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1
Houpt, David W. ""Mysteries in politiks" the second Congressional elections in the districts of Worcester and Maine /." Fairfax, VA : George Mason University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1920/4532.
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Thesis (M.A.)--George Mason University, 2009.Vita: p. 150. Thesis director: Rosemarie Zagarri. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed June 10, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 144-149). Also issued in print.
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Puglisi, Michael J. "The legacies of King Philip's War in the Massachusetts Bay Colony." W&M ScholarWorks, 1987. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623769.
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When King Philip's War erupted in the summer of 1675, the New England colonies entered a quarter-century of almost constant trial and tension. Colonial leaders consistently interpreted each successive crisis and the lingering legacies as warnings from God against backsliding and sin. Interpreting the causes of the colonies' troubles was just the beginning of the struggle, however; understanding, solving, and learning from the trials of the period represented the ongoing challenge for the future of the New England mission.;The most obvious victims of King Philip's War were the natives of the colony. Even the Praying Indians who lived under English jurisdiction became targets of the colonists' anxiety and prejudice. The persistence of any bands in the region, friendly, or hostile, provided a source of continuing tension for the colonists.;Economically, demographically, even politically, the effects of King Philip's War lingered throughout the ensuing decades. The colony's effort to recoup the costs of the war led to a persistent struggle as citizens and towns attempted to avoid the increased tax rates. The need to secure the frontier communities either threatened or actually abandoned during the conflict represented an ongoing campaign in the region. In the area of politics, the war made the colonists more sensitive and more assertive, and this new spirit appeared in town politics as well as in the constitutional upheaval in Boston.;The uneasiness resulting from the accumulated tensions led to a period of self-examination among New Englanders. Puritan clergy exhorted their followers to reform in order to ward off the forces of evil which threatened the mission. The jeremiads of the period bemoaned the spiritual decline in the region, but in the end, their message remained optimistic. The errand would continue, but with a new sense of secular interest incorporated into the New England mentality. Although King Philip's War was not the sole, direct cause of all the problems that plagued Massachusetts during the troubled decades of the late seventeenth century, it was the first in a series of crises and the event which set the tone for the whole period.
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Burton, John Daniel. "Puritan town and gown: Harvard College and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1636--1800." W&M ScholarWorks, 1996. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1593092095.
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Nichols, Shaun Steven. "Crisis Capital: Industrial Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1865-Present." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493349.
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“Crisis Capital” offers a local history of global capitalism and a global history of local economic development, exploring how the global movements and political struggles of industry, labor, and capital created, destroyed, and repeatedly reconfigured the southeastern industrial core of Massachusetts. By dissecting the succeeding rise and fall of the whaling, textile, garment, electronics, and high-tech industries over the past one-hundred-fifty years, it challenges one of the master narratives of modern economic development: the oft-repeated story of how nineteenth-century industrialization, urbanization, and capitalist expansion collapsed into twentieth-century de-industrialization, globalization, and urban decay. Industrial Massachusetts, it argues, did not simply “rise” in the nineteenth century only to “fall” in the twentieth, but was made and un-made over and over again—besieged and begot by the swirling global movements of migrant labor and mobile capital. From migrating Azorean seamen, British weavers, and Quebecois farmers to globetrotting whalers, New York mobile manufacturers, and Asia-bound garment producers, “Crisis Capital” explores the industrial development of Massachusetts as a function of myriad actors’ attempts to navigate the tempests of economic globalization.
In so doing, “Crisis Capital” highlights the seemingly paradoxical ways Massachusetts business, government, and labor leaders discovered they could use economic crisis to reorder the global geography of capitalism to their advantage. From the lure of low rents and free factory space to the appeal of cheap labor and abundant industrial financing, crisis became a crucial means for pulling and pushing both capital and workers across the continents. Moreover, “Crisis Capital” explores how these strategies of crisis exploitation have since been adopted by states and nations around the world. By analyzing the global history of industrial Massachusetts, “Crisis Capital” thus provides not only a new take on the classic “rise-and-fall” narrative of industrialization, but a sense of how global capitalism was historically pulled together: namely, through the meshing of myriad local economies, like Massachusetts, each seeking to use crisis itself to entice capital from competing locales. The so-called “race to the bottom,” it argues, is no contemporary bugaboo, but a structural facet of how industrial capitalism has expanded over the last two centuries.History
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Haycook, Margot. "Comparison of the price and volatility of current and alternative models for the acquisition of direct supply natural gas for the Department of Defense." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2005. http://library.nps.navy.mil/uhtbin/hyperion/05Jun%5FHaycook.pdf.
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Hammond, Christopher D. (Christopher Daniel). "Economic analysis of shale gas wells in the United States." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/83718.
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Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 65-66).
Natural gas produced from shale formations has increased dramatically in the past decade and has altered the oil and gas industry greatly. The use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has enabled the production of a natural gas resource that was previously unrecoverable. Estimates of the size of the resource indicate that shale gas has the potential to supply decades of domestically produced natural gas. Yet there are challenges surrounding the production of shale gas that have not yet been solved. The economic viability of the shale gas resources has recently come into question. This study uses a discounted cash flow economic model to evaluate the breakeven price of natural gas wells drilled in 7 major U.S. shale formations from 2005 to 2012. The breakeven price is the wellhead gas price that produces a 10% internal rate of return. The results of the economic analysis break down the breakeven gas price by year and shale play, along with P20 and P80 gas prices to illustrate the variability present. Derived vintage supply curves illustrate the volume of natural gas that was produced economically for a range of breakeven prices. Historic Natural Gas Futures Prices are used as a metric to determine the volumes and percentage of total yearly production that was produced at or below the Futures Price of each vintage year. From 2005 to 2008, the total production of shale gas resulted in a net profit for operators. A drop in price in 2009 resulted in a net loss for producers from 2009 to 2012. In 2012, only 26.5% of the total gas volume produced was produced at or below the 2012 Natural Gas Futures Price.
by Christopher D. Hammond.
S.B.
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Mori, Naoko. "Role of public relations in management: Japanese corporations in the United States." Thesis, Boston University, 1988. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/38082.
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Thesis (M.S.)--Boston UniversityPLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you.
This study explores how Japanese corporations operating in the U.S. accommodate their management systems to an American work environment, and examines the role of public relations activities in the management systems. Nine interviews were conducted with American and Japanese executives at five Japanese corporations in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The major research questions were: What are the management policies and how is the management structured at each company? What kind of communication method is used for employee and community relations programs? How do the differences between American and Japanese cultures, such as languages and work values, affect the corporations? How do public relations activities support management objectives? All the executives concluded that cultural differences between the U.S. and Japan do not become communication barriers once people from both nations gain mutual understanding. Due to differences in the nature of employees and communities in which they operate, the types of management systems and the communication methods adopted by the five companies vary. Public relations can help management monitor these environmental differences and establish its goals according to the environment. To implement these goals, organizations need active managers who are willing to understand the cultural differences of their organizations and to get involved with employee and community activities. In this way, the managers can facilitate two-way communication among the organizations and between the organizations and the communities.
2031-01-01
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Hunter, Phyllis Whitman. "Ship of wealth: Massachusetts merchants, foreign goods, and the transformation of Anglo-America, 1670-1760." W&M ScholarWorks, 1996. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623879.
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This study examines capitalism and cultural change in early New England. The research focuses on leading merchants in Boston and Salem, Massachusetts from the last third of the seventeenth century to 1760. During this period, merchants, royal officials, and professionals formed a prominent influential elite that refashioned the town landscape and social structure of colonial ports. Merchants adopted a new Anglo-American worldview that gradually supplanted Puritan spiritual and providential understanding of the world and, instead, emphasized visible, material characteristics as the source of value in science, commerce, and consumption. The resultant "world of goods," created a social marketplace where identity, shaped by owning and displaying high-style goods and genteel manners, could be purchased by anyone with money. Incorporating both exotic imports and foreign merchants, the new culture fostered capitalism and helped to dispel earlier conflicts over sectarian beliefs and ethnic origins that had plagued Boston and Salem. Thus, this study argues that it was consumption and a worldview that placed value in the material not Puritan asceticism, as sociologist Max Weber and his supporters insist, that initiated the spirit of modern capitalism.
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English, Beth Anne. "A common thread: Labor, politics, and capital mobility in the Massachusetts textile industry, 1880-1934." W&M ScholarWorks, 2003. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623415.
