Not Found in Tibetan Society : Culture, Childbirth, and a Politics of Life on the Roof of the World

This article explores the work of culture and politics in the context of health-development interventions. Specifically, I discuss a maternal-child health project that was conceived and executed in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China, and the place of engaged medical anthropology therein. This work takes inspiration from Pigg\u27s (1997) insights about the ways health-development programs can adopt specific interpretive lenses that create categories of being and experience such as Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs). This article illustrates the ways such categories circulate to serve the needs of governmental and non-governmental organizations, and, in the process, how they run the risk of essentializing culture or eliding the complex realities in which people live. Yet this article also argues that such elision is neither a given nor one-sided. Rather, such programs are enmeshed within a realpolitik in places such as Tibet where the trope of “culture” is both problematic and deeply influential, and where demographics (including maternal and infant mortality statistics) are politicized in particular ways. The article argues that far from being “anti-political,” (Ferguson 1994) such health development efforts are domains in which a “politics of life” (Fassin 2007) inheres. Even so, such efforts can be successful, and can help to nuance and ground the ephemeral yet powerful concepts of structural violence and social suffering

Multishaker modal testing

A component mode synthesis method for damped structures was developed and modal test methods were explored which could be employed to determine the relevant parameters required by the component mode synthesis method. Research was conducted on the following topics: (1) Development of a generalized time-domain component mode synthesis technique for damped systems; (2) Development of a frequency-domain component mode synthesis method for damped systems; and (3) Development of a system identification algorithm applicable to general damped systems. Abstracts are presented of the major publications which have been previously issued on these topics

Adaptive tracking for complex systems using reduced-order models

Reduced-order models are considered in the context of parameter adaptive controllers for tracking workspace trajectories. A dual-arm manipulation task is used to illustrate the methodology and provide simulation results. A parameter adaptive controller is designed to track the desired position trajectory of a payload using a four-parameter model instead of a full-order, nine-parameter model. Several simulations with different payload-to-arm mass ratios are used to illustrate the capabilities of the reduced-order model in tracking the desired trajectory

Status of direct detector and array development

Programs are now underway to develop and demonstrate the detector/array technology needed for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), Large Deployable Reflector (LDR), and other future NASA missions. The development goal is to achieve focal plane sensitivities, at extended integration times over the 2 to 700 microns range, limited only by the low astrophysical backgrounds encountered in cryogenic telescopes such as SIRTF. Dramatic progress has been made in the last 2 to 3 years in integrated array and detector systems for low background astronomical applications. With the broadly based developments and lab characterizations now underway for SIRTF and similar space applications, coupled with the rapidly expanding art and science of ground based astronomical imagery with arrays, the potential for effective utilization of arrays with LDR appears to be very good

Resisting electronic payment systems: burning down the house?

This commentary explains the phenomena of path dependence, hysteresis, and network economies using lively historical and contemporary examples. The author shows how the path dependence and network economies can interact to produce a variety of undesirable ends-inefficient payment systems, the adoption of inferior technology, or disasters like the 1834 fire that destroyed the British House of Lords.Payment systems