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Mixed Structures and Mixed Feelings: The Case of Surzhyk
No full textSurzhyk, a Ukrainian-Russian mixed language, is a widely spoken, yet lowly respected language in Ukraine. The mixing of Ukrainian and Russian is an almost inevitable process in environments in which the two East Slavic languages have coexisted for centuries. The lack of respect is a result of the complex and imperialistic nature of Ukraine and Russia’s shared recent histories combined with the exploitation of language differences by modern Ukrainian politicians. We find that Surzhyk speakers are mischaracterized as monolingual, uneducated, uncultured, rural peasants, while in reality many contemporary Surzhyk speakers are bilingual, urban Ukrainians who use Surzhyk as expressions of their mixed identities. We examine Surzhyk speech and identify a large aspect of its systematicity within its mixing of Russian lexical items with Ukrainian morphology, thus pointing back to shared cultural and historical experience as the source of the delegitimization of Surzhyk. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, anti-Russian sentiments have shifted the linguistic landscape of Ukraine, the effects of which have yet to be explored with respect to Surzhyk
The evolutionary implications of adaptive introgression of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes in Eurasian
No full text50-60 ka ago, anatomically modern humans (AMH) left Africa and entered Eurasia for the first time (Gittelman et al. 2016). The founding population of Eurasian AMH possessed only a fraction of the genetic diversity present in ancient African AMH, creating a significant Eurasian genetic bottleneck (Gittelman et al. 2016; Rinker et al. 2020). Dispersing AMH occasionally interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans, archaic species of humans that predated AMH migration to Eurasia by hundreds of thousands of years (Peyrégne et al. 2024). Importantly, archaic introgression introduced novel archaic derived alleles and reintroduced ancestral alleles to AMH populations (Gittelman et al. 2016; Meyer et al. 2016; Rinker et al. 2020; Peyrégne et al. 2024; Zeberg et al. 2024). The selective pressures associated with the Eurasian AMH founder event were compounded by dispersing AMH’s interactions with novel environments and Eurasian species of archaic humans. Selection for specific introgressed alleles, adaptive introgression, is observed in ancient and modern AMH populations and may have facilitated AMH settlement of Eurasia (Gittleman et al. 2016). Consequently, AMH of non-African descent possess 1.8-2.6% Neanderthal DNA and populations of Southeast Asians possess up to 4% Denisovan DNA (Prüfer et al. 2017; Peyrégne et al. 2024). Recent inquiries into the effects of archaic DNA on modern human phenotypes have identified introgressed segments which have major implications for the pathogenesis of viruses like COVID-19, the regulation of metabolic pathways, and other significant biological processes (Huerta-Sánchez et al. 2014; Enard and Petrov 2018; Gouy and Excoffier 2020; Zeberg and Pääbo 2020, 2021; Ahlquist et al. 2021; Huffman et al. 2022; Reilly et al. 2022; Velazquez-Arcelay et al. 2023; Zhang et al. 2023). The legacy of interactions between established archaic Eurasian populations and founding Eurasian AMH populations is still observed today. Here, I discuss the evolutionary significance of introgression and consider two major examples of adaptive introgression in response to Eurasian environmental and genetic pressures
Whales: The Physics of Underwater Life
No full textWhales have developed many adaptations for living in the aquatic underworld. In this paper, I will first take a look at fluid dynamics to see how whales move around in the water. Next, I investigate at how they maintain a warm body temperature despite the cold of the ocean. I then go over how whales deal with the water pressure at high depths. Finally, I look at how they use echolocation to navigate when light-based senses are not viable. These adaptations are interesting to observe and knowing how they work can be used to both improve human technology and preserve whale habitats and resources
The Impact of Feminist Movements on Violence Against Women Policy Implementation in Rural Communities
No full textKids on the Move: Modeling the Impact of Children on Migratory Decision-Making
No full textResidential surroundings change, a job is lost, and children are born and grow older— in response, a household may decide to move. In the economic literature, push and pull effects drive movers from and to new homes according to their preferences. Households are affected by the institutions, peers, and infrastructure in their vicinity. This environment is taken into account when households decide whether or not to pack up and leave— and where to go. Literature indicates that children are meaningfully affected by their surroundings, and, in turn, have a significant influence over whether or not those surroundings change. Using data from the 2016 American Community Survey (ACS), this paper uses three probit models to connect the presence of children in a household with the probability of movement, each grounded in an economic push and pull framework of residential mobility. Findings from these regressions indicate that children affect the probability of movement, and how their families account for the residential characteristics around them. Children appear to decrease household preferences for education and increase household preferences for white neighbors. A push effect due to rising average income levels appears to decrease after the first child, but then increase again thereafter. In addition to their value for understanding how children influence migration, examining residential characteristics adds validity to the push and pull models— the data show residents move to areas for the same reason they stay in those areas, and vice versa
Who Called the Stork and Where Did it Fly? Women\u27s Empowerment and Fertility
No full textGeographic differences in fertility are important to account for when constructing national population projections. This provides insight into the degree regional differences in fertility persist or converge when planning at the sub-national level. I use non-spatial and spatial econometric methods to investigate the effect of women’s empowerment on fertility in US counties. I do not find evidence of significant spatial clustering of fertility at the national level, and some marginal evidence when the analysis is conducted using regional sub-samples. I find that nationally, women’s empowerment is positively associated with fertility, suggesting the income effect dominates the substitution effect. Estimates should be interpreted at face-value, as econometric issues limit the robustness of calculated standard errors
The Match: An ILP Application
No full textAs CS majors, we are all intimately familiar with the struggles of course registration. In recent years, the Carleton CS department has attempted to mitigate the challenges posed by registration for classes in the department by adopting a method called the CS Match. This pre-registration process takes in a list from every participating student that contains a ranking of CS courses they would like to take and matches them to a single course using an adaptation of the Gale-Shapley algorithm. Given the complexity of the CS Match process, we sought to investigate another approach to solve this problem that can account for more factors. Hence, for our Comprehensive Exercise, we studied integer linear programming (ILP) and its application to the problem of matching students to classes
