The State, the UDHR, and the Social Construction of Family in Human Rights: The Case of the Scarborough 11

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (UN 1947:34) declares in Article 16(3) that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to the full protection by society and the state.” However, the UDHR does not define family, but rather presumes it is defined by traditional heteronormative marriage in a nuclear family. The failure of the UDHR to consider a more expansive view of family leaves the definition of family centrally in the hands of the state, and affects the ability of all but traditional nuclear family forms to access other human rights. We add to the scholarship on the role of the state in defining and maintaining family and family inequality through an examination of the case of the Scarborough 11, an intentional family sued by the city of Hartford, CT for violations of residential zoning ordinance based on family. This case challenges hegemonic constructions of family and illustrates the limits of the UDHR to protect all families. The case demonstrates the importance of the related questions: 1) how legal definitions of family create the capacity for local residents to understand non-nuclear families living among them, 2) whether the end-goal of this problem should be to expand the state’s definition of family or remove that power from the state in total (a question of reform vs. abolition) and, 3) what might a case concerning white middle-class professionals’ struggles to thrive tell us about boundary maintenance and the struggles of the poor to survive

Muscle Dysfunction Associated With ACL Injury and Reconstruction.

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries occur in over 200,000 individuals per year in the United States. Quadriceps central activation failure (CAF) is a common consequence of these knee injuries, though why it presents remains elusive. Neuromuscular impairments resulting from ACL injury may not be limited to the muscles crossing the knee joint, however, though limited data are available to confirm this. The overall goal of this dissertation is to examine the muscle dysfunction associated with ACL injury and reconstruction, possible mechanisms leading to the lingering quadriceps muscle weakness after ACL reconstruction (ACLr), and to determine the immediate impacts of this weakness on the affected individual. In the first study, I sought to establish the presence of muscle dysfunction throughout the lower extremity following ACL injury and ACLr. I found that significant quadriceps and hamstrings strength deficits were present in the injured/reconstructed limb compared to the contralateral side both pre- and post-operatively, with pre-operative injured limb strength deficits also present compared to healthy individuals. There was no hip or ankle weakness, however, compared to healthy individuals. Given the presence of quadriceps weakness following ACLr, identifying the contributing factors to this muscle weakness seemed critical. Therefore, in study two I examined the contributions of quadriceps atrophy and CAF to persistent quadriceps strength impairments. Individuals who were six-months post-operatively following ACLr underwent quadriceps CAF and magnetic resonance imaging assessment. Results demonstrated that neither quadriceps CAF nor atrophy significantly contributed to the persistent quadriceps weakness in these individuals. Finally, I examined the effects of neuromuscular fatigue on quadriceps strength, CAF, and lower extremity biomechanics after ACLr. Individuals 7-10 months after ACLr demonstrated lower extremity biomechanics consistent with non-contact ACL injury risk prior to fatigue. Both ACLr and healthy individuals demonstrated greater quadriceps weakness and CAF following fatigue. Healthy individuals concurrently altered their biomechanics, potentially increasing their non-contact ACL injury risk. Surprisingly, ACLr subjects demonstrated similar, potentially injurious sagittal plane biomechanics pre- and post-fatigue, suggesting that reconstruction and/or rehabilitation are not sufficiently reducing the biomechanical risk factors for re-injury when individuals return to activity.Ph.D.KinesiologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78807/1/abbeyt_1.pd

The Maze of Personality: Latency and electric organ discharge in a mormyrid fish, Gnathonemus petersii Gunther 1862 (Mormyridae, Teleostei)

Personality is individual differences in behavior, consistent across contexts. Among Gnathonemus petersii we investigated, we hypothesized that fish could be grouped by: (1) slow/fast maze performance, (2) low/high electric frequencies, (3) correlated latency and frequency. Our first two hypothesis were not supported. Our third hypothesis was partially supported

Isolated hip and ankle fatigue are unlikely risk factors for anterior cruciate ligament injury

Lower extremity neuromuscular fatigue purportedly increases anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk through promotion of extreme landing mechanics. However, the impact of fatigue on muscle groups critical to the landing strategy remains unclear. This study examined the effects of isolated hip rotator and triceps surae fatigue on lower extremity landing biomechanics. Sixteen healthy females (18–22 years) reported for testing on two occasions, with one muscle group fatigued per session. Subjects performed three single-leg landings onto a force platform pre- and post-fatigue, defined as an 80% decrease in peak torque in the targeted muscle group. Hip rotator fatigue was induced via alternating concentric contractions and triceps surae fatigue through concentric plantar flexion contractions on an isokinetic dynamometer. Initial contact (IC) kinematics and peak stance (PS) kinetics and kinematics were analyzed pre- and post-fatigue. Hip rotator fatigue increased IC ( P =0.05) and PS ( P =0.04) hip internal rotation angles. Triceps surae fatigue decreased IC knee flexion ( P =0.01) angle. Isolated hip rotator and triceps surae fatigue each produced modifications in lower limb kinematic parameters viewed as risk factors for ACL injury. These modifications, however, do not appear of sufficient magnitude to compromise ligament integrity, suggesting injury via an integrative lower extremity fatigue mechanism is more likely.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78722/1/j.1600-0838.2009.01076.x.pd

