From the Church of Disco to Waterfront Ruins: An Analysis of Gay Space

My senior thesis is an analysis of gay space from the late 1970s to 1980s New York, and I’m questioning how themes of private vs. public, accessibility, race, and economic status dictated where one searched for gay self-expression and community in the built environment. In order to understand how queer spaces functioned architecturally and socially, I’ve chosen to research two opposites: The Saint and the west side piers. The former was a private club in New York City from 1980-1988 and was considered to be the “Vatican of Disco” with a planetarium that could hold over a thousand men, two bars, and top of the line sound and lighting systems. As a result of its architectural and technological advancements, the Saint was able to blur reality and manufacture a new dimension of interaction where society\u27s rules didn’t exist at least for a select crowd of wealthy white men. On the other hand, the piers, the democratic ruins of the west side, were open to all: gay, straight, black, white, and they were frequented for sex, drugs, and artistic intervention. The piers weren’t about escaping reality, rather it was a space where one could explore gay identity in the crumbling outskirts of New York by anonymously cruising or sunbathing with friends on the concrete beach. Ultimately, by analyzing these two spaces, I plan to explore the various meanings and forms gay space takes, and consider how spaces like these have been both memorialized and forgotten over time

Reference Dependent Financial Satisfaction over the Course of the Celtic Tiger: A Panel Analysis Utilising the Living in Ireland Survey 1994-2001

The link between income and subjective satisfaction with one’s financial situation is explored in this paper using a panel analysis of 4,000 individuals tracked through the course of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom period, 1994-2001. The impact of the level of individual and household income, the time-path of income and the impact of reference group income on financial satisfaction are all considered. To the extent that income influences financial satisfaction, there is strong evidence from this paper that household income has a greater effect on financial satisfaction than individual income. There is also evidence that changes in income have an independent effect on financial satisfaction with the time derivative of income entering positively in the financial satisfaction equation. Thus, our paper gives further evidence to support the hypothesis that individuals process changes as well as absolute levels of income. While reference group income has a negative effect at the start of the period it has no effect at the end.

Reference Dependent Financial Satification over the Course of the Celtic Tiger : A Panel Analysis Utilising the Living in Ireland Survey 1994-2001

well-being, financial satisfaction, reference-dependency.

Population genetic structure of Antarctic springtails (Collembola) and New Zealand damselflies (Odonata)

Since Darwin (Darwin, 1859), the process of speciation and maintenance of biological diversity has caused intensive debate in the scientific and non-scientific communities alike. The ability to analyze differences in the molecular structure of enzymes and DNA sequences has provided an extremely sensitive tool for investigating gene flow within and among populations, a key facet of the genetic divergence required for speciation to occur. Using such techniques, we are now able to gain a snapshot of the genetic structure of a population and its geographical distribution (Hewitt, 2001) In this way, the phylogeography of species from many environments around the globe have now been studied in fine detail. It has also been possible to generate hypotheses proposing restricted distribution in 'refugia' and subsequent recolonisation after climatic events such as glaciation have occurred. Refugia appear to be particularly important in shaping high latitude biodiversity (Willis & Whittaker, 2000). On such occasions the distribution of different populations may ultimately overlap again at a contact zone, and the species geographical subdivision may provide enough evidence to suggest speciation or the creation of a hybrid zone (Hewitt, 2001 ). In addition, the DNA sequences may yield important information on the evolutionary history, dispersal and taxonomy of various species. Morphologically indistinguishable organisms may be discovered as 'cryptic species', and vice versa, taxa considered to be very different based on observable characteristics can be found to be genetically similar and not reproductively isolated (e.g. Trewick, 2000; Witt & Hebert, 2000). In this way, the genetic diversity within and among closely related species may be determined to a high degree of resolution. In today's climate of human interference and relatively rapid environmental change, it is vital that we appreciate and make full use of the detailed population information available to us. In this way, we may be able to predict and potentially mitigate the consequences of environmental change for organisms by analyzing their evolutionary past. This thesis contains an analysis of molecular data (mtDNA and allozymes) on two arthropod taxa. The thesis consists of two chapters. Chapter I describes the distribution of mitochondrial (mt) DNA haplotypes for the Antarctic springtail Gomphiocephalus hodgsoni (Collembola) in Taylor Valley, southern Victoria Land. The observed distribution was congruent with a hypothesis of multiple refugia during the Pleistocene glaciations and a barrier to gene flow by a glacial lake. Chapter II assesses the genetic variability of the New Zealand damselfly genera (Odonata) from sites throughout the North, South and Chatham islands using both allozyme and mtDNA analyses. All morphologically recognized species were clearly discernible on the basis of both mtDNA and allozymes. However, variability within and among sites was limited for all species, and may have implications from a conservation perspective. The thesis ends with a brief summary section highlighting the main findings contained in the thesis and outlining potential future research directions

BUDGET PERSPECTIVES 2007

1. DISABILITY BENEFIT – CONTROLLED OR UNDER-CONTROLLED? Brenda Gannon p. 3 2. CHILD POVERTY AND CHILD INCOME SUPPORTS: IRELAND IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Tim Callan, Kieran Coleman, Brian Nolan and John Walsh p. 23 3. STATE FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR HORSE RACING IN IRELAND Tony Fahey and Liam Delaney p. 3

A GPU-based Correlator X-engine Implemented on the CHIME Pathfinder

We present the design and implementation of a custom GPU-based compute cluster that provides the correlation X-engine of the CHIME Pathfinder radio telescope. It is among the largest such systems in operation, correlating 32,896 baselines (256 inputs) over 400MHz of radio bandwidth. Making heavy use of consumer-grade parts and a custom software stack, the system was developed at a small fraction of the cost of comparable installations. Unlike existing GPU backends, this system is built around OpenCL kernels running on consumer-level AMD GPUs, taking advantage of low-cost hardware and leveraging packed integer operations to double algorithmic efficiency. The system achieves the required 105TOPS in a 10kW power envelope, making it among the most power-efficient X-engines in use today.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by IEEE ASAP 201

Endoplasmic reticulum stress-mediated upregulation of miR-29a enhances sensitivity to neuronal apoptosis.

