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Politics and Institutional change: The Water Commission Act of 1913
Get PDFEconomists have long argued that increasing resource scarcity can lead to more clearly defined individual property rights, but the precise mechanism whereby this occurs remains unclear to this day. This paper documents the role of politics in shaping the creation of individual property rights within the context of appropriative water law in early 20th century California, finding evidence of both party ideology and interest group influence in establishing a new system for administering appropriative water rights
Napambana: Gender and Power in Bongo Fleva Music Videos
No full textThis paper utilizes a theoretical approach based on practice theory to analyze gender based power relations within fifteen music videos. These videos are part of a genre called bongo fleva, a kind of contemporary popular music from Tanzania. The following paper introduces the concept of bongo and overviews relevant historical information and scholarly research. It then outlines its theoretical approach and methodology before analyzing the fifteen music videos. The analysis is organized under the categories: struggle and domination, capital and agency, romantic relationships, and community networks. The concept of bongo is central to this paper. bongo is understood as a culturally constructed conception of what life is like in contemporary Tanzania. This paper finds that the fifteen music videos demonstrate men and women having different responsibilities and tools in navigating bongo. Through their narratives, imagery, and lyrics these videos legitimize and stigmatize the behavior of men and women in meaningfully different ways. This research paper ultimately sees bongo fleva as an intellectual tradition that grapples with the challenges and opportunities of life in Tanzania
Closed Door, Open Field: Documentation of My Art Exhibition
No full textThis paper documents both my artwork and my process of creation and installation of said artwork while working at Northeast Sculpture Gallery in the Summer of 2024
The Influence of Life Stressors on Cognitive Decline in a NW Monkey Model of Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease
No full textThis study investigated whether aging and psychosocial stressors predict cognitive decline in cotton top tamarins, a New World monkey animal model with potential for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research. Cognitive performance was assessed using tasks targeting working memory (Delayed Match-to-Sample, DMTS) and episodic memory (“what, where, and when,” WWW). Results showed that both advancing age and increased psychosocial stress significantly predicted declines in working memory performance, especially under conditions requiring longer memory retention. This pattern mirrors cognitive declines observed in humans experiencing early-stage AD, supporting the use of tamarins as a promising animal model for studying aging and neurodegenerative diseases. The episodic memory task measured familiarity memory with a 1-week delay and contextual cues did not impair memory performance. Neither age nor stress significantly influenced familiarity memory outcomes, indicating that the WWW task, as implemented, lacks sensitivity to detect episodic memory declines but measures familiarity memory associated with aging. Overall, these findings emphasize the importance of age and psychosocial stress as risk factors for cognitive decline in AD
Bobby Arora (NYU) Comps Group: Designing Synthetic Peptidomimetics to Inhibit Protein-Protein Interactions
No full textMany biological processes are mediated through the interaction of protein partners, termed protein–protein interactions (PPIs). PPIs are important therapeutic targets–especially given their implications in cancer growth and proliferation–but the development of PPI inhibitors is difficult due to the large, shallow interfaces spanning the two interacting proteins. Dr. Paramjit (Bobby) Arora’s lab (NYU) develops peptidomimetics.These are synthetic molecules that mimic the secondary structures responsible for PPIs and can be implemented for therapeutic purposes. In this talk we will dive into the Arora Lab’s work to develop alpha helical mimics with a hydrogen bond surrogate–a covalent bond that encourages adoption of a helical shape. We will explain the lab’s work in the design, synthesis, optimization, and in vivo application of inhibitors that target PPIs important for cancer growth. Join us to learn more about bioorganic chemistry, peptide chemistry, drug development, and an exciting new class of therapies
Not So Mindblind Online: Exploring Neurodivergent Empathy through Digital Text-Based Interactions
No full textFrom religious manuscripts to emotional letters and gripping suspense novels, text-based communication has included empathetic information for centuries. Now, the text-based communication landscape includes digital options like instant messaging and email. Digital text-based communication, however, has faced pushback historically regarding its capacity for facilitating empathy because of its supposed anonymity and disembodiment. Many of today’s most frequent forms of digital text-based communications are not anonymous, such as text messaging and email, and have the potential to facilitate empathetic social interactions.
There is no consensus in psychology, specifically social psychology, as to what the concept of empathy fully encompasses nor how to measure it. Aspects of empathy include differentiating between trait- and state-based influences, affective and cognitive components, empathy and related socio-cognitive concepts, and whether empathy requires an immediately present “target.” Many definitions of empathy include one, several, or all of these components. One framework, proposed by Fletcher-Watson and Bird (2019), breaks down empathy into four component stages, encompassing many of the previously mentioned aspects and emphasizes empathy being a process. This model of empathy is used throughout the paper to illustrate how empathy depends on the context and individuals present.
