Refugee Resettlement and Integration in Germany: Analysis of Media Discourse

Refugees are among the most discussed and debated topics worldwide; the massive movement of refugees and asylum seekers facing the world today is the largest since the end of the second world war. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates the total number of refugees in the world to be almost twenty-six million people, while asylum seekers account for around three million. The concept of a refugee is formally defined by the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, which creates a legal status, and states that a refugee is a person who “faces well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. The issues surrounding refugees are vast and complex, with wide-reaching and long lasting effects. As the world continues to face massive human displacement as a result of fragile states, civil wars, and countless other factors, refugees and related issues will continue to be of vital importance. One key element to the issue of refugees is the question of resettlement and even further the issue of integration

Construction and Calibration of a Streaked Optical Spectrometer for Shock Temperature

Here we describe the implementation and calibration of a streaked visible spectrometer (SVS) for optical pyrometry and emission/absorption spectroscopy on light gas gun platforms in the UC Davis Shock Compression Laboratory. The diagnostic consists of an optical streak camera coupled to a spectrometer to provide temporally and spectrally-resolved records of visible emission from dynamically-compressed materials. Fiber optic coupling to the sample enables a small diagnostic footprint on the target face and flexibility of operation on multiple launch systems without the need for open optics. We present the details of calibration (time, wavelength and spectral radiance) for absolute temperature determination and present benchmark measurements of system performance.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures Davies, E., et al. (accepted). In J. Lane, T. Germann, and M. Armstrong (Eds.), 21st Biennial APS Conference on Shock Compression of Condensed Matter (SCCM19). AIP Publishin

Instrumental Variables Estimation with Some Invalid Instruments and its Application to Mendelian Randomization

Instrumental variables have been widely used for estimating the causal effect between exposure and outcome. Conventional estimation methods require complete knowledge about all the instruments' validity; a valid instrument must not have a direct effect on the outcome and not be related to unmeasured confounders. Often, this is impractical as highlighted by Mendelian randomization studies where genetic markers are used as instruments and complete knowledge about instruments' validity is equivalent to complete knowledge about the involved genes' functions. In this paper, we propose a method for estimation of causal effects when this complete knowledge is absent. It is shown that causal effects are identified and can be estimated as long as less than $50$% of instruments are invalid, without knowing which of the instruments are invalid. We also introduce conditions for identification when the 50% threshold is violated. A fast penalized $\ell_1$ estimation method, called sisVIVE, is introduced for estimating the causal effect without knowing which instruments are valid, with theoretical guarantees on its performance. The proposed method is demonstrated on simulated data and a real Mendelian randomization study concerning the effect of body mass index on health-related quality of life index. An R package \emph{sisVIVE} is available online.Comment: 99 pages, 29 figures, 14 table

Band Filling and Temperature Effects on Electrical Conductivity in Strongly Correlated Hybridized Electron Systems

We investigate the effects of band filling as well as temperature change on the electrical conductivity of materials with strong interelectron interaction as well as band hybridization. This is done by use of the irreducible two-particle Green function method applied to strongly correlated electron systems described by the Periodic Anderson Model. It was found that there is a definite peak in electrical conductivity at low band occupancy when the d-energy sub-band is half filled. Conductivity was found to have a sharp drop with an increase in temperature as a result of thermal dispersion as well as a change in the width of the narrow energy sub-bands causing an increase in the number of charge carriers with negative effective mass

Using Regression Analysis to Determine Land Cover Impacts on Groundwater Levels in the High Plains

Many parts of the High Plains region are facing declining aquifer levels, which threatens the long-term viability of irrigated agriculture. Furthermore, some areas of the High Plains region, like the Republican River Basin in Nebraska, need to keep groundwater levels high enough in the short-term to ensure that hydrologically connected rivers have enough streamflow to fulfill surface water obligations, such as Nebraska\u27s interstate river compact with Colorado and Kansas. To better manage groundwater, it is important to understand the unintended effects of policies that may not be aimed at groundwater conservation, such as the USDA- Conservation Reserve Program (USDA-CRP). The CRP pays farmers to take cropland out of production and put it into conservation covers, mainly grassland. Environmental benefits include reduced soil erosion, improved surface water quality, and increased wildlife habitat. But, the changes in land cover due to CRP enrollment could also impact the infiltration of precipitation through the soil, thus changing groundwater recharge. The paper estimates the potential effect of CRP on groundwater levels using data from Ogallala Aquifer region of Kansas and the Republican River Basin portion of Nebraska. The analysis relates disaggregated aquifer level data with spatial land cover data, weather, soil, and groundwater extraction data. Grassland land cover is used as a proxy for grassland put in by CRP. Findings suggest that grassland leads to a lower yearly recharge rate than common crop land covers in the Republican River Basin of Nebraska. Recharge in the Ogallala Aquifer region of Kansas seems too small to have a detectable impact though. These results imply that in addition to other environmental benefits, policymakers need to pay attention to the impact of CRP enrollment on regional aquifer conditions in regions where groundwater levels are a concern but can expect recharge to take place. Adviser: Karina Schoengold and Taro Mien

Praesentia Sublimis: Studies in the Differend

Interrogating the notion of the differend, taken from Jean-Franҫois Lyotard’s book of the same name, in which a wrong occurs along with the impossibility of its representation as a wrong, this thesis attempts to rearticulate the relationship between the distant and heterogeneous theories dealing with a supposedly common subject matter: namely, the sublime. The sublime as it is taken up in the rhetorical pedagogy of Longinus, the transcendental aesthetic of Immanuel Kant, and the postmodern theory of Jean-Franҫois Lyotard refuses to yield a shared dimension that could bind together these major moments of thought. There are sublimes, it seems, rather than a single sublime. Against this, I contend that the thought of these three figures all constitute a site for a differend involving that which is both singular and irreducible in its happening here and now and therefore always escapes representation: the event of presentation as such