Madre Patria (Mother Country): Latino Identity and Rejections of Blackness

When I was in third grade, in Puerto Rico, I wanted to be the Virgin Mary for the community Christmas celebration. A teacher promptly informed me that the mother of Christ could not be black. A girl with blonde hair and blue eyes was selected for the role, and I was given the role of a shepherd. In middle school, also in Puerto Rico, I played a house servant for a school play. Only children of black heritage played the slaves and servants. A white student with a painted face portrayed the only significant black character. All the other characters were white. I learned then that nonwhite persons could not be anyone or anything representative of the nation\u27s greatness but could only serve as servants and slaves to the great white leaders. In this essay, I explore racism among Latinos both in Latin America and the United States, with particular reference to black Latino women, the Latinegras

Reduction of Dilute Ising Spin Glasses

The recently proposed reduction method for diluted spin glasses is investigated in depth. In particular, the Edwards-Anderson model with \pm J and Gaussian bond disorder on hyper-cubic lattices in d=2, 3, and 4 is studied for a range of bond dilutions. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of using bond dilution to elucidate low-temperature properties of Ising spin glasses, and provide a starting point to enhance the methods used in reduction. Based on that, a greedy heuristic call ``Dominant Bond Reduction'' is introduced and explored.Comment: 10 pages, revtex, final version, find related material at http://www.physics.emory.edu/faculty/boettcher

The phase diagram of L\'evy spin glasses

We study the L\'evy spin-glass model with the replica and the cavity method. In this model each spin interacts through a finite number of strong bonds and an infinite number of weak bonds. This hybrid behaviour of L\'evy spin glasses becomes transparent in our solution: the local field contains a part propagating along a backbone of strong bonds and a Gaussian noise term due to weak bonds. Our method allows to determine the complete replica symmetric phase diagram, the replica symmetry breaking line and the entropy. The results are compared with simulations and previous calculations using a Gaussian ansatz for the distribution of fields.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Interaction between episodic and semantic memory networks in the acquisition and consolidation of novel spoken words

When a novel word is learned, its memory representation is thought to undergo a process of consolidation and integration. In this study, we tested whether the neural representations of novel words change as a function of consolidation by observing brain activation patterns just after learning and again after a delay of one week. Words learned with meanings were remembered better than those learned without meanings. Both episodic (hippocampus-dependent) and semantic (dependent on distributed neocortical areas) memory systems were utilised during recognition of the novel words. The extent to which the two systems were involved changed as a function of time and the amount of associated information, with more involvement of both systems for the meaningful words than for the form-only words after the one-week delay. These results suggest that the reason the meaningful words were remembered better is that their retrieval can benefit more from these two complementary memory system

Manic Depressive Disorder (Bipolar Disorder) and its effect on the family unit

Bipolar affective disorder can mean many years of pain, confusion and loneliness for sufferers. This can also be said to be true for their families. Most relatives develop a fixed set of attitudes ranging from supportive, whatever the circumstances, to the persistently critical and hostile. It is not possible to know if the latter may be a trait or the outcome of a developmental process, but the complexity of these emotions would have some significance in the relapse, and on the family unit as a whole. This study focuses on how family members are affected by living with bipolar disorder sufferers. It is based on relative studies of schizophrenia (The Nithsdale Schizophrenia Surveys 1993, McCreadie et al). Aspects examined include: relationships, practical management, emotional support care given to relatives suffering from bipolar disorder on relative's own health, the extreme difficulty that people with the illness experience in learning from life, and the significance of stress for relatives, both financial and social. The study uses in-depth interviewing and questionnaires methodology to measure the emotions, attitudes and feelings of relatives living closely with the sufferers, and the social consequences on the family unit. The results show that the high-EE (Expressed Emotion) critical families, when the sufferers and relatives are in conflict there is a prolonged and escalating "mutual" negativity. It makes no distinction as to the originators of the negative sequence. Furthermore, in contrast to work on EE or affective style, the results indicate that in low-EE families there is an actively supportive attitude to the sufferers. This parallel is present in the study, but the findings also stress the need for the sufferers to be supporting of their carers. The cases of relapse show that the sufferers and the carers play at least an equal part in the negative inter-action associated with relapse

