Educating Belize: Challenges and Opportunities for the Future

Report on the current state of the Belizean educational system and recommendations for reforms. Written under the auspices of the Bridging Disciplines Programs at The University of Texas at Austin with mentor David V. Gibson of the IC² Institute.IC2 Institut

Nitric oxide and synaptic function

The free radical gas nitric oxide (NO) is a recently identified neuronal messenger that carries out diverse signaling tasks in both the central and peripheral nervous systems. Whereas most neurotransmitters are packaged in synaptic vesicles and secreted in a Ca2+-dependent manner from specialized nerve endings, NO is an unconventional transmitter which is not packaged in vesicles, but rather diffuses from its site of production in the absence of any specialized release machinery. The lack of a requirement for release apparatus raises the possibility that NO can be released from both pre- and postsynaptic neuronal elements. In addition, because NO is gaseous and extremely membrane permeant, it can bypass normal signal transduction routes involving interactions with synaptic membrane receptors. Although the targets of NO have not yet been completely described, it is known that NO can bind to the iron contained in heine groups, leading to conformational changes in associated proteins, such as guanylyl cyclase

A Half-Built House: The Substantial Similarity Analysis Split in Architectural Copyright Infringement Cases

The path to extending copyright protection to architectural works in the United States has not come without its challenges, especially as the federal courts continue to muddle through complicated and varying case law to determine whether architectural works infringement has occurred in a given dispute. Applying a uniform approach to analyze substantial similarity in a way that effectively protects architectural works across the federal circuits is necessary to fulfill the legislative intent and the constitutional intent of copyright protection. Likewise, a uniform approach will clarify the level of copyright protection that architectural works are permitted to receive in the United States. This note argues that courts should implement a “look and feel” test to determine the overall similarity of the architectural works, then separate out unprotectable elements through traditional copyright mechanisms, and compare again to ensure that enough original, copyrightable elements are present to declare the works substantially similar. Applying this multistep approach with an inverse ratio fulfills the legislative intent of the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act as well as the constitutional purposes of copyright protection, and it provides architects with a uniform understanding of how the law will be applied should they need to initiate an infringement actio

Feshbach resonances in ultracold 85Rb-87Rb and 6Li-87Rb mixtures

We present an analysis of experimentally accessible magnetic Feshbach resonances in ultra-cold hetero-nuclear 85Rb-87Rb and 6Li-87Rb mixtures. Using recent experimental measurements of the triplet scattering lengths for 6Li-87Rb and 7Li-87Rb mixtures and Feshbach resonances for one combination of atomic states, we create model potential curves and fine tune them to reproduce the measured resonances and to predict the location of several experimentally relevant resonances in Li-Rb collisions. To model 85Rb-87Rb collisions, we use accurate Rb_2 potentials obtained previously from the analysis of experiments on 87Rb-87Rb collisions. We find resonances that occur at very low magnetic fields, below 10 G, which may be useful for entanglement generation in optical lattices or atom chip magnetic traps.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

“See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Empathy Across Gender Boundaries in James Joyce’s Ulysses

Many critics originally attacked James Joyce’s Ulysses for its dark representation of gender relations. Today, many scholars consider this criticism prematurely formed and recognize that these early critics responded more to Stephen Dedalus’s antagonistic, misogynistic views in the novel’s opening chapters than to the rest of the epic and the views of the novel’s main protagonist, Leopold Bloom, who displays a much more receptive, appreciative attitude toward women. These scholars now believe that gender relations as portrayed in Ulysses actually undermine preconceived notions of a gendered hierarchy. However, this difference in character perspective is not the only or even the most important way that the novel challenges gender hierarchies. In addition to the shift in character perspective, Joyce’s epic also includes a narrative arc that uses sexuality as a metaphor, transforming Bloom’s various sexual encounters–namely those with Gerty MacDowell, Bella Cohen, and Molly Bloom–into a commentary on how intimate sexual interactions between genders can not only potentially help men and women transcend structures and preconceived notions of separation but can also enable greater depth of perception, both empathetically and artistically

Coming out after coming out : the changing trajectory of the coming-out narrative in twenty-first century young adult and new adult texts

