NARRATING THE NATION: Heterotopian Struggles for Self-Representation in the Cuban Diaspora

Miami's sizeable Cuban diaspora has long used museums and galleries to produce and preserve their sense of community, united through the loss inherent to exile. Recent influxes of migration from Cuba (and beyond) are increasingly interpreted as a threat to the cultural forms many consider an “authentic” preservation of something now lost to Castro's Revolution. Drawing upon fifteen months of ethnographic research within several of these organizations, this article argues that a recent proliferation of new museum spaces and their physical distribution across the city indicate growing anxieties and conflicts between diasporic cohorts. Drawing upon Foucault's concept of heterotopias, the article maps these conflicts onto other measures of difference, such as ethnicity and socioeconomic class. The article concludes that hegemonic and normative public spaces are being weaponized in a diasporic struggle over Cuban identity, while newer arrivals are responding in kind through the inauguration of counter-spaces of cultural representation

El Paquete Semanal: A Cuban Sharing Economy

This lecture will explore the digital phenomenon of El Paquete Semanal, or the Weekly Package, a nationwide distribution network through which a Terabyte of films, music, apps, and more besides is moved across the island of Cuba on a weekly basis. It will contextualize this network within Cuba\u27s unique historical and political trajectory and propose a framework for understanding how El Paquete fits into a global chain of material and digital consumerism. Finally, it will examine the way value is created in this network in the light of widespread suggestions that El Paquete signals a move closer towards capitalism in Cuba.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cri_events/1365/thumbnail.jp

Social [Media] Distancing

This article examines the role of digital ethnographic methods in an emerging research landscape struck by COVID-19, whereby more traditional anthropological methods have been rendered impossible due to social distancing restrictions. It argues that while anthropology has long privileged physical proximity and presence as a central tenet of ethnographic method, digital methods can also afford a certain sense of social distance, which in fact can be beneficial to the research process. It draws upon experiences of conducting fifteen months of fieldwork both online and offline amongst marginalised groups in Cuba and its diaspora in Miami to reveal the ways in which digital distance can level the relationship between researcher and researched, and ultimately lead to a more ethical way of carrying out fieldwork amongst vulnerable communities

'The Mula Ring': Material Flows of Circulation Through the Cuban World

This thesis explores the permeability of what is arguably one of the most politicised and reified ‘frontiers’ in the world: that between the U.S. and Cuba. Despite decades of diplomatic hostilities and economic sanctions, the border between Miami and Havana is in a state of constant flux, with ceaseless flows of both people and things moving in both directions. Drawing upon fifteen months of ethnographic research primarily in Miami and Havana (2017-2018), and also in Panama, Mexico and Guyana, this thesis traces these ‘flows’ to understand how and why these material and digital flows constitute everyday life for millions of Cubans who, notwithstanding this political rhetoric, seek to maintain personal and business relationships. The thesis presents personal stories based on these flows to examine the shifting relationship between Cuba and its diaspora. Cubans in both Miami and Cuba are negotiating materiality and digital networks within their own plural notions of cubanidad (‘Cubanness’), capitalism and socialism, and according to their own geopolitical and socioeconomic contexts. By focusing on the inconsequential objects of the everyday, and centring on notions of ‘flow’ and ‘flux’, this thesis seeks to show how a politically and economically turbulent landscape is experienced and reconfigured at a micro level by ordinary Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits who, by the happenstance of their birth right, must negotiate extraordinary and difficult conditions on a daily basis to maintain their family connections, cultural identity, and ultimately, to live what they consider to be meaningful lives. The thesis shows how it is only through a slippage in traditional categories of ‘people’ and ‘things’ that such flows are made possible, and then positions this observation within theoretical arguments that situate rupture as crucial for the emergence of new cultural forms

(Dis)connections: migration, transnationalism, and global capitalism between Haiti and the United States

Review of Migration and Vodou (2nd edition with a new preface) by Karen E. Richman (University Press of Florida, 2018)

Within-Category Feature Correlations and the Curse of Dimensionality

This item is only available electronically.Within the domain of category learning, the curse of dimensionality states that as categories acquire more features, the size of the feature space and thus the number of examples necessary to adequately learn the category grows rapidly. As a result, category learning should be a highly difficult task. However, people learn to classify categories with ease. The primary aim of the current study was to address how people overcome this problem by determining if they were attuned to information about which features were correlated with each other, and whether or not they used this information as an indication that those features were relevant for categorisation. In theory, this would then allow for the detection of natural category family resemblance structure in highly dimensional environments, and subsequently, allow human learners to overcome the curse of dimensionality. In addition to this primary aim, and under the assumption that people were attuned to this correlational structure, a number of secondary hypotheses were also proposed. These hypotheses assessed both feature and correlation learning, evaluated relative category learning improvement as a function of dimensionality between conditions, as well as compared human performance to a Naïve Bayes model that was inherently incapable of detecting any correlational structure. The results of the current study suggest that people do not utilise within-category feature correlational structure as a heuristic for category predictive feature detection. However, these findings were contingent on a number of methodological shortcomings present in the current study. Directions for future research are proposed that provide clear methodological changes in category structure which may mitigate the lack of support found for the proposed hypotheses.Thesis (B.PsychSc(Hons)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 201

