The Carceral Death Machine: Savagery, Contamination and Sacrifice in the Contemporary Prison

In this dissertation, I develop a convict epistemology that interweaves two elements: 1) a deep engagement with the works of particular philosophers and scholars investigating questions of punishment, violence, biopolitics and political philosophy 2) with some specific, publicly-reported incidents within California prisons in the late 20th and 21st centuries and my own detailed narration of events and the structural and quotidian dynamics of the prison yard as I experienced them as inmate #K73299 from 1997 to 2005. Diverging from Foucauldian theories of disciplinarity, I argue that under neoliberalism, the primary punishments that any inmate is subjected to within the carceral thresher are in excess of what they were sentenced to endure by the court. Taken together, these extrajuridical punishments constitute a thanatopolitical machinery of forms of state-organized violence that are delegated to inmates and are therefore disavowed and have utterly subsumed the carceral interior. Because this violence is directed at particular, largely racialized populations – the majority of the prison population being Black and Brown - abandonment to the contemporary prison and its thanatopolitical machinery is proto-genocidal. The primary function of the contemporary prison, then, is to actively abandon a largely racialized, rendered superfluous population within a forcefully bounded and statetotalized space to a steered machinery of delegated, proto-genocidal death production. As this thanatopolitical machinery of inmate-on-inmate violence has subsumed the prison yard, I argue that the contemporary prison is the carceral state’s manufacture of an artificial Hobbesian-style state of nature, an always potential war of all-against-all or prison race riot, through the interaction of the four following carceral logics: 1) The imposition of scarcity, 2) atop a forcefully undifferentiated population, 3) that is barred the capacity to flee, or, the state enjoying a monopoly over inmate movement, and 4) within conditions of functional lawlessness. Resultantly, through carceral inscription, each and every inmate is rendered as a “savage,” a less-than-fully-human ontological type, and it is this concept that does sufficient ideological work to anchor normative subjectivity within neoliberalized social space through negation. It is also the prison as artificial state of nature and constitutive boundary that civil society comes to define itself against, both materially and ideologically. Further, as a result of these four foundational carceral logics, inmates are forced to enact or endure daily forms of lesser violence, often as conscious means of forestalling more lethal and larger-scale entropic violence. As disease infects the individual body and undermines it, this violent “savagery” at the gates (prison race riot and lesser forms of violence meant to prevent it) is perceived within the whitesupremacist Hobbesian fantasy anchoring normative subjectivity as threatening the “body politic” with annihilation. Through Roberto Esposito’s immunitarian paradigm, the contemporary prison should be read as a series of recursive quarantines called forth to inoculate civil society from the perceived contagious threat of “violence disease” materialized as largely racialized, inmate bodies. The concept of the less-than-fully-human inmate is thus semantically overloaded with notions of both savagery and contamination then, and daily life within prison for inmates is largely organized by “prison-politics” as prophylactic, epidemiological strategy that guarantees social distance between racialized groupings that stalls out a race riot’s transmissibility as the prison’s very condition of being, And as inmates are articulated as a less-than-fully-human savage/contaminant threats, they are through René Girard’s framework of sacrificial violence to be read as being marginalized from civil society; a sacrificial category of less-than-full-humanness functioning as lightning rod or attractor for all the varied hostilities and insecurities roiling a violently restructured, neoliberalized social space. It is the contemporary prison that allows white supremacist community to cohere through time through the regular displacement of internal antagonisms generated under neoliberalism towards the inmate as sacrificial subject. The prison is a sacrificial stone

Branding Strategies of a Private International School

Demand for international K-12 schools in India is growing, and this is causing competition between them. The purpose of this paper was to explore the branding strategies that private international school leaders in India use to enhance the school brand. Case study method was used where fifteen participants were interviewed from an international school in Southern part of India. Interviews were conducted with five school leaders, five teachers, and five parents using a semi-structured interview method with open-ended questions related to branding strategies. Brand-oriented organizations have internal approaches to developing their brand based on vision, mission, and values. As education is an intangible product, both internal branding and external branding are required to win the trust of parents. Various information technology tools including social media can help to devise personalized communication channels to tell the school’s story to the stakeholders. The inherent limitation with a case study method is that it is not generalizable. Branding as a process has been discussed for higher education institutions but not the K-12 sector, especially from the Indian perspective. The empirical evidence presented in this paper may help K-12 schools, especially in India to understand how to enhance the school brand

