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Drugs, Thugs, and Mariachis: An Institutional Response to Mexico’s Drug Cartels
Get PDFMexico represents a dichotomy of images: first, as a land of sun, surf, and a place of destiny for vacationers, and second, as providing a haven for violent drug cartels operating with virtual impunity from the power of the state that appears unable to provide a fundamental duty - public safety. In the current environment of cartel violence, festive similes of mariachis called narcocorridos are muffling traditional Mexican poems by singing ballads praising drug cartel leaders. Defying the government prohibition against radio stations playing this type of music, narcocorridos are often commissioned by drug cartels as a popular source of entertainment in cities proximate to the United States-Mexico border region
ESSM: An Extractive Summarization Model with Enhanced Spatial-Temporal Information and Span Mask Encoding
Get PDFExtractive reading comprehension is to extract consecutive subsequences from a given article to answer the given question. Previous work often adopted Byte Pair Encoding (BPE) that could cause semantically correlated words to be separated. Also, previous features extraction strategy cannot effectively capture the global semantic information. In this paper, an extractive summarization model is proposed with enhanced spatial-temporal information and span mask encoding (ESSM) to promote global semantic information. ESSM utilizes Embedding Layer to reduce semantic segmentation of correlated words, and adopts TemporalConvNet Layer to relief the loss of feature information. The model can also deal with unanswerable questions. To verify the effectiveness of the model, experiments on datasets SQuAD1.1 and SQuAD2.0 are conducted. Our model achieved an EM of 86.31% and a F1 score of 92.49% on SQuAD1.1 and the numbers are 80.54% and 83.27% for SQuAD2.0. It was proved that the model is effective for extractive QA task
Prediction and Analysis of Bus Adherence to Scheduled Times: San Antonio Transit System
Get PDFCitizens in large and modern cities heavily rely on smart and efficient public transportation as an alternative to private cars. Public transportation options are expected to be efficient, consistent, and reliable. For example, users of public buses should be able to use their smart phones to reserve and plan their trip at any time. They should also be able to track in real time their routes and any possible delays or issues. Bus adherence to their schedule in public transportation can be modeled as an NP-hard problem. This is due to the many unpredictable factors that can impact such adherence. In this paper, we used deep neural network and regression models to predict bus adherence to scheduled times. We selected San Antonio Transit system as a problem domain and used a dataset containing a snapshot of the adherence of VIA buses from February 2019. We focused on analyzing the significant routes in the dataset and explored the percentage of buses were on time in these routes. Results revealed better performance of neural network models as compared to regression models
Project SEARCH: Analysis of Employment Outcomes for Students with Disabilities Across Two Districts
Get PDFRehabilitation professionals have a major focus on competitive employment, which is a central component of adult life that provides not only economic benefits, but also a social network and enhanced self-esteem. The employment gap for individuals with disabilities has remained consistently high despite concerted efforts to provide access to quality job readiness training and a simultaneous increase in awareness of the value of diversity in the workforce. This study examined the outcomes of Project SEARCH, an employer-based transition program for young adults with disabilities that promotes partnerships among the school and community by utilizing a unique collaborative approach that brings the education system, employers, and rehabilitation services together to provide meaningful individualized employment experiences for students with disabilities. Findings suggest Project SEARCH appears to have the potential to address employment outcomes for young adults with various disabilities. Implications for practice and future research are also discussed
COVID-19 Oral History Project: Interview with Jo Ann Andrade
Get PDFThe interview talks about personal experiences throughout this past year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Angelita Andrade interviewed Jo Ann Andrade in San Antonio for our U.S History 1302 course. She discusses how much the pandemic has impacted her life, job, family and friends
COVID-19 Oral History Project: Interview with Alexis Gabriela Leija
Get PDFThe interview conducted discusses personal experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviewee Alexis Leija gives a different perspective due to her residence in Calvillo, Mexico. Leija describes how her life has changed socially and the protocol she has been following both in Mexico and the U.S to ensure safety. Including the differences, she likes and dislikes when being able to travel back and forth
COVID-19 Oral History Project: Interview with Ahmed Abdi
Get PDFThe interview discusses the interviewee\u27s lived experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The person interviewed was Ahmed Abdi in Minneapolis, MN by Fainus Abdi in San Antonio, TX for our U.S. History 1302 course. Ahmed Abdi discusses how his personal, work, and school life changed throughout the pandemic as he faced the challenges of online school, moving to a new state, and a family member getting COVID-19
COVID-19 Oral History Project: Interview with Arielle Benjamin
Get PDFIn this oral history we talk to Arielle about her experiences with the Covid-19 pandemic. She mentions her job, her family and how it affected them as well
Post-scandal Organizational (Dis)order: A Grounded-Theory Approach Shifting from Murphy’s Law to Safer Regulatory Environments
Get PDFThe literature shows that, in the wake of negative media exposition, organizations’ self-regulation tends to be strengthened. We investigate such motivation from the perspective of the psychosocial consequences in executives’ and organizational self-confidence. A grounded-theory approach supports findings from 27 different events described by top-level executives from major publicly traded organizations. Their testimonies document that scandalous episodes, when they occur, leave a trauma footprint within the organizational and individual consciousness because of the perceived post-event humiliation, remorse, guilt, and fear. The paradigm of reliance and trust in the designed structures is severely altered. In turn, a climate of excessive self-regulation explains the recovery from the traumatic experience. New boundaries for regulatory balance, also called “the confidence zone,” exists until design changes coalesce with organizational blame to create the perception that reputational safety has been achieved. Fears of subsequent media scrutiny are mitigated by the perception of moral safety based on governance. Consequently, the over-regulatory response comprises the organizations’ healing process as they recover from the psychosocial trauma caused by media exposition
