Browsing by Subject "Surveillance"

Now showing 1 - 16 of 16
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    Atrial fibrillation: surveillane, concordance, and healthcare utilization
    (2013-10) Smith, Lindsay Garnier
    Background information on the epidemiology of atrial fibrillation (AF), including descriptive data and risk factors, pathophysiology, clinical aspects and outcomes, as well as three original manuscripts that together form the basis of this doctoral dissertation, are presented. The objectives of this dissertation were to assess temporal trends in the occurrence and prognosis of AF among acute myocardial infarction (MI) patients, to determine the usefulness of administrative data to identify incident AF, and to describe the impact of AF on healthcare utilization. AF in the setting of MI occurs frequently and is associated with increased mortality. Nonetheless, temporal trends in the occurrence of AF complicating MI and in the prognosis of these patients are not well described. In a population-based sample of 20,049 validated first incident nonfatal hospitalized MIs from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, prevalence of AF in MI increased from 11% to 15% (adjusted odds ratio [OR] for prevalent AF: 1.11; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.04 - 1.19 per five-year increment) from 1987 through 2009. In patients with MI, AF was associated with increased 1-year mortality (adjusted OR 1.47, 95% CI 1.07-2.01) compared to those without AF. However, there was no evidence that the impact of AF on MI survival changed over time or differed over time by sex, race or MI classification. In the setting of MI, co-occurrence of AF should be considered a critical clinical event and treatment needs unique to this population should be explored further. Increasingly, epidemiologic studies use administrative data to identify AF. Capture of incident AF is not well documented. ARIC cohort participants without prevalent AF enrolled in fee-for-service Medicare, Parts A and B, for at least 12 continuous months between 1991 and 2009 were included. Of 10,134 eligible participants, 738 developed AF according to both ARIC and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); an additional 93 and 288 incident cases were identified using only ARIC and CMS data, respectively. Incidence rates per 1,000 person-years were 10.8 (95% CI: 10.1-11.6) and 13.6 (95% CI: 12.8-14.4) in ARIC and CMS, respectively; agreement was 96%; the kappa statistic was 0.77 (95% CI: 0.75-0.80). Additional CMS events did not alter observed associations between risk factors and AF. Drawbacks of CMS are its inapplicability to those <65 years and inability to capture AF for those with Medicare Advantage. AF is associated with increased risk of hospitalizations. However, little is known about the impact of AF on non-inpatient healthcare utilization or about sex or race differences in AF-related utilization. ARIC cohort participants with incident AF (n=944) enrolled in fee-for-service Medicare, Parts A and B, for at least 12 continuous months between 1991 and 2009 were matched on age, sex, race and center to up to three participants without AF (n=2,761). The average annual days hospitalized were 13.1 (95% CI: 11.5-15.0) and 2.8 (95% CI: 2.5-3.1) for those with and without AF, respectively; the annual numbers of outpatient claims were 53.2 (95% CI: 50.4-56.1) and 23.0 (95% CI: 22.2-23.8) for those with and without AF, respectively. Most utilization in AF patients was attributable to non-AF conditions, particularly other- cardiovascular disease-related reasons. There was suggestive evidence that sex modified the association between AF and inpatient utilization, with AF related to greater utilization in women than men. The association between AF and healthcare utilization was similar in whites and blacks. In addition to rate or rhythm treatment, management of AF also should focus on the accompanying cardiovascular comorbidities. Overall, the results from this dissertation indicate that co-occurrence of AF in MI is a critical clinical event, that administrative data can be useful in AF epidemiologic research, and AF patients have substantial healthcare utilization, especially for other-cardiovascular disease-related reasons.
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    Data Mining of Traffic Video Sequences
    (University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, 2009-09) Joshi, Ajay J.; Papanikolopoulos, Nikolaos
    Automatically analyzing video data is extremely important for applications such as monitoring and data collection in transportation scenarios. Machine learning techniques are often employed in order to achieve these goals of mining traffic video to find interesting events. Typically, learning-based methods require significant amount of training data provided via human annotation. For instance, in order to provide training, a user can give the system images of a certain vehicle along with its respective annotation. The system then learns how to identify vehicles in the future - however, such systems usually need large amounts of training data and thereby cumbersome human effort. In this research, we propose a method for active learning in which the system interactively queries the human for annotation on the most informative instances. In this way, learning can be accomplished with lesser user effort without compromising performance. Our system is also efficient computationally, thus being feasible in real data mining tasks for traffic video sequences.
