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Audiovisual Translation and Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition in Colloquial Arabic
No full textOver the past few years, a renewed interest in employing translation in language pedagogy appears to be gaining momentum over the more commonly-celebrated communicative approach. The present paper describes a pilot study on the effectiveness of audiovisual translation in vocabulary acquisition. A group of (13) learners of Arabic in a large public university in the US took part in an 8-week project where they carried out the interlingual subtitling of a full-length Egyptian film into the English language. Data was collected by means of a pre- and a post-project survey to measure the progress made by learners at the end of the project with regard to incidental acquisition of vocabulary and idiomatic expressions. The study participants were also surveyed to determine their perception of the relevance of translation in their language studies. The findings corroborate the argument in favor of the incorporation of translation activities in L2 classes
Essays on Financial Market Structure and Shareholder Voting
No full textChapter 1: Size Discovery in Slow Markets
Adding a size-discovery trading protocol, where a break in the limit order book occurs to match orders at a fixed price, can increase allocative efficiency in markets with slow trading frequency. A high trading frequency spreads liquidity, resulting in a strong incentive to wait for a size-discovery session. This incentive to delay trade is smaller in slower markets, and its negative effect on efficiency can be offset in slower markets by the positive effect of size discovery. This result rationalizes the empirical fact that size-discovery protocols only exist in slower markets. Potential conflicts of interest between traders and platform operators are identified but seem unlikely to drive the existence of size-discovery trading protocols.
Chapter 2: Is 24/7 Trading Better? with Alexander Ober
Are daily market closures still needed? In a model of large traders who manage inventory risk, we show that even short market closures can significantly improve liquidity. Anticipating these closures, traders engage in aggressive trading, which concentrates and coordinates liquidity. A market structure with a daily closure improves allocative efficiency relative to a continuously open market, even though traders cannot trade during the closure itself. If traders have heterogeneous information about the asset value, trade is less aggressive on the whole, but closure still retains its substantial welfare benefits. Our findings suggest moving to a longer trading day could be beneficial, but moving to 24/7 trading would harm welfare.
Chapter 3: Proxy Advice and Errors in Shareholder Voting with Alan Crane, Kevin Crotty, and David De Angelis
How does proxy advice relate to voting mistakes? Structural estimates of latent proposal quality imply advisor ISS’s recommendations are wrong half the time for shareholder proposals. Vote outcomes, however, are correct the vast majority of the time because positive recommendations, which are particularly uninformative, are less influential. Our results support recent theory that proxy advice crowds out information collection by institutional investors and aims to create controversy. Recommendations are less informative than most mutual funds' votes. Vanguard’s votes are a considerably better benchmark for proposal quality than ISS recommendations. Overall, our analysis implies limiting ISS’s influence would improve voting outcomes
Evolution of Holiness Camp Kwali, Abuja: Gnosis and History Exemplifying a shift from Church-Centric to Community-Centric Christianity
No full textAbstract
Historically, the Evangelical Revival and the Great Awakenings of the eighteenth century primarily resulted in the establishment of church institutions through rituals. This work is going to demonstrate that while the early history of revivalism is well documented in Nigeria, the contrast today is that the current revival leaders have also expanded the scope of their vision to create Nigerian Pentecostal camp meeting revivals beyond church institutions into creating Christian neighborhoods governed according to the teachings and doctrines of specific movements. This research focuses on the Holiness Camp, Abuja. Ruth Marshall's observation that "In Nigeria, the line between the city and the church is rapidly vanishing" underscores the transformation of the Redemption Camp into the Redemption City of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, highlighting significant real estate investments that have turned the camp into a residential area.
Despite the extensive literature on Nigerian Pentecostalism, a significant gap remains in understanding the connection between Pentecostalism and neighborhood development through the tradition of Pentecostal revival camps and their evolution into exclusive Christian enclaves. This dissertation addresses how daily spiritual devotions transform a camp space into a new and settled community by examining the Holiness Camp in Abuja, Nigeria, as a case study of a diastolic camp. It categorizes Pentecostal revival camps in Nigeria into three types: systolic, equilibrium, and diastolic (residential) camps. The research posits the perspective that the frequency and constancy of spiritual devotion, large expanse of land, and founder’s residence in the camp, are crucial for an equilibrium or seasonal camp to transition into a Holiness Revival Movement Worldwide’s camp into a diastolic or residential camp.
