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OpenBU is Boston University’s digital institutional repository for scholarly articles, theses and dissertations, preprints, and grey literature. This repository enables BU researchers to share, disseminate, and preserve their scholarship, and makes their research more accessible
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Recent Submissions
Trauma-informed practices in adult community choruses
(2026) Hansen, Kathleen R.; Smith, Tawnya D.
Trauma is ubiquitous in adult populations, and trauma-affected individuals may have impaired capacity to learn, connect, and create in group settings. Adult community chorus directors, facilitators, and organizers come from diverse educational backgrounds and may not be aware of trauma-informed practices, creating barriers to supportive and inclusive environments. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the effects of trauma on learning and interpersonal dynamics, no trauma-informed guidelines exist for adult community choruses. In this study, I explored the applicability the six tenets of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) trauma-informed approach through an equity-centered lens. Four chorus directors and one therapist chorister participated in a professional learning community (PLC) using collaborative inquiry. Data were collected via PLC meetings and chorus surveys, and analyzed using eclectic, concept, and thematic coding. Findings indicated that many directors and choruses had existing practices that aligned with the six tenets and that the tenets themselves are useful for guiding trauma-informed approaches in this context. Challenges to implementation emerged, including difficulties with group size, lack of education of trauma-informed approaches, and the recognition that directors cannot enact these practices alone. Collective engagement of all choristers and leaders, conceptualized here as congregate co-regulation, is critical for fostering safe and supportive environments. Opportunities to repair relational ruptures were also essential to maintaining such environments. These findings extend trauma-informed theory by demonstrating the applicability of trauma-informed approaches to community chorus environments and introducing the need for shared responsibility in group environments. Implications include: raising awareness of trauma-informed approaches among community music leaders; guiding intentional rehearsal, programming, and administration design; and fostering equitable and supportive chorus communities. This study highlights ways directors, leaders, and choristers can use trauma-informed principles to create safer, more inclusive, and collaborative chorus spaces.
Modeling female reproductive disturbances post-traumatic injury in Drosophila melanogaster
(2025) Dixon, Cameron Thomas; McCall, Kimberly
Traumatic injuries (TIs) from intimate partner violence, vehicular collisions, high-impact sports, and even mundane activities can be fatal. However, survivors of TIs can have residual pathophysiological disturbances post-injury that lead to life altering conditions, including neurodegenerative diseases, mental illness, and metabolic disorders. Reproductive issues are a known consequence of TI especially in women, however this has remained poorly understood. These issues with reproduction are seen through menstrual cycle dysregulation, lower libido, decreased fertility, and increased rates of miscarriages. These consequences are not only localized to the time of injury but can persist through the remainder of the individual’s life.Drosophila melanogaster have recently emerged as a stellar model of TI due to the conservation of molecular/cellular cascades following injury response, relatively short lifespans, and the avoidance of many of the ethical dilemmas of using vertebrate models. Reproductive consequences had not previously been tested using the Drosophila model, and we have found that reproductive consequences are conserved. These reproductive consequences come in the form of decreased egg laying behavior, increased cell death and the retention of mature egg chambers, mimicking issues in ovulation. To investigate the genetic and cellular mechanisms of these reproductive responses, we hypothesized that either hormonal or immune disruption following TI leads to these changes. Interestingly, patients who have undergone TI have higher rates of diabetes and immune dysregulation, supporting that reproductive deficits may be linked to hormonal and/or immune breakdown. We investigated potential roles of the major hormones insulin-like peptide 8 (Ilp8), neuropeptide F (NPF), and adipokinetic hormone (AKH) via knockdowns in several tissues and while we did not recapitulate findings with Ilp8 and NPF we did however see recapitulation of retention with the knockdown of akh. Additionally, we found that disruption to the major phagocytic receptor of Drosophila, Draper (drpr), leads to similar defects in reproduction. These findings suggest that immune dysregulation contributes to these reproductive failures post-TI.
Animating the Inanimate: Automaton-clock and Cross-Cultural Exchange at the Qing Court
(2026-04-08) Jiayi Yang
This paper examines how automaton-clocks at the Qing court were experienced and interpreted under the Qianlong Emperor. Focusing on an imported writing automaton-clock and domestically produced automaton-clocks from the imperial workshops and Guangzhou, it argues that these objects were not merely technological curiosities but affectively and ritually charged instruments through which imperial time, vitality, and authority were enacted. Their liveliness depended on a productive paradox: they appeared self-moving yet required controlled activation. Read through embodied writing, court spectacle, and theatrical display, automaton-clocks emerge as staged forms of illusion through which sovereignty was made visible and repeatedly renewed.
