Salva la Iglesia: A Congregation\u27s Fight for Community

The purpose of this study is to examine community response to crisis and the impact intercultural interactions have on the outcome of ethnic and religious group conflict. This research uses a case study focusing on the San Martín Catholic Mission in Oregon and the ways this particular community responded to the crisis of the Catholic diocese threatening to sell their property in 2010. I gathered data from a year of ethnographic fieldwork, participant observations in the setting, and in-depth interviews with six individuals involved in the church and related community groups. I then analyzed the data using the lens of social capital theory to examine the resource networks built through this event and their effect on the communities. Themes such as changing roles of immigrants and minorities in the United States, changing gender roles in community activism, and changing levels of activism after community crises are resolved emerged from this analysis, which indicate the importance of social factors in affecting community response to crisis. The findings of this case study have implications for how communities may need to adapt to the changing demographic of the United States as the Latino population increases, and it provides insight into patterns of interaction that may be seen between ethnic and religious communities in the future

Undocumented Queer Latinx Students: Testimonio of Survival

Recent U.S. political turmoil has deliberately embedded fear into many marginalized and underrepresented people living in the U.S. The fact that the United States was founded on the demanding work of diverse populations of immigrants is vitally important to how immigrants are being treated today. In 2016, the U.S. presidential electoral win for Donald Trump left many marginalized communities—including Undocumented Queer Latinx students—fearful of how his administration would affect their communities. This paper reviews literatures on Queer immigration history, the homophobic and transphobic psychological history behind legal immigration barriers, and the recent mobilization to include Undocumented Queer Latinx students in the Immigration Rights Movement as foundational elements for an ethnographic research case study of the Undocumented Queer Latinx student community. The historical and current adversities these students face will be the main point of this research due to the increased legal barriers, deportations, and uncertain future that extremely conservative politicians have set―or will set―in motion. The proposed project explores the intersectionality of the historical heterosexism of immigration law, current government debate over DACA, Queer Manifestos about immigration rights, and the gray politics that emphasize the importance of Undocumented Queer Latinx student voices. This research is a subject not many mainstream media sources investigate; however, it is vitally important due to the injustices faced by this community

New York Times v. U.S.: Implications and Relevance in the 21st Century

In 1971, the New York Times released the first installment in a series later referred to as the Pentagon Papers that would eventually have significant political, social, and historical impacts that are felt even in the 21st Century. Following the first release, President Nixon’s administration sought an injunction against the publication of the remaining contents of the classified study, ultimately becoming an extensive legal process that culminated in the Supreme Court. In a per curiam opinion, the Court ruled that in accordance with Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe and Near v. Minnesota that the federal government did not meet the burden of proof required for prior restraint. The individual Justices’ opinions were divergent on several fronts and provide unique insight into the complexity of the issue. This decision was the driving force behind the formation of the White House Plumbers, the group that orchestrated one of the most infamous political scandals and the eventual implosion of Nixon’s career. It also effectively changed the tide of the Vietnam War, contributed to the credibility gap, and forever modified the relationship between the press and the federal government. The Pentagon Papers case has also served as one of the most famous freedom of the press cases and established a de facto precedent. The aftermath of its outcome is still felt today with the increasing prevalence of government whistle-blowers, such as WikiLeaks, PFC. Manning, and Edward Snowden

Naming the Church: The Representation of Two Congregations in the Media

This study examines the portrayal of religious and ethnic group conflicts in the media using a case study in Oregon. Local newspaper reports about a struggle between the St. James Catholic Church and the San Martín Catholic Mission were analyzed using cluster criticism to identify the key terms used to communicate ideas about the two congregations to the local public. Various patterns of themes emerged, which indicate that the institutions and leaders on each side of the conflict were presented as opposing forces of hierarchy/community and logic/emotion. From this analysis it can be seen that the newspapers reporting on this conflict portrayed St. James as more of a hierarchical business structure, while San Martín was represented as a vulnerable and benevolent community. The newspaper\u27s rhetorical strategy of associating the names of the churches with certain features may have influenced local perceptions of the conflict, leading to a favorable outcome for the San Martín community. Additional keywords: cluster analysis, Latin

Stochastic band structure for waves propagating in periodic media or along waveguides

We introduce the stochastic band structure, a method giving the dispersion relation for waves propagating in periodic media or along waveguides, and subject to material loss or radiation damping. Instead of considering an explicit or implicit functional relation between frequency $\omega$ and wavenumber $k$, as is usually done, we consider a mapping of the resolvent set in the dispersion space $(\omega, k)$. Bands appear as as the trace of Lorentzian responses containing local information on propagation loss both in time and space domains. For illustration purposes, the method is applied to a lossy sonic crystal, a radiating surface phononic crystal, and a radiating optical waveguide. The stochastic band structure can be obtained for any system described by a time-harmonic wave equation

Photoelectrochemical properties of melanin

Melanin is to the animal kingdom like chlorophyll to the vegetal kingdom(1). Melanin collects energy from lower-energy radiation sources, kicks electrons into excited states, initiating a process that would end up producing chemical energy, similar to the way in which photosynthesis supplies energy to plants. However, the precise roles of melanin during this process are unknown. Here we show that the increase in the electron-transfer properties of melanin is independent of the energy of the incident photons. We found in controlled in vivo assays that melanin has the remarkable capability of converting lower-energy radiation towards a more useful form of energy. Furthermore, we found that melanin can break up water molecules and giving up energy suggesting an additional behavior mode for melanin. Our results demonstrate how members of the melanin family are likely to function as transducers, oxidizing water, pushing apart water molecules, as well as recruiting back ions into molecules that are subsequently polarized again. Melanin drives the photon energy of lower-energy radiation sources by quenching electrons and initiating an ionic event independently of their relative energy contention. We anticipate our assay to be a starting point for more sophisticated photoelectrochemical applications. For example, the individual and combined action of multiple photovoltaic applications could be tested, including conducting polymers, for example poly-(phenylenevinylene) (PPV) derivatives or C60 particles. Furthermore, melanin's energy conversion ability is a major target of solar energy conversion development, and an organic-semiconductor way for photoelectrochemical applications will be relevant for such developments.</sup></sup&#x3e