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"A Common Thread" is an analysis of the relocation of the New England textile industry to the states of the Piedmont South between 1880 and 1934. Competition from textile mills operating in the South became a serious challenge for New England textile manufacturers as early as the 1890s. as they watched their profits turn into losses while output and sales of southern goods continued apace during the 1893 depression, owners of northern textile corporations felt unfairly constrained by state legislation that established age and hours standards for mill employees, and by actual and potential labor militancy in their mills. Several New England textile manufacturers, therefore, opened southern subsidiary factories as a way to effectively meet southern competition. In 1896, the Dwight Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts was one of the first New England cotton textile companies to open a southern branch mill. Within a thirty-year period, many of the largest textile corporations in Massachusetts would move part or all of their operations to North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama where textile production took place in mills that cost less to fuel, was done by workers whose wages were lower than those paid in New England, and occurred in a region where textile unions and state regulations were virtually non-existent.;Through the lens of the Dwight Manufacturing Company, "A Common Thread" examines this process of regional transfer within the U.S. textile industry. The specific goals of the study are to explain (1) why and how Massachusetts cotton manufacturing companies pursued relocation to the South as a key strategy for economic survival, (2) why and how southern states attracted northern textile capital, and (3) how textile mill owners, the state, manufacturers' associations, labor unions, and reform groups shaped the North-to-South movement of cotton mill money, machinery, and jobs. "A Common Thread" provides a historic reference point for and helps inform on-going discussions and debates about capital mobility and corporate responsibility as the industrial relocation from region to region that occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continues from nation to nation within the context of economic globalization.
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Doughty, Craig. "Constructing a history from fragments : jazz and voice in Boston, Massachusetts circa 1919 to 1929." Thesis, Keele University, 2017. http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/3780/.
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Boston is a city steeped in history. Beyond the struggle for abolition, however, the historical experiences of the majority of black Bostonians, especially during the early twentieth-century, are lacking recognition. In this respect, the Jazz Age (represented here as circa 1919 – 1929) serves as a noteworthy case-in-point. For insofar as the impact of jazz music on social, political, and economic climates in cities such as New York, New Orleans, and even Kansas have been recorded, the music’s impact on and significance in Boston is yet to be addressed in any great detail. Simply put, the history of jazz in Boston, and with it an important period for black development in the city, exists in fragments such as discographies, newspaper listings, musical handbooks, potted witness accounts among others. Therefore, the principle aim of this thesis is to piece-together these fragments to form a mosaic history that reveals instances of black struggle, resistance, and progress during a period of heightened racial (Jim Crow segregation), political (the Red Scare), and economic tension. Essential to this process is not only the need to locate the voices of Boston’s black past, whether in text, testimony, sound and beyond, but also to create the conditions to hear them on their own terms. In order to achieve this, emphasis here is placed on tracing instances of voice, and as a by-product heritage, in musical form from the arrival of the first slaves to Boston in the first-half of the seventeenth century and analysing the ways in which these voices were perpetuated through methods of adaptation, appropriation, and evolution. This approach would ultimately assist in enriching the Jazz Age with a black art form that was not only unique but a distinct form of expression for a race lacking a significant voice in America at the time. In this respect, this thesis looks at the ways in which homegrown Boston musicians, such as Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney, and frequenting players, such as Duke Ellington, used jazz music as a way to oppose standard forms of white dominance, cultural elitism, and economic subjugation.
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Kurdi, Ammr. "Regulation and Political Costs in the Oil and Gas Industry: An Investigation of Discretion in Reporting Earnings and Oil and Gas Reserves Estimates." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2010. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30481/.
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This study investigates the use of discretion by oil and gas companies in reporting financial performance and oil and gas reserve estimates during times of high political scrutiny resulting from increases in energy prices. Hypotheses tested in prior literature state that companies facing the risk of increasing taxes or new regulations reduce reported earnings to reduce this risk. This study uses a measure of high profitability (rank order of return on assets relative to industry peers) to identify oil and gas companies more likely to manage earnings during the period from 2002 to 2008. Two measures of discretionary accruals (total and current discretionary accruals), and a measure of discretionary depreciation, depletion, and amortization (DDA) were used as indicators of discretion exercised in reporting earnings. Data on oil and gas reserve disclosures was also hand-collected from Forms 10-K to investigate whether managers use reserve estimate revisions to reduce reported earnings through increasing the annual depletion expense. Results suggest that both oil and gas refining and producing firms use negative discretionary accruals to reduce reported earnings. Results also indicate that profitability is an important determinant of the use of negative discretionary accruals by these companies regardless of the time period examined. There is also evidence that oil and gas producing firms opportunistically revise their oil and gas reserve estimates to increase depreciation, depletion, and amortization expense during periods of high oil prices.
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Ragon, Stephen F. "Expendable| Eight Soldiers from Massachusetts Regiments Executed for Desertion During the United States Civil War." Thesis, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10265341.
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The written history of the United States Civil War provides limited analysis on the topic of desertion and execution for desertion in the Army of the Potomac. The specific numbers involved are well documented. With the exception of occasional narratives on the executions themselves, there is no examination of the human decisions taken; beginning with the soldier’s choice to desert. In addition, while the military court-martial trial was rigid in its structure and process, it allowed for discretion in the sentencing phase. Human choice exerted its greatest influence in the aftermath of the trial as the sentence was reviewed up through the military chain of command. Ultimately, the case would arrive at the desk of President Abraham Lincoln; the final arbitrator of life or death. Fortunately for the convicted, they had a compassionate Commander in Chief and President Lincoln personally intervened in hundreds of their cases.
There were over 200,000 incidents of desertion from the Union Armies during the Civil War. Desertion and other crimes resulted in 75,961 court-martial trials and 1,883 soldiers were sentenced to be executed. A total of 265 men were executed and 147 of those were for desertion. This paper provides a micro history of eight soldiers from Massachusetts regiments executed for desertion. They are contrasted against seven soldiers from Massachusetts regiments pardoned for the same capital crime of desertion. Extrapolating the data elements of the accused, along with their trial testimonies, allows for the identification of three major factors that influenced whether a soldier who deserted was executed or pardoned.
A second contribution to the historical record on the Civil War is the identification of the personal data elements found in these men’s lives. By consolidating these elements, such as place of birth, a profile of the typical deserter emerges. This deserter profile can be contrasted against a historically codified profile of a typical Union soldier. Ultimately, while these deserters were denigrated for their crime of desertion, they deserve to have their stories heard. In doing so, it is possible to identify who these men really were and what their role was in the United States Civil War.
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Hirota, Hidetaka. "Nativism, Citizenship, and the Deportation of Paupers in Massachusetts, 1837-1883." Thesis, Boston College, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/3768.
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Thesis advisor: Kevin KennyThis dissertation examines the origins of American immigration policy. Without denying the importance of anti-Asian racism, it locates the roots of federal immigration policy in nativism and economics in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. The influx of poor Irish immigrants over the first half of the nineteenth century provoked anti-Irish nativism, or intense hostility toward foreigners, in Massachusetts. Building upon colonial laws for banishing paupers, nativists in Massachusetts developed policies for prohibiting the entry of destitute alien passengers by ship and railroad and for deporting immigrant paupers in the state to Ireland, Liverpool, British North America, or other American states where they resided before coming to Massachusetts. Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, citizenship and its attendant rights remained inchoate, allowing anti-Irish nativism to override certain rights and liberties that were later taken for granted. Nativist officials seized and banished paupers of Irish descent, including some who were born or naturalized in America. Historians have long seen anti-Irish nativism as a set of prejudiced ideas that generated few consequences at the level of law and policy, and have identified late-nineteenth-century federal Chinese exclusion laws as the beginnings of American immigration control. This dissertation argues that anti-Irish nativism in Massachusetts had a significant practical impact on Irish immigrants in the form of state deportation policies, and demonstrates that Massachusetts' policies, which were driven by a poisonous combination of prejudice against the Irish and economic concerns, helped lay the foundations for later federal restriction policies that applied to all immigrants. The argument unfolds in a transnational context, examining the migration of paupers from Ireland, their expulsion from America, and their post-deportation experiences in Britain and Ireland. In this way, deportation from the United States can be seen as part of a wider system of pauper restriction and forcible removal operating in the Atlantic world
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: History
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Manion, Lynne Nelson. "Local 21's Quest for a Moral Economy: Peabody, Massachusetts and its Leather Workers, 1933-1973." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2003. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/ManionLN2003.pdf.
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Luginbuhl, Mather April Marie. "The Final Nail in the Coffin of Small-Scale Farming in the United States: Stewardship and Greenhouse Gas Markets in the United States." The Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1275393945.
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Madigan, Corinne James. "The "M" Word: An Analysis of Gay Marriage in the United States." Thesis, Boston College, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/698.
