'Modern' Madrasa: Deoband and Colonial Secularity

This article situates the emergence of the Deoband movement, an Islamic revivalist movement based at India’s Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband madrasa (seminary), within concepts of colonial secularity in British India. It shows how the decline of first Mughal and then British patronage for Islamic learning, as well as the post-1857 British policy of non-interference in ‘religious’ matters, opened up a space for Deobandi scholars to re-conceive the madrasa as a ‘religious’ institution rather than one engaged in the production of civil servants, to reimagine the ‘ulama’ as stewards of public morality rather than professionals in the service of the state, and to reframe the knowledge they purveyed as ‘religious’ knowledge distinct from the ‘useful’ secular knowledge promoted by the British. The article treats this production of ‘religious’ knowledge and space as discourse of distinction similar to those explored elsewhere in this HSR Special Issue

Blood profile of grizzly bears in central and northern Alaska

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1983Blood from 151 grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) captured between 1973 and 1982 in the Brooks Range, Alaska, and the Alaska Range was examined for 7 hanatological, 24 serum chemistry, and 6 protein electrophoretic determinations. Differences in these characteristics between samples collected one hour apart indicate a response to stress during capture. Location differences in leukocyte count, erythrocyte count, hemoglobin, hematocrit, and cortisol suggest that Alaska Range bears were more stressed by capturing than Brooks Range bears. Sodium, creatinine, and urea nitrogen were negatively correlated with capture date, suggesting varied diet reinstatement and regained renal function as time from den emergence increased. Calcium, phosphorous, and alkaline phosphatase were negatively correlated with age, reflecting increased osteoblast activity and bone formation in young bears. Males had higher values than females for erythrocyte count, hematocrit, glucose, creatinine, calcium, phosphorous, and alkaline phosphatase, while glutamic-oxalacetic and glutamic-pyruvic transaminases were higher in females

Groundwater: A Community’s Management of the Invaluable Resource Beneath its Feet

Understanding the impact of human decisions on vital resources is a core task of environmental sociology, which studies the interaction between human society and the environment. The overarching theme of this research is the economicenvironmental relationship in U.S. public policy, using a case study of a specific environmental resource problem in a specific region. It fuses basic assumptions of two economic growth models (treadmill of production and the urban growth machine) to examine the extent to which these assumptions permeate the worldviews of policymakers and those who advise them. When the growth imperative is a priority in their worldviews, then the paradigm shapes policy decisions favorable to growth. When the growth imperative paradigm dominates the decision-making structure, then policy decisions favor economic growth over concerns for and at the expense of environmental resources. This is the case because economic growth requires unlimited commoditization and exploitation of finite resources. The results are impairment of both the quantity and quality of natural resources on which communities depend for growth and their existence. This research examines the economic-environmental relationship in a case study of the Memphis, Tennessee area to ascertain how policy decisions that promote growth affect groundwater and may have sparked an inter-state water conflict. The State of Mississippi filed a federal lawsuit against Memphis and its utility Memphis Light, Gas and Water over rights to groundwater, the sole source of drinking water. The study ascertains that the predominance of the growth paradigm is linked to policymakers’ perspectives and reflected in their decisions that impair the quantity and quality of vital environmental resources. The case demonstrates how the growth imperative contributes to resource depletion, which can lead to conflict among users of a common resource

Causal Comparative Study: The Effect of School Scheduling and Academic Outcomes of Economically Disadvantaged Students

This study was designed to investigate if a statistical variance exists between traditional and A/B block school scheduling, and the effect on economically disadvantaged student achievement on the English I and Algebra I End-of-Course STAAR state-mandated exam, from 2015-2018. In response to studies illuminating the achievement gap, educational leaders in Texas implemented block scheduling in order to improve student outcomes among high school students. However, to date, published research studies yield mixed results of the effectiveness block scheduling has made on student achievement. The findings are expected to help to fill the gap in published literature, which focuses on the effect of block scheduling on the academic outcomes of high school students in the state of Texas. The results of this study suggested that there is a statistical significance in the performance of economically disadvantaged students on traditional and A/B block school schedules

Do monkeys think in metaphors? Representations of space and time in monkeys and humans

Research on the relationship between the representation of space and time has produced two contrasting proposals. ATOM posits that space and time are represented via a common magnitude system, suggesting a symmetrical relationship between space and time. According to metaphor theory, however, representations of time depend on representations of space asymmetrically. Previous findings in humans have supported metaphor theory. Here, we investigate the relationship between time and space in a nonverbal species, by testing whether non-human primates show space–time interactions consistent with metaphor theory or with ATOM. We tested two rhesus monkeys and 16 adult humans in a nonverbal task that assessed the influence of an irrelevant dimension (time or space) on a relevant dimension (space or time). In humans, spatial extent had a large effect on time judgments whereas time had a small effect on spatial judgments. In monkeys, both spatial and temporal manipulations showed large bi-directional effects on judgments. In contrast to humans, spatial manipulations in monkeys did not produce a larger effect on temporal judgments than the reverse. Thus, consistent with previous findings, human adults showed asymmetrical space–time interactions that were predicted by metaphor theory. In contrast, monkeys showed patterns that were more consistent with ATOM

American Insurance Association v. Garamendi and Executive Preemption in Foreign Affairs