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    Designing optimal strategies for surveillance and control of invasive forest pests.
    (2011-04) Horie, Tetsuya
    This thesis focuses on the theme of detecting and managing invasive forest pests. First, we model optimal detection of sub-populations of invasive species that establish ahead of an advancing front. We find that the uninfested landscape is divided into two zones, characterized by different dynamically optimal management plans: a suppression zone and an eradication zone. In the suppression zone, optimal detection effort increases with distance from the front. At the distance where the suppression zone yields to the eradication zone, optimal detection effort plateaus at its maximum level. Second, we develop a model of optimal surveillance and control of forest pathogens and apply it to the case of oak wilt in a region within Anoka County, Minnesota. We develop a cost curve associated with the expected fraction of healthy trees saved from becoming infected. We also explore characteristics of sites selected for surveillance. In particular, we examine the characteristics of sites that make them high-priority sites for surveillance when the budget level is relatively low. We find that the best surveillance strategy is to prioritize sites with relatively low expected unit surveillance cost per tree saved from infection. Our results offer practical guidance to managers in charge of deciding how and where to spend limited public dollars when the goal is to reduce the number of trees newly infected by oak wilt. Third, we model a private landowners' forest protection problem, in which each landowner decides among three possible strategies: prevention, monitoring and treatment, and no treatment. We find that the proportion of landowners taking preventive and no action increases as the accuracy of monitoring decreases; monitoring ceases to be chosen when monitoring accuracy declines below a threshold value. We also investigate the possible effects of a policy that raises the accuracy of monitoring on social welfare in both the landowners' equilibrium and the full information social optimum. We find that the policy closes the gap in social welfare between the landowners' equilibrium and the full information social optimum. However, it decreases social welfare in the full information social optimum.
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    Foodborne disease surveillance: evaluation of a consumer driven complaint system and development of methods for screening of pathogens and cluster detection.
    (2010-09) Li, John Jiuhan
    Introduction: Foodborne illnesses are common, with an estimated 76 million cases in the U.S. annually. They are also becoming harder to prevent with the increasing complexity of food distribution networks and product types. There has been an increased call to improve the food safety in the United States through improved foodborne disease surveillance. The aim of this dissertation was to improve foodborne illness surveillance, by examining a statewide complaint surveillance system and development of methods to more effectively use incoming data. Methods: In manuscript one, the complaint surveillance system in Minnesota from 2000-2006 was evaluated and characteristics of outbreak related complaints were analyzed. In manuscript two, predictors for Salmonella complaint calls were examined to develop a screening tool to be used on incoming complaint data. A predictive model for Salmonella-like calls was developed and validated using bootstrap methods. The third manuscript used cusum methods to detect temporal correlations in complaint calls and flag weeks of unusually high calls. The fourth manuscript, described the current use of complaint based surveillance systems by local health departments in the U.S. Results: Complaint based surveillance was responsible for detection of 72% of outbreaks in Minnesota. The predictive model for Salmonella was able to discriminate between Salmonella-like and non-Salmonella-like calls with an adjusted AUC of 0.88. An algorithm to flag suspected outbreak weeks had a sensitivity and specificity of 63% and 84% in detection of norovirus outbreaks. An estimated 81% of health departments in the U.S. use a complaint based surveillance system; however, ability of the system to detect outbreaks varies between jurisdictions.] Conclusions: This dissertation provides a framework to improve food safety in the U.S. through the development of complaint based surveillance systems and application of methods to better use incoming data. Complaint systems are a powerful tool to complement pathogen specific surveillance.
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    The Future of the Fourth Amendment: Guardian of the First Amendment
    (2015-05) Vlisides, Alexander
    Modern technology records unprecedented amounts of data about individuals, and developments in surveillance technologies have removed many practical limitations on government collection of this information. A Fourth Amendment test called the third party doctrine permits the U.S. government to collect vast amounts of this electronically-stored data without any individualized suspicion. This thesis explores how the failure to create legal barriers preventing indiscriminate data collection chills citizens' First Amendment rights. Courts, legal scholars and social scientists have documented how pervasive surveillance restricts free expression and even free thought. This thesis endorses a technology-centered approach to the Fourth Amendment, which asks whether government's method of collection has the capacity to facilitate broad, indiscriminate surveillance. This approach better protects free expression and reasonable expectations of privacy by focusing directly on the fundamental challenge facing modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: the current practical and constitutional feasibility of mass surveillance methods that chill First Amendment rights.
