Belize: Decoding the Census

Report on demographic, social, and economic trends in Belize based on the 2010 Census. 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

Peons and Progressives: Race and Boosterism in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1904-1941

The Texas borderlands have come to be increasingly important in the historical literature and in public opinion for the way that the region shapes national thought on race, borders, and ethnicity. With this increasing importance, it is pressing to examine the history of these issues in the region so that they may be accurately and insightfully deployed. This article contributes to the existing scholarship with a close discursive analysis of race in the booster materials, 1904-1941. The booster materials forge a notion of race relations that borrows from tropes common across the West but is also informed by Jim Crow and the unique demands of the region. The booster materials forward a notion of race that is largely unique in Western boosterism, positing only two major characters, Mexicans and white Northerners. The figure of ‘the Mexican’ is drawn more as a part of nature than human society in that it shares the fundamental characteristics of the land, animals, and rivers of the region. Nature in the region is depicted as an adventitious, disorderly, and wasteful body that calls out for northern discipline. The ‘Northerners’ are figured as the ones who, through applying discipline to the natural resources of the area (land, water, and Mexicans) can bring reason, fertility, and profitable connection to the national economy. The consequences of this racial division are further explored in the article as they play out in schooling, religion, justice, beauty, leisure, and sport

A Discussion of Thin Client Technology for Computer Labs

Computer literacy is not negotiable for any professional in an increasingly computerised environment. Educational institutions should be equipped to provide this new basic training for modern life. Accordingly, computer labs are an essential medium for education in almost any field. Computer labs are one of the most popular IT infrastructures for technical training in primary and secondary schools, universities and other educational institutions all over the world. Unfortunately, a computer lab is expensive, in terms of both initial purchase and annual maintenance costs, and especially when we want to run the latest software. Hence, research efforts addressing computer lab efficiency, performance or cost reduction would have a worldwide repercussion. In response to this concern, this paper presents a survey on thin client technology for computer labs in educational environments. Besides setting out the advantages and drawbacks of this technology, we aim to refute false prejudices against thin clients, identifying a set of educational scenarios where thin clients are a better choice and others requiring traditional solutions

"The War for the Fare": How Driver Compensation Affects Bus System Performance

Two systems of bus driver compensation exist in Santiago, Chile. Most drivers are paid per passenger transported, while a second system compensates other drivers with a fixed wage. Compared with fixed-wage drivers, per-passenger drivers have incentives to engage in "La Guerra por el Boleto" ("The War for the Fare"), in which drivers change their driving patterns to compete for passengers. This paper takes advantage of a natural experiment provided by the coexistence of these two compensation schemes on similar routes in the same city. Using data on intervals between bus arrivals, we find that the fixed-wage contract leads to more bunching of buses, and hence longer average passenger wait times. The per-passenger drivers are assisted by a group of independent information intermediaries called "sapos" who earn their living by standing at bus stops, recording arrival times, and selling the information to subsequent drivers who drive past. We find that a typical bus passenger in Santiago waits roughly 10% longer for a bus on a fixed-wage route relative to an incentive-contract route. However, the incentives also lead drivers to drive noticeably more aggressively, causing approximately 67% more accidents per kilometer driven. Our results have implications for the design of incentives in public transportation systems.

Ein hierarchisches Framework für physikalische Mensch-Roboter-Interaktion

Robots are becoming more than machines performing repetitive tasks behind safety fences, and are expected to perform multiple complex tasks and work together with a human. For that purpose, modern robots are commonly built with two main characteristics: a large number of joints to increase their versatility and the capability to feel the environment through torque/force sensors. Controlling such complex robots requires the development of sophisticated frameworks capable of handling multiple tasks. Various frameworks have been proposed in the last years to deal with the redundancy caused by a large number of joints. Those hierarchical frameworks prioritize the achievement of the main task with the whole robot capability, while secondary tasks are performed as well as the remaining mobility allows it. This methodology presents considerable drawbacks in applications requiring that the robot respects constraints imposed by, e.g., safety restrictions or physical limitations. One particular case is unilateral constraints imposed by, e.g., joint or workspace limits. To implement them, task hierarchical frameworks rely on the activation of repulsive potential fields when approaching the limit. The performance of the potential field depends on the configuration and speed of the robot. Additionally, speed limitation is commonly required in collaborative scenarios, but it has been insufficiently treated for torque-controlled robots. With the aim of controlling redundant robots in collaborative scenarios, this thesis proposes a framework that handles multiple tasks under multiple constraints. The robot’s reaction to physical interaction must be intuitive and safe for humans: The robot must not impose high forces on the human or react unexpectedly to external forces. The proposed framework uses novel methods to avoid exceeding position, velocity and acceleration limits in joint and Cartesian spaces. A comparative study is carried out between different redundancy resolution solvers to contrast the diverse approaches used to solve the redundancy problem. Widely used projector-based and quadratic programming-based hierarchical solvers were experimentally analyzed when reacting to external forces. Experiments were performed using an industrial redundant collaborative robot. Results demonstrate that the proposed method to handle unilateral constraints produces a safe and expected reaction in the presence of external forces exerted by humans. The robot does not exceed the given limits, while the tasks performed are prioritized hierarchically

Multivariate regression smoothing through the 'fallling net'.

We consider multivariate regression smoothing through a conditional mean shift procedure. By computing local conditional means iteratively over a set or grid of target points, at each iteration a `net' is formed which gently drifts towards the data cloud, until it settles at the conditional modes of the response distribution. The method is edge-preserving and allows for multi-valued response