Rethinking Care Through Social Reproduction: Articulating Circuits of Migration

Care has come to dominate much feminist research on globalized migrations and the transfer of labor from the South to the North, while the older concept of reproduction had been pushed into the background but is now becoming the subject of debates on the commodification of care in the household and changes in welfare state policies. This article argues that we could achieve a better understanding of the different modalities and trajectories of care in the reproduction of individuals, families, and communities, both of migrant and nonmigrant populations by articulating the diverse circuits of migration, in particular that of labor and the family. In doing this, I go back to the earlier North American writing on racialized minorities and migrants and stratified social reproduction. I also explore insights from current Asian studies of gendered circuits of migration connecting labor and marriage migrations as well as the notion of global householding that highlights the gender politics of social reproduction operating within and beyond households in institutional and welfare architectures. In contrast to Asia, there has relatively been little exploration in European studies of the articulation of labor and family migrations through the lens of social reproduction. However, connecting the different types of migration enables us to achieve a more complex understanding of care trajectories and their contribution to social reproduction.

“Work of Kinship” done by Families in Santiago de Chile

This paper reports the progress achieved in an anthropological investigation based on which there is now a more in depth understanding of some dimensions of the “kinship work” carried out by families in Chile. The main objective is to analyze the work of maintaining family links performed primarily by women within families and show how this work reproduces gender inequalities within them. On the basis of a longitudinal methodology based on semi-structured interviews, it is concluded that the work of maintaining family links performed by women is crucial but goes unnoticed because kinship obligations are seen as a naturally being part of women’s role in the family.

Automatic learning of pre-miRNAs from different species.

Discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs) relies on predictive models for characteristic features from miRNA precursors (pre-miRNAs). The short length of miRNA genes and the lack of pronounced sequence features complicate this task. To accommodate the peculiarities of plant and animal miRNAs systems, tools for both systems have evolved differently. However, these tools are biased towards the species for which they were primarily developed and, consequently, their predictive performance on data sets from other species of the same kingdom might be lower. While these biases are intrinsic to the species, their characterization can lead to computational approaches capable of diminishing their negative effect on the accuracy of pre-miRNAs predictive models. We investigate in this study how 45 predictive models induced for data sets from 45 species, distributed in eight subphyla/classes, perform when applied to a species different from the species used in its induction. Results: Our computational experiments show that the separability of pre-miRNAs and pseudo pre-miRNAs instances is species-dependent and no feature set performs well for all species, even within the same subphylum/class. Mitigating this species dependency, we show that an ensemble of classifiers reduced the classification errors for all 45 species. As the ensemble members were obtained using meaningful, and yet computationally viable feature sets, the ensembles also have a lower computational cost than individual classifiers that rely on energy stability parameters, which are of prohibitive computational cost in large scale applications. Conclusion: In this study, the combination of multiple pre-miRNAs feature sets and multiple learning biases enhanced the predictive accuracy of pre-miRNAs classifiers of 45 species. This is certainly a promising approach to be incorporated in miRNA discovery tools towards more accurate and less species-dependent tools.

The Economics of Climate Adaptation on America’s Coasts: A Washington Conversation

Report of a colloquium on the economics of coastal climate change adaptation held in Washington D.C. on April 16, 2015. The event was sponsored by The Center for Blue Economy of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the Urban Coast Institute of Monmouth University. Participants included Michael Conathan, Center for American Progress; Frank Nutter, Reinsurance Association of America; Dr. Robert Kopp, Rutgers University; Josh Sawislak, Council on Environmental Quality; Tony MacDonald, Urban Coast Institute; Jason Scorse and Charles Colgan, Center for the Blue Economy

Contribución de la misión de naciones unidas en Guatemala – Minugua, a la promoción, defensa y garantía de los derechos de la población indígena guatemalteca (1994 a 2004)

El conflicto armado en Guatemala se originó por el abuso de poder, la desigualdad, la exclusión y la profunda discriminación, sobre todo hacia la población indígena, a la que se le han desconocido históricamente sus derechos y que fue la más afligida durante el conflicto. Lo que desembocó en el nacimiento de grupos al margen de la ley, cuyo propósito fue reivindicar los derechos de la población, así como la equidad y justicia social. El conflicto se caracterizó por la formación de grupos paramilitares, la violación al Derecho Internacional Humanitario, el elevado número de víctimas del conflicto, mayoritariamente indígenas y porque más del 85% de las violaciones a los derechos humanos fueron perpetradas por el Estado. Gracias a la voluntad política, al respaldo de la comunidad internacional, especialmente de la Organización de Naciones Unidas -ONU, y a los buenos oficios de la Comisión Nacional de Reconciliación – CNR, se lograron firmar los Acuerdos de Paz y dar fin a este cruento conflicto de más de 36 años. Las partes firmantes vieron la necesidad de que un ente autónomo e imparcial de Naciones Unidas, verificara el cumplimiento de La Misión de Naciones Unidas en Guatemala - MINUGUA contribuyó a la promoción, defensa y garantía de los derechos de la población indígena guatemalteca. Específicamente, incidió en el cumplimiento de los compromisos contenidos en el Acuerdo sobre Identidad y Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas guatemaltecos –AIDPI, que fue suscrito el 31 de marzo de 1995, asimismo, contribuyó a la garantía del derecho a la justicia de la población indígena, lo que se evidenció en las acciones y el papel que desempeñó en los componentes de verdad, justicia y reparación.

Prevention of Risky drinking among students at a Brazilian University

Aim: The aim of this paper was to compare the quantity and frequency of alcohol use and its associated negative consequences between two groups of college students who were identified as being risky drinkers. Subjects were randomly allocated in a clinical trial to intervention or control groups. Methods: Risky drinking use was defined as Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) >= 8 and/or Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index (RAPI) >= 5 problems in the previous year. Students who had undergone the Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS) (N = 145 at baseline; 142 at 12 months, and 103 at 24 months, loss of 29.7%) were compared with a control group (N = 121 at baseline; 121 at 12 months and 113 at 24 months, loss of 9.3%), the nonintervention group. Variables included drinking frequency, quantity and peak consumption, dependence assessment, and family and friends' abuse assessment. Results: Treated students at a 24-month follow-up decreased quantity of alcohol use per occasion and lowered AUDIT and RAPI scores. Conclusions: This is the first brief intervention work on risky drinking with college students in Brazil and the results are encouraging. However, it is difficult to conduct individual prevention strategies in a country where culture fosters heavy drinking through poor public policy on alcohol and lack of law enforcement.

Administrative Placement of the Information Systems Discipline in Universities - A SWOT Analysis of Queensland University of Technology

In some Queensland universities, Information Systems academics have moved out of Business Faculties. This study uses a pilot SWOT analysis to examine the ramifications of Information Systems academics being located within or outside of the Business Faculty. The analysis provides a useful basis for decision makers in the School studied, to exploit opportunities and minimise external threats. For Information Systems academics contemplating administrative relocation of their group, the study also offers useful insights. The study presages a series of further SWOT analyses to provide a range of perspectives on the relative merits of having Information Systems academics administratively located inside versus outside Business faculties.