Digital Commons Network^™

The Impacts Of Pension Privatization In Latin American: A Cross-Country Comparison Of Pension Reforms And The Introduction Of Individual Accounts. An Analysis Modeled After The Six Guiding Core Principles Of Social Security, Victoria Le Fraga

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Latin America was the world’s pioneering nation in the privatization of pensions. In 1981, Chile’s pension system underwent a reform making it the first country to replace a public defined-benefit pay-as-you-go pension scheme with a fully funded defined-contribution pension scheme based on individual accounts. This project assesses the impacts and results of pension privatization in Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. As indicators of a prosperous system, my analyses are made using the six core guiding principles of Social Security: i) Coverage; ii) Equal Treatment and Social Solidarity; iii) Gender Equity; iv) Adequacy of Benefits; v) Administrative Costs; vi) and, Financial Sustainability …

Chinggis Khan's Syncretic Steppe: How Tradition And Innovation Combined To Form The World's Largest And Most Diverse Nomadic Empire, Adrian Ramos

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Who Acts? Community Through Chance, Jonas Lh Kunz

Senior Projects Fall 2017

In this paper I will argue that sortition - choosing representatives by chance - could be a way of conciliating the disenchanted democratic citizens with their government. Current democracies suffer under what has been termed the democratic fatigue syndrome. Low voter turnouts, decreasing citizen participation, high rates of distrust and a subsequent rise of nationalist movements. But underlying this fatigue seems to be a general systematic problem, which Robert J. Pranger, Hannah Arendt and Max Weber identify as the politics of interests. These politics rely on competition, coalitions and assertive creativity, - en grow - they rely on power and …

Utilization Of Remittance For Transportation: A Case Study Of Moldova, Nicholas O. Kifyak

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Slash: Call And Response Composition In Jazz Music, Miles Taylour Sweeny

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Low Fidelity, Drew Mccoy Robinson

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

13, Charles Julian Panek

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Malus Pumila, Andrew N. Warner

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Land can be passed in time through generations, just as the presence of family and friends remain. Ive been raised on my family’s land, while watching my relatives with a distinct eye. I have had the privilege of living on old familial ground, coming from my great grandfather to my grandparents, and now handed down to my mother and her siblings. I grew up in Virginia on a farm situated in the countryside with fields, horses, and apples orchards. These places have evolved in time and I have grown with them; though the trees still grow, the land stays the …

The Political Economy Of State-Level Emergency Unemployment Relief: The Case Of The New York Tera, 1931-37, Hasani J. Gunn

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt created The New York State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA) in response to the Great Depression. Operating from 1931-37, this state-level jobs-and-income style policy featured comprehensive in-kind assistance, “home relief,” and emergency unemployment relief, “work relief.” Though the program is fascinating just in this respect, it has been systematically overshadowed by the alphabet soup of New Deal era relief policies. We revisit the TERA to shed light on what it offered to the people of NY and, overall, what it offered to the economy. We find significant evidence that the program stabilized the State economy by …

From Random To Organized: The Architecture Of Neural Networks During Development, Avery Isabella Morris

Senior Projects Fall 2017

The brain is constantly changing during development as a result of various stimuli: memories, language, visual patterns and other sensory information. As a result, networks need to have specific learning rules to function being both plastic and stable. In this project, I’ve constructed a mathematical model based on a biological neural network during development. I’ve written differential equations to describe these specific learning rules as well as methods of visual input to the network. I’ve changed my model, using Euler’s method, to create a discrete-time version of this biological phenomenon to implement on the computer. I’ve successfully coded this, using …

Glimpses, Duncan Puce Hanrahan

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

read em and weep mf'ers

Thinking Outside The Box: Computing 3d Volume In 2d, Alexandra D. Morris

Senior Projects Fall 2017

This project explores how to compute 3D volume of cardboard boxes in 2D without a calibrated camera. Computer vision techniques to obtain 3D volume typically require camera calibration, the standard method for mapping 3D points to 2D. We created our own solution that doesn’t rely on camera calibration and obtains the areas of each box with unknown dimensions with the help of a chessboard pattern placed on each box side. The solution is a proportion that given the box area in pixels, chessboard pattern in pixels, and the chessboard pattern in inches, determines the box area in inches. We tested …

Poetic Possibilities: Poetry And Experience In Emerson, Nietzsche, And Freud, Amalia Astin

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Institutionalized: How Racial Wealth Inequality Creates A Cycle Of Mass Incarceration, Alphonso C. Kenneth

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Racial wealth inequality is a relentless cycle that operates uniquely in America because it implies that the racial consequences of racism continue to influence decisions made in structures and institutions and create unjust economic relationships between white and Black people in America.(Richard F. America) The recent political discourse alleges, by asserting neoclassical theory, that the wealth divide is resultant of differences in self-determination, prioritization, and work ethic alone varying across racial demographics — reinforcing the assumption that some races of people (Whites and Asians, for example) work harder than others(like Blacks). Therefore, by the transitive property, racial wealth inequality is …

Higher Education Costs And The Excelsior Scholarship: Who Pays, And Who Receives?, Anirudh Sanjay Hungund

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Use Your Condom-Sense: Looking At The Effects Of Framing And Categorization On Condom-Use Messages Between Heterosexual And Homosexual Men, Anastasia Sielski Elizalde

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Condom-use has historically been associated as a low-risk, preventative health behavior (Kiene, Barta, Zelenski, & Cothran, 2005). Yet, condom-use is not without risk, as it is an interpersonal behavior that could be potentially relationship threatening (St.Lawrence, 1999; Fisher & Fisher, 1995). Because of the potential relationship risk of condom-use, it cannot be equated with risk-averse preventative health behaviors, such as sunscreen use or wearing a seatbelt. For these reasons, Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1981), provides a strong framework to understanding how to best frame condom-use messages in relation to specific circumstances. Prospect Theory predicts that potentially risky behaviors will …

Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment In Procedural Content Generation, Charles Joseph Calder

Senior Projects Fall 2017

The world of game development has gone through many chapters since its birth. Many complex techniques, designed to give every player a personal game experience, have been developed by those who love to create. This project explores modern Procedural Content Generation and Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment techniques. The algorithm developed in the course of this project is designed to increase developer and player quality of life. Through adaptive generation, this project will explore how players engage with games and what developers can do to add to the player experience.

Begin Again, John David Carroll

Senior Projects Fall 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.