level. Furthermore, spatial filtering may induce aliasing because it decreases the spatial resolution and, consequently, the physical gradient tolerance.We then extend our findings on aliasing to the effects of including aliased images in small-baseline subset (SBAS) time series generation. We find that aliasing has an intimate relationship with the time between image acquisitions forming a given interferogram (the temporal baseline). Often, aliasing errors increase with increasing temporal baseline, so we observe a systematic decreases in SBAS solution magnitudes and a spatiotemporal distortion of displacement patterns as we increase the maximum temporal baseline used in our calculations. However, Sentinel-1 observations in three study areas (Kilauea Volcano, HI, the Delaware Basin, TX, and California's Central Valley) highlight that some of the best time series solutions with respect to ground-truth include long-temporal baseline interferograms and others require their explicit exclusion. This indicates that the best set of phases to use in SBAS not only varies between study areas, but may even be unique to each pixel.Next we present a case study of reservoir characterization with InSAR in the Delaware Basin, TX, an expansive oil field in the Permian Basin. The motivation for our analysis is a marked increase in earthquake frequency since a revitalization of oil pumping in 2010 with horizontal wells. Our work shows widespread deformation related to oil and gas activity, some of which can be directly related to volume changes from pumping and injection through the correlation of InSAR time series with monthly well volumes. Deformation primarily due to volume change near wells is prevalent in the northern portion basin, where there is a notable absence of earthquake activity. However, the southeastern portion of the basin displays short-wavelength, curvilinear displacement features that do not correlate temporally or spatially with well locations or activity in any obvious way. Rather, these features are spatially correlated with trends in seismicity and the local stress conditions, which indicates that they may be the surface expression of slip on normal faults. We use analytic models of edge dislocations to test this hypothesis in a small study area. Our final three-fault, patched model reproduces the spatial patterns and magnitude of the main linear feature in both vertical and east-west horizontal displacement components. All three faults are high-angle (75◦) and span the Delaware Mountain group (1000-2000 m depth).Two of the faults dip toward one another in a graben structure, matching the characteristics of a recentlyidentified larger graben network in the surrounding region. The areas of largest fault slip (up to 23 cm) are spatially correlated with nearby disposal wells, linking shallow wastewater injection to the reactivation of pre-existing faults. Though all fault planes contain the largest earthquakes in the study area, our analysis indicates that the fault slip is largely aseismic (stable), which will be an important mechanism to consider in modeling if we are to better understand induced earthquakes in the Delaware Basin.