The Role of Philanthropy in the U.S. Immigrant Rights Movement

As the Ford Foundation marks 25 years of involvement on U.S. immigration issues, it is a good time to take stock of what has occurred and to examine more closely philanthropy's role in supporting the growth of a national immigrant rights movement. There are many reasons for the field's rapid growth, including extraordinary leadership by those who have headed the movement. But the support of numerous foundations and other donors has played a vital part in fueling the field's expansion. Contributions have come from all parts of the philanthropic community. Smaller foundations, for example, have played a significant role in strengthening the capacity of regional and local immigrant-serving organizations that are backbone of the movement.To help tell the story of philanthropy's contribution to the development of an immigrant rights field in United States, the Ford Foundation commissioned journalist Louis Freedberg, with assistance from Ted Wang, to write this report. It describes how Ford initially entered the field, the challenges the Foundation and its grantees faced in the early years, how funders have worked together to support an emerging but vibrant movement, and the lessons learned to help inform future efforts to support the field. The authors' observations are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Ford Foundation. They point out that the power of philanthropic grantmaking in this area has come from a combination of factors: committed long-term funders who have supported this field for many years; a willingness to fund a wide range of organizations that provide complementary activities; flexibility to adjust grantmaking to changing conditions; and an openness among funders to collaborate with each other and as well as with grantees to achieve a shared vision

The rise and fall of (Chinese) African apparel exports

During the final years of the Multifiber Agreement (2001-2005) the US imposed quotas on Chinese apparel while it gave African apparel duty- and quota-free access. We argue that the combination of these policies led to a rapid but ephemeral rise of African exports that can be explained in part by ethnic-Chinese firms using Africa as a quota-hopping export platform. We first provide a large body of anecdotal evidence on the ethnic-Chinese apparel wave in Africa. Second, we show that Chinese exports to Africa predict US imports from the same countries and in the same apparel categories but only where transhipment incentives are present, i.e. for products facing US quotas and in countries with preferential access to the US unconstrained by rules of origin. Our estimates indicate that direct transhipment may account for around 22% of Africa's apparel exports during 2001-2008

China's pattern of growth : moving to sustainability and reducing inequality

The authors study the sources and pattern of China's impressive economic growth over the past 25 years and show that key issues currently of concern to policymakers-widening inequality, rural poverty, and resource intensity-are to a large extent rooted in China's growth strategy, and resolving them requires a rebalancing of policies. Using both macroeconomic level and sector data and analyses, the authors extend the growth accounting framework to decompose the sources of labor productivity growth. They find that growth of industrial production, led by a massive investment effort that boosted the capital/labor ratio, has been the single most important factor driving GDP and overall labor productivity growth since the early 1990s. The shift of labor from low-productivity agriculture has been limited, and, hence, contributed only marginally to overall labor productivity growth. The productivity gap between agriculture and the rest of the economy has continued to widen, leading to increased rural-urban income inequality. Looking ahead, the authors calibrate two alternative scenarios. They show that continuing with the current growth pattern would further increase already high investment and saving needs to unsustainable levels, lower urban employment growth, and widen the rural-urban income gap. Instead, reducing subsidies to industry and investment, encouraging the development of the services industry, and reducing barriers to labor mobility would result in a more balanced growth with an investment-to-GDP ratio that is consistent with the medium-term saving trend, faster growth in urban employment, and a substantial reduction in the income gap between rural and urban residents.Economic Growth,Labor Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Municipal Financial Management,Achieving Shared Growth

Graded, Dynamically Routable Information Processing with Synfire-Gated Synfire Chains

Coherent neural spiking and local field potentials are believed to be signatures of the binding and transfer of information in the brain. Coherent activity has now been measured experimentally in many regions of mammalian cortex. Synfire chains are one of the main theoretical constructs that have been appealed to to describe coherent spiking phenomena. However, for some time, it has been known that synchronous activity in feedforward networks asymptotically either approaches an attractor with fixed waveform and amplitude, or fails to propagate. This has limited their ability to explain graded neuronal responses. Recently, we have shown that pulse-gated synfire chains are capable of propagating graded information coded in mean population current or firing rate amplitudes. In particular, we showed that it is possible to use one synfire chain to provide gating pulses and a second, pulse-gated synfire chain to propagate graded information. We called these circuits synfire-gated synfire chains (SGSCs). Here, we present SGSCs in which graded information can rapidly cascade through a neural circuit, and show a correspondence between this type of transfer and a mean-field model in which gating pulses overlap in time. We show that SGSCs are robust in the presence of variability in population size, pulse timing and synaptic strength. Finally, we demonstrate the computational capabilities of SGSC-based information coding by implementing a self-contained, spike-based, modular neural circuit that is triggered by, then reads in streaming input, processes the input, then makes a decision based on the processed information and shuts itself down

Multiple normalized solutions for quasi-linear Schr\"odinger equations

In this paper we prove the existence of two solutions having a prescribed $L^2$-norm for a quasi-linear Schr\"odinger equation. One of these solutions is a mountain pass solution relative to a constraint and the other one a minimum either local or global. To overcome the lack of differentiability of the associated functional, we rely on a perturbation method developed in [27]

Physical Simulation of Si-Based Resistive Random-Access Memory Devices

We present a newly-developed three-dimensional (3D) physical simulator suitable for the study of resistive random-access memory (RRAM) devices. We explore the switching behavior of Si-rich silica (SiOx) RRAM structures, whose operation has been successfully demonstrated experimentally at ambient conditions [1]. The simulator couples self-consistently a simulation of oxygen ion and electron transport to a self-heating model and the `atomistic' simulator GARAND. The electro-thermal simulation model provides many advantages compared to the classical phenomenological models based on the resistor breaker network. The simulator is validated with respect to experimental data and captures successfully the memristive behavior of the simulated SiOx RRAMs, by reconstructing the conductive filament formation and destruction phenomena in the 3D space. The simulation framework is useful for exploring the little-known physics of SiOx RRAMs, and providing efficient designs, in terms of performance, variability and reliability, for both memory devices and circuits

Self-consistent physical modeling of SiOx-based RRAM structures

We apply a unique three-dimensional (3D) physics-based atomistic simulator to study silicon-rich (SiOx, x<;2) resistive switching nonvolatile memory (RRAM) devices. We couple self-consistently a simulation of ion and electron transport to the `atomistic' simulator GARAND and a self-heating model to explore the switching processes in these structures. The simulation model is more advanced than other available phenomenological models based on the resistor breaker network. The simulator is calibrated with experimental data, and reconstructs accurately the formation and rupture of the conductive filament in the 3D space. We demonstrate how the simulator is useful for exploring the little-known physics of these promising devices, and show that switching is an intrinsic property of the SiOx layer. In general, the simulation framework is useful for providing efficient designs, in terms of performance, variability and reliability, for memory devices and circuits. The simulator validity is not limited to SiOx-based devices, and can be used to study other promising RRAM systems based, e.g., on transition metal oxides

Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence on Cuba\u27s Primary Health Care

Many scholars have lauded the Cuban primary health care system because the country has demonstrated a remarkable success in providing access to and improving the health of its population under punishing economic circumstances. While much of the evidence supporting this view has relied on quantitative research, more recent research with ethnographic components offers alternative perspectives of the Cuban health experience. The purpose of this capstone is to determine the extent to which there may be dissonance between quantitative and qualitative research. A review of the published literature reveals challenges for both patients and health workers. Issues discussed include the informal economy for health, diminishing income for physicians, constraints for patients, and medical internationalism. This capstone concludes that Cuba‘s primary health care system has been largely successful in meeting the health care needs of its population