Seeking Equilibrium: Exploring Environmental Sustainability and Decision Making in Higher Education

Smiley Smith, Sara Elizabeth Yale University 2016 해외박사(DDOD)

While the term environmental sustainability is widely popular and ostensibly modern, the ideas embodied by this fluid concept are as old as human society. History has repeatedly demonstrated that when communities fail to find a balance between extracting the resources needed to live and promoting the continued healthful function of natural systems, they suffer serious consequences. Examples of this can be seen in fishery collapse, agricultural catastrophe, and chemical mismanagement where human behavior ran unchecked until ecosystems were too stressed to provide the services humans depended on. Themes in historical examples include a difficulty in understanding decision consequences, conflicting values, challenged long term thinking, and struggles to effectively use knowledge. Understanding how to encourage today's decision makers to embrace sustainability as a core value in their decision making process can help to shift the drive for healthy human systems toward greater balance, or equilibrium, with the need for environmental well being. Institutions of higher learning have been early actors in this arena, working to improve the sustainability of their operations while training future leaders. These institutions are making changes to better manage ubiquitous human systems including those for waste management and energy production, and the lessons gleaned in these settings are relevant far beyond campus borders. Institutions of higher learning provide ideal study sites to examine how the expression of sustainability influenced values, held by actors and by the institutions themselves, impact the decision making process. This work explores four cases in three topical areas at Yale University: food, transportation and energy. The first case presents a study of the transition from a campus dining system in which food waste was discarded in wastewater and Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), to one boasting a food waste composting program. The second case focuses on the decision to shift from traditional diesel to a biodiesel blended fuel in campus shuttle busses. The third case explores efforts to influence individual commuting decisions to and from campus. Finally, the fourth case details the process of reaching a decision to make a public greenhouse gas reduction commitment. Each of these cases exposes a diversity of variables that interrelate in an evolving fashion. As values change, priorities shift, and actors enter and exit, the relationships between all components of a decision making system adjust. The decision making processes described in each of these cases can be partially explained through the use of theory and literature from fields including the policy sciences, problem definition, and innovation diffusion, among others. Building from this foundation, this work highlighted 18 variables that were expressed as having low, medium or high influence in each case. These variables were organized into four focal groups: Context, Knowledge, Participation and Process. Across the four cases, an increase in the prevalence of high influence variables was found when moving from the simple case of converting to biodiesel fuel to the highly complex example found in shifting to a compost system. A continuum of increasing decision complexity emerged. While the number of high influence variables increased across the continuum, distinct variables demonstrated variability. This analysis found seven key variables, a majority of which fell into the Process group, that were identified as being highly relevant for future sustainability influenced decision making. Understanding organizational structure and having system knowledge were important in navigating decision making in complex institutions. Agenda setting enabled decision makers to provide leadership by understanding who the players were and what motivated them, and using that knowledge to set institutional priorities around sustainability. As the need for behavior change increased, so too did the complexity of decision making overall. Cultural shifts and risk taking demonstrated that having a community understanding of what sustainability is provided support for decision makers, as did acceptance of thoughtful experimentation. Finally, problem definition involvement enabled actors to skillfully communicate that sustainability was enmeshed throughout institutional work. Many of these variables were found in the Process group, underscoring the importance of understanding the functional units of how decision making happens at an institution. Those seeking to improve the impact of sustainability influenced decision making can use this list of key variables to guide their efforts, helping target their focus and enable them to avoid common pitfalls. This work represents the experience at Yale University, and can be strengthened through further verification in other institutional settings.

A multivariate multilevel discrete-time hazard model for familial aggregation and co-aggregation of psychiatric disorders

Stolar, Marilyn Jane Yale University 2003 해외박사(DDOD)

