Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Futurological Fodder: On Communicating The Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, And Employment, Michael E. Samers Dr

Geography Faculty Publications

This article examines the debate concerning the employment implications of the so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (FIR) or the increasing presence of artificial intelligence and robotics in workplaces. I analyze three ‘genres’ associated with this debate (academic studies including neo-classical and heterodox/post-human approaches, the ‘gray literature’, and popular media) and I argue that together they represent ‘futurological fodder’ or discourses and knowledges that ‘perform’ the FIR and its purported consequences. I contend further that these genres involve a complex mix of ethics and politics, and I conclude with a reflection on the political implications of the FIR debate.

“We Just Need The Developer To Develop”: Entrepreneurialism, Financialization And Urban Redevelopment In Lexington, Kentucky, Kevin Ward, Andrew Wood

Geography Faculty Publications

Since the 1980s US city governments have increased their use of more speculative means of financing economic redevelopment. This has involved experimenting with a variety of financial and taxation instruments as a way of growing their economies and redeveloping their built environments. This very general tendency, of course, masks how some cities have done well through the use of these instruments while others have not. The work to date has tended to pivot around a “winner-loser dichotomy”, which emphasises either the capacity of US cities to be able to experiment and speculate through the use of one financial instrument or …

Emergence Of Covid-19 And Patterns Of Early Transmission In An Appalachian Sub-Region, Abbey K. Mann, Timothy A. Joyner, Ingrid E. Luffman, Megan Quinn, William Tollefson, Ashley Frazier

Journal of Appalachian Health

Background: In mid-March 2020, very few cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed in the Central Blue Ridge Region, an area in Appalachia that includes 47 jurisdictions across northeast Tennessee, western North Carolina, and southwest Virginia. Authors described the emergence of cases and outbreaks in the region between March 18 and June 11, 2020.

Methods: Data were collected from the health department websites of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia beginning in mid-March for an ongoing set of COVID-19 monitoring projects, including a newsletter for local healthcare providers and a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) dashboard. In Fall 2020, using these databases, authors …

Trends In Land Surface Phenology Across The Conterminous United States (1982-2016) Analyzed By Neon Domains, Liang Liang, Geoffrey M. Henebry, Lingling Liu, Xiaoyang Zhang, Li-Chih Hsu

Geography Faculty Publications

Tracking phenological change in a regionally explicit context is a key to understanding ecosystem status and change. The current study investigated long-term trends of satellite-observed land surface phenology (LSP) in the 17 National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) domains across the conterminous United States (CONUS). Characterization of LSP trends was based on a high temporal resolution (3-d) time series of the two-band enhanced vegetation index (EVI2) derived from a long-term data record (LTDR) of the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). We identified significant trend patterns in LSP and their seasonal climate and land …

Creating A Field-Wide Forage Canopy Model Using Uavs And Photogrammetry Processing, Cameron Minch, Joseph S. Dvorak, Joshua J. Jackson, Stuart Tucker Sheffield

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Alfalfa canopy structure reveals useful information for managing this forage crop, but manual measurements are impractical at field-scale. Photogrammetry processing with images from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can create a field-wide three-dimensional model of the crop canopy. The goal of this study was to determine the appropriate flight parameters for the UAV that would enable reliable generation of canopy models at all stages of alfalfa growth. Flights were conducted over two separate fields on four different dates using three different flight parameters. This provided a total of 24 flights. The flight parameters considered were the following: 30 m altitude with …

Mapping Complex Land Use Histories And Urban Renewal Using Ground Penetrating Radar: A Case Study From Fort Stanwix, Tyler Stumpf, Daniel P. Bigman, Dominic J. Day

Anthropology Graduate Research

Fort Stanwix National Monument, located in Rome, NY, is a historic park with a complex use history dating back to the early Colonial period and through the urban expansion and recent economic revitalization of the City of Rome. The goal of this study was to conduct a GPR investigation over an area approximately 1 acre in size to identify buried historic features (particularly buildings) so park management can preserve these resources and develop appropriate educational programming and management plans. The GPR recorded reflection events consistent with our expectations of historic structures. Differences in size, shape, orientation, and depth suggest that …