Disturbance of homeostasis within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) lumen leads to the accumulation of unfolded and misfolded proteins. This results in the activation of an evolutionary conserved stress response termed ER stress that, if unresolved, induces apoptosis. Previously the Bcl-2 homology domain 3-Only Protein Puma was identified as a mediator of ER stress-induced apoptosis in neurons. In the search of alternative contributors to ER stress-induced apoptosis, a downregulation of the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family protein Mcl-1 was noted during ER stress in both mouse cortical neurons and human SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells. Downregulation of Mcl-1 was associated with an upregulation of microRNA-29a (miR-29a) expression, and subsequent experiments showed that miR-29a targeted the 3\u27-untranslated region of the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family protein, Mcl-1. Inhibition of miR-29a expression using sequence-specific antagomirs or the overexpression of Mcl-1 decreased cell death following tunicamycin treatment, while gene silencing of Mcl-1 increased cell death. miR-29a did not alter the signalling branches of the ER stress response, rather its expression was controlled by the ER stress-induced transcription factor activating-transcription-factor-4 (ATF4). The current data demonstrate that the ATF4-mediated upregulation of miR-29a enhances the sensitivity of neurons to ER stress-induced apoptosis

Calibrating CHIME, A New Radio Interferometer to Probe Dark Energy

The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is a transit interferometer currently being built at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in Penticton, BC, Canada. We will use CHIME to map neutral hydrogen in the frequency range 400 -- 800\,MHz over half of the sky, producing a measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) at redshifts between 0.8 -- 2.5 to probe dark energy. We have deployed a pathfinder version of CHIME that will yield constraints on the BAO power spectrum and provide a test-bed for our calibration scheme. I will discuss the CHIME calibration requirements and describe instrumentation we are developing to meet these requirements

Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Pathfinder

A pathfinder version of CHIME (the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) is currently being commissioned at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in Penticton, BC. The instrument is a hybrid cylindrical interferometer designed to measure the large scale neutral hydrogen power spectrum across the redshift range 0.8 to 2.5. The power spectrum will be used to measure the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale across this poorly probed redshift range where dark energy becomes a significant contributor to the evolution of the Universe. The instrument revives the cylinder design in radio astronomy with a wide field survey as a primary goal. Modern low-noise amplifiers and digital processing remove the necessity for the analog beamforming that characterized previous designs. The Pathfinder consists of two cylinders 37\,m long by 20\,m wide oriented north-south for a total collecting area of 1,500 square meters. The cylinders are stationary with no moving parts, and form a transit instrument with an instantaneous field of view of $\sim$100\,degrees by 1-2\,degrees. Each CHIME Pathfinder cylinder has a feedline with 64 dual polarization feeds placed every $\sim$30\,cm which Nyquist sample the north-south sky over much of the frequency band. The signals from each dual-polarization feed are independently amplified, filtered to 400-800\,MHz, and directly sampled at 800\,MSps using 8 bits. The correlator is an FX design, where the Fourier transform channelization is performed in FPGAs, which are interfaced to a set of GPUs that compute the correlation matrix. The CHIME Pathfinder is a 1/10th scale prototype version of CHIME and is designed to detect the BAO feature and constrain the distance-redshift relation.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures. submitted to Proc. SPIE, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation (2014

Limits on the ultra-bright Fast Radio Burst population from the CHIME Pathfinder

We present results from a new incoherent-beam Fast Radio Burst (FRB) search on the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Pathfinder. Its large instantaneous field of view (FoV) and relative thermal insensitivity allow us to probe the ultra-bright tail of the FRB distribution, and to test a recent claim that this distribution's slope, $\alpha\equiv-\frac{\partial \log N}{\partial \log S}$, is quite small. A 256-input incoherent beamformer was deployed on the CHIME Pathfinder for this purpose. If the FRB distribution were described by a single power-law with $\alpha=0.7$, we would expect an FRB detection every few days, making this the fastest survey on sky at present. We collected 1268 hours of data, amounting to one of the largest exposures of any FRB survey, with over 2.4\,$\times$\,10$^5$\,deg$^2$\,hrs. Having seen no bursts, we have constrained the rate of extremely bright events to $<\!13$\,sky$^{-1}$\,day$^{-1}$ above $\sim$\,220$\sqrt{(\tau/\rm ms)}$ Jy\,ms for $\tau$ between 1.3 and 100\,ms, at 400--800\,MHz. The non-detection also allows us to rule out $\alpha\lesssim0.9$ with 95$\%$ confidence, after marginalizing over uncertainties in the GBT rate at 700--900\,MHz, though we show that for a cosmological population and a large dynamic range in flux density, $\alpha$ is brightness-dependent. Since FRBs now extend to large enough distances that non-Euclidean effects are significant, there is still expected to be a dearth of faint events and relative excess of bright events. Nevertheless we have constrained the allowed number of ultra-intense FRBs. While this does not have significant implications for deeper, large-FoV surveys like full CHIME and APERTIF, it does have important consequences for other wide-field, small dish experiments