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Returning for a Better Life: The Habitus of Temporary Senegalese Male Migrants
Get PDFIn this thesis, I study the narratives and practices which maintain Senegal’s temporary migration regime. This form of migration functions not as an individual endeavor, but rather as a family and community project which provides its participants—migrants and others—with cultural capital and prestige. I consider how the cultural imaginary of Senegalese male migration encourages young men to migrate in search of masculine social adulthood. I ultimately examine the habitus of temporary Senegalese male migrants in order to understand how their migration projects are oriented towards return to Senegal
Using DNA as Scaffolding for the Study of FRET Enhancement by Surface Plasmons on Gold Nanogratings
Get PDFOur lab seeks to enhance the Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) efficiency using surface plasmons excited on gold nanogratings. Surface plasmons are longitudinal oscillations of conduction electrons that travel along a metal surface. FRET is the transfer of energy between a donor and an acceptor fluorescent molecule, the efficiency of which is strongly dependent on the distance between the donor and acceptor molecules. Additionally, we suspect the surface plasmon enhancement effectiveness depends on the distance between the donor and acceptor and the grating surface. To precisely position the donor and acceptor molecules relative to each other and the gold nanograting, we developed a protocol to use double-stranded DNA as scaffolding. In this work we describe fabrication methods for gold nanogratings, effective methods for the deposition of DNA onto gold nanogratings using a thiol attachment, and the attachment of DNA to a silanized glass slide for use as a background sample. For test runs the donor is placed at various positions along the DNA backbone for the precise positioning relative to the nanograting post deposition. We then place the samples in a homemade apparatus designed for detecting fluorescence enhancement
Public Awareness of PR: Measuring Citizens’ Comprehension of the Influence of Public Relations
Get PDFThrough its circulation of culturally relevant messaging, the field of public relations has established itself as an omnipresent force that “both intervenes in and instrumentali[z]es different aspects of society and culture” (Edwards, 2018). Despite public relations’ role as a socio-cultural decider, there has been limited academic exploration of public relations within the field of media literacy. Considering the influential nature of public relations, there are negative implications surrounding a lack of general comprehension of the field at both the individual-consumer level as well as at the national level (i.e., the health of American democracy). This thesis seeks to bring public relations literacy, a term coined by Holladay and Coombs (2013), to the forefront of academic consideration by gauging American adults’ average comprehension of public relations tactics. In a survey assessing 185 adults, results suggested that U.S. adults lack public relations literacy compared to advertising literacy, a notable finding considering that advertising literacy frequently appears in media literacy discourse whereas public relations literacy does not. The results of this study provide foundation for the necessary discussion of public relations literacy in future research
Blood in a Wine Glass: Dionysian Vampires in Modern Horror
Get PDFIn this paper I argue that Dionysus, as depicted in Euripides\u27s Bacchae, has structural similarities and shared features with modern vampires, as depicted in works by Le Fanu, Stoker, and Rice
Civilized Elders and Isolated Ancestors: The Multiple Histories of Contemporary Amazonia
Get PDFIn this article I consider the impact of Peter Gow’s writing on indigenous histories as a key area of research on Amazonia. Building on his study of kinship as history on the Bajo Urubamba (1991) he presented a regional perspective on the dynamic social categories by which Amazonian people understand their relations with various “others.” Focusing on indigenous agency and modes of thought, Gow challenged certain lines of historical thinking that dominated anthropology at the time. I explore how his ethnographic approach to history has influenced a generation of regional scholarship, including my own work on memory and social transformation among Waorani people in Amazonian Ecuador. I look specifically at how Gow’s approach can help contextualize expressions of historical continuity and difference in indigenous politics. In contrast to relatively static views of history in a global politics of recognition, the categories of difference and their transformation he described remain central to how some Amazonian people relate the past to their hopes for the future. Understanding this process requires Gow’s sensitivity to radically different ideas of the past, as well as attention to the multiple histories that Amazonian people engage with today
Las nociones o’dam de cuerpo y persona. Diálogo interrumpido entre el norte de México y la Amazonía peruana
Get PDFEl presente artículo tiene como objetivo reflexionar acerca de las nociones de cuerpo y persona del pueblo o’dam del norte de México, partiendo de los principios que Peter Gow y otros autores han observado para las poblaciones nativas de la región amazónica. Los cuerpos y las personas no son cosas “dadas” o “naturales”, sino que son el resultado de procesos constantes y complejos que articulan relaciones sociales, cosmologías y significaciones. Para el pueblo yine del río Bajo Urubamba investigado por Gow, el cuerpo y sus deseos se encuentran en el corazón de la economía y sirven como punto de unión de las preocupaciones sociales. Para el pueblo o’dam, por otra parte, la construcción del cuerpo y la persona está estrechamente relacionada con la producción de alimentos, específicamente con el maíz, que corresponde a una mujer con la que se establece una alianza de la cual nacen simultáneamente los bebés y los frutos. Las nociones de cuerpo y persona entre los o’dam dependen de su relación con diferentes conjuntos de dioses, incluyendo los de origen mestizo, que residen en el templo católico, y los espíritus del bosque, además de su relación con el maíz, concebido como una deidad ancestral De esta manera, la praxis social relativa a la producción de cuerpos y personas supone mantener relaciones controladas con estas deidades, pues permanecer demasiado cerca de ellas significa estar en el mundo de los ancestros, lo que implica estar muerto, mientras que alejarse demasiado de ellas, implica perder la gracia de la vida, concedida por ellas