In American Insurance Association v. Garamendi, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated California\u27s Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act (HVIRA), which required insurance companies doing business in California to disclose all policies they or their affiliates sold in Europe between 1920 and 1945. According to the Court, the state\u27s law unconstitutionally interfered with the foreign affairs power of the national government. The decision was easily overlooked in a Term filled with landmark cases dealing with affirmative action and sexual privacy. What coverage the case did receive emphasized its federalism aspects, and excited little reaction because the result seemed intuitively appropriate given the federal government\u27s interest in conducting foreign affairs. We argue in this paper, however, that Garamendi is more important - and problematic - when seen as a case about separation of powers. In particular, we argue that the decision expands presidential control over foreign affairs, not only at the expense of the states, but also and more critically at the expense of Congress and the Senate. This arises from the Court\u27s invention of a novel constitutional power of executive preemption - that is, an independent ability of the President to override state laws that interfere with executive branch policies in foreign affairs. Until Garamendi, no one had thought that a mere executive branch policy, unsupported by the formal or even tacit approval of any other branch, could have the effect of preemptive law. As a result, one need not be a defender of foreign policy federalism, nor a critic of executive foreign affairs powers, to have grave reservations about the decision\u27s implications for separation of powers, federalism and constitutional theory. It is uncontroversial that state laws and policies must give way to the foreign affairs objectives of the national government. The critical question, though, is how these overriding federal goals are developed and identified. We argue that the Garamendi decision has at least three separate and substantial ill-effects upon this process. First,executive preemption conveys to the President the power to decide which state laws affecting foreign affairs survive and which do not. This concentrates foreign affairs power in the President in a way not contemplated by the Constitution\u27s Framers, who sought to separate executive power from legislative power. Second, Garamendi seemed to make executive agreements the functional equivalents of congressional statutes; this functional equivalency may hasten the decline of the treaty as a foreign policy-making tool, with a concomitant decline in the opportunities for Congress - the Senate, in particular - to shape foreign policy. Third, the decision implicated the relationship between the states and the federal government in foreign affairs, but did so in a way that provided essentially no guidance for the future. Part I of this Article discusses the factual setting of the Holocaust insurance claims that formed the background of the case. Part II outlines the constitutional law of federal-state relations in foreign affairs as it stood before the Garamendi decision. Part III describes the Supreme Court\u27s decision, and points out its discontinuity with prior decisions. In Part IV we turn to the troubling structural implications of Garamendi, which we regard as occurring primarily in the field of separation of powers. We conclude that the Court ended up far from the text, structure and history of the Constitution. In Part V we address the decision\u27s implications for federalism, particular the dangers of concentrating preemptive power in the executive branch. Part VI relates the Garamendi case to the wider theoretical debates of modern foreign affairs law and constitutional interpretation. In contrast to other federalism and separation of powers cases, the Garamendi Court paid little attention to text or structure in analyzing the constitutional questions presented. More surprising, perhaps, is the Court\u27s complete lack of interest in what light history might shed on the foreign affairs issues before it. But neither is Garamendi an exercise in common law doctrinal evolution, because it owes essentially nothing to prior cases or practice, except as rhetorical cover. Garamendi\u27s near-exclusive attention to loose interpretations of prior case law and its lack of sensitivity to text, history, and structure, suggest to us a danger in common law constitutional interpretation as a preferred approach to constitutional interpretation and adjudication in foreign affairs controversies

Deobandis Abroad: Sufism, Ethics and Polemics in a Global Islamic Movement

This dissertation examines contemporary Islamic debates about the ethics and legality of Sufism (Islamic mysticism) within a globally influential movement based at the Islamic seminary (madrasa) known as Dar al-Ulum Deoband in northern India. Two overarching, and interrelated, questions motivate this dissertation. What are the historical origins of Deoband's critique of Sufism? And how is this critique variously appropriated and contested in the contemporary world? To this end, it reconstructs the contours of Deoband's engagement with Sufism in the works of its founders and how this critique traveled through the Deobandi network to South Africa, home to the most prominent Deobandi madrasas outside of South Asia and wide participation in the Sufi devotions that the Deobandis have most vociferously critiqued. The first and second chapters explore how Deobandis conceived Sufism exclusively as ethical reform (islah) of the self and argued certain devotional practices (especially celebration of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday and of Sufi saints' death anniversaries) are illicit innovations (bidà) in Islam. The third chapter reconstructs how Deobandi thought and institutions took root in South Africa, attending to the circulation of Deobandi writings within South Africa and the founding of South African Deobandi madrasas. The fourth chapter demonstrates how Deobandi students position themselves within an imagined Deobandi network and how they seek to embody and internalize the ethics of Sufi practice. The fifth and sixth chapters assess the reception of Deobandi critiques of Sufism in the South African public sphere, particularly in the context of Muslim politics, society and popular media during and after apartheid

Representation of numerosity in posterior parietal cortex

Humans and animals appear to share a similar representation of number as an analog magnitude on an internal, subjective scale. Neurological and neurophysiological data suggest that posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is a critical component of the circuits that form the basis of numerical abilities in humans. Patients with parietal lesions are impaired in their ability to access the deep meaning of numbers. Acalculiac patients with inferior parietal damage often have difficulty performing arithmetic (2 + 4?) or number bisection (what is between 3 and 5?) tasks, but are able to recite multiplication tables and read or write numerals. Functional imaging studies of neurologically intact humans performing subtraction, number comparison, and non-verbal magnitude comparison tasks show activity in areas within the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Taken together, clinical cases and imaging studies support a critical role for parietal cortex in the mental manipulation of numerical quantities. Further, responses of single PPC neurons in non-human primates are sensitive to the numerosity of visual stimuli independent of low-level stimulus qualities. When monkeys are trained to make explicit judgments about the numerical value of such stimuli, PPC neurons encode their cardinal numerical value; without such training PPC neurons appear to encode numerical magnitude in an analog fashion. Here we suggest that the spatial and integrative properties of PPC neurons contribute to their critical role in numerical cognition