Secular cycles are 2-3 century oscillations in population associated with periodic state breakdown. Turchin and Nefedov (2009) find two secular cycles in England: the Plantagenet (1150–1485) and Tudor-Stuart (1485–1730). This paper proposes modified dating for these cycles (1070–1485 and 1485–1690) and two adjacent cycles: Anglo-Saxon (ca. 880–1070) and mercantile (1690–undetermined). Several mathematical models for secular cycles were investigated for their ability to model trends in population, state strength, elite number and internal instability during the Plantagenet and Tudor-Stuart cycles with the modified dating. The demographic-fiscal model (Turchin 2003) uses just six adjustable parameters and gave as good a fit to the population data as a polynomial model with ten parameters. Sociopolitical instability has been proposed as the primary factor in delayed population recovery following secular decline. This did not seem to be the case for England, at least when instability was measured in terms of large-scale events. For such events the dominant pattern was the fathers and sons cycle, not the much longer secular cycle.

This paper proposes a supplemental secular cycle formulation for a modern capitalist society that employs financial, economic, and political metrics in place of population and sociopolitical violence. It makes use of Thomas Piketty’s (2014) hypothesis that excess investment return relative to economic growth causes inequality. In a capitalist society, the investing class can be considered as a proxy for elites. Inequality as measured by the ratio of financial to wage gains over time agrees with other economic measures. Rising inequality led to a reduction in capital productivity (output per person per unit of capital). This created instability in financial markets that generated the 1929 stock market crash. Application of a simplified version of the demographic structural theory to inequality trends shows political stress peaking in 1929. The depression that began with the stock market crash in that year resulted in a devastating political defeat for the ruling party in 1932 which brought in the political coalition that engineered the inequality trend reversal. This series of events can be considered as a modern version of the state collapse and reconstitution that was typically a key feature of premodern secular cycles.

Rising economic inequality in the United States has become a topic of political interest in recent years. Inequality appears to show cycles corresponding to secular cycles, suggesting the possibility of declining inequality in the future. The most recent episode of declining inequality in America is known as the Great Compression. It occurred in the middle of the 20^th century. This paper uses the guided variation cultural evolution model (Boyd and Richerson 1985:95-7) to explain shifting trends in inequality in five nations. According to this analysis, the Great Compression was largely due to a shift in the business environment reflecting tax and other economic policy implemented over the 1914-45 era. The cultural evolutionary response to this environmental change was to replace “shareholder primacy” cultural variants with “stakeholder capitalism” variants which resulted in lower inequality. Half a century later, new policy, implemented in response to the great inflation following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, changed the business environment again in ways that favored shareholder primacy cultural variants and rising inequality. The extent to which this occurred depended on the degree to which stakeholder capitalism was integrated into institutions.

This dissertation examines a lively lower-middle-class, immigrant neighborhood in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, the Faubourg Saint-Denis, from 1950 into the twenty-first century, and explores the history of everyday life in its streets and public spaces. It connects the neighborhood's evolution to larger changes in urban redevelopment policies and municipal politics in Paris. This study challenges a core assumption held by scholars about urban neighborhoods: that everyday life and communities are shaped primarily by residents.

Residents have historically been the focus of neighborhood scholarship because they are easily accessible to scholars in most archival sources and because they have been viewed as the stabilizing force that keeps chaotic cities civilized. Since the 1950s and even during the nineteenth-century, however, non-residents have been found at the core of local communities in Paris, especially in its busiest neighborhoods. These parts of the city, often centered around marketplaces and market streets, such as Les Halles, have remained vibrant due to the important role played by non-residents, many of whom have commuted long distances to them every day not only to work, but also to shop, and to socialize. Scholars, however, have neglected their important role in shaping community life in cities.

This dissertation is about these everyday users of Paris's city center and its vibrant neighborhoods, many of whom have contributed to the life of a neighborhood far from where they sleep. These users do not leave many traces of their impact, though through the examination of a wide variety of sources, including tax records, television news reports, police records, classified ads, transportation statistics, and oral interviews, it is possible to find hints of their significant presence. Daily mobility in Paris has been crucial to the creation of community life.