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    Improved diagnosis and management of viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus in fish
    (2013-02) Phelps, Nicholas
    Viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV) is a highly contagious and pathogenic virus, affecting more than 70 farm raised and wild fish species worldwide. A new viral strain (VHSV-IVb) has proven both virulent and persistent, spreading throughout the Great Lakes of North America and to inland water bodies in the region. As this new biological hazard continues to grow, so too must our understanding of the disease. The focus of this dissertation is to improve diagnostic capacity and management of VHSV-IVb to rapidly respond to outbreaks, prevent further dissemination, and scientifically justify current prevention strategies. To better understand the geographic distribution of the virus, we used a modified real time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) assay for high-throughput testing of fish for VHSV. The assay was shown to be twice as sensitive as the gold standard, virus isolation, and did not cross react with other viruses found in fish. In addition, the diagnostic turnaround time was reduced from 28-30 days for virus isolation to 2-4 days for rRT-PCR. To demonstrate the usefulness of the rRT-PCR assay, 115 high priority water bodies in Minnesota were tested by both methods from April 2010 - June 2011. All survey sites tested negative for VHSV by both methods. The survey results have informed fisheries managers on the absence of VHSV in Minnesota and have better prepared them for the eventual arrival of the disease. In addition, the results demonstrate the value of this rRT-PCR as a surveillance tool to rapidly identify an outbreak so that it can be controlled in a timely manner. The aforementioned rRT-PCR assay (Phelps et al. 2012) along with another (Jonstrup et al. 2012), were evaluated for the potential for sample-induced inhibition from common diagnostic samples, including kidney/spleen, entire viscera, and ovarian fluid. The detection of high, medium, and low VHSV-IVb dilutions in each tissue type was not affected using the assay by Jonstrup et al (2012). However, using the assay by Phelps et al. (2012), the detection of VHSV-IVb was decreased for the kidney/spleen samples spiked with low virus levels and increased for the ovarian fluid spiked with medium virus levels. Entire viscera, the tissue type most likely to inhibit the rRT-PCR reaction, did not affect the sensitivity of virus detection for either assay. The emergence of VHSV-IVb in the Great Lakes region has resulted in unprecedented regulatory response to better manage the disease. In Minnesota, all VHSV-susceptible fish must be inspected annually prior to intra or interstate movement - a significant bottleneck for the aquaculture industry. In 2009, Minnesota enacted legislation requiring fish for regulatory health inspections to be collected by a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MNDNR) approved individual. The so-called Fish Health Collector could be 1) an American Fisheries Society - Fish Health Section Fish Health Inspector or Pathologist, 2) an accredited veterinarian with approved training, or 3) an individual (i.e. MNDNR field biologist) with approved training. In response, a fish health collector training workshop was developed for veterinarians and field biologists to fulfill the MNDNR requirements. A manual was developed to supplement a full-day workshop and provide the basic information and references to perform a fish health collection. This training resulted in a sufficient number of fish health collectors, well distributed across Minnesota, now available to rapidly respond to a disease outbreak and better serve the regulatory needs of the aquaculture industry. In the USA, current state and federal fish health regulations target the spread of VHSV-IVb through movement restrictions of live fish but largely ignore the potential for the virus to be spread through the commercial distribution and use of frozen baitfish from VHSV-IVb positive regions. Some state laws do require treatment of frozen baitfish to inactivate VHSV and additional methods have been proposed, but there have been few scientific studies examining the efficacy of these treatments. In an effort to evaluate these treatments, bluegills were challenged with VHSV-IVb, frozen to represent standard industry methods, disinfected by various treatments, and tested for infectious VHSV-IVb using virus isolation. The virus was isolated from 70% of fish subjected to three freeze thaw cycles. All other treatment methods were effective in inactivating the virus, including treatment with isopropyl alcohol, mineral oil, salt with borax, and dehydration. Dehydration followed by rehydration is rapid and effective, and therefore, seems to be the best option for inactivating VHSV-IVb present in frozen baitfish while maintaining their usefulness as bait. Monitoring or regulating all risk factors for the transmission of VHSV is an infeasible task. A semi-quantitative risk assessment model was utilized to focus VHSV management efforts in Minnesota. The risk of VHSV introduction to major watersheds in Minnesota was directly correlated with proximity to Lake Superior, the only VHSV-positive waterbody in the state. Although the current regulations are uniform across Minnesota, the risk varied for specific locations within the watersheds. For example, the introduction of game fish for stock enhancement (a common fisheries management practice) was found to be a significant risk factor for VHSV introduction into public waterbodies and waterbodies frequently used for wild baitfish harvest. Aquaculture facilities with strict biosecurity programs and frequent health inspections received the lowest risk scores and were largely considered protected and of low risk for VHSV introduction. These results suggest the current management strategy, based on political boundaries, should be reevaluated. A risk-based management strategy would better allocate efforts to watersheds or specific waterbodies at higher risk and relax efforts in areas of lower risk of VHSV introduction in Minnesota.
