Left of Maidan: Self-Organization and the Ukrainian State on the Edge of Europe

This dissertation examines the intersection of processes of Europeanization and decommunization in Ukraine during a time of war and upheaval. Through the lens of leftist and feminist activists, it explores how political action was renegotiated during and after the mass mobilizations of 2013-2014, known as Euromaidan or Maidan. I use the concept of “self-organization” to consider ways these activists have engaged with a dominant national ideology, which draws from specific political ideas about Europe and communism. I trace how self-organization has roots within socialist-era political forms, how it was enacted during the Maidan mobilizations, and its path since the end of the protests and the onset of war in Ukraine’s eastern regions. In the dissertation, I consider the relationship between self-organization and neoliberalism, as this latter force has permeated activist discourses. I use three specific ethnographic examples from participant observation with leftist and feminist activists to make these arguments. During the Maidan period and after, I consider the ways leftist activists organized volunteer-based initiatives in order to engage during the protests without using violence and without supporting right-wing national ideologies. Second, I use the example of education-based activism to understand how the leftist student population made criticisms of state institutions that they integrated into the broader anti-state protests of Maidan. Finally, I examine how feminist activists’ views of Europe widely diverged from those of the majority of protesters on Maidan, and I follow how these feminists—like leftists—reconfigured their own participation through self-organization. Together, these elements provide both an ethnographic analysis of this significant moment of disorder and a lens onto a more complex understanding of the relationship between the state and political action. More specifically, examining how marginalized groups participated in this form of collective political action has led me to determine that these protests have reformulated people’s expectations of their governing regimes and their notions of what political participation can and should achieve. I conclude, ultimately, that this reformulation has great bearing on the future of Ukraine’s relationship with its more dominant neighbors—namely, Russia and the European Union

Narrative language competence in children and adolescents with Down syndrome

This study was designed to examine the narrative language abilities of children and adolescents with Down syndrome in comparison to same-age peers with fragile X syndrome and younger typically developing children matched by nonverbal cognitive ability levels. Participants produced narrative retells from a wordless picture book. Narratives were analyzed at the macrostructural (i.e., their internal episodic structure) and the microstructural (i.e., rate of use of specific word categories) levels. Mean length of utterance, a microstructural metric of syntactic complexity, was used as a control variable. Participants with Down syndrome produced fewer episodic elements in their narratives (i.e., their narratives were less fully realized) than the typically developing participants, although mean length of utterance differences accounted for the macrostructural differences between participant groups. At the microstructural level, participants with Down syndrome displayed a lower rate of verb use than the groups with fragile X syndrome and typical development, even after accounting for mean length of utterance. These findings reflect both similarities and differences between individuals with Down syndrome or fragile X syndrome and contribute to our understanding of the language phenotype of Down syndrome. Implications for interventions to promote language development and academic achievement are discussed

Eocene to Miocene Magnetostratigraphy, Biostratigraphy, and Chemostratigraphy at ODP Site 1090 (Sub-Antarctic South Atlantic)

At Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 1090 (lat 42854.89S, long 8854.09E) locatedin a water depth of 3702 m on the Agulhas Ridge in the sub-Antarctic South Atlantic, ~300 m of middle Eocene to middle Miocenesediments were recovered with the advancedpiston corer (APC) and the extendedcore barrel (XCB). U-channel samplesfrom the 70–230 meters composite depth(mcd) interval provide a magnetic polaritystratigraphy that is extended to 380 mcd byshipboard whole-core and discrete sampledata. The magnetostratigraphy can be interpretedby the fit of the polarity-zone patternto the geomagnetic polarity time scale(GPTS) augmented by isotope data andbioevents with documented correlation tothe GPTS. Three normal-polarity subchrons(C5Dr.1n, C7Ar.1n, and C13r.1n),not included in the standard GPTS, are recordedat Site 1090. The base of the sampledsection is correlated to C19n (middleEocene), although the interpretation is unclearbeyond C17r. The top of the sampledsection is correlated to C5Cn (late earlyMiocene), although, in the uppermost 10 m of the sampled section, a foraminifer (Globorotaliasphericomiozea) usually associatedwith the Messinian and early Pliocene hasbeen identified. 87Sr/86Sr, d13C, and d18Ovalues measured on foraminifera, includingthe d18O and d13C shifts close to the Eocene/Oligocene boundary, support the correlationto the GPTS. For the interval spanningthe Oligocene/Miocene boundary, benthicd13C, d18O, and 87Sr/86Sr records from Site1090 can be correlated to isotope recordsfrom ODP Site 929 (Ceara Rise), providing support for the recently-published Oligocene/Miocene boundary age (22.92 Ma) of Shackleton et al

