Columbus, New Mexico, and Palomas, Chihuahua: Transnational Landscapes of Violence, 1888-1930

In examining the area surrounding Columbus, New Mexico, and Palomas, Chihuahua, as a landscape of violence, this dissertation historicizes the process by which violent actions create a sense of place. Although neither town is considered large enough to be of much consequence, both were targeted by bellicose campaigns that sought to destabilize the Mexican state during the Porfiriato and the Mexican Revolution. Raids on the Palomas customs house were, at least in part, responses to the drive of the Mexican government under Porfirio Díaz to create modern progress and order in Mexico. For many inhabitants of rural northwestern Chihuahua, the imposition of capitalist modes of land and resource ownership, delineation, and exchange deprived them of access to a livelihood. The dissertation, therefore, considers as violence the reallocation of resources under the modern capitalist notion of law and order. By employing a broad definition of violence, seemingly disparate actions, such as land surveys and insurgencies, are juxtaposed in order to highlight the connections between them. The dissertation shows the various ways in which violence was at once a destructive as well as creative force along the New Mexico-Chihuahua border between 1888 and 1930. The violence of new legal and land regimes that left colonists and settlers of northwestern Chihuahua without access to land and resources was answered through the violence of armed movements that specifically targeted the towns of Palomas, La Ascensión, and Columbus—sites of intensified development efforts around the turn of the century. By drawing on geographers and sociologists\u27 theories of legal and spatial violence, this dissertation places these actions in their proper context as localized movements for social and economic justice, rather than haphazard precursors to the subsequent Mexican Revolution. In this context, Pancho Villa\u27s Raid on Columbus is not simply an isolated incident that spilled over from the larger struggle of the Mexican Revolution. It is part of a dialectic of violence specific to the New Mexico-Chihuahua border region

African-American Male Teachers: Examining the Insight, Encounters, and Best Teaching Practices

The experiences students have in schools has a large effect not only on their career choices but also on the way they interact with other members of society in the future. Specifically, the K-12 education system has an objective of ensuring that all students are adequately prepared to become responsible and productive members of society. Unfortunately, research shows that African-American male students and teachers face comparatively high levels of societal challenges compared to their Caucasian counterparts. General demographic trends reveal a serious concern. While the number of black students entering the education system is increasing, there is a reduction in the number of African-American male teachers. Extant research shows that African-Americans are the least-represented ethnic group in the education system. African-Americans male teachers make up a mere 2% of the teacher population in public schools. Some of the challenges these teachers face include, but are not limited to, racism, lack of mentors, and lack of professional support from school administrations. Using inputs and frameworks derived from the Critical Race Theory, this paper analyzes the experiences of black male teachers in the K-12 program and their perceived contribution to the education system. The study participants were all selected from their existing communities. Five African-American male teachers were interviewed. The data collection design made use of an open-ended interview where interviewees were given a chance to express their opinions and explain their experiences. The findings of this research revealed an obvious bias in the treatment of African-American male teachers. In particular, the research finds a shortage of mentors and role models for black students. There is also evidence of lackluster institutional support for African-American male teachers

Smart Grid Network Simulation

Problem: In the coming years the United States is working to move towards a smarter electric grid. One that is more versatile and can adjust to different situations. To move forward with these from our current electric grid to the Smart Grid, simulations are needed to understand how the new grid is likely to behave in different situations. Rationale: The importance of creating these simulations is to try and predict which topological set-ups are best for different kinds of scenarios as well as how the grid might behave under different circumstances. Once different situations are simulated, Smart Grid developers can use the simulations as a guide for building the physical and digital Smart Grid. Approach: Our team used the simulation software NS3 to write our Smart Grid simulation. We are beginning with a basic network topology and trying to implement five use cases on this network. From there we hope to be able to expand to be able to look at slightly different topologies and compare their performance completing the use cases. The use cases are: on demand meter read, on demand meter read failure, on demand meter interval period read, normal meter reading operations, and bulk meter interval data read. Interim Results and Conclusions: We have begun with a simple topology (shown below) with a point to point connection between individual meters and the data concentrator, which then send information to the data and control center. We have begun implementing the use cases while monitoring time for completion, loss of information and other important factors we would like to compare across all of our various topologies. Anticipated Results and Conclusions: At the conclusion of this project, we hope to have a functioning simulation that can compare and assess different topologies and network set-ups.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1028/thumbnail.jp

The Lived Experiences of Mothers whose Children were Sexually Abused by Their Intimate Male Partners

Child sexual abuse is a global phenomenon that affects many families and appears to be increasing dramatically in South Africa. The literature on child sexual abuse focuses mainly on the victims and perpetrators while largely ignoring the experiences of non-offending mothers. The objective of this study was to explore the lived experiences of mothers whose children were sexually abused by their intimate male partners. Existential phenomenology was employed in the study, and Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-phase thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The results indicate that the participants experienced  emotions similar to those following loss including disbelief, anger, guilt, depression, trust and blame.Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 11, Edition 1 May 2011, 11-2

