Cleaning and sanitization are essential operations in wine production. The use of chemical cleaning and sanitizing agents for managing waste in fermentation vessels and the sulfur dioxide fumigation of empty oak barrels are ubiquitous processes in commercial wineries but are poorly studied in academic literature. Increasing environmental pressures and concerns over the poor quality of winery wastewater have created a need for optimizing protocols by reducing chemical inputs and water usage while maximizing the efficacy of treatments and employee safety during application. To optimize the use of chemical cleaning and sanitizing agents for managing fermentor waste the performance of a wide range of commercially available cleaning and sanitizing chemistries was assessed using fermentation derived soils and spoilage microorganisms in planktonic and sessile physiologies in trials from bench scale to 2000-L fermentation tanks. Minimum effective antimicrobial concentrations of chemical treatments were determined for common winery spoilage yeasts using the minimum inhibitory concentration, minimum biocidal concentration assay, and a modified minimum biofilm inactivation assay. Propidium iodide fluorescent staining was used to determine the minimum effective contact time required for inactivating Saccharomyces cerevisiae cultures using peracetic acid. Results suggested that caustic cleaning agents were the most effective in removing fermentation soils, and that sanitizers were ineffective without thorough prior cleaning. Peracetic acid- and hydrogen peroxide-based sanitizer formulations were effective and have innocuous breakdown products compared to traditional chemistries. Manufacturers’ suggested application rates were largely in line with the minimum effective antimicrobial concentration for the spoilage microorganisms tested. In practical settings, sanitary tank design may be the most important factor in determining the success of cleaning and sanitizing efforts regardless of the specific chemicals applied.The sulfur dioxide detection performance of colorimetric gas detection tubes, gas chromatography-sulfur chemiluminescence detection, and a novel electrochemical sensor apparatus was assessed. The electrochemical sensor was superior in linearity and precision versus the other detectors. American oak barrels were used to measure the persistence and antimicrobial efficacy of the sulfur dioxide fumigation of empty winery cooperage for pure gas application and the combustion of solid sulfur wicks. Prior to fumigation, the penetration rate and abundance of spoilage yeasts in barrel wood for cultures inoculated in grape must was determined for Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Brettanomyces bruxellensis cultures. S. cerevisiae cultures were recovered at 10 mm depth within one week of inoculation. B. bruxellensis cultures did not penetrate beyond surface samples within six weeks of inoculation. Measurable concentrations of sulfur dioxide existed after six weeks of storage for pure gas and sulfur stick fumigation, with concentration profiles closely described by power law functions regardless of the hydration status of the barrel wood. Both gas applications and sulfur stick combustion effectively eliminated culturable populations of S. cerevisiae and B. bruxellensis for all samples. Methods for assessing the mechanism of sulfur dioxide diffusion as a Fickian process according to the steady-state approximation poorly fit the measured gas data. Interactions between the diffusing gas and the stave wood and the heterogeneous structure of barrels may explain the discrepancy between the observed and predicted Fickian diffusive behavior. Together, this work presents the most comprehensive quantitative assessment of winery cleaning and sanitization to date in academic literature. These studies not only provide insight into the fundamental interaction of microorganisms, winery equipment, and chemical cleaners and sanitizers, but can also act as a practical resource for winemakers to develop effective cleaning and sanitizing protocols and monitoring strategies.

Welcome to Deal with it, the only game show in the world where Jesus tries to kill you.

But that�s not all that will try to kill you in this mad, game-show world:

you could be cut to ribbons by the chain-saw olives, blown to bits by the flying rockets, or merely fall into a never ending oblivion if you miss a jump.

The goal: Get as much money as possible while still making it out alive.

One kind of temporal inference in discourse operates over iconicity, such that inferred temporal order follows reported order. In two preregistered experiments (combined N = 930), we asked whether this temporal inference is predictably modulated by linguistic eventuality. Based on event-structural theories of temporal interpretation, stative descriptions, corresponding to cognitively less salient states in the world, should serve as backgrounds for eventive descriptions, locating states earlier in time. Participants read descriptions like Mary got/was married to John. She got/was pregnant and indicated which happened first. Eventuality type of both sentences and reported order were crossed. We find that states tend to be ordered before events, and longer states before shorter states. Our results support a model of discourse comprehension in which eventuality framing is crucial for (temporal) inferences.

This dissertation examines the participatory aspect of the lawmaking process of the Roman Republic of the first century and late second century, BC. Unlike voters in many modern republics, Roman citizens voted directly on their own laws, which were written and proposed to the citizen voting assemblies by career politicians. Whereas recent work on Republican politics has found Rome’s civil institutions to have been more open and participatory than has traditionally been assumed, the people’s role during legislative assemblies themselves continues to be seen as marginal and reactive, due to voters’ supposed dependence on their elected magistrates and presumed inability to understand the meaning behind proposed laws. This dissertation challenges the traditional view and proposes that Roman lawmaking was a fundamentally participatory process in which the people played an active role.

The first chapter focuses on obstruction of voting assemblies by the elite, which has traditionally been seen as a sign of de facto senatorial control of voting. In fact, the evidence shows that obstruction of legislative assemblies almost never succeeded at halting voting. Instead, obstruction of the legislative process by elite Roman statesmen largely served as a sort of “political theater” in which conflict was used to signal dissent or dissatisfaction with the people’s prevailing mood, rather than necessarily to block the immediate proposal at hand. When understood in this way, it was more important to be seen opposing a proposal than to succeed at blocking it. The second chapter examines how Roman voters used context clues to understand the gist of a law, and how the statesmen who drafted the laws were expected to organize and present the texts such that their contents were clear. Like many modern voters, Roman citizens relied heavily on official, orally delivered summaries of the laws rather than necessarily wrestling with the thousands of lines of highly technical language that made up the full text of a proposed law. The third chapter evaluates the expectations of Italian voters from outside Rome, who only became citizens close to the end of the Republic, of the lawmaking process. These new citizens were a highly diverse group and brought a unique set of cultural perspectives and expectations to the assembly, and consequently to the laws themselves.

Contrary to the traditional position on Roman Republican lawmaking, the Roman people were active and insightful participants in the legislative process. Despite not being able to write and propose laws directly, voters understood lawmaking and the laws well enough to be able to make independent judgments and to participate meaningfully in state institutions. Moreover, this dissertation shows that Roman lawmaking was the result of living and evolving cultural factors, which constrained elite behavior and set known expectations. This dynamic was fundamental to the way the Roman state functioned, and how it managed political crises.