Alzheimer’s: A Quiet Story. A photographic series and solo exhibition.

This series of 20 artworks was developed by Plouviez looking at the experience of memory loss, photography and how the everyday routine can become unfamiliar. Work from the series was shown as a billboard in CIVIC, the first international festival of billboard art, Sunderland UK (November 2011), and as part of the Action Field Kodra photography festival in Thessaloniki, Greece (October 2012). The full series of work is exhibited in Thessaloniki, Greece (22 November 2013-17 January 2014) as part of PhotoBiennale, an international photography festival organized by the Museum of Photography, and at Panna Foto Studio, Jakarta, Indonesia (23 November-14 December 2013)

Dibosons from CMS

It is here presented the diboson production cross section measured by the CMS collaboration in $pp$ collisions data at $\sqrt{s}$=7 TeV. $W \gamma$ and $Z \gamma$ results from 2010 analyses (36 pb$^{-1}$) are presented together with 2011 first measurements of $WW$, $WZ$ and $ZZ$ final states obtained using 1.1 fb$^{-1}$. Results obtained with 2010 data are also interpreted in term of anomalous triple gauge couplings.Comment: Presented at the 2011 Hadron Collider Physics symposium (HCP-2011), Paris, France, November 14-18 2011, 4 pages, 3 figure

The Paradoxes of Precarity: Buffalo Refugees Reconsidered

Some legal scholars have responded to the liberal, autonomous subject by theorizing a vulnerable subject. In doing so, they recognize vulnerability as a universal and constant characteristic of the human condition. Alternatively, many humanists use a different conceptual frame which follows Judith Butler’s distinction between precariousness as universal human vulnerability and the political state of precarity. Precarity is a useful critical tool because the rhetorical constructions of precarity demonstrate how activists and politicians create worldviews and assemble publics. Political cultures construct precarity, shifting the precarity of different people fluidly. On what days does the precarity of Afghan women exceed that of US soldiers? In an earlier study of the discourses surrounding Buffalo’s refugees, I suggest that precarity is often denied or ignored, not just because people wish to be competent, but because dominant discourses obscure our ability to recognize precarity and its causes. Over a decade ago, Buffalo media occasionally worried about the precarity of refugees and their economic cost to the county. Now, it reports that refugees have stabilized the city’s shrinking population, revitalized the city’s West Side, and provided an international economic network

Illegal Gold Mining in Madre de Dios: Evaluating Current and Prospective Solutions

This thesis investigates public policies and action plans that would help address the growing issue of illegal gold mining in the Amazonian Madre de Dios region of Peru. Devastating environmental and public health problems affect the region as a direct result of illegal mining and the mercury-reliant gold extraction process used by miners in the region. This thesis project will employ cost-benefit analysis on potential strategies for the Peruvian government or international entities to help curtail the prevalent activity of illegal gold mining in the bio-sensitive region of Madre de Dios. The best solution(s) will be cost effective, produce high impact, be highly efficient, promote fairness, be politically acceptable, robust, and replicable so that other countries can learn from and adopt practices from Peru to combat the destructive consequences of informal and/or illegal small-scale gold mining in a practical way.Plan II Honors Progra

History of Fashion Installations as Art Exhibitions and Their Impact on the Public’s Perspective on Culture and Community

The current study targeted the problem of the relationship among the notions of fashion, art, and culture. The study aimed to determine the potential role of fashion brands and artists in the transformation of modern culture. Additionally, the study sought to analyze the forms of collaboration between fashion and arts, and their commercial and conceptual value. As to the research methods, qualitative secondary data review using thematic analysis methodology was utilized. The research findings included the recognition of the significant role of modern fashion and arts in the transformation of the public culture. Furthermore, it was revealed that different formats of collaboration between fashion and arts bring about substantial commercial and conceptual benefits that could be generated for both spheres of creative work. Finally, opportunities for further research and means of constructive cooperation among artists and fashion designers were determined

How beneficial is open-mindedness in vaccination games on network-based models of disease transmission?

This is an HTC thesis presentation about the relationship between game theory ad vaccination decisions

Remembering the Future: Wild Time and the Cosmic Imagination

Entropy – the Second Law of Thermodynamics – is generally held to prove “time’s arrow”: that time is linear and unidirectional, and that the universe is following this trajectory. This paper presents a preliminary exposition into a new, integral ontology of time in which time is hyper-dimensional, non-linear and flows in both directions. This is supported through trans-disciplinary praxis at the intersection of aesthetics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. The metaphysical implications of reverse causality are investigated, and confer a teleological universe that is coherent with the paradigm of an intelligent, self-realising cosmos in which beauty is a fundamental property

Rethinking Urban Risk And Adaptation: The Politics Of Vulnerability In Informal Urban Settlements

Informal urban settlements are increasingly recognised as vulnerable to climate-related risks. Their political-legal status is known to influence their vulnerability, but the linkages between state governance and vulnerability in this setting remain under-researched. In particular, as more urban governments develop climate risk assessments, questions arise about how risks are defined, the politics behind the processes of risk definition, and the impact this has on local-scale vulnerabilities. The thesis proposes a new conceptual direction for urban vulnerability research. First, it draws on livelihoods debates to highlight the embeddedness of the livelihoods pathways that shape vulnerability in social and political relations. Second, the thesis shows how the idea of co-production, developed in the context of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and public policy, can be used to investigate the state politics of risk assessment in informal, urban areas. This theoretical frame generates insights at the interface between development studies and STS, providing a new perspective on questions of how urban communities adapt in informal areas, who adapts and what they are adapting to. The conceptual propositions of the thesis are applied to a landslide risk management programme in three informal settlements in Bogota, Colombia. The thesis presents empirical findings that illustrate (i) how risk assessments are shaped by state cultures, values and practices particular to informal sites in ways that drive new forms of inclusion and exclusion; (ii) how inhabitants respond to risk in the context of socially-embedded meanings and identities and their relationships with the state; and (iii) how people’s agency to transform risks depends on fragile social and political relationships and the exercise of political agency. The thesis argues for a repoliticisation of approaches to understanding urban risk and adaptation, and for transformations in policy to reflect this approach

Hotel en el Castillo de Santueri

El importante papel que toma la topografía en el lugar, ha servido para definir el proyecto formalmente, adaptándose al máximo a ésta y aprovechando las magníficas vistas que ofrece. La tipología formal se basa en una geometrización de las curvas de nivel originales, simulando los típicos baluartes de defensa de la Edad Media. El programa del proyecto se resuelve en tres niveles más el acceso a un nivel inferior. En el primer nivel encontramos la recepción, consigna, pequeña cafetería, dirección, lavandería y taller de mantenimiento. En el nivel 2 se disponen 3 pabellones de habitaciones y en el nivel 3 los 6 pabellones restantes. El restaurante, sauna finlandesa y sauna húmeda, así como los miradores, se encuentran dispuestos en los diferentes restos de aljibes y torres que quedan ene le recinto del castillo. Los materiales previstos para el proyecto son principalmente la madera, el hormigón, el acero y el vidrio. Sobre los pilares de acero que se introducen directamente en la roca y que se apoyan sobre zapatas aisladas, descansa una losa maciza de hormigón armado, sobre la que a su vez descansan los pabellones de madera de alerce que forman las habitaciones del hotel. Los detalles del proyecto están resueltos principalmente por piezas de cobre. Se ha elegido la madera de alerce, ya que su cromatismo es muy similar al de la piedra envejecida, buscando la máxima adaptación al contexto paisajístico