THE EXPERIENCES OF INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE STUDENTS FROM LATIN AMERICA IN THEIR TRANSITION OF GRADUATING AND FINDING A JOB IN THE UNITED STATES

The purpose of this thesis project is to conduct a qualitative phenomenological study to understand the lived experiences of international graduate students from Latin America in the United States as they transition from their studies to finding a full-time job in the United States. The most common themes mentioned in the different sections of the interviews were: the different dynamics in their identity, the benefits, and limitations of their status in the American context, and how their professional development and economy are impacted while being international graduate students from Latin America. Student service departments such as the Career Service department, the International Student Office, and the academic departments were the resources the participants mentioned most in their transition of graduating and looking for a job. Supported by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its branch Latina/o Critical Theory (LatCrit), this research demonstrated that besides their national identity and race, the socio-political situation shapes the opportunities for those students. It is with the hope that the presence and the storytelling of these Latin American international graduate students in the United States become a source of inspiration and education for the educational structures, the American workforce, and the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services for an inclusive and just American society

A scalable reliable instant messenger using the SD Erlang libraries

Erlang has world leading reliability capabilities, but while it scales extremely well within a single node, distributed Erlang has some scalability issues. The Scalable Distributed (SD) Erlang libraries have been designed to address the scalability limitations while preserving the reliability model, and shown to deliver significant performance benefits above 40 hosts using some relatively simple benchmarks. This paper compares the reliability and scalability of SD Erlang and distributed Erlang using an Instant Messaging (IM) server benchmark that is a far more typical Erlang application; a relatively large and sophisticated benchmark; has throughput as the key performance metric; and uses non-trivial reliability mechanisms. We provide a careful reliability evaluation using chaos monkey. The key performance results consider scenarios with and without failures on up to 17 server hosts (272 cores). We show that SD Erlang adds no performance overhead when all nodes are grouped in a single s_group. However, either adding redundant router nodes in distributed Erlang applications, or dividing a set of nodes into small s_groups in SD Erlang applications, have small negative impact. Both the distributed Erlang and SD Erlang IM tolerate failures and, up to the failure rates measured, the failures have no impact on throughput. The IM implementations show that SD Erlang preserves the distributed Erlang reliability properties and mechanisms

A Reliable Instant Messenger in Erlang: Design and Evaluation

This document describes the design and evaluation of two Erlang-based instant messenger systems using Distributed Erlang (D-Erlang) and Scalable Distributed Erlang (SD-Erlang). The purpose of these systems is to serve as real-world benchmarks to test the performance of the SD Erlang library

La MANE como mecanismo legítimo de representación estudiantil

Este articulo muestra el proceso coyuntural de la Mesa Amplia Nacional de Estudiantes, la cual surge como una forma de resistencia estudiantil, en contra de la Reforma que el gobierno Santos propone hacer a la ley 30 de 1992. Esta es la que estructura la educación superior en Colombia. La MANE es un movimiento social de representación estudiantil. Ha logrado legitimidad por el uso de nuevas formas de manifestación pacífica y ganado fuerza a nivel nacional, aumentando sus posibilidades de influir en la política colombiana. Dentro de este movimiento, se dieron dos momentos: el primero ligado a la resistencia estudiantil y el segundo referente a la creación de una nueva propuesta de ley para la educación

Sublethal concentrations of waterborne copper induce cellular stress and cell death in zebrafish embryos and larvae

http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0716-97602011000100002&lng=es&nrm=isoCopper is an essential ion that forms part of the active sites of many proteins. At the same time, an excess of this metal produces free radicals that are toxic for cells and organisms. Fish have been used extensively to study the effects of metals, including copper, present in food or the environment. It has been shown that different metals induce different adaptive responses in adult fish. However, until now, scant information has been available about the responses that are induced by waterborne copper during early life stages of fish. Here, acute toxicity tests and LC50 curves have been generated for zebrafish larvae exposed to dissolved copper sulphate at different concentrations and for different treatment times. We determined that the larvae incorporate and accumulate copper present in the medium in a concentration-dependent manner, resulting in changes in gene expression. Using a transgenic fish line that expresses enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) under the hsp70 promoter, we monitored tissue-specific stress responses to waterborne copper by following expression of the reporter. Furthermore, TUNEL assays revealed which tissues are more susceptible to cell death after exposure to copper. Our results establish a framework for the analysis of whole-organism management of excess external copper in developing aquatic animals