The familial aggregation and comorbidity of psychiatric disorders is a public health concern studied by psychiatric epidemiologists. Offspring of affected parents are at elevated risk for psychopathology due to familial liability as well as individual liability for disorder. Childhood and adolescent psychopathology and its relationship with the onset and progression of substance use is an especially important issue. Children are appropriate targets of interventions to mitigate disorder onset and the severity of its course. Longitudinal studies of high-risk offspring elucidate the distribution, etiology and course of early-onset psychiatric disorders to inform intervention and prevention. Many statistical models for familial aggregation have appeared in the genetic epidemiology and family study literature. Our aim in this manuscript is to offer a conceptualization of familial aggregation that differentiates variation in familial clustering from that of familial risk, and to develop a multilevel model that operationalizes this approach. Because the outcome of our analysis is the disease status of children who are observed until different ages and thus different points in the period of risk, we use a hazard model. We apply our model to family study data collected by Dr. Kathleen Merikangas of the Genetic Epidemiology Research Unit at Yale University. The Yale Family Study high-risk component examined 203 children of 124 proband parents. Probands were ascertained from clinics and from the New Haven CT community as affected with anxiety and/or substance-related disorders or as healthy controls. To analyze clustered duration data for patterns of familial aggregation and comorbidity, we propose a multivariate multilevel discrete-time hazard model. We apply the model to the reported ages of onset of anxiety disorder and alcohol use in the high-risk sample. We choose these outcomes and a set of related risk factors mainly for the purpose of giving a clear illustration of the modeling process. Although in this manuscript we may not necessarily provide a definitive answer to a substantive clinical question, we develop a tool that we offer to researchers in their quest to do so.

Educational Impacts of Admissions Mechanisms

Kapor, Adam Joshua Yale University 2015 해외박사(DDOD)

The "Texas Top Ten" law guaranteed admissions to all students ranking in the top decile of their high school class to each public university in the state of Texas, including the state flagship universities. In this dissertation I analyze the effects of the law on individuals who attended high school in Texas. The first two chapters present an evaluation of the effects of Texas Top Ten and associated scholarship programs on the distribution of college applications, admissions, and matriculation and on students' performance in college. I construct a model of students' application portfolios and financial-aid application decisions, colleges' preferences and admissions rules, students' choice of college, and students' grades and persistence in college. I estimate this model using a survey of a cohort of Texas high school seniors, together with administrative records of Texas universities. I find that Texas Top Ten led to a 10% increase in underrepresented minority enrollment at the state flagship universities. Next, I consider a large expansion of the Longhorn Opportunity Scholarship, which provides scholarships at UT Austin. Expanding the program to cover all high schools with poverty rates above 60% would cost an additional $60 per student enrolled at UT Austin and lead to an increase in underrepresented minority enrollment of about 5%. The effects on students from poor high schools are larger than those of purely informational interventions. Relative to Texas Top Ten, a hypothetical race-conscious affirmative action policy that awards points to minority applicants would attract underrepresented minority students with relatively poor class rank from relatively affluent high schools. These students would achieve lower college GPAs at flagship universities than those minority students admitted under Texas Top Ten. In the third chapter I measure the effects of Texas Top Ten on high school achievement as well as on labor market outcomes after college. The guarantee provided by Texas Top Ten changed the return to placing in the top decile at many Texas high schools. Using variation in students' peers and variation in policy affecting the return to class rank, together with administrative data on the universe of Texas public high school students' test scores and attendance linked to college and labor market outcomes, I test the hypothesis that students responded to an increase in the value of class rank with changes in academic effort, and measure the effects on high school exit-level standardized test scores and long-run outcomes. This study is the first study of the incentive effects of a Percent Plan that takes advantage of this student-level source of variation. I find little evidence that high school test scores and eventual wages responded to changes in incentives provided by Texas Top Ten.

A study of transitional collective behavior in heavy nuclei

Williams, Elizabeth Tamera Yale University 2009 해외박사(DDOD)

Throughout the nuclear landscape, regions of structural transition have provided a sensitive means of testing our understanding of nuclear structure. In this work, two aspects of transitional behavior in nuclear structure will be examined, using both theoretical and experimental methods. In the weakly vibrational nucleus 140Nd, mixed symmetry states -- collective excitations in which the protons and neutrons behave collectively, but out of phase -- are sought via beta decay experiments at the Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Yale University. Angular correlations techniques are used to identify 2+ states near 2 MeV that decay to the 2+1 state via a predominant M1 transition, and two low-lying mixed symmetry candidates are identified. The relationship between underlying shell structure and the fragmentation of mixed symmetry states in the N = 80 isotones is discussed. To study of transitions between spherical and deformed collective structures, internal conversion electron measurements of the deformed nucleus 158Dy have been carried out at the Australian National University. Measurements in the deformed region, where data are scarce, may hold the key to understanding the physics behind observed E0 transition strengths in the transitional region. To that end, the E0 transition between the 0+2 and 0+1 states in 158Dy has been measured, and an X(E0/E2) value for this transition is presented. Finally, the Interacting Boson Model-1 is used to study the evolution of quantum (shape) phase transitional behavior in collective nuclei. Energies, transition strengths, and shape invariants in yrast states are studied over a large range of system sizes. The roles that system size, angular momentum, excitation energy, and even choice of observable play in our discussion of such systems are explored through a variety of methods. Angular momentum, in particular, is found to play a significant role in the evolution of ground state band energies in finite nuclear systems, but does not have an effect on the evolution of any observables in the large boson limit.

