Work and the Post-Crisis: Artistic Representations of Claustrophobic Labor Spaces in Argentina (2001-2011)

This dissertation treats a variety of works of Argentine theater, film, and narrative produced between 2001 and 2011, a historical period that serves as the context for the playwrights, directors, and authors studied in this project, as well as for the characters that they depict through their fictional works of art. Common to each of the artistic representations analyzed is a special emphasis placed on a claustrophobic labor space, which I read as a microcosm for Argentine society. This unique setting represents a space from which to establish a critical reflection of the physical, social, racial, and sexual limitations confronted by Argentine citizens of the post 2001 economic crisis. The decision to focus on the suffocating conditions encountered by these characters represents a strategy employed by artists of recent years in order to highlight the lasting detrimental impact of the economic crisis on the country for a full decade after the climax of said economic downturn, despite moderate socioeconomic and political reforms employed during the Kirchner years (2003-present). Although there is not an easily identifiable political discourse shared by artists and texts treated in this project, the emphasis on the problems faced by Argentina of recent years is no doubt a strategy by which to highlight the failure of the neoliberal system employed by Carlos Menem (1989-1999), which arguably resulted in the current situation, and the inability to construct an alternative system capable of providing the country's citizens (especially of the lower and middle class) with a full socioeconomic recovery from the events of 2001

DEFORESTATION OF CLOUD FOREST IN THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS OF GUATEMALA: SOIL EROSION AND SUSTAINABILITY IMPLICATIONS FOR Q\u27EQCHI\u27 MAYA COMMUNITIES

Understanding the nexus between deforestation, food production, land degradation, and culture contributes knowledge that is useful for development practitioners working to enhance conservation and food security. Documenting deforestation and soil erosion in the Sierra Yalijux and Sierra Sacranix in the Central Highlands of Guatemala adds new knowledge about the rates and dynamics of deforestation and land degradation in areas with unique and sensitive cloud forest ecosystems. It also suggests possible areas of emphasis for efforts targeted at combining cloud forest conservation with sustainability for indigenous Q\u27eqchi\u27 communities. In addition, this work contributes to a small but growing body of literature concerned with human-environment interactions in cloud forests, and demonstrates how a transdisciplinary approach can be used to investigate these interactions. The cloud forest in the Sierra Yalijux and Sierra Sacranix in the Central Highlands of Guatemala is largely unprotected and provides habitat for a wide variety of wildlife and critical ecosystem services for rural communities. A mix of research methods was used to investigate the human-environment interactions between the cloud forest and the Q\u27eqchi\u27 people living in the vicinity, and implications for sustainability. Deforestation patterns and rates for the cloud forest, and impacts on soil erosion, were examined using land use change mapping from remote sensing imagery (Landsat TM, high-resolution digital orthophotos, and digital elevation models) and soil erosion modeling using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation. Contributing factors to deforestation, as well as implications for sustainability of food production and ecosystem services in Q\u27eqchi\u27 communities were investigated using analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from surveys and focus groups in several communities. Annual deforestation rates were highest in the Sierra Yalijux study area, nearly doubling from 0.65 percent/year between 1986 and 1996 to 1.19 percent/year between 1996 and 2006. In the Sierra Sacranix, the annual deforestation rate increased from approximately 0.25 percent/year to 0.81 percent/year, more than tripling between 1986 and 2006. Population increase in Q\u27eqchi\u27 communities is driving land subdivision, which is leading to reduced fallow periods on land already cleared for subsistence farming, and is ultimately leading to increased clearing of cloud forest. Thus deforestation has been caused by expansion of subsistence agriculture in response to increased food demand and increased pressure on land resources, such as soils. Farmers have been gradually clearing cloud forest on increasingly steep slopes in order to cultivate enough land to meet growing food needs. The implications of cloud forest loss are significant for Q\u27eqchi\u27 communities. Farmers rely on the cloud forest for ecosystem services such as organic matter input to enhance soil fertility, potable water availability, and microclimate stability. The Q\u27eqchi\u27 have observed reductions in the input of leaf matter to their agricultural plots, changes in the precipitation regime, and decreased availability of potable water from springs in recent decades, all of which are associated with cloud forest removal. Estimates of soil erosion rates from model calculations show that soil loss is most severe in agricultural areas. Expansion of agriculture was observed in both catchments, and as a result soil loss rates have increased. However the increase of soil loss as a result of deforestation was relatively small compared to the overall contribution from agricultural areas. Simulation results comparing current practices to a soil conservation scenario indicate that support practices such as bench terracing and polyculture would significantly mitigate the most severe soil erosion. These measures accomplish this by reducing slope (terracing) and increasing vegetation cover (polyculture). We anticipate that reducing soil loss through support practices would likely increase soil fertility in the long-term and increase nutrition in Q\u27eqchi\u27 communities through the consumption of a wider variety of crops, which would enhance food security. Reducing the decline of soil fertility in the long run and increasing agricultural intensity through polyculture would also curb pressure on the cloud forest, even as population continues to increase in the region

Canvas Five Year LMS Accreditation Reporting Using Rubrics and Assignments

There is a surprisingly large gap between measuring inputs to a program and outputs from that program. Accreditation requirements have added an increasingly burdensome workload to degree-plan and course administration. The ease with which one can design assignments and their corresponding rubrics does not freely translate to assessing student response to those assignments. The challenge is to deploy assessment tools that are easy to understand, administer, deploy, and learn from. This paper focuses on the assessment of assignments evaluated by detailed rubrics. We describe tools and processes that enable us to examine years of data at a granularity not directly supported by our LMS

A chronology of alluvial fan response to Late Quaternary sea level and climate change, Crete