With the rise of municipal democracy in Paris since 1977 and increasing political decentralization across France since the mid-1980s, residents in Paris have gained significant new power in shaping the outcome of their neighborhood's public space by working with their local government. As these residents have increasingly become homeowners, often taking out expensive mortgages for their apartments, they have sought to use their lobbying and voting power to shape public space to cater more to their desires. Although many of these residents who moved to the Faubourg Saint-Denis between 1998 and 2012--a period of gentrification and a substantial rise in real estate prices in Paris--chose it because they liked its diversity and energy, their actions to make their neighborhood more green, livable, and pedestrian-friendly have often unwittingly worked against their desire to live in a vibrant area of the city. Despite this pressure to quiet the neighborhood's public spaces, the Faubourg Saint-Denis has remained the daytime or nighttime home of its non-resident users who generally live in suburbs of Paris, where housing is more affordable and life is calmer. The city center of Paris continues to function as it has since the nineteenth century, animated and invigorated every day by people who live far from it.

Abstract

Plastic products have become indispensable in various industrial sectors and everyday life worldwide. However, conventional plastics present significant sustainability challenges due to their reliance on unsustainable petroleum sources, contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, and their resistance to biodegradation, which leads to environmental waste accumulation. In response to these issues and the need to decrease carbon emissions, there has been a growing interest in bioplastics. One promising family of bioplastics is polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), a group of natural polyesters that can serve as a sustainable alternative to traditional plastics in numerous applications. PHA stands out among bioplastics for several reasons, including production from organic waste substrates. The polyester can be produced from various organic waste materials, reducing the demand for costly virgin resources and providing an environmentally friendly solution for waste management. PHA additionally possesses high biodegradability compared to other bioplastics on the market, allowing it to break down more efficiently in the environment and minimize long-term pollution. PHA can replace several families of petroleum-based plastics, making it a versatile option for a wide range of products and applications. However, despite these promising attributes, the high production cost of PHA remains a significant barrier to its widespread adoption. The expensive carbon sources utilized in microbial fermentation are the primary factor contributing to this cost, limiting the growth of the PHA market. There is a critical need to develop an efficient bioprocessing system that can produce high-quality PHA at a significantly lower cost. To address this imperative, the primary goal of this study was to create an integrated PHA production system that utilizes inexpensive cheese byproducts feedstock, making PHA production more economically viable while maximizing resource efficiency and minimizing waste. Whey and whey byproducts generated from cheese production offer a promising source for bioplastic production. Researchers estimate that approximately half of this whey produced from cheese making is processed into useful forms for human or animal consumption, with the rest ending up as waste material, contributing to high carbon emissions. While some cheese manufacturers can convert whey byproducts into valuable food ingredients, like whey protein concentrates and lactose powder, additional byproducts continue to be generated. Whey permeate is produced after concentrating the liquid whey with membrane filtration, containing most of the lactose and minerals. The whey permeate can be further processed into lactose powder with evaporation and drying systems creating byproduct delactosed permeate (DLP). Crystallization limitations prevent the complete recovery of lactose for food products. As a result, approximately one-third of the lactose remains as delactosed permeate (DLP), which is either sold as low-value animal feed or disposed of as waste. DLP is the main cheese byproduct without a widespread commercial application, which presents an opportunity for biomaterial production. Therefore, this study aimed to convert low-value cheese byproducts DLP into high-value bioplastic PHA. The PHA producer Haloferax mediterranei (H. mediterranei) appears to be a suitable candidate for utilizing cheese byproducts as feedstock. This fit is due to the archaea’s unique ability to thrive in extreme halophilic conditions, tolerating salinity levels of up to 20%. The presence of high salt-containing cheese byproducts provides a compatible source of nutrients for H. mediterranei, compared to other PHA producers and common contaminant organisms that can become inhibited from such high salt concentrations. The high salt environment removes the need for an expensive sterility unit operation, such as high-temperature exposure or antibiotics, reducing production costs. Moreover, the intracellular PHA extraction from H. mediterranei can be achieved through a straightforward process of water addition, causing osmotic shock and cell lysis. High salt-containing cheese byproducts provide Another advantage of H. mediterranei is its ability to produce a higher-value PHA polyester, poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV). This PHA polyester exhibits enhanced properties compared to the more commonly produced polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB). The presence of 3-hydroxyvalerate units in PHBV enhances its flexibility, making it suitable for various applications, especially in the food industry. The potential applications of PHBV in food packaging, such as films, bags, containers, or cutlery, align with the circular economy principles. By utilizing cheese byproducts and producing high-value PHBV, the cheese industry can take significant steps toward sustainability and waste reduction. A pretreatment method of the DLP was developed and optimized utilizing centrifugation and enzymatic lactase hydrolysis. The centrifugation pretreatment was shown to increase lactase hydrolysis efficiency