After the Mexican-American war, the educational experience of Mexican and Mexican -American students was one of segregation, discrimination, and inequalities. Latina/o histories and funds of knowledge have not been historically part of the classroom curriculum. Although scholars, educators, and social movements have challenged such inequalities, they still persist. Students became objects of the educational process. New theories and educational practices, such as critical pedagogy, have helped empowered students to become aware of their situation and encouraged students to become social agents of change. Literature circles, an educational practice of critical pedagogy, enable educators to provide students with an educational experience where they become the Subjects of their own learning; thus, transforming their educational experiences. / text

Economic globalization in the 1980s ad 1990s gave birth to a new type of city, called a 'global city', which is assumed to perform critical functions to facilitate the contemporary global economy and which share the same characteristics. Cities, however, have different histories, economies, polities and demographies and these different local conditions do no lend themselves to the construction of a general model a global city even though they have characteristics. First, I explore the historical path of urban development in Seoul since the 1960s. Seoul is very unique in that its economic growth was mainly planned and implemented by the authoritarian Korean national government while civil and political freedom of citizens to participate the decision making process were strongly suppressed. However, the forces of globalization from the 1980s significantly altered the economic and political context in which the Korean state had successful operated in the previous decades. The role of state in regulating and planning the market was significantly weakened as well as the national political system became democratized and decentralized from the 1980s. These changes caused by the forces of globalization have made significant impacts on the organization of urban development in Seoul. Secondly, thus, I examine the social and political impacts of the globalization on the lives of the inhabitants in Seoul and I found that Seoul’s becoming a global city is closely related to the growing gap in the condition of living between the poor and the rich in Seoul. It is mainly caused by the restructuring of the urban labor market toward producer service sector orientation away from manufacturing sector. The expansion of the producer service sector has produced new trends in Seoul’s urban labor market: professionalization of regularly employed people at the top and increasing informal and low-skilled laborers and/or illegal foreign workers at the bottom. Moreover, it is found that increasing social inequality has its spatial consequence: a growing residential segregation. In Seoul, the southeast sub-region has emerged as an exclusive residential area for high-income professionals with much better living conditions, including spacious houses, easier access to heath-care facilities, more green space and educational institutions. The most important cause of the spatial concentration of professionals in this region is the concentration of the producer service sector jobs there. Yet, high price for housing in this area reinforces the clustering of the rich in the area and shuns lower-income people from moving into the area. However, the role of the national government cannot be under-estimated because the government urban policies produced the new development of residential and commercial development in the area in the 1980s. However, it is argued an opportunity to mediate the degrading economic living conditions for citizens in a global city has been created by the same force of globalization, yet in a different social system: urban politics. With particular emphasis on political democratization and decentralization under the current global economic system, it became possible for citizens to be directly involved in the public-policy making process. In theory, this situation implies that citizens are now empowered to create public policies that would minimize the negative consequences of economic globalization on their daily lives. My case study on Cheonggye Stream Restoration Project shows the opportunities and challenges of new urban political context in Seoul. The analysis of the Cheonggye Restoration Project suggests that more room has been created in the course of policy planning and the policy-making process, caused mainly by global political change toward direct democracy. However, the project also suggests that these changes at an institutional level did not lead to changes at an operational level, failing to produce an outcome that really reflects the demands of the actors. / text

