GOING ON OTOR: DISASTER, MOBILITY, AND THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF VULNERABILITY IN UGUUMUR, MONGOLIA

Post-socialist states have increasingly adopted rural governance and resource management policies framed around the concepts of decentralization, devolution, and de-concentration in which formerly central state powers are transferred to lower, more local levels of governance. In more recent incarnations, these policies have become inspired by neo-liberal discourses of minimal government, self-rule, and personal responsibility. Increasingly, the social science literature has argued that such forms of neo-liberal governance lead to a variety of unforeseen and diverse consequences. This dissertation attempts to understand the impact of these political transformations on household vulnerability in the context of hazardous events called zud. I do this through an ethnographic study of institution-building and risk management in a pastoral district of eastern Mongolia where I explore contemporary transformations in the management of critical resources such as livestock, labor, and land. As this dissertation shows, differential mobility practices are strongly correlated to zud-based livestock mortality rates. In particular, households that are more capable of practicing otor, a kind of non-customary and irregular migration strategy, are less susceptible to the conditions that threaten herd loss. Households with a greater capacity for conducting otor are able to move greater distances, in shorter time spans, and to regions with less severe conditions, thereby escaping the possibility of facing high loss rates. Differential capacity to mitigate the risk of zud conditions also was found to be deeply affected by previously under-studied institutional transformations surrounding rights and access to livestock, labor, and land. Primarily, this study demonstrates that decentralization and other neo-liberal models of governance not only open space for significant reconfiguration of the institutional landscape in ways that support social inequality, but also subsequently lead to increased differentiation in vulnerability to disaster. Theoretically, this work contributes to critical understandings of political ecology by uncovering circulations of power through constellations of actors (human and otherwise), institutions, and meanings as well as through bio-physical landscapes. In addition, this study contributes to work in vulnerability studies by shedding light on how administrative governance, local institution-building, and property-making shift the apportionment of entitlements to produce hazardous conditions and unequal distributions of risk and vulnerability

Guilty Pleas and the Hidden Minefield of Immigration Consequences for Alien Defendants: Achieving a Just Result by Adjusting Maine\u27s Rule 11 Procedure

On August 19, 1998, Defendant Awralla Aldus pleaded guilty to an aggravated assault charge and other charges pursuant to counsel\u27s advice. As a result of a plea bargain, the defendant received a sentence of five years in prison, with all but 90 days suspended. In addition, she received four years of probation resulting from the aggravated assault charge and concurrent sentences of 60 days for the other charges. Despite covering “every facet of the case,” however, counsel was completely unaware that his client\u27s three months in jail would be followed by the threat of removal from the United States. In 1996, Congress passed laws making aliens “conclusively presumed to be deportable” as a result of any “aggravated felony” conviction in state or federal courts. Previously, the term “aggravated felony” related to criminal convictions with a sentence of more than one year, but the laws passed in 1996 have greatly expanded the scope of the term to include crimes that are not felonies. The new laws also require suspended sentences to be treated as time actually served in prison, making it much easier to render an alien deportable. Because the defendant\u27s suspended sentence exceeded one year, her conviction made her subject to removal procedures. To say that the 1996 laws have created confusion and heartache in courts would be a gross understatement. State courts, in particular, have seen a marked increase in litigation resulting from the peculiar interplay of state and federal laws. State criminal cases are entirely distinct from federal deportation proceedings, which are civil in nature. Yet, most state courts are aware that a conviction for an aggravated felony in state court will automatically trigger federal deportation proceedings for an alien defendant. As such, federal deportation consequences are often the most important factor informing an alien defendant\u27s decision to plead guilty or go to trial in a state criminal case. Although it is clear that immigration consequences matter a great deal to an alien defendant, the question remains; should they matter at all to a court in a state criminal proceeding? Confusion over the materiality of immigration consequences has been most acute in two areas of law in which defendants have constitutionally mandated protections: cases involving the Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel and cases involving Rule 11 protections, which aim to ensure that a defendant\u27s guilty plea is knowing, voluntary, and based in fact. Though the case law on ineffective counsel and Rule 11 cases is fairly extensive, it is important to note that the progression of the common law is like a river that is never at rest. Sweeping changes accompanying recent immigration laws have led some state courts to adjust the substantive law to reflect the idea that immigration consequences can be material to a guilty plea in certain circumstances. By examining the facts and holdings of new cases in relation to those of the prior case law, it is possible to obtain a “functional definition” of the law—a window into the meaning and scope of the law. Functionally defining the law in a single jurisdiction is particularly instructive because it provides an opportunity to assess the law in a real context. Because a description of the law should precede a prescription for changing the law, this Comment focuses on the single jurisdiction of Maine, describing its case law and proposing changes aimed at enhancing judicial procedures

The 2014 Beatson International Cancer Conference: Powering the Cancer Machine

Here, we present a report of the 2014 annual Beatson International Cancer Conference, Glasgow, July 6–9, 2014. The theme was “Powering the Cancer Machine”, focusing on oncogenic signals that regulate metabolic rewiring and the adaptability of the metabolic network in response to stress

