Remaking Resistance: Cultural Meaning and Activism in the SOA Watch Movement

This thesis is an exploration of the symbolic dimensions of activism in the SOA Watch movement, which seeks to close the School of the Americas (SOA), a U.S. training facility for Latin American military and police. Through historical analysis, participant observation, and ethnographic interviews with activists, I examine the practices of activism in the SOA Watch movement and the systems of meaning that inform them. As activists in the movement engage a system of power they seek to change, they construct and locate this system in space and time. By inserting themselves into the history and geography of the SOA through practices of resistance, activists construct and enact their own agency

The distribution of Cat-301 immunoreactivity in the cerebral cortex

The distribution of the monoclonal antibody Cat -301 was examined in the cerebral cortex of macaque monkeys. Throughout the cerebral cortex, Cat -301 labelled the soma and proximal dendrites of a restricted population of neurones. The distribution was uniform within cytoarchitecturally defined areas (or subareas) but varied between them, with respect to the density of labelled neurones, the intensity of their immunoreactivity, their morphology, and their laminar distribution.Large numbers of intensely immunopositive neurones were evident in motor related areas in the frontal lobe, somatosensory areas in the parietal lobe, and areas specialised for the analysis of visual motion in the parietal and occipital lobes. The heavily labelled areas are known to be interconnected, and the Cat -301 positive cells within them were concentrated in the laminae from which their cortico- cortical connections arise. Given the critical role of somatosensory and visuospatial information in the execution of somatic and ocular movements, the heavily labelled areas may be regarded as sharing a broadly motor function.The timing of the expression of the antigen recognised by Cat -301 during development, its peri- synaptic localisation and its biochemical characteristics suggest that it may play a role in the stabilisation of 8 synaptic connections. Cat -301 may label networks of areas with a similar functional specialisation because the antigen plays such a role in relation to the specific interconnections that exist between them

Book Review: Critical Judicial Nominations and Political Change: The Impact of Clarence Thomas. by Christopher E. Smith; Justice Antonin Scalia and the Supreme Court\u27s Conservative Moment. by Christopher E. Smith.

Book review: Critical Judicial Nominations and Political Change: The Impact of Clarence Thomas. By Christopher E. Smith. Westport, Conn: Praeger. 1993. Pp. xii, 172 ; Justice Antonin Scalia and the Supreme Court\u27s Conservative Moment. By Christopher E. Smith. Westport, Conn: Praeger. 1993. Pp. xi, 148. Reviewed by: Kevin T. McGuire

Project HOME: Hydroponic Operations for Mars Exploration

This study considers the challenges NASA, SpaceX, and other private companies will face in the approaching two decades when sending astronauts on missions to Mars. The longest exploration is planned to take place in the 2030\u27s, sending a crew of, at minimum, four astronauts to Mars for a year of research. The research conducted is assisting NASA, SpaceX, and alike companies ways to grow a complete diet on a planet that does not receive enough sunlight. Agriculture in enclosed and buried structures on Mars will enable astronauts to conduct extended surface exploration missions. The researchers evaluated a deep-water culture indoor hydroponics system to grow Moringa oleifera (M. oleifera), a nutrient- and antioxidant-rich plant with leaves containing all nine essential amino acids. After initial aquaponics growth and 3 prior harvests, the lighting intensity was set to 590 W/m^2 in a twelve hour on/off cycle, in normal indoor atmosphere. This simulates an ambient light collection and reflection system on Mars illuminating an insulated, pressurized underground chamber for agriculture. All plants (N = 32) were harvested 17 times over a 9 month period at regular intervals, when plant heights reached an average of 0.9 m. Consumable leaf yield averaged 0.18 dry g per plant per day. Data suggest M. oleifera as a perennial hydroponic crop is possible under reduced illumination, and is a candidate food source for Mars explorers. Preliminary research has expanded to utilizing natural light, five additional plants, three more hydroponic systems, and solar power. Currently a solar powered eight by twelve- foot greenhouse is being used to hydroponically grow Goji Berries, Moringa, Bamboo, Kale, Chia, and Sweet Potatoes. When these foods are combined they contain a complete necessary set of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, fiber, carbohydrates, and nutrients for a balanced human diet. The plants receive 590 W/m^2 by utilizing a shade cloth over the entire greenhouse and the solar panels. In conclusion, the report states that NASA and alike companies will obtain valuable stepping stones in future missions to Mars by maximizing the growth of superfoods with utilization of natural light, and a focus on a hydroponics system as the farming method for space

Genome-wide linkage scan for genes affecting longitudinal trends in systolic blood pressure

Only one genome scan to date has attempted to make use of the longitudinal data available in the Framingham Heart Study, and this attempt yielded evidence of linkage to a gene for mean systolic blood pressure. We show how the additional information available in these longitudinal data can be utilized to examine linkages for not only mean systolic blood pressure (SBP), but also for its trend with age and its variability. Prior to linkage analysis, individuals treated for hypertension were adjusted to account for right-censoring of SBP. Regressions on age were fitted to obtain orthogonal measures of slope, curvature, and residual variance of SBP that were then used as dependent variables in the model-free linkage program SIBPAL. We included mean age, gender, and cohort as covariates in the analysis. To improve power, sibling pairs were weighted for informativity using weights derived from both the marker and trait. The most significant results from our analyses were found on chromosomes 12, 15, and 17 for mean SBP, and chromosome 20 for both SBP slope and curvature

A regression based transmission/disequilibrium test for binary traits: the power of joint tests for linkage and association

BACKGROUND: In this analysis we applied a regression based transmission disequilibrium test to the binary trait presence or absence of Kofendred Personality Disorder in the Genetic Analysis Workshop 14 (GAW14) simulated dataset and determined the power and type I error rate of the method at varying map densities and sample sizes. To conduct this transmission disequilibrium test, the logit transformation was applied to a binary outcome and regressed on an indicator variable for the transmitted allele from informative matings. All 100 replicates from chromosomes 1, 3, 5, and 9 for the Aipotu and the combined Aipotu, Karangar, and Danacaa populations were used at densities of 3, 1, and 0.3 cM. Power and type I error were determined by the number of replicates significant at the 0.05 level. RESULTS: The maximum power to detect linkage and association with the Aipotu population was 93% for chromosome 3 using a 0.3-cM map. For chromosomes 1, 5, and 9 the power was less than 10% at the 3-cM scan and less than 22% for the 0.3-cM map. With the larger sample size, power increased to 38% for chromosome 1, 100% for chromosome 3, 31% for chromosome 5, and 23% for chromosome 9. Type I error was approximately 7%. CONCLUSION: The power of this method is highly dependent on the amount of information in a region. This study suggests that single-point methods are not particularly effective in narrowing a fine-mapping region, particularly when using single-nucleotide polymorphism data and when linkage disequilibrium in the region is variable

Measuring Policy Content on the U.S. Supreme Court

Political scientists have developed increasingly sophisticated understandings of the influences on Supreme Court decision making. Yet, much less attention has been paid to empirical measures of the Court’s ideological output. We develop a theory of the interactions between rational litigants, lower court judges, and Supreme Court justices. We argue that the most common measure of the Supreme Court’s ideological output—whether the Court’s decision is liberal or conservative—suffers from systematic bias. We trace this bias empirically and explain the undesirable consequences it has for empirical analyses of judicial behavior. Specifically, we show that, although the Court’s preferences are positively correlated with the ideological direction of the justices’ decision to reverse a lower court, the attitudes of the justices are negatively related—and significantly so—to the ideological direction of outcomes that affirm lower court decisions. We also offer a solution that allows scholars to work around this ‘‘affirmance bias.’