Waqf in Transition: Tracing Local Institutional Change during the British Mandate in Palestine

The British Mandate’s actions of state-building in Palestine were informed by a Zionist-Western modernist envisioned past of Palestine. This state-building ideology was embedded within much of the bureaucracy of the Mandate’s system and infringed on numerous Palestinian institutions such as Waqf. Waqf was disenfranchised in particular through the implementation of urban development programs, like town planning and archaeological regimes, which sought to support the British-Zionist recasting of Palestine. This thesis aims to show how the British’s ideology of Palestine informed the Mandate’s internal polices and actions which infringed on the rights of waqf. This was done through two axes of inquiry. The first axis analyses the role of British programs and institutions, and I take the example of town planning policies as a site for analysis. I demonstrate that town planning designed by appointed British town planners understood Palestine through a Zionist-Christian lens. This ideological lens was a presumption of the Mandate powers that Palestine was by definition the historical site of the Hebrew/Israeli peoples and thus the proper site of a nation-state building effort for a modern Zionist state. This state-building effort was legitimized within the British official mind in Palestine and more specifically by the Mandate’s Department of Archaeology. The crafting of a historical claim of a national-mythology through collecting ancient artifacts were used by the Department of Archaeology to give credence to the political efforts of the British and Zionist state-building efforts as a means of grounding their modernization mythology of Palestine ought to be the future home of the Jews. This placed the proper procedure of nationalization of the modern state on an ancient historical foundation in which saw that only through the re-injection of that ancient historical foundation a modern state in Palestine could emerge. The second axis of inquiry looks at the specific case study of Jerusalem and selects two episodes of contention. The two episodes show how the state formation process of the Mandate privileged the Zionist-Christian mythology of Palestine over the Palestinian political and social experience prior to the Mandate. The first site of contention is where the Department of Archaeology and the Supreme Muslim Council battled over the defining of the White Minaret in Ramla Palestine. This case shows the privileging of the Zionist-Christian envisioning of the built environment over the legal waqf rights of the Minaret. The second site of contention is situated in the walls of Jerusalem. This site shows how Town Planning schemes, and the Department of Archaeology worked in tandem to restore the city as a Jewish site through the removal of Palestinian built environments on and near the wall. This, again, privileged a Zionist-Christian understanding of Jerusalem over the lived space of Palestinians within Jerusalem

Honors Project

Accounting is an essential function of the operation of all businesses. Accounting is a vital function in the internal operations of all businesses because it is used to manage all monetary transactions. The American Accounting Association defines accounting as, “the process of identifying, measuring, and communicating economic information to permit informed judgments and decisions by the users of the information” (American Accounting Association). In the United States, the market size of the accounting industry as measured by revenue is $110 billion (Statista). For as long as humanity has been participating in trade and the process of buying and selling goods and services, accounting methods have been in use

The Forgotten Unitary Executive Power: The Textualist, Originalist, and Functionalist Opinions Clause

This article will analyze the Opinion Clause’s text, its history and intent, and its potential functions as a power. Part II catalogues much of the prior scholarship on the Opinions Clause, which generally fits into two categories: the anti-unitary approach, which argues that a substantive reading of the Vesting Clause renders the Opinions Clause redundant, and the unitary response, which essentially accepts that redundancy. To some extent, both sides miss the mark. The unitary approach misreads the text, assigning great substantive weight to the descriptive Vesting Clause, while assigning descriptive status to the substantive Opinions Clause. The anti-unitary approach, on the other hand, neglects to analyze the substantive powers of the Opinions Clause and what they mean for the constitutional nature of the presidency. As a result, while anti-unitary scholars are correct in that the Opinions Clause refutes a substantive reading of the Vesting Clause, their position is undermined by their failure to advocate for a definable alternative. This article fills this space. Part III focuses on the text of the Opinions Clause and analyzes its implications for the Presidency. The text vests the president with discretionary power to inform himself of the workings of the entire executive branch. On the other hand, the limited nature of this power suggests that the Constitution does not vest the president with unenumerated powers. For example, the Opinions Clause grants the president the authority to require a principal officer report to him, but it does not grant the president the power to remove that officer. To close this argument, the Opinions Clause and the broader structure of Article II is used to refute the unitary argument that the Vesting Clause fills in any of the gaps in power left by the Opinions Clause. Part IV assigns the Clause its historical significance by analyzing its introduction and adoption at the Philadelphia Convention. Then, it is shown that the Clause serves James Madison’s and the framers’ purpose of the presidency: to be a republican check on a factious legislature. To illustrate, Part V analyzes President Washington’s use of the Opinions Clause to prepare and execute a response to the Whiskey Rebellion. From this historical example, an inference is made of three Opinions Clause powers vested uniquely in the president: the Unitary Political and Legislative Power, the Unitary Judicial Power, and the Unitary Executive Power. These three powers enable the president to protect the executive branch from both legislative and judicial encroachments, garner political support amongst the electorate, and unify the executive branch even in situations where congress has restricted the president’s legal authority. Finally, Part VI examines the recent practices of President Trump through the lens of the Opinions Clause, namely, President Trump’s attempt to use the Opinions Clause for his initial justification for the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. This Part includes the discovery of potentially troubling facts centered around the current President’s actions which tend to compromise the independence of the Department of Justice. In contrast to President Washington, who used the power of the Opinions Clause to further his legislative, judicial, and executive policies in crushing the Whiskey Rebellion, President Trump’s actions suggest a reason the framers granted the president this more limited power—to allow Congress the flexibility to regulate the execution of the law and prevent presidential abuse of power. Additionally, after documenting the evidence as we now know it, this Section turns to the steps congress can take on the basis of the correct reading of Article II. Congress can insulate inferior officers such as the FBI Director from reporting directly to the president, prevent presidents from ordering politically motivated investigations, and protect any officer, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller, from at-will removal