and H. mediterranei cell growth. The optimal lactase enzyme conditions with the centrifuged DLP to achieve a lactose hydrolysis efficiency of 92.5% were determined to be a loading of 0.025 g lactase/g lactose and shaking incubation at 40 ℃ for 12 hours. The effects of hydrolyzed DLP on H. mediterranei cell growth and PHA production were studied. The hydrolyzed DLP achieved high PHA yields of 0.33 ± 0.01 g VS/g total sugar that surpassed yields obtained with glucose feedstock. However, lower galactose consumption by H. mediterranei was observed to limit PHA production with this substrate. After demonstrating that hydrolyzed DLP could result in effective H. mediterranei growth and PHA production, nitrogen source optimization was conducted to devise a cost-effective feedstock for H. mediterranei growth on hydrolyzed DLP substrate. Three nitrogen sources were tested at equivalent C/N ratios of 8, yeast extract, ammonium chloride, and an equal nitrogen loading of yeast extract and ammonium chloride. Supplementation of ammonium chloride resulted in the highest PHA yield, reaching 0.34 ± 0.03 g VS/g total sugar. Furthermore, the media supplemented with ammonium chloride nitrogen source gave the lowest PHA production of the feedstocks investigated. These cost savings make ammonium chloride an economically favorable choice for PHA production compared to other nitrogen sources containing yeast extract. The results of these studies demonstrated that cheese byproduct DLP could be used as an effective feedstock for PHA production, helping to create a circular economy for the cheese industry. The hydrolyzed DLP supplemented with ammonium chloride nitrogen source was studied as feedstock for H. mediterranei cultivation with three feeding strategies; batch, fed-batch, and continuous feeding. With batch feeding, four different hydrolyzed DLP and whey permeate loadings of 10, 20, 30, and 40 g total sugar/l were studied. The loading of 10 g total sugar/l was determined to be the maximum loading of hydrolyzed DLP, as higher loadings resulted in considerable inhibition. However, hydrolyzed whey permeate resulted in a higher maximum loading of 30 g total sugar/l. This difference in maximum loading between the two hydrolyzed cheese byproduct feedstocks indicated that inhibitory constituents were present in DLP that were not in whey permeate. High-heat reaction products that form during whey permeate processing to lactose powder and DLP, such as Maillard products that are inhibitory to other microorganisms, could be the source of increased inhibition with DLP. The PHA yields of the hydrolyzed DLP and whey permeate were similar at 0.30 ± 0.03 and 0.27 ± 0.02 g VS/g total sugar, respectively. These yields were on the higher end of those reported for glucose feedstock of 0.07-0.33 g PHA/g sugar, demonstrating that hydrolyzed cheese byproducts are an effective substrate for PHA production. The maximum specific growth rates of H. mediterranei growth with hydrolyzed DLP and whey permeate were estimated with batch feeding and found to be similar for the two byproducts. These results can assist in developing large-scale PHA production facilities utilizing the cheese byproduct substrates. Based on the batch operation findings, a 6 L fed-batch bioreactor with an initial working volume of 3 L was operated to attempt to decrease substrate inhibition with the hydrolyzed DLP. Hydrolyzed DLP and whey permeate feedstocks were fed every four days at a loading of 10 g total sugar/l. A 50% increase in the final PHA concentration of the hydrolyzed DLP was achieved with the fed-batch operation and two feedings than with the single batch loading of 10 g total sugar/l. This increase in PHA production with fed-batch operation was due to the additional loading of 10 g total sugar/l that was able to be fed without inhibition occurring. However, the culture became inhibited and unstable past the third feeding of hydrolyzed DLP. For the whey permeate, the PHA concentration increased with the first three feedings, and a stable culture was maintained after three additional feedings. These results confirmed that increased inhibition occurs with hydrolyzed DLP compared to hydrolyzed whey permeate feedstock. The results indicated that fed-batch bioreactor operation with hydrolyzed DLP and hydrolyzed whey permeate feedstocks can improve PHA production compared to batch cultivation. Since fed-batch feeding only increased PHA production with hydrolyzed DLP marginally, a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) with hydrolyzed DLP feedstock was studied to try to reduce substrate inhibition further and increase PHA production. The CSTR was operated at a hydraulic retention time of 10 days with an organic loading rate (OLR) of 2.5 g total sugar/l/day, and a hydraulic retention time of 20 days with various OLRs of 1.25-2 g total sugar/l/day. The 10-day HRT CSTR resulted in a PHA yield of 0.18 g VS/g total sugar, comparable to that achieved with the fed-batch bioreactors. However, the 10-day CSTR became unstable after 22 days of continuous feeding, potentially due to hydrolyzed DLP substrate inhibition. Although the 20-day HRT CSTR was able to maintain a stable culture for 130 days, considerably lower PHA yields were achieved of < 0.10 g VS/g total sugar. Therefore, continuous feeding at the applied HRTs and OLRs was not recommended for PHA production with hydrolyzed DLP. Lower galactose consumption was observed for the batch and fed-batch studies than for glucose. Therefore, a galactose acclimation study was conducted to determine if growing H. mediterranei on successive batches of galactose could increase consumption and PHA production with the sugar. The archaea was cultivated on galactose for five consecutive batches. The final cell dry mass (CDM) concentration of H. mediterranei significantly increased with three batches, the specific growth rate with four batches, the final PHA concentration with five batches, and the galactose consumption with three batches (total galactose consumption), demonstrating effective galactose acclimation had occurred. The research can potentially lead to improved PHA yields with galactose-containing feedstocks such as hydrolyzed cheese byproducts. Overall, the study demonstrated that cheese byproduct delactosed permeate could successfully be utilized as feedstock for PHA bioplastic production with H. mediterranei. The results of the study should be used to further scale the proposed process leading to commercialization.

