National Anthem Protests in America

The NFL national anthem protests have divided America. This paper investigates how media portrayals of the protests reflect and likely exacerbate these divisions by analyzing coverage by three major news outlets: FOX, MSNBC and CNN as well as one sports outlet: ESPN. Several transcripts of commentary were sampled from each outlet. The data were coded using qualitative analysis technique employing both open and axial coding. The results show that FOX tended to portray the protests as anti-patriotic; MSNBC and CNN were more inclined to frame the protests in terms of fighting racial injustice. ESPN noted its disappointment over the fact that coverage over the protests tended to fuel political debate, rather than an open discussion about racial divisions and injustices

Endocytic Regulation of Notch Signaling in Drosophila Melanogaster Neural Progenitor Cells

Notch signaling is a ubiquitously used signaling pathway that is highly conserved and used throughout metazoan development. Understanding the regulation of Notch signaling is becoming increasingly important in determining the mechanism and treatment for the myriad of human Notch-related diseases. In Drosophila. melanogaster, the development of external sensory organs provides a context in which Notch can be manipulated and phenotypes can be easily interpreted. Here, we expand upon the growing field of Notch regulation through endocytic trafficking by examining the role of Numb and Sara endosomes. Numb is a potent Notch inhibitor whose function is conserved in higher organisms, but whose mechanism of action has remained elusive. In this study, we dispel a previous hypothesis that Numb promotes Notch internalization and instead demonstrate that Numb is a suppressor of Notch endocytic recycling. In support of this, we show that Numb is necessary and sufficient for Notch trafficking to late endosomes/lysosomes to promote degradation. We do this by employing a novel technique that is able to distinguish recycled Notch from other populations within the cell. In addition, we show that the cell fate determinant Lethal (2) Giant Larvae, can also suppress Notch recycling, but at a step upstream of Numb. Results from this study help to answer a long-standing questions in the field of Notch signaling, by demonstrating the role of Numb in Drosophila. We also extended our investigation of endocytic Notch regulation by determining the role of a sub-population of early endosomes positive for Sara. We show that these Sara endosomes are trafficked preferentially to Notch activated cells, but do not contain appreciable levels of Notch. While we conclude that the Sara endosomes do not seem relevant to Notch signaling, we show that the mechanism of Sara endosome trafficking is likely tied to global anterior-posterior cues and not related to cell fate determinants. Results from our studies have important implications in the designing of treatments for Notch related dysfunctions that depend on an exquisite understanding of Notch regulation

The Codegree, Weak Maximum Likelihood Threshold, and the Gorenstein Property of Hierarchical Models

The codegree of a lattice polytope is the smallest integer dilate that contains a lattice point in the relative interior. The weak maximum likelihood threshold of a statistical model is the smallest number of data points for which there is a non-zero probability that the maximum likelihood estimate exists. The codegree of a marginal polytope is a lower bound on the maximum likelihood threshold of the associated log-linear model, and they are equal when the marginal polytope is normal. We prove a lower bound on the codegree in the case of hierarchical log-linear models and provide a conjectural formula for the codegree in general. As an application, we study when the marginal polytopes of hierarchical models are Gorenstein, including a classification of Gorenstein decomposable models, and a conjectural classification of Gorenstein binary hierarchical models

Anisotropic Diffusion Approximations for Time-dependent Particle Transport.

In this thesis, we develop and numerically test new approximations to time-dependent radiation transport with the goal of obtaining more accurate solutions than the diffusion approximation can generate, yet requiring less computational effort than full transport. The first method is the nascent anisotropic diffusion (AD) approximation, which we extend to time-dependent problems in finite domains; the second is a novel anisotropic P_1-like (AP_1) approximation. These methods are ``anisotropic'' in that, rather than operating under the assumption of linearly anisotropic radiation, they incorporate an arbitrary amount of anisotropy via a transport-calculated diffusion coefficient. This anisotropic diffusion tensor is the second angular moment of a simple, purely absorbing transport problem. In this thesis, much of the computational testing of the new methods is performed in ``flatland'' geometry, a fictional two-dimensional universe that provides a realistic but computationally inexpensive testbed. As work ancillary to anisotropic diffusion and the numerical experiments, a complete description of flatland diffusion, including boundary conditions, is developed. Also, implementation details for both Monte Carlo and S_N transport in flatland are provided. The two new anisotropic methods, along with a ``flux limited'' modification to anisotropic diffusion, are tested in a variety of problems. Some aspects of the theory, including the newly formulated boundary conditions, are tested first with diffusive, steady-state problems. The new methods are compared against existing ones in linear, time-dependent radiation transport problems. Finally, the efficacy and performance of the anisotropic methods are investigated in several thermal radiative transfer (TRT) computational experiments. Our results demonstrate that for many multi-dimensional problems, the new anisotropic methods perform much better than their conventional counterparts. In every time-dependent test, the flux-limited anisotropic diffusion approach produced the most accurate solutions of the new methods. Based on our numerical testing, we believe this method to be a strong contender for accurate, inexpensive simulations of time-dependent transport and thermal radiative transfer problems.Ph.D.Nuclear Engineering & Radiological SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91465/1/sethrj_1.pd

A Design Process Framework to Deal with Non-functional Requirements in Conceptual System Designs

To simultaneously satisfy the user needs and project-specific technical requirements, it is imperative that complex engineering systems are designed using contemporary, systematic approaches. This study presents a framework that combines Axiomatic Design and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process to ensure that designers can concurrently satisfy the functional and non-functional requirements along with the design constraints of conceptual system designs. A conceptual design case of an autonomous battery charging system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is presented as an illustrative case study. The results showed that the approach can aid decision-making processes by systematic evaluation and comparison of conceptual designs such that the selected solutions satisfy user needs whilst also realising both functional and non-functional requirements of the system

BUV Canopy

Design a flexible canopy for the BUV driver for sun protection and light rain protection

Can Capacity Markets Be Designed by Democracy?

Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) are stakeholder-driven organizations where changes to rules or protocols go through a process of stakeholder approval. Based on interviews with PJM stakeholders, we observe the perception that the process is held up by specific coalitions. We use voting data from the PJM stakeholder process and a model of participatory decision-making to assess these stakeholder perceptions, integrated with a model of PJM’s capacity market to address how stakeholder-driven processes can design market constructs that promote reliability. We do observe a strong voting coalition by demand-side interests (electric distribution utilities and large direct-access customers) but not by supply-side interests. In theory, this demand-side coalition can act in a pivotal manner to prevent any rule change from going forward. In the capacity market redesign case in practice, the pivotal or swing participants are more likely a smaller segment of financial market participants, such as hedge funds and banks