Ambivalent anxietes of the South Asian-Gulf Arab labor exchange

Este trabajo explora las contradicciones desatadas por la dependencia de los países del Golfo Pérsico de la mano de obra de Asia Meridional. Mientras que las remesas de los trabajadores suponen un estímulo significativo para el nivel de vida de las familias en los países de origen, el exceso de mano de obra estimula la emergencia de un mercado de permisos de trabajo que acilita la extracción anual de miles de millones de dólares, al tiempo que permite una forma moderna de servidumbre contratada. A pesar de esta realidad, las desfavorables condiciones económicas hacen que los trabajadores de Asia Meridional busquen trabajo en el Golfo. ________________________________________This essay explores the contradictions unleashed by the heavy reliance of Gulf Arab countries on South Asian expatriate labor. While worker remittances significantly boost the living standards of home country households, the presence of surplus labor both stimulates the emergence of a labor permits market that facilitates the annual extraction of billions of dollars and allows a modern form of indentured servitude. Despite this reality, unfavorable economic conditions cause South Asian workers to seek employment in the Gulf

Higher Education Revolutions in the Gulf

Over the past quarter century, the people of the Arabian Peninsula have witnessed a revolutionary transformation in higher education. In 1990, there were fewer than ten public universities that offered their Arabic-language curricula in sex-segregated settings to national citizens only. In 2015, there are more than one hundred public, semi-public, and private colleges and universities. Most of these institutions are open to expatriates and national citizens; a few offer gender integrated instruction; and the language of instruction is much more likely to be in English than Arabic. Higher Education Revolutions in the Gulf explores the reasons behind this dramatic growth. It examines the causes of the sharp shift in educational practices and analyses how these new systems of higher education are regulated, evaluating the extent to which the new universities and colleges are improving quality. Questioning whether these educational changes can be sustained, the book explores how the new curricula and language policies are aligned with official visions of the future. Written by leading scholars in the field, it draws upon their considerable experiences of teaching and doing research in the Arabian Gulf, as well as their different disciplinary backgrounds (linguistics and economics), to provide a holistic and historically informed account of the emergence and viability of the Arabian Peninsula’s higher education revolutions. Offering a comprehensive, critical assessment of education in the Gulf Arab states, this book represents a significant contribution to the field and will be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East and Gulf Studies, and essential for those focused on higher education

Concepts, requirements, and design approaches for building successful planning and scheduling systems

Traditional practice of systems engineering management assumes requirements can be precisely determined and unambiguously defined prior to system design and implementation; practice further assumes requirements are held static during implementation. Human-computer decision support systems for service planning and scheduling applications do not conform well to these assumptions. Adaptation to the traditional practice of systems engineering management are required. Basic technology exists to support these adaptations. Additional innovations must be encouraged and nutured. Continued partnership between the programmatic and technical perspective assures proper balance of the impossible with the possible. Past problems have the following origins: not recognizing the unusual and perverse nature of the requirements for planning and scheduling; not recognizing the best starting point assumptions for the design; not understanding the type of system that being built; and not understanding the design consequences of the operations concept selected

Epistemic prejudice and geographies of innovation

This article seeks to understand how and why certain locations are excluded from or seen as foreclosed as places of innovation and knowledge production in health research and practice. Rooted in several years of collaborative ethnographic research in Mississippi, we develop this conceptual framework to understand the persistence of – and often ineffective response to – racialized and classed health disparities. We define our concept of epistemic prejudice as a structural inability or resistance to seeing certain places, bodies, and locations as capable of knowledge production and innovation. The history of the community health center movement, paired with the portrayal of Mississippi in contemporary media representations, helps us develop our concept. We use an interface ethnography method as Mississippi scholars to demonstrate the importance of this model of research in understanding persistent inequality in places of ‘lack’, noting that the challenges of addressing health problems in Mississippi stem in part from epistemic prejudice of scholars, health care practitioners, and policy-makers. Epistemic prejudice has broader implications for how global health initiatives are implemented, how postcolonial frameworks still shape knowledge production, and how knowledge is generated and taken as authoritative

Drunk Selfie Detection

The goal of this project was to extract key features from photographs of faces and use machine learning to classify subjects as either sober or drunk. To do this we analyzed photographs of 53 subjects after drinking wine and extracted key features which we used to classify drunkenness. We used random forest machine learning to achieve 81% accuracy. We built an android application that using our classifiers to estimate the subjects drunkenness from a selfie

MEASURING & MONITORING Plant Populations

The root of the word monitoring means to warn, and an essential purpose of monitoring is to raise a warning flag that the current course of action is not working. Monitoring is a powerful tool for identifying problems in the early stages, before they become dramatically obvious or crises. If identified early, problems can be addressed while cost-effective solutions are still available. For example, an invasive species that threatens a rare plant population is much easier to control at the initial stages of invasion, compared to eradicating it once it is well established at a site. Monitoring is also critical for measuring management success. Good monitoring can demonstrate that the current management approach is working and provide evidence supporting the continuation of current management

MiR-18a-5p Targets Connective Tissue Growth Factor Expression and Inhibits Transforming Growth Factor β2-Induced Trabecular Meshwork Cell Contractility

Increased trabecular meshwork (TM) cell and tissue contractility is a driver of the reduced outflow facility and elevation of intraocular pressure (IOP) associated with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). Connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) is an established mediator of TM cell contractility, and its expression is increased in POAG due to transforming growth factor β 2 (TGFβ2) signalling. Inhibiting CTGF upregulation using microRNA (miRNA) mimetics could represent a new treatment option for POAG. A combination of in silico predictive tools and a literature review identified a panel of putative CTGF-targeting miRNAs. Treatment of primary human TM cells with 5 ng/mL TGFβ2 for 24 h identified miR-18a-5p as a consistent responder, being upregulated in cells from five different human donors. Transfection of primary donor TM cells with 20 nM synthetic miR-18a-5p mimic reduced TGFβ2-induced CTGF protein expression, and stable lentiviral-mediated overexpression of this miRNA reduced TGFβ2-induced contraction of collagen gels. Together, these findings identify miR-18a-5p as a mediator of the TGFβ2 response and a candidate therapeutic agent for glaucoma via its ability to inhibit CTGF-associated increased TM contractility

Kinematic alignment of precision robotic elements in factory environments

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-86).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.In the measurement and instrumentation fields, kinematic couplings have been widely used to create precise and repeatable interfaces on a variety of devices. However, these devices have been limited to low load and clean environments such as in semiconductor manufacturing facilities. While traditional factory environments present less ideal conditions for the implementation of kinematic couplings, the benefits of more repeatable, deterministic interfaces is becoming more necessary as tolerances for products continue to become more stringent. In this thesis, general exact constraint and kinematic coupling design theory is discussed with specific application for use in industrial environments. Factors such as installation and cleanliness are discussed along with traditional design parameters such as Hertzian contact stress and preload. To test out the application of kinematic couplings to detrimental environments, two separate case studies were performed. The first case study consists of a small scale metrology device used to calibrate the home position of the ABB 6400R robot. In this application, a low-load coupling is designed for a less than ideal environment. The second case study applies kinematic coupling theory to the medium scale, high load wrist interface on the same robot. In the latter, two forms of couplings were compared, including the classic ball and groove coupling as a baseline and the three pin coupling as a new, cheap solution. Testing of prototypes of each concept shows potential for inclusion of this technology in future robot models.by Patrick Willoughby.S.M