Oral Presentations with Michael Barnard and Juliet Quintero
Join us for presentations and Q&A with these undergraduate researchers:
Michael Barnard (Geology), Confirming a Volcanic member of the Shaw Mountain Formation. A new Petrographic, Geochemical, and Geochronological Approach to Reconstructing the Protolith of the Shaw Mountain Formation in the Bull Run Brook in Roxbury Vermont.
Previous authors interpreted a member of the Shaw Mountain Formation within the Bull Run watershed (Roxbury Quadrangle, central Vermont) as an explosive felsic tuff. This member consists of ultra-fine-grained leucocratic rocks occurring in a 0.5 km wide shear zone as isolated lenses surrounded by the sheared Cram Hill and Northfield formations. Thin sections show euhedral phenocrysts of plagioclase feldspar up to 1 mm long exhibiting distinct sets of simple and multiple twins surrounded by highly strained matrix. Sericitic phyllosilicates occupy microfractures and define a cleavage. ICP-AES chemical analyses reveal that this member has a geochemical composition of rhyolite with SiO2 71.8-79.0 wt%, Al2O3 12.40-15.20 wt%, Na2O 1.08-4.77 wt%, and K2O 3.74-11.25 wt%. ICP-MS trace element analyses show REE patterns similar to that of a volcanic cobble in an olistostrome of the nearby Northfield Formation. Zircon crystals extracted from the Shaw Mountain rhyolitic member occur as perfectly euhedral bipyramidal prisms, strongly supporting the interpretation of an igneous source for these rocks. These characteristics suggest that the previous assignment as a volcanic tuff is correct. U/Pb radiometric dating of the zircons will provide an absolute age of the eruption event, and potentially help determine the proper stratigraphic position of this unit.
Juliet Quintero (Criminal Justice), Why defendants failed to appear to Court?
Failure to appear (FTA) to court is a problem in the system where around 25-30% of the defendants fail to appear (Bornstein, Tomkins & Neely, 2011). However, few studies have explored different factors associated with FTA that varied across demographic factors and genders including criminal history, recidivism, status of employment, residential instability, drug problems, and warrant status. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the criminal justice system has been an iterative process over the last few years and how different pretrial assessment tools such as the Ohio Pretrial Assessment Tool and others have managed to identify and prioritize treatment for defendants with FTA in order to reduce recidivism. Using secondary data analysis of data from the National Archive Criminal Justice Data that rely in Pretrial Release Practices in the United States from 1976-1978 (ICPSR7972) study, this research will test the validity of the OhioPretrial AssessmentTools with a sample of individuals with known outcomes. Ultimately, the data and analysis drawn from it should increase the understanding of why defendants fail to appear to courts and what assessment tools are being used to determine this cause, providing additional research and understanding of factors related to failures to appear.
Moderated by Prof. Amy Woodbury Tease
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