Microtubules, polarity and vertebrate neural tube morphogenesis

Microtubules (MTs) are key cellular components, long known to participate in morphogenetic events that shape the developing embryo. However, the links between the cellular functions of MTs, their effects on cell shape and polarity, and their role in large-scale morphogenesis remain poorly understood. Here, these relationships were examined with respect to two strategies for generating the vertebrate neural tube: bending and closure of the mammalian neural plate; and cavitation of the teleost neural rod. The latter process has been compared with 'secondary' neurulation that generates the caudal spinal cord in mammals. MTs align along the apico-basal axis of the mammalian neuroepithelium early in neural tube closure, participating functionally in interkinetic nuclear migration, which indirectly impacts on cell shape. Whether MTs play other functional roles in mammalian neurulation remains unclear. In the zebrafish, MTs are important for defining the neural rod midline prior to its cavitation, both by localizing apical proteins at the tissue midline and by orienting cell division through a mirror-symmetric MT apparatus that helps to further define the medial localization of apical polarity proteins. Par proteins have been implicated in centrosome positioning in neuroepithelia as well as in the control of polarized morphogenetic movements in the neural rod. Understanding of MT functions during early nervous system development has so far been limited, partly by techniques that fail to distinguish 'cause' from 'effect'. Future developments will likely rely on novel ways to selectively impair MT function in order to investigate the roles they play

UAV Catapult

This document outlines the Senior Design Project proposed by Dr. Aaron Drake that was assigned to a team of Mechanical Engineering students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The purpose of this project was to design, build, test, and finalize a launching system for two small, fixed wing, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) owned by Dr. Drake and Cal Poly. The goal was to create a system that was both portable and reliable to use, only requiring a two-person team to use effectively in the field. The most important design requirements were determined to be the launch speed, assembly time, and storage size. Multiple propulsion methods were explored, with a pneumatic piston cylinder chosen for the preliminary design. A side clamping carriage design was selected due to the shape of the UAVs being launched. A structural prototype of the UAV carriage was constructed, and the final design was developed as a result of data obtained from the prototype. Following the creation of our final design, a manufacturing plan and design verification plan were produced to bring the concept to fruition. With these plans in place, parts were ordered, and construction began. This document will describe the background research done, the objectives of the project, the preliminary and final design, the manufacturing and testing process, difficulties and obstacles faced, our final results, and what can be improved upon in the future

Opening and closure of intraventricular neuroendoscopic procedures in infants under 1 year of age: institutional technique, case series and review of the literature

Purpose: Intraventricular neuroendoscopic techniques, particularly third ventriculostomy, are employed increasingly in the management of infantile hydrocephalus. However, surgical access to the ventricular cavities is associated with a risk of post-operative cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak. Here, we describe a structured, multi-layered approach to wound opening and closure which aims to maximise the natural tissue barriers against CSF leakage. We present a series of patients undergoing this technique and subsequently review the literature regarding opening and closure techniques in paediatric intraventricular neuroendoscopic procedures. Methods: We performed a retrospective case series analysis of patients under 1 year of age who underwent intraventricular neuroendoscopic procedures in a single institution over a 5-year period. Patients were identified from an institutional operative database, and operation notes and clinical records were subsequently reviewed. Results: 28 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria for this study. The mean age at operation was 9 weeks. 27 patients underwent endoscopic third ventriculostomy whilst 1 underwent endoscopic septostomy, and all patients underwent our structured, multi-layered opening and closure technique. Follow-up ranged from 4 months to 5 years. There were no cases of post-operative CSF leak, infection or wound breakdown. 12 patients remained shunt-free at the last follow-up, with the remaining 16 requiring shunt insertion for progressive hydrocephalus at a mean of 24 days post-operatively. Conclusion: Various methods aiming to prevent post-operative CSF leak have been reported in the literature. We propose that our institutional technique may be of benefit in minimising this risk in infants undergoing endoscopic third ventriculostomy and similar intraventricular neuroendoscopic procedures

Combining Clinical With Cognitive or Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data for Predicting Transition to Psychosis in Ultra High-Risk Patients:Data From the PACE 400 Cohort

Background: Multimodal modeling that combines biological and clinical data shows promise in predicting transition to psychosis in individuals who are at ultra-high risk. Individuals who transition to psychosis are known to have deficits at baseline in cognitive function and reductions in gray matter volume in multiple brain regions identified by magnetic resonance imaging.Methods: In this study, we used Cox proportional hazards regression models to assess the additive predictive value of each modality—cognition, cortical structure information, and the neuroanatomical measure of brain age gap—to a previously developed clinical model using functioning and duration of symptoms prior to service entry as predictors in the Personal Assessment and Crisis Evaluation (PACE) 400 cohort. The PACE 400 study is a well-characterized cohort of Australian youths who were identified as ultra-high risk of transitioning to psychosis using the Comprehensive Assessment of At Risk Mental States (CAARMS) and followed for up to 18 years; it contains clinical data (from N = 416 participants), cognitive data (n = 213), and magnetic resonance imaging cortical parameters extracted using FreeSurfer (n = 231).Results: The results showed that neuroimaging, brain age gap, and cognition added marginal predictive information to the previously developed clinical model (fraction of new information: neuroimaging 0%–12%, brain age gap 7%, cognition 0%–16%).Conclusions: In summary, adding a second modality to a clinical risk model predicting the onset of a psychotic disorder in the PACE 400 cohort showed little improvement in the fit of the model for long-term prediction of transition to psychosis