The Lived Experience of Losing a Sibling through Murder

This study explores the grief experiences of young adults in the aftermath of the murder of a sibling. Three young adults were recruited to participate in interviews in which they described their lived experience of loss. Data collection and the subsequent analyses were guided by a phenomenological research design and resulted in the identification of seven major themes, namely (1) shock and disbelief, (2) recollection, guilt and self-blame, (3) rupture and fragmentation, (4) support, (5) justice and revenge, (6) reformulation, and (7) resilience, healing and growth. These themes are discussed with reference to the findings of other documented studies, and the implications for practitioners working with bereaved siblings of murder victims pointed to. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, May 2010, Volume 10, Edition

Efficient Neural Architecture Search using Genetic Algorithm

NASNet and AmoebaNet are state-of-the-art neural architecture search systems that were able to achieve better accuracy than state-of-the-art human-made convolutional neural networks. Despite the innovation of the NASNet search space, it lacks the ability to express flexibility in terms of optimizing non-convolutional operation layers, such as batch normalization, activation, and dropout. These layers are hand designed by the architect prior to optimization, limiting the exploration possible for model architectures by narrowing down the search space. In addition, the NASNet search space can not allow for many non-classical optimization techniques to be applied as it lacks the ability to be expressed in a fixed-length, floating-point, multidimensional array. Lastly, both NASNet and AmoebaNet use an extensive amount of computation, both evaluating 20,000 models during optimization, consuming 2,000 GPU hours worth of computation. This work addresses these limitations by, first, changing the NASNet search space to include optimization of non-convolutional operation layers through the addition of a building block that allows for the optimization for the order and inclusion of these layers; second, proposing a fixed-length, floating-point, multidimensional array representation to allow other non-classical optimization techniques, such as particle swarm optimization, to be applied; and third, proposing an efficient genetic algorithm, while using state of-the-art techniques to reduce training comiv plexity. After only 1,300 models evaluated, consuming 190 GPU hours, evolving on the CIFAR-10 benchmark dataset, the best model configuration yielded a test accuracy of 94.6% with only 1.3 million parameters, and a test accuracy of 95.09% with only 5.17 million parameters, outperforming both ResNet110 and WideResNet. When transferring to the CIFAR-100 benchmark dataset, the best model configuration yielded a test accuracy of 71.1% with only 1.3 million parameters, and a test accuracy of 76.53% with only 5.17 million parameters

Supporting Live Development of SOAP and CORBA Servers

We present middleware for a Server Development Environment that facilitates live development of SOAP and CORBA servers. As the underlying implementation platform, we use JPie, a tightly integrated programming environment for live software construction of Java applications. JPie provides dynamic classes whose signature and implementation can be modified at run time, with changes taking effect immediately upon existing instances of the class. We extend this model by automating the server deployment process, allowing developers to devote their full attention to the implementation of server logic. Moreover, the live development model enables the construction of server applications while they are running, connected, and communicating with clients. Combined with our Client Development Environment [1], these features facilitate the live, simultaneous construction of both the client and server applications

Kroc Fit Kids Needs Assessment

The Salvation Army Kroc Center, a 12.4-acre family support, education, recreation, and cultural arts center located in the Rolando neighborhood of San Diego, is interested in designing an intervention program to alleviate the issue of low levels of physical activity and combat the childhood obesity problem. The Kroc Center is well suited to designing such an intervention because it works closely with six partner elementary schools in its surrounding neighborhoods. To assist the Kroc Center in developing an intervention, this needs assessment examines factors that may lead to low fitness scores, and the potential dangers to students, and the community, if no intervention takes place.https://digital.sandiego.edu/npi-bpl-programdesign/1003/thumbnail.jp

AGENT ORANGE-INDUCED Anaplastic Large-Cell Lymphoma (ALCL) with Cutaneous Involvement

Anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (ALCL) is a CD30 + lymphoproliferative disorder that may manifest with skin involvement.1 We present a rare case of Agent Orange-induced ALCL with cutaneous involvement of the hand, surgical excision, and follow-up treatment

Automated Georeferencing of Antarctic Species

Many text documents in the biological domain contain references to the toponym of specific phenomena (e.g. species sightings) in natural language form "In Garwood Valley summer activity was 0.2% for Umbilicaria aprina and 1.7% for Caloplaca sp. ..." While methods have been developed to extract place names from documents, and attention has been given to the interpretation of spatial prepositions, the ability to connect toponym mentions in text with the phenomena to which they refer (in this case species) has been given limited attention, but would be of considerable benefit for the task of mapping specific phenomena mentioned in text documents. As part of work to create a pipeline to automate georeferencing of species within legacy documents, this paper proposes a method to: (1) recognise species and toponyms within text and (2) match each species mention to the relevant toponym mention. Our methods find significant promise in a bespoke rules- and dictionary-based approach to recognise species within text (F1 scores up to 0.87 including partial matches) but less success, as yet, recognising toponyms using multiple gazetteers combined with an off the shelf natural language processing tool (F1 up to 0.62). Most importantly, we offer a contribution to the relatively nascent area of matching toponym references to the object they locate (in our case species), including cases in which the toponym and species are in different sentences. We use tree-based models to achieve precision as high as 0.88 or an F1 score up to 0.68 depending on the downsampling rate. Initial results out perform previous research on detecting entity relationships that may cross sentence boundaries within biomedical text, and differ from previous work in specifically addressing species mapping