12466 research outputs found
Sort by
Testing the Impact of Government Intervention and International Financial Integration on Economic growth in Africa, and the Validity of Wagner’s Law for Mauritius
Full text linkChapter one studies the impact of International Financial Integration, the cross-border holdings of financial assets and liabilities, on African economic growth using panel vector autoregression modeling on 40 African states from 2000-2021. The study reveals that Granger causality is unidirectional and runs from IFI to economic growth. Changes in the Economic Freedom Index, Human Development Index, and national income significantly enhance IFI in Africa. Robustness tests reveal that the Economic Freedom Index and Human Development Index amplify the IFI effect on economic growth.Chapter two investigates the unintended consequences of government intervention on economic growth through a panel data regression analysis for 54 African states from 2001-2021. Empirical findings reveal that general government final consumption expenditure and central government debt as a percentage of GDP significantly and adversely affect GDP per capita growth in Africa. The optimal point of GEXGDP for Africa is 11.4%, with economic growth deteriorating beyond 23.8%, underscoring the critical importance of maintaining a balanced approach to government expenditure relative to GDP to foster sustainable economic growth. Chapter 3 investigates the applicability of Wagner's Law of "expanding state expenditures" to Mauritius using time series regression and Vector Autoregression models using data from 1976 to 2022. The empirical findings support the validity of Wagner's Law in Mauritius, as evidenced by the positive relationship between economic growth and government expenditure. The income elasticity of demand for real government expenditure is elastic, and the Granger causality test confirms that unidirectional causality runs from real GDP per capita to per capita government expenditure
ESSAYS ON INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS AND DEVELOPMENT IN WAR-TORN COUNTRIES
Full text linkThis dissertation seeks to address the institutional challenges of dealing with heterogeneity. In doing that, I analyze the costs and benefits of polycentric systems in accommodating heterogeneity. I pay special attention to the polycentric provision of public or “national” goods like defense and peacekeeping as a mechanism of accommodating heterogeneity. Existing literature suggests that heterogeneity reduces societies' ability to engage in collective action. My dissertation is intended to challenge these studies or at least add a caveat to them. The first essay is “The Polycentric Production of Peace and Security.” Peace and security are commonly viewed in social theory as a necessary task for the state, by virtue of being public goods. However, this essay challenges the Samuelsonian consensus on public good provision and presents a framework of “polycentric peace.” The promotion of peace through settings as diverse as civic associations, markets, and religious orders will be highlighted. Polycentric peace underlines the discovery of and learning about peacebuilding processes relevant to circumstances of time, place, and context. The second essay is “Polycentric defense, Ukraine style: explaining Ukrainian resilience against invasion.” Contrary to predictions by many experts, Ukraine’s military has been resilient in the face of the Russian government’s invasion. Drawing on the logic of polycentric defense, this article helps explain how Ukraine has remained resilient against a conventionally more powerful adversary. We argue that polycentric defense in Ukraine has four benefits that aid counteroffensive efforts against invasion, particularly when defense is provided by a highly heterogeneous population. We present evidence of the benefits of polycentric defense in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The third essay is “Monocentric Governance and the Rise of Sectarian Conflict in Yemen.” Yemenis, a religiously diverse people, have experienced civil conflicts and wars legitimized or perpetuated by sectarian beliefs in ways only a few other countries have. This chapter explains how governmental centralization, or monocentricity, played a central role in exacerbating and perpetuating sectarianism in Yemen. Instead of viewing sectarianism as a purely ideological phenomenon or solely a product of foreign interference, this chapter argues that it is severely intensified by monocentric institutions introduced to Yemen after the North Yemen Civil War of 1962-70
Religious Legitimacy and Political Intrigue: The Almohad Caliphate’s Contest for Spain in the Writings of Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt
Full text linkThis dissertation explores the complex interplay of religious legitimacy, political rivalry, and warfare between Muslims and Christians in medieval Spain through the lens of Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt’s work, al-Mann bi’l-Imāma. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide context and to explain the scarcity of Muslim sources regarding the crusades and the Reconquista. By providing context on the Muslim sources, this text presents a nuanced portrayal of the Almohad Caliphate, one of the many regional Muslim dynasties that precipitated the Christian advances in the Muslim world throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries. To prove the Almohad Caliphate’s claim to authority, Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt illustrated how the Almohads engaged with Christian rivals such as Giraldo Sempavor and Sancho Jimenez, as well as Muslim rivals such as the competing Almoravid dynasty and taifa rulers Ibn Mardanish and Ibn Hamusk. To prove the legitimacy of the Almohad rulers, Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt chronicled the Muslim calls for jihad in response to Christian victories in Spain. He invoked the rare messianic title of the Mahdi, and he frequently used titles popularized in the early days of Islam that were associated with the prophet and his companions like “caliph” and “Commander of the Faithful” to establish political and religious authority in an unstable region at a volatile time. To further protect the Almohad claim to dominion, Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt diminished and dismissed the Almohads’ rivals by recounting the dishonorable warfare from whom he regarded as hypocrites and infidels. Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt’s text illustrated how the Almohads constructed their identity and justified their rule through a combination of military conquests, religious rhetoric, and the deliberate delegitimization of their enemies. This dissertation presents details to better understand the broader context of Muslim-Christian relations and intra-Muslim conflicts during a critical period of Islamic history, offering insights into the complex fabric of medieval Islamic polity and society
LINGUISTIC JUSTICE, TRANSLINGUALISM, AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF LANGUAGE: “THE UNRAVELING OF WHAT ONCE FELT INTACT”
No full textThis work is embargoed by the author and will not be publicly available until May 2029.The field of Writing Studies has consistently responded to national calls for justice and equity at critical historical junctures with Students Right to their own Language (SRtoL) in 1974, the translingual turn in 2011 and linguistic justice in 2020. These theoretical frames and pedagogical approaches have critiqued standard language ideologies and drawn attention to explicit and implicit linguistic bias and discrimination in our teaching and assessment practices. While these positions speak truth to power and give rise to important, critical stances against systemic injustices, they have not yet fully accounted for the embodied experiences of students with diverse linguistic repertoires. To that end, this dissertation argues for a phenomenological expansion of translingualism and linguistic justice, one that explores the impact of trauma on what sociolinguist, Brigitta Busch, calls the “lived experience of language.”Institutional DEIA discourse frames diversity as a value-added for universities, a marker of cosmopolitanism and/or a preparation for the transnational marketplace; and, translingualism and linguistic justice have shifted the disciplinary conversation from a deficit view of linguistic diversity to one that positions it as an emblem of multicompetence and cross-cultural dialogue. Complicating these popular discourses of diversity, this dissertation focuses on the invisible stories that multilingual or translingual students carry with them–stories of displacement, forced migration, war, or political upheaval. The project invites a closer consideration of linguistic memory and a better understanding of how experiences with trauma and displacement give rise to what the author terms linguistic freeze and linguistic liminality, both states that can have a significant impact on students’ relationship to language and their subsequent engagement with writing instruction. Specifically, to invoke the complex lived and embodied dimensions of the linguistic repertoire, the author--herself a child of the Lebanese civil war--experiments with the epistolary form (ie. letters to friends, family and students with trauma experiences) as a method for counterstory. The resulting phenomenological frame challenges institutional master-narratives of DEIA and linguistic diversity, deepens the field’s aspirations for a translingual orientation and foregrounds the lived and embodied experience of learners.2029-05-1
Scalable Secure Multiparty Computation
Full text linkSecure multiparty computation (MPC) allows a group of parties to collectively perform computation on their combined inputs while revealing nothing about their private inputs beyond what can be inferred from the output of the computation. Although early results focused on MPC between 2 or 3 parties with a relatively small input size, recent years have seen growing interest in protocols designed for large networks of parties processing large data inputs. The protocols used for small-scale MPC are often poorly-suited to the parameter sizes seen in practice for certain applications, hence there is a need for new protocols designed with an emphasis on scalability. In this dissertation, we aim to design protocols for secure multiparty computation which remain efficient at large scale
Flat Or Reconstructed, Not Broken: Analysis Of Women's Post- Mastectomy Narratives
Full text linkThis study integrates several different interrelated qualitative methods to craft a holistic narrative of the lived experience of mastectomy survivors. Breast cancer survivors, especially those who have experienced mastectomy, face some of the greatest psychosocial and physical challenges of all cancer survivors. The experience of breast cancer and mastectomy are uniquely gendered experiences, and are complicated by the social roles of women, the history of treatment of women in the biomedical community, and the complexity of issues surrounding mastectomy and reconstruction. The purpose of this study is to bring out the voices of women through their own means, creating a greater level of consciousness of both their suffering and their resilience that can help guide effective programs, policies, and supportive health communication efforts for these women. By examining the unique identity, privacy, and sense making experiences surrounding choice and status of breast cancer, this dissertation honors the voices survivors through written, verbal and visual narrative inquiry, employing multiple theories related to identity and social relations
Early Life Diet in Medieval Croatia: A Bioarchaeological Reconstruction of Infant and Child Dietary Histories
Full text linkArchaeological reconstructions of breastfeeding and weaning have the potential to address central themes in anthropology including personhood, subsistence, demographics, and social structure. Dietary reconstructions may demonstrate cultural differences in timing of weaning according to sex, social status, or other factors. This allows for a deeper interpretation of identity and embodiment throughout the life course. The archaeological site of Đurđevac-Sošice appears to have been an important religious center and prominent trading district throughout the Middle Ages. This study explores early life diet among the medieval Croatian community through the use of commingled remains interred within the church of St. George.
Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes of incremental dentin collagen were used to reconstruct patterns of breastfeeding and weaning. Longitudinal central slices of dentin were removed from the M1 of twelve individuals. One millimeter increments of dentin collagen were then extracted beginning from the crown and ending at the root. This method improves temporal resolution and age-alignment accuracy by taking into account the anatomical structure of dentin. δ15N data were entered into WEAN, a program designed to generate an age estimation for weaning completion using regression analysis.
Although the archaeological context of commingled remains is greatly limited, this isotopic sampling method has allowed for detailed longitudinal reconstructions of diet that illustrate nutritional transitions throughout the life course. The results of this study demonstrate consistency with historic documentation (Adamson, 2004; Janeković Römer, 2009). Most individuals were breastfed exclusively for a period of approximately six months and the average age of weaning completion among the sample was approximately 2.9 years. Furthermore, the δ15N and δ13C values post-weaning indicate gradual dietary shifts transitioning from a childhood diet to a more adult-like diet. The results demonstrate that diet was an important aspect of social age and identity among this medieval Croatian community
DISCOVERY OF NOVEL SMALL SIZE HIV-1 RELEASED FROM INFECTED T-CELLS AND PERIPHERAL BLOOD MONONUCLEAR CELLS
Full text linkIn the current work, we explored the intersecting properties of human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1) and small size extracellular particles (sEPs) under 50 nm. We isolated five fractions by sequential differential ultracentrifugation from HIV-1 infected T-cells, where the last fraction contained sEPs. In contrast, the other fractions had EPs greater than 100 nm. The sEPs fraction was enriched in CD63 and HSP70 and contained HIV-1 integrase enclosed in a protective membrane. Surprisingly, our infectivity assay indicated the presence of small infections HIV-1 particles (smHIV-1) in the sEPs fraction, which was blocked by HIV-1 broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies and significantly reduced by anti-CD63 immunodepletion. However, treatment of the chronically infected T-cells with NRTIs did not decrease the infectivity of the released smHIV-1, but significantly reduced the infectivity of the virus in the other larger fractions. Furthermore, single particle colocalization analysis for host proteins and viral integrase and the viral envelope glycoproteins further supported that the smHIV-1 in the sEPs fraction is CD63+. Additionally, we confirmed that smHIV-1 was released from peripheral mononuclear cells infected with a primary virus. Collectively, our study indicates the release of distinctly small and large HIV-1 from the same infected T-cells with different biophysical, biochemical, and functional properties. These results could have a potential impact on vaccine and drug development studies not only for HIV, but also for other pathogens