Turbulent flow over a house in a simulated hurricane boundary layer

Every year hurricanes and other extreme wind storms cause billions of dollars in damage worldwide. For residential construction, such failures are usually associated with roofs, which see the largest aerodynamic loading. However, determining aerodynamic loads on different portions of North American houses is complicated by the lack of clear load paths and non-linear load sharing in wood frame roofs. This problem of fluid-structure interaction requires both wind tunnel testing and full-scale structural testing. A series of wind tunnel tests have been performed on a house in a simulated atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), with the resulting wind-induced pressures applied to the full-scale structure. The ABL was simulated for flow over open country terrain where both velocity and turbulence intensity profiles, as well as spectra, were matched with available full scale measurements for this type of terrain. The first set of measurements was 600 simultaneous surface pressure measurements over the entire house. A key feature of the surface pressure field is the occurrence of large, highly non-Gaussian, peak uplift (suctions) on the roof. In order to better understand which flow features cause this, PIV experiments were performed on the wind tunnel model. These experiments were performed with time-resolved PIV (sampling rate of 500 Hz) for a duration of 30 seconds. From the fluid dynamics videos (low- and high-resolution) generated from the PIV data it is clear that strong circulation is generated at the windward edge of the roof. These vortices are eventually shed and convect along the roof. It is the presence of this concentrated circulation which is responsible for the peak loading observed.Comment: Abstract for Gallery of Fluid Motion 2009 in Minneapoli

Development of prokaryotic cell-free systems for synthetic biology

Prokaryotic cell-free systems are currently heavily used for the production of protein that can be otherwise challenging to produce in cells. However, historically cell-free systems were used to explore natural phenomena before the advent of genetic modification and transformation technology. Recently, synthetic biology has seen a resurgence of this historical use of cell-free systems as a prototyping tool of synthetic and natural genetic circuits. For these cell-free systems to be effective prototyping tools, an understanding of cell-free system mechanics must be established that is not purely protein-expression driven. Here we discuss the development of E. coli-based cell-free systems, with an emphasis on documenting published extract and energy preparation methods into a uniform format. We also discuss additional considerations when applying cell-free systems to synthetic biology

Single Nuclei Analyses Reveal Transcriptional Profiles and Marker Genes for Diverse Supraspinal Populations

The mammalian brain contains numerous neurons distributed across forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain that project axons to the lower spinal cord and work in concert to control movement and achieve homeostasis. Extensive work has mapped the anatomic location of supraspinal cell types and continues to establish specific physiological functions. The patterns of gene expression that typify and distinguish these disparate populations, however, are mostly unknown. Here, using adult mice of mixed sex, we combined retrograde labeling of supraspinal cell nuclei with fluorescence-activated nuclei sorting and single-nuclei RNA sequencing analyses to transcriptionally profile neurons that project axons from the brain to lumbar spinal cord. We identified 14 transcriptionally distinct cell types and used a combination of established and newly identified marker genes to assign an anatomic location to each. To validate the putative marker genes, we visualized selected transcripts and confirmed selective expression within lumbar-projecting neurons in discrete supraspinal regions. Finally, we illustrate the potential utility of these data by examining the expression of transcription factors that distinguish different supraspinal cell types and by surveying the expression of receptors for growth and guidance cues that may be present in the spinal cord. Collectively, these data establish transcriptional differences between anatomically defined supraspinal populations, identify a new set of marker genes of use in future experiments, and provide insight into potential differences in cellular and physiological activity across the supraspinal connectome

Strategic Opportunities in Rental Companies and Ridesharing

Given the future of mobility, the increase in online shopping, and the ease of ridesharing, companies need to adapt their network to one that uniquely utilizes their resources to cater to these dramatic changes. The task in this case was to re-image Goodyear’s dealer network and find possible ways to use their excess space to help establish themselves in the future of mobility. The team conducted secondary research on three main topics: retail versus online shopping, Goodyear’s services compared to services needed by Uber and Lyft drivers, and information regarding the current and future status of ridesharing

Information dynamics algorithm for detecting communities in networks

The problem of community detection is relevant in many scientific disciplines, from social science to statistical physics. Given the impact of community detection in many areas, such as psychology and social sciences, we have addressed the issue of modifying existing well performing algorithms by incorporating elements of the domain application fields, i.e. domain-inspired. We have focused on a psychology and social network - inspired approach which may be useful for further strengthening the link between social network studies and mathematics of community detection. Here we introduce a community-detection algorithm derived from the van Dongen's Markov Cluster algorithm (MCL) method by considering networks' nodes as agents capable to take decisions. In this framework we have introduced a memory factor to mimic a typical human behavior such as the oblivion effect. The method is based on information diffusion and it includes a non-linear processing phase. We test our method on two classical community benchmark and on computer generated networks with known community structure. Our approach has three important features: the capacity of detecting overlapping communities, the capability of identifying communities from an individual point of view and the fine tuning the community detectability with respect to prior knowledge of the data. Finally we discuss how to use a Shannon entropy measure for parameter estimation in complex networks.Comment: Submitted to "Communication in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation