Dickinson College

ABSTRACT Many who defend immigration restrictions do so on the grounds that communities have a right to seek to preserve their cultures. The importance of preserving culture is said to reside in the meaningful connections that individuals form with their fellows and places. We ask what conclusions regarding immigration can be drawn from appeals to the importance of culture. We focus our argument on the search for meaning as a motivating factor prompting immigration and call migrants who do so for this reason ‘cultural migrants.’ We argue that human beings share the need to create meaningful relations. The ‘fellow creatures ethic’ that we develop thus puts culture at the centre of our argument. Contrary to critics of open borders, however, we argue that, in recognition of our shared humanity, we should show hospitality to potential immigrants and share the world with them physically. This is because such migration leaves it possible for current residents to continue developing their meaningful relationships, whereas closed borders prevent this for immigrants. We argue that the preservation of culture does not outweigh this quest for cultural meaning. Sharing the world with fellow creatures involves acknowledging the risk – indeed inevitability – that cultures continually change.

Abstract Most of Earth's present‐day terrestrial surface is covered by regolith—the layers of soil, saprolite, and weathered bedrock that together comprise the critical zone. Recent research has focused on understanding fluxes of minerals, water, and energy through the critical zone under steady state assumptions. However, in eroding landscapes, regolith and soil are produced from the bedrock as it is exhumed. Therefore, at some point in time, every location on the Earth's surface currently mantled by regolith experienced an onset of weathering processes. This initial creation of a critical zone from rock is poorly understood. Here we study initial critical zone formation from exposed bedrock by combining surface and subsurface geophysical observations at a site where regolith appears to be forming from bedrock on a granodiorite outcrop in Panola Mountain State Park, Georgia, USA. Vegetation gains an initial foothold on the outcrop by colonizing microtopographic depressions created by differential weathering of contrasting bedrock compositions. We observe a range of colonization stages, from moss to grasses to small bushes and eventually to large trees. Subsurface signatures of the vegetation include enhanced radar reflectance and reduced seismic velocities, with larger vegetation associated with stronger subsurface signals. Using a space‐for‐time substitution approach, we propose an evolutionary sequence for critical zone development. While disentangling the chicken‐and‐egg questions that pervade this topic remains challenging, our results suggest that geological heterogeneity can provide the initial catalyst for colonization, but ultimately vegetation itself plays a strong role in producing subsurface structures associated with the critical zone.

Misallocation has been generally proven to lower aggregate TFP and drive per capita GDP differences across countries. This paper investigates the extent to which financial constraints contribute to the firm-level resource misallocation that is present in 12 sub-Saharan African countries. The study calibrates a misallocation model by Hsieh and Klenow (2009) with intermediate inputs as an additional factor input using firm-level data from the Enterprise Survey of the World Bank to derive measures of capital, labor, and output misallocation. It then conducts an empirical exercise to establish a link between these measures of misallocation and financial constraints. The analysis finds that the latter significantly increases output distortions, and that size is the main channel. Smaller firms are more financially constrained and in consequence face more distortions that prevent them from growing to optimal size. The lack of access to adequate financing therefore explains the large size of micro enterprises in African countries.

Abstract Although culture contact is a well-studied area of archaeological inquiry, complex ancient cross-cultural interactions can be challenging to discern. As zones of innovation in which boundaries are obscure, ancient frontiers offer ideal contexts to analyze the nuances of such interactions. To address the challenges of interpreting a multicultural frontier in the Moquegua Valley, southern Peru, we apply a practice-based approach using foodways to elucidate the complexity of culture contact between Wari-affiliated and Indigenous Huaracane communities during the Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000). Our findings indicate that after Wari colonization of the Moquegua frontier, the Huaracane community at Yahuay Alta began brewing chicha de molle, an alcoholic beverage associated with and central to Wari political and religious social structures. They did not, however, adopt the practice in a completely Wari fashion. Instead, we see Huaracane leaders brewed and served chicha de molle in ways that aligned with their own cultural practices. The material remains of chicha de molle production and consumption at Yahuay Alta should not be seen as a simple adoption of a nonlocal cultural practice by an Indigenous group, but instead an active manipulation of practice as part of frontier cultural negotiations and entanglements.

Abstract Positive emotion regulation skills, such as positive refocusing, positive meaning-making, and acceptance have been shown to predict well-being. The current study hypothesized that one of these mechanisms, positive meaning-making, would mediate the relationship between positive emotion regulation and well-being. Undergraduate students recruited from Dickinson College reported a self-defining memory and answered questionnaires related to emotion regulation and well-being. Results indicated that positive emotion regulation predicted well-being, but mediation was not supported. The findings contradict previous research that reported positive meaning-making as a significant predictor of well-being. However, the current study provides evidence that positive coping mechanisms in the wake of adversity may lead to higher levels of well-being.

Human-managed green spaces in urban landscapes have become important focal points for insect conservation, partly because of the desirable insect diversity that these areas support, and also because exposure to nature is important for human health and wellbeing. An important issue in insect conservation is the extent to which non-pest insects are impacted by pesticide applications, but this has been relatively less examined outside of agricultural landscapes. Here, we investigated green spaces, including parks and private yards, in two urban areas (Sacramento, California, and Albuquerque, New Mexico), asking if larval host plants for butterflies in the two regions contained herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. We assayed 336 individual plants in 19 genera, including woody and herbaceous plants. Pesticide presence was ubiquitous: only 22 samples had no detectable levels of pesticides; the median number of compounds detected in the other 314 individual plants was three; and the maximum detected in any one plant was 18. Within Sacramento, azoxystrobin was detected in 84% of all samples, whereas atrazine was detected in 70% of samples within Albuquerque. Two compounds (azoxystrobin and chlorantraniliprole) were found to exceed concentrations that are known to cause lethal and sublethal effects in 71 out of 336 plants. Our results suggest that the effects of pesticides on non-target species should be further explored in urban areas, and that non-target effects on desirable insects are possible in these areas without thoughtful management and elimination of non-essential pesticide applications.

The Geophysics of the Near Surface: an Outdoor Motivational Experience for Students, or GNOMES, program was designed to recruit, engage, and retain racially and ethnically minoritized students early in their undergraduate experience into geoscience. This goal was enacted by introducing a diverse group of students, early in their post-secondary education, to the geosciences through an inclusive experiential learning field experience that built community amongst the participants. The program focused on critical zone geophysics fieldwork to engage students in geoscience concepts. Throughout the two-week summer program, students worked in teams to address research problems in critical zone science and build geoscience and professional skills. This paper presents the results from the first three years of the GNOMES program (2018, 2019, and 2022), during which time 47 participants and 8 mentors were engaged in the program, 80% of whom were from racial and ethnic backgrounds minoritized in geoscience. Here we present the program design and show that the program was successful in impacting participants through increases in self-reported professional and geoscience skills and through increased participant science identity. In addition, we discuss the successes and pitfalls in the program and provide advice and suggestions for ensuring the successful implementation of similar programs. The GNOMES program provides a model and demonstrates an effective approach for broadening participation in geosciences.

Recently, the number of undergraduate economics bachelor’s degrees conferred has declined as has the percentage of total degrees conferred to economics majors (IPEDS). Simultaneously, the fraction of economics degrees conferred to econometrics and quantitative economics (STEM-designated) has been rising (IPEDS; Marshall and Underwood 2020). These concurrent trends, alongside a perpetual underrepresentation of females and other minorities in economics, motivate an examination of the core economics curriculum components. This paper discusses aspects of intermediate microeconomics, a foundational and almost universally required course in the economics major and explores how this course may play a role in these trends.

Many frog and toad species are specialized in jumping and swimming, credited to their short forelimbs and long hindlimbs. However, several frog species predominantly use walking or running as their primary mode of locomotion. The gait of these species is characterized by alternating diagonal forelimb and hindlimb pairs, allowing them to walk quadrupedally. Previous studies have found reduced length disparity between the fore- and hindlimb proportions in frogs specialized for walking and running, compared to species which predominately jump or swim. However, it remains unclear how this disparity in limb lengths impacts how force is produced between the fore- and hindlimb during a stride. In this study, we examine how three-dimensional forces applied between the fore- and hindlimbs differ across three walking frog species (Kassina senegalensis, Phrynomantis bifasciatus, and Phyllomedusa hypochondrialis). We used 3D high-speed videography to track ten joint centers along the forelimbs and hindlimbs during walking events across a force plate. Our preliminary findings show that the forelimbs of quadrupedal walking frogs exert a greater amount of force on the ground compared to the hindlimbs. The findings suggest that limb proportions have an impact on the force distribution during a stride. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant Number BRC-BIO 223366 This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.