Underlying mechanisms of distinct west-to-east spatial patterns of soil moisture-precipitation feedbacks across the conterminous United States
(2024) Ryu, Kyoungho; Salvucci, Guido
It is critical to understand and predict changes in the patterns of rainfall events in a region due to climate change because precipitation is the central resource in freshwater availability, agriculture, energy generation, and the ecosystem. Thanks to enormous research efforts over the past few decades, we now know that land properties also play a role in understanding precipitation events, and that there are complicated feedbacks between the land and atmosphere called land-atmosphere (L-A) interactions. Soil moisture and precipitation are important components of these L-A feedbacks and thus have been studied in observations and models. However, there is still uncertainty and model-data disagreements in terms of the sign and magnitude of soil moisture-precipitation (SM-P) feedbacks. Thus, the community has focused on the understanding of atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) processes. The ABL is directly influenced by land surface properties and it transports fluxes of heat, moisture, and other scalars from the surface to the Free Atmosphere (FA).
This dissertation focuses on the interaction between land surface fluxes and boundary layer clouds to explain underlying physical mechanisms of distinct west-to-east spatial patterns of observed SM-P feedbacks across the Conterminous United States (CONUS) (Tuttle & Salvucci, 2016; 2017, hereafter the reference research). To this end, this dissertation documents three related research projects. In Chapter Two, we studied simulations of the ABL evolution with a simplified process-based cloud-topped boundary layer (Chemistry Land-surface Atmosphere Soil Slab, CLASS) model (Vilà-Guerau de Arellano et al., 2015). We modified the model to make it applicable to a wide range of environmental conditions (CLASS-L, Ryu & Salvucci, 2024). For the simulations, we used idealized environmental conditions representing over 11,000 cases and verified the CLASS-L model against Large Eddy Simulations (LES). In Chapter Three, we applied the CLASS-L model to explain the underlying mechanisms of observed SM-P feedbacks with the assumption that the predicted daily maximum cloud mass flux (M_DM) greater than a given criterion can represent precipitating clouds. We then conducted sensitivity tests of M_DM to changes in evaporative fraction (EF), which is proportioned to SM. We thus seek to explain observed SM-P feedbacks with a model linking EF to M_DM. The North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR, Mesinger et al., 2006) data sets in the summer months (June, July, and August) from 2002 to 2010 are the initial conditions to simulate the CLASS-L model. The research period overlaps with the reference research (Tuttle & Salvucci, 2016). In Chapter Four, we show that a simple regression model captures the underlying mechanisms explained in Chapter Three. The regression relates the M_DM to the early-morning environmental conditions and EF, and thus captures the totality of land-atmosphere interactions studied in this dissertation.
Based on the results of Chapter Three and Chapter Four, we explain the underlying mechanism of distinct west-to-east spatial patterns of observed SM-P feedbacks. The surface energy partitioning plays a critical role because the sensible heat flux is the source of the ABL growth. Thus, the depth of the ABL is deeper in the western CONUS and shallower in the eastern CONUS. On top of this fact, analyses of the drivers of cloud mass fluxes (a precursor to precipitation) reveal competing influences due to cloud core fraction, convective velocity, and humidity deficit, the net effect of which determines the strength and sign of the feedbacks. Furthermore, the CONUS-wide regression provides a more accessible tool than physical models to understand L-A interactions across CONUS. Beyond the processes evaluated in this dissertation, further knowledge of surface dynamics, cloud physics, interactions from the surface dynamics to clouds, and large-scale phenomena (such as convergence and divergence) are essential for a complete understanding of the totality of L-A interaction.
Meaningfulness and relevance of a student-planned social justice choral event: how American high school students used choir to tell their own stories
(2026) Coonfield, Candy Renee; Smith, Gareth D.
In the US, many school music programs teach in a monocultural and hegemonic manner that quiets student voice. I strove to encourage student voice in my choral classroom by inviting students to plan their own social justice choral concert on a topic of their choosing. My practices were grounded in care and storytelling, with aspects of culturally relevant pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and critical pedagogy. The culminating concert event functioned as performance, a social justice activity, and a collective narrative by the students about mental health. This qualitative instrumental case study examined the teaching practices and resulting concert event through observation notes, field notes, artifacts, and interviews. The study focused on three research questions: (1) How do students and audience members perceive meaningfulness and relevance of a student-led social justice concert that was the product of a dialogic choral project? (2) In what ways, if any, did power dynamics between teacher and students affect the classroom and learning? and (3) In what ways, if any, did student goals for the project promote student voice and empowerment through storytelling? Data were analyzed using both deductive and inductive methods.
Results indicated that students and audience members experienced meaningfulness and relevance at the concert event. Students also experienced meaningfulness, relevance, and empowerment through planning and rehearsal processes, and the shift to more dialogic teaching enabled students to tell their collective story. Care permeated the project. The connective tissue of care became the focus in the analysis and synthesis. Recognizing its importance, I created the Educational Care Spiral (ECS). The ECS builds upon research in caring about, caring for, and caring with to create a spiral that depicts the potential impact and influence of different types of care in the classroom.
The results of this research suggest a potential way forward for choral education that is more inclusive and empowering for diverse student populations, affording students opportunities to create dynamic and relevant concert programming rooted deeply in their communities. It is adaptable to varying school scenarios and programs and can be done with sensitivity and awareness of any potential cultural or political constraints, while potentially promoting the study and respect of varying musical styles, genres, and sounds. The ECS provides a tool for studying the influence and implementation of varying types of care in the music classroom, with the potential to inform teaching practices and provide educators with an accessible tool with which they can study their own teaching methods and classrooms.