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Thesis advisor: Donald HafnerThere is perhaps no issue more controversial in the so-called American culture war than that of gay marriage. In the last five years, four states have legalized same-sex marriages and several more appear poised to follow suit. This paper creates an analytical framework with which to evaluate the chances of successful gay marriage initiatives in any given state. Demographics, political institutions, and state-specific variables make up the three parts of the framework, which is then applied to three case studies in which gay marriage has already been addressed: Massachusetts, Vermont, and California. A fourth case, Maine, serves as a prediction state to test the validity of the framework. The paper’s conclusions indicate that, in the current political and cultural domain, there is a set of factors that tend to promote the legalization of gay marriage. The demographics of a population need to be such that they qualify as a “tolerant citizenry,” people who are hesitatingly accepting of gay marriage and can be persuaded to support that legalization. On the political side, a positive evaluation of gay marriage by the state supreme court that then passes on responsibility to the state legislature is the most conducive to legalization. The court provides the constitutional and legal grounds for gay marriage, while the legislature acts as an intermediary between the justices and the wider population. Finally, states in which the constitutions are difficult to amend, and which amendment procedures are controlled by the legislature, are the most likely to legalize gay marriage. The application of the framework to the three case studies illustrates this complex process
Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2009
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Political Science Honors Program
Discipline: Political Science
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Patten, Monika Drake. "A Fatal Enigma?: The Reception of Smallpox Inoculation in Colonial Massachusetts." W&M ScholarWorks, 1990. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625629.
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Pint, Alexander Steven. "Building energy codes and their impact on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States." Kansas State University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/20534.
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Master of ScienceArchitectural Engineering and Construction Science
Russell J. Murdock
The purpose of this study is to identify and explore relationships between the building industry, building energy usage, and how both the industry and the energy usage correspond to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States. Building energy codes seek to reduce energy usage and, subsequently, GHG emissions. This study specifically seeks to determine the impact that most current U.S. building energy codes could have on national GHG emissions if widespread adoption and enforcement of those codes were a reality. The report initially presents necessary background information about GHG emissions is first discussed. This establishes the current state of global GHG emissions, the position of the U.S. within the global scale, and what portion of the contribution can be attributed to the building industry. The report also describes the current issues and benefits of building energy codes. An overview of building energy codes evaluation is included, with explanation of the energy analysis used to determine the effectiveness of new building energy codes. In order to determine how to improve the building energy code system, an analysis of ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2013 (equivalent to 2015 IECC, the most recent standard available) is conducted to reveal unrealized GHG emission reductions that are expected with adoption and compliance to the newest code. Standard 90.1-2013 is analyzed due to the national popularity of the code relative to other building energy codes. This analysis includes compilation of energy usage intensity, square footage, and current code adoption data throughout the United States. Results showed that the excess GHG emission savings from enhanced adoption and compliance was not significant on a national scale. However, in terms of GHG emissions currently saved by building energy codes, the extra savings becomes more significant, proving that increased adoption and compliance is a worthwhile pursuit. Recommendations are then made for how to increase adoption and compliance. This information will give policymakers improved understanding of the current state of the industry when crafting laws regarding GHG emissions and building energy codes. Furthermore, findings from this study could benefit specific states that are attempting to lower GHG emissions.
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Rajbhandari, Isha. "The Impacts of Oil and Gas Developments on Local Economies in the United States." The Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1500413045323116.
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Zelner, Kyle Forbes. "The Flower and Rabble of Essex County: A social history of the Massachusetts Bay Militia and militiamen during King Philip's War, 1675-1676." W&M ScholarWorks, 2003. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623431.
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This study examines the process of recruitment and the social makeup of militiamen in seventeenth-century New England. King Philip's War, 1675--1676, was the first major military crisis the Massachusetts Bay Colony faced. The government responded by impressing over a thousand men, employing a recruitment system that evolved from the colony's founding in the 1630s. The Massachusetts militia system was a hybrid of the English militia with additional safeguards. The founders of Massachusetts believed the English militia of the 1620s overly nationalistic, at the expense of local control. Thus, the Massachusetts system was created to be centralized in command, but local in recruitment. When faced with a military emergency, Massachusetts established composite companies of militiamen to fight the enemy, leaving the town militia companies mostly intact for defense. After 1652, the decision of which men were pressed was made by a unique local institution: the town committee of militia, comprised of civilian and military leaders from the community.;This study includes a social portrait of every militiaman who served during the war from Essex County, Massachusetts and the twelve communities that sent them. Essex towns represented every major community type in colonial Massachusetts and offer the perfect microcosm for understanding military recruitment in seventeenth-century New England. The details of the lives, actions, and family backgrounds of all 357 enlisted soldiers offer a new and superior understanding of early American soldiers and the communities that impressed them.;Conventional historical wisdom asserts that the universal military obligation of the colonies, which forced all males from sixteen-to-sixty to serve, created seventeenth-century armies that mirrored society. This study finds that untrue. The militia committees in every town impressed a large majority of men who had some negative factor in their past, such as: low economic standing, criminal behavior, or short residency. Town committees of militia did not chose men equally from the population; but carefully selected soldiers who would be least missed by the town and its families if they were killed. Even the earliest American soldiers were not representative of their society; they were more the "Rabble" of their communities than their "Flower."
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Nolan, Christopher M. "War and contentment : Dedham, Massachusetts and the military aspect of the War for Independence, 1775-1781." Virtual Press, 1997. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1045640.
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Using a wealth of secondary and primary sources; such as town records, diaries, tax valuations, and genealogical data, this project will attempt to shed light on the reaction of Dedham, Massachusetts, and its middle class, to military service during the American Revolution. Although extremely responsive during the opening months of the war, Dedham's middle class became reluctant to contribute its fathers and sons to the military cause when the war moved outside of their periphery, and for good reason, they needed them back home. This study determined that the lack of zeal on the part of the town's middle class was part and parcel of historical, economical, and political factors that combined to keep the fathers and sons of Dedham from serving in the war. Although declining to serve in the Continental Army, Dedham was able to continue its support for the war effort by hiring others to do the fighting for them.Department of History
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Blanck, Emily V. "Reaching for Freedom: Black Resistance and the Roots of a Gendered African-American Culture in Late Eighteenth Century Massachusetts." W&M ScholarWorks, 1998. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626189.
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Coughlan, Katelyn M. "Disturbed but not destroyed| New perspectives on urban archaeology and class in 19th century Lowell, Massachusetts." Thesis, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1566534.
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Through the artifacts from the Jackson Appleton Middlesex Urban Revitalization and Devolvement Project (hereafter JAM) located in Lowell, MA, this research explores social class in nineteenth-century boardinghouses. This thesis is a two-part study. First, through statistical analysis, research recovers interpretable data from urban archaeological contexts subject to disturbance. Pinpointing intra-site similarities between artifacts recovered from intact and disturbed contexts, data show that artifacts recovered from disturbed and intact contexts in urban environments are not as dissimilar as previously believed. In the second phase using both intact and disturbed JAM contexts, the analysis of four boardinghouse features highlights two distinct patterns of ceramic assemblages suggesting 1) that the JAM site includes artifacts associated with Lowell's early boardinghouse period (1820-1860) in contrast to other late nineteenth century collections from Lowell like the Boott Mills and 2) that material goods amongst upper class mangers versus working class operative were more similar at Lowell's outset. Synthesizing this data with previous archaeology in Lowell, this research shows that over the course of the nineteenth century changes in the practice of corporate paternalism can be seen in the ceramic record. Furthermore, the data suggest that participation in the planned industrial project was a binding element of community interactions, blurring the lines of social class for Lowell's inhabitants in the early years of the Lowell experiment.
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Jenkins, Sandra Elizabeth. "Interdependency of electricity and natural gas markets in the United States : a dynamic computational model." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90053.
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Thesis: S.M. in Technology and Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2014.81
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 73-81).
Due to high storage costs and limited storage availability, natural gas is generally used as a just-in- time resource that needs to be delivered as it is consumed. With the shale gas revolution, coal retirements and environmental regulations, the interdependency of natural gas and electricity has increased. These changes impact pipeline financing and power generation dispatch. Potential solutions to gas-electricity interdependency challenges such as mismatched market schedules are not too difficult to determine. However, a quantitative model is needed in order to evaluate these solutions in order to provide insights into which solutions to interdependency concerns offer the best outcomes. While it is clear that natural gas constraints will affect the cost of the electricity system, there is a need for modeling to explore the relationship between fuel uncertainty and system cost. In this thesis, a quantitative optimal flow model with a dynamic market mechanism is used to measure the effects of natural gas-fired power producer's fuel uncertainty on the net social benefit to consumers and producers. Modeling results indicate that fuel price uncertainty negatively affects social welfare while demand response, information availability and coordination improvements limit the impact of natural gas fuel uncertainty. To simulate improved coordination, a second model is developed which includes natural gas network constraints. The results of this model demonstrate how joint optimization of the networks could relax fuel constraints on gas-fired generators and improve social welfare.
by Sandra Elizabeth Jenkins.
