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Tokyo-bot: Emulating Industrial Automation
Get PDFOur E90 project was to design, assemble, and program an omni-directional robot that integrated a web camera to intelligently sort (and ideally transfer from one location to another) colored boxes. The purpose of this project was to simulate an industrial workplace setting where similar types of sorting processes occur, and be able to optimize them. Developing a robot with high maneuverability combined with object detection capabilities could prove to be useful in optimizing workflows in warehouses and processing factories where items constantly need to be located and transported. With three group members, each with their own specializations, the project was divided up into mechanical prototyping/development, implementing swerve drive kinematics with software, and implementing object/color detection with computer vision software
Understanding The Anthropocene
Get PDFThe current climate crisis can be a daunting, anxiety-provoking topic. Terms such as “climate anxiety” are brought up because thinking about the prospect of future warming can cause extreme dread. Our current trajectory has even pushed people to forgo having children. Yet although this dread is very warranted and cannot be minimized, simply fearing for the future does not present any solutions to improving it. Ecopoetry can give us a window into helping deal with our grief, and can also suggest solutions for moving forward. This anthology presents poems that do both, helping us to better understand our current era in time, the Anthropocene
Before We Say Farewell: An Anthology Of Ecopoetry
Get PDFWhen faced with the climate crisis, we humans have responded with varying levels of distress. Most of us swing between despair, when we fall into grief at our own stupidity and possible doom, and hope, that a solution is right around the corner. There is a middle ground of apathy, for those who’ve lost all hope and/or become paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the climate crisis. Regardless of where we are, life under the climate crisis is not easy, and we all need to be reminded that it’s worth going on from time to time. Ironically, many of us have found solace in nature, the very thing we humans are destroying with our own hands. Such an impulse is difficult to rationalize, though we can get closest to understanding why through one medium: poetry. Ecopoetry, to be more precise. Ecopoetry navigates the human’s relationship to nature, through the hope, the despair, and the apathy that we all feel; nature poems guide us through our grief, and eventually, help us rediscover our hope and our humanity amidst the destruction we’ve dealt our home. And maybe, just find it in ourselves to repair what we’ve broken: give back to nature, in handfuls, by our puny human hands. Hands that we must remember are capable of much more than we sometimes care to think. This anthology hopes to distill this process and guide the reader through it, hopefully to encourage, and maybe empathize
“Students find corporate reforms absurd”: Bryn Mawr Student’s Mobilization for Divestment from Apartheid South Africa
Get PDFIn 1986, Bryn Mawr College’s endowment held 96 million endowment in investments tied to Apartheid in South Africa. In line with other major US institutions who believed they must act moral in the face of violent and exploitative system of racial discrimination, the Board of Trustees, the governing body that oversees college operations and finances, proposed a plan in 1985 to divest from subsidiaries of their stock in South Africa if Apartheid was still in place 24 months later in 1987. This came at the tail end of the international movement to oppose and end Apartheid through economic pressures. Bryn Mawr students would reject this plan, occupying buildings and mobilizing campus to disrupt Board meetings. Students said they would not rest until full divestment. Their movement held a shared commitment to ending Apartheid in South Africa and to ending racism in the United States.
