Alliance One Tobacco (Malawi)
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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
From Policy to Practice: Physician Decision Making, Patient Outcomes, and Policy Evaluation in Global Tuberculosis Control
No full textTuberculosis (TB) remains one of the world’s leading causes of infectious disease death, disproportionately affecting individuals living in low- and middle-income countries. While biomedical advances have improved diagnosis and treatment, persistent gaps in care reflect broader system-level, clinical, and policy challenges. This dissertation explores global TB control through three interconnected perspectives: physician decision-making, patient outcomes, and health policy evaluation, with a focus on real-world implementation in resource-constrained settings.
Chapter 2 examines how clinicians decide to initiate TB treatment for individuals being evaluated for TB when bacteriological test results are negative. Using a systematic review and individual patient data meta-analysis from over 15,000 individuals across 13 countries, I identify factors—such as symptom profile, HIV status, and prior TB history—that influence treatment decisions. The findings highlight the complexities of diagnostic decision-making in resource-limited settings.
Chapter 3 investigates long-term mortality among individuals diagnosed with TB in Brazil. Leveraging linked administrative data, I construct a retrospective cohort of over 700,000 individuals diagnosed with TB and compare their mortality risk to that of the general population over time. Results show elevated mortality persisting for many years after treatment, highlighting the importance of continued care and monitoring beyond the treatment period.
Chapter 4 evaluates the potential health and economic impact of targeted active case finding (ACF) in Blantyre, Malawi, guided by community-level Mycobacterium tuberculosis immunoreactivity surveys. Using a simulation model, I compare survey-informed geographical targeting to untargeted ACF and passive case finding. Findings suggest that targeted ACF guided by immunoreactivity survey results can improve efficiency, particularly in settings with a high prevalence of undiagnosed TB and high HIV burden.
Together, these chapters illustrate that advancing global TB control requires more than technical fixes—it demands engagement with clinical uncertainty, long-term patient needs, and the complexities of health system design. This dissertation highlights the importance of aligning diagnostic approaches, treatment pathways, and policy responses with both patient realities and system-level constraints, contributing evidence to support more responsive and equitable TB programs.Population Health Science
The Point That Makes a Difference: Interpreting Influence in Linear Off-Policy Evaluation
No full textEvaluating how a decision-making policy will perform without actually running it is a core challenge in reinforcement learning, especially when working with pre-collected data. This task, known as offline policy evaluation (OPE), becomes particularly difficult when the data doesn’t fully cover the situations the new policy might encounter, making certain datapoints disproportionately important. This thesis explores how individual datapoints influence value estimates under two value-based OPE algorithms—Least-Squares Temporal Difference (LSTD) and Fitted Q-Evaluation (FQE)—using linear function approximation. We derive exact leave-one-out (LOO) estimates for both methods and, through experiments on structured environments, show how these influence measures can be used to understand convergence issues and offer insight to the reliability of OPE estimates. In particular, we show that FQE convergence provides a strong signal for when LSTD estimates can be trusted and offer an interpretation through influences for cases of FQE divergence. We further introduce a clipped version of FQE that bounds predicted values, reducing variance while maintaining stability, and provide exact LOO estimates for it as well.Computer Scienc
Frank the Animal
No full textMale stripper. Pimp. Drug dealer. Money collector. Professional hockey player.
Frank the Animal is the story of a promising young hockey player’s meteoric rise from
the depths of the Winnipeg underworld to the pinnacle of professional hockey. As the
first-born son of poor Polish immigrants living in Winnipeg, Frank Bialowas rejected his
parents’ conservative metric of success and dreamt of making something more of
himself. Frank worked hard to become one of Manitoba’s toughest brawlers in junior
hockey, but at eighteen-years-old, a local criminal lured Frank into Winnipeg’s seedy
underworld because of its promise of fast money and beautiful women. Long before he
was nicknamed “the Animal,” Frank Bialowas was better known in his native Winnipeg
as Max the Millionaire, the stripper who pimped, sold drugs, and collected money for
motorcycle gangs. After serving a stint in a Manitoba jail, Frank’s family convinced him
to give hockey one last chance with a minor-pro team in Virginia. Frank reluctantly left
behind his life of crime and went on to great success in the American Hockey League,
where he became one of Philadelphia’s most iconic bad boys. Despite the success he
enjoyed in professional hockey, Frank’s self-destructive tendencies resulted in many
devastating setbacks throughout his playing career and personal life. Like other
compelling antiheroes, Frank’s talent was limited only by his struggle to maintain selfcontrol.Extension Studie
Can resource depletion explain the differing effects of perspective-taking on racial bias?
