On the Threshold of Paradise and Present: Memory in Contemporary Cuban‐American Literature

The exile leaving his or her homeland for new and unknown territory travels with much more than just luggage and the clothes on his or her back. He or she carries a weighty collection of memories. Available for the exile in times when the harmony of the past is far removed from the difficult circumstances present during the process of cultural assimilation, these memories present an opportunity for the exile to fashion for him or herself an identity that mimics the realities of life in the home left behind. In this creative endeavor, I seek to examine the powerful potential of memory as it is exercised by a collection of Cubans and Cuban-Americans in different corners of the United States. Analyzing Achy Obejas’ Memory Mambo, Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, Ana Menéndez’s In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, and Elías Miguel Muñoz’s Brand New Memory, I aim to trace the suggestive potential of memory as it is used by each of the characters in these works in an effort to reconcile their Cuban identities with the ones that are in the process of creation in the U.S. I will borrow from a collection of literature dealing with identity and exile, relevant graduate-level theses on Cuban-American literature, as well as theoretical perspectives on memory formation and nostalgia in order to trace the various ways in which memory is relied on in the process of cultural assimilation and emotional coping. Being presented in Miami, which hosts the largest concentration of Cuban immigrants, this thesis aims to present itself as a reflective tool for Cubans and Cuban-Americans who may find value in seeing their personal sentiments portrayed in literature, thus allowing for a potential reevaluation of identity. If the existing literature on my topic of analysis reveals anything, it is that the scope of my project is one that has not been inspected previously, thus making my analytical contribution a new one that will add a new interpretive set of lens through which readers of contemporary Cuban-American literature can examine the works.

Critical bed shear stress and threshold of motion of maërl biogenic gravel

Critical bed shear stress for incipient motion has been determined for biogenic free-living coralline algae known as maërl. Maërl from three different sedimentary environments (beach, intertidal, and open marine) in Galway Bay, west of Ireland have been analysed in a rotating annular flume and linear flume. Velocity profile measurements of the benthic boundary layer, using an Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter, have been obtained in four different velocity experiments. The bed shear stress has been determined using three methods: Law of the Wall, Turbulent Kinetic Energy and Reynolds Stress. The critical Shields parameter has been estimated as a non-dimensional mobility number and the results have been compared with the Shields curve for natural sand. Maërl particles fall below this curve because its greater angularity allows grains to be mobilised easier than hydraulically equivalent particles. From previous work, the relationship between grain shape and the settling velocity of maërl suggests that the roughness is greatest for intertidal maërl particles. During critical shear stress determinations, beds of such rough particles exhibited the greatest critical shear stress probably because the particle thalli interlocked and resisted entrainment. The Turbulent Kinetic Energy methodology gives the most consistent results, agreeing with previous comparative studies. Rarely-documented maërl megaripples were observed in the rotating annular flume and are hypothesised to form at velocities ~10 cm s-1 higher than the critical threshold velocity, where tidal currents, oscillatory flow or combined-wave current interaction results in the preferential transport of maërl. A determination of the critical bed shear stress of maërl allows its mobility and rate of erosion and deposition to be evaluated spatially in subsequent applications to biological conservation management.

Oil Market Modelling: A Comparative Analysis of Fundamental and Latent Factor Approaches

We formally compare fundamental factor and latent factor approaches to oil price modelling. Fundamental modelling has a long history in seeking to understand oil price movements, while latent factor modelling has a more recent and limited history, but has gained popularity in other financial markets. The two approaches, though competing, have not formally been compared as to effectiveness. For a range of short- medium- and long-dated WTI oil futures we test a recently proposed five-factor fundamental model and a Principal Component Analysis latent factor model. Our findings demonstrate that there is no discernible difference between the two techniques in a dynamic setting. We conclude that this infers some advantages in adopting the latent factor approach due to the difficulty in determining a well specified fundamental model.

School and Community Screening Shows Malawi, Africa, to Have a High Prevalence of Latent Rheumatic Heart Disease

Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) is the largest cardiac cause of morbidity and mortality in the world's youth. Early detection of RHD through echocardiographic screening in asymptomatic children may identify an early stage of disease, when secondary prophylaxis has the greatest chance of stopping disease progression. Latent RHD signifies echocardiographic evidence of RHD with no known history of acute rheumatic fever and no clinical symptoms.

OBJECTIVE: Determine the prevalence of latent RHD among children ages 5-16 in Lilongwe, Malawi.

DESIGN: This is a cross-sectional study in which children ages 5 through 16 were screened for RHD using echocardiography.

SETTING: Screening was conducted in 3 schools and surrounding communities in the Lilongwe district of Malawi between February and April 2014.

OUTCOME MEASURES: Children were diagnosed as having no, borderline, or definite RHD as defined by World Heart Federation criteria. The primary reader completed offline reads of all studies. A second reader reviewed all of the studies diagnosed as RHD, plus a selection of normal studies. A third reader served as tiebreaker for discordant diagnoses. The distribution of results was compared between gender, location, and age categories using Fisher's exact test.

