Beyond Prosthetic Memory: Posthumanism, Embodiment, and Caregiving Robots

Literary and cinematic speculations about the future of care, read in tandem with the rising prominence of actual robotic caregivers, foretell a future in which human interaction is no longer an inevitable feature of care relations. This essay considers the social, cultural and ethical implications of robotic care alongside a particular speculative representation of posthuman care, the 2012 film Robot and Frank. The film demonstrates how the intimacy of human/machine care relationships can supply posthumanist insights into the illusion of human invulnerability and exceptionalism that obscure the heterogeneity of embedded and embodied subjects. Not only does the film dramatize the fundamental anxieties caregiving robots incite, it also offers provocative posthumanist critiques of human exceptionalism, conjuring haptic affects that trespass the boundaries between humans and machines

Nutrition and the Labor Market

Do different income levels affect the foods people consume? It is commonly known that healthier foods are more expensive than unhealthy foods. Those with lower incomes tend to gravitate toward fast food and junk food, with those with higher incomes tend to gravitate toward fruits, vegetables, and healthier options, including having personal chefs and ordering proportioned meals delivered to their homes. Lower income people consuming unhealthy foods potentially leads to health issues such as malnutrition, high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes. Not everyone is aware of the health side effects of their diets. It is shown that people who are less educated (and more likely to have lower paying jobs) do not know the effects of their diets as well as those who are highly educated. However, some people are still aware of the health effects of their diet but their occupation, such as being a truck driver, for example, requires them to eat on the road more (fast food). There are many statistics that need to be looked at to confirm these statements, including the incomes and jobs of people who consume fast food versus those who eat at healthy establishments. Another factor is the locations of various establishments, and the average income of the area. In conclusion, this research will explore how wealthier people have healthier options than people with lower incomes

Effects of Height and Vegetation on Success of Bird Nests in Maritime Forests

Nest predation is an important source of mortality in songbirds and may contribute to declines in Neotropical migrants. I used artificial nests baited with fresh Japanese Quail and Zebra Finch eggs in conjunction with observations of natural nests to quantity the ettects ol nest height and vegetation on nest predation on St. Catherine\u27s Island, a barrier island in southeast Georgia. Because of intense browsing by white-tailed deer. I predicted that lower, more exposed nests would be least successful. Artificial nests (n = 389) were placed in the field, and natural nests (n = 49) were observed, durintz April and May 1999 - 2000. Natural nests were more likely to be successful (77.6%: 38/49) than artificial nests (49.9%; 194/389). Nest success decreased with nest height in artificial nests, but height did not affect natural nests. Successful nests tended to ha\e more vegetation cover horizontally within 1 m of the nest; this effect was most pronounced in artiticial nests. I he effects of vegetation were consistent across nest heights. Patterns of egg loss suggest that most nest predation was by larger nest predators, but smaller predators (such as mice or small snakes) appeared important at lower nest heights. Overall, lower nests were not less successful on St. Catherine\u27s Island, but vegetation cover was important to nest success. Deer browsing does not appear to be causing unusual mortality in songbird nests below 2 m. but passerines on St. Catherine\u27s Island tended to select nest sites non-randomly to minimize detection b\ predators. Although shrub-nesting passerines were able to find suitable nest sites in this study, the effects of browsing on the habitat may limit the number of available nest sites, thus decreasing the ov erall population of Neotropical migrants on St. Catherine\u27s Island. Because the majority of Neotropical migrants nest in the shrub layer and are more prone to the effects of nest predation. Future research should assess the effects of populations of white-tailed deer on vegetation in southeastern maritime forests

Reassessing the Rule of Law Legacy of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

The focal point of transitional justice efforts in Cambodia have been recently-completed criminal prosecutions at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (“ECCC”). Like other international criminal justice institutions, the ECCC has been framed as not only a criminal court, but also as an institution capable of helping achieve various transitional justice goals such as improving the rule of law and respect for human rights domestically in Cambodia. This Article identifies troubling connections between the ECCC experience and the Cambodian government’s increasing use of rule by law tactics in recent years. The Article identifies two related ways in which the ECCC experience may have further damaged, rather than helped mend, the rule of law in Cambodia. First, by providing training to Cambodian legal actors beholden to the autocratic government, the ECCC has engaged in a form of “negative capacity-building” by enhancing the abilities of such actors to weaponize Cambodia’s legal system against perceived threats to the dominant Cambodia People’s Party (“CPP”). Second, by playing into the dominant social perception in Cambodia that powerful CPP-aligned actors remain the ultimate arbiters of contentious legal cases, even when producing inconsistent, incompatible outcomes, the Court’s social messaging has lent some legitimacy to rule by law tactics in Cambodia. These negative rule of law outcomes are especially troubling given the authoritarian backsliding Cambodia has recently experienced. Moreover, the potential negative rule of law legacy of the ECCC should serve as a cautionary tale against the notion that international criminal law prosecutions solely produce positive rule of law effects in postatrocity States

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SEXUAL DIMORPHISM IN THE DROSOPHILA GONAD

Throughout the animal kingdom, sex-specific development is used to create different forms in males and females. Sexual dimorphism is important for successful reproduction both on social and biological levels, but is especially vital in the gonad, which must be sexually dimorphic so it can support germline differentiation into sperm and eggs. In Drosophila, adult testes and ovaries are highly specialized organs that can serve as good models for studying sex-specific gonadogenesis, however, it is not well understood how sexual dimorphism is initially established in the embryo. In this thesis I present an analysis of how differences between the male and female somatic gonad are brought about during early development. I have observed that the Drosophila gonad is already sexually dimorphic at the time of its initial formation, and have characterized two sex-specific cell types termed the male-specific somatic gonadal precursors (msSGPs) and the pigment cell precursors. msSGPs and pigment cells give rise to specific adult testis cell types and express Sox100B, a homolog of Sox9, a factor required for mammalian sex determination. These two cell types employ different cellular mechanisms, such as apoptosis and cell-cell signaling, to ensure sexual dimorphism in the gonad. Sex-specific gonad development relies on positional information provided by the homeotic genes and proper sexual identity downstream of the sex determination gene doublesex. The sexually dimorphic behavior of msSGPs and pigment cells appears to be controlled non-autonomously, which is distinct from cell-autonomous sex determination that has been reported for most other Drosophila somatic tissues. Finally, I have analyzed the function of Sox100B in gonad development, and have found a role in adult iii testis formation, suggesting that there is a conserved molecular mechanism for regulating sexual dimorphism between flies and mammals. These results demonstrate many common features between Drosophila and mammalian gonadogenesis. Thus, despite vast differences in initial sex determination between species, these data strongly support a hypothesis that the downstream regulation of sexual dimorphism in the gonad is an evolutionarily conserved process at the cellular and molecular levels

Beyond Prosthetic Memory

Literary and cinematic speculations about the future of care, read in tandem with the rising prominence of actual robotic caregivers, foretell a future in which human interaction is no longer an inevitable feature of care relations. This essay considers the social, cultural and ethical implications of robotic care alongside a particular speculative representation of posthuman care, the 2012 film Robot and Frank. The film demonstrates how the intimacy of human/machine care relationships can supply posthumanist insights into the illusion of human invulnerability and exceptionalism that obscure the heterogeneity of embedded and embodied subjects. Not only does the film dramatize the fundamental anxieties caregiving robots incite, it also offers provocative posthumanist critiques of human exceptionalism, conjuring haptic affects that trespass the boundaries between humans and machines