S.M. in Technology and Policy
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Charles, Ricardo Keston Michael. "Regional estimates of the price elasticity of demand for natural gas in the United States." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/104830.
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Thesis: S.M. in Technology and Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Engineering, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, Technology and Policy Program, 2016.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 87-92).
A misalignment of incentives in the gas pipeline construction process has caused growth of gasfired generation to outpace investment in new pipelines in New England. Limited gas capacity to the region has resulted in power reliability issues, particularly during severe winter weather when gas demand is high. The majority of proposed solutions have focused on increasing gas supply. However, demand response in the natural gas retail market is a potential alternative answer. To quantify the benefits of gas demand response regional and state level price elasticities of demand for natural gas must be known. In this thesis, the price elasticity of demand for natural gas in the U.S. was estimated for the period 2001 to 2014 at the national, regional and state levels for the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Differences in demand estimates were observed when performed at the different aggregate data levels and sectors. However, not all the regional and state estimates obtained for each sector showed statistically significant differences from each other or the national level. The short-run regional estimates for New England were used in a simple demonstration of gas demand response to show how they could have been used to mitigate the effects of the 2014 cold snap on electricity generation. Prices were optimized such that they reduced gas demand from retail markets by the amount of fuel that generators were short while minimizing the total deadweight loss.
by Ricardo Keston Michael Charles.
S.M. in Technology and Policy
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Lankford, Susan M. "Historic gas stations along U.S. 40 in Indiana." Virtual Press, 2004. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1292986.
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This thesis contains the results from researching historic gas stations along U.S. 40 in Indiana and from exploring the effects of the automobile and oil industries on the evolution of this building type. It reaches conclusions about how the stations in the study area differ from national design trends and from the prototypes created by major oil companies.Of the major gas station design types, only residential and oblong box stations were found in the study area. Since the other design types were common across the country, it is reasonable to assume that such structures also appeared in Indiana and have subsequently been demolished. Although not all types and styles were found in the study area, those that were found were comparable in form and design to other stations throughout the country.Ultimately, this thesis is a case study of gas stations in Indiana. It can be used to evaluate stations throughout the state and provides a framework for further research on gas stations along other Indiana highways.Department of Architecture
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Li, Xiang. "Characterization of Air Pollutant and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Energy Use and Energy Production Processes in United States." Research Showcase @ CMU, 2017. http://repository.cmu.edu/dissertations/1082.
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Air pollutants and greenhouse gases are two groups of important trace components in the earth’s atmosphere that can affect local air quality, be detrimental to the human health and ecosystem, and cause climate change. Human activities, especially the energy use and energy production processes, are responsible for a significant share of air pollutants and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In this work, I specifically focused on characterizing air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions from the on-road gasoline and diesel vehicles, which is an important energy use process that largely contributes to the urban air pollutions, and from the natural gas production systems, which is a major energy production process that has increased dramatically in recent years and is expected to have a long-lasting impact in the future. We conducted multi-seasonal measurements in the Fort Pitt Tunnel in Pittsburgh, PA to update the on-road vehicle emission factors, to measure the size distribution of vehicle emitted particulate matter (PM), and to quantify the volatility distributions of the vehicle emitter primary organic aerosol (POA). We also conducted mobile measurements in the Denver-Julesburg Basin, the Uintah Basin, and the Marcellus Shale to quantify facility-level VOC emission from natural gas production facilities, and I constructed a gridded (0.1° × 0.1°) methane emission inventory of natural gas production and distribution over the contiguous US. I found that the stricter emission standards were effective on regulating NOx and PM emissions of diesel vehicles and the NOx, CO and organic carbon (OC) emissions of gasoline vehicles, while the elemental carbon (EC) emissions of gasoline vehicles did not change too much over the past three decades. Vehicle-emitted particles may be largely externally mixed, and a large fraction of vehicle-emitted particles may be purely composed of volatile component. Vehicle-emitted smaller particles (10– 60 nm) are dominantly (over 75%) composed of volatile component. The size-resolved particles and particles emission factors for both gasoline and diesel vehicles are also reported in this work. I also found that the POA volatility distribution measured in the dynamometer studies can be applied to describe gas-particle partitioning of ambient POA emissions. The POA volatility distribution measured in the tunnel does not have significant diurnal or seasonal variations, which indicate that a single volatility distribution is adequate to describe the gas-particle partitioning of vehicle emitted POA in the urban environment. The facility-level VOC emission rates measured at gas production facilities in all three gas production fields are highly variable and cross a range of ~2-3 order of magnitudes. It suggests that a single VOC emission profile may not be able to characterize VOC emissions from all natural gas production facilities. My gridded methane emission inventory over the contiguous US show higher methane emissions over major natural gas production fields compared with the Environmental Protection Agency Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emission and Sinks (EPA GHGI) and the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research, version 4.2 (Edgar v4.2). The total methane emissions of the natural gas production and distribution sector estimated by my inventory are 74% and 20% higher than the Edgar v4.2 and EPA GHGI, respectively. I also run the GEOS-Chem methane simulation with my inventory and EPA GHGI and compare with the GOSAT satellite data, and results show that my inventory can improve the model and satellite comparison, but the improvement is very limited. The size-resolved emission factors of vehicle emitted particles and POA volatility distribution reported in this work can be applied by the chemical transport models to better quantify the contribution of vehicle emissions to the PM in the atmosphere. Since our measurement of VOC emissions of natural gas production facilities were conducted before EPA started to regulate VOC emissions from the O&NG production facilities in 2016, the facility-level VOC emission rates reported in this work can serve as the basis for future studies to test the effectiveness of the regulatory policies. The spatially resolved methane emission inventory of natural gas production and distribution constructed in this work can be applied to update the current default methane emission inventory of GEOS-Chem, and the updated methane emission inventory can be used as a better a priori emission field for top-down studies that inversely estimate methane emissions from atmospheric methane observation.
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Larson, Parker E. (Parker Edward) 1979. "The technology and economic feasibility of offshore liquefied natural gas receiving terminals in the United States." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/91797.
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Thesis (S.M. in Ocean Systems Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Ocean Engineering, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-102).
by Parker E. Larson.
S.M.in Ocean Systems Management
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Wylie, Sara Ann. "Corporate bodies and chemical bonds : an STS analysis of natural gas development in the United States." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/69453.
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Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2011.Page 689 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 652-688).
Natural gas extraction in the United States in the early 21st century has transformed social, physical, legal and biological landscapes. The technique of hydraulic fracturing, which entails the high-pressure injection into subsurface shale formations of synthetic chemical mixtures, has been viewed by the natural gas industry as a practice of great promise. But there is another side to the story. The first half of this dissertation explores an innovative scientific approach to studying the possible deleterious impacts on human health and the environment of the release of chemicals used in gas extraction. Via participant-observation within a small scientific advocacy organization, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX), I follow the development of a database of chemicals used in natural gas extraction, a database that seeks to document not only what these chemicals are (many are proprietary), but also what sorts of bodily and ecological effects these substances may have. I analyze ethnographically how TEDX transformed an information vacuum around fracturing and generated fierce regional and national debates about the public health effects of this activity. The second portion of the dissertation expands TEDX's databasing methodology by reporting on a set of online user-generated databasing and mapping tools developed to interconnect communities encountering the corporate forces and chemical processes animating gas development. Shale gas extraction is an intensive technological practice and requires the delicate calibration of corporate, governmental, and legal apparatuses in order to proceed. The industry operates at county, state, and federal levels, and has in many instances been able to organize regulatory environments suited to rapid and lucrative gas extraction. In the midst of such multi-scalar deterritorializing forces, communities may have little legal or technical recourse if they think that they have been subject to chemical and corporate forces that undermine their financial, bodily, and social security. ExtrAct, a research group I co-founded and directed with artist and technologist Chris Csikszentmihalyi, sought to intervene in these processes by developing a suite of online mapping and databasing tools through which "gas patch" communities could share information, network, study and respond to industry activity across states. Using ExtrAct as an example this dissertation explores how social sciences and the academy at large can invest in developing research tools, methods, and programs designed for non-corporate ends, perhaps redressing in the process the informational and technical imbalances faced by communities dealing with large-scale multinational industries whose infrastructure and impacts are largely invisible to public scrutiny. The dissertation describes one potential method for such engaged scientific and social scientific research: an iterative, ethnographically informed process that I term "STS in Practice."
by Sara Ann Wylie.
Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS
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Abdulai, Akibu. "Regulating health and safety in the upstream oil and gas industry : lessons for Ghana from the United Kingdom continental shelf and the United States outer continental shelf." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2016. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=231627.
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This thesis examines the emerging health and safety regulatory regime in Ghana's nascent upstream petroleum industry putting it in context with the approaches that have evolved in the United Kingdom Continental Shelf and the United States Outer Continental Shelf. The thesis analyses the existing regulatory framework in Ghana in terms both of the architecture and of the orientation of health and safety regulation. As regards the regulatory architecture, it concludes that it is characterised by fragmented agencies under piecemeal legislation. This has resulted in regulatory overlap and lacunae. Also, the regulatory agencies including the emerging upstream regulator are saddled with conflicting missions of resource exploitation and oversight of health and safety. The thesis further demonstrates that these agencies lack decision making independence and therefore cannot provide the independence and visibility required for a robust health and safety regime. Whereas the current regulatory challenge faced by Ghana has been experienced previously in the UKCS and the US OCS, and steps have been taken there to resolve the problem of conflicting functions, the precise approach differs in each case. But the degree to which the principle of separating functions has been observed in each case may be said to correlate with the robustness of the regime in question. As regards regulatory orientation, the thesis concludes that each of the three jurisdictions examined adopts a different approach: Ghana's is basically self-regulatory while the US OCS approach is prescriptive and the UKCS framework is characterised by goal-setting and process regulation. The thesis evaluates the three approaches and concludes that the management-based approach built in to the safety case of the UKCS has proved to be robust against the prescriptive performance-based approach of the US. The thesis therefore proceeds to recommend the adoption of the UK's approach for Ghana so that all the fragmented industry specific agencies and legislation would be replaced with a single independent and visible authority and a single goal setting legislation for occupational health and safety.
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Mathews, Amanda A. ""A Government of Laws and Not of Men": John Adams, Attorney, and the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780." Thesis, Boston College, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/526.
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Thesis advisor: Alan RogersThesis advisor: Brendan McConville
The Massachusetts Constitution is the oldest active constitution in the world — it has been in effect for 228 years. While the state has amended the original document many times since its passage, its essential provisions, which have remained largely unaltered, are undoubtedly the work of a single man — John Adams. John Adams, routinely neglected among scholars, is essential to the development of American political thought. The purpose of this study is to put a magnifying glass on two important aspects of John Adams's life and give them the detailed study that they deserve: his legal career and its impact on the Massachusetts Constitution. The link between his legal career and his political theory is crucial to understanding that document. To write about John Adams's political thought without understanding the two-decade long legal career that drove so much of it leaves one with only a shallow understanding of how that thought developed. It was through the study of numerous legal authors along with his reflection and experiences as an attorney that Adams came to understand how vital the law was for a nation. Indeed, for Adams, law was the basis for good government itself, "to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."
Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2008
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: History
Discipline: History Honors Program
Discipline: College Honors Program
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Jafthas, Joan Agnes Ann. "Teacher support teams in primary schools, of the West Coast Winelands Education Management and Development Centre, Western Cape Education Department, South Africa." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2004. http://etd.uwc.ac.za/index.php?module=etd&.
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The functioning of a teacher support team is an important aspect in improving quality of education, because it has as its purpose the enhancement of collaboration and support to educators and development of conditions for learners to become more successful. This research study explored the functioning of teacher support teams in primary and elementary schools of the Western Cape Education Department of South Africa and Massachusetts in the United States of America, in assisting educators of learners with special needs in mainstream schools.
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au, 19770984@student murdoch edu, and Carrie Sonneborn. "Industry capacity building with respect to market-based approaches to greenhouse gas reduction : U.S. and Australian perspectives." Murdoch University, 2005. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20060615.132356.
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Fossil fuelintensive companies are coming under increasing pressure to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). The political environment surrounding climate change and the evolution of the carbon market are complex and in a fluid state of play. Uncertainty exists with respect to government policy, greenhouse (GH) accounting standards, interaction with stakeholders and the capacity to commoditise carbon emissions, making it difficult for companies to determine exactly how to build their internal capacity to deal with a shifting external situation.
In Australia and the United States in particular, companies are receiving mixed messages from government about the necessity of reducing GHGs and the role of emissions trading. While market-based approaches to GHG reduction are being promoted, the governments of both countries have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and failed to establish domestic emissions trading schemes. Finally, few companies have substantial experience in managing GHGs or in market-based approaches to GHG abatement, such as emissions trading.
This research aims to provide guidance for industry capacity building with respect to market-based approaches to GHG reduction, recognising that generally this would require significant organisational learning and change to corporate systems. The proposed Framework facilitates organisational learning that goes beyond the detection and correction of errors to questioning and modifying existing norms and procedures and, further, to reflecting on past experience and creating new strategies.
The research included participants as integral to the study, giving their emic (insider) viewpoints centrality while allowing etic (outsider / researcher) interpretation. Within the organisational learning literature, the approach that best describes this research is that of Action Research and Appreciative Inquiry. The principles of environmental management, cleaner production, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development inform the research. Surveys, focus groups and a literature review are employed as the data collection methods, which are compared and contrasted.
The data suggest that a one size fits all approach to industry capacity building with respect to market-based approaches to GHG reduction is not optimal or possible. This is due to the differing strategic objectives, varying assessment of risk and disparate circumstances and starting points of the companies involved. Thus, rather than a prescriptive model, this research has identified and prioritised the key themes and issues that currently influence corporate capacity building. Precursors to action have been specified and a menu of choices provided. Lastly, a step-by-step Framework has been proposed to build companies capacity to participate in GHG emissions trading. It was also observed that the majority of the key themes and issues that influence companies and the preparatory actions they need to take are the same, whether a market-based system or a command-and-control system of GHG reduction is introduced.
The thesis includes some suggestions for further research in the application and evaluation of this approach with companies in the field.
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Chewning, John Andrew. "William Robert Ware and the beginnings of architectural education in the United States, 1861-1881." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/14983.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1986.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING.
Bibliography: leaves 482-490.
William Robert Ware (1832- 1915) planned and directed the first collegiate program in architectural education i n the United States. He was educated in the liberal arts and civil engineering at Harvard University and received further training in architects' offices before entering into practice with Henry Van Brunt (1832-1903). In 1865 Ware was appointed to the newly established Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He remained on the faculty until 1881, when he was called to Columbia University to organize still another collegiate program in architecture. During 1866-67, Ware traveled in Europe, paying particular attention to the role of national schools and professional organizations in the teaching of architecture in Britain and France. Formal instruction in architecture at M.I.T. began in the fall of 1868. Ware devised a curriculum, which he adjusted throughout the 1870s, including drawing and design, architectural history, and construction and practice (i . e., building materials and components, specifications, and contracts). In the spring of 1872, he recruited Eugene Letang (1842-1892), an alumnus of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, to teach design. From this time on, the routine studio problems at M.I.T. began to emulate those of the Ecole, and the eclectic neoclassicism of the Beaux-Arts began to predominate in students' drawings. The Department of Architecture at M.I.T. in these earliest years functioned best in providing a one- or two-year course of special study for persons who were graduates of four-year colleges or who had some experience in architects' offices. It also served to prepare Americans for the formal or informal study they intended to pursue in Paris. Ware's department offered, in effect, a postgraduate program, a program in continuing education, and a preparatory program for advanced study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. By virtue of its location in cosmopolitan Boston, the M.I.T. Department of Architecture emerged in the 1870s as the preeminent American collegiate program, attracting more students from more diverse parts of the country than the other important early programs at Cornell University and the University of Illinois. Ware trained some 235 students at M.I.T., and many of them became the leaders in architecture and architectural education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
by John Andrew Chewning.
Ph.D.
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Rodriguez, Alexander. "The removal of an airborne low-volatility heavy metal from exhaust gases through condensation onto sorbent particles." Access restricted to users with UT Austin EID Full text (PDF) from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International, 2001. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3035970.
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Dohanich, Francis Albert. "On-Road Remote Sensing of Motor Vehicle Emissions: Associations between Exhaust Pollutant Levels and Vehicle Parameters for Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Texas, and Utah." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2003. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5524/.