Relational Envelope-based Planning

This thesis proposes a synthesis of logic and probability for solving stochastic sequential decision-making problems. We address two main questions: How can we take advantage of logical structure to speed up planning in a principled way? And, how can probability inform the production of a more robust, yet still compact, policy? We can take as inspiration a mobile robot acting in the world: it is faced with a varied amount ofsensory data and uncertainty in its action outcomes. Or, consider a logistics planning system: it must deliver a large number of objects to the right place at the right time. Many interesting sequential decision-making domains involve large statespaces, large stochastic action sets, and time pressure to act. In this work, we show how structured representations of the environment's dynamics can constrain and speed up the planning process. We start with a problem domain described in a probabilistic logical description language.Our technique is based on, first, identifying the most parsimonious representation that permits solution of the described problem. Next, we take advantage of the structured problem description to dynamically partition the action space into a set of equivalence classes with respect to this minimal representation. The partitioned action space results in fewer distinctactions. This technique can yield significant gains in planning efficiency.Next, we develop an anytime technique to elaborate on this initial plan. Our approach uses the envelope MDP framework, which creates a Markov decision process out of a subset of the possible state space. This strategy lets an agent begin acting quicklywithin a restricted part of the full state space, as informed by the original plan,and to judiciously expand its envelope as resources permit.Finally, we show how the representation space itself can be elaborated within the anytime framework. This approach balances the need to respond to time-pressure and to produce the most robust policies possible. We present experimental results in some synthetic planning domains and in a simulated military logistics domain

Agrobacterium rhizogenes vs auxinic induction for in vitro rhizogenesis of Prosopis chilensis and Nothofagus alpina

The induction and improvement of in vitro rhizogenesis of microshoots of Prosopis chilensis (Mol.) Stuntz and Nothofagus alpina (Poep. et Endl. Oerst.) were compared using Agrobacterium rhizogenes (Ar) versus indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) in the culture media. Microshoots of P. chilensis (1-2 cm length), coming from in vitro grown seedlings, were cultivated in a modified Broadleaved Tree Medium (BTMm) containing half salt concentration of macronutrients and 0.05 mg.L-1 benzilaminopurine (BAP). After 30 days, microshoots with 2-4 leaves were selected and cultured in BTMm-agar in presence or abscense of Ar and in combination with IBA. For N. alpina, the apical shoots with the first 2 true leaves, from 5 weeks old seedlings, were cultured in the abovementioned medium, but with 0.15 mgL-1 of BAP. After 2 months, microshoots with 2-3 leaves were selected and cultured in BTMm-agar, supplemented with 5 mg.L-1 IBA or in liquid BTMm on perlite and, in the presence or absence of A. rhizogenes (Ar) and in combination with 3 mg.L-1 IBA. Rooting in P. chilensis reached 100.0% when Ar infection was produced in the presence of IBA, increasing both, the number and dry weight of roots. In N. alpina, 90.0% of rooting efficiency was obtained when Ar infection was produced in liquid culture and in the absence of auxin.Fil: Caro, Luis Alberto. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; ArgentinaFil: Santecchia, Natalia. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; ArgentinaFil: Marinangeli, Pablo Alejandro. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida; ArgentinaFil: Curvetto, Nestor Raul. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; ArgentinaFil: Hernandez, Luis Francisco. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; Argentin

Design Patterns in Software Maintenance: An Experiment Replication at UPM - Experiences with the RESER'11 Joint Replication Project

Replication of software engineering experiments is crucial for dealing with validity threats to experiments in this area. Even though the empirical software engineering community is aware of the importance of replication, the replication rate is still very low. The RESER'11 Joint Replication Project aims to tackle this problem by simultaneously running a series of several replications of the same experiment. In this article, we report the results of the replication run at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Our results are inconsistent with the original experiment. However, we have identified possible causes for them. We also discuss our experiences (in terms of pros and cons) during the replication

Propuesta de mejoramiento para el sistema de transporte de distribución a nivel nacional del centro de operación logística de Almacafé

Ingeniero (a) IndustrialPregrad

Effective Coping Mechanisms for Caregivers of Dialysis Patients

In the United States, approximately 9 million informal caregivers, such as family and friends, assist other adults with essential activities, and more than 20 million adult Americans in the United States suffer from some level of chronic kidney disease. Research on the burden and satisfaction of caregivers of dialysis patients has focused on patients and caregivers who have been dealing with long-term kidney disease; however, this study addressed patients and their caregivers who were first transitioning from wellness to illness. The main intent of this study was to identify the coping mechanisms of effective caregivers at this point in time. The theoretical framework for this study was Lazarus and Folkmanâs theory of cognitive appraisal, which focused on emotions and how an individual appraises a situation. A total of 128 caregivers completed the survey. A multiple regression analysis, with backward elimination method was used. Results of multiple linear regression analysis showed that the coping skills of being optimistic and emotive manifested by caregivers during the transition from wellness to illness of patients with end-stage renal disease significantly positively predict scores on the physical health domain, as well as the coping skill of being emotive on the psychological domain, and the coping skill of being optimistic on the environment domain. Identifying caregiver coping mechanisms during the initial transition from wellness to illness could contribute to future therapeutic techniques for caregivers; it could also contribute to positive social change in terms of government legislation for caregivers of kidney dialysis patients and in the global community for caregivers of kidney dialysis patient