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How Local Youths Struggled for Entry into Extractives Industry in a Resource Frontier: Crude Oil Exploration in Turkana, Northwestern Kenya (2010-2020)
No full textPJa/3/Af4application/pdfZAF202500_101現在、グローバルに拡張する資本主義が世界中の辺境地に進出し、「資源のフロンティア」が形成されている。ケニア北西部に位置するトゥルカナ社会は、植民地期から現在まで政治的・経済的・社会的に周縁化されてきた歴史をもつ。しかしながら、この地域では 2010 年頃から多国籍企業が原油探査を開始し、現地住民は急激で予測が困難な経済的・社会的変化を経験している。本稿では、辺境の社会の若者たちが原油探査という未知の状況に果敢に立ち向かい、石油生産の利益配分を獲得していった軌跡を記述する。多国籍企業は当初、操業に対する住民の承諾を得るために現地の政治家などを優遇する戦略をとった。しかし、エリートだけが不当な便益を得ていると感じた一般住民は、道路封鎖などの「実力行使」によって
企業の操業を妨害し、利益の配分を要求するようになった。また、現地の若者たちは自分の会社を創設し、さまざまな交渉をとおして多国籍企業の下請け仕事を勝ち取った。本稿ではこうした「実力行使」と下請け仕事の獲得を石油開発への「参入を求める闘い」と位置づけ、トゥルカナ社会の若者たちが未経験で不慣れな状況にいかに対処したのかを論ずる。journal articl
Rumi and the Seven Cities of Love: The Path from a Divided Society to an Ever-advancing Civilization
No full textThe poet Rumi became transformed when he met the mystic Shams. The seven stages of the transformation are present in various works of the great mystical poets and mystical religious tracts. This work uses these seven stages, sometimes called seven valleys, sometimes seven cities, and attempts to build the unrecorded dialog that may have taken place between Rumi and Shams. The written works of Rumi as well as the memoir attributed to Shams are also used to form their potential dialogue in their own words when possible. Historical information is used as landmarks to guide the narrative. The poems presented from Rumi are original translations rendered into English from the Persian. The concept that resonates through the works of Rumi is perhaps the idea of love as a fire that purifies as a force of transformative action.
The second section of this work similarly follows the seven stages used in the Rumi narrative but for an objective presentation that applies much of what Rumi and Shams share as applied to today’s challenges as a non-fiction narrative based on recent research referencing relevant works. Ideas such as empathy extend from the Rumi narrative into this section. Here, the scientific method is used when applicable. Mathematical principles including those used in the underpinnings of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other areas of science such as Quantum Computing are used to help create an objective narrative. Effort is made to present findings while allowing the reader to decide the conclusions themselves.
The final section includes a peer-reviewed paper, in Appendix A, that has been accepted for presentation and publication at the AI Large Language Model conference on November of 2024. This paper and subsequent completed work provide a framework to simulate and practically apply the concepts from sections one and two. The methods presented in these papers provide a means to run simulations of various types of group dynamics using Large Language Models and evaluate their efficacy in overcoming group polarization and finding solutions to extremely challenging problems
Concrete Oasis: Measures of Accessibility & Equity in the Distribution of Public-Serving Amenities Across U.S. Cities
No full textThe phrase Concrete Oasis offers an oxymoronic depiction of the modern city: a vast industrial landscape, replete with competition and inequality, yet one simultaneously over-flowing with resources and amenities holding the potential to improve the public good. From libraries and parks to hospitals and schools, these entities provide economic, social, and
health-related benefits for city residents.
In this thesis, I investigate whether those amenities actually reach all city residents by mapping the geographical accessibility of each resource to both household income and racial identity. I further derive correlations that describe how distributions of each amenity type vary nationally using property data from the 38 most populous U.S. cities. I then test three historical factors—partisanship, latitude, and city founding date—to explore plausible origins for resource and spatial inequality.
Through a combination of large-scale graph analysis and sociological theory, my research reveals that the majority of amenities are most accessible for wealthier and whiter neighborhoods, but also investigates potential middle class neglect and the relative lack of amenities in racially integrated areas. I propose partisanship and latitude as possible historical contributors to inequitable amenity distributions with respect to income, and city founding date to those with respect to race. Finally, I discuss approaching future urban planning through a lens of redistributive inequality as a means to establish long-term structural support of amenities for those who need them most.Computer Scienc
The Transformative Power of Paradigms: How Shifting the Human-Nature Relationship Impacts Social-Ecological Systems
No full textThe current global social-ecological system (SES) is extractive, polluting and prioritizes economic growth. Due to systems dynamics, reinforcing feedback loops have emerged within this SES that drive runaway growth and environmental degradation. One proposed solution is the Circular Economy (CE) which aims to decouple economic growth from environmental harm. However, it remains unclear if CE will truly achieve sustainability—defined as a system’s ability to provide for human well-being within planetary boundaries—or whether it merely adjusts the rules and parameters of a system without addressing the deeper paradigms that underpin it. As the world’s oldest continuing culture, Aboriginal communities have provided for human health and well- being within planetary boundaries for over 65,000 years, persisting under remarkably diverse and harsh conditions. What can be learned across these three different constructs and cultures, so that we may redesign our current system to one where sustainability and regeneration, instead of degradation and collapse, is inevitable? This research used systems modelling to explore how the human-nature paradigm underpinning an SES impacts on the system, its components, structures, and sustainability outcomes. I hypothesized that (1) an SES underpinned by an ecocentric human-nature paradigm would show greater sustainability than an SES underpinned by an anthropocentric human-nature paradigm. I also hypothesized that (2) SESs sharing a similar anthropocentric human-nature paradigm would exhibit similar system structures, components and sustainability outcomes, and (3) an SES with an ecocentric human-nature paradigm would present a different system structure and components, compared to one with an anthropocentric human-nature paradigm, supporting the proposition that paradigms represent a deep system leverage point. To undertake this analysis, I identified three different SESs: Business as Usual (BAU), CE, and Aboriginal. Upon confirming that each system had the appropriate human-nature paradigm for analysis, I completed a thorough literature review and identified the components and structures of each system. I then mapped each system as a Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) in Kumu to assess the visual system structure and feedback loops. Finally, I evaluated their sustainability using multiple sustainability frameworks including thin and thick, and strong and weak sustainability. The results showed that BAU and CE, which both had anthropocentric human- nature relationship paradigms, had similar system structures and components that resulted in low sustainability outcomes. Alternatively, the Aboriginal system with an ecocentric paradigm, revealed a significantly different structure and components which resulted in high levels of sustainability. This supports the idea that to shift systems to result in sustainability, we must address the human-nature relationship that underpins them. This analysis shows the value of systems thinking and the role that paradigms play in creating sustainable outcomes. Further work is needed to build, test and refine these models, and quantitatively test the qualitative ideas proposed throughout this work. Finally, as revealed by systems modelling, we urgently need a new human-nature paradigm for our global system that will result in a truly sustainable future that achieves societal well-being within planetary boundaries.Extension Studie
Deep-Learning to Assess Biological Aging From Spinal Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry
No full textSpinal dual-energy absorptiometry (DXA) is an x-ray imaging method typically used to assess bone mineral density (BMD) and diagnose osteoporosis in post-menopausal women. However, these images may contain additional information beyond BMD to predict mortality and disease risk to help estimate biological age, the concept that chronological age can differ from the actual effects of aging.
In this study, we aim to use deep learning to estimate biological age from spinal DXA images. A convolutional neural network was trained and tested on a 44,082 patient dataset from the UK Biobank database using a 5-fold cross-validation procedure and a hold-out test set of 8,951 individuals. An additional external data set from the Mass General Brigham (MGB), which consisted of 2,059 images, was used to evaluate the model on DXA obtained during routine care. We saw that the deep learning model output had a high association with several age-related incident and prevalent diseases, captured signals of aging and long-term risk for those diseases, and could categorize individuals at higher risk. In the MGB dataset, these associations were not able to be replicated, indicating that fine-tuning the model on DXAs obtained during routine clinical care may be necessary. As a result, our deep learning approach analyzing spinal DXA shows promise to be an effective way to measure biological age and as a method for doctors to help identify and prevent age-related diseases.Computer Scienc