Adapting health-risk communication to the specific cultural contexts of diverse populations : an assessment of malaria-treatment programs in Liberia

Drawing on theories of technical communication, rhetoric, literacy, language and culture, and medical anthropology, this dissertation explores how local culture and traditions can be incorporated into health-risk-communication-program design and implementation, including the design and dissemination of health-risk messages. In a modern world with increasing global economic partnerships, mounting health and environmental risks, and cross-cultural collaborations, those who interact with people of different cultures have “a moral obligation to take those cultures seriously, including their social organization and values” (Hahn and Inhorn 10). Paradoxically, at the same time as we must carefully adapt health, safety, and environmental-risk messages to diverse cultures and populations, we must also recognize the increasing extent to which we are all becoming part of one, vast, interrelated global village. This, too, has a significant impact on the ways in which healthcare plans should be designed, communicated, and implemented. Because communicating across diverse cultures requires a system for “bridging the gap between individual differences and negotiating individual realities” (Kim and Gudykunst 50), both administrators and beneficiaries of malaria-treatment-and-control programs (MTCPs) in Liberia were targeted to participate in this study. A total of 105 people participated in this study: 21 MTCP administrators (including designers and implementers) completed survey questionnaires on program design, implementation, and outcomes; and 84 MTCP beneficiaries (e.g., traditional leaders and young adults) were interviewed about their knowledge of malaria and methods for communicating health risks in their tribe or culture. All participants showed a tremendous sense of courage, commitment, resilience, and pragmatism, especially in light of the fact that many of them live and work under dire socioeconomic conditions (e.g., no electricity and poor communication networks). Although many MTCP beneficiaries interviewed for this study had bed nets in their homes, a majority (46.34 percent) used a combination of traditional herbal medicine and Western medicine to treat malaria. MTCP administrators who participated in this study rated the impacts of their programs on reducing malaria in Liberia as moderately successful (61.90 percent) or greatly successful (38.10 percent), and they offered a variety of insights on what they might do differently in the future to incorporate local culture and traditions into program design and implementation. Participating MTCP administrators and beneficiaries differed in their understanding of what “cultural incorporation” meant, but they agreed that using local indigenous languages to communicate health-risk messages was essential for effective health-risk communication. They also suggested that understanding the literacy practices and linguistic cultures of the local people is essential to communicating health risks across diverse cultures and populations.

THE DISPERSION AND SELECTIVE FLOCCULATION OF HEMATITE ORE

Iron ore is one of the most important ores in the world. Over the past century, most mining of iron ore has been focused on magnetite (Fe3O4). As the name suggests, magnetite is magnetic in nature and is easily separated from gangue (unwanted) minerals through magnetic separation processes. Unfortunately, the magnetite ore bodies are diminishing. Because of this, there has been a recent drive to pursue technology that can economically separate hematite (Fe2O3) from its gangue minerals as hematite is a much more abundant source of iron. Most hematite ore has a very small liberation size that is frequently less than 25μm. Beneficiation of any ore with this fine of a liberation size requires advanced processing methods and is seldom pursued. A single process, known as selective flocculation and dispersion, has been successfully implemented at a plant scale for the beneficiation of fine liberation size hematite ore. Very little is known about this process as it was discovered by the U.S. Bureau of Mines by accident. The process is driven by water chemistry and surface chemistry modifications that enhance the separation of the hematite from its gangue minerals. This dissertation focuses on the role of water chemistry and process reagents in this hematite beneficiation process. It has been shown that certain ions, including calcium and magnesium, play a significant role in the process. These ions have a significant effect on the surface chemistry as reported by zeta potential studies. It was shown that magnesium ions within the process water have a more significant impact on surface chemistry than calcium ions due to steric hindrance effects at the hematite surface. It has also been shown that polyacrylic acid dispersants, if used in the process, can increase product quality (increase iron content, decrease phosphorus content, decrease silica content) substantially. Water, surface and reagent chemistry experiments were performed at a laboratory, pilot, and full plant scale during the course of this work. Many of the conclusions developed in the laboratory and pilot scale were found to be true at the full plant scale as well. These studies are the first published in history to develop theories of water chemistry and surface chemistry interactions at a full plant scale.

LATTICE BOLTZMANN METHOD AND CELLULAR AUTOMATA SIMULATION OF PARTICLE MOTION AND DEPOSITION IN 2-D CASE

This technical report discusses the application of the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) and Cellular Automata (CA) simulation in fluid flow and particle deposition. The current work focuses on incompressible flow simulation passing cylinders, in which we incorporate the LBM D2Q9 and CA techniques to simulate the fluid flow and particle loading respectively. For the LBM part, the theories of boundary conditions are studied and verified using the Poiseuille flow test. For the CA part, several models regarding simulation of particles are explained. And a new Digital Differential Analyzer (DDA) algorithm is introduced to simulate particle motion in the Boolean model. The numerical results are compared with a previous probability velocity model by Masselot [Masselot 2000], which shows a satisfactory result.

ON THE DIGITAL-POLITICAL TOPOGRAPHY OF MUSIC

The persuasive power of music is often relegated to the dimension of pathos: that which moves us emotionally. Yet, the music commodity is now situated in and around the liminal spaces of digitality. To think about how music functions, how it argues across media, and how it moves us, we must examine its material and immaterial realities as they present themselves to us and as we so create them. This dissertation rethinks the relationship between rhetoric and music by examining the creation, performance, and distribution of music in its material and immaterial forms to demonstrate its persuasive power. While both Plato and Aristotle understood music as a means to move men toward virtue, Aristotle tells us in his Laws, through the Athenian Stranger, that the very best kinds of music can help guide us to truth. From this starting point, I assess the historical problem of understanding the rhetorical potential of music as merely that which directs or imitates the emotions: that which “Soothes the savage breast,” as William Congreve writes. By furthering work by Vickers and Farnsworth, who suggest that the Baroque fascination with applying rhetorical figures to musical figures is an insufficient framework for assessing the rhetorical potential of music, I demonstrate the gravity of musical persuasion in its political weight, in its violence—the subjective violence of musical torture at Guantanamo and the objective, ideological violence of music—and in what Jacques Attali calls the prophetic nature of music. I argue that music has a significant function, and as a non-discursive form of argumentation, works on us beyond affect. Moreover, with the emergence of digital music distribution and domestic digital recording technologies, the digital music commodity in its material and immaterial forms allows for ruptures in the former methods of musical composition, production, and distribution and in the political potential of music which Jacques Attali describes as being able to foresee new political realities. I thus suggest a new theoretical framework for thinking about rhetoric and music by expanding on Lloyd Bitzer’s rhetorical situation, by offering the idea of “openings” to the existing exigence, audience, and constraints. The prophetic and rhetorical power of music in the aleatoric moment can help provide openings from which new exigencies can be conceived. We must, therefore, reconsider the role of rhetorical-musical composition for the citizen, not merely as a tool for entertainment or emotional persuasion, but as an arena for engaging with the political.