Multicultural Narratives: Language as a Site of Struggle for Amazigh Rights Activism in Morocco

The Moroccan constitutional monarchy’s officialization of the Amazigh language in 2011 was its response to a building coalition for Amazigh rights, which simultaneously narrowed and broadened the scope of the Amazigh Rights movement. This study’s purpose was to analyze Tamazight as it has currently manifested in the urban space of Rabat as a site of struggle for Amazigh people. The questions the study attempts to answer are: a) Has the Moroccan government found success in its chosen goal of standardization of the Tamazight language in schools? b) Do Amazigh activists share this same goal? c) Whose needs do the goals of Tamazight standardization include and exclude? If it is true that they have not found success, if the activists agree, and if these goals are not inclusive of the populations, what are the narratives utilized to justify this misaligned mission? The qualitative research to answer this question took the form of ethnographic fieldwork at Amazigh rights protests, IRCAM officials, and associations like AMREC, in order to examine the processes of institutional goal formation. Additionally, by bringing into play the case study of Moul Hanut , the study weaves real narratives through the institutional-level findings, grounding the research. Through twelve interviews with Moroccans from various backgrounds and in various languages (English, Arabic, Tamazight), the study discovers that Amazigh activists and government officials alike utilize different multicultural narratives to justify their narrow aims for the Movement that suit an urban, educated elite. This furthers the urban-rural divide in Amazigh needs and highlights the identities of the spokespeople for the movement. It confirmed that the needs of the Amazigh population are complex and splintered, and that continued research can assist in their cause. However, the gatekeepers of the Amazigh rights movement and Moroccan government ultimately need grounded communication with the people it serves, rather than research that reinforces an informational loop, in order to fully address what facilitates a multicultural society

Women Elementary Principals and Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance (WLB) is a challenge for principals to navigate as the ever-increasing responsibilities require more time. Because time is limited, achieving balance between principals’ workloads and home responsibilities can cause significant stress. Often, women principals face additional challenges because of childcare and household responsibilities. To support principals in their practice and encourage them to enter and persist in the role, better policies and practices should be implemented. By providing more site level staff, fostering a culture where WLB is valued, releasing principals from non-essential obligations, and training principals to prioritize tasks, districts can help mitigate the overload principals experience

Characterization of the Metallohistin cDNA \u3cem\u3eAgNt84 and Pteris vittata\u3c/em\u3e Tissue Culture for Phytoremediation

Contamination of soils with toxic metals such as arsenic and cadmium has become a major environmental and human health risk. Phytoremediation provides a method to remove contaminants from soils that is not only economically viable but also environmentally sound. Metallohistins are proteins that have the capability to bind divalent metal ions such as Ni2+, Zn2+, Co2+, Cu2+ and Cd2+. In this study, a concatemer sequence was designed to try to increase the presence of metal-binding proteins in transgenic plants. Two methods to increase translational efficiency of the metallohistin protein were used: 1) characterization of the full-length metallohistin AgNt84 gene, and 2) construction of three vectors containing different fragments of the AgNt84 cDNA which were transformed into Nicotiana tabacum. The concatemer sequence proved toxic to Escherichia coli cells and could not be cloned into vectors for plant transformation. Explants genetically transformed with vectors containing either the entire AgNt84 cDNA or the 5’ untranslated and coding region of the cDNA recovered from tissue culture. Explants genetically transformed with a vector containing only the coding region of the cDNA produced shoots but not roots in tissue culture, and then became necrotic. Characterization of the transformants is underway. The first exon and portion of the intron of the gene has been sequenced. Phytosensors that can recognize and report the presence of arsenic would provide remediators with a management tool for phytoremediation. A transmission and scanning electron microscopy study of Pteris vittata tissue culture revealed callus formation on epidermal cells of gametophytes, presence of an extracellular matrix on calli, and the formation of croziers during differentiation. Calli induced on semi-solid medium consisted of distinct meristematic nodules. These nodules differentiated randomly, and are unfit for genetic transformation. A new differentiation medium is also described. A preliminary genetic transformation study was successful in creating protoplasts from both Pteris vittata gametophytes and sporophytes, but unsuccessful with biolistic bombardment of calli. Low yields, cellular debris, and autofluorescence exhibited by the protoplasts hampered polyethylene glycol-mediated genetic transformation and detection of transgene expression

Invoking Joyce, Avoiding Imitation: Junot Díaz’s Portrait of Nerds in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