This effort shows the advantages of adopting a systems-based process perspective for use within the study of religion to connect religious understandings to social phenomena by drawing on a range of systems theorists. By articulating the issues with the static paradigm induced by Aristotelian substance ontology, the application of systems-based process philosophy for evaluating social phenomena is explained through a broader discussion of emergence with special emphasis on Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism. Highlighting the work of Islamic scholar Mustafa Ruzgar, this effort shows the ability for systems-based process philosophy to connect religious insights to secular studies through the language of process.

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

The Holocaust of Biafra: Anti-Semitism and Genocide in Sub-Saharan Africaby Remy Chukwukaodinaka Ilona

Doctor of Philosophy in Religious StudiesUniversity of California, Riverside, 2024 Dr. Michael S. Alexander

The Igbo genocide carried out between 1966 and 1970 by Nigeria was a culmination of many years of persecution of the Igbo people (the Jews of Nigeria). From the early period of Nigeria, other Nigerians had been hostile to the Igbos. This led to the stirring of an Igbo nationalism to champion their national security. This increased the resentments of the elites of the other Nigerian groups towards the Igbos whose culture and Jewish identity made them different. Attacks, and accusations that the Igbos were satanic, money-loving, Jews, and worse increased. In response the besieged people’s national consciousness started becoming political. Instructively, at roughly the same period that Igbo nationalism became more political, the political Zionism of Theodore Herzl was engendered by anti-Semitic attacks in Europe. The Igbos wanted to restore the national/cultural rights colonialism had taken away from them which they considered their natural rights. These included regaining freedom to express their nationhood in their homeland, which many of them had been forced away from, and to be free of British colonialism. The Jewish nationalists known as Zionists pursued the right to return to Zion (the land of Israel), where they would once again be masters of their own destiny. With World War II came the Holocaust, which some of its outcomes included spread of the culture of Nazi anti-Semitism. Hatred of the Jews did not die with the collapse of the Third Reich. Neither was the culture of the Holocaust contained only in Europe. During the bloodletting in Europe, the late Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Al Haj Mohammed Amin al Husseini, shared this culture spiced with slurs about Jews as enemies of Islam to people in the Arab and Muslim worlds. This dissertation argues that powerful Nigerians who had worked with Al Husseini, and shared his anti-Semitic views, used them to incite Nigerians against Jews. Between 1966 and 1970, the incited Nigerians fell on the Igbos and murdered large numbers of them. Nigeria’s tactics were so brutal that many observers, including the late famous Elie Wiesel, wrote in his book, A Jew Today, that Biafra echoed Auschwitz.