Choice f micro-mobility: Case studies of ta public bicycle sharing system in New Zealand

This study considers how to improve understanding of sustainable urban transport planning from the perspective of the Central Business District (CBD) redevelopment process for two cities, Hamilton and Christchurch in New Zealand (NZ). The most proportion of ‘Public Bicycle Share Schemes’ operate in densely populated cities as these are characterized by limited modal accessibility but high population density in the urban CBD. This situation is similar to NZ’s two medium-sized cities, in each of which the city’s population density is constantly increasing in the past years. In this study, Multinomial and Mixed Logistic regression models were used to determine the model specification, and subsequently, to test the mode choice cross-elasticities for promoting greater use of the bicycle sharing system in conjunction with public transport service. The data were gathered using stated preference surveys from 486 New Zealanders, and the modeling results indicate that the potential improvement in a modal shift towards micro-mobility, which can be enhanced by applying different policy options

Generalized Video Deblurring for Dynamic Scenes

Several state-of-the-art video deblurring methods are based on a strong assumption that the captured scenes are static. These methods fail to deblur blurry videos in dynamic scenes. We propose a video deblurring method to deal with general blurs inherent in dynamic scenes, contrary to other methods. To handle locally varying and general blurs caused by various sources, such as camera shake, moving objects, and depth variation in a scene, we approximate pixel-wise kernel with bidirectional optical flows. Therefore, we propose a single energy model that simultaneously estimates optical flows and latent frames to solve our deblurring problem. We also provide a framework and efficient solvers to optimize the energy model. By minimizing the proposed energy function, we achieve significant improvements in removing blurs and estimating accurate optical flows in blurry frames. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in real and challenging videos that state-of-the-art methods fail in either deblurring or optical flow estimation.Comment: CVPR 2015 ora

Study of Circulating Tumor Cells using Microfluidic Technology: From Isolation to Analysis

An intimidating aspect of cancer is its ability to spread out to distant organs causing 90% of cancer-associated deaths. This metastatic progression is driven by circulating tumor cells (CTCs) shed from the primary tumor into bloodstream of carcinoma patients. As a result, CTCs hold great promise as a potential biomarker in areas of cancer diagnosis, monitoring, and evaluation of therapeutic efficacy for personalized medicine, which can serve as surrogate for invasive tissue biopsy. However, theses cells are extremely rare with a frequency of only 1-10 cells surrounded by billions of normal blood cells in 1mL of blood. This thesis delineates the shortcomings of existing CTC isolation methods followed by development and implementation of new microfluidic-based platforms to improve the sensitivity, specificity, and throughput for CTC enrichment. First, an affinity-based CTC isolation chip is introduced incorporating functional graphene oxide for high-density tumor specific antibody presentation. The two-dimensional surface-capture approach shows an overall CTC capture efficiency of >82.3% for flow rates up to 3mL/hr, while maintaining high viability (>90%) from low shear stress generated during sample processing. The extremely low blood cell contamination rate in the order of 100 cells/mL enables subsequent downstream analysis of CTCs. The clinical validity of the chip is demonstrated in a cohort of 47 metastatic breast cancer patients. Second, a size based CTC isolation chip is presented utilizing the inertial force effects to isolate CTCs by differentially focusing. Channel design parameters including the height, width, and radius of curvature and flow conditions are investigated to observe their effect on particle/cell focusing and streak migration. Optimal flow regimes to achieve maximum separation of 10/20 μm particles, representing leukocytes and CTCs respectively, in various channel configurations are identified. Based on these results, a cascaded spiral chip is designed for label-free CTC isolation achieving 87.76% recovery rate with 97.91% leukocyte depletion. Finally, a catheter based in-vivo CTC isolation system is implemented for large blood volume CTC screening. The system includes a dual lumen catheter to connect the patient blood veins, a peristaltic pump for continuous blood sampling, heparin injector to prevent blood clogging and clotting, and a CTC capture module.PHDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138501/1/tztaebo_1.pd

Culture Matters: Cultural Differences in the Reporting of Employment Discrimination Claims

Why don’t reasonable people complain about discrimination? Behavioral science evidence points to structural barriers, like the fear of retaliation and the lack of sociocultural power in the workplace, that discourage employees from reporting. By not reporting perceived discriminatory or harassing conduct, the employee not only underutilizes Title VII’s administrative scheme—which was created precisely to remedy and deter such conduct—but also incurs a heavy litigative cost in employer liability suits. This Article claims that for certain minority groups, namely Asian Americans, certain cultural differences significantly heighten those structural barriers and consequently leave them underprotected in the legal system. The Article locates the cultural differences in two dimensions of cultural diversity—collectivism and particularism—and a Confucian philosophical norm. Ultimately, it asks and addresses whether the law should accommodate these differences or whether the ethnic minority should accommodate, and thereby assimilate to, the legal norm. It concludes that courts should, as with certain gender differences, consider cultural differences when assessing the reasonableness of the employee’s actions in employer liability suits

Rethinking Review Standards in Asylum

Factual findings drive asylum adjudication. If immigration judges get them wrong, they risk sending refugees back to persecution. Recent studies have exposed an immigration agency that is prone to inaccurate and ill-considered fact-finding due to its structural problems. Without the political will or the financial capital necessary to fix what many acknowledge as a compromised system of adjudication, the agency may continue to render decisions that cast doubt on its capability and expertise. With an agency either unable or unwilling to ensure an accurate and fair fact-finding process, the first meaningful review of an asylum applicant’s claim happens at the federal courts of appeals, where judges continue to affirm the agency’s decisions under a most deferential understanding of the substantial evidence standard of review. This Article exposes that anomaly and articulates an understanding of the substantial evidence standard that allows reviewing judges more latitude to consider the capabilities and credibility of the agency when they assess agency findings of fact. It argues that, in light of the agency’s severe under-resourcing problems, judges should review the agency’s factual findings less deferentially and exercise their discretion to remand decisions back to the agency if they lack confidence in the accuracy and fairness of the fact-finding process. The price to pay for not doing so is the risk of sending an individual to persecution