Relative roles of dispersal dynamics and competition in determining the isotopic niche breadth of a wetland fish

1. The niche variation hypothesis predicts that among-individual variation in niche use will increase in the presence of intraspecific competition and decrease in the presence of interspecific competition. We sought to determine whether the local isotopic niche breadth of fish inhabiting a wetland was best explained by competition for resources and the niche variation hypothesis, by dispersal of individuals from locations with different prey resources or by a combination of the two. We analysed stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen as indices of feeding niche and compared metrics of within-site spread to characterise site-level isotopic niche breadth. We then evaluated the explanatory power of competing models of the direct and indirect effects of several environmental variables spanning gradients of disturbance, competition strength and food availability on among-individual variation of the eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki). 2. The Dispersal model posits that only the direct effect of disturbance (i.e. changes in water level known to induce fish movement) influences among-individual variation in isotopic niche. The Partitioning model allows for only direct effects of local food availability on among-individual variation. The Combined model allows for both hypotheses by including the direct effects of disturbance and food availability. 3. A linear regression of the Combined model described more variance than models limited to the variables of either the Dispersal or Partitioning models. Of the independent variables considered, the food availability variable (per cent edible periphyton) explained the most variation in isotopic niche breadth, followed closely by the disturbance variable (days since last drying event). 4. Structural equation modelling provided further evidence that the Combined model was best supported by the data, with the Partitioning and the Dispersal models only modestly less informative. Again, the per cent edible periphyton was the variable with the largest direct effect on niche variability, with other food availability variables and the disturbance variable only slightly less important. Indirect effects of heterospecific and conspecific competitor densities were also important, through their effects on prey density. 5. Our results support the Combined hypotheses, although partitioning mechanisms appear to explain the most diet variation among individuals in the eastern mosquitofish. The results also support some predictions of the niche variation hypothesis, although both conspecific and interspecific competition appeared to increase isotopic niche breadth in contrast to predictions that interspecific competition would decrease it. We think this resulted from high diet overlap of co-occurring species, most of which consume similar macroinvertebrates

Reflections on Software Failure Analysis

Failure studies are important in revealing the root causes, behaviors, and life cycle of defects in software systems. These studies either focus on understanding the characteristics of defects in specific classes of systems or the characteristics of a specific type of defect in the systems it manifests in. Failure studies have influenced various software engineering research directions, especially in the area of software evolution, defect detection, and program repair. In this paper, we reflect on the conduct of failure studies in software engineering. We reviewed a sample of 52 failure study papers. We identified several recurring problems in these studies, some of which hinder the ability of the engineering community to trust or replicate the results. Based on our findings, we suggest future research directions, including identifying and analyzing failure causal chains, standardizing the conduct of failure studies, and tool support for faster defect analysis.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures To be published in: Proceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE '22

Reflections on Software Failure Analysis

Failure studies are important in revealing the root causes, behaviors, and life cycle of defects in software systems. These studies either focus on understanding the characteristics of defects in specific classes of systems or the characteristics of a specific type of defect in the systems it manifests in. Failure studies have influenced various software engineering research directions, especially in the area of software evolution, defect detection, and program repair. In this paper, we reflect on the conduct of failure studies in software engineering. We reviewed a sample of 52 failure study papers. We identified several recurring problems in these studies, some of which hinder the ability of the engineering community to trust or replicate the results. Based on our findings, we suggest future research directions, including identifying and analyzing failure causal chains, standardizing the conduct of failure studies, and tool support for faster defect analysis

Derivation of an observer model adapted to irregular signals based on convolution channels.

Anthropomorphic model observers are mathe- matical algorithms which are applied to images with the ultimate goal of predicting human signal detection and classification accuracy across varieties of backgrounds, image acquisitions and display conditions. A limitation of current channelized model observers is their inability to handle irregularly-shaped signals, which are common in clinical images, without a high number of directional channels. Here, we derive a new linear model observer based on convolution channels which we refer to as the "Filtered Channel observer" (FCO), as an extension of the channelized Hotelling observer (CHO) and the nonprewhitening with an eye filter (NPWE) observer. In analogy to the CHO, this linear model observer can take the form of a single template with an external noise term. To compare with human observers, we tested signals with irregular and asymmetrical shapes spanning the size of lesions down to those of microcalfications in 4-AFC breast tomosynthesis detection tasks, with three different contrasts for each case. Whereas humans uniformly outperformed conventional CHOs, the FCO observer outperformed humans for every signal with only one exception. Additive internal noise in the models allowed us to degrade model performance and match human performance. We could not match all the human performances with a model with a single internal noise component for all signal shape, size and contrast conditions. This suggests that either the internal noise might vary across signals or that the model cannot entirely capture the human detection strategy. However, the FCO model offers an efficient way to apprehend human observer performance for a non-symmetric signal