The Transfer Equity Program a Plan to Increase Baccalaureate Attainment for Students of Color

The primary goal of a higher education institution is to provide students with a quality education and help them obtain a bachelor’s degree. By earning a bachelor’s degree this provide an opportunity of a social mobility. The racial institutional stratification in higher education continues to be problematic for underrepresented students and their baccalaureate attainment goals. This issue is important to address, for students of color who start at a community college and transfer to a degree granting institution. The project will explain institutional barriers that students of color face in their post- secondary transition. The project will offer specific services and resources to help alleviate transfer barriers

Education policy networks in a comparative perspective: Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain and New Zealand

International initiatives in education, such as PISA and the Bologna Process, have distinctly changed conditions framing domestic policy-making. This paper sheds light on the territorial and modal dispersion of national education policy networks by means of a systematic network analytical description. The focus is on changing patterns of interactions and coalitions between international and national as well as private and public actors. Therefore, we analyse four countries, i.e. Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain and New Zealand, in a comparative perspective. The findings show that in most countries there is indeed an internationalization of education politics taking place in the sense of an increasing participation of international actors. These actors apply a more and more diversified portfolio of governance instruments. At the same time, however, domestic veto players develop a rich set of strategies to cope, compete or collaborate with international actors. -- Internationale Initiativen, wie z.B. der Bologna Prozess oder die PISA-Studien, haben die Rahmenbedingungen nationaler Bildungspolitik grundlegend verändert. In diesem Arbeitspapier wird die Internationalisierung von Bildungspolitik aus netzwerkanalytischer Perspektive beleuchtet. Ziel ist es, den Wandel von Formen politischer Interaktion und Koalitionen zwischen internationalen und nationalen sowie privaten und öffentlichen Akteuren zu beschreiben. Dazu werden Politiknetzwerke in vier Ländern - Deutschland, Schweiz, Großbritannien und Neuseeland - vergleichend analysiert. Anhand der Befunde lässt sich eine Internationalisierung des Politikfelds Bildung erkennen, d.h. internationale Akteure treten im Kontext nationaler politischer Interaktion zunehmend in Erscheinung. Gleichzeitig zeigt sich, dass auch nationale Vetospieler Strategien entwickeln, um dieser neuen Konstellation in der Bildungspolitik zu begegnen.

Hidden horizons in non-relativistic AdS/CFT

We study boundary Green's functions for spacetimes with non-relativistic scaling symmetry. For this class of backgrounds, scalar modes with large transverse momentum, or equivalently low frequency, have an exponentially suppressed imprint on the boundary. We investigate the effect of these modes on holographic two-point functions. We find that the boundary Green's function is generically insensitive to horizon features on small transverse length scales. We explicitly demonstrate this insensitivity for Lifshitz z=2, and then use the WKB approximation to generalize our findings to Lifshitz z>1 and RG flows with a Lifshitz-like region. We also comment on the analogous situation in Schroedinger spacetimes. Finally, we exhibit the analytic properties of the Green's function in these spacetimes.Comment: Abstract and Introduction updated, typos correcte

Für alle Fälle einen Hahn im Kofferraum : die Bedeutung des Brautpreises in Burkina Faso

Menschen mit Geldbeträgen in Verbindung zu setzen, gilt heute in Deutschland als inakzeptabel, ja sogar sittenwidrig. Zwangsheiraten, bei denen auch Brautgeld fließt, werden als Menschenhandel geahndet. Bei den Brautpreisübergaben der Mossi in Burkina Faso gewinnen Geld und Güter jedoch eine symbolische Dimension. Wer von der Suppe isst, die mit dem Salz des Brautpreises gewürzt ist, erkennt das Bündnis zwischen den Brautleuten an. Die sorgfältig vorbereitete Übergabe des Preises etabliert soziale Bande zwischen den Familien und ist zugleich ein Test für den Bräutigam