Improving the Care of Patients with Cirrhosis at MMC

Purpose: Improve the rate and timeliness of paracenteses for patients with decompensated cirrhosis.https://knowledgeconnection.mainehealth.org/lambrew-retreat-2021/1021/thumbnail.jp

Explicit Lie-Poisson integration and the Euler equations

We give a wide class of Lie-Poisson systems for which explicit, Lie-Poisson integrators, preserving all Casimirs, can be constructed. The integrators are extremely simple. Examples are the rigid body, a moment truncation, and a new, fast algorithm for the sine-bracket truncation of the 2D Euler equations.Comment: 7 pages, compile with AMSTEX; 2 figures available from autho

Unequal relationships in high and low power distance societies: a comparative study of tutor - student role relations in Britain and China

This study investigated people's conceptions of an unequal role relationship in two different types of society: a high power distance society and a low power distance society. The study focuses on the role relationship of tutor and student. British and Chinese tutors and postgraduate students completed a questionnaire that probed their conceptions of degrees of power differential and social distance/closeness in this role relationship. ANOVA results yielded a significant nationality effect for both aspects. Chinese respondents judged the relationship to be closer and to have a greater power differential than did British respondents. Written comments on the questionnaire and interviews with 9 Chinese academics who had experienced both British and Chinese academic environments supported the statistical findings and indicated that there are fundamental ideological differences associated with the differing conceptions. The results are discussed in relation to Western and Asian concepts of leadership and differing perspectives on the compatibility/incompatibility of power and distance/closeness

Symplectic integrators with adaptive time steps

In recent decades, there have been many attempts to construct symplectic integrators with variable time steps, with rather disappointing results. In this paper we identify the causes for this lack of performance, and find that they fall into two categories. In the first, the time step is considered a function of time alone, \Delta=\Delta(t). In this case, backwards error analysis shows that while the algorithms remain symplectic, parametric instabilities arise because of resonance between oscillations of \Delta(t) and the orbital motion. In the second category the time step is a function of phase space variables \Delta=\Delta(q,p). In this case, the system of equations to be solved is analyzed by introducing a new time variable \tau with dt=\Delta(q,p) d\tau. The transformed equations are no longer in Hamiltonian form, and thus are not guaranteed to be stable even when integrated using a method which is symplectic for constant \Delta. We analyze two methods for integrating the transformed equations which do, however, preserve the structure of the original equations. The first is an extended phase space method, which has been successfully used in previous studies of adaptive time step symplectic integrators. The second, novel, method is based on a non-canonical mixed-variable generating function. Numerical trials for both of these methods show good results, without parametric instabilities or spurious growth or damping. It is then shown how to adapt the time step to an error estimate found by backward error analysis, in order to optimize the time-stepping scheme. Numerical results are obtained using this formulation and compared with other time-stepping schemes for the extended phase space symplectic method.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Plasma Phys. Control. Fusio

The Longitudinal Stability of Intense Non-Relativistic Particle Bunches in Resistive Structures

The longitudinal stability of intense particle bunches is investigated theoretically in the limit of small wall resistivity compared to total reactance. It is shown that both in the absence of resistivity and to lowest order in the resistance that an intense bunch is stable against longitudinal collective modes. An expression is derived for the lowest order instability rate. Application of these results are made to drivers for heavy ion inertial fusion

Enhanced ionization in small rare gas clusters

A detailed theoretical investigation of rare gas atom clusters under intense short laser pulses reveals that the mechanism of energy absorption is akin to {\it enhanced ionization} first discovered for diatomic molecules. The phenomenon is robust under changes of the atomic element (neon, argon, krypton, xenon), the number of atoms in the cluster (16 to 30 atoms have been studied) and the fluency of the laser pulse. In contrast to molecules it does not dissappear for circular polarization. We develop an analytical model relating the pulse length for maximum ionization to characteristic parameters of the cluster