Disrupt, Defy, and Demand: Movements Toward Multiculturalism at the University of Oregon, 1968-2015

This essay explores the history of activism among students of color at the University of Oregon from 1968 to 2015. These students sought to further democratize and diversify curriculum and student services through various means of reform. Beginning in 1968 with the Black Student Union’s demands and proposals for sweeping institutional reform, which included the proposal for a School of Black Studies, this research examines how the Black Student Union created a foundation for future activism among students of color in later decades. Coalitions of affinity groups in the 1990s continued this activist work and pressured the university administration and faculty to adopt a more culturally pluralistic curriculum. This essay also includes a brief examination of the state of Oregon’s and the city of Eugene, Oregon’s, history, and their well-documented history of racism and exclusion. This brief examination provides necessary historical context and illuminates how the University of Oregon’s sparse policies regarding race reflect the state’s historic lack of diversity

The Córdoba Reform Movement of 1918 and Ecological Systems Theory

In this essay, I examine the Córdoba University Reform Movement of 1918 through both a historical lens and the application of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1986, 1993) ecological systems theory. Examining the Reform Movement at the National University of Córdoba (UNC) from a historical perspective elucidates the complexities of the movement and its resulting legacies, particularly its essential role in shaping the Latin American higher education tradition of academic freedom and university autonomy. Building on this historical perspective, I utilize the context component of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1986, 1993) ecological systems model to explore how issues, challenges, and opportunities to improve institutional policy and culture arose at different levels within the student activist experience at UNC. This examination reveals the importance of studying identity formation among student activists so higher education practitioners can build campus environments to effectively promote optimal growth and holistic development for diverse student populations.Educatio

‘So many applications of science’: Novel Technology in British Imperial Culture During the Abyssinian and Ashanti Expeditions, 1868-1874.

This thesis will examine the portrayal and reception of ‘novel’ technology as constructed spectacle in the military and popular coverage of the Abyssinian (1868) and Ashanti (1873-4) expeditions. It will be argued that new and ‘novel’ military technologies, such as the machine gun, Hale rocket, cartridge rifle, breach-loading cannon, telegraph, railway, and steam tractor, were made to serve symbolic roles in a technophile discourse that cast African expansion as part of a conquest of the natural world. There was a growing confidence in mid-Victorian Britain of the Empire’s dominant position in the world, focused particularly on technological development and embodied in exhibition culture. During the 1860s and ‘70s, this confidence was increasingly extended to the prospect of expansion into Africa, which involved a substantial development of the ‘idea’ of Africa in the British imagination. The public engagement with these two campaigns provides a window into this developing culture of imperial confidence in Britain, as well as the shifting and contested ideas of race, climate, and martial prowess. The expeditions also prompted significant changes to understandings of ‘small wars’, a concept incorporating several important pillars of Victorian culture. It will be demonstrated that discourses of technological superiority and scientific violence were generated in response to anxieties of the perceived dangers posed by the African interior. Accounts of the expeditions demonstrated a strong hope, desire to claim, and tendency to interpret that novel European technology could tame and subjugate the African climate, as well as African populations. This study contributes to debates over the popularity of imperialism in Victorian society. It ties the popularity of empire to the social history of technology, and argues that the Abyssinian and Ashanti expeditions enhanced perceptions of military capability and technological superiority in the Victorian imagination. The efficacy of European technology is not dismissed, but approached as a proximate cause of a shift in culture, termed ‘the technologisation of imperial rhetoric’.University of Exeter College of HumanitiesSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

The Effects of an SMA-based Slat Cove Filler on the Aerodynamic and Structural Characteristics of a Wing Prototype

Current and new FAA regulations that are to be phased in have begun to pressure the aerospace industry to develop new noise reduction technologies to reduce aeroacoustic emissions that proponents say detriment the health and well-being of community members. With recent technological advancements improving noise emission from aircraft engines, emissions from airframe noise sources now project a larger footprint on the total emitted noise. This research proposes to investigate the previously developed shape memory alloy based slat cove filler concept and conduct aerodynamic and structural experiments with the purpose of characterizing the response under relevant flow conditions. The Texas A&M University 3’ 4’ low speed wind tunnel will be used to determine the aerodynamic influences of the shape memory alloys based slat cove filler on wing performance. A previously developed wing prototype treated with a slat cove filler will be used to compare aerodynamic effects at multiple slat settings. Structural experiments was conducted using Digital Image Correlation measurements, and displacement measurements from a custom-designed laser displacement sensor to determine the structural response of the shape memory alloy slat cove filler during a typical retraction cycle under wind tunnel test conditions. Results from the structural experiments will be used to validate a finite element analysis model that will be used to further research development into computational modeling tools

The John Psathas Percussion Project

Professor Omar Carmenates, along with some select percussion students, worked in collaboration with New Zealand’s most famous composer, resulting in new works for percussion ensemble. Will perform some of the music that was recorded as part of the project. Will also discuss the process of preparation for the project

Preliminary results using a P300 brain-computer interface speller: a possible interaction effect between presentation paradigm and set of stimuli

Fernández-Rodríguez Á., Medina-Juliá M.T., Velasco-Álvarez F., Ron-Angevin R. (2019) Preliminary Results Using a P300 Brain-Computer Interface Speller: A Possible Interaction Effect Between Presentation Paradigm and Set of Stimuli. In: Rojas I., Joya G., Catala A. (eds) Advances in Computational Intelligence. IWANN 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11506. Springer, ChamSeveral proposals to improve the performance controlling a P300-based BCI speller have been studied using the standard row-column presentation (RCP) par-adigm. However, this paradigm could not be suitable for those patients with lack of gaze control. To solve that, the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) para-digm, which presents the stimuli located in the same position, has been proposed in previous studies. Thus, the aim of the present work is to assess if a stimuli set of pictures that improves the performance in RCP, could also improve the per-formance in a RSVP paradigm. Six participants have controlled four conditions in a calibration task: letters in RCP, pictures in RCP, letters in RSVP and pictures in RSVP. The results showed that pictures in RCP obtained the best accuracy and information transfer rate. The improvement effect given by pictures was greater in the RCP paradigm than in RSVP. Therefore, the improvements reached under RCP may not be directly transferred to the RSVP.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Recombinant Incretin-Secreting Microbe Improves Metabolic Dysfunction in High-Fat Diet Fed Rodents

peer-reviewedThe gut hormone glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 and its analogues represent a new generation of anti-diabetic drugs, which have also demonstrated propensity to modulate host lipid metabolism. Despite this, drugs of this nature are currently limited to intramuscular administration routes due to intestinal degradation. The aim of this study was to design a recombinant microbial delivery vector for a GLP-1 analogue and assess the efficacy of the therapeutic in improving host glucose, lipid and cholesterol metabolism in diet induced obese rodents. Diet-induced obese animals received either Lactobacillus paracasei NFBC 338 transformed to express a long-acting analogue of GLP-1 or the isogenic control microbe which solely harbored the pNZ44 plasmid. Short-term GLP-1 microbe intervention in rats reduced serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides and triglyceride-rich lipoprotein cholesterol substantially. Conversely, extended GLP-1 microbe intervention improved glucose-dependent insulin secretion, glucose metabolism and cholesterol metabolism, compared to the high-fat control group. Interestingly, the microbe significantly attenuated the adiposity associated with the model and altered the serum lipidome, independently of GLP-1 secretion. These data indicate that recombinant incretin-secreting microbes may offer a novel and safe means of managing cholesterol metabolism and diet induced dyslipidaemia, as well as insulin sensitivity in metabolic dysfunction