Star formation in the early universe

Bromm, Volker Yale University 2000 해외박사(DDOD)

We investigate the formation of the first stars in the universe. In the context of hierarchical models of structure formation, these Population III stars are expected to form in high or peaks of mass ∼10<super>6</super><math> <f> <rm><mit>M<inf>⊙</inf></mit></rm></f> </math>, collapsing at redshifts ≃20−30. We present an exploratory survey, based on numerical simulations using the SPH method. The main results are: (1) Just before the onset of gravitational instability, the primordial gas attains a characteristic temperature of a few 100 K, and a density of 10<super>3</super>−10<super>4</super>cm<super>−3</super>, with corresponding Jeans mass <italic>M_J</italic> of ∼10<super> 3</super><math> <f> <rm><mit>M<inf>⊙</inf></mit></rm></f> </math>. These characteristic values have robust explanation in the microphysics of H₂ cooling, related to the minimum temperature that can be reached with the H₂ coolant, and to the critical density at which the transition takes place between levels being populated according to NLTE, and according to LTE. The gas fragments into clumps with initial masses close to <italic> M_J</italic>. This result is remarkably insensitive to the initial conditions, and suggests that the first stars might have been quite massive. (2) The later evolutionary stages, during which the clumps grow in mass due to accretion and merging with other clumps, are quite sensitive to the initial conditions. The key process in building up very massive clumps, with masses up to a few times 10<super>4</super><math> <f> <rm><mit>M<inf>⊙</inf></mit></rm></f> </math>, is merging. (3) We follow the collapse of a clump up to central densities of ∼10<super>14</super>cm<super>−3</super>. Three-body reactions are very efficient in converting the hydrogen into fully molecular form. A central core of ∼10<super>2</super><math> <f> <rm><mit>M<inf>⊙</inf></mit></rm></f> </math> is in a state of free-fall, leaving behind an extended envelope with an isothermal profile. No further subfragmentation is seen. (4) We calculate the generic spectral signature of a population of massive stars at high redshifts. The production rate of ionizing radiation per stellar mass by stars more massive than ∼100<math> <f> <rm><mit>M<inf>⊙</inf></mit></rm></f> </math> is larger by ∼1 order of magnitude for hydrogen and He I, and by ∼2 orders of magnitude for He II, than the emission from a Salpeter IMF.

Reimagining religion: The grounding of spiritual politics and practice in modern America, 1890--1940

Anderson, Theodore Marvin Yale University 2008 해외박사(DDOD)

Between 1890 and 1940, American society changed profoundly, forcing intellectuals and religious leaders to grapple with fundamental questions about the essence of religion and the grounding of values in the modern world. "Reimagining Religion" begins by elaborating the context of the late-nineteenth-century spiritual crisis in the U.S., focusing on two related factors: Darwinism and the secularization of higher education. The most devastating aspect of Darwin's theory of evolution was not so much its devaluation of human beings but, rather, the support it lent to a newly emerging conception of truth. Darwin's predecessors in England and the U.S. had looked to nature for the confirmation and elaboration of truths revealed in the Bible. For them, truth was fixed. But Darwin's method put the testing and confirmation of his theory at some indefinite point in the future; the truth it offered was provisional and cumulative. In these same late-century decades, partially as a result of the Darwinian revolution, higher education in the U.S. became increasingly secularized and divided into discrete fields of learning. The discovery of new knowledge became the primary mission of colleges and universities. This paradigm shift, and the loss by religious organizations of their hegemony in the realm of higher education, precipitated a crisis of cultural authority. The vacuum created by orthodox religion's travails was filled by "the self," on the one hand, and by communities of experts and specialists on the other. Subjective religious experience became an important new basis of religious truth. At the same time, the ideal of value-neutrality increasingly held sway among academics. These conflicting trends---subjective religion and objective scholarship---formed the foundation of a new, distinctively post-Victorian culture in the U.S. "Reimagining Religion" charts its creation---as well as the intellectual, religious, and political backlash against it---by focusing on the stories of five individuals: the Harvard philosopher William James (1842-1910); the self-help guru Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952); the Columbia University philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952); the Harvard professor Irving Babbitt (1865-1933); and the Indianapolis-based evangelist E. Howard Cadle (1884-1942).