Detecting Recent Crop Phenology Dynamics In Corn And Soybean Cropping Systems Of Kentucky, Yanjun Yang, Bo Tao, Liang Liang, Yawen Huang, Christopher J. Matocha, Chad D. Lee, Michael Sama, Bassil El Masri, Wei Ren

Geography Faculty Publications

Accurate phenological information is essential for monitoring crop development, predicting crop yield, and enhancing resilience to cope with climate change. This study employed a curve-change-based dynamic threshold approach on NDVI (Normalized Differential Vegetation Index) time series to detect the planting and harvesting dates for corn and soybean in Kentucky, a typical climatic transition zone, from 2000 to 2018. We compared satellite-based estimates with ground observations and performed trend analyses of crop phenological stages over the study period to analyze their relationships with climate change and crop yields. Our results showed that corn and soybean planting dates were delayed by 0.01 …

Undoing Mastery: With Ambivalence?, Jess Linz, Anna J. Secor

Geography Graduate Research

In this commentary, we respond to Derek Ruez and Daniel Cockayne’s article ‘Feeling Otherwise: Ambivalent Affects and the Politics of Critique in Geography’. We do so by picking up ambivalence—or more precisely, ambivalence about ambivalence—as a tool with which Ruez and Cockayne leave us. We find this tool somewhat difficult to grasp, but we understand this as part of its design. Ambivalence undoes the subject’s mastery. In doing so, we find that an airing of ambivalence gives other kinds of entangled, indeterminate, and unknowing relations room to breathe.

Challenges When Identifying Migration From Geo-Located Twitter Data, Caitrin Armstrong, Ate Poorthuis, Matthew Zook, Derek Ruths, Thomas Soehl

Geography Faculty Publications

Given the challenges in collecting up-to-date, comparable data on migrant populations the potential of digital trace data to study migration and migrants has sparked considerable interest among researchers and policy makers. In this paper we assess the reliability of one such data source that is heavily used within the research community: geolocated tweets. We assess strategies used in previous work to identify migrants based on their geolocation histories. We apply these approaches to infer the travel history of a set of Twitter users who regularly posted geolocated tweets between July 2012 and June 2015. In a second step we hand-code …

Uncovering Frontier Mythologies: Memorial Landscapes In Minneapolis, Mn, Corrin Turkowitch

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This thesis analyzes the relationship between settler colonialism and public memory in B.F. Nelson Park, a downtown park in Minneapolis. My focus is the Pioneer statue, a large granite memorial depicting a frontier family in the middle of the park, which I examine through the lenses of race, gender, power, and violence. Using archival and landscape analysis I examine the historical and present built environment of the park and how it relates to white supremacy. Through interviews of two municipal constituencies, I evaluate how these organizations maintain present narratives of European settlement and in turn uphold the monument. This research …

Procuring Produce In A Rural, Appalachian County: A Thematic Analysis Of Community Member Experiences, Caroline Blincoe

Theses and Dissertations--Nutrition and Food Systems

Rates of obesity and other health disparities are exceptionally high in rural Appalachian counties compared to the nation as a whole. One causal factor of these health disparities in Appalachian counties is the inequitable allocation of healthy food. Food insecurity and the local food environment are large drivers for obesity experienced by Martin County, Kentucky residents. Successful socioecological model (SEM) and policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) interventions have shown promising results in reducing obesity and enhancing food security in this population. Through the transcription of semi-structured focus group interviews, thematic analysis aimed to obtain perspectives on the local food system. …

Gentrification And The Black Church: Mitigating Black Suburban Displacement In A Post Covid-19 World, Jordan Mccray