LGBTQ+ literature of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has been preoccupied with the personalised politics of coming out of the homosexual closet. Beginning with David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy in 2003, Young Adult and New Adult texts have begun to approach the coming-out narrative with greater scepticism. This thesis seeks to understand the ways in which the coming-out narrative of the twentieth century has changed in the twenty-first century, focusing on Young Adult and New Adult texts. Through an analysis of Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda (2015) by Becky Albertalli, Carry On (2015) and Wayward Son (2019) by Rainbow Rowell, Boy Meets Boy (2003) by David Levithan, the Captive Prince trilogy (2015–2016) by C. S. Pacat and Welcome to Night Vale (2012–present) by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, this thesis addresses the changing nature of the coming-out narrative, its diminishing significance, and some of the ways in which the coming- out narrative’s endurance can be seen as having a deleterious effect on LGBTQ+ people. These contemporary texts examine often displace elements of the coming-out narrative structure onto other categories of difference and propose alternatives to the coming-out narrative. In exploring the possibility of the post-coming-out narrative, this thesis establishes an understanding of the three key elements of any coming-out narrative: secrecy and disclosure, a navigation of a dual insider/outsider status, and the initiator figure. Rather than pose legitimate challenges to the heteronormativity that necessitates LGBTQ+ characters’ comings out, however, contemporary texts such as Carry On and Wayward Son bury their heteronormative assumptions in subtextual elements or displace them onto another category of difference such as vampirism. In leaving heteronormativity and, in some cases, homophobia intact, these texts are ultimately not transformative of the coming-out narrative. Moreover, by sublimating these phobic elements in otherwise anti-phobic texts, this thesis argues that stereotypical and homophobic assumptions about LGBTQ+ people and youth prevail in contemporary fiction

The eschatology of John's gospel and the Johannine epistles

In the Introduction we learned that to think and speak theologically is to think and speak eschatologically.From Chapter I, aside from the many valuable contributions of the individual commentaries, we learned that a critically sound case can be made out for the existence of a Johannine Parousia and eschatology. We also learned that the rigid, stereotyped apocalyptic schema, which can be called a type and to which the Johannine "consummation" corresponds as antitype, is far too unwieldly and undiscriminating to express the fine and spiritual meaning of the Second Advent. If it is objected that a "consummation" is vague and meaningless, it is to be answered that under the Spirit's indwelling tutelage it is, on the contrary, the really meaningful statement of the Parousia, because it is the one that leaves room for the Spirit's explicating what is implicit in the apocalyptic statement. Any [#?#?# #?# #?#?#?] that is too rigid to leave ample room for the Spirit's work of interpreting to the Christian the "future things" (Jo. 16:13) is surely foreign to real Christian eschatology.We discovered in Chapter II, the survey of John's eschatological terms, John's conception of the Gegenwārtigekeit of the [#?#?#?#] is such that it must unquestionably give basic guidance to all our attempts to interpret or define the Parousia or Second Advent. that cumulative meaning for human history the Parousia will have and what form or method the Second Advent may assume are surely questions to be answered only in the Christian heart's continuous and ever-enlarging understanding of the Johannine language about the Coming. and Abiding of Christ in the Holy Spirit. Apocalyptic imagery is the fruit of attempts to understand the meaning to the human order of the final Coming of the Lord. We shall know what to keep of thin fruit if we are living, in the Johannine context because we shall be closer to the True Vine from which all such fruit proceeds. Surely John has taught us how to find the essential meaning of any and all eschatological events still in the distant future: look within to the heart 's. communion with Christ. Christ will mean in the Parousia basically what He means to me now in my heart.The study of christology and. eschatology in Chapter III taught us that the Johannine christology demands the Johannine eschatology. °Only He who is from before the foundation of the world, will be with us in the Father's house in the consummation. Only He who is 'Alpha' can be 'Omega'" (p. 195 above).In the discussion of °Realized and Unrealized Eschatology" of Chapter IV, we found that "a greater realized eschatology in the present makes a greater-unrealized eschatology for the future" ((p. 224 above). "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be" (I John 3:2). "Christian eschatoloy must be "now" and "not yet"!. Johanine eschatology is superbly both!" (p. 225 above).In Chapter V on "The Church and Eschatology" are the following statements: "The Church is at the heart of the eschatological struggle between light and darkness" (p. 230); "The sign of the Parousia is hidden int he midst of the world-wide mission of the Church" (p.236); "... within the basic spirit and message of Christianity and her mission is contained the essential meaning of time, eternity, and human existence" (p. 240); "The humble Church of God holds the key of history. The fact that progress hangs on faith and not on time keeps 'the door of hope open to history as the province of the Divine working'" (p.237)Finally, John's Gospel and Epistles represents an advanced stage of the Christian understanding of eschatology. "'In Jesus the world is confronted by the End. This does not mean that the eschatology of the earlier tradition has been transmuted into an inner, present, spiritual mysticism: it means that the Evangelist judges the heart of Christian eschatology to lie less in the expectation of a second coming on the clouds of heaven than in the historical fact of Jesus, in His words and actions.... " (p. 71 above). Surely John has taught us to use the language of eschatoloIogy cautiously, for the [#?#?#?#] confronts man now in the [#?#?#?#]