Foreign Echoes & Discerning the Soil: Dual Translation, Historiography, & World Literature in Chinese Poetry

Klein, Lucas Yale University 2010 해외박사(DDOD)

What constitutes the relationship between World Literature and Chineseness? How has translation shaped Chinese poetry, and can translation be understood as at the foundation not only of World Literature, but of Chineseness, as well? This dissertation answers these questions by demonstrating how Chineseness as an aspect of the Chinese poetic tradition is results from translation. Looking at Chinese poetry's negotiation with concepts central to translation--- nativization and foregnization, or the work's engagement with the Chinese historical heritage or foreign literary texts and contexts, respectively---I argue not only that Chinese poetry can be understood as translation, but for an understanding of the role of such translation in the constitution of both Chineseness and World Literature. After contextualizing recent debates in the field of Sinology in the Introduction, Chapter I examines the poetic career of Bian Zhilin (1910--2000) and his implicit vision for a World Literature able to merge the Chinese literary heritage with Western influence. Chapter II, on Yang Lian (b. 1955), re-considers such positions in the light of ethnography, asking whether a Chinese writer's presentation of the Chinese tradition may itself re-cast Western superiority over its other. Since debates around World Literature, especially in Chinese literary studies, focus on the modern era, however, I contrast those chapters with a discussion of the Tang (618--907), when China had earlier become highly international, even cosmopolitan. Chapter III examines the history of Regulated Verse (lu`shi), describing not only its origins in Sanskrit but how it maintained associations with Buddhism. Chapter IV considers the work of Du Fuˇ (712--770) to understand how the canonization of his work nativized Regulated Verse through its historiography. Chapter V looks at the notoriously complex work of Liˇ Shangyiˇn (813--858), proposing that, through his writing of history and the complexity of his form, he re-foreignizes Regulated Verse, paving the way for new possibilities of World Literature. Finally, the dissertation concludes with a reconsideration of the place of World Literature and translation in the university.

Going Urban: The Jewish Experience of the Metropolis in Early 20th Century Literature

Pridan, Ariel Y Yale University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 2023 해외박사(DDOD)

This study delves into urban Jewish praxis and its impact on the production of urban space in three literary texts composed within the first four decades of the 20th century: the novella “Min HaMeitzar” [“Out of the Depths”] (1908) by Hebrew writer Yosef Haim Brenner, the novel Nokh alemen [“The End of Everything”] (1913) by Yiddish writer Dovid Bergelson, and the novel Hiob: Roman eines einfachen Mannes [“Job: The Story of a Simple Man”] (1930) by German-Jewish writer Joseph Roth. The literary readings presented in this study strive to elucidate the literary production of urban space as a means of universalizing, standardizing, and normalizing modern Jewish life, thus facilitating the transition from traditional Jewish particularistic, communal, and tribal existence towards the modern notion of citizenship. Simultaneously, the foundational premise underpinning these readings posits that the pursuit of this universalization—an abstract prospect detached from material existence—presents an inherent challenge rather than a definitive solution. Consequently, this study highlights the illusory belief in modern urban space as a neutral arena fostering a free and egalitarian Jewish public sphere.Each of the three texts discussed in this study captures the experiences of Jewish individuals across distinct urban centers—London, Kiev, and New York—while exploring the potential of these cities to serve as gateways for Jews to embrace modernity and liberate themselves from the constraints of traditional Jewish life. Within these narratives, the texts delve into the intricacies of Jewish urbanization and migration into modern urban spaces as potential solutions to the Jewish Question [Die Judenfrage]. This endeavor follows unique trajectories in its pursuit of Jewish integration into the broader narrative of modernity. Through their engagement with Jewish urbanization, the literary texts discussed in this project challenge the core spatial and political avenues of Jewish existence during the early 20th century, encompassing nationalism, territoriality, migration, cosmopolitanism, and Diasporism. Concurrently, these texts challenge the assumption that attaining citizenship within a nation-state—whether European or prospective Jewish—constitutes the ultimate culmination of modernity’s trajectory.In contrast to the prevailing aspiration for nation-state formation, Brenner, Bergelson, and Roth explore Jewish urbanization as a comprehensive embodiment of divergent and coexisting existential and spatial ideals, offering alternatives to the spatial pursuit of constructing a nationstate defined by homogeneity, authoritarianism, and territorial demarcation. Through their exploration of urban spaces, these literary texts contemplate the feasibility of establishing alternative models for modern Jewish existence and underscore the limitations intrinsic to the project of modernity when confronted with the complexities of identity politics.