RESULTS: The prevalence of latent RHD was 3.4% (95% CI = 2.45, 4.31), with 0.7% definite RHD and 2.7% borderline RHD. There was no significant differences in prevalence between gender (P = .44), site (P = .6), urban vs. peri-urban (P = .75), or age (P = .79). Of those with definite RHD, all were diagnosed because of pathologic mitral regurgitation (MR) and 2 morphologic features of the mitral valve. Of those with borderline RHD, most met the criteria by having pathological MR (92.3%).

CONCLUSION: Malawi has a high rate of latent RHD, which is consistent with other results from sub-Saharan Africa. This study strongly supports the need for a RHD prevention and control program in Malawi.

Approach to chaos in ultracold atomic and molecular physics: Statistics of near-threshold bound states for Li+CaH and Li+CaF

We calculate near-threshold bound states and Feshbach resonance positions for atom–rigid-rotor models of the highly anisotropic systems Li+CaH and Li+CaF. We perform statistical analysis on the resonance positions to compare with the predictions of random matrix theory. For Li+CaH with total angular momentum J=0 we find fully chaotic behavior in both the nearest-neighbor spacing distribution and the level number variance. However, for J>0 we find different behavior due to the presence of a nearly conserved quantum number. Li+CaF (J=0) also shows apparently reduced levels of chaotic behavior despite its stronger effective coupling. This may indicate the development of another good quantum number relating to a bending motion of the complex. However, continuously varying the rotational constant over a wide range shows unexpected structure in the degree of chaotic behavior, including a dramatic reduction around the rotational constant of CaF. This demonstrates the complexity of the relationship between coupling and chaotic behavior.

Extreme-Ultraviolet-Initated High-Order Harmonic Generation: Driving Inner-Valence Electrons Using Below-Threshold-Energy Extreme-Ultraviolet Light

We propose a novel scheme for resolving the contribution of inner- and outer-valence electrons in XUV-initiated high-harmonic generation in neon. By probing the atom with a low energy (below the 2s ionisation threshold) ultrashort XUV pulse, the 2p electron is steered away from the core, while the 2s electron is enabled to describe recollision trajectories. By selectively suppressing the 2p recollision trajectories we can resolve the contribution of the 2s electron to the high-harmonic spectrum. We apply the classical trajectory model to account for the contribution of the 2s electron, which allows for an intuitive understanding of the process.

Crossing the Threshold: Mysticism, Liminality, and Remedios Varo’s Bordando el manto terrestre (1961–2)

In this article we propose to take up the question of the painter’s work in connection with liminality more explicitly. We will argue that the limen Varo’s heroines cross is a psychological one that takes them through a process culminating in a rebirth of the self, and that to the extent they are in-between identities and involved in a process of initiation, they can be considered liminars (Turner). We will also argue that in order to develop this theme, which culminates in her most autobiographical work, the triptych Bordando el manto terrestre (1961–2), the artist needed to find a way conceptually to bridge surrealism and her interest in mysticism. She would have found a sympathetic approach in Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis, who turned explicitly to the question of religion in the troubled thirties, though, as we shall see, she revised his androcentric approach. We will suggest that Jung’s writing helped the artist make a transition from surrealism to esoteric spirituality.

Physical Layer Security with Threshold-Based Multiuser Scheduling in Multi-antenna Wireless Networks

In this paper, we consider a multiuser downlink wiretap network consisting of one base station (BS) equipped with AA antennas, NB single-antenna legitimate users, and NE single-antenna eavesdroppers over Nakagami-m fading channels. In particular, we introduce a joint secure transmission scheme that adopts transmit antenna selection (TAS) at the BS and explores threshold-based selection diversity (tSD) scheduling over legitimate users to achieve a good secrecy performance while maintaining low implementation complexity. More specifically, in an effort to quantify the secrecy performance of the considered system, two practical scenarios are investigated, i.e., Scenario I: the eavesdropper’s channel state information (CSI) is unavailable at the BS, and Scenario II: the eavesdropper’s CSI is available at the BS. For Scenario I, novel exact closed-form expressions of the secrecy outage probability are derived, which are valid for general networks with an arbitrary number of legitimate users, antenna configurations, number of eavesdroppers, and the switched threshold. For Scenario II, we take into account the ergodic secrecy rate as the principle performance metric, and derive novel closed-form expressions of the exact ergodic secrecy rate. Additionally, we also provide simple and asymptotic expressions for secrecy outage probability and ergodic secrecy rate under two distinct cases, i.e., Case I: the legitimate user is located close to the BS, and Case II: both the legitimate user and eavesdropper are located close to the BS. Our important findings reveal that the secrecy diversity order is AAmA and the slope of secrecy rate is one under Case I, while the secrecy diversity order and the slope of secrecy rate collapse to zero under Case II, where the secrecy performance floor occurs. Finally, when the switched threshold is carefully selected, the considered scheduling scheme outperforms other well known existing schemes in terms of the secrecy performance and complexity tradeoff

Threshold Magic: Impressionism and the Domestic Interior

This article focuses on the liminal space of the threshold in paintings by female Impressionists. It engages with Cultural theory and History of Design in order to offer a new interpretation of domestic spaces

The Li-8(p, alpha)He-5 reaction at low energies, and Be-9 spectroscopy around the proton threshold

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Bayesian nonparametric latent variable models

L’un des problèmes importants en apprentissage automatique est de déterminer la complexité du modèle à apprendre. Une trop grande complexité mène au surapprentissage, ce qui correspond à trouver des structures qui n’existent pas réellement dans les données, tandis qu’une trop faible complexité mène au sous-apprentissage, c’est-à-dire que l’expressivité du modèle est insuffisante pour capturer l’ensemble des structures présentes dans les données. Pour certains modèles probabilistes, la complexité du modèle se traduit par l’introduction d’une ou plusieurs variables cachées dont le rôle est d’expliquer le processus génératif des données. Il existe diverses approches permettant d’identifier le nombre approprié de variables cachées d’un modèle. Cette thèse s’intéresse aux méthodes Bayésiennes nonparamétriques permettant de déterminer le nombre de variables cachées à utiliser ainsi que leur dimensionnalité. La popularisation des statistiques Bayésiennes nonparamétriques au sein de la communauté de l’apprentissage automatique est assez récente. Leur principal attrait vient du fait qu’elles offrent des modèles hautement flexibles et dont la complexité s’ajuste proportionnellement à la quantité de données disponibles. Au cours des dernières années, la recherche sur les méthodes d’apprentissage Bayésiennes nonparamétriques a porté sur trois aspects principaux : la construction de nouveaux modèles, le développement d’algorithmes d’inférence et les applications. Cette thèse présente nos contributions à ces trois sujets de recherches dans le contexte d’apprentissage de modèles à variables cachées. Dans un premier temps, nous introduisons le Pitman-Yor process mixture of Gaussians, un modèle permettant l’apprentissage de mélanges infinis de Gaussiennes. Nous présentons aussi un algorithme d’inférence permettant de découvrir les composantes cachées du modèle que nous évaluons sur deux applications concrètes de robotique. Nos résultats démontrent que l’approche proposée surpasse en performance et en flexibilité les approches classiques d’apprentissage. Dans un deuxième temps, nous proposons l’extended cascading Indian buffet process, un modèle servant de distribution de probabilité a priori sur l’espace des graphes dirigés acycliques. Dans le contexte de réseaux Bayésien, ce prior permet d’identifier à la fois la présence de variables cachées et la structure du réseau parmi celles-ci. Un algorithme d’inférence Monte Carlo par chaîne de Markov est utilisé pour l’évaluation sur des problèmes d’identification de structures et d’estimation de densités. Dans un dernier temps, nous proposons le Indian chefs process, un modèle plus général que l’extended cascading Indian buffet process servant à l’apprentissage de graphes et d’ordres. L’avantage du nouveau modèle est qu’il admet les connections entres les variables observables et qu’il prend en compte l’ordre des variables. Nous présentons un algorithme d’inférence Monte Carlo par chaîne de Markov avec saut réversible permettant l’apprentissage conjoint de graphes et d’ordres. L’évaluation est faite sur des problèmes d’estimations de densité et de test d’indépendance. Ce modèle est le premier modèle Bayésien nonparamétrique permettant d’apprendre des réseaux Bayésiens disposant d’une structure complètement arbitraire.

Vehicle Distance Threshold for Quayside Operations of Container Terminals

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Clinically-relevant threshold of preformed donor-specific anti-HLA antibodies in kidney transplantation.

BACKGROUND: Pretransplant anti-HLA donor-specific antibodies (DSA) are recognized as a risk factor for acute antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) in kidney transplantation. The predictive value of C4d-fixing capability by DSA or of IgG DSA subclasses for acute AMR in the pretransplant setting has been recently studied. In addition DSA strength assessed by mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) may improve risk stratification. We aimed to analyze the relevance of preformed DSA and of DSA MFI values. METHODS: 280 consecutive patients with negative complement-dependent cytotoxicity crossmatches received a kidney transplant between 01/2008 and 03/2014. Sera were screened for the presence of DSA with a solid-phase assays on a Luminex flow analyzer, and the results were correlated with biopsy-proven acute AMR in the first year and survival. RESULTS: Pretransplant anti-HLA antibodies were present in 72 patients (25.7%) and 24 (8.6%) had DSA. There were 46 (16.4%) acute rejection episodes, 32 (11.4%) being cellular and 14 (5.0%) AMR. The incidence of acute AMR was higher in patients with pretransplant DSA (41.7%) than in those without (1.6%) (p<0.001). The median cumulative MFI (cMFI) of the group DSA+/AMR+ was 5680 vs 2208 in DSA+/AMR- (p=0.058). With univariate logistic regression a threshold value of 5280 cMFI was predictive for acute AMR. DSA cMFI's ability to predict AMR was also explored by ROC analysis. AUC was 0.728 and the best threshold was a cMFI of 4340. Importantly pretransplant DSA>5280 cMFI had a detrimental effect on 5-year graft survival. CONCLUSIONS: Preformed DSA cMFI values were clinically-relevant for the prediction of acute AMR and graft survival in kidney transplantation. A threshold of 4300-5300 cMFI was a significant outcome predictor.