The privilege of induction avoidance and calcineurin inhibitors withdrawal in 2 haplotype HLA matched white kidney transplantation

BACKGROUND: White recipients of 2-haplotype HLA-matched living kidney transplants are perceived to be of low immunologic risk. Little is known about the safety of induction avoidance and calcineurin inhibitor withdrawal in these patients. METHODS: We reviewed our experience at a single center and compared it to Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) registry data and only included 2-haplotype HLA-matched white living kidney transplants recipients between 2000 and 2013. RESULTS: There were 56 recipients in a single center (where no induction was given) and 2976 recipients in the OPTN. Among the OPTN recipients, 1285 received no induction, 903 basiliximab, 608 thymoglobulin, and 180 alemtuzumab. First-year acute rejection rates were similar after induction-free transplantation among the center and induced groups nationally. Compared with induction-free transplantation in the national data, there was no decrease in graft failure risk over 13 years with use of basiliximab (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 0.86; confidence interval [CI], 0.68-1.08), Thymoglobulin (aHR, 0.92; CI, 0.7-1.21) or alemtuzumab (aHR, 1.18; CI, 0.72-1.93). Among induction-free recipients at the center, calcineurin inhibitor withdrawal at 1 year (n = 27) did not significantly impact graft failure risk (HR,1.62; CI, 0.38-6.89). CONCLUSIONS: This study may serve as a foundation for further studies to provide personalized, tailored, immunosuppression for this very low-risk population of kidney transplant patients

Comparison of Upper Extremity Function in Women With and Women Without a History of Breast Cancer

Design: This was an observational cross-sectional study. Methods: Women who were diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mean post–surgical treatment time of 51 months (range = 12–336 months) were compared with women who did not have breast cancer (CTRL group). Self-reported upper extremity function using the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (DASH) questionnaire and shoulder range of motion, strength, and muscular endurance were measured. Participants were divided into 3 groups: breast cancer involving the nondominant limb (BC-ND), breast cancer involving the dominant limb (BC-DOM), and CTRL. Results: A total of 59 women in the CTRL group, 23 women in the BC-ND group, and 28 women in the BC-DOM group completed measures. Mean DASH scores in women with breast cancer were higher than those of women in the CTRL group, regardless of the limb on which cancer occurred (Cohen d = 1.13; 95% CI = 2.20 to 16.21) Range of motion for the BC-ND group was significantly less for flexion (Cohen d = 1.19, 95% CI = −13.08 to −0.11) and external rotation (Cohen d = 1.11, 95% CI = −18.62 to −1.98) compared with the CTRL group. Strength in the BC-ND group was 23% to 25% lower in the CTRL group for external (Cohen’s d = 0.89, 95% CI = 0.09 to 0.12) and internal rotation (Cohen d = 0.92, 95% CI = 0.10 to 0.13). Endurance was not significantly different in the 3 groups. Limitations: Some participants had rehabilitation, which may have skewed results. The range of post–surgical treatment times was broad, making it difficult to determine when function returned. Muscular endurance measures demonstrated a ceiling effect and large variance, limiting the ability to distinguish differences among participants. These results may not be generalizable to the subset of women who were treated with lumpectomy, sentinel node biopsy, or chest wall radiation alone or who underwent a contralateral prophylactic mastectomy. Conclusion: In the long term, women with breast cancer have lower self-reported shoulder function than women without breast cancer. Motion and strength are lower among women who have experienced cancer on the nondominant limb

Women Entrepreneurs Need Mentors

As of 2014 United States’ women entrepreneurs own 9.1 million businesses creating the fastest growing business segment. This phenomenological study highlights how women entrepreneurs can learn to be more objective while managing their company through a leadership position. The main themes emerging from the study were the value of a mentorship experience and how a transformational leadership style may help women entrepreneurs grow their businesses and develop personally and professionally. Seventy-five percent of women leaders maintain that mentoring plays an integral part in their career. This study may contribute to positive social change by encouraging women entrepreneurs to establish on-going mentoring relationships

Evaluations of fiber optic sensors for interior applications

This report addresses the testing and evaluation of commercial fiber optic intrusion detection systems in interior applications. The applications include laying optical fiber cable above suspended ceilings to detect removal of ceiling tiles, embedding optical fibers inside a tamper or item monitoring blanket that could be placed over an asset, and installing optical fibers on a door to detect movement or penetration. Detection capability of the fiber optic sensors as well as nuisance and false alarm information were focused on during the evaluation. Fiber optic sensor processing, system components, and system setup are described