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On-road remote sensing has the ability to operate in real-time, and under real world conditions, making it an ideal candidate for detecting gross polluters on major freeways and thoroughfares. In this study, remote sensing was employed to detect carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC), and nitrogen oxide (NO). On-road remote sensing data taken from measurements performed in six states, (Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Texas, and Utah) were cleaned and analyzed. Data mining and exploration were first undertaken in order to search for relationships among variables such as make, year, engine type, vehicle weight, and location. Descriptive statistics were obtained for the three pollutants of interest. The data were found to have non-normal distributions. Applied transformations were ineffective, and nonparametric tests were applied. Due to the extremely large sample size of the dataset (508,617 records), nonparametric tests resulted in "p" values that demonstrated "significance." The general linear model was selected due to its ability to handle data with non-normal distributions. The general linear model was run on each pollutant with output producing descriptive statistics, profile plots, between-subjects effects, and estimated marginal means. Due to insufficient data within certain cells, results were not obtained for gross vehicle weight and engine type. The "year" variable was not directly analyzed in the GLM because "year" was employed in a weighted least squares transformation. "Year" was found to be a source of heteroscedasticity; and therefore, the basis of a least-squares transformation. Grouped-years were analyzed using medians, and the results were displayed graphically. Based on the GLM results and descriptives, Japanese vehicles typically had the lowest CO, HC, and NO emissions, while American vehicles ranked high for the three. Illinois, ranked lowest for CO, while Texas ranked highest. Illinois and Colorado were lowest for HC emissions, while Utah and California were highest. For NO, Colorado ranked highest with Texas and Arizona, lowest.
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Tong, Fan. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Economic and Environmental Implications of Using Natural Gas to Power On-Road Vehicles in the United States." Research Showcase @ CMU, 2016. http://repository.cmu.edu/dissertations/717.
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Currently, in the United States, on-road vehicles are primarily powered by petroleum fuels (gasoline and diesel). These vehicles have caused serious climate change effects from emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) and health and environmental impacts from criteria air pollutant (CAP). The recent success of shale gas development has brought industry interest in using natural gas to power on-road vehicles. In addition to low costs and wide availability of this national fuel source, natural gas is a common feedstock to produce alternative fuels. The question arises of whether using natural gas for transportation could help or hinder the environment. In this dissertation, I study the economic and environmental effects of a wide range of natural gas fuel pathways for a selection of light duty (LDV) and medium and heavy duty (MHDV) vehicle types. I choose to focus on two environmental metrics: GHGs and CAPs emitted over the life cycle of each potential pathway for natural gas use. First in Chapters 2 and 3, I use life-cycle analysis to understand the emissions of GHGs from different natural gas pathway for LDVs and MHDVs. Then in Chapter 4 I focus on the CAP emissions from these vehicles. Overall, I find that none of the natural gas pathways eliminate life cycle air emissions. In fact, only a few pathways reduce life cycle GHG emissions and/or life cycle air pollution damages compared to baseline petroleum fuels (gasoline for light-duty vehicles (LDVs) and diesel for heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs)). For the cases of light duty vehicles (LDVs) and transit buses, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) powered by natural gas-based electricity provide significant reduction in life cycle GHG emissions and life cycle air pollution damages (for almost all counties) compared to the baseline petroleum fuels. However, the actual electricity that charges BEVs may not be natural gas-based electricity in most parts of the U.S. When powered by U.S. grid electricity (using average emission factors for 2010 and 2014), BEVs reduce life cycle GHG emissions to a lesser extent but increase life cycle air pollution damages significantly. Compressed natural gas (CNG), while reducing GHG emissions and CAP emissions (except CO) at tailpipe, are more likely to increase life cycle GHG emissions and increase life cycle air pollution damages in the majority of U.S. counties. For heavy-duty trucks, CNG sparking-ignition (SI) trucks and liquefied natural gas (LNG) high-pressure direct ignition (HPDI) trucks have mixed environmental impacts. While they are unlikely to reduce life cycle GHG emissions compared to diesel, they reduce life cycle air pollution damages in 76-99% of U.S. counties for local-haul tractor-trailers and in 32-71% of U.S. counties for long-haul tractor-trailers. In Chapters 5 and 6, I examine the economic impacts of natural gas fuel pathways for two vehicle types, tractor-trailers and transit buses. I study the economic feasibility of a national natural gas refueling infrastructure for long-haul trucks in U.S., which is a prerequisite for natural gas tractor-trailers. I find that a transition to natural gas fuels in long-haul trucks is more expensive when the shares of natural gas trucks are below 5% because of low refueling demands and over-capacity of the refueling infrastructure to ensure network coverage. At higher shares of natural gas trucks, both the total refueling capacity and the net economic benefits of the national refueling infrastructure increase almost linearly as adoption increases. Finally, in Chapter 6, I provide an economic-technology assessment for transit buses by considering both life cycle ownership costs and life cycle social costs due to GHG emissions and CAP emissions. Transit buses are early adopters of alternative fuel technologies because of funding supports and operation characteristics (such as high fuel consumption and private refueling infrastructure). I find that the availability of external funding is crucial for transit agencies to adopt any alternative fuel option. Without external funding, only rapid-charging battery electric buses (BEBs) have lower ownership & social costs than conventional diesel buses. When external funding is available to reduce bus purchase costs by 80%, BEBs become much more cost-effective. In this case, life cycle ownership and social costs of BEBs are 37-43% lower than conventional diesel buses. Including life cycle social costs does not change the ranking of alternative fuel options. The findings in this dissertation suggest different strategies of using natural gas for different vehicle markets. Natural gas is best used in electric power generation than to produce gaseous or liquid fuels for powering on-road LDVs. The use of CNG and LNG for heavy-duty trucks may continue as there are less alternative fuel options but issues such as methane leakage should be addressed to avoid important climate change effect. Finally, natural gas-based transportation fuels can at best partially mitigate climate change or air pollution damages, so other mitigation strategies in the transportation sector are ultimately needed to achieve sustainable transportation.
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Phillips, Sara. "Property and prosperity: examing contemporary private property ownership in light of increased oil and gas development in the United States." Thesis, McGill University, 2014. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=121441.
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The concept of private property has played an important role within American history and culture. For many of the country's founding statesmen, private property was heralded as the ultimate path to freedom, financial independence, and prosperity. The role of the private landowner has evolved dramatically over the last two centuries or so, and private property has now become an important component of US states' increased oil and gas development efforts. As demand for the resources continues to rise, the US has experienced an unprecedented boom in oil and gas development, on both public and private lands. In the wake of increased development activity, the demand for greater land conservation measures has also escalated. Private property plays an integral role in US environmental conservation efforts and a growing number of landowners now seek enduring land conservation and protection.This thesis considers the role of private property in light of the arguably equally important state interests of oil and gas resource development and environmental conservation. Utilizing professors Gregory Alexander and Eduardo Peñalver's human flourishing model of the social obligation norm, I argue that private property ownership consists of two primary overarching social obligations: resource development and land conservation. Looking to the state of Colorado as a case study, I examine the various traits inherent in private land ownership within the context of resource development, demonstrating that Colorado has, to its detriment, over-emphasized the obligation of resource development while neglecting other equally important environmental considerations. Throughout the thesis, I reveal how Colorado's substandard regulatory practices have disempowered the state's private landowners, disincentivized land conservation efforts, and effectively undermined the human flourishing model of private property ownership. I therefore argue for a repositioning of the state's interests, to provide greater protection to Colorado's private landowners while also restoring balance and harmony to the social objectives of environmental preservation, and conservation and development of oil and gas resources.Le concept de propriété privée a joué un rôle important dans l'histoire et la culture Américaine. Pour beaucoup des pères fondateurs du pays, la propriété privée était considérée comme la voie ultime menant à la liberté, l'indépendance financière et la prospérité. Le rôle du propriétaire privé a considérablement évolué au cours des deux derniers siècles environ, et la propriété privée est devenue, pour les états américains, une composante importante de leur développement minier et gazier. Du fait de l'augmentation des besoins en ressources, les États-Unis ont connu un essor sans précédent de l'exploitation minière, aussi bien sur les terrains publics que privés. Au fur et à mesure du développement grandissant de l'activité minière, les exigences d'accroissement des mesures protectrices en matière de conservation des sols ont également augmenté. La propriété privée joue un rôle essentiel dans les efforts des États-Unis en matière de protection environnementale et un nombre croissant de propriétaires cherchent dorénavant une conservation et une préservation durables des terres.Cette thèse étudie le rôle de la propriété privée au regard des intérêts étatiques, sans doute aussi importants, en matière de développement des ressources gazières et pétrolières et de préservation de l'environnement. Utilisant le modèle de l'épanouissement de l'être humain fondé sur la théorie de la contrainte sociale, élaboré par les professeurs Gregory Alexander et Eduardo Peñalver, je soutiens que la propriété privée se compose de deux contraintes sociales principales : le développement des ressources et la préservation des terres. Utilisant l'état du Colorado comme cas d'étude, j'examine les différents attributs inhérents à la propriété privée des terres dans le cadre du développement des ressources, démontrant ainsi que le Colorado a, à son détriment, excessivement privilégié le développement des ressources par rapport aux autres considérations environnementales tout aussi importantes. Tout au long de la thèse, je m'attache à exposer comment les lacunes des normes règlementaires édictées par l'état du Colorado ont conduit à désavantager les propriétaires privés de l'état, décourager les initiatives en matière de préservation des sols et ont finalement desservi le modèle d'épanouissement de l'être humain par la propriété privée. J'ai donc argumenté en faveur d'un repositionnement des intérêts de l'état, afin d'offrir une meilleure protection aux propriétaires privés du Colorado, tout en rétablissant l'équilibre et l'harmonie entre les objectifs sociétaux de préservation et conservation de l'environnement et de développement des ressources pétrolières et gazières.