As America's public schools become more diverse, the achievement gap between white students and students of color persists. These gaps are even more apparent in urban areas that serve large numbers of poor students of color. Because the population of aspiring teachers is increasingly white and middle class, theorists and teacher trainers often recommend multicultural education as a solution to working successfully in these schools. Multicultural education theorists claim that their suggestions for K-12 practitioners have not been infused into classrooms and schools, and so maintain that additional training opportunities should be provided for teachers. Although there is ample literature regarding multicultural education, there is scant research discussing teachers' perceptions and experiences with multicultural education, especially experienced teachers at the secondary level post-No Child Left Behind (NCLB). While one of the main purposes for the accountability measures in NCLB is to eliminate the achievement gap, these current political policies are at odds with the ideals of multicultural education. Further, historical and sociological analyses indicate that teachers have not been able to systematically alter school practices or outcomes in urban schools. Therefore, there is a gap between multicultural education theory and practice, as well as a gap between multicultural education theory and policy. The purpose of this study was to further investigate teacher perceptions of the factors in schools that affect the gaps between theories, practice and policy. Seven teachers who embrace multicultural education and work in urban secondary schools serving large populations of students of color were interviewed to further explore their experiences when implementing multicultural practices in their classroom. The results of this research suggest that multicultural education theory may be flawed in the way it approaches teacher training and the unique conditions of urban secondary schools, especially in the high accountability NCLB era. Teachers in this study understood the theoretical foundations of multicultural education, but believed that the goals of multicultural education were beyond what could be accomplished in classrooms. The findings of this study address some of the theoretical inconsistencies related to the institutional contexts of urban schools, teacher retention, and multicultural education teacher training models.

Access to health care is an important resource for sexually experienced adolescent females in the prevention of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. However, a paucity of research exists regarding the extent to which social disparities in access to health care exist among this vulnerable population of adolescents, including the potential contribution of the neighborhood context. Therefore, the primary aims of this dissertation were to examine (1) the extent to which racial and socioeconomic disparities in access to health care exist among sexually experienced adolescent females, (2) the extent to which access to health care among sexually experienced adolescent females varies across neighborhoods, and (3) the extent to which the neighborhood racial and socioeconomic context contribute to racial and socioeconomic disparities in access to health care among sexually experienced adolescent females. A multilevel design was employed for this dissertation utilizing secondary data from Wave I of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Analyses included hierarchical generalized linear modeling to examine the receipt of a routine physical, the receipt of contraceptive services, and reported unmet health needs among the dissertation sample of 1,526 sexually experienced Non-Hispanic Black and Non-Hispanic White adolescent females between 15 years to 19 years of age who were dispersed across 546 neighborhoods. After adjusting for a variety of factors that may influence access to health care, the findings revealed no racial disparities and few socioeconomic disparities in access to health care among this sample of adolescents. No significant relationship was noted between the neighborhood racial and socioeconomic context and access to health care or social disparities in access to health care among this sample of adolescents. However, the findings revealed that access to health care among this sample of sexually experienced adolescent females varied across neighborhoods, above and beyond the individual composition of the neighborhood. Further studies are indicated to explore the underlying factors that contribute to socioeconomic disparities in access to health care among sexually experienced adolescent females, and the potential neighborhood characteristics that may contribute to differential access to health care across neighborhoods among this vulnerable population of adolescents.

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Cells must faithfully segregate their chromosomes at division; errors in this process causes cells to inherit an incorrect number of chromosomes, a hallmark of birth defects and cancer. The machinery required to segregate chromosomes is called the spindle, a bipolar array of microtubules that attach to chromosomes through the kinetochore. Replicated chromosomes contain two sister chromatids whose kinetochores must attach to microtubules from opposite poles to ensure correct inheritance of chromosomes. The spindle checkpoint monitors the attachment to the spindle and prevents cell division until all chromatids are attached to opposite poles. Both the spindle and the checkpoint are critical for correct segregation, and we sought to understand the regulation of these two components. The spindle is assembled to a characteristic metaphase length, but it is unknown what determines this length. It has been proposed that spindle length could be regulated a balance of two forces: one generated by interaction between microtubules that elongates the spindle and a second due to interactions between kinetochores and microtubules that shortens the spindle. We tested this force-balance model which predicts that altering the number of kinetochores will alter spindle length. We manipulated the number of kinetochores and found that spindle length scales with the number of kinetochores; introducing extra kinetochores produces shorter spindles and inhibiting kinetochores produces longer spindles. Our results suggest that attachment of chromosomes to the spindle via kinetochores produces an inward force that opposes outward force. We also found that the number of microtubules in the spindle varied with the number of kinetochores. In addition to establishing a spindle, cells must also guarantee that chromosomes are correctly attached to it. Correct attachment generates tension as the chromatids are pulled toward opposite poles but held together by cohesin until anaphase. The spindle checkpoint monitors this tension which causes stretching of chromatin and kinetochores. Lack of tension on activates the checkpoint, but is unknown if the checkpoint measures stretch between kinetochores (inter-kinetochore stretch) or within kinetochores (intra-kinetochore). We tethered sister chromatids together to inhibit inter-kinetochore stretch and found that the checkpoint was not activated. Our results negate inter-kinetochore models and support intra-kinetochore models.

The purpose of this dissertation is to elucidate the democratic nature of American public schools in terms of democratic principles of freedom, equality, and equity through historical, sociological, conceptual, and educational examinations. Chapter 2 explores, through a salient and recurring phenomenon of segregation, how the democratic-capitalistic matrix of American public schools has been constructed in terms of both meritocratic and egalitarian policies. To scrutinize the substantive nature of democratic-capitalistic society, in Chapter 3, social theories proposed by Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, and Freud are examined in terms of the nature of human existence in the democratic-capitalistic society and then, its mode of existence is analyzed in light of the metaphors, the Möbius strip and the Klein bottle. The object of Chapter 4 is to clarify the conceptual and substantive relationship between freedom and equality based on equity as balance point. In Chapter 5, educational issues concerning the nature of democratic existence are dealt with in terms of educational quality, while clarifying the paradoxical nature of democratic-educational conceptions of excellence and knowledge in the public school system. Further, a reconsideration of the Brown decision in Chapter 6 helps penetrate how democratic existence can be substantialized in American public schools under the capitalistic-democratic society, confirming a new version of educational paradigm. / text

Object perception is necessary to our understanding of the visual world, yet its neural mechanism remains poorly understood. The goal of this dissertation is to shed light on this mechanism. Current computational models of object perception suggest that regions on opposite sides of a shared border compete, with the winner perceived as the shaped object and the loser as its locally shapeless background (or ground). Recent behavioral work indicates that the result of this competition is suppression of the ground at the level of object shape--a finding not predicted by models. Here, I present three studies that extend this previous research on ground suppression as a mechanism by which object perception is accomplished. I first show that the amount of suppression applied to the ground depends on the amount of competition for object status (Salvagio, Cacciamani, & Peterson, 2012). I then provide the first neural evidence of ground suppression from shape-level competition at both high and low levels of the visual hierarchy, with the latter arising from top-down feedback (Cacciamani, Scalf, & Peterson, submitted). Finally, I show that semantic information pertaining to the ground is accessed prior to the assignment of object status, but unlike shape information, is not suppressed (Cacciamani, Mojica, Sanguinetti, & Peterson, 2014). Together, the three studies that comprise this dissertation demonstrate that ground suppression arising from shape-level competition underlies object perception. This research contradicts traditional theories stating that objects are processed unidirectionally through the visual system in a single feedforward pass; instead, it supports theories of object perception entailing dynamical feedforward and feedback processes.

Spatial segregation among life cycle stages has been observed in many stage-structured species, including species of the flour beetle Tribolium. Patterns have been observed both in homogeneous and heterogeneous environments. We investigate density dependent dispersal of life cycle stages as a mechanism responsible for this separation. By means of mathematical analysis and numerical simulations, we explore this hypothesis using stage-structured, integrodifference equation (IDE) models that incorporate density dependent dispersal kernels.In Chapter 2 we develop a bifurcation theory approach to the existence and stability of (non-extinction) equilibria for a general class of structured integrodifference equation models on finite spatial domains with density dependent kernels. We show that a continuum of such equilibria bifurcates from the extinction equilibrium when it loses stability as the net reproductive number n increases through 1. We give several examples to illustrate the theory.In Chapter 3 we investigate mechanisms that can lead to spatial patterns in two dimensional Juvenile-Adult IDE models. The bifurcation theory shows that such patterns do not arise for n near 1. For larger values of n we show, via numerical simulation, that density dependent dispersal can lead to the segregation of life cycle stages in the sense that each stage peaks in a different spatial location.Finally, in Chapter 4, we construct spatial models to describe the population dynamics of T. castaneum, T. confusum and T. brevicornis and use them to assess density dependent dispersal mechanisms that are able to explain spatial patterns that have been observed in these species.