The corporate eye: Photography and the rationalization of American culture, 1884--1929

Brown, Elspeth H Yale University 2000 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation explores managers' instrumental uses of photography to rationalize spheres of production, distribution, and consumption in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I look at the intersections among the rationalization of work, the standardization of modern consumer culture, and the emergence of photography as a mass technology in order to understand how business and industry harnessed photographic meaning to naturalize corporate and industrial relations. Chapter One examines the turn to photographic technologies as a means of making industrial production more efficient during the Progressive era. After a brief discussion of Frederick Winslow Taylor and Eadweard Muybridge, I discuss industrial consultants Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, who photographed and filmed industrial workers in order to isolate individual movements, which could then be reconfigured to model the “one best way” to perform a given task. Chapter Two considers the work of an early personnel consultant, Dr. Katherine Blackford who used the still photograph as a means of selecting appropriate employees for a variety of vocations. A popularizer of classical and modern scientific assumptions concerning the relationship between external features and character, Blackford's substantial influence was challenged, and eventually displaced, by the competing claims of university-trained applied psychologists. In Chapter Three I turn to advertising photography to understand the rationalization of consumption. The major figure here is Lejaren`a Hiller, a photographic illustrator who invented photographic illustration for print advertising in its modern form. While corporate managers, psychologists and advertisers were moving from a model of “rational” man to “irrational woman,” or a consumer motivated by emotional appeals, Hiller created complex social tableaux, softening photography's realist edge with pictorialist sophistication. My argument throughout is that corporate managers relied upon photography as neutral reporter of transparent social truths in a variety of instrumental applications, ranging from motion study, to employee selection, to advertising. The goal uniting these various forms of photographic production was the increased rationalization of the modern economy through a set of interlocking managerial innovations, technologies which sought to redesign not only industrial production, but the modern subject as well.

HALL OF MIRRORS: REFLECTIONS OF SENTIMENTAL AND POLITICAL POWER IN CORNEILLE'S THEATER (PIERRE CORNEILLE, FRANCE, KINGSHIP, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY)

TAIT, ALLISON ANNA YALE UNIVERSITY 1999 해외박사(DDOD)

In the Corneille's theater, the issues of love and kingship are a thematic cornerstone, yet while each is important in its own right Corneille deftly plays the two concepts off of one another and in doing so, uncovers the philosophical intricacies of each. Drawing on a traditional Christian model of kingship, one originated in the medieval polity and brought to fruition by theorists of absolutism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Corneille adds complexity to this model by introducing ideas on individual power and responsibility from the Neo-Stoics, such as Justus Lipsius, and the constitutional monarchs, including Claude Seyssel. Heavily influenced by the optimistic humanism of theorists such as Jean Bodin and Guillaume Budé, Corneille celebrates both the office of the monarch as well as the individual for their powers of creation and innovation. What Corneille does to take the discussion to a new level of interest, then, is examine these models of sovereignty in tandem with Platonic theories of love. Drawing upon the poetics of Neo-Platonist such as Dante, Petrarch, Ficino, and Marot, Corneille paints a noble an elegant portrait of the mistress, endowing her with spiritual knowledge and divine aspect, a portrait that he then compares to that of the political monarch. Creating a parallel between the two sovereigns, political and sentimental, Corneille creates a vision of authority as mediating power between human and divine, and he consequently nuances this paradigm as he investigates the obstacle that face both ruler and subject in the realization of this vision. The primary obstacle faced in this optimistic enterprise is that of self-love, and in discussing the problem of self-love, Corneille also draws upon a set of philosophical and political theory that emphasize the hold self-love and personal interest have over man. What ultimately emerges, then, is a complex and subtle model of authority, one that tempers the original positive model with philosophical realism, yet one that retains the mediating power and that still has the power to incorporate the subject into household, community, state, and universe.