The Economic Impact of the Oso Landslide: A Hedonic Approach

Mass wasting, or landslides, commonly occurs in Washington State, posing risk to individuals residing in the area. The 2014 Oso landslide, the deadliest mass-wasting event in United States history, increased awareness for mass-wasting hazards in western Washington. Studying single-family homes from 2004-2017, this research uses a hedonic property model to measure consumer willingness to pay for a home in a mass-wasting hazard area after the Oso landslide and finds that home values in Snohomish County decreased by 11% after the Oso disaster

Film Review – Amigo (2011)

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The Semantics of Chaos in Tjutčev

In der Reihe Slavistische Beiträge werden vor allem slavistische Dissertationen des deutschsprachigen Raums sowie vereinzelt auch amerikanische, englische und russische publiziert. Darüber hinaus stellt die Reihe ein Forum für Sammelbände und Monographien etablierter Wissenschafter/innen dar

Personal memory and the negotiation of identity : a self portrait

The first section of this paper surveys the differing characteristics of memory, its fragmentary qualities, its constant negotiation within the present, its personalised form and its links to identity-formation and construction. Concepts of continuity, stabilising identity within the present, and their corresponding memory-related problems are discussed. Photographs are looked at in relation to memory as well as for their ability to inform or influence individual identity. References to the multi-faceted information that is unconsciously assimilated from multi-media sources in today's society, and the resultant identity related complexities introduce a more personal outlook on historically specific factors that appear to have destabilised identity. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is briefly introduced from the perspective of recreating one collective national memory and the implicit complexities involved on both a personal and collective level. Section two of the paper establishes the importance of place in the formation of identity and then looks specifically at historical incidents that are relevant to my personal self-consciousness. Zimbabwean land reform issues, political racism and economic problems are presented as occurrences powerful enough to trigger the conscious scrutiny of identity and a personal sense of the past. Travel-related experiences are discussed with issues pertaining to the destabilisation felt when the individual is introduced to "other" discourses or cultures. Exposure to these occurrences, and conjecture surrounding their "ripple effect" on the individual provide the starting point from which to understand the motivation behind my body of practical work. The third section of this paper looks closely at the problems, possibilities and variations involved in making a body of work around the concept of personal memory. The history of etching is briefly discussed, and the method of etching is compared to the recollection process. Finally, the panel of work is presented as a "heritage site" to the viewer, and a form of re-evaluation of identity for the maker. A series of narrative texts are sourced as personal springs that triggered the production of each image, and serve to accompany or enrich the artworks themselves

"A great army of instruction" : American teachers and the negotiation of empire in the Philippines

In the summer of 1901, the United States government began a project of colonial education in the Philippines, sending close to one thousand teachers to the newly-acquired colony. These teachers, called “Thomasites,” were part of a wider justification of empire, which was intimately linked with notions of manly duty, masculine endeavor, and the innate superiority of whiteness. However, all of the American teachers headed for the Philippines, male and female, black and white, engaged with the idea of strenuous living and imperial duty, viewing themselves as personally adventurous, as well as integral members of the imperial project. More so than any other group, these teachers were positioned between the colonial administration and the Filipino people. It was the teachers who were often responsible for implementing colonial policies on the ground and for representing American government and values to Filipinos. Their position as imperial mediators allowed the teachers to create roles for themselves that would not have been possible at home, which both complemented and challenged official visions of empire. Examining these teachers’ negotiations with American officials and Filipinos illuminates the gulf between official policies and the day to day functioning of empire, demonstrating how the implementation of empire on the ground often deviated from the expectations of the colonial state. Rather than construing their experiences as expressions of maternalism – which many scholars argue was the linchpin of women’s Progressive Era politics – white female teachers in the Philippines constructed identities as adventurers, imperial officials and professionals. African American teachers, on the other hand, used their positions within empire to disrupt the linking of civilization and modernity with whiteness. Black teachers argued that their racial sympathy with the Filipino people made them most fit to be benevolent colonizers, and linked racial oppression in the United States to the imperial mission in the Philippines. This dissertation examines how notions of race, gender, and national identity colored quotidian colonial interactions. I argue that these interactions nuance the narrative of American empire and provide deeper understanding of the processes of colonization.Histor

A Pedagological Study Of Intrinsic Motivation In The Classroom Through Autonomy, Mastery, And Purpose

Increasing regulation imposed on education systems at all levels engulfs teaching/learning time and impedes individual pursuits of interest to the learner.  However, by restructuring the way educators approach the classroom, students can be provided an opportunity to explore further and become more successful. This success can be derived by removing extrinsic motivation from the equation, leaving the student to rely on intrinsic motivation through autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Described herein is an experimental Master’s level Educational Psychology course structured and conducted following these guidelines

What does a platypus look like? Generating customized prompts for zero-shot image classification

Open vocabulary models are a promising new paradigm for image classification. Unlike traditional classification models, open vocabulary models classify among any arbitrary set of categories specified with natural language during inference. This natural language, called "prompts", typically consists of a set of hand-written templates (e.g., "a photo of a {}") which are completed with each of the category names. This work introduces a simple method to generate higher accuracy prompts, without using explicit knowledge of the image domain and with far fewer hand-constructed sentences. To achieve this, we combine open vocabulary models with large language models (LLMs) to create Customized Prompts via Language models (CuPL, pronounced "couple"). In particular, we leverage the knowledge contained in LLMs in order to generate many descriptive sentences that are customized for each object category. We find that this straightforward and general approach improves accuracy on a range of zero-shot image classification benchmarks, including over one percentage point gain on ImageNet. Finally, this method requires no additional training and remains completely zero-shot. Code is available at https://github.com/sarahpratt/CuPL