Drought resistance across California ecosystems: Evaluating changes in carbon dynamics using satellite imagery

Additional Supporting Information may be found online at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.1561/fullDrought is a global issue that is exacerbated by climate change and increasing anthropogenic water demands. The recent occurrence of drought in California provides an important opportunity to examine drought response across ecosystem classes (forests, shrublands, grasslands, and wetlands), which is essential to understand how climate influences ecosystem structure and function. We quantified ecosystem resistance to drought by comparing changes in satellite-derived estimates of water-use efficiency (WUE = net primary productivity [NPP]/evapotranspiration [ET]) under normal (i.e., baseline) and drought conditions (ΔWUE = WUE2014 − baseline WUE). With this method, areas with increasing WUE under drought conditions are considered more resilient than systems with declining WUE. Baseline WUE varied across California (0.08 to 3.85 g C/mm H2O) and WUE generally increased under severe drought conditions in 2014. Strong correlations between ΔWUE, precipitation, and leaf area index (LAI) indicate that ecosystems with a lower average LAI (i.e., grasslands) also had greater C-uptake rates when water was limiting and higher rates of carbon-uptake efficiency (CUE = NPP/LAI) under drought conditions. We also found that systems with a baseline WUE ≤ 0.4 exhibited a decline in WUE under drought conditions, suggesting that a baseline WUE ≤ 0.4 might be indicative of low drought resistance. Drought severity, precipitation, and WUE were identified as important drivers of shifts in ecosystem classes over the study period. These findings have important implications for understanding climate change effects on primary productivity and C sequestration across ecosystems and how this may influence ecosystem resistance in the future.The authors would like to acknowledge the excellent support provided by the Open Science for Synthesis-2014 training (supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OCI-1216894) at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), a center funded by the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the State of California. The authors would like to thank OSS instructors Nancy Baron, Ben Bolker, Stephanie Hampton, Matthew Jones, Karthik Ram, Mark Schildhauer, and the participants of the OSS training. The authors would also like to thank the Goulden Lab at the University of California Irvines. A. J. Pérez-Luque acknowledges funding received by NCEAS and to MICINN (Spanish Government) for the PTA 2011-6322- I contract; D. P. Drucker acknowledges support from the USAID and the U.S. Department of State through the Sustainable Landscapes Brazil program; and M.G. Tulbure acknowledges funding from the Australian Research Council Early Career Researcher Award (DE140101608)

A Nation-Wide Survey of High School Baseball Coaches’ Perceptions Indicates Their Arm Care Programs Play a Role in Injury Prevention

Background Arm care programs consisting of upper extremity strengthening and stretching have been recommended for injury prevention for pitchers of all ages. There has been no investigation into high school baseball coaches’ usage and perceptions of arm care programs to mitigate physical impairments associated with injuries in baseball players. Hypothesis/Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the current usage of arm care programs by high school baseball coaches. The primary objective was to determine if coaches use group-based or individualized arm care programs. The secondary objective sought to determine if the use of arm care programs is influenced by coaches’ age, education, and experience level. Finally, this study explored the potential barriers to arm care implementation and high school baseball coaches’ current awareness and beliefs of injury prevention. Study Design Descriptive cross-sectional survey Methods A 29-item online survey was emailed to 18,500 high school baseball coaches throughout the United States. Data were collected for three months, and the response rate was 3.7%. Results A total of 87.3% (n=571/654) of responding coaches use arm care programs with their players. Of coaches performing arm care, only 18.5% of 571 individualize their arm care exercises based on specific player needs. However, older and more experienced coaches are more likely to individualize their programs. Among the 12.7% (n=83/654) of coaches who do not use arm care programs, the two most commonly cited reasons for not implementing arm care were lack of observed benefit (41%) and insufficient staff (31%). Although 42% of 654 coaches recognized reduced shoulder mobility as a major contributor to injury, risk factors such as throwing with a fatigued arm, previous injury history, and throwing \u3e 8 months per year were not consistently identified as primary risk factors. Conclusion The results of this study suggest that the majority high school baseball coaches implement group-based arm care exercise programs to prevent injury. Lack of confidence in the effectiveness and staffing limitations were major barriers to implementation of arm care programming. However, the responding coaches exhibited inconsistent risk factor awareness and dated injury prevention beliefs. Therefore, better educational collaboration between rehabilitation professionals and high school coaches regarding injury risk factors and preventative strategies is warranted. Level of Evidence Level