Corruption and Democracy in Latin America

Summary This essay examines the recent incidence of corruption as an issue in Latin American politics. It suggests that the process of democratization may have made corruption more pronounced. It concludes that Latin American democracy is more formal than substantive and that efforts to diminish corruption will not succeed until democracy is significantly deepened

Performing Tourism: Maya Women\u27s Strategies

Walter Little is assistant professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany and codirector of Oxlajuj Aj, Tulane University’s Kaqchikel Language and Culture class in Guatemala. He has conducted fieldwork among Maya handicrafts producers and vendors since 1992 on issues related to tourism, gender roles, and identity performance, and this research is the subject of his book, Mayas in the Marketplace: Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity (Austin: University of Texas, 2004)

Alien Registration- Little, Walter R. (Wade, Aroostook County)

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Common Origins/ Different Identities in Two Kaqchikel Maya Towns

Kaqchikel Maya residents of San Antonio Aguas Calientes and Santa Catarina Barahona (neighboring towns in Guatemala) tell the same origin story. This story is used to root historically their concepts of collective identity and community. However, residents in each town hold that those in the other town have no real claim to the story. Both towns can equally claim this origin story, but the debate between residents of these towns offers an opportunity to discuss how the meaning of place is related to the historical and ethnographic contexts of which that place\u27s residents are part. By weighing the story and residents\u27 explanations about why it is theirs against previous historical accounts, I show that Spanish colonialism, religious evangelism, economic competition, and development contributed to divisions between the towns and skewed their concepts of origin

Home as a Place of Exhibition and Performance: Mayan Household Transformations in Guatemala

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala, has been incorporated into transnational movements of people, commodities, and ideas through tourism, development, and religious evangelism. The Kaqchikel Mayas living there have long looked outward from their community as they embraced, ignored, or criticized these global flows. Contemporary Kaqchikel Mayas have incorporated these global flows into the organization and maintenance of their households, while giving them a local interpretation. Some families have made their homes a place to enact their culture through exhibitions and performances for tourists. Such performances are indicative of the strategies increasingly used by Kaqchikel women, where the private household/ domestic sphere becomes public and also part of the global. These enactments have changed the economic and social organization of the household in terms of gender relations

Too Tired to Think Outside the Box? An Analysis of Ego Depletion\u27s Effects on Creativity

Recent research suggests that complex tasks that require self-control to complete, such as strenuous tests or complicated decisions, put a strain on the limited resource known as the ego. The ego is thought to be a kind of mental energy reserve that can be depleted with use. Previous studies have shown that, not only is it possible to deplete the ego, but this depletion leads to poor performance on various later tasks involving skills such as decision making, cognitive extrapolation, reasoning, and self-control. Two models in particular have gained support recently: the resource model –involving blood glucose– and the trade-off model – involving distribution of attention. Because both creativity and the ego are thought to be biologically based and because cognitive flexibility, which has been shown to be highly correlated with creativity, seems to require a fairly high level of processing like other processes on which ego depletion has been shown to have a negative effect, it is reasonable to suggest that ego depletion would cause a decrease in creativity as well

Mayanists’ Methods and Tradition Discourses: Research and the Politics of Maya Language and Cultural Practice

This essay reviews the following works: The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas. Edited by Karen Bassie-Sweet, with Robert M. Laughlin, Nicholas A. Hopkins, and Andrés Brizuela Casimir. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 251. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806147024. Wellness beyond Words: Maya Compositions of Speech and Silence in Medical Care. By T. S. Harvey. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 256.$55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826352736. Maya Market Women: Power and Tradition in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala. By S. Ashley Kistler. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 160. $44.68 paperback. ISBN: 9780252079887. Southern Eastern Huastec Narratives: A Trilingual Edition. Translated and edited by Ana Kondic. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 197.$24.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806151809. Indigenous Bodies, Maya Minds: Religion and Modernity in a Transnational K’iche’ Community. By C. James MacKenzie. Boulder: University Press of Colorado; Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, 2016. Pp. ix + 368. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781607325567. Songs That Make the Road Dance: Courtship and Fertility Music of the Tz’utujil Maya. By Linda O’Brien-Rothe. Forewords by Allen J. Christenson and Sandra L. Orellana. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 244.$72.93 paperback. ISBN: 9781477305386. Language and Ethnicity among the K’ichee’ Maya. By Sergio Romero. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 123. $50.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781607813972