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    Locomotion of serial multiply-actuated tumbling robots.
    (2011-06) Hemes, Brett Robert
    Mobile robots that are able to move about and effectively negotiate their environment are attractive for a wide variety of applications. Such applications include surveillance, inspection, and mobile sensing where robots often present cost-effective alternatives to human labor. Other applications include those that are potentially hazardous to humans; examples of these include search and rescue, monitoring and maintenance of toxic environments, and planetary exploration. A vast majority of research into mobile robots has been limited to structured environments such as research labs, indoor office environments, industrial settings, maintained roads, etc. As the number of mobile robot applications grows, so does the need for such systems to be able to operate in unstructured (general) environments. Such environments often exhibit a wide variety of terrain including uneven surfaces and significant terrain irregularities. In some cases hazardous areas can be tactically avoided with careful path planning, but in general this is not always possible and obstacles must be negotiated directly. For these applications it is imperative that the robot exhibits a sufficient level of mobility to be able to perform required tasks. In addition to mobility requirements, many mobile robot applications are further constrained by limitations on physical size and/or cost. It is often the case that small (inexpensive) robots are preferable if not required. In general, however, it is the case that miniature mobile robots sacrifice mobility in exchange for their small size. Additionally, the increased design complexity of miniature systems often increases both design and manufacturing cost. In this thesis we present a relatively new and unexplored form of robotic locomotion called tumbling which addresses many of the aforementioned existing limitations of miniature mobile robots; the thesis is comprised of three main parts. In the first, tumbling and tumbling robots are defined and discussed in detail as well as other useful notation. Additionally, we present a classification of tumbling robots along with a catalog of existing designs to establish the state of the art. This treatment marks the first of its kind and establishes the first formal definitions with respect to tumbling locomotion for mobile robots. In the second, we examine terrainability of the class of serial multiply actuated tumbling robots by looking at the underlying principles of tumbling interactions with several idealized obstacles. Specifically, we derive configuration equations that relate terrainability to the parameters of an idealized tumbling robot. The results are supported through experimentation using the Adelopod, a physical tumbling robot developed as part of this thesis, over a variety of repeatable terrains. Finally, we conclude by examining the maneuverability for the class of serial multiply actuated tumbling robots and begin to address motion planning for such devices. We present results of several planning algorithms as well as a method for deriving useful distance metrics for significant planning speedup and increased path quality. Results of applying such metrics are presented.
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    Monitoring of phenotypic and genotypic changes in antimicrobial resistance in clinical swine bacterial isolates circulating in the U.S.