Topological Comparison of Some Dimension Reduction Methods Using Persistent Homology on EEG Data
Get PDFIn this paper, we explore how to use topological tools to compare dimension reduction methods. We first make a brief overview of some of the methods often used in dimension reduction such as isometric feature mapping, Laplacian Eigenmaps, fast independent component analysis, kernel ridge regression, and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding. We then give a brief overview of some of the topological notions used in topological data analysis, such as barcodes, persistent homology, and Wasserstein distance. Theoretically, when these methods are applied on a data set, they can be interpreted differently. From EEG data embedded into a manifold of high dimension, we discuss these methods and we compare them across persistent homologies of dimensions 0, 1, and 2, that is, across connected components, tunnels and holes, shells around voids, or cavities. We find that from three dimension clouds of points, it is not clear how distinct from each other the methods are, but Wasserstein and Bottleneck distances, topological tests of hypothesis, and various methods show that the methods qualitatively and significantly differ across homologies. We can infer from this analysis that topological persistent homologies do change dramatically at seizure, a finding already obtained in previous analyses. This suggests that looking at changes in homology landscapes could be a predictor of seizure
Attitudes, Clinical Practices, and Perceived Advocacy Needs of Professionals With Interests in Personality Disorders
Get PDFExperts in personality disorders (PDs) generally prefer dimensional diagnostic systems to categorical ones, but less is known about experts’ attitudes toward personality pathology diagnoses in adolescents, and little is known about public health shortfalls and advocacy needs and how these might differ geographically. To fill these gaps, the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders surveyed 248 professionals with interests in PDs about their attitudes toward different diagnostic systems for adults and adolescents, their PD-related clinical practices, and perceived advocacy needs in their area. Results suggested that dimensional diagnostic systems are preferable to categorical and that skepticism about personality pathology in adolescents may not be warranted. The most pressing advocacy need was the increased availability of PD-related services, but many other needs were identified. Results provide a blueprint for advocacy and suggest ways that professional societies can collaborate with public health bodies to expand the reach of PD expertise and services
Choose-Your-Own Adventure in Marketing Education: Empowering Students to Increase Engagement and Rigor Through Mass Customization
Get PDFThe landscape of student tolerance for ambiguity and engagement, both in and out of the classroom, has changed markedly in recently years. Technology is simultaneously redefining the boundaries of learning and eroding tried and true pedagogical structures. Signs of change were present prior to recent global upheaval. However, against the backdrop of the pandemic, students connected with others online and consumed media in new and different ways that have arguably emboldened a do-it-yourself attitude toward learning. The authors argue that this learning breakdown, exacerbated by loosened course structures (if not standards), is rooted in psychological ownership. Empowerment theory is employed to conceptualize, and subsequently deploy, a choose-your-own-adventure marketing course format to guide students toward achieving a sense of control. Quantitative and qualitative feedback suggest that this approach may substantively enhance both perceived quality of instruction and rigor, while shifting a greater number of attributions for poor performance onto the student
Procedural Content Generation in 3 Dimensions using Wave Function Collapse in Minecraft
Get PDFThis investigation into the effectiveness of Wave Function Collapse as a Procedural Content Generation Technique (PCG) in Minecraft sets out to determine whether this method can be used easily by players and game designers to generate content that mimics the original content. We also set out to determine whether this technique can be implemented by game designers or community modders easily enough to improve the default generation of settlements in Minecraft. We grade the effectiveness of our output using metrics provided by the Generative Design in Minecraft Competition in order to test whether generated content is effective. Tests were conducted on terrain that was taken from an existing Minecraft world, and featured a mixture of structures ranging from simple to complex in design meant to simulate structures that players would build near the beginning of the game. Unfortunately, our conclusion is that in it’s most basic form, Wave Function Collapse is unsuited as a PCG tool for Minecraft. During the course of our testing, we found that the run times for simple algorithms were too long to be effective, and the algorithm fails to generate content for many of the test cases regularly. In order to make it more suitable, a number of improvements are suggested including global constraints, weight balancing, and layering PCG methods. Overall, this approach has potential, but requires more work before it is a suitable replacement to current PCG methods for Minecraft settlement generation