The range of empathetic opportunities afforded by digital text-based communication methodologies is explored through the lens of neurodiversity, specifically autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD). Individuals with these conditions often face social communication difficulties with neurotypical people. Some of these difficulties are due to miscommunications between neurotypical social norms and neurodivergent ways of navigating the world. In particular, ASD and SAD populations often face challenges in recognizing and responding to empathetic cues in face-to-face communication but have harnessed opportunities afforded by digital text-based communication mediums to have better social interactions. By adapting these technologies to their communication styles, neurodivergent people, specifically those with ASD and SAD, can experience more comfort, control, confidence, and understanding in empathetic social interactions. The experiences of neurodivergent people in online interactions support treating cross-neurotype communication as cross-cultural communication to create more inclusive social norms supporting neurodivergent empathetic expression
Sex Differences in Brain Activation Patterns and Strategies during Cognitive Tasks of Verbal Fluency and Spatial Rotation
No full textUsing the intersex brain model, this paper looks at how sex differences are related to brain activation patterns, and the impact of this relationship on cognitive tasks of verbal fluency and spatial rotation. Females outperform males on verbal fluency tasks, where they produce a higher number of words on the test than males do. Males are better than females at spatial rotation tasks, and give a higher number of accurate answers on this test. As there are limited structural differences between the brains of males and females, this paper looks at brain activation patterns, which show substantial differences when performing these tasks. During verbal fluency tasks, females have more bilateral brain activation and use switching strategies, whereas males have greater activation of the left hemisphere – which is linked to language production and processing – and use clustering strategies. We hypothesise that the greater activation of these brain regions in males can be attributed to their requiring more effort to perform the task, which subsequently suggests that females have an advantage in verbal fluency. Additionally, we hypothesise that this female advantage is a result of the different strategies each sex uses on the test. In mental rotation tasks, males show more activation in posterior brain regions – associated with visual analysis of 3D objects – compared to females, who show more activation in frontal brain regions – associated with memory and recollection. We hypothesize that these activation differences may be attributed to the use of different sex specific strategies – ‘gestalt’ in males and analytic/serial in females – which leads females to have a slower response time while allowing males to have an advantage on spatial rotation tests
Effects of Pyrohydrolysis on Trace Element Analyses of Planet-Forming Processes in Chondrites
No full textWe are entering a new era in space research as NASA missions target returning with extraterrestrial samples. With this increase in extra-terrestrial samples often collected under mass-limiting conditions, we need sample handling and processing procedures that maximize analytical capabilities on limited material. This project explores a procedural workflow that synthesizes an inorganic trace element analysis and a halogen extraction using pyrohydrolysis in order to maximize scientific analysis on these returned samples. Halogen and trace elements analyses are normally run on two different aliquots of the same sample due to concerns over procedural effects on the other analysis. We use terrestrial, Martian analog, and chondrite samples to test the effect of the pyrohydrolysis procedure on trace element abundances in samples. First, we determine ratios of trace elements that are indicative of planet-forming processes using the control samples unaffected by the pyrohydrolysis. The ratios determined in this study were Cr/V for core formation, Yb/Ce and La/Ho for silicate differentiation, and Rb/Sr and Rb/Zr for fluid and volatile involvement. Most notably, the Rb/Sr and Rb/Zr ratios indicated a volatile process occurring in the chondritic samples rather than a fluid process. Then, a synthesized pyrohydrolysis and trace element analysis is performed. Of the ratios studied, only Cr/V is affected by the halogen extraction procedure
Can Neural Network Language Models Demonstrate Linguistic Systematicity?
No full textLarge language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are capable of impressively human-like linguistic behavior, but they also have limitations. This paper is intended to explore the question of whether neural network language models can systematically generalize in language-based tasks. This paper begins by introducing the term systematicity, a term from linguistics and philosophy that refers to “the fact that there are definite and predictable patterns among the sentences we understand” (Szabó, 2024). The beginning of the paper also contrasts systematicity with linguistic compositionality, the determination of a complex expression’s meaning “by its structure and the meanings of its constituents” (Szabó, 2024) and discusses the relationship between these concepts. The next section addresses the philosophical debate on systematicity sparked by Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn’s 1988 paper “Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis. That section outlines Fodor and Pylyshyn’s (1988) argument and addresses counterarguments, discussing more recent philosophical work on the topic of systematicity, including a distinction between different strengths of systematicity. This paper then provides a basic overview of how artificial neural networks function, along with recent developments in LLMs such as transformer architecture. The largest section of the paper discusses failures of systematicity in neural network language models (or simply neural language models), including some examples of empirical studies that attempt to evaluate language models on systematicity and/or compositionality. This section discusses what the results of these studies can tell us about systematicity, given the difficulty in evaluating such an abstract concept empirically, and also covers attempts to improve systematicity in language models by improving the ability of language models to generalize outside of their training data. The paper concludes by returning to Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988) and the philosophical debate on systematicity. While some attempts to ensure systematicity in neural networks (those involving neuro-symbolic hybrid architectures) merely implement a classical architecture, other approaches, such as data-driven methods, can lead to human-level performance on some tasks requiring systematicity. The conclusion argues that a neural language model that meets or exceeds human performance on a variety of tasks that require systematic generalization displays some degree of systematicity, and that distinguishing between weak and strong forms of systematicity is useful for evaluating language models. Neural language models can display at least a weak degree of systematicity (Buckner & Garson, 2019) and high-performing LLMs can display a strong degree of systematicity (Russin et al., 2024)