Error Propagation Analysis in the SAE Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) and the EDICT Tool Framework

This report documents the capabilities of the EDICT tools for error modeling and error propagation analysis when operating with models defined in the Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL). We discuss our experience using the EDICT error analysis capabilities on a model of the Scalable Processor-Independent Design for Enhanced Reliability (SPIDER) architecture that uses the Reliable Optical Bus (ROBUS). Based on these experiences we draw some initial conclusions about model based design techniques for error modeling and analysis of highly reliable computing architectures

Following the messenger: Recent innovations in live cell single molecule fluorescence imaging

Messenger RNAs (mRNAs) convey genetic information from the DNA genome to proteins and thus lie at the heart of gene expression and regulation of all cellular activities. Live cell single molecule tracking tools enable the investigation of mRNA trafficking, translation and degradation within the complex environment of the cell and in real time. Over the last 5 years, nearly all tools within the mRNA tracking toolbox have been improved to achieve high‐quality multi‐color tracking in live cells. For example, the bacteriophage‐derived MS2‐MCP system has been improved to facilitate cloning and achieve better signal‐to‐noise ratio, while the newer PP7‐PCP system now allows for orthogonal tracking of a second mRNA or mRNA region. The coming of age of epitope‐tagging technologies, such as the SunTag, MoonTag and Frankenbody, enables monitoring the translation of single mRNA molecules. Furthermore, the portfolio of fluorogenic RNA aptamers has been expanded to improve cellular stability and achieve a higher fluorescence “turn‐on” signal upon fluorogen binding. Finally, microinjection‐based tools have been shown to be able to track multiple RNAs with only small fluorescent appendages and to track mRNAs together with their interacting partners. We systematically review and compare the advantages, disadvantages and demonstrated applications in discovering new RNA biology of this refined, expanding toolbox. Finally, we discuss developments expected in the near future based on the limitations of the current methods.This article is categorized under:RNA Export and Localization > RNA LocalizationRNA Structure and Dynamics > RNA Structure, Dynamics, and ChemistryRNA Interactions with Proteins and Other Molecules > RNA–Protein ComplexesTools for the intracellular visualization of mRNA metabolism and function.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155943/1/wrna1587_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155943/2/wrna1587.pd

Assessing Music Perception in Young Children: Evidence for and Psychometric Features of the M-Factor

Given the relationship between language acquisition and music processing, musical perception (MP) skills have been proposed as a tool for early diagnosis of speech and language difficulties; therefore, a psychometric instrument is needed to assess music perception in children under 10 years of age, a crucial period in neurodevelopment. We created a set of 80 musical stimuli encompassing seven domains of music perception to inform perception of tonal, atonal, and modal stimuli, in a random sample of 1006 children, 6–13 years of age, equally distributed from first to fifth grades, from 14 schools (38% private schools) in So Paulo State. The underlying model was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. A model encompassing seven orthogonal specific domains (contour, loudness, scale, timbre, duration, pitch, and meter) and one general music perception factor, the “m-factor,” showed excellent fit indices. The m-factor, previously hypothesized in the literature but never formally tested, explains 93% of the reliable variance in measurement, while only 3.9% of the reliable variance could be attributed to the multidimensionality caused by the specific domains. The 80 items showed no differential item functioning based on sex, age, or enrolment in public vs. private school, demonstrating the important psychometric feature of invariance. Like Charles Spearman's g-factor of intelligence, the m-factor is robust and reliable. It provides a convenient measure of auditory stimulus apprehension that does not rely on verbal information, offering a new opportunity to probe biological and psychological relationships with music perception phenomena and the etiologies of speech and language disorders