    (2019-08) Hayer, Shivdeep Singh
    Starting 2017, a Veterinary Feed Directive was implemented in food animal production in the U.S. This directive prohibits the extra-label use and use of medically important antimicrobials for growth promotion. Analysis of long-term trends of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) can help in evaluating the success of such policies. The objectives of this dissertation were to monitor phenotypic and genotypic changes in antimicrobial resistance in clinical swine bacterial isolates (Escherichia coli, Streptococcus suis, Actinobacillus suis, Pasteurella multocida and Haemophilus parasuis) circulating in the U.S. between 2006 to 2016. For E. coli, the prevalence of resistance to most of the antimicrobials remained constant or changed only modestly, with the exception of enrofloxacin resistance which increased from nearly 0% in 2006 to 21% in 2016. For S. suis and P. multocida, prevalence of resistance did not change drastically except for a few antimicrobials. For A. suis and H. parasuis, statistically significant changes were estimated for several antimicrobials. However, a lack of clinical breakpoints or epidemiological cut-offs hindered in the making any clinical or epidemiological inferences. E. coli isolates resistant to ceftiofur and enrofloxacin were selected and whole genome sequencing was conducted on these isolates. Nearly 25% of the ceftiofur resistant E. coli isolates carried ESBL genes and 24% of enrofloxacin resistant isolates carried qnr genes. These genes have been reported only rarely in food animals in USA. Select plasmids carrying ESBL genes were assembled and these were similar to ESBL plasmids present globally. Additionally, these isolates were also found to be carrying mcr-9 and fosA7 genes, which have not been reported in food animals in USA previously. In addition to these studies, a systematic review on global prevalence of AMR in E. coli of swine origin is also presented. This review highlights the disparity between AMR prevalence in high income versus lower-middle income countries and a clear lack of harmonization in studies conducted worldwide.
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    Silha Bulletin
    (University of Minnesota, 2022-08) University of Minnesota: Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law; Kirtley, Jane E.; Colby, Claire; Samantha, Brunn; Srodulski, Luke; Hargrove, Elaine
    The Silha Bulletin is a publication of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, part of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota Twi Cities campus.
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    Spatial and Molecular Epidemiological Approaches for Evaluating Dynamics of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus in India and Vietnam
    (2021-10) Wijewickramalage Gunasekara, Umanga
    Foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV) is still endemic in many regions worldwide. Many widespread FMDV lineages have emerged from South Asia, and subsequently spread to other regions, including Southeast Asia, making these two regions important epicenters for FMDV evolution and transboundary transmission. The progressive control pathway (PCP) proposed by the World Animal Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization (OIE/FAO) provides a framework for countries to reduce the incidence of the disease, with the ultimate goal of achieving zonal or country-wide freedom from disease. The PCP pathway is outcome-oriented and relies on a self-evaluation process before being accredited by the OIE and obtaining the official status for a given stage. Different epidemiological methods are acceptable for evaluation of the progress at each stage, yet OIE/FAO does not provide specific guidelines in regard to methods for epidemiological evaluation. In this dissertation, the objective was to demonstrate how recent and newly developed epidemiological approaches can be applied to support progression through PCP stages in South and Southeast Asia. Two countries in those two regions, India and Vietnam, both countries in stage 3, were used as case studies to examine how commonly available types of epidemiological data, such as reported outbreaks and sequence data, can be analyzed to understand the spatial dynamics of FMDV circulation, assess the effectiveness of vaccination programs, and delineate high-and low-risk areas. Ultimately, this work will serve as a proof-of-concept for novel methods for genomic surveillance, which could be used as a cost-effective means to generate sequence data needed for surveillance and epidemiological analysis and help the countries to move towards stage 4 of the PCP. The first chapter provides an overview of the PCP with a focus on stages 1-3, epidemiological approaches typically used to support PCP activities, and the FMD situation in India and Vietnam. The second chapter specifically explores FMD situation in India and applies Bayesian space-time regressions to investigate factors underlying the spatial heterogeneity in risk of reported outbreaks, including an assessment of how mass vaccination impacted the spatial and temporal distribution of disease. However, such spatial models account for population connectivity by incorporating spatial autocorrelation amongst contiguous spatial units, which is likely a poor representation of population connectivity for highly mobile hosts such as livestock. The third chapter explores the ways to improve Bayesian space-time regression models using the phylogeography to account for patterns of population connectivity. Finally, monitoring circulating virus strains and rapid detection of novel strains is a necessary component of FMD control as part of the PCP, and sequence data also enables a number of other epidemiological approaches to understand virus circulation in a country. Conventional methods to acquire sequence data in the field are not efficient as a means for routing genomic surveillance, and it may be more effective to identify sentinel surveillance points to detect emerging outbreaks, such as slaughterhouses. Genomic surveillance at slaughterhouses was explored in the fourth chapter using FMDV sequence data from Vietnam. The final chapter is an overview of demonstrated methods to improve FMD control measures and support progression in PCP stages in FMD endemic countries in endemic regions of South and Southeast Asia.