THE IMPACT OF BANK-SPECIFIC FACTORS ON NON-PERFORMING LOAN IN INDONESIA: EVIDENCE FROM ARDL MODEL APPROACH

Non-performing Loan (NPL) is an indicator that is generally used to determine the ability of bank management to manage non-performing loans. This study aims to analyze the impact of bank-specific factors on NPL. The bank-specific factors are Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR), Return on Assets (ROA), Operating Expenses on Operating Income (BOPO), and Loan to Deposit Ratio (LDR). The data used is monthly time series data, a case study on Commercial Banks in Indonesia from January 2015 to August 2020. The model used to analyze these problems is Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL). The results obtained are ARDL(1,6,0,1,1) model is the best model. The model shows that bank-specific factors have a direct impact on NPL. Specifically, the ARDL bounds test offers the analysis results, which show that the ability of bank-specific factors to explain the NPL of commercial banks in Indonesia is 84%. At the same time, 16% are other factors outside the model. The analysis results show a long-run cointegration relationship between NPL and specific characteristics, CAR, ROA, and BOPO. Then, only CAR, BOPO, and LDR impact NPL in the short-run relationship. The equilibrium correction obtained is significant and confirms a long-run relationship. The equilibrium correction indicates a high velocity towards stability after a shock. It means that the performance of Commercial Banks in Indonesia is outstanding during the COVID-19 Pandemic because the ability to recover from shock is relatively faste

Relative Properties of Smooth Terminating Bands

The relative properties of smooth terminating bands observed in the A~110 mass region are studied within the effective alignment approach. Theoretical values of $i_{eff}$ are calculated using the configuration-dependent shell-correction model with the cranked Nilsson potential. Reasonable agreement with experiment shows that previous interpretations of these bands are consistent with the present study. Contrary to the case of superdeformed bands, the effective alignments of these bands deviate significantly from the pure single-particle alignments of the corresponding orbitals. This indicates that in the case of smooth terminating bands, the effects associated with changes in equilibrium deformations contribute significantly to the effective alignment.Comment: 15 pages, 8 PostScript figures, RevTex, uses 'epsf', submitted to Nucl. Phys.

Terahertz superlattice parametric oscillator

We report a GaAs/AlAs superlattice parametric oscillator. It was pumped by a microwave field (power few mW) and produced 3rd harmonic radiation (frequency near 300 GHz). The nonlinearity of the active superlattice was due to Bragg reflections of conduction electrons at the superlattice planes. A theory of the nonlinearity indicates that parametric oscillation should be possible up to frequencies above 10 THz. The active superlattice may be the object of further studies of predicted extraordinary nonlinearities for THz fields.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Stand Characteristics and Leaf Litter Composition of a Dry Forest Hectare in Santa Rosa National Park, Costa Rica

One hectare of tropical dry forest in Guanacaste Conservation Area, Costa Rica was mapped and all trees larger than 10 cm diameter at breast height (DBH) identified. The same hectare was sampled for leaf litter and the two data sets, forest and litter, were compared. Dominant and subdominant species of the forest are represented in the leaf litter, whereas rare tree species are highly variable in their representation in the leaf litter. Relative abundance of dominant and subdominant tree species is represented well by the litter although absolute rank-order is nor identical between source forest basal area and leaf litter mass. The litter adds a significant component to the source forest data owing to the presence of vines and lianas, and more rarely small trees or shrubs. This indicates that litter studies may be able to add depth to forest diversity surveys. The source forest also was used to test foliar physiognomic reconstructions of climate that have been proposed recently by paleobotanists as an alternative to taxonomic affinities methods. The observed climate of the area does not conform to the climatic values that were predicted by application of these new methods. RESUMEN Una hectÁrea de bosque seco tropical en el Area de ConservaciÓn de Guanacaste, Costa Rica fue mapeada, y todos los Árboles mayores de 10 cm de dap fueron identificados. En la misma hectÁrea, se tomaron muestras de hojarasca y los dos colecciones de datos. bosque y hojarasca, fueron comparadas. Se encontrÓ que las especies dominantes y subdominantes del bosque estaban representadas en las muestras de hojarasca, mientras que la presencia de especias arbÓreas raras en las muestras de mojarasca fue muy variable. La abundancia relativa de especies arbÓreas dominantesestÁ bien representada en la hojarasca aunque el Área basal del bosque de origen y la masa de hojarasca no heron idÉnticos en rangos absolutos. La hojarasca aÑade un componente significativo a los datos del bosque de origen debido a la presencia de bejucos y lianas en la hojarasca, y mÁs raramente Árboles pequeÑos y arbustos. Estos datos indican que los estudios de hojarasca pueden incrementar la precisiÓn de las estimaciones de la diversidad de los bosques. El bosque de origen fue usado tarnbien para examinar reconstrucciones del clima basados en la fisiognomia foliar recientemenre propuesras por paleobotÁnicas como una alternativa a mÉtodos de afinidad raxonÓmicas. El clima observado en el Área no corresponde con los valores climÁticos que fueron predecidos por la aplicaciÓn de estos nuevos mÉtodos.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73234/1/j.1744-7429.1997.tb00034.x.pd