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This dissertation investigates the materiality of performative sculpture in the Americas during the long 1970s through artists Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015) and Senga Nengudi (1943). United in their disenchantment with second-wave feminism, Buchanan and Nengudi are situated art-historically in the expanded fields of (post)minimalism, conceptualism, and the Black Arts Movement. These artists realize their objects by sourcing non-traditional artmaking materials within what this dissertation conjures as a haptic imaginary—an intervening corrective to both the second-wave feminist and postmodern art imaginaries of the 1970s. Their materials expose the limitations of the visual and offer alternate models of knowing. For Buchanan’s frustulum series (1978-81), poured concrete, and later, tabby concrete, memorializes the textures of architectural sites to honor experiences of labor and displacement. Tabby concrete, a compound binding agent made of sand and lime, is a localized, inexpensive material that was often used by enslaved people in the southern United States, especially in coastal states like Georgia, which provide access to massive deposits of lime-rich oyster shells. Nengudi’s R.S.V.P. series (1977) of pliable pantyhose and sand are anthropomorphic objects originally meant to be activated; they mimic bodily expansion, endurance, and fatigue. Pantyhose, made mostly of nylon, the world’s first fully synthetic fiber, are the product of decades of scientific and economic development, whose intertwined history with World War II offers a springboard to understand the potency of Nengudi’s experiments with the garment. The artists’ materials become sites of investigation into memory, place, body, erotics, and precarity. By offering new epistemological methods of engagement that retaliate against the hegemony of the visual through their twinned interests in ruins for Buchanan, and remains for Nengudi, the artists realize a new womanist politic. Buchanan and Nengudi deploy, respectively, tabby concrete and pantyhose with sand to transmit historical and embodied knowledge. It is precisely through the activated sensorium of touch—imagined and physical—that the past is transmitted and materialized.

This experiment was designed to examine the effects of burning pig (Sus scrofa) remains on insect succession. Remains can be found burnt in a range of natural disasters including earthquakes, motor vehicle accidents, house fires, and brush fires. In homicides, more often than not, remains may be burnt to try and disguise the crime or destroy evidence. There has been little research conducted on the rate of insect succession at different levels of burning. This study will help to build upon the hypothesis that diverse levels of burning will each affect insect succession differently. The experiments took place in May 2017, and was repeated in August 2017. There were a total of three pigs used during this study, which were divided into quarters. Two quarters were used to represent each treatment level. One treatment remained unburnt and was used as a control in each experiment. The quarters were burnt at the research site in Holliston, MA. The Crow-Glassman Scale (CGS) was used to burn one treatment to level 2 and one treatment to level 3-4. They were then placed on site, no closer than five meters apart, surrounded by modified lobster cages and allowed to decompose. Notes, photographs, and insect collections took place every 2 hours on day 2 and twice a day for days 2 through 7. A final collection was then made on day 10 after the majority of tissue and insects were no longer present. The amount of insect activity was documented, photographs were taken, and samples were both preserved and reared through to adults. It was hypothesized that there was a correlation between insect activity and the level of burning. This was found to be true based on the results of this study, and with further research, will have the potential to aid in the determination of the post mortem interval (PMI) when burnt remains are found at the scene.

The present research examined remains found from the Winchester Site in Winchester, MA that have evidence for postmortem alteration. The author compared the assemblages from Point San Jose (Hart et al. 2019; Willey et al. 2018), Holden Chapel (Hodge 2013; Hodge et al. 2017), Medical College of Georgia (Blakley 1997; McFarlin and Wineski 1997; Terrell and McFarlin 1997), Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds (Dougherty and Sullivan 2017), Newcastle Infirmary (Chamberlain 2016), and Blockley Almshouse (Crist et al. 2017; Hynes 2005) regarding patterns in bone modification and their potential causes. The sawn assemblage consists of 1365 adult remains, 67 juvenile remains, and 13 nonhuman remains. The human adult sawn Winchester Site sample is composed of 19.7% cranial remains and 80.3% postcranial remains. The postmortem alterations found on the remains from the Winchester Site lack pathological changes surrounding them. Eight of the 17 (47.0%) nearly complete crania exhibit evidence for craniotomy. Postmortem trephinations are seen in three crania. Repetition of surgical procedure training is seen through the 349 transverse complete kerfs located on the postcranial remains. There are 125 sternal segments and 133 rib segments with evidence of sharp force trauma, potentially from thoracotomy. The postmortem alteration within the faunal assemblage can be attributed to butchery on the elements from cow, sheep, and unidentified mammal, and dissection on the elements from the dog and red fox. Implements utilized on the skeletal remains were a flat-bladed saw with 18 teeth per inch (TPI) and a trephine. The remains from the Winchester Site exhibit experimentation with kerf locations, most likely originating from surgical training practices.