Mesothelioma: identical routes to malignancy from asbestos and carbon nanotubes

Exposure of laboratory mice to carbon nanotubes mimics exposure to asbestos, from initial and chronic inflammation, through loss of the same tumour-suppressor pathways and eventual sporadic development of malignant mesothelioma. Fibres of a similar nature may pose significant health risks to humans

Episodic disk accretion in the halo of the 'old' Pre-Main Sequence cluster Eta Chamaeleontis

We present multi-epoch medium-resolution observations of two M4.5 candidate members in the halo of the ~8 Myr Eta Chamaeleontis open cluster. Over six months of observations both stars exhibited variations in their H-alpha line profiles on timescales of days to months, with at least one episode of substantial activity attributable to accretion from a circumstellar disk. We derive an accretion rate ~10^-8.7 Msun/yr for this event, with a rate of ~10^-10.6 Msun/yr in quiescence. Episodic accretion like that observed here means existing surveys of accreting Weak-lined T-Tauri Stars in young clusters are likely incomplete and that gas dissipation timescales calculated from the fraction of accreting objects are underestimates.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Progress and challenges in Mesothelioma: from bench to bedside

Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma (MPM) is currently an incurable cancer with a typical survival of 1 year from the time of diagnosis. The recent genomic and transcriptomic characterization of MPM presents new opportunities and challenges for MPM researchers. Recent advances in clinical and laboratory diagnostics, and proposals for an updated, data-driven, staging system, also present new challenges for clinicians and hospital services involved in MPM care. The aim of this review is first to introduce the reader to the topic of MPM, a disease that is causally linked to prior, typically occupational, exposure to asbestos fibres. Secondly, we will discuss MPM from the clinical and laboratory perspectives, including reviews of current and evolving therapies and our present understanding of the molecular basis of the disease. Finally, we will attempt to identify critical knowledge gaps that currently prevent more effective treatment, including the challenges involved in early detection and chemoprophylaxis

Criteria for Enrolling Dementia Patients in Hospice

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111189/1/j.1532-5415.1997.tb05966.x.pd

Asteroseismology of 16000 Kepler Red Giants: Global Oscillation Parameters, Masses, and Radii

The Kepler mission has provided exquisite data to perform an ensemble asteroseismic analysis on evolved stars. In this work we systematically characterize solar-like oscillations and granulation for 16,094 oscillating red giants, using end-of-mission long-cadence data. We produced a homogeneous catalog of the frequency of maximum power (typical uncertainty $\sigma_{\nu_{\rm max}}$=1.6\%), the mean large frequency separation ($\sigma_{\Delta\nu}$=0.6\%), oscillation amplitude ($\sigma_{\rm A}$=4.7\%), granulation power ($\sigma_{\rm gran}$=8.6\%), power excess width ($\sigma_{\rm width}$=8.8\%), seismically-derived stellar mass ($\sigma_{\rm M}$=7.8\%), radius ($\sigma_{\rm R}$=2.9\%), and thus surface gravity ($\sigma_{\log g}$=0.01 dex). Thanks to the large red giant sample, we confirm that red-giant-branch (RGB) and helium-core-burning (HeB) stars collectively differ in the distribution of oscillation amplitude, granulation power, and width of power excess, which is mainly due to the mass difference. The distribution of oscillation amplitudes shows an extremely sharp upper edge at fixed $\nu_{\rm max}$, which might hold clues to understand the excitation and damping mechanisms of the oscillation modes. We find both oscillation amplitude and granulation power depend on metallicity, causing a spread of 15\% in oscillation amplitudes and a spread of 25\% in granulation power from [Fe/H]=-0.7 to 0.5 dex. Our asteroseismic stellar properties can be used as reliable distance indicators and age proxies for mapping and dating galactic stellar populations observed by Kepler. They will also provide an excellent opportunity to test asteroseismology using Gaia parallaxes, and lift degeneracies in deriving atmospheric parameters in large spectroscopic surveys such as APOGEE and LAMOST.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJS. Both table 1 and 2 are available for download as ancillary file

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 38: Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and the communication of technical information in aerospace

This paper discusses the use of computers as a medium for communication (CMC) used by aerospace engineers and scientists to obtain and/or provide technical information related to research and development activities. The data were obtained from a questionnaire survey that yielded 1006 mail responses. In addition to communication media, the research also investigates degrees of task uncertainty, environmental complexity, and other relevant variables that can affect aerospace workers' information-seeking strategies. While findings indicate that many individuals report CMC is an important function in their communication patterns, the research indicates that CMC is used less often and deemed less valuable than other more conventional media, such as paper documents, group meetings, telephone and face-to-face conversations. Fewer than one third of the individuals in the survey account for nearly eighty percent of the reported CMC use, and another twenty percent indicate they do not use the medium at all, its availability notwithstanding. These preliminary findings suggest that CMC is not as pervasive a communication medium among aerospace workers as the researcher expect a priori. The reasons underlying the reported media use are not yet fully known, and this suggests that continuing research in this area may be valuable