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Club Sport Participation
Full text linkAt the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020, university campuses began to close or move into virtual operations to attempt to prevent the spread of the virus around the United States, pausing all co-curricular learning opportunities at the campuses, including club sports for the estimated 2 million students who participate in these programs annually. Using systems theory as a theoretical framework, this study, funded by a NIRSA Research Grant, attempted to determine the impact of the pandemic on club sports participation and operations, both in the 2020–2021 academic year when campuses were first learning to operate with the virus, and over the full 4-academic-year period from 2019–2020 to 2022–2023.An electronic Qualtrics survey was sent to club sports contacts at 547 institutions that were members of NIRSA, the professional organization for collegiate recreation, and 107 institutions responded (response rate of 19.6%). The survey was administered from May to July 2024. The data were analyzed to compare mean participation and operation rates over multiple years to gender of participants, first-year student status, characteristic of the sport that was played, institutional characteristics, and restrictions on club operations to attempt to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during 2020–2021. Total unique participation at the 91 institutions that provided data for all 4 years of the study began at 90,349 in 2019–2020, before dropping 40.7% into 2020–2021, climbing 85.5% into 2021–2022, and then going up another 3.5% going into 2022–2023. Over the 4-academic-year period, total participation climbed 14.3%. For the 2020–2021 academic year, statistically significant relationships were found for club sports participation based on restrictions imposed on operations such as clubs being able to meet in person in fall of 2020 (p = 0.002) and spring of 2021 (p = 0.006), clubs being able to travel off campus in the spring of 2021 (p = 0.004), institutions requiring participants to wear face masks in fall of 2020 (p = 0.044), and institutions requiring social distancing in fall of 2020 (p = 0.040). Notably, institutions that required masking and social distancing in the semester had higher participation rates. Mean differences in participation were also seen based on institution size and Carnegie classification (both p < 0.001). Operations by clubs also varied based on the way the club traditionally operated, with statistically significant differences existing for indoor versus outdoor clubs for both practices (p = 0.013) and competitions (p < 0.001), and contact versus noncontact sports for practices (p = 0.045) and competitions (p = 0.029). Over the full 4-academic-year period, no statistically significant differences in participation were found by types of participants, restrictions used to mitigate COVID-19 in 2020–2021, operational nature of clubs, or characteristics of institutions. Participation and operation means consistently saw significant drops for the 2020–2021 year, followed by a recovery in 2021–2022. Takeaway lessons for club sports, collegiate recreation, and student affairs professionals for future events and crises that disrupt normal operations—including severe weather, violence and terrorist acts, and mass illness—are ensuring that students feel safe participating during the immediate aftermath of a disruption and not being concerned about temporarily suspending operations to respond to the crisis. Participation appears to return as students feel safe to return and the opportunity to participate comes back. The benefits of social interactions with peers and physical activity to counteract the mental health challenges posed by social isolation and stress during the crisis are potential reasons for students returning to participate in club sports postpandemic
Ground-based Light Curve Follow-up Validation observations of TESS object of interest TOI 5191.01
No full text“The objective of this study is to determine whether TESS candidate TOI 5191.01 is a transiting exoplanet. The TESS faint star QLP search mission flagged the candidate on April 25, 2022, but it still required validation. We collected raw data from the 0.8m telescope at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, then performed data reduction and plate solving using the AstroImageJ (AIJ) software to process the images and plot the light curve. We also conducted a non-eclipsing binary (NEB) check to rule out interference from another light source. To validate this exoplanet, we compared our calculations with previously collected data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive. However, due to imperfect weather conditions and data collection, we could not validate this exoplanet, and our analysis was inconclusive. For future work, we recommend gathering telescope data under clearer skies and using a more powerful, sharper telescope.