So We Ran...

This paper tells the true story of a Hungarian refugee who\u27s family fled the communist regime there in 1971. Gabriella Bercze\u27s story reflects on what it was like to live in Hungary under communist rule, and her family\u27s experience in escaping the country, and fleeing to Italy, where they lived in a refugee camp for months before immigrating to the United States in the early 70s

Italy’s Refugee Burden and the Role of the EU in Asylum Cases

Italy\u27s unique geographic location at the coast of the Mediteranean Sea gives much opportunity for the international community to criticize its dealings with asylum seekers crossing the body of water to enter Europe. The UNHCR reported that as of October 2014, 165,000 asylum seekers had taken dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea; of those 165,000 people, Italy received 140,000

Integrated supplier management system a case study: PARL Bone Mills

Effective supplier management is vital for successful business operation of any business organization. Supplier management is a technique and continuous activity that used to control and make decision about supplier management. Cooperative managers make wise supplier management decision by using supplier management strategy as part of an organized plan. Therefore the research is to implement IS in supplier management at PARL Bone Mills. The Management Information System (MIS) will propose a decision making process for the management at PARL Bone Mills. From the initial findings, the management often faces some problems in taking the supplier record where it is done manually. Therefore, the proposed MIS system will be able to choose a useful supplier who will make available of right product as per the organization’s need. By implementing ICT strategy successfully at PARL Bone Mills, especially MIS system, it is hoped that it can bring some effective and efficient improvement to their supplier management system and this project will also help them to reduce their misuse of time

Improvements in Maximum Likelihood Estimators of Truncated Normal Samples with Prior Knowledge of σ

Researchers analyzing historical data on human stature have long sought an estimator that performs well in truncated-normal samples. This paper reviews that search, focusing on two currently widespread procedures: truncated least squares (TLS) and truncated maximum likelihood (TML). The first suffers from bias. The second suffers in practical application from excessive variability. A simple procedure is developed to convert TLS truncated means into estimates of the underlying population means, assuming the contemporary population standard deviation. This procedure is shown to be equivalent to restricted TML estimation. Simulation methods are used to establish the mean squared error performance characteristics of the restricted and unconstrained TML estimators in relation to several population and sample parameters. The results provide general insight into the bias-precision tradeoff in restricted estimation and a specific practical guide to optimal estimator choice for researchers in anthropometrics

Fictional Narrative Skills of Preschool-Age Bilingual Children with Typical Language Development

Oral narrative retells are commonly used in assessment to examine language and literacy development in young children. Due to the increasing number of bilingual children in the United States, it is necessary to understand typical development in order to assess and intervene when needed. English story retells from eight preschool-age Spanish-English bilingual children were analyzed in the present study using the Narrative Assessment Protocol. Analyses were conducted to examine differences in narrative microstructure at two time points. In the present study, a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Sum test which is a nonparametric statistical measure was used to determine whether there was a significant change in NAP scores over time. Mean scores at Time 2 were statistically significantly higher than scores at Time 1. Children’s narratives at Time 2 were more complex and contained more microstructure elements

The Timeliness of Hamilton: An American Musical

In 2015, Hamilton: An American Musical was a sweeping success on Broadway—the first rap and hip-hop display of its kind. In 2019, the show\u27s relevance remains strong. When a revolutionary (pun intended) production like Hamilton sweeps the nation, the question raised is: Why? What makes Hamilton so special? The author suggests that the reason Hamilton has been received with overwhelming positivity by everyone from Barack Obama, to Dick Cheney, to Weird Al Yankovic (Hayes & Gale 42-43) is its perfectly placed rhetorical situation. It is difficult to say whether, in another time and place, this Broadway smash hit, with its “mostly black cast [that] ‘turns the tables on the practice of using white actors to portray ethnic characters,’” would have succeeded—or if it could have been created at all (Yankovic qtd. in Hayes & Gale 42). The exigence of Hamilton created the kairos of the production. Put simply, America was ready for Hamilton

Development of variable and robust brain wiring patterns in the fly visual system

Precise generation of synapse-specific neuronal connections are crucial for establishing a robust and functional brain. Neuronal wiring patterns emerge from proper spatiotemporal regulation of axon branching and synapse formation during development. Several neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders exhibit defects in neuronal wiring owing to synapse loss and/or dys-regulated axon branching. Despite decades of research, how the two inter-dependent cellular processes: axon branching and synaptogenesis are coupled locally in the presynaptic arborizations is still unclear. In my doctoral work, I investigated the possible role of EGF receptor (EGFR) activity in coregulating axon branching and synapse formation in a spatiotemporally restricted fashion, locally in the medulla innervating Dorsal Cluster Neuron (M- DCN)/LC14 axon terminals. In this work I have explored how genetically encoded EGFR randomly recycles in the axon branch terminals, thus creating an asymmetric, non-deterministic distribution pattern. Asymmetric EGFR activity in the branches acts as a permissive signal for axon branch pruning. I observed that the M-DCN branches which stochastically becomes EGFR ‘+’ during development are synaptogenic, which means they can recruit synaptic machineries like Syd1 and Bruchpilot (Brp). My work showed that EGFR activity has a dual role in establishing proper M-DCN wiring; first in regulating primary branch consolidation possibly via actin regulation prior to synaptogenesis. Later in maintaining/protecting the levels of late Active Zone (AZ) protein Brp in the presynaptic branches by suppressing basal autophagy level during synaptogenesis. When M-DCNs lack optimal EGFR activity, the basal autophagy level increases resulting in loss of Brp marked synapses which is causal to increased exploratory branches and post-synaptic target loss. Lack of EGFR activity affects the M-DCN wiring pattern that makes adult flies more active and behave like obsessive compulsive in object fixation assay. In the second part of my doctoral work, I have asked how non-genetic factors like developmental temperature affects adult brain wiring. To test that, I increased or decreased rearing temperature which is known to inversely affect pupal developmental rate. We asked if all the noisy cellular processes of neuronal assembly: filopodial dynamics, axon branching, synapse formation and postsynaptic connections scale up or down accordingly. I observed that indeed all the cellular processes slow down at lower developmental temperature and vice versa, which changes the DCN wiring pattern accordingly. Interestingly, behavior of flies adapts to their developmental temperature, performing best at the temperature they have been raised at. This shows that optimal brain function is an adaptation of robust brain wiring patterns which are specified by noisy developmental processes. In conclusion, my doctoral work helps us better understand the developmental regulation of axon branching and synapse formation for establishing precise brain wiring pattern. We need all the cell intrinsic developmental processes to be highly regulated in space and time. It is infact a combinatorial effect of such stochastic processes and external factors that contribute to the final outcome, a functional and robust adult brain