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Stress is a ubiquitous experience in the student population. This is concerning, as stress impairs memory functioning. Since memory functioning largely determines academic success, stress prevents students from fulfilling their academic potential. But this impairing effect of stress may not always emerge. Recent research has shown that stress does not impair memory performance if students learn information by practicing retrieval. This has been coined as an inoculation effect. Though surprising, this may simply result from automatizing the retrieval process. This study sought to replicate this finding using ecologically valid materials and test whether the inoculation effect occurred with multiple-choice questions (MCQs). Participants learnt a passage by either restudying it or by practicing retrieval. They returned two days later and completed the Trier Social Stress Test or a control version. They then freely recalled the passage and completed the MCQs. Although the results are preliminary, the trends in the data indicate that stress had no effect on free recall performance or MCQ performance when information was learnt by practicing retrieval. This result is discussed along with this study’s limitations. Post hoc analyses are also discussed with future research directions. Altogether, this study adds to a longstanding literature reporting negative effects of stress on cognition and adds to a new literature that investigates ways to nullify effects of stress on memory performance. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Prognostics and healthmanagement (PHM) is an engineering discipline that aims to maintain the systembehaviour and function, and assure the mission success, safety andeffectiveness. Health management using a proper condition-based maintenance (CBM)deployment is a worldwide accepted technique and has grown very popular in manyindustries over the past decades. These techniques are relevant in environmentswhere the prediction of a failure and the prevention and mitigation of itsconsequences increase the profit and safety of the facilities concerned.Prognosis is the most critical part of this process and is nowadays recognizedas a key feature in maintenance strategies, since estimation of the remaininguseful life (RUL) is essential.PHM can provide a stateassessment of the future health of systems or components, e.g. when a degradedstate has been found. Using this technology, one can estimate how long it willtake before the equipment will reach a failure threshold, in future operatingconditions and future environmental conditions. This thesis focuses especiallyon physics-based prognostic approaches, which depend on a fundamentalunderstanding of the physical system in order to develop condition monitoringtechniques and to predict the RUL.The overall research objective of thework performed for this thesis has been to improve the accuracy and precisionof RUL predictions. The research hypothesis is that fusing the output of morethan one method will improve the accuracy and precision of the RUL estimation,by developing a new approach to prognostics that combines different remaininglife estimators and physics-based and data-driven methods. There are two waysof acquiring data for data-driven models, namely measurements of real systemsand syntactic data generation from simulations. The thesis deals with two casestudies, the first of which concerns the generation of synthetic data andindirect measurement of dynamic bearing loads and was performed atBillerudKorsäs paper mill at Karlsborg in Sweden. In this study the behaviourof a roller in a paper machine was analysed using the finite element method(FEM). The FEM model is a step towards the possibility of generating syntheticdata on different failure modes, and the possibility of estimating crucialparameters like dynamic bearing forces by combining real vibration measurementswith the FEM model. The second case study deals with the development ofprognostic methods for battery discharge estimation for Mars-based rovers. Herephysical models and measurement data were used in the prognostic development insuch a way that the degradation behaviour of the battery could be modelled andsimulated in order to predict the life-length. A particle filter turned out tobe the method of choice in performing the state assessment and predicting thefuture degradation. The method was then applied to a case study of batteriesthat provide power to the rover.

For law enforcement officials, encountering a ritual scene involving the use of human skeletal remains may lead to the incorrect assumption that the bones belong to the victim of a homicide. Due to the presence of human bones, a forensic anthropologist may be called to the scene to analyze and determine their significance. However, most law enforcement agencies and many forensic anthropologists may not recognize the additional ritual artifacts, nor their significance or symbolism. The focus of this thesis is to explore the forensic significance of the use of human skeletal remains in religious rituals. Included are the rituals of the Afro-Caribbean religions of Santeria, Palo, and Vodun. Recognition of associated ritual artifacts and taphonomic modifications of human skeletal remains allows for correct interpretation of these ritual scenes, providing law enforcement officials with the necessary tools to conduct proper scene investigation and analysis.

The present research examined the nonhuman skeletal remains associated with anatomized human skeletal remains in Winchester, MA. Previous research indicated the use of animals for anatomical teaching, including but not limited to, the remains found at the sites of Holden Chapel, Ashmolean Museum, London Hospital Burial, and Medical College of Georgia. The present research consists of analyzed the faunal skeletal remains, including taxonomic identification, quantification, aging, and bone modification. The assemblage consisted of 1444 nonhuman remains, making up 9.5% of the total identified Winchester Site skeletal sample. The most represented species were dog (Canis familiaris), cat (Felis catus), and brown rat (Rattus norvegicus). The sample also included cattle (Bos taurus), pig (Sus scrofa), goat/sheep (Ovis aries/Capra hircus), macaque (Macaca sp.), European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), chicken (Gallus gallus), turtle (Testudines), and oyster (Ostreida). Sharp force trauma is present on 1.14% of the remains, providing evidence of food butchery and dissection. Taphonomic alterations from burial included green copper oxide staining, brown soil staining, and the presence of plant roots in the assemblage. The nonhuman sample consisted of a total Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI) of 36, and the long bones represented most of the Minimum Animal Units (MAU). The identified species were used for diverse purposes, including medical training and food, with macaque, turtle, cat, and dog used for comparative anatomy.

There is a generalized perception on the 1991-1995 war in the former Yugoslavia as an ethnic conflict caused by longstanding antagonisms among homogenous ethnic groups inhabiting its territory. In such a worldview, which became part of the dominant discourse, inter-ethnic violence in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina was inevitable and the division of the population along ethnic lines was needed to stop the violence. In this thesis I problematize the dominant discourse on the ethnic nature and inevitability of violence, as well as on the ethnic fracturing as a solution, by exposing the experiences of two largest communities that remained ethnically mixed and preserved communal peace throughout wartime – the community of the region of Gorski kotar in Croatia and the community of the city of Tuzla in Bosnia-Herzegovina. By documenting and analysing their discourses and practices, and by contrasting them with the dominant discourses of war in these two countries, I provide evidence that these two communities were oases of peace which developed a counter-discourse and resisted violence by preserving their multi-ethnic character, promoting multiple identities, cherishing inter-ethnic cooperation and ensuring equality and good governance for all their citizens. Their narratives challenge the well-established «truths» about the war in the former Yugoslavia and add to the complexity of collective memories of its peoples.