Holly is a four-month-old Labradoodle puppy, currently visiting campus a few times a week and housed during visiting days in the same building as the Honors Program–on the 3rd floor of 714 21st St., NW. Her owners both work on campus and are seeking help with walks 3x per day (roughly, 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm), for specified dates in July and August. Each walk is 15-20 minutes, weather allowing. In case of bad weather, walks will be shortened, and play time indoors may be added. Each walk earns $10; about 20 days in the schedule. (No Fridays in the schedule.) We can employ multiple people in a set schedule, so if interested and available for any of these walk times, you may be considered. Dog care and basic dog training experience necessary. Willingness to learn, patience, and gentleness, and capacity for fun with a puppy are required. Dependability a must. Please email donna.scarboro@gmail.com.
Tag: AY1516
When Did This Guy Die? A How-To Guide [SURE Stories]
The following post was written by UHP student and SURE Award winner Kathryn Coté.
As a biological anthropology major, I was interested in studying skeletal material as part of my senior thesis. Fortunately, the National Museum of Natural History has some of the largest skeletal collections in the world, and it’s only a few Metro stops away from campus! Receiving a SURE Award offset the cost of my many Metro trips to the collections and allowed me to conduct research in forensic anthropology at the Smithsonian (thus furthering my endless quest to become Temperance Brennan from Bones).
For my thesis, I chose to study a method that uses morphological changes in the acetabulum (the socket on the side of the pelvis that articulates with the femur) to estimate age-at-death in adult skeletal remains. The method was originally developed using a predominantly white male population, but research suggests that the acetabulum is highly population dependent as an age-at-death marker. I calculated the accuracy of the technique across populations and sexes using black and white individuals in the Smithsonian’s Terry Collection in order to determine whether the method was broadly applicable.
Surprisingly, the method was equally applicable across sexes and ancestries. Percent accuracy did not vary to a statistically significant degree between black females, black males, white females, and white males. This is most likely due to the broad age ranges that the method uses to classify unknown remains. However, with such broad age classifications and an average percent accuracy of 46.6%, the method remains insufficient for use in a medicolegal context, despite being equally applicable across groups.
Conducting independent research has been an extremely rewarding experience that has allowed me to organize every step of the research process. I was responsible for conducting a literature review, identifying a quantifiable gap in the literature, designing an experiment to address this gap, finding researchers who were willing to support my project, efficiently carrying out my experiment, and interpreting my results. This experience has allowed me to hone my research skills and I am extremely grateful to everyone at the UHP and NMNH that made this project possible.
Fall Job Opportunity
Seeking responsible, energetic student to provide after school care for our two daughters (age 6 and 11).
Location: Capitol Hill (Eastern Market/Barracks Row area).
Duties: Meet girls at school daily at 3:15 pm, walk home (< 1 mile), help prepare afternoon snack, supervise and assist with homework/studying, supervise outdoor and indoor play, possible shuttling to after-school activities in our vehicle, end at 6 pm. Compensation: $15/hour.
Please submit written summary of relevant experience and references to scott.cernich@usdoj.gov.
A View from the Top (of a Landfill) [SURE Stories]
The following post was written by UHP student and SURE Award winner Julia Wagner.
When I set out to study urban sustainability for my senior honors thesis, I never thought that it would land me in a landfill in the middle of South America. But research, folks, can be exciting!
I was visiting the CEAMSE landfill outside of Buenos Aires to get a better understanding for the city’s sustainability planning in regards to their waste management. I wanted to understand the impetus behind the City’s new recycling program, which not only stands for waste reduction but social justice.
As I stood, looking over a mountain of trash, I reflected on how I got there. It started with a semester of study abroad in Buenos Aires, during which I fell in love with the city’s passion, volatility, and depth. The famous portenos, or Buenos Aires locals, take what they need, and keep innovating until they get it. One particular group, a sector of informal waste-pickers who organized to create their own cooperatively-run businesses really inspired me to return and dig deeper into this fascinating place and study the role of waste in the city. Finally, the SURE Award ensured that I had enough funds to travel back to South America and get the much needed ethnographic interviews to complete my research.
Garbage, it turns out, is a major urban problem all over the world. How cities decide to manage their waste has huge environmental, political, and social implications in their localities. Waste, as product of the items we consume, tells a lot about a people’s culture and values. Many of the materials that we throw away, like plastic, glass, and cardboard, can also be very useful when cycled back into the industrial process; thus, waste is also a valuable resource. In a world where extractive activities become more expensive, recycling has grown into a bustling industry.
It was out of economic necessity that many people started collecting spare recyclables in Buenos Aires. These waste-pickers, or cartoneros as they came to be known, would pick out useful materials from curbside dumpsters to sell back to industries for a profit. These people, their political organizations, and their democratically-run businesses served as the basis for my research. They are single-handedly changing the face of the recycling industry and the culture of recycling in Buenos Aires. Further, they have built a scenario for understanding how informal actors can bring change to city’s formal sustainability planning and green infrastructures.
I find it ironic that my #onlyatGW moment would be funded research in a South American landfill, but as I stood looking out over a mountain of garbage, I couldn’t have felt happier, or more empowered to continue researching the implications of urban waste management in the future.