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    Terrorist Threats: Dreaming Beyond the Violence of Anti-Muslim Racism
    (2020-07) Patel, Soham
    My dissertation draws on cultural and political theory as well as visual arts, literature, and music to examine how Western empire is constructed through Orientalist knowledge and also contested through decolonial, feminist, and anti-racist aesthetics. “Terrorist Threats” relies on a multidimensional approach to studying the Global War on Terror and its attendant figure targeted for death and destruction: the Muslim. Following the scholarship of Sherene H. Razack, Sohail Daulatzai, and Junaid Rana, I examine how the colonial construction of the Muslim as a racialized object within modernity, in particular, has been deployed to taxonomically classify a broad range of intersectional categories: Black, Brown, indigenous, immigrant, Latinx, Arab, Sikh, Hindu, and Islam. That is, the “Muslim” in the context of white supremacy and global imperialism exceeds the rigidity of a faith-based category. In fact, my project contends that the figure of the Muslim becomes a fungible category to signify a racialized object that philosophically and/or phenotypically embodies a political position other than liberal secular humanism. Thus, throughout my project, I explore how several South Asian and Muslim diasporic artists engage in insurgent cultural production to combat white supremacy. This allows me to interrogate how colonial knowledge, on the one hand, propagates anti-Muslim racism and, on the other hand, disciplines, controls, and compels the diaspora to internalize this knowledge as a way to perform the role of the good/desirable immigrant. Throughout “Terrorist Threats,” I highlight how South Asian and Muslim diasporic artists rethink and reshape Orientalist knowledge production and the role of Western secular ideas of self-determination, sovereignty, citizenship, and the Human within colonial modernity. The analysis offers a praxis of reading, seeing, and listening to visual and sonic archives that articulate decolonial knowledge and aesthetics, which becomes what I call “terrorist threats.” My project’s transnational focus seeks to produce decolonial imaginaries whereby different political solidarities and praxes can be forged — beyond and across geopolitical and biopolitical borders.
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    Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State
    (2016-06) Fischer, Mia
    After decades of erasure, transgender people are gaining unprecedented mainstream media attention; yet transgender communities, particularly those of color, remain disproportionately affected by poverty, discrimination, violence, and harassment. Terrorizing Gender examines how media representations of transgender people connect to their surveillance by state institutions, specifically federal and state governments, the military, and the legal system. The project calls for centering transgender subjectivities and experiences in critical media studies in order to move beyond an exclusive focus on analyzing representations and visibility politics. Placing transgender at the center of gender studies, critical media studies, and surveillance studies focuses attention on the relationship between material consequences and representational trends in popular culture. By highlighting the material realities of transgender people, the project refutes popular narratives of progress that claim equality and civil rights victories for LGBT people over the last decade. Terrorizing Gender highlights two case studies: WikiLeaker and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act and leaking sensitive U.S. documents; and a black transgender woman from Minneapolis, CeCe McDonald, who was charged with murder for killing her attacker during a transphobic and racist assault in 2011. I argue that news media predominantly construct transgender people as deceptive, deviant, and threatening, and that these constructions not only affirm, but align with state interests in surveilling, harassing, and ultimately, criminalizing transgender communities. Particularly, the popular discourse of colorblindness – a pervasive belief that race should not and no longer does matter – circulated by media institutions is central to the state’s management and disposing of transgender lives. Terrorizing Gender thus contends that the current popularity of “transgender” must be understood to connote a contingent cultural and national belonging given the racialized and gendered violence that the state continues to enact against most gender non-conforming people, particularly those of color.
