We Have Something to Say: Ideas and Mobilization in the Migrant Solidarity Movement

Despite the existence of strong anti-immigrant sentiments across the United States, a movement in solidarity with undocumented migrants has emerged in southern Arizona and other heavily traveled border regions. Based on participatory research with the organization No More Deaths / No Mas Muertes, this thesis works towards an understanding of the ways in which this migrant solidarity movement reframes migration within a highly oppositional ideational space. My research suggests that, when examining movements that strongly reject accepted viewpoints, it is important to understand framing not only through analysis that examines a movement or organization as a whole, but also to focus attention the ways individuals build worldviews and make personal decisions to act as part of an oppositional movement. Engaging with literature on social movement framing of contentious issues, I propose the concept of a personal framing process through which individuals in the migrant solidarity movement explain and justify their actions

Regulating Urban Belonging: China\u27s Hukou System as Intra-national Bordering Process

In China\u27s urban metropoles, the hukou system of household registration regulates one of the largest movements of people in human history. While rural-urban migrations are reshaping societies worldwide, the migrants who make up a great portion of urban China\u27s low-wage labor force and burgeoning population face unique legal and social challenges. Although the trajectories of their migration do not cross international boundaries, most are legally prevented from ever gaining the within China\u27s hukou system of household registration. The functions of this system parallel those of national citizenship policies, and are difficult to explain through standard conceptions of sovereignty and national citizenship. Extending recent work in border studies that thinks of borders in dimensions that go beyond the line itself, this thesis argues that national borders and national citizenship should not be considered as the exclusive sites from which bordering processes emanate. Instead, I argue that citizenship and bordering processes can both take place apart from the norms of nation-state territory. Based on a series of qualitative interviews conducted in Shanghai and Anhui province, this article examines the structure and effects of the hukou system as it regulates legal inclusion and exclusion of migrant workers

Redundancy reduction in motor control

Research in machine learning and neuroscience has made remarkable progress by investigating statistical redundancy in representations of natural environments, but to date much of this work has focused on sensory information like images and sounds. This dissertation explores the notions of redundancy and efficiency in the motor domain, where several different forms of independence exist. The dissertation begins by discussing redundancy at a conceptual level and presents relevant background material. Next, three main branches of original research are described. The first branch consists of a novel control framework for integrating low-bandwidth sensory updates with model uncertainty and action selection for navigating complex, multi-task environments. The second branch of research applies existing machine learning techniques to movement information and explores the mismatch between these methods for extracting independent components and the forms of redundancy that exist in the motor domain. The third branch of work analyzes full-body, goal-directed reaching movements gathered in a novel laboratory experiment, using explicitly measured information about the goal of each movement to uncover patterns in the movement dynamics. Each branch of research explores redundancy reduction in movement from a different perspective, building up a sort of catalog of the types of information present in movements. Redundancy is discussed throughout as an an important aspect of movement in the natural world. The dissertation concludes by summarizing the contributions of these three branches of work, and discussing promising areas for future work spurred by these investigations. More detailed models of voluntary movements hold promise not only for better treatments, improved prosthetics, smoother animations, and more fluid robots, but also as an avenue for scientific insight into the very foundations of cognition.Computer Science

Determination of the reliability of the Gamb\u27s ophthalmometer

The purpose of this study is to report our findings and impressions concerning the reliability of corneal radius readings possible with the Gamb\u27s Ophthalmometer

Detailed Spatially Distributed Geothermal Heat-flow Data for Modeling of Basal Temperatures and Meltwater Production Beneath the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet

Accurate modeling of ice sheets requires proper information on boundary conditions, including the geothermal heat flow (or heat-flow density (HFD)). Traditionally, one uniform HFD value is adopted for the entire modeled domain. We have calculated a distributed, high-resolution HFD dataset for an approximate core area (Sweden and Finland) of the Scandinavian ice sheet, and imbedded this within lower-resolution data published for surrounding regions. Within the Last Glacial Maximum ice margin, HFD varies with a factor of as much as 2.8 (HFD values ranging between 30 and 83mWm–2), with an average of 49mWm–2. This average value is 17% higher than 42mWm–2, a common uniform value used in ice-sheet modeling studies of Fennoscandia. Using this new distributed dataset on HFD, instead of a traditional uniform value of 42mWm–2, yields a 1.4 times larger total basal meltwater production for the last glacial cycle. Furthermore, using the new dataset in high-resolution modeling results in increased spatial thermal gradients at the bed. This enhances and introduces new local and regional effects on basal ice temperatures and melt rates. We observed significant strengthening of local ‘ice streaming’, which in one case correlates to an ice-flow event previously interpreted from geomorphology. Regional to local variations in geothermal heat flow need to be considered for proper identification and treatment of thermal and hydraulic bed conditions, most likely also when studying Laurentide, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets

Resolving uncertainty on the fly: Modeling adaptive driving behavior as active inference

Understanding adaptive human driving behavior, in particular how drivers manage uncertainty, is of key importance for developing simulated human driver models that can be used in the evaluation and development of autonomous vehicles. However, existing traffic psychology models of adaptive driving behavior either lack computational rigor or only address specific scenarios and/or behavioral phenomena. While models developed in the fields of machine learning and robotics can effectively learn adaptive driving behavior from data, due to their black box nature, they offer little or no explanation of the mechanisms underlying the adaptive behavior. Thus, a generalizable, interpretable, computational model of adaptive human driving behavior is still lacking. This paper proposes such a model based on active inference, a behavioral modeling framework originating in computational neuroscience. The model offers a principled solution to how humans trade progress against caution through policy selection based on the single mandate to minimize expected free energy. This casts goal-seeking and information-seeking (uncertainty-resolving) behavior under a single objective function, allowing the model to seamlessly resolve uncertainty as a means to obtain its goals. We apply the model in two apparently disparate driving scenarios that require managing uncertainty, (1) driving past an occluding object and (2) visual time sharing between driving and a secondary task, and show how human-like adaptive driving behavior emerges from the single principle of expected free energy minimization.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figure

Enhanced Endothelin-1 Mediated Vasoconstriction of the Ophthalmic Artery May Exacerbate Retinal Damage after Transient Global Cerebral Ischemia in Rat

Cerebral vasculature is often the target of stroke studies. However, the vasculature supplying the eye might also be affected by ischemia. The aim of the present study was to investigate if the transient global cerebral ischemia (GCI) enhances vascular effect of endothelin-1 (ET-1) and 5-hydroxytryptamine/serotonin (5-HT) on the ophthalmic artery in rats, leading to delayed retinal damage. This was preformed using myography on the ophthalmic artery, coupled with immunohistochemistry and electroretinogram (ERG) to assess the ischemic consequences on the retina. Results showed a significant increase of ET-1 mediated vasoconstriction at 48 hours post ischemia. The retina did not exhibit any morphological changes throughout the study. However, we found an increase of GFAP and vimentin expression at 72 hours and 7 days after ischemia, indicating Müller cell mediated gliosis. ERG revealed significantly decreased function at 72 hours, but recovered almost completely after 7 days. In conclusion, we propose that the increased contractile response via ET-1 receptors in the ophthalmic artery after 48 hours may elicit negative retinal consequences due to a second ischemic period. This may exacerbate retinal damage after ischemia as illustrated by the decreased retinal function and Müller cell activation. The ophthalmic artery and ET-1 mediated vasoconstriction may be a valid and novel therapeutic target after longer periods of ischemic insults