Deportation Deadline

Deadlines regulate nearly all facets of life. In U.S. law, deadlines control the timeliness of a claim in the forms of statutes of limitations and common law doctrines such as laches. In nearly all areas of the law, whether involving claims brought by private actors or the government, and in both criminal and civil contexts, an expiration date cuts off a plaintiff’s right to assert a claim. No such deadline exists, however, for immigration enforcement actions. The U.S. government can deport immigrants for offenses after decades have passed. As a result, millions of long-term, otherwise law-abiding and productive individuals participating and residing in communities across this nation live under an indefinite threat of deportation for conduct that may have happened decades ago. This Article exposes and examines this procedural anomaly between immigration and non-immigration law, which is yet another aspect of U.S. immigration law that makes it exceptional precisely because of the subject it regulates— noncitizens. In this Article, I frame the argument for nuanced deportation deadlines by drawing on comparative insights from other areas of the law, where statutes of limitations represent the legal norm, and import these insights into the immigration enforcement context. I locate the precedent for a deportation deadline in the early immigration statutes enacted at the turn of the century and in the historical remnants of that approach in the traces of mercy that animate the current immigration statute. Finally, I outline how a statute of limitations could be realized in the deportation context, and, in the process, propose time limitations on deportations as an important strategy for integrating long-term undocumented immigrants into U.S. society

Immigrant Passing

The metaphor of America as a melting-pot is as old as this country\u27s founding. In its aspirational reach and inclusive vision, this storied narrative is alluring. This assimilationist norm is deeply woven into our culture and laws. But the demand to assimilate can easily cross the ine into unlawful discrimination and exact untold harms on an individual\u27s identity For over eleven million undocumented immgrants in the United States, many of whom have lived here for generations, the story of inclusion smacks of fiction. To remedy their daily fear of deportation and obviate the need to hide, the Obama Administration enacted, through executive action, two landmark programs to defer deportation for specific parents of undocumented children and youths who came to the United States as children. While legal and interdisciplnary scholars have debated the merits of these executive actions within legislative, jurisprudential, and political contexts, this Article does something very different: it exposes an emergent link between assimilation and discrimination by examining undocumented status as a stigma. It argues that the current legal and cultural norms pose passing demands on the lves of undocumented imngrants that drive them into a life ofhiding. It theorizes the Obama Administration\u27s deferred action programs as an anti-passing measure that seeks to challenge what is a de facto passing regime in immigration enforcement. This Article situates undocumented status within the broader antidiscrimination and civil rights discourse and thereby sheds new light on an unexamined aspect of the deferred action programs

Impacto de las actividades de lenguaje motivacional en la motivación de los maestros novatos de inglés: Una perspectiva de la teoría de la actividad

The study aims to explore the influence of languaging on novice English teachers’ motivation and to investigate the uniqueness of each English teacher’s reactions to motivational languaging activities (MLAs) from an Activity Theory (AT) perspective. Three novice English teachers at secondary schools in South Korea were interviewed using questions based on an AT framework, and they completed six sets of MLAs consisting of two parts: motivation and languaging. Our findings indicated that the two relatively motivated teachers could use MLAs to develop their ideal teacher identity and improve their teaching confidence. By participating in MLAs, a demotivated teacher can reshape her thoughts regarding teaching and motivate herself again. It has also been shown that MLAs can mediate participation in an imaginary teacher community, possibly leading to enhancement of L2 teacher motivation, but that this also might not occur depending on one’s teacher agency. (143 words)El estudio tiene como objetivo explorar la influencia del lenguaje en la motivación de los profesores de inglés novatos e investigar la singularidad de las reacciones de cada profesor de inglés a las actividades de lenguaje motivacional (MLAs) desde una perspectiva de la teoría de la actividad (AT). Se entrevistó a tres profesores de inglés novatos de escuelas secundarias en Corea del Sur con preguntas basadas en un marco de AT, y completaron seis conjuntos de MLAs que constan de dos partes: motivación y lenguaje. Nuestros hallazgos indicaron que los dos maestros relativamente motivados podrían usar los MLAs para recuperar su identidad de maestro ideal y mejorar su confianza en la enseñanza. Al participar en los MLAs, una maestra desmotivada podría remodelar sus pensamientos con respecto a la enseñanza y motivarse nuevamente. También se ha demostrado que los MLAs podrían mediar en la participación en una comunidad de maestros imaginaria, lo que posiblemente conduce a una mejora en la motivación del maestro de L2, pero esto no ocurriría dependiendo de la agencia de maestros de uno

Effect of ferromagnetic contacts on spin accumulation in an all-metallic lateral spin-valve system: Semiclassical spin drift-diffusion equations

We study the effect of the ferromagnetic (FM) contacts on the spin accumulation in the lateral spin valve system for the collinear magnetization configurations. When an additional FM electrode is introduced in the all-metallic lateral spin-valve system, we find that the transresistance can be fractionally suppressed or very weakly influenced depending on the position of the additional FM electrode, and relative magnitudes of contact resistance and the bulk resistance defined over the spin diffusion length. Nonlocal spin signals such as nonlocal voltage drop and leakage spin currents are independent of the magnetization orientation of the additional FM electrode. Even when the additional contact is nonmagnetic, nonlocal spin signals can be changed by the spin current leaking into the nonmagnetic electrode.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, revised versio