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    Tolerance, governance, and surveillance in the Jim Crow South: Asheville, North Carolina, 1876-1946
    (2013-02) Epstein, Seth Edward David
    This dissertation argues that logics of tolerance were central to emerging forms of urban governance in the New South tourist locale of Asheville, North Carolina between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. White authorities' practices of "race relations," the development of civic sites of historical memory, and the regulation of disorderly spaces worked to distribute the responsibility of surveillance to many actors. Most significantly, objects of suspicion were enlisted and enlisted themselves in networks of authority as a means to police and, hopefully, transcend the danger to urban order they themselves embodied. These networks were hierarchical. Their priorities and the relations between actors within them were shaped and supported by white authorities' political privilege to formulate racialized, gendered, and class-conscious definitions of deviance. They were also distributive, as their operation depended on the efforts of multiple participants. The forms of governance organized around techniques of tolerance did not dispel white authorities' suspicion, nor aim to. Instead, the projects considered here created opportunities to make that suspicion operable and regularize its management. By focusing on one city, this dissertation is able to demonstrate how the development, maintenance, and changes in networks of tolerance played a key role in making and remaking both place and space in Asheville. Scrutinizing these networks is essential for understanding how tolerance both created space for civic participation and sharply curtailed what would be tolerated within it. Through variously articulating, critiquing, and performing the expectation of surveillance, African Americans, Jews, and white Christians sought to redefine the boundaries of tolerable difference in urban spaces as well as the meanings of blackness, Jewishness, and whiteness. This dissertation employs insights drawn from cultural geography and government studies to interrogate tolerance as a technique of management. It therefore newly historicizes the emergence of tolerance as a national civic value in the interwar period and reassesses its analytical value to urban history.
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    Walking Corporate Suburbia: A Photographic and Sonic Record
    (2021-04-19) Bauch, Nicholas; nbbauch@protonmail.ch; Bauch, Nicholas
    [Written by Nicholas Bauch, 2021] This is a collection of digital photographs, audio recordings, maps, and creative writing. They were all made by artist Nicholas Bauch during multi-day walks that he did in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area between 2018 and 2020. The nodes of the walks are Fortune-500 corporate headquarters based in the Twin Cities (as listed in 2019). Bauch navigated from one headquarter to the next using only a compass while walking. His main camera was a GoPro 4, which he wore for most of the walks attached to either his head or chest. This camera was programmed to take one JPG picture every two seconds for the duration of the walks, which ranged between 4 and 7 miles each. Without the use of other wayfinding technologies, the resultant routes are not always the most direct, creating documentation of an embodied trek among some of the world’s most influential repositories and wranglers of capital, and—more importantly—the urban and suburban space in which these centers are situated. Any large scale economic system—capitalism, in this case—has a built form that emerges to accommodate the (dys)functions of that economy. The photographs produced on these walks seek to expose that built form, implicitly positing that the organization of suburban spaces is intimately tied to the needs, as it were, of the global corporations. These include things like high-speed roads, protected residential areas, and recreational opportunities like water bodies and parks. One can also read in this built form spaces of oppression and poverty, such as unmaintained housing and sidewalks, shuttered storefronts, and many instances of economic liminality, that is, places for people who are involved in the economic system without much choice, but are not its beneficiaries. One of the great consequences of capitalism is its tendency to direct wealth and resources into smaller and smaller numbers of people as time progresses. This can be read in the urban form, and this collection provides visual evidence for this movement towards unequal wealth distribution as it existed in these years. The photos, therefore, record the urban form of a mid-sized, Midwestern, United States metropolis in the late 20-teens. Urbanists, geographers, and planners, among others in the future may benefit in particular from seeing how the myriad details of suburban and urban spaces were conceived, constructed, and inhabited. Bauch’s 70,000-plus scenes document the everyday spaces of life and work, spanning the four seasons of Minnesota’s extremely variable continental climate. The headquarters between which Bauch walks are the main decision, management, finance, and research centers for large-revenue companies that impact the lives of millions of people across the local region, the nation, and the world. While many lives—bodies, even, as in the case of health insurance and food manufacturing—are materially shaped by these entities, most people could not say where they are located within the city and its surrounds. Examples of these companies, along with their annual revenues in 2019, are UnitedHealth Group ($242 billion), 3M ($32 billion), Ecolab ($15 billion), CHS ($32 billion), C.H. Robinson ($15 billion), Cargill (privately held, $115 billion), Best Buy ($43 billion), United Natural Foods Inc ($21 billion), Target ($75 billion), and General Mills ($18 billion). This is not a celebration of corporate life or of the normalization of wealth accumulation, nor does it condone the historically (and currently) racist social systems that make continuously accelerating commercial growth possible at a global scale. On the contrary, it is an attempt to point attention--much as Pop Art might have--toward the realities of economic geography, in an attempt to know them and sow the seeds of rebuilding them in ways that benefit all people. From the artist: My identity as a middle-aged, white, English-speaking, employed, housed, U.S.-passport-holding male positions me to blend-in, as it were, when I walk through areas that do not experience high volumes of foot traffic from “outsiders.” That is, even with a strapped-on camera, I look enough like a local to not arouse visits from the police, or suspicion from other entities that enforce social and economic boundaries. Being ignored is a privilege that only proves the existence of the racist structure in the first place; I suspect that someone pushing a grocery cart, or someone with a camera strapped to a turban, would not move as unencumbered as I have. When I walk, I often find myself trying to imagine the landscape as it might have looked before European contact with the Americas. Without assuming details about the Dakota experience, I think about lives that might have been lived in these places. With each picture, I see what now appear to be banal landscapes as deep containers that have amassed generational layers of meaning. That is, stories about real people who held all the complexities, fears, joys, and wonders of a life fully lived have happened in the places where my feet hit the ground, where motorists fling out cigarette butts and where plows heap oil- and salt-soaked snow.
