Social Capital and Burmese Migrant Domestic Workers in Thailand

The purpose of this thesis is to explore and understand the significant of social networks for Burmese domestic migrant workers who live in Thailand. In order to achieve that, the thesis employs the concept of social capital to scrutinize different social networks in the migrants’ lives. The analysis in the thesis has been done both in larger level focusing on the role and important of social capital to the migration process and lives; as well as, in micro level, examining different social capital from the perspectives of the migrants. The data has been collected in Thailand by using semi-structure interviews and observations. The thesis concludes that social capital is crucial to both the process of migration and lives as migrant workers in Thailand. On the micro level, the specific socio-cultural context of migrants’ and the migrants’ own agency are also shaping the way the migrants build and use their social capital. The thesis has also found that, despite its importance, social capital has negative sides. In addition, the migrants’ choices and access to various social capitals in Thailand are limited

Proposal for the Expansion of the University of Richmond’s Campus Garden

In today’s society the growing, buying and consuming of local foods is skyrocketing in demand. It provides for a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle that the University has stated its interest in promoting. This project to expand the current community garden on campus would not only promote the University’s strives in sustainable practices, but also draw the community and campus together. This garden could produce foods that could be sold to the current dining services, and to the local community generating some profit from this community garden while also reducing the University’s spending on food for the dining hall. Furthermore, a graduate certificate program could be created at the University for those interested in some sort of agricultural practices at the school. This garden could be an outside lab for biology, ecology and other sciences while also giving the University the potential to create new classes in the science curriculum, for example an introduction to agriculture class. By expanding the current garden the University will reap the many benefits that it brings, while also appealing to the future generations that will be applying to the University in the years to come

Cultural investigation on typography in branding in the United States and in Brazil.

This cultural thesis is set to investigate the use of typography in branding, and how the same is influenced by cultural aspects, specifically in the United States and Brazil. The contrasting experience I have had as a student of graphic design in these two countries led me to discover the influence culture has in dictating the typography design use in branding. Typography, branding and cultural influences have been significantly researched in the past, but historically as three separate subjects, without focusing on the importance of their association and how they influence one another cross-culturally. Since the impact of graphic design and the power of typography is important to branding, global brands need to adapt and be relatable to multiple cultures. The aim of this thesis is to fill this existing gap between these three matters and show the importance of the connection between typography, branding, and culture, specifically across Brazil and the United States

Fazendo consciência à medida que passamos pelo nevoeiro: As metáforas dos diretores dentro de uma implementação da reforma nacional

Principals’ implementation of national reforms in the educational arena resembles a wild ride on a roller coaster as they face with contradicting demands, ongoing confusion and ambiguity. As critical change agents, principals interpret and translate reform demands into local practices through a process of sense-making. This current qualitative research explored 60 high school principals' sense-making processing of their leadership within a national reform through their use of metaphors. Data analysis yielded four themes: (a) reframing the principal’s role and pedagogical autonomy; (b) reframing the principal’s work; (c) reframing the school culture; and (d) reframing the principal’s relationships with teachers. This study expands the currently limited knowledge about principals' experience with and responses to reforms, and suggests implications and further research on metaphors principals use within reform implementation.La implementación de las reformas nacionales en el ámbito educativo por parte de los directores se asemeja a un paseo salvaje en una montaña rusa al enfrentarse con exigencias contradictorias, que van desde la confusión hasta la ambigüedad. Como agentes de cambio críticos, los directores interpretan y traducen las exigencias de la reforma en prácticas locales a través de un proceso de “generar conciencia”. Esta investigación en términos cualitativos exploró 60 procesos de “generación de conciencia” de los Directores de escuelas secundarias, referente a su liderazgo dentro de una reforma nacional a través del uso de metáforas. El análisis de los datos obtenidosarrojo cuatro temas: (a) replantear el papel del director y la autonomía pedagógica; (b) replantear el trabajo del director; (c) replantear la cultura escolar; y (d) replantear las relaciones del director con los maestros. Este estudio amplía el conocimiento actualmente limitado sobre la experiencia de los directores y las respuestas a las reformas, y sugiere implicaciones e incrementar la investigación sobre las metáforas que los Directores usan en la implementación de la reforma.A implementação de reformas nacionais no campo educacional pelos diretores é semelhante a um passeio selvagem em uma montanha-russa diante de demandas contraditórias, que vão desde a confusão até a ambiguidade. Como agentes de mudança crítica, os diretores interpretam e traduzem as demandas de reforma nas práticas locais através de um processo de “gerar consciência.” .Esta pesquisa, em termos qualitativos, explorou 60 processos de “geração de conscientização” dos diretores das escolas secundárias, referentes à sua liderança dentro de uma reforma nacional através do uso de metáforas. A análise dos dados obtidos revela quatro temas: (a) repensar o papel do diretor e a autonomia pedagógica; (b) repensar o trabalho do diretor; (c) repensar a cultura escolar; e (d) repensar as relações do diretor com professores. Este estudo expande o conhecimento atualmente limitado sobre a experiência dos diretores e as respostas às reformas e sugere implicações e aumenta a pesquisa sobre as metáforas que os diretores usam na implementação da reforma

El derecho a la protesta social y la critica de la violencia

Mucho se ha dicho y escrito en terminos juridicos penales y/o sociológicos politicos sobre la criminalización de la protesta social en nuestro país. Sin embargo, muy poco o nada se ha hecho para afinar genealogicamente la investigación y análizar las relaciones complejas que subyacen ese recorte. Para ser claro y simple, la protesta social y su criminalización, no son ni más ni menos, una parte importante del reflujo de la tensión, tan constante como perpetua, entre la violencia, el poder, el derecho y la justicia. Como no podía ser de otra manera esa tensión que se agudiza en tiempos de conflicto social o de lucha de clases.Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociale

Simulating Our Cosmological Neighborhood: Mock Catalogs for Velocity Analysis

We describe the construction of an N-body simulation that mimics the true velocity and mass-density fields in a box of side 256\hmpc about the Local Group , and the production of mock catalogs that mimic in detail current catalogs of redshifts and peculiar velocities. Our main purpose is to provide a tool for developing and testing reconstruction methods, but the different components of the method can be used on their own in other applications. The initial conditions are based on the IRAS 1.2Jy redshift survey, assuming that galaxies trace mass and \Omega=1. A density field smoothed is recovered from the redshift survey, using quasi-linear theory and a power-preserving filter. The corresponding potential field is traced back to the linear regime using the Zel'dovich-Bernoulli equation. Small-scale power is added by means of constrained realization to mimic fluctuations on galactic scales. The gravitating system is evolved forward in time with a PM code of 2\hmpc resolution. The result reproduces the real dynamical structures on large scales and the statistical properties of the structure down to galactic scales. "Galaxies" are identified via a linear biasing scheme (b=1.35) and they are divided into "spirals" and "ellipticals" to obey Dressler's morphology-density relation. The galaxies are assigned internal-velocity parameters and absolute magnitudes scattered about an assumed mean Tully-Fisher relation. They are then "observed" as magnitude-limited samples, trying to mimic the selection criteria of the data sets constituting the Mark III catalog of peculiar velocities. Artificial IRAS 1.2Jy redshift surveys are also compiled. The simulations and mock catalogs will be made available electronically as bench marks for testing reconstruction methods.Comment: 27 pages, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Text only, retrieve text and figures by anonymous ftp to ftp://cfata4.harvard.edu/pub/tsafrir/fgcat_pp.uu (2.7Mb

Quenching for discretizations of a semilinear parabolic equation with nonlinear boundary outflux

In this paper, we study numerical approximations of a semilinear parabolic problem in one-dimension, of which the nonlinearity appears both in source term and in Neumann boundary condition. By a semidiscretization using finite difference method, we obtain a system of ordinary differential equations which is an approximation of the original problem. We obtain some conditions under which the positive solution of our system quenches in a finite time and estimate its semidiscrete quenching time. Convergence of the numerical quenching time to the theoretical one is established. Next, we show that the quenching rate of the numerical scheme is different from the continuous one. Finally, we give some numerical results to illustrate our analysis

Gold Standard for Green Spiders: Proposals for Excellence in Sustainability at the University of Richmond

The University of Richmond should commit to achieving the Gold Standard rating by the AASHE Campus Sustainability Index by 2024. Gold Standard for Green Spiders includes eight proposals that taken together, will move UR up from our current silver rating to gold. This volume also includes short summaries of the sustainability programs of eight of the top ten most sustainable liberal arts colleges in the nation. The eight student authors of these chapters completed their works as part of the Environmental Studies Senior Seminar course, the capstone course for Environmental Studies majors

Bayesian power-spectrum inference for Large Scale Structure data

We describe an exact, flexible, and computationally efficient algorithm for a joint estimation of the large-scale structure and its power-spectrum, building on a Gibbs sampling framework and present its implementation ARES (Algorithm for REconstruction and Sampling). ARES is designed to reconstruct the 3D power-spectrum together with the underlying dark matter density field in a Bayesian framework, under the reasonable assumption that the long wavelength Fourier components are Gaussian distributed. As a result ARES does not only provide a single estimate but samples from the joint posterior of the power-spectrum and density field conditional on a set of observations. This enables us to calculate any desired statistical summary, in particular we are able to provide joint uncertainty estimates. We apply our method to mock catalogs, with highly structured observational masks and selection functions, in order to demonstrate its ability to reconstruct the power-spectrum from real data sets, while fully accounting for any mask induced mode coupling.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figure

Simulating the Formation of the Local Galaxy Population

We simulate the formation and evolution of the local galaxy population starting from initial conditions with a smoothed linear density field which matches that derived from the IRAS 1.2 Jy galaxy survey. Our simulations track the formation and evolution of all dark matter haloes more massive than 10e+11 solar masses out to a distance of 8000 km/s from the Milky Way. We implement prescriptions similar to those of Kauffmann et al. (1999) to follow the assembly and evolution of the galaxies within these haloes. We focus on two variants of the CDM cosmology: an LCDM and a tCDM model. Galaxy formation in each is adjusted to reproduce the I-band Tully-Fisher relation of Giovanelli et al. (1997). We compare the present-day luminosity functions, colours, morphology and spatial distribution of our simulated galaxies with those of the real local population, in particular with the Updated Zwicky Catalog, with the IRAS PSCz redshift survey, and with individual local clusters such as Coma, Virgo and Perseus. We also use the simulations to study the clustering bias between the dark matter and galaxies of differing type. Although some significant discrepancies remain, our simulations recover the observed intrinsic properties and the observed spatial distribution of local galaxies reasonably well. They can thus be used to calibrate methods which use the observed local galaxy population to estimate the cosmic density parameter or to draw conclusions about the mechanisms of galaxy formation. To facilitate such work, we publically release our z=0 galaxy catalogues, together with the underlying mass distribution.Comment: 25 pages, 20 figures, submitted to MNRAS. High resolution copies of figures 1 and 3, halo and galaxy catalogues can be found at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/NumCos/CR/index.htm