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Berger, Loretta Kathleen. "The effect of health insurance plan type on initial colorectal cancer screening in the United States since the inception of health care reform in Massachusetts." Thesis, Boston University, 2013. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/21124.
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Thesis (M.S.H.P.) PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you.The Accountable Care Act (ACA) will expand coverage to millions of Americans. Health insurance plans designed to contain costs and incentivize patients may pose risks that deter members from utilizing recommended services despite provisions such as zero-cost-sharing intended to encourage their use. We evaluated trends (from 2007 to 2011) in health insurance plan type and initial colorectal cancer (CRCA) screening per current guidelines. We hypothesized that consumer-directed and high-deductible health plans (CDHP/HDHP) would be associated with decreased and delayed CRCA screening, and a shift toward lower-cost screening options. Using Thomson MarketScan® data, we analyzed commercial claims for 989,038 American adults (prior colectomy or CRCA excluded) over a full three-year period (starting in January of the fiftieth birthday-year) to assess for CRCA screening (colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, or stool test). Using logistic regression, we found that CDHP/HDHP members showed increased likelihood of having had any CRCA screening compared to Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) members, in both Massachusetts (Odds Ratio [OR] 2.321, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 1.788-3.014) and the Nation (OR 1.640, 95% CI 1.602-1.678). Of those screened, CDHP/HDHP patients were more likely to receive colonoscopy than other recommended alternatives compared to PPO (Massachusetts OR 1.289, 95% CI 1.007-1.651; U.S. OR 1.225, 95% CI 1.192-1.259). Using linear regression, we found that CDHP/HDHP patients were only slightly older at screening compared to PPO, and the difference, while statistically significant, was likely too small to be clinically meaningful. We conclude that contrary to our expectations, CDHP/HDHP members have not been deterred from seeking and obtaining appropriate and timely initial CRCA screening, and they have not chosen lower-cost options. These findings may reflect the newly insured effect, although one limitation of this study was the inability to adjust for selection into CDHP/HDHP. Further study should determine whether CDHP/HDHP members subsequently experience unexpected financial burdens related to CRCA screening that affect future utilization of recommended care. In the pursuit of lower costs through better outcomes, attention should be paid to designing simple and affordable plans with easily understandable features that encourage both patients and providers to follow recommended guidelines while considering the cost-effectiveness of available options.
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van, Onna Joppe H. "A comparison of the environmental regulatory framework on the production of shale gas in the European Union and the United States." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Juridiska institutionen, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-96032.
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Phoel, William C. "Community structure of demersal fishes on the inshore U.S. Atlantic continental shelf: Cape Ann, MA. to Cape Fear, N.C. (United States, cluster analysis, Massachusetts, North Carolina)." W&M ScholarWorks, 1985. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539616807.
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Numerical classification analyses (clustering) of spring, summer and fall National Marine Fisheries Service bottom trawl catches on the inshore continental shelf between Cape Ann, Ma. and Cape Fear, N.C., showed consistent species associations and faunal zones over a three year period. Analysis of a data set created by combining all nine survey cruises also produced consistent species associations, however sites clustered by seasons as well as by geographic area. The three faunal provinces of the U.S. east coast (Gulf of Maine, Middle Atlantic Bight and South Atlantic Bight) were represented in the study area, as were the seasonal faunal barriers at Nantucket Shoals and Cape Hatteras. Generally, the faunal zones correlated well with the thermal regimes of each province and respected the faunal barriers when strong thermal gradients were present. Only south of Cape Hatteras did depth appear to define a boundary between faunal zones. During the spring, when bottom water temperatures were lowest, four species associations and three faunal zones were identified. The species associations consisted of a cold water boreal group (affiliated only with the faunal zone between Cape Ann and Cape May, N.J.), a less cryophilic boreal group, a eurythermal warm temperate group and a warm temperate group which was restricted to waters south of Cape Hatteras. With vernal warming, a northerly and onshore migration of warm temperate species increased to five the number of species associations in summer. Beside the four groups found in spring, a more thermophilic association was identified. Separations between the northern three summer faunal zones occurred at Nantucket Shoals and northern New Jersey. The other two summer zones were restricted to south of Cape Hatteras and were separated longitudinally (inshore and offshore). In fall, when bottom temperatures were highest, a sixth species group of primarily southern species was identified. This group appeared restricted to the inshore faunal zone south of Cape Hatteras. The five faunal zones recognized in summer were also identified in fall.
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Ziesler, Yasmine Levora. "Becoming Korean and American: a microethnography of Korean children's socialization in an American preschool." Thesis, Boston University, 2004. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/33608.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityPLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you.
This study examines the socialization of sharing behaviors in a transnational population of Korean children in greater Boston, Massachusetts and South Korea. Data for this study include the author's experiences living in South Korea from 1995 to 1996, ethnographic fieldwork in the Korean community of greater Boston from 1999 to 2002, five weeks of classroom observation and home visits in South Korea in the summer of 2001, and weekly microethnographic observations of seventeen children from January 2001 to June 2002. Korean culture is broadly construed as "sociocentric" in contrast to "individualistic" American culture. Descriptions ofhome and school life demonstrate this contrast in strategies for sharing limited resources. Korean strategies for sharing emphasize a generalized joint use of resources katchi (together) while American strategies emphasize litigation of individual rights through tum-taking procedures. This study describes the socialization of transnational Korean children who encounter these contrasting cultural strategies for sharing. Through a microethnographic examination of the experiences of individual children over time, the study offers several contributions to culture and socialization theory. First, a description of the Korean community of greater Boston challenges assumptions in education research that define public schools as a place of "mainstream American" culture in contrast to the culture of minority children's homes and ethnic communities. The Korean community of greater Boston described in this study is a heterogeneous continuum of immigrant and sojourner families living in patterns of dense settlement and school enrollment. A child may interact almost exclusively with ethnic Korean peers at school and yet practice American behaviors in these interactions. The second major contribution of this work is to outline a microethnographic approach to studying children's development over time. In comparisons of the behaviors of five individual children, this study highlights a common developmental trajectory towards greater self-assertiveness in sharing behaviors and also exposes individual variations in experience and behavior. By focusing on the socialization of specific behaviors in a small number of individuals, this study provides evidence for a model of cultural socialization as the unique individual accumulation of knowledge, motivation, and practice.
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Giroux, André François. "The settlement of international environmental trade dispute in GATT : a case study of the European Union - United States gas guzzler tax Dispute." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26446.
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This thesis addresses the issue of international trade and environmental protection, more particularly within the framework of the GATT dispute settlement system. In May 1993, the European Union took issue with the U.S. taxes on automobiles aimed primarily at environmental concerns. The European Union claims that the gas guzzler tax, the luxury tax and the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) payment are discriminatory and therefore contrary to the principles of GATT Article III.The study of this dispute and the prospective analysis of its outcome show that both the gas guzzler tax and the luxury tax do not constitute a violation of the General Agreement. However, the CAFE payment violate the national treatment obligation and is not justified under the GATT general exceptions. The CAFE payment, despite that it is primarily aimed at fuel conservation, constitute a means of arbitrary and unjustifiable discrimination.
The outcome of this dispute confirms the permissiveness and limits of the GATT rules toward legitimate environmental policies.
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Al-Imam, Jamal D. "U.S. Foreign Policy and the Soviet Gas Pipeline to Western Europe." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1985. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc663015/.