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    “We know what you see, so here’s an ad!” Online Behavioral Advertising and Surveillance on Social Media in an Era of Privacy Erosion.
    (2021-06) Sifaoui, Asma
    Technology has helped creating new opportunities for advertisers to better reach their audiences online. Online Behavioral Advertising is one of these strategies that is being used to target specific audiences with personalized messages to specific consumers based on their online behavior and personal information. However, this personalization has impacted how consumers respond to these personalized ads because they may feel that they are continuously monitored and watched by these brands. This feeling is called perceived surveillance. I explain the relationship between the levels of personalization of the ad based on the brand (match vs. mismatch in ad with previous search) and levels of personalization of the ad based on the product (match vs. mismatch in ad with previous search) and advertising effectiveness (i.e., ad avoidance, attitudes, and purchase intentions) through perceived surveillance. By using the Social Contract Theory, I suggest that higher levels of personalization (i.e., match in brand and/or product with previous online search) illustrate a breach in the social contract between brands and consumers. Furthermore, I explain the relationships between perceived surveillance and the advertising outcomes through the Reactance Theory where higher level of perceived surveillance would lead to more avoidance of the persuasive message and more negative attitudes, and lower purchase intention because of the threat to freedom that surveillance creates. This thesis contributes to theory by looking at perceived surveillance as an antecedent to these advertising outcomes and presents a framework to understand consumers’ perceptions of increased levels of personalization. Practically, this study amplifies the need to safeguard consumers’ privacy; thus, advertisers need to align their strategies to better serve their customers.
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    Wireless sensor networking for intelligent transportation systems.
    (2009-11) Jeong, Jaehoon
    This dissertation studies the Wireless Sensor Networking for Intelligent Transportation Systems, tailored and optimized for road networks. For military scenarios, since the road networks are used for main maneuver of military troops in cities or urban areas, they need to be protected for military operations. For civil engineering scenarios, the Intelligent Transportation Systems have been developed and been evolving to support the driving safety and transportation efficiency through the information computing and communications among transportation infrastructures and vehicles. Roadways are mainly used for the transportation of people and goods and also are nowadays equipped with intelligent devices, such as electronic tollgates and variable message signs for driving. In addition to this, vehicles are equipped with GPS-based navigation systems and emergency notification systems for the driving efficiency and safety. With this trend, Wireless Sensor Networks have been considered new parts for the Intelligent Transportation Systems and are being deployed into road networks in order to enhance further the driving safety and security. This dissertation studies the key technologies in the wireless sensor networking for the security and communications in the road networks as follows: (i) Localization for sensor location, (ii) Road Surveillance for vehicle monitoring, (iii) Data Forwarding for road sensing data delivery and (iv) Reverse Data Forwarding for road condition information sharing. In order to design the technologies to be tailored for road networks, this dissertation investigates the characteristics of road networks and takes advantage of the characteristics for the wireless networking. The first characteristic is the predictable vehicle mobility within the roadways. The second is the abstract representation of the layouts of the road networks into road maps. The third is the vehicular traffic statistics representing the vehicle density on the roadways and intersections. The fourth is the vehicle trajectory representing the future vehicle mobility along the roadways, guided by the GPS navigation systems. These four characteristics open a door of new research on wireless sensor networks. Therefore, using these road network characteristics, this dissertation designs and evaluates the wireless sensor networking technologies for road networks.