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Black churches have been playing an important, stabilizing and supportive role for their members, their neighborhoods, and their communities more broadly. However, these churches’ memberships, community functions, and abilities to support their members have been threatened by the accelerating displacement of African Americans due to the ongoing effects of gentrification, defined by massive economic investment in low-income areas leading to the displacement of low-income residents. At the same time, COVID-19 has also changed the ways churches are able to deliver their support and outreach, with some moving their services to be completely virtual, and many outreach programs having to be …

Bio-Spatial Policing In Theory And Practice: Examining Impacts And Resistance Through Mobilities And Children's Everyday Life, Emily Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Despite decades of reforms and technological innovations, increasing evidence shows that state securitization disproportionately harms already racially, spatially, and socio-economically marginalized communities. My research investigates uneven impacts of state securitization, from punitive welfare programs to school surveillance to policing. Across sites, I focus on scales, voices and the everyday lived experiences often left out of scholarly discourse and sensational media. In the current climate of growing awareness and scholarship on police violence, my dissertation addresses three less-studied areas: 1) the interplay between racial, gendered, spatial, and technified police practices; 2) how these practices impact the everyday lives of those racially …

Debilitating Debts And Recapacitating Loans: How Fintech Made Markets For Unsecured Consumer Debt Using Alternative Data And Machine Learning, Michael Joshua Mccanless

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This thesis investigates the production and management of consumer debt on digital platforms. First, this study investigates how borrowers navigate spaces of debt and indebtedness created by fintech consumer lenders. Second, this thesis analyzes the process and impact of ‘alternative’ data and machine learning on fintech credit scoring models. As consumer lending ‘moves online’, this research analyzes the increasingly important role of digital spaces in the creation and management of debt. Tracking the interfaces and algorithms used by online consumer lenders, I weave together insight from digital and financial geographies to argue that digital technologies are enabling firms to marketize …

Building Quality? Migration, Suzhi, And Subaltern Masculinity In The Shanghai Construction Industry, Leif Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This doctoral dissertation providesa novel perspective on the everyday lives of construction workers in urban China, demonstrating the underpinnings of urban infrastructure and citizenship policy in affective and gendered relations surrounding the construction industry. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, China, this dissertation makes a series of three related arguments: First, focusing on the role that migrant labor plays in the construction of urban infrastructure in Shanghai, I argue that the physical existence of infrastructure itself is inextricably tied to systems that govern rural-urban migration across China. Second, building from the Chinese concept of suzhi as both …

Orienting New International College Students During A Global Pandemic: Spatiality’S Contributions To Staff Work Practices, Thomas W. Teague Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

U.S. colleges must increasingly respond to a wide range of complex forces and simultaneously fulfill their missions and support students. To address many of these forces, some have turned to internationalization efforts like recruiting and enrolling international students. In light of these efforts, critics have called for institutions to better, more appropriately support these students, given their challenges and needs. This call has amplified during the recent COVID-19 global health pandemic.

Traditional student support services tend to center around Tinto’s Theory of Student Departure. Examples of support programming are frequently shared, yet rarely detail how institutional staff actually perform them …

An Assessment Of Kentucky Birth Records, Focusing On Early-Onset Hypertensive Disorders Of Pregnancy, Environmental Metal Exposures, And Geocoding Precision, 2008-2017, Courtney J. Walker

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Using live and stillbirth records from Kentucky (2008-2017), this dissertation assessed the county-level prevalence and geospatial patterns of early-onset hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (eHDP); examined the geocoding precision of addresses recorded on birth records, and evaluated the association between individual risk factors and environmental metal exposures on eHDP prevalence. After adjusting for maternal demographic factors and pre-existing health conditions, we observed that eHDP prevalence was 38% higher (aPR=1.38, 95%CI:1.16, 1.64) in counties with the highest prevalence of married women (> 53.8%) compared to lower prevalence areas (31.6%) had a 20% higher prevalence of eHDP(aPR=1.20, 95%CI:1.00, 1.44) compared to counties with …