Key activities for neighborhood development shift from seasonal to daily or weekly devotions, with four quarterly conferences hosted at the camp. I demonstrate that the presence of the founder's residence, internal security system, large expanses of land available for sale or gift to members, the administrative headquarters being located within the camp, and the emergence of socio-economic activities such as commercial laundry, printing press, mechanic workshops, restaurants, medical clinics, schools, and factories for block and water production, all guided by the doctrines of the movement, endow the camp with the features of a neighborhood with a religious worldview.
This research employs descriptive analysis methods and Anthony Wallace’s event-analysis methodological principle to examine the spiritual and doctrinal systems addressing everyday needs in the Holiness Camp. The study is grounded in comprehensive fieldwork, utilizing diverse data sources, including field notes, diaries, devotional tracts, oral and telephone interviews, participant observation, and an extensive collection of over fifty books authored by Paul Rika, the founder of HOREMOW. Additionally, it incorporates the analysis of multimedia sources such as photographs, YouTube and Facebook videos, audio and video disks, websites, maps, Zoom meetings, and academic journal articles. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of the evolving nature of Pentecostal revival camps in Nigeria, providing insights into the complex interplay between Pentecostalism and neighborhood development
Politics at Play: The Jewish Community and the Development of the Visual Arts in Buenos Aires, 1943-1952
No full textMy dissertation asserts that, between 1943 and 1952, distinct factions of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires deployed artmaking and collecting to promote a communist-leaning platform to emerge from the margins of society into intellectual leftist circles while concurrently encouraging Argentina to engage in the global shift of capital formation towards development economic practices. In this way the Jewish diasporic impulse towards avant-garde cosmopolitanism in the visual arts, characterized by the instrumentalization of current artistic trends in the service of creating an interconnected, global community, goes beyond navigating identities and becomes the foundation for actively constructing culture in Argentina. This dissertation interrogates how culture is constructed through a network of interacting political, economic, and social agendas. Within this framework, I contend that the Jewish community strove to establish cultural capital as a resource that it invested, accumulated, and converted into other forms of capital. In this sense, cultural production became a process of position-taking and nation-building for the Jews in Argentina.
The first part of my dissertation focuses on the seminal institution Sociedad Hebraica de Argentina (SHA), which acted as a mediator between the Jewish community and the Argentinean intellectual elites using artmaking and collecting as cultural capital to influence the development of the nation. Chapters 1 and 2 examine various artistic endeavors that the SHA promoted a leftist leaning ideological stance with subtle communist undertones, while establishing a vehicle to integrate the Jewish community into the larger national rhetoric through its commitment to modernization and development in Buenos Aires.
The second part of my dissertation explores the Jewish contingency of Arte Concreto Invención, one of the most important and innovative avant-garde movements to emerge in Buenos Aires in the 1940s. This group created a space outside of official channels for Jews to navigate their place within the local, cultural scene with like-minded intellectuals, many of whom were also emigrés. Because they functioned outside of consecrated spaces, these Jews had more freedom than affiliated institutions and collectors to take a radical and innovative approach to artmaking and challenge the dominant discourses. Chapters 3 and 4 address how these artists, including Gyula Kosice, Martín Blazsko, Grete Stern, Yente, and Diyi Laañ, embraced non-figurative art as a way to propel Argentinean society forward. I contend that this coincides with the Jewish community’s desire to make the country global and modern and promote communist ideology
Reality is God's Dream: Religion and Philosophy of Mind in Bernardo Kastrup and Carl Jung
No full textThis thesis has two main aims. First, to demonstrate that Carl Jung can be understood as a philosopher in the German Idealist tradition. Second, to forward arguments and observations on behalf of Bernardo Kastrup’s Jungian philosophy of mind and its 21st century Idealist worldview. Bernardo Kastrup has led the revival of Idealism as a position by extrapolating ideas first popularized by Jung. Jung himself was very hesitant to offer clear metaphysical speculation in his work, mostly limiting his discussion of transpersonal forces like archetypes to the psychological dimension. First, this thesis aims to go beyond Jung himself by grounding his ideas in philosophical history, showing that he is connected to the German Idealist tradition while laying out Kastrup’s metaphysical schema and contributing to the reception of its arguments. The second section of this work posits that one can read Jung in two ways – as a dual-aspect monist and as an idealist, both understood as positions available in the philosophy of mind. Dual-aspect monism states that reality is monistic in some way but expresses itself as both mental and physical. Kastrup’s analytic idealism is the position that nothing exists other than phenomenal states. I will touch on some key arguments Kastrup makes against