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This paper surveys U.S. foreign policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s as the American administration reacted to the Soviet Union's interventions in Afghanistan and Poland and to its planned gas pipeline to Western Europe. Chapter I outlines the origins of the pipeline project; Chapters II and III describe U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviets during the Carter and Reagan administrations. Chapter IV focuses on the economic sanctions imposed against the Soviet Union by the United States and their failure to block or delay the pipeline, and Chapter V stresses the inability of economic sanctions-- in this and other instances--to achieve political ends.
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Wang, Huei-Jin. "Projecting Carbon Pools in Aboveground Woody Accumulations and Harvested Wood in Loblolly Pine Plantations of the Southern United States: From Stand-level to Regional Scales." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/30218.
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Accounting for in-woods carbon storage in carbon accounting systems may be insufficient when substantial amounts of sequestered carbon are harvested and converted to long-lived wood products and landfills. The potential for offsetting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by storing carbon in managed loblolly pine forests in the southern United States was projected over the next half-century, both in terms of in-woods aboveground carbon pools and harvested products, including wood used for energy production. A region-wide data set from the Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) program of USDA Forest Service was used to set initial conditions and estimate model parameters for projecting management activities including plantation area, age distributions of thinning, and clearcut harvest on an annual timestep. The stand-level growth and yield model FASTLOB was linked to the FIA data to project growth rates and annual harvest volumes of sawtimber and pulpwood for the projection period, accounting for annual timber harvests and the life cycles of wood products. In addition to baseline management practices, projections were made for scenarios that assumed increasing management intensities including the use of chemical fertilizers and herbicides and genetically-improved growing stock. Present-day carbon storage in well-managed southern pine plantations averaged 30.54 Mgâ ha-1 (± 2.54%) for aboveground carbon. Over a 50-year projection, annual wood production was 62.1 and 45.9 million green metric tons from pulpwood and sawtimber yield, with roughly one-fourth of the green weight being carbon. Baseline projections showed aboveground carbon pools of up to 341 million metric tons being maintained over the next 50 years, with 93% in aboveground live trees and 7% in coarse woody debris (CWD). The carbon storage in wood products increased steadily over the half-century projection and showed no sign of leveling off, while the storage in plantations was found to remain constant or increase slightly over time. An additional 11 million metric tons of harvested carbon was used for energy per year on average, equivalent to 25% of annual forest-products-industry renewable energy use in U.S.A. Intensified forest management practices showed the potential to increase as much as 30% total carbon stored in in-woods and harvested-wood-products pools, with potential increases up to 40% in energy offsets above the baseline scenario. Reducing management intensity greatly increased in-woods carbon storage potential, but eliminated the wood-products carbon sink.Ph. D.
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Binus, Joshua D. "Bonneville Power Administration and the Creation of the Pacific Intertie, 1958 -1964." PDXScholar, 2008. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1724.
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Construction of the Pacific Northwest-Pacific Southwest Intertie (also known as the Pacific Intertie) began in 1964, following the culmination of a series of interrelated negotiations which included: 1) the planning for the construction and operation of the Pacific Intertie; 2) the passage of federal legislation that put limits on the export of electricity from the regions where it was generated; and 3) the full ratification of the Columbia River Treaty between the United States and Canada. By 1970, with construction complete, the Pacific Intertie allowed for the movement of more than 4,000,000 kilowatts of power among the electrical systems of British Columbia and eleven Western states, including 243 rural electrical cooperatives, municipal systems, and other public agencies. It had essentially become the backbone of the largest electrical grid in the Western world. In addition to widening the marketing area available to power producers throughout the grid, the Pacific Intertie also integrated the operations of the nation's largest hydropower system (Bonneville Power Administration), the largest privately owned electrical system (Pacific Gas & Electric), and the largest municipal power system (L.A. Department of Water and Power) in the country.
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Mayo-Bobee, Dinah. "Book Review of Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic by Charles N. Edel." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/722.
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Chilcote, Jonathan D. ""All the Crises Reached a Concerted Crescendo" - The Arab Oil Embargo and Why the United States Was Unprepared for It." TopSCHOLAR®, 2009. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/144.
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During the 2008 spike in oil prices, oil companies and government officials were brought under close scrutiny as many Americans began to question why prices were able to rise so quickly. Americans had become accustomed to living in an economy where cheap oil was the norm, and demanded answers when that situation changed. What most of them did not know is that they were repeating history and mimicking the response to the 1973 oil embargo. Just as in 2008, the United States faced a crisis in 1973 with which it was unprepared to effectively cope. This thesis analyzes the reasons for and consequences of this lack of preparation in 1973 drawing on the writings of major policy makers and leaders of the time, most notably Henry Kissinger, Anwar el-Sadat, and Richard Nixon, Senate hearings testimony, recently declassified government documents detailing plans for U.S. invasion, and contemporary newspapers which recorded public perception. I argue that decades of living with cheaply priced oil, an over reliance on multinational corporations and a lack of understanding of Middle Eastern resentment toward these oil companies, combined with a fundamental misunderstanding of how oil and politics could be linked brought the United States to the ultimate near-decision of invading the Middle East.
The 1973 oil embargo brought the United States face-to-face with the consequences of reliance on foreign oil and with the hardships that resulted from it. The United States had relied on oil companies to manage their interests in the Middle East for decades but in 1973 the situation changed forever. I close by considering the ongoing deep ties between the United States and the Middle East that are present still. The same problems that existed in 1973 exist today, and until those are corrected the United States and its economy will be deeply tied to the Middle East and to events in the region.
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Campbell, Kyle. "Sister Cities and Diaspora: From Diaspora to Potential Sister City Partnership." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-21219.
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The sister city concept has now been around for several decades and yet there remains to be a paucity of literature dealing with the subject. Despite this unfortunate fact, there has been some literature written trying to deal with the progression of what sparked cities to try to establish sister city relationships with one another. However, this is still not enough. Diasporas have been neglected as a potential cause, which I try to remedy by employing the method of explaining outcome process tracing in a case study of the sister city relationship that began to be explored between the cities of Governador Valadares, Brazil and Framingham, United States.Information was collected using materials such as news articles from such sources as the Metrowest Daily News and official websites such as Governador Valadares’ official city webpage, and various histories, ethnographies, and other sources were also considered especially focusing on Framingham and the Greater Boston Area, allowing for the collection of materials of both primary and secondary nature and thus an in-depth analysis.What was found was that indeed, it is true that diaspora had a hand in influencing the negotiation of a sister city relationship between the two cities; First, the context of the Brazilian Diaspora in the United States was explained and analysed and it was found that it could be termed a termed a proletarian labour diaspora.Explaining outcome process tracing was then employed to inductively explain how the spark can be created, which suggested that the causal mechanism between the diaspora and the negotiations for the SCR to begin were that of an enclave forming due to the diaspora which then allowed social capital to be accumulated, allowing for Governador Valadares to grow despite Brazil’s bad economic conditions due to remittances, leading to the mayor of Governador Valadares initiating the talks.
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Look, Wesley Allen. "The economics of US greenhouse gas emissions reduction policy : assessing distributional effects across households and the 50 United States using a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79205.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-62).
The political economy of US climate policy has revolved around state- and district- level distributional economics, and to a lesser extent household-level distribution questions. Many politicians and analysts have suggested that state- and district-level climate policy costs (and their distribution) are a function of local carbon intensity and commensurate electricity price sensitivity. However, other studies have suggested that what is most important in determining costs is the means by which revenues from a price on carbon are allocated. This is one of the first studies to analyze these questions simultaneously across all 50 United States, household income classes and a timeframe that reflects most recent policy proposals (2015 - 2050). I use a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to estimate the economic effects of a US "cap-and-dividend" policy, by simulating the implementation of the Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act, a bill proposed by Senators Cantwell (D-WA) and Collins (R-ME) in 2009. I find that while carbon intensity and electricity prices are indeed important in determining compliance costs in some states, they are only part of the story. My results suggest that revenue allocation mechanisms and new investment trends related to the switch to low-carbon infrastructure are more influential than incumbent carbon intensity or electricity price impacts in determining the distribution of state-level policy costs. These findings suggest that the current debate in the United States legislature over climate policy, and the constellation of both supporters and dissenters, is based upon an incomplete set of assumptions that must be revisited. Finally, please note that this study does not claim to comprehensively model the CLEAR Act,. nor does it incorporate a number of important data and assumptions, including: the latest data on natural gas resources and prices, the price effects on coal of EPA greenhouse gas and mercury regulations, the most recent trends in renewable energy pricing.
by Wesley Allen Look.
S.M.