To better understand how fluvial systems respond to late Quaternary climatic forcing OSL and U-series dating was applied to stratigraphically significant sedimentary units within a small (<6.5 km) alluvial fan system (the Sphakia fan) in southwest Crete. The resultant chronology (comprising 32 OSL and U-series ages) makes Sphakia fan one of the best dated systems in the Mediterranean and suggests that Cretan fans responded to climate in two ways. First, during the transitions between Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5a/4 and MIS 2/1 Sphakia fan was characterised by significant entrenchment and distal shift in the zone of deposition. It is proposed that the phases of entrenchment were driven by sea level induced base level fall during MIS 5a/4 and landscape stabilisation during the onset of the current interglacial (MIS 2/1). Second, with the exception of these two entrenchment episodes fan alluviation occurred across the entire last interglacial/glacial cycle in all climatic settings i.e. interglacials, interstadials and stadials. It is likely that the topographic setting of the catchment supplying sediment to Sphakia fan maintained high sediment transfer rates during most climatic settings enabling fan aggradation to occur except during major climatic driven transitions i.e. major sea level fall and postglacial vegetation development.N/

A qualitative study exploring the factors influencing admission to hospital from the emergency department

Objective: The number of emergency admissions to hospital in England and Wales has risen sharply in recent years and is a matter of concern to clinicians, policy makers and patients alike. However, the factors that influence this decision are poorly understood. We aimed to ascertain how non-clinical factors can affect hospital admission rates. Method: We conducted semistructured interviews with 21 participants from three acute hospital trusts. Participants included 11 emergency department (ED) doctors, 3 ED nurses, 3 managers and 4 inpatient doctors. A range of seniority was represented among these roles. Interview questions were developed from key themes identified in a theoretical framework developed by the authors to explain admission decision-making. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed by two independent researchers using framework analysis. Findings: Departmental factors such as busyness, time of day and levels of senior support were identified as non-clinical influences on a decision to admit rather than discharge patients. The 4-hour waiting time target, while overall seen as positive, was described as influencing decisions around patient admission, independent of clinical need. Factors external to the hospital such as a patient’s social support and community follow-up were universally considered powerful influences on admission. Lastly, the culture within the ED was described as having a strong influence (either negatively or positively) on the decision to admit patients. Conclusion: Multiple factors were identified which go some way to explaining marked variation in admission rates observed between different EDs. Many of these factors require further inquiry through quantitative research in order to understand their influence further

A simplified correction method for thermocouple disturbance errors in solids

When a thermocouple is embedded in a material of lower thermal conductivity, under certain heating or cooling conditions, the presence of the thermocouple can distort the surrounding temperature field. As a result, the measured temperatures may be very different to the ‘undisturbed’ temperatures that would exist without the thermocouple. This study presents the results of a sensitivity analysis of key factors influencing this thermal disturbance. A series of heat transfer models and accompanying experiments are used to demonstrate the effects of thermocouple geometry, contact conditions, thermal properties, and heating regime on the temperature measurement error. These tailored finite element models were validated against experiments on vermiculite insulation board, which confirmed the accuracy of the models in simulating the thermal disturbance for inert heating conditions. Also, a simplified version of the finite element model was used to calculate the thermal disturbance error for a number of conditions, and subsequently to predict a range of corrected temperatures for the experimental measurements. This correction method was found to greatly improve the accuracy of the results for inert heating conditions. Since the method does not account for the effects of moisture in heat transfer, a creep of uncorrected errors could be observed

New olenelline trilobites from the Northwest Territories, Canada, and the phylogenetic placement of Judomia absita

This is the author's accepted manuscript, the published version is available here http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2011/f/z02918p028f.pdfThe Early Cambrian olenelline trilobites are a diverse clade that have been the subject of several phylogenetic analyses. Here, three new species of Bradyfallotaspis Fritz, 1972 (B. coriae, B. nicolascagei, and B. sekwiensis) and one new species of Nevadia Walcott, 1910 (N. saupeae) are described from the Sekwi Formation of the Mackenzie Mountains, Northwest Territories, Canada. In addition, new specimens potentially referable to Nevadia ovalis were recovered that may expand that species’ geographic range, which was thought to be restricted to Sonora, Mexico. A phylogenetic analysis incorporating several olenelline taxa, including Judomia absita from the Sekwi Formation, is also presented herein. This species has been assigned to various olenelline genera, including Judomia Lermontova, 1951 and Paranevadella Palmer & Repina, 1993. Phylogenetic analysis suggests this species is closely related to Judomia tera Lazarenko, 1960 from Siberia. This phylogenetic relationship provides further support for the hypothesis that a close biogeographic relationship existed between Laurentia and Siberia during the Cambrian

Scattering error corrections for in situ absorption and attenuation measurements

Monte Carlo simulations are used to establish a weighting function that describes the collection of angular scattering for the WETLabs AC-9 reflecting tube absorption meter. The equivalent weighting function for the AC-9 attenuation sensor is found to be well approximated by a binary step function with photons scattered between zero and the collection half-width angle contributing to the scattering error and photons scattered at larger angles making zero contribution. A new scattering error correction procedure is developed that accounts for scattering collection artifacts in both absorption and attenuation measurements. The new correction method does not assume zero absorption in the near infrared (NIR), does not assume a wavelength independent scattering phase function, but does require simultaneous measurements of spectrally matched particulate backscattering. The new method is based on an iterative approach that assumes that the scattering phase function can be adequately modeled from estimates of particulate backscattering ratio and Fournier-Forand phase functions. It is applied to sets of in situ data representative of clear ocean water, moderately turbid coastal water and highly turbid coastal water. Initial results suggest significantly higher levels of attenuation and absorption than those obtained using previously published scattering error correction procedures. Scattering signals from each correction procedure have similar magnitudes but significant differences in spectral distribution are observed