materialism. I will conclude by applying the ideas present in the Jungian philosophical worldview to some concepts in contemporary culture. The goal is to elucidate the meaning and reality of religious and social events as sites of unconscious apprehension of deep patterns in our reality. This also heralds a return of the primacy of mythology and storytelling in philosophy and metaphysics. The conclusion points towards a reconciliation of modern science to mankind’s ancient and powerful myth-making faculties which currently appear atavistic and absurd from a purely modernist perspective. This attitude towards religion results from materialism’s ascendancy as the main climate of opinion in our culture. According to Kastrup’s analytic idealism and Jungian philosophy in general, the world of scientific principles, which underlie our understanding of reality and the brain, can be reconciled to the intuitions and perceptions of religious symbolism and behavior. Thus we can achieve a vision of the re-enchantment of the world and overcome the malaise and nihilism that has been philosophically plaguing humanity since the 20th century, resulting from our general alienation from the richly meaningful realities perceived through religious traditions and spirituality in the past and today. This will also shed light on desirable changes that ought to be made in American and global culture
The Relationship Between Children’s Differential Exposure to Industrial Pollution and their Cognitive Outcomes
No full textIn examining pollution and child development, current research overlooks the dual impact of pollution exposure in home and school environments. This study examines the urban context, analyzing how pollution levels at home and school vary and examining differences in exposure between these environments. Furthermore, it investigates whether simultaneous exposure to pollution at home and school more significantly impacts children's cognitive outcomes compared to exposure at just one location. Utilizing the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory dataset and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-K:2011, I match children in the first grade at the census tract level to combined land, water, and air pollution levels. Item Response Theory scores are then used to assess child development in reading and math performance. Ordinary Least Squares regressions are employed to examine the relationship between pollution exposure and cognitive performance. The findings reveal evidence that school and home pollution are associated with lower direct cognitive assessment scores for reading and math for children in the first grade
Convergent soft tissue structure drives patterns of skull shape evolution
No full textKey innovations are thought to promote the diversification of lineages by allowing them to
exploit their environment in a previously unexplored way. The more popular interpretation,
defined by a trait that provides access to novel resources, excludes innovations which merely
increase the rate of diversification or levels of phenotypic diversity. Restricted gill openings
(RGOs) are a modification of the teleost branchiostegal membrane which results in smaller gill
openings, which may free up the evolution of bones and tissues that were previously
constrained by gill size and shape. Here we use 3D geometric morphometrics and phylogenetic
comparative methods to investigate the influence of branchiostegal membrane state on skull
shape evolution in Actinopterygii.
We find higher rates of evolution in lineages with RGO than other gill membrane states, and
varying levels of disparity across states
Imaging the initial condition of heavy-ion collisions and nuclear structure across the nuclide chart
No full textHigh-energy nuclear collisions encompass three key stages: the structure of the colliding nuclei, informed by low-energy nuclear physics, the initial condition, leading to the formation of quark–gluon plasma (QGP), and the hydrodynamic expansion and hadronization of the QGP, leading to final-state hadron distributions that are observed experimentally. Recent advances in both experimental and theoretical methods have ushered in a precision era of heavy-ion collisions, enabling an increasingly accurate understanding of these stages. However, most approaches involve simultaneously determining both QGP properties and initial conditions from a single collision system, creating complexity due to the coupled contributions of these stages to the final-state observables. To avoid this, we propose leveraging established knowledge of low-energy nuclear structures and hydrodynamic observables to independently constrain the QGP’s initial condition. By conducting comparative studies of collisions involving isobar-like nuclei—species with similar mass numbers but different ground-state geometries—we can disentangle the initial condition’s impacts from the QGP properties. This approach not only refines our understanding of the initial stages of the collisions but also turns high-energy nuclear experiments into a precision tool for imaging nuclear structures, offering insights that complement traditional low-energy approaches. Opportunities for carrying out such comparative experiments at the Large Hadron Collider and other facilities could significantly advance both high-energy and low-energy nuclear physics. Additionally, this approach has implications for the future electron-ion collider. While the possibilities are extensive, we focus on selected proposals that could benefit both the high-energy and low-energy nuclear physics communities. Originally prepared as input for the long-range plan of U.S. nuclear physics, this white paper reflects the status as of September 2022, with a brief update on developments since then