There are several hints in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) that Junot Díaz has been more influenced by the Irish modernist James Joyce than he declares. As a modernist, Joyce emphasized the importance of detachment and disobedience in imagining the ethos of a modern artist. For Joyce, it is significant for an artist to innovate his own language not only because it invites new aesthetic styles but it engenders political resistance to a dominant culture. Joyce’s 1916 novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man provides an exposition of how an aesthetic pursuit coincides with a political rebellion against British imperialism. This study argues that Joyce remains a formidable precursor for Díaz due to the above reasons. Reading Díaz’s 2007 novel alongside Joyce’s 1916 fiction, this study offers textual sites which imply the precursor’s influence on Díaz. In doing so, I seek to demonstrate that Díaz values and inherits literary expectations of Joyce while he modifies certain modes of the precursor. Focusing on the link between Díaz and Joyce can expand our awareness of Díaz, placing a new emphasis on Díaz’s drive for creativity to be acquired through receiving and challenging the precursor

Toward Direct Biosynthesis of Drop-in Ready Biofuels in Plants: Rapid Screening and Functional Genomic Characterization of Plant-derived Advanced Biofuels and Implications for Coproduction in Lignocellulosic Feedstocks

Advanced biofuels that are “drop-in” ready, completely fungible with petroleum fuels, and require minimal infrastructure to process a finished fuel could provide transportation fuels in rural or developing areas. Five oils extracted from Pittosporum resiniferum, Copaifera reticulata, and surrogate oils for Cymbopogon flexuosus, C. martinii, and Dictamnus albus in B20 blends were sent for ASTM International biodiesel testing and run in homogenous charge combustion ignition engines to determine combustion properties and emissions. All oils tested lowered cloud point. Oils derived from Copaifera reticulata also lowered indicated specific fuel consumption and had emissions similar to the ultra-low sulfur diesel control. Characterization of the biosynthetic pathways responsible for the sesquiterpene-rich Copaifera-derived oils could lead to production of these oils in biofuel feedstocks. The Copaifera officinalis transcriptome sequencing, assembly, and annotation identified eight terpene synthase genes in C. officinalis and C. langsdorffii that produced mono- and sesquiterpene products in functional assays. The terpene synthases characterized produced the major fraction of sesquiterpenes identified in C. officinalis leaf, stem, and root tissues as well as the oils tested previously. This initial characterization will support future investigation of sesquiterpene biosynthesis in the Copaifera genus to understand how liters of sesquiterpene oils are produced for biotechnology applications and the mechanism responsible for the geographical biochemical variation seen in sesquiterpene-producing New World species compared to diterpene-producing African species. Lastly, Cymbopogon flexuosus and C. martinii biomass production in small field trials, as well as oil and ethanol yield from biomass were investigated to determine the feasibility of producing the advanced biofuels in lignocellulosic feedstocks. C. flexuosus and C. martinii ethanol yields from biomass were lower than Panicum virgatum, but had an average oil yield of 85.7 kg ha-1 [ha^-1] and 67.0 kg ha-1 [ha^-1], respectively. Combined ethanol and oil value for C. flexuosus and C. martinii were higher than P. virgatum ethanol value. This suggests that the oils from C. flexuosus and C. martinii are more suitable as high-value fermentation coproducts rather than as low-value advanced biofuels. Increasing yield of oil or alternative production schemes could lead to economically feasible advanced biofuel production

The Cosmological Bootstrap: Spinning Correlators from Symmetries and Factorization

We extend the cosmological bootstrap to correlators involving massless particles with spin. In de Sitter space, these correlators are constrained both by symmetries and by locality. In particular, the de Sitter isometries become conformal symmetries on the future boundary of the spacetime, which are reflected in a set of Ward identities that the boundary correlators must satisfy. We solve these Ward identities by acting with weight-shifting operators on scalar seed solutions. Using this weight-shifting approach, we derive three- and four-point correlators of massless spin-1 and spin-2 fields with conformally coupled scalars. Four-point functions arising from tree-level exchange are singular in particular kinematic configurations, and the coefficients of these singularities satisfy certain factorization properties. We show that in many cases these factorization limits fix the structure of the correlators uniquely, without having to solve the conformal Ward identities. The additional constraint of locality for massless spinning particles manifests itself as current conservation on the boundary. We find that the four-point functions only satisfy current conservation if the s, t, and u-channels are related to each other, leading to nontrivial constraints on the couplings between the conserved currents and other operators in the theory. For spin-1 currents this implies charge conservation, while for spin-2 currents we recover the equivalence principle from a purely boundary perspective. For multiple spin-1 fields, we recover the structure of Yang-Mills theory. Finally, we apply our methods to slow-roll inflation and derive a few phenomenologically relevant scalar-tensor three-point functions.Comment: 128 pages, 15 figures; V3: minor corrections and references adde

Nursing, Health and Society in New Delhi, India at Salokya School of Nursing

Cultural immersion and clinical experience in New Delhi, India. Community health outreach initiatives and living the life of a Salokaya nursing student!https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153971/1/NursingHealthandSocietyinNewDelhiIndiaatSalokayaSchoolofNursing.pd