Proceedings of the Conference on Globalization and Its Discontents

Increasing globalization and free trade agreements have generated a number of controversies. One significant issue is the potential conflict between free trade and ethical standards. While free trade in theory need not be antithetical to ethical standards, as defined in practice by major trade organizations free trade conflicts with national ethical standards for issues such as labor standards, environmental impact, and animal welfare. The concerns of trade organizations on this issue have some merit. However, the one-sided position of trade organizations is both flawed and politically unsustainable. A balance must be achieved between legitimate ethical issues and minimizing trade barriers. Guidelines or principles are presented for how trade organizations can balance legitimate ethical issues against free trade considerations. In addition, it is argued that the provision of information valued by consumers should be allowed as a matter of general principle. In fact, the rather than information provision being a trade barrier, the prohibition of information provision is in fact a trade barrier.globalization, free trade agreements, ethical standards, ethics

Jack D. Forbes and the Search for a Decolonizing Philosophy of Education

This study seeks to explicate and advance contemporary deimperial and decolonial philosophies of education through a reflexive archival inquiry and comparative textual analysis of the corpus of California Indian educational leader (Renape/Lenape) Jack Douglas Forbes (Jan. 7, 1934-Feb. 23, 2011). This study looks across Forbes lifetime at the development of his conception of education and peoplehood-nationhood, his critique of imperialism and colonialism, and finally his development and advocacy for decolonizing-deimperializing forms of education. I will describe his growth as an Indigenous scholar-warrior reading and writing across diverse types of data sources, or as I name all throughout this study as “texts”. This study synthesizes and critiques Forbes critical textual voice through comparative analysis of 25 collected speeches and interviews, as well as 75 core education focused texts among his more than 555 published works and thousands of records held in over 260 boxes at UC Davis Special Collections. Forbes contributions to the above themes are found in nearly all of the texts studied, and who provides a rich analysis and nuanced philosophy of education to meet the needs of Native Nations while combating a growing globalizing, imperial condition

Deronda and the Tigress: Judaism, Buddhism, and Universal Compassion In George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda

Many scholars have discussed Judaism and the ethics of George Eliot in Daniel Deronda, but few have explored the impact of Buddhism upon the novel. This thesis is the first study to demonstrate the influence of Buddhism upon George Eliot\u27s fiction. By tracing Eliot\u27s interest in the emerging field of comparative religion, I argue that Buddhism offered Eliot a unique religion that was compatible with her secular humanism. Although Buddhism appears explicitly in Deronda in only a few instances, I contend that Eliot uses the tradition of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalism as the predominant theology in Deronda because it contains many affinities with Buddhism, most notably the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Mordecai interprets the transmigration of souls as a teleological justification for Jewish nationalism, but I assert that for Eliot, the transmigration of souls challenges national boundaries and instead promotes a universal compassion that extends to all cultures. I argue that Eliot employs many voices of Jewish dissent in Deronda to illustrate the difficulty of reconciling cultural heritage with universal compassion strictly in terms of Judaism, and then I draw upon a metaphor in which Eliot compares Deronda to the Buddha to suggest that Deronda and his mission to re-establish Israel are antithetical to Eliot\u27s vision of universal compassion. Chapter one reviews Deronda scholarship about Judaism, including work by Edward Said, Amanda Anderson, and Nancy Henry. This chapter reads these scholars in terms of particular Eliot letters, notes, and moments in Deronda and Impressions of Theophrastus Such and asserts that Jewish nationalism in Deronda precludes universal compassion. Chapter two chronicles Eliot\u27s adoption of secular humanism and then argues that Buddhism offers both the cultural solidarity that Eliot prizes in Judaism as well as the universal compassion inherent in Eliot\u27s secular humanism. The conclusion of this thesis asserts that the renunciation of the ego in Buddhism attracts Eliot, and it proposes that contextualizing Deronda in terms of Eliot\u27s conceptions of Buddhism helps resolve some of the tension between Judaism and compassion in the novel

An Investigation of The Plant Growth Promoting Abilities of Pseudomonas Fluorescens UW4 Under Toxic Metal Stress

I investigated plant-microbe-metal interactions under metal stress. In theory, plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) promote plant growth by reducing stress ethylene and synthesizing indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). The putative PGPR Pseudomonas fluorescens UW4 and a mutant strain that lacked an enzyme critical to the reduction of plant ethylene were studied to determine if they could promote Arabidopsis thaliana growth under cadmium and copper stress conditions. Both strains of P. fluorescens UW4 adhered to roots and synthesized IAA, and the wild-type lowered metal stress-induced ethylene in Arabidopsis, but neither strain enhanced plant growth. Wildtype P. fluorescens UW4 and its mutant had no effect on altering the concentrations of other plant stress hormones with the exception of salicylic acid under copper stress. More work is needed to determine why P. fluorescens UW4 did not promote growth under metal stress conditions before it can be utilized in agricultural settings

Thermal Recovery of Multi-Limbed Robots with Electric Actuators

The problem of finding thermally minimizing configurations of a humanoid robot to recover its actuators from unsafe thermal states is addressed. A first-order, data-driven, effort based, thermal model of the robots actuators is devised, which is used to predict future thermal states. Given this predictive capability, a map between configurations and future temperatures is formulated to find what configurations, subject to valid contact constraints, can be taken now to minimize future thermal states. Effectively, this approach is a realization of a contact-constrained thermal inverse-kinematics (IK) process. Experimental validation of the proposed approach is performed on the NASA Valkyrie robot hardware

Academic Perspectives on Agribusiness: An International Survey

The IFAMR is published by (IFAMA) the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review. www.ifama.orgpromotion and tenure, agribusiness, teaching, grantsmanship, research, Agribusiness, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Productivity Analysis, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession, Q130,

Genetic interactions contribute less than additive effects to quantitative trait variation in yeast.

Genetic mapping studies of quantitative traits typically focus on detecting loci that contribute additively to trait variation. Genetic interactions are often proposed as a contributing factor to trait variation, but the relative contribution of interactions to trait variation is a subject of debate. Here we use a very large cross between two yeast strains to accurately estimate the fraction of phenotypic variance due to pairwise QTL-QTL interactions for 20 quantitative traits. We find that this fraction is 9% on average, substantially less than the contribution of additive QTL (43%). Statistically significant QTL-QTL pairs typically have small individual effect sizes, but collectively explain 40% of the pairwise interaction variance. We show that pairwise interaction variance is largely explained by pairs of loci at least one of which has a significant additive effect. These results refine our understanding of the genetic architecture of quantitative traits and help guide future mapping studies