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There has been limited analysis of the relationship between the domestic production activities deduction (DPAD) - which is a U.S. manufacturing tax incentive with the stated goal of supporting U.S. jobs - and employment. I examine the relationship between the dollar amount of DPAD claimed per corporate tax return in an industry in the previous year and the number of employees per return in that industry using data on 67 industries from 2007-2011. Broadly consistent with previous findings, results from analyses that include industry and year fixed effects show that an extremely large change in DPAD is related to an extremely small change in employment. These results may help to buttress arguments in favor of eliminating the DPAD in an effort to broaden the tax base.

Fabrication of a one-lunger Atlantic marine engine for the purposes of developing a curriculum for an advanced fabricating and machining class for the Papplardo Apprentices at MIT. One-lunger marine engines greatly influenced the fishing cultures of Nova Scotia at the turn of the 20th century. Discussion of proper casting practices and terminology in addition to theory of sand types, machinability, engine cycles, and ignition systems. In depth descriptions of basic and advanced casting processes using the ignitor body and piston as examples.

Research examining the effects of secondary traumatic stress among social worker supervisors is limited, as most studies combine front line social workers with supervisors. The purpose of this study is to explore the impacts of mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques when practiced by supervisors in the workplace. This study focused on supervisors and lead workers in the Employment & Training Department of Merced County utilizing mindfulness-based techniques from the Tools for Well-Being. This research used a pre-experimental design using a pre-test and post-test and an individual weekly session feedback form. The study began with 11 participants. At the end of the eight weeks, four participants were present to complete the post test. The participants showed low scores related to mindfulness awareness at the pre-test stage. These findings appear to suggest that interventions of this nature are needed in keeping with the needs of social work supervisors. However, unfortunately, with only four participants completing the post-test, it is difficult to determine the effectiveness of the intervention in increasing mindfulness and reducing secondary traumatic stress. Nevertheless, the findings do offer insight regarding the needs of supervisors. First, there is a clear need to understand the obstacles that supervisors face in participating and completing interventions of this nature. Additionally, the results did reveal that the four supervisors who completed the intervention appeared to gain knowledge related to mindfulness and decreases in stress. Implications for social work practice, policy and future research are discussed.

The genome is the same in every cell of an organism, but complex organisms have multiple cell types. This is due to the epigenome specifying a cell's transcriptional state resulting in distinct cell identities. Despite 98.5% of the human genome is non-coding and the site of epigenomic activity, which specifies instructions for regulating transcription of the coding region, relatively little is known about its function. A major hurdle with studying non-coding regulatory elements is identifying their distal gene and regulatory targets. Here, I solve this issue by using the three-dimensional chromatin conformation to identify targets that are in close physical proximity of the regulatory element. By integrating data on the three-dimensional chromatin state with other epigenomic measures including the open chromatin regions, transcription factor binding sites, and histone modifications I provide genome-wide insight into how the epigenome establishes the transcriptional state of the cell. In addition, I have developed a new method for prioritizing non-coding genetic variants in complex phenotypes. I validated this method in the context of Type 1 Diabetes and craniofacial disorders. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how data integration of multiple measurements of the epigenome and transcriptome provides insight into methods of transcriptional regulation and how this regulation is influenced by genetic variance.