The Use Of Distraction: Doomscrolling, Losing Time, And Digital Well-Being In Pandemic Space-Times, Jacob Saindon

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

In the space-times of the COVID-19 global health crisis, how have our relationships with smartphones changed? How do popular discourses designate mundane engagements with digital technologies as healthy or unhealthy, and how are these notions of wellness practiced? This thesis draws upon an online survey of smartphone users residing in Kentucky, and a review of marketing, journalistic, and academic literature to establish current understandings of ‘digital well-being’. The paper then analyzes interviews with Kentucky smartphone users who were asked to track their screen time for a one-week period. This project reveals normative conceptions of well-being and the role of smartphone …

What Happened In Harris Neck?: Racism, Resistance, And Futures, Anna Sharpe

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This project traces the history and legacy of the seizure of Harris Neck, approximately 2,600 acres on the Georgia coast, once largely composed of rice and cotton plantations. After the Civil War, freedmen and women transformed the area into a thriving Black community. The community of approximately a hundred families, a school, a church, a post office, and many small farms and businesses flourished from the late 1800’s until 1942, when the federal government seized Harris Neck for use as an Army airfield.

The procedures used by the federal government to seize and, later, reallocate Harris Neck will be examined, …

Micromending The Metabolic Rift: An Analysis Of Food Waste Composting Systems In Lexington, Kentucky, Casey Byrd

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

The metabolic rift theory explores materials and social exchanges between rural and city communities and human-nature relations. Metabolic rifts can exist both environmentally and socially and are often geographically or culturally unique. Ultimately the metabolic rift is earmarked by increasing disconnection between humans and their environment. This thesis draws upon life cycle analysis studies, social-economic studies, and environmental and sustainability studies to argue that large-scale contemporary urban composting efforts, although well intended, are insufficient to mitigate the effects of the metabolic rift. Mobilizing theories around capitalism and the metabolic rift, this research paper connects social, environmental, and economic notions of …

Countering ‘Plastic Addicted Subjects’: Power, Essentialized Identities, And Expertise In Thailand, Olivia Carter Meyer

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Thailand is considered one of the six most significant contributors to marine plastic pollution in the world. This has led to widespread media attention and condemnation of Thai people as “addicted to plastic,” with little attention paid to how such discourses actually take shape. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with Thai regulatory institutions, grassroots environmental organizations, plastic industry representatives, and recyclers, I analyze the social, political, economic, and environmental processes that shape Thailand’s plasticscapes. I propose a feminist political ecology of plastic waste which attends to people’s lived experiences and perspectives, power relationships underlying discourses that inform the issue, and Thai …

Political Economy Of The Production Of Heritage Space In A Centro Histórico: Attracting Real Estate Capital, Expelling People. The Case Of Cartagena (Colombia), Camilo Rey-Sabogal

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Cartagena is a South American city whose historical built environment has been recognized as a World Heritage Site due to the preservation of elements of the Spanish military architecture of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. This recognition promoted a tourist and real estate boom in the Centro Histórico and, as a result, its inhabitants have faced gentrification dynamics that are expelling them to other areas of the city. During the last 15 years, these dynamics have shown a strong acceleration. Therefore, the Centro Histórico is experiencing, on the one hand, huge inflows of capital for the purchase of properties …

Maternal Proximity To Mountaintop Removal Mining And Birth Defects In Appalachian Kentucky, 1997-2003, Daniel B. Cooper

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

Background: Extraction of coal through mountaintop removal mining (MTR) alters many dimensions of the landscape, and explosive blasts, exposed rock, and coal washing have the potential to pollute air and water with substances known to increase risk of developmental and birth anomalies. Previous research suggests that infants born to mothers living in MTR coal mining counties have higher prevalence of most types of birth defects.

Objectives: This study seeks to examine further the relationship between MTR activity and birth defects by employing individual level exposure estimation through precise satellite data of MTR activity in the Appalachian region and maternal residence …