The challenge of reporting an unreported world

This report by Polis Summer School student David R Myles on how one foreign correspondent deals with the unique challenges of invetigating original stories around the world. Imagine this: You are a journalist sitting in the passenger seat of a rickety SUV, traversing the crowded streets of Kabul, with a local guide behind the wheel and your producer nervously fidgeting in the backseat. Your safety belt grips you to the seat, and your head is on a swivel, watching for any and all potential threats, as you make your way to a neutral location to interview a Taliban commander about death threats he has ordered against Afghani filmmakers. Would you be able to handle the stress? Would you be able to stay objective and ask provocative questions without letting your fear shine through? This is the kind of challenge Jenny Kleeman faces reporting the Unreported World for the UK’s Channel 4

First Cousins: A novel on youth, family, love, faith, and responsibility (Original novel)

First Cousins is a contemporary novel detailing four months in the life of William Reginald Jack Jackson, an 18-year old African-American graduate of Valley High School in West Des Moines, Iowa. Themes of initiation provide the primary focus: as a young adult, William must learn how to carry out new responsibilities toward family, friends, and the future. The novel\u27s central conflict emerges from William\u27s blossoming relationship with his adopted cousin Natalie, a rebellious 18-year old who must also come to terms with the new demands of young adulthood. Set primarily in North Carolina and Iowa, the novel is narrated from William\u27s first-person point of view

Choosing to Achieve: Same Domain Affirmations and Academic Achievement

CHOOSING TO ACHIEVE: SAME DOMAIN AFFIRMATIONS AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT. David E. Myles and Forrester Lee., MD. Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University, School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. Investigators have observed decrements in the inter-ethnic disparity in academic achievement among middle-school students as a result of self-affirming manipulations. In the current study the tested hypothesis is that students who are African-American will: 1. choose to self-affirm in the domain of academics; and 2. be observed to earn a higher grade-point average (GPA) as a result of such self-affirmations. Self-affirmations made in the same domain as that of the dependent variable being measured have historically led to adverse outcomes. This study suggests that three conditions are necessary for same-domain affirmations to result in beneficial outcomes: 1. there must be a perceived threat; 2. the domain must be of personal relevance; and 3. participants must freely choose the domain in which they self-affirm. Two independent evaluators conducted a content analysis of the self-affirmation manipulations. It was observed that students who are African American chose to self-affirm in the domain of academics statistically greater than students who were not African American (Χ2 = 2.62; OR = 2.4; p \u3c 0.1). The results from this study support the hypothesis that students who are African American do choose to self-affirm in academics, but there was no resultant relative increase in academic achievement (all t\u27s \u3c 1.3, all p\u27s \u3e .20)

Constructing Injustice Symbols in Contemporary Trans Rights Activisms

In this paper, we investigate the role that mourning and commemoration practices play in contemporary trans rights activism. Drawing from visual politics, digital activist culture, as well as media and communication, we analyse how trans rights movements construct injustice symbols that are used for sociopolitical mobilisation and expression. We contend that these symbols are constructed through shared communicative practices, which produce and circulate visuals that possess important memetic qualities (pictures, slogans, hashtags, graffiti, posters, etc.). To do so, we analyse three case studies where the unjust death of a trans person was collectively mobilised for political purposes: Jennifer Laude (Philippines, 1988-2014), Hande Kader (Turkey, 1993-2016), and Marsha P. Johnson (United States of America, 1945-1992). While each case study points to local or national specificities, our comparative analysis also underlines transnational trends in the production of posthumous visuals within contemporary trans rights activism. We conclude by addressing the contentions over the construction of trans symbols who inherently possess intersectional identities

A novel scanned mask imaging system for high resolution solid state laser ablation

A technology gap has emerged between the sub-micron semiconductor manufacturing technologies used in the manufacture of integrated circuits and the semi-additive processes used to manufacture advanced chip packages which are currently limited to feature sizes greater than 10 µm. Embedding conductors in laser ablated circuit features is one of the proposed solutions to address this technology gap in the advanced chip packaging industry. Excimer laser systems are currently the only available production tools capable of the high throughput laser ablation of circuit features down to 2 µm. In this thesis I have developed an ablative, solid state laser, mask imaging system for the high volume 3D structuring of organic dielectrics. This system enables the ablation of circuit features down to 2 µm which are of comparable quality to excimer laser ablation. The system architecture has a throughput exceeding that of an excimer laser production system. I have developed an illumination system, which I have tested at both a feasibility stage and at a prototype stage, with custom designed optical components. The illumination system consists of a galvanometer scan head which is used to raster scan a solid state laser beam across a binary mask, the image of which is then projected onto the substrate. The system I present enables the use of multimode, UV, solid state lasers in well-developed and high resolution mask imaging optical systems. Through the use of a less expensive laser technology, the system I have developed has a cost of ownership estimated to be less than 50% of that of an excimer production system, thus reducing the cost of high resolution, high throughput laser ablation

An evaluation of surface roughness as measured by the brush surface analyzer and the schmaltz optical cut

This thesis attempted to relate a qualitative observaion of surface roughness, obtained by means of an optical cut, to a quantitative measure recorded by the Brush Surface Analyzer. The qualitative description was reduced to a Roughness Parameter, and the arithmetic average roughness was correlated with it