The changing impact of the AIDS epidemic on older-age parents in the era of ART: Evidence from Thailand

Previous research makes clear that before antiretroviral therapy (ART), when HIV led to disabling illness and certain death, many older persons as parents of infected adults experienced adverse emotional, material and social consequences. The present study examines how widespread access to ART is transforming the situation in Thailand. Interviews with parents of adult ART recipients reveal that major improvements in the health of their adult children under treatment is associated with major reductions in parental caregiving and expenses associated with their HIV-infected child although parents continue to provide psychological support. Parents own worry about their child’s health also declines. Most adult children on ART are able to continue or resume economic activity and many contribute to support of the parental household. ART appears to reduce negative community reaction. Nevertheless, given uncertainty surrounding how long ART can protect against fatal illnesses, whether the adverse impacts of the AIDS epidemic on parents are being eliminated or only postponed remains an open question.pilot sub-grant from the National Institute on Aging grant P30 AG012846Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90420/1/JCCG published arfticle.pd

Universal features of Lifshitz Green's functions from holography

We examine the behavior of the retarded Green's function in theories with Lifshitz scaling symmetry, both through dual gravitational models and a direct field theory approach. In contrast with the case of a relativistic CFT, where the Green's function is fixed (up to normalization) by symmetry, the generic Lifshitz Green's function can a priori depend on an arbitrary function $\mathcal G(\hat\omega)$, where $\hat\omega=\omega/|\vec k|^z$ is the scale-invariant ratio of frequency to wavenumber, with dynamical exponent $z$. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that the imaginary part of the retarded Green's function (i.e. the spectral function) of scalar operators is exponentially suppressed in a window of frequencies near zero. This behavior is universal in all Lifshitz theories without additional constraining symmetries. On the gravity side, this result is robust against higher derivative corrections, while on the field theory side we present two $z=2$ examples where the exponential suppression arises from summing the perturbative expansion to infinite order.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figures, v2: reference added, v3: fixed bug in bibliograph

Conceptualizing Climate Justice In Kivalina

Due to climate change, indigenous communities in Alaska are forced to develop in ways that adversely affect their livelihoods and culture. For example, decreases in sea ice, increases in the frequency of sea storms, and melting permafrost have so accelerated the erosion of one barrier island that an entire village faces relocation. These indigenous communities, which have contributed little to causing climate change, are limited in their ability to adapt. After examining three broad questions about the effects of climate change on indigenous communities, this Article reaches four preliminary conclusion about relocation as a climate adaptation strategy and its relations to climate justice. First, climate-induced impacts are symptomatic of ongoing social-historical processes that produce vulnerability and limit adaptive capacity. Second, by taking these processes into account, climate-induced relocation can benefit from utilizing local, indigenous knowledge and increasing community participation in relocation planning. Third, if relocation is viewed as contributing to community resilience, new opportunities to empower communities and collaborate with state and federal agencies are possible. Finally, reframing relocation as a climate justice issue broadens the discussion to include both its environmental and social-historical drivers

Application of Image Processing in Soil Mechanics

Whenever someone digs a hole in the ground or takes a relaxing walk on the beach, they directly interact with the soil. In its basic form, soil consists of solid, water, and air phases. Unlike water and metals, soil is a particulate media, and the relative proportion of the individual phases significantly influences its physical properties. Various studies have analyzed soil using image processing to determine its morphological properties. Research involving the digital processing of X-ray Computed Tomography (X-ray CT) images of soil to retrieve physically meaningful information is gaining recognition. This study investigates two-dimensional X-ray CT images of unsaturated granular media taken at specific locations on the wetting and drying curves of the soil water characteristic curve (SWCC) determined for the granular media. The images are segmented into three distinct phases of the media through image histogram-based thresholding. The porosity, void ratio, and degree of saturation are evaluated by counting the appropriate pixels for each phase and applying calibrations between pixels and physical dimensions