Association analysis and clustering of rare variants with disease phenotypes
(2023) Sun, Xianbang; Liu, Chunyu
Hundreds of thousands of human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) samples have been whole genome sequenced, identifying numerous rare variants in the nuclear genome and mitochondrial genome (mtDNA). Multiple mtDNA molecules are present in a cell. mtDNA heteroplasmy is the presence of two or more nucleotides at an mtDNA location in the same individual. Most of the heteroplasmic variants are extremely rare, posing a challenge to applying traditional analytic approaches in association with heteroplasmy. On the other hand, clustering disease-associated rare variants (e.g., classify them into null, positively, or negatively associated groups) in a gene region provides useful information for investigating the underlying biological mechanisms between rare variants and disease traits. However, few studies have investigated rare variants clustering. To fill in these knowledge gaps, this dissertation focuses on association analysis and clustering of rare variants. In project 1, we develop and evaluate a comprehensive framework for association testing of heteroplasmy using both simulated and real data. In project 2, we propose a method to cluster trait-associated rare variants based on a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and apply this method to a real dataset. We also assess the effect of linkage disequilibrium (LD) on the performance of the clustering method in simulation studies. In project 3, we apply the framework developed in project 1 for association analysis of heteroplasmy to cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) in six TOPMed cohorts to identify CMD-associated heteroplasmic gene regions. Knowledge gained from these three projects will help to better understand the role of rare genetic variants in the etiology of complex human diseases.
Essays on leadership and workforce dynamics in operations
(2026) Yuan, Nuo; Bellamy, Marcus
This dissertation examines how leadership composition, operational governance mechanisms, and workforce dynamics jointly shape the design and performance of organizational operating systems. Across three essays, I advance a people-centric perspective on operations management: operational systems are not purely technical infrastructures but are shaped by the individuals who design, govern, and participate in them. The first essay studies how board gender representation influences environmental innovation through internal operational mechanisms. Using panel data on U.S. public firms, I show that board female representation increases environmental innovation primarily when women constitute a majority of the workforce. The mechanism operates through the adoption of environmental management systems (EMS), which embed environmental monitoring and performance evaluation into operational routines. While gender-diverse boards are more likely to adopt EMS, these systems translate into innovation mainly in female-majority workforces, where employees appear more responsive to governance signals emphasizing environmental priorities. The second essay examines responsible supplier governance in supply-chain operations. I document that the presence of a female Chief Supply Chain Officer (CSCO) strengthens supplier monitoring systems and increases the likelihood that firms terminate noncompliant suppliers. This enforcement effect is amplified when sustainability performance is embedded in executive compensation, highlighting how leadership authority and incentive alignment jointly influence operational control systems within supply networks. The third essay investigates workforce instability as an operational risk. I conceptualize “talent drain” as reductions in employee inflow or increases in voluntary outflow and examine how capital markets respond to signals of workforce instability. Leveraging the arrival of initial Glassdoor reviews as an information shock, I show that investors reprice firms’ risk exposure when employee sentiment becomes publicly observable. I further construct text-based talent drain indices using machine learning techniques that provide incremental predictive power for future workforce attrition. Together, these essays demonstrate how leadership characteristics, governance structures, and workforce sentiment shape operational systems, with important implications for innovation, supply-chain governance, and organizational risk.
Essays on emerging technologies and sustainability
(2026) Li, Yuze; Bellamy, Marcus; Tsoukalas, Gerry
This dissertation investigates how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and decentralized platforms both address and generate new sustainability challenges across environmental, social, and governance dimensions. In the first chapter, I investigate how the rapid adoption of AI-driven pricing agents affects the sustainability of tacit collusion in markets. We show that collusion is fragile under the heterogeneity typical of real deployments: differences in agent patience, data access, number of competitors, and algorithmic diversity all significantly weaken collusion, while model-size differences paradoxically stabilize it through emergent leader-follower dynamics. These findings highlight agent heterogeneity as a critical factor shaping competitive dynamics, providing policymakers with actionable levers to mitigate collusion risks. In the second chapter, I examine how decentralized consortia for certifying green products impact firms' sustainability incentives. We show that while joining a consortium increases firm profits by unlocking the green premium, it can paradoxically reduce firms' sustainability efforts when consumer willingness to pay for green products is relatively low, ultimately harming consumer surplus and social welfare. In the final chapter, I examine the impact of blockchain technology on financial inclusion in developing countries. Exploiting the implementation of a blockchain-based lending protocol by the prosocial lending platform Kiva in Sierra Leone, we find that borrowers attract more guarantors and are more likely to be funded, while microfinance institutions experience lower portfolio risks and improved operational sustainability. These positive impacts are most pronounced for traditionally underserved borrowers, including rural populations and individuals with weaker financial credit records.
Research Topics and Keywords
(2023-10-18) Meisel J.L.; Lim L.S.; Romero M.L.; Hawley C.; Shirk S.D.
Research Topics and Keywords
(2023-10-18) Meisel J.L.; Lim L.S.; Romero M.L.; Hawley C.; Shirk S.D.