Assessing Racial Determinants of Wellbeing

Overview

This paper reveals numerous psychological mechanisms and correlations that are relevant in the sphere of race and wellbeing, and thus relevant to all people because of the inevitable effects that race has on one’s life. I show that the valuation of race is asymmetric across racial groups and that this immediately has repercussions in the real world. I propose a theoretical market where race is an item of transaction, under which this asymmetry can be analyzed systematically. Within this framework, I rename this nuanced form of information asymmetry to be experiential asymmetry and discuss a new type of market failure, one where the cost to wellbeing is not immediately financial but psychological. Mathematically, I suggest two mechanisms that will reduce the asymmetry in this racial market and prevent market failure. This paper establishes empathy as a strong variable that could reduce asymmetry and then demonstrates the strong correlation between empathy and responses to key national events like the George Floyd protests of 2020 and the January 6th Capitol protest. Finally, I note inconsistencies in my dataset with the long-standing idea of loss aversion. I suggest that there exists something inherently unique to being a person of color that correlates strongly with valuing a gain more than an equivalent loss. Simple and Low-Cost Production of Magnetite/Graphene Nanocomposites in Activated Carbon Matrix for Heavy Metal Ions Adsorption Jessica Yan The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, Columbus, MS It is challenging to produce economical magnetic graphene-based adsorbents on an industrial scale for heavy metal ions removal. Here, magnetite/graphene nanocomposite embedded in activated carbon matrix (magnetite/G-AC) was synthesized via in situ catalytic graphitization of iron-impregnated biochar to obtain graphene encapsulated iron nanoparticles (GEINs) embedded in biochar (BC) matrix, and followed by steam activation of GEINs-BC. Steam activation aimed to upgrade biochar to activated carbon with oxygen functional groups, crack encapsulated graphene shell to graphene nanosheets, and obtain magnetic Fe3O4 by oxidation of iron, thereby improving the adsorption capacity of magnetite/G-AC-800 (153.2 mg/g) four times higher than that of GEINs-BC. The parameters on the adsorption capacity were investigated using Pb(II) ions as a typical pollutant as a function of solution pH (3–7), contact time (5–300 min), initial Pb(II) concentration (50–400 mg/L), and adsorbent dosage (0.05–0.25 g). The fitted pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Langmuir model indicated that the main adsorption mechanism was chemical adsorption over monolayer. This research developed a low-cost magnetic adsorbent with the advantage of simple large-scale production and excellent adsorption capacity per unit cost for remediating wastewater. MISSOURI