This paper narrates how the social and economic movements against Apartheid panned out at Bryn Mawr College in the 1980s. Based on my original primary source research at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges’ special collections, I uncover the tactics and frameworks of the student movement to divest as well as the college’s response. Inevitably, the administration took partial measures to accommodate some of the demands of the student movement for divestment. The nexus between the student movement for divestment and the college administration took new heights in 1986. In this year, the students rejected the college’s newly presented plan for divestment, as they understood it as a mere palliative measure in the face of the violence and racism of Apartheid. To understand the student zeitgeist at the time , I illuminate the historical context of the movement against Apartheid by situating it in relation to the preceding anti-War and Civil Rights movements. The later era of activism precipitated into the New Left movement, which was a radical student movement grounded in ideas of political and economic democracy. I provide readers with a primer on the foundations of ethical investment in South Africa. The college’s plan embodied the corporate responsibility ethos of the 80s, which sought to maintain capitalism and pacify very popular alternatives through modest reforms. These principles undergirded Bryn Mawr College’s eventual divestment strategy, which sought to maintain profit and to make a statement about their opposition to the political system of Apartheid. To make this argument, I draw on archival discussions of corporate responsibility politics and the theory of change they espouse which forwarded reform through pressuring the companies they held stock in. I engage in an analysis of discourses emerging from a school-sponsored trip to South Africa in the winter of 1986, which was dubbed a “Peace Mission Fact Finding Trip.” This analysis is essential to understanding student and faculty perspectives, as there was not a consensus on the subject. In the end, Bryn Mawr adopted a divestment plan that was in the name of corporate responsibility. They wrote letters to the corporations they held stock in who had subsidiaries in South Africa, and asked what they were going to do to end Apartheid. The school sold $651,558 in 1986 of stock from the 5 companies, a mere 0.67% of the total endowment
Two Houses Divided? The Parallel Histories of the Casa de Contratación and the Casa da Índia, 1500-1580
Get PDFThis paper seeks to investigate the histories of the Spanish Casa de Contratación and the Portuguese Casa da Índia in relation to one another, identifying possible ways in which each drew inspiration, or imitated the other during the period from 1500 to 1580. Though there is existing research into the individual Casas, comparative approaches have generally been avoided. This work synthesizes the literature and tracks interactions or trends between the Iberian empires from both an institutional and interpersonal perspective. Through analysis of bureaucratic charters, letters, and other documents, it outlines the time periods, possible reasons, and results of this imitation game. Ultimately, after decades of trial and error, each empire settled into a model more suited to its imperial situation on the ground: for the Spanish, this was a more privatized model, while for the Portuguese it was statist in the East and more privatized in Brazil
À Propos Decolonization: The “Affaire D’amour” Between The Renault Factory Strikes of 1947 and French Malagasy Discrimination
No full textIn 1947, The Monnet Plan was introduced in France to reinvigorate the economy, which was still feeble after World War II. Its high demands of factory workers soon led to strikes, which quickly gained the support of the French Communist Party. Concurrently, the French government was rapidly decolonizing Madagascar. Newly independent Africans found themselves financially strained in the wake of decolonization and were enticed to immigrate to France in the hopes of attaining economic freedom and citizenship in exchange for labor. These laborers, who were employed by the stricken factories, also garnered the support of the PCF, much to the dismay of the Labor Party and the Rally of the French People. While negotiations ended the strikes, the surveillance state instituted to monitor French-African immigrants perpetuated the class divides, xenophobia, and racism that grew out of the original resistance to The Monnet Plan. Thus the complex power and class dynamics that dominated the French Cold War also played a key role in its creation, as the total submission to the nation via the surveillance state came about as a result of much earlier fears of Blackness, immigration, and migrant labor
Finding Safe Haven: Church-Centered Communities and Cultural Persistence Among Central American Migrants in Los Angeles
Get PDFEffect Of Ambient Conditions On Acoustic Activation Of The Perfluoropropane Droplets Within The Infarct Zone
No full textBackground: Acoustically activated perfluoropropane droplets (PD) formulated from lipid encapsulated microbubble preparations produce a delayed myocardial contrast enhancement that preferentially highlights the infarct zones (IZ). Since activation of PDs may be temperature sensitive, it is unclear what effect body temperature (BT) has on acoustic activation (AA). Objective: We sought to determine whether the microvascular retention and degree of myocardial contrast intensity (MCI) would be affected by BT at the time of intravenous injection. Methods: We administered intravenous (IV) PD in nine rats following 60 min of ischemia followed by reperfusion. Injections in these rats were given at temperatures above and below 36.5°C, with high MI activation in both groups at 3 or 6 min following IV injection (IVI). In six additional rats (three in each group), IV PDs were given only at one temperature (\u3c36.5°C or ≥36.5°C), permitting a total of 12 comparisons of different BT. Differences in background subtracted MCI at 3-6 min post-injection were compared in the infarct zone (IZ) and remote zone (RZ). Post-mortem lung hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining was performed to assess the effect potential thermal activation on lung tissue. Results: Selective MCI within the IZ was observed in 8 of 12 rats who received IVI of PDs at \u3c36.5°C, but none of the 12 rats who had IVI at the higher temperature (p \u3c 0.0001). Absolute MCI following droplet activation was significantly higher in both the IZ and RZ when given at the lower BT. H&E indicated significant red blood extravasation in 5/7 rats who had had IV injections at higher BT, and 0/7 rats who had IV PDs at \u3c36.5°C. Conclusions: Selective IZ enhancement with AA of intravenous PDs is possible, but temperature sensitive. Thermal activation appears to occur when PDs are given at higher temperatures, preventing AA, and increasing unwanted bioeffects
