Self-Organizing File Cabinet

This thesis presents a self-organized file cabinet. This file cabinet uses electronic information to augment the physical world. By using a scanner to transform documents into electronic files, the self-organized file cabinet can index the documents on visual and textual information. The self-organized file cabinet helps the user find the documents at a later date. The focus of this thesis is on the design and evaluation of the self-organized file cabinet. User studies show that this tool is natural to use

Study of the Impact of the ACA Implementation in Kentucky: Semi-Annual Report

This report was produced by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) at the University of Minnesota as part of a mixed-methods study, Study of the Impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Implementation in Kentucky, funded by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky (Foundation). As part of this project, SHADAC will use semi-annual and annual reports to document the impact of the ACA in Kentucky using a set of indicators agreed upon by the Foundation and its ACA Impact Study Oversight Committee (see Appendix I for a complete list of indicators). These reports will track change in the indicators throughout the duration of this 34-month study (March 2015 through January 2018), and will include comparisons of Kentucky metrics with the U.S. and other states.The purpose of the first semi-annual report, "Baseline Data for the Implementation of the ACA in Kentucky," is to describe the baseline status of the healthcare situation in Kentucky prior to ACA implementation. The report presents baseline data for all study indicators, under the five study domains: coverage, access, cost, quality, and health outcomes. We use calendar year 2012 data as our baseline because it pre-dates the first ACA enrollment period that began in October 2013 and because the 2012 data are available for most of the indicators

Canada’s Great War on Film: \u3cem\u3eLest We Forget\u3c/em\u3e (1935)

Lest We Forget was Canada’s official Great War film. It sparked controversy when it was shown across the country in 1935, during the midst of the worst depression in Canadian history, and with a growing anxiety over the increased aggression of international dictators. The film provided a contested venue for what the Great War had meant to a generation of Canadians. But this was no ordinary war film. Officially sanctioned and constructed from archival footage, the story of Canada’s war was told in 100 minutes, from the opening phases through to the grim fighting on the Western Front, and including those who supported the soldiers from home. Many journalists, politicians, and veterans called Lest We Forget the most authentic film to have appeared since the end of the war, especially in contrast to Hollywood fictional productions. This article examines the conflicting discourse surrounding Lest We Forget. While the official film, what we would now call a documentary, provided important insight into the war, and how it would be remembered, it probably tells us more about the 1930s than the period from 1914 to 1918. But this is only one part of the story. Canada’s Great War film history remains largely unexplored. Where did this film footage come from? Who filmed these Canadians on the battlefield? How did these cameramen work within the deadly environment of shrapnel, snipers, and poison gas? How was the film footage received during and after the war? To better the importance of Lest We Forget, it is not just the film and the public’s reaction to it, but also the footage that was used to underpin the narrative

Dr. Strangelove Visits Canada: Project Rustice, Ease, and Bridge, 1958–1963

During the Cold War, many NATO governments developed highly secret contingency plans to maintain the continuity of government (COG) during and after nuclear attack. Canada was no exception. COG planning generally consisted of several elements including legal mechanisms and constitutional matters; document duplication and storage; skeleton bureaucracies; dispersion; transportation; and shelter. All were necessary to keep Canada functioning as a nation in the face of an attack by Soviet atomic and hydrogen bombs. The most misunderstood element of COG planning has been the shelter component. Critics of civil defence programmes argued that protecting government leaders in shelters and not providing similar facilities to the population as a whole was “undemocratic,” designed to maintain the “power elite.”1 The reality of Canada’s COG programme was quite different from this propaganda line and its ability to protect the country’s leaders in underground facilities was much more limited than alleged. This study will concentrate on the strategic context, physical arrangements and concepts of operation developed to maintain the continuity of Canadian government in the era of the greatest danger during the Cold War, 1958 to 1963

'Behind Enemy Lines' Menzies, Evatt and Passports for Peking

This article focuses primarily on Australian government responses to the 1952 Peace Conference for Asia and the Pacific Regions. Because the conference was to be held in Peking, it was the subject of immense controversy: Chinese communists were fighting Australian soldiers in Korea and Australian peace activists, most communist or 'fellow travellers', sought to travel behind the 'bamboo curtain'. In this context, the Menzies government's policies on passports were sharply silhouetted. Although this conference has been overlooked in the literature, we can infer from the trajectory of relevant Cold War historiography that Prime Minister Menzies would adopt restrictive, even draconian, policies. This article argues otherwise. It suggests that it was that consistent champion of civil liberties, former deputy prime minister, attorney-general and secretary of the General Assembly of the United Nations and now, in 1952, Leader of the Opposition, Dr Evatt, who favoured more repressive action towards prospective delegates. In contrast, Menzies and his Cabinet were more lenient and shifted towards a harsher policy belatedly and reluctantly. This episode, therefore, challenges some comfortable assumptions about how the early Cold War was fought in Australia

Alvin Weinberg and the promotion of the technological fix

The term “technological fix”, coined by technologist/administrator Alvin Weinberg in 1965, vaunted engineering innovation as a generic tool for circumventing problems commonly conceived as social, political or cultural. A longtime Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, government consultant and essayist, Weinberg also popularized the term “Big Science” to describe national goals and the competitive funding environment after the Second World War. Big Science reoriented towards Technological Fixes, he argued, could provide a new “Apollo project” to address social problems of the future. His ideas – most recently echoed in “solutionism” – have channeled confidence and controversy ever since. This paper traces the genesis and promotion of the concept by Weinberg and his contemporaries. It argues that, through it, the marginal politics and technological confidences of interwar scientists and technocrats were repositioned as mainstream notions closer to the heart of Big Science policy

Interpersonal Connections Do Matter: Evolution of DPJ Factions

This article is a result of research conducted as a part of a project financed by the Polish National Science Centre based on decision DEC-2011/01/B/HS5/00863

Case Study: “Hair meets Design”: The Application of Storytelling in the Context of Long-Distance Collaboration and Virtual Teamwork

Virtual teamwork and long distance collaboration is an increasingly attractive option in design education especially when students and other participants, (for example, industry guests or sponsors) cannot meet in the same physical place or classroom. The constant improvement in technology allows this type of electronic communication to be increasingly accepted as an appropriate format for collaboration and evaluation of student projects. This paper discusses the collaboration between members of a company in Germany and a group of industrial design students in California. It will present the work flow, the evaluation tools and the formats introduced during the process. Since the participants of this project could not meet physically to discuss and evaluate ideas, