State Opportunities for Reconnecting Young Adults to Education, Skills Training and Employment

"An alarmingly large number of young adults have disconnected from traditional education or skills training pathways, often without obtaining a basic high school credential. The research is clear: the longer a person is without a high school credential or without the skill training necessary for a family-sustaining wage, the more likely that individual will remain in poverty and be a significant consumer of public welfare and social services" (p.1). In addressing this problem, the brief describes the issue, which millions of out-of-school young adults face and which can lead to negative consequences for them as well as society at large; explains several federally authorized programs that impact the reconnection of young adults to education and training; outlines possible state tools for reconnecting young adults to education and skills training; and provides recommendations for state-level engagement

University Scholar Series: Scott Shaffer

A New Form Of Biotechnology: Novel Data Logging Devices Reveal Secrets About The Lives Of Marine Animals On September 25, 2013, Dr. Scott Shaffer gave a talk titled “A New Form Of Biotechnology: Novel Data Logging Devices Reveal Secrets About The Lives Of Marine Animals” as part of the University Scholar Series hosted by Provost Ellen Junn at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. Dr. Shaffer’s research focuses on the ecology, physiology, and conservation of marine vertebrate species. Specifically, he uses novel smart technologies to study long-range movements, distribution, and behavior of wild seabirds and marine mammals. This new form of biotechnology is shedding light on the secret lives of marine animals that range widely over the open sea. Dr. Shaffer has used this technology to study animals in Alaska, Antarctica, the Arctic, and the tropical Pacific. Dr. Shaffer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/uss/1028/thumbnail.jp

Factorization in the Cloud: Integer Factorization Using F# and Windows Azure

Implementations are presented of two common algorithms for integer factorization, Pollard’s “p – 1” method and the SQUFOF method. The algorithms are implemented in the F# language, a functional programming language developed by Microsoft and officially released for the first time in 2010. The algorithms are thoroughly tested on a set of large integers (up to 64 bits in size), running both on a physical machine and a Windows Azure machine instance. Analysis of the relative performance between the two environments indicates comparable performance when taking into account the difference in computing power. Further analysis reveals that the relative performance of the Azure implementation tends to improve as the magnitudes of the integers increase, indicating that such an approach may be suitable for larger, more complex factorization tasks. Finally, several questions are presented for future research, including the performance of F# and related languages for more efficient, parallelizable algorithms, and the relative cost and performance of factorization algorithms in various environments, including physical hardware and commercial cloud computing offerings from the various vendors in the industry

Child Access Prevention Laws: Keeping Guns Out of Our Children\u27s Hands

This Note explores the Child Access Prevention ( CAP ) law and laws which are generally intended to limit children\u27s access to guns at home. The author proposes a model CAP law that should be enacted in the United States. This Note discusses the evolution of CAP laws and presents for arguments for and against such laws. It delves into the National Rifle Association\u27s ( NRA ) powerful influence that improperly prevents CAP laws from being enacted by the federal government. Additionally, it is argued that unless the federal government enacts a CAP law, innocent children will continue to be injure and lose their lives as a result of unintentional shootings in their own homes

Judicial Oversight in the Comparative Context: Biodiversity Protection in the United States, Australia, and Canada

How effective are courts as policymaking institutions? Generally speaking, courts play a far larger role in American biodiversity law than they do in comparable Australian and Canadian statutory programs. As a result, studying endangered species protection offers a useful way to identify and isolate the policy impacts of judicial intervention. In the two cases I examine, the American system functioned at least as well as, and sometimes better than, the biodiversity programs in Australia and Canada. Contrary to most scholarship on the topic, lawsuits did not appear to slow the American policymaking process significantly; rather, litigation helped enforce important legal provisions and forced government officials to address critical shortcomings in their regulatory actions. At least in these cases, then, litigation acted as a productive and useful part of the policymaking process.Governmen

Unification and the Myth of Purely Reductive Understanding

In this paper significant challenges are raised with respect to the view that explanation essentially involves unification. These objections are raised specifically with respect to the well-known versions of unificationism developed and defended by Michael Friedman and Philip Kitcher. The objections involve the explanatory regress argument and the concepts of reduction and scientific understanding. Essentially, the contention made here is that these versions of unificationism wrongly assume that reduction secures understanding

Foley’s Threshold View of Belief and the Safety Condition on Knowledge

This paper introduces a new argument against Richard Foley’s threshold view of belief. His view is based on the Lockean Thesis (LT) and the Rational Threshold Thesis (RTT). The argument introduced here shows that the views derived from the LT and the RTT violate the safety condition on knowledge in way that threatens the LT and/or the RTT

Defusing the Miners Paradox

This paper presents a case for the claim that the infamous miners paradox is not a paradox. This contention is based on some important observations about the nature of ignorance with respect to both disjunctions and conditional obligations and their modal features. The gist of the argument is that given the uncertainty about the location of the miners in the story and the nature of obligations, the apparent obligation to block either mine shaft is cancelled