576 research outputs found
Building Peace in the New Oil Frontiers of Northern Kenya
Since the discovery of oil five years ago in Northern Kenya, explorations have spread to more than 30 drilling and testing sites. This has brought foreign investment, and in turn, new work opportunities, corporate social investment in schools and health clinics, and options for personal enrichment through contracts and tenders. In an area long inhabited by pastoralists, this rapid development has created tensions, resistance, and conflict around both access to new opportunities and also the impacts on lives and livelihoods. The Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK and the Centre for Human Rights and Policy Studies, Kenya, as well as a team of researchers from Turkana County in Kenya have worked closely with big businesses, advocacy organisations, and communities to understand and balance out the interests at play. They have enabled the different parties to navigate a peaceful and sensitive process and this will be key to informing future plans for oil development.ESRC-DFI
Teaching systems and robotics in a four-week summer short course
This paper describes a four-week summer short-course designed to introduce students with limited hands-on technical experience to the low-level details of embedded systems and robotics. Students start the course using a Raspberry Pi 3 to learn the basics of Linux and programming, and end the course by competing in a capture-the-flag type competition with the web-configurable GPS-guided autonomous robots they designed and tested in the course. Throughout the course, students are introduced to programming languages including Python and PHP, advanced programming concepts such as using sockets for inter-process communication, data interchange formats such as JSON, basic API development, system concepts such as I2C and UART serial interfaces, PWM motor control, and sensor fusion to improve robotic navigation and localization. This course was offered to students for the first time in the summer of 2016, and though formal feedback collection was limited, informal feedback indicated that students found the course to be challenging, engaging, and beneficial to their overall understanding of engineering.
The paper walks the reader through the background of this course. It then discusses the weekly lesson plans, supplemental material provided to the students, and our general strategy for teaching the course\u27s programming and system design concepts in such an accelerated time frame. Finally, the paper discusses the student and instructor reactions to the course, lessons learned, and suggestions for future offerings. The material developed for this course will be posted online so that other educators may use it in their teaching
Mean Value Theorems for Riemannian Manifolds Via the Obstacle Problem
We develop some of the basic theory for the obstacle problem on Riemannian manifolds, and we use it to establish a mean value theorem. Our mean value theorem works for a very wide class of Riemannian manifolds and has no weights at all within the integral
The Herschel SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer Spectral Feature Finder II. Estimating Radial Velocity of SPIRE Spectral Observation Sources
The Herschel SPIRE FTS Spectral Feature Finder (FF) detects significant
spectral features within SPIRE spectra and employs two routines, and external
references, to estimate source radial velocity. The first routine is based on
the identification of rotational CO emission, the second cross-correlates
detected features with a line template containing most of the characteristic
lines in typical far infra-red observations. In this paper, we outline and
validate these routines, summarise the results as they pertain to the FF, and
comment on how external references were incorporated.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figures, 1 table, accepted by MNRAS March 202
Policy Partners in the Neoliberal Age: Corresponding School and Prison Reforms Since 1970
This dissertation is a comparative policy study of changes in education and incarceration of the past 40 years. Following national and global trends, New York City saw public school and carceral policies converge as the city experienced massive deindustrialization and governmental cutbacks while its political economy shifted to one driven by finance, investment, real estate, and the growth of a low-wage service sector. These changes dramatically increased economic inequality across racial lines, and spurred the intimate linkage of public education and state incarceration as institutional tools for the mass management of low-income communities of color. Following from a growing policy debate in education and criminal justice around the school-to-prison pipeline, this study analyzes the emergence and structure of correspondence in these two major social sectors. This multiscalar research draws on critical policy analysis and critical discourse analysis to examine federal and state policy vis-Ã -vis case studies of local charter school and drug court reforms. Findings include correspondence in the implementation of data-driven managerial practices and representations, the extension of private nonprofit and foundation influence on policy, and the (re)production and circulation of what Melamed (2006) terms official antiracisms- knowledge systems which deracialize inequality on the one hand, while constructing neoliberal subject positions amenable to racialized processes of disinvestment, dispossession, and discipline on the other
Detailed modelling to evaluate the effectiveness of sediment recycling on coastal habitat
In many parts of the world, ports and harbours lie adjacent to ecologically important areas of coastal habitat. In such areas port authorities, coastal managers and regulators are required to negotiate the tension between the demands of making ports ever more efficient, with wider and deeper approaches to accommodate vessels of deeper draft and larger handling areas, and the preservation of coastal habitats which are vitally important for bird and fish populations and which help protect the coast from flooding and erosion. The deepening of approach channels and berths usually results in an increased rate of sedimentation and maintenance dredging. There is an increasing recognition that such dredged sediment is a resource which should be utilised beneficially for human development activities and/or enhancement of ecological habitats. One form of beneficial use of dredged material, is termed “sediment recycling” or “strategic placement”. This form of beneficial use consists of the placement of cohesive sediment into the water column or onto the bed in such a way so that currents and waves then transport the released sediment onto the desired habitats. Sediment recycling is less widely practiced because the changes in bed level resulting from placement are generally of the order of a few centimetres/year or less and it is difficult to demonstrate whether such recycling is successful. This paper describes a methodology for the assessment of the effectiveness sediment recycling, implementing the methodology on a case study of a large-scale sediment recycling scheme in the Stour/Orwell Estuary system in the United Kingdom, designed to offset the identified adverse effects of an approach channel deepening on the estuary system. The study represents a major contribution to the consideration of non-direct beneficial use of cohesive sediment. For the first time a methodology for reliably evaluating the effects of sediment recycling, separating the effects of natural changes in morphology from the beneficial use, has been shown to be effective. This method, which is applicable anywhere where there are sufficient data, allows a robust evaluation of the effectiveness of such methods and crucially enables these methods to be tested and optimised using modelling before implementation
The Ursinus College Investment Management Company Newsletter, Spring 2022
Inside this issue:
Letter from Olivia DeFusco \u2724
Letter from Peyton Vostenak \u2722
At a Glance
Investment Team Strategies and Updates
UCIMCO Research
UCIMCO Investment Performance and Analysis
Endowment Outlook
Stock Selection Picks
Women\u27s Fund Picks
Our Teams
Thank You!
How to Contribut
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