No full textPerspective-taking has become a popular technique for mitigating racially biased behavior, yet some studies, like Vorauer, Martens, and Sasaki (2009) have found it can also backfire. One possible explanation for the results seen in Vorauer et al. (2009) is differing cognitive demands when participants are primed with a perspective-taking mindset from a previous task (indirect perspective-taking; IPT), or if they’re actively manipulated to do so in the interaction being measured (direct perspective-taking; DPT). This study recruited White American and Canadian adults using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) for a study ostensibly involving a video chat with another participant. Participants were randomly assigned a depletion condition (depletion or non-depletion) and a mindset manipulation (objective, DPT, or IPT). Intimacy-building behavior was measured in personal questionnaires participants filled out to ostensibly exchange with their video chat partner. It was hypothesized that depletion would explain differences in IPT and DPT interventions, however intimacy-building behavior did not vary significantly, and was uniformly low
Beyond the Stars: Optimizing Residual Images and Source Counts in Deep-Field Spitzer IRAC Mosaics
No full textThis thesis presents refined approaches for the development of source count catalogs and residual images for deep-field Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) mosaics. Two well-known scientific fields, the Euclid Deep Field North (EDF-N) and the Euclid Deep Field Fornax (EDF-F), are analyzed at 3.6 microns and 4.5 microns, resulting in a final set of four residual images and source counts. The residual images are developed through an iterative point spread function (PSF) fit-and-subtract routine that is validated on the basis of normalized completeness and photometric accuracy. The source counts are cataloged as an additional component of the iterative subtraction method and evaluated for precision and completeness through the use of SourceXtractor++ and published historical IRAC source counts. Three of the four sets of final residual images and source count catalogs are well-suited for scientific use, specifically as they relate to the study of the cosmic infrared background and its broader cosmological implications.Applied Mathematic
Exploring Greater Common Ground: Western Countries and the Turkic and Tajik States of the Central Asian to Trans-Caspian Corridor
No full textFollowing Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, growing cohesion among the Turkic and Tajik states is notable as international and regional power alignments shift. Western countries have coalesced to defend against Russia and develop alternatives to their dependencies on Russia. Seven Turkic and Tajik states along the Central Asian to Trans-Caspian corridor—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Türkiye—are recognized as top candidates for expanded roles in energy supply and product transport. Concurrently, the six former Soviet republics are testing the fraught potential for generational transformation toward operative independence from Russia and more reliable relationships with the West.
The thesis topic is: Western engagement with the seven Turkic and Tajik states along the Central Asian to Trans-Caspian corridor. The research question is: To what extent has the Russia-Ukraine war led Western countries to find common ground with Turkic and Tajik states along the Central Asian to Trans-Caspian corridor? Within theoretical frameworks of linkage and leverage, agency, modernization, and structure, the project conducts empirical data collection, quantitative and qualitative content analysis, hypothesis and proposition evaluation, and policy discussion. The study covers thousands of public records gleaned from official websites of Western states and entities, and Turkic and Tajik states and entities. Background conversations and reliable media sources help to validate or clarify official records. This thesis finds burgeoning realignments, with greater common ground among Western, Turkic, and Tajik states, and much yet to do.Extension Studie
Mutable Ghosts: A Collection of Short Stories
No full textMutable Ghosts is a collection of three short stories that feature unreliable narrators in the first person. These works explore the fickle nature of the self and its ability to create its own reality. They are in some way, a study of solipsism. Each narrator resides intensely in his or her own reality. These stories investigate the conditions needed to either expand or contract a person's understanding of themselves and likewise a person's understanding of their intrinsic responsibility to those around them. These stories explore a host of conditions that affect these insular worlds. Among them include personal hauntings, that is the people and experiences that bedevil us, as well as place and environment. These stories offer a tour of the Eastern Seaboard from Massachusetts to West Virginia to Florida. I am inspired by the cast of unreliable narrators that have defined my experience of fiction; from the Underground Man to Humbert Humbert and Nick Carraway, from Holden Clawfield and Richard Papin to Ava Bigtree and Amy Elliot Dunne. I am consistently moved by fiction that finds the universal truth in the utterly untrue; that which holds authentic in even the most skewed and insular of human spirits. I have always taken solace in fiction that acknowledges the subjectivity of every human being and so too, the remarkable sameness of the human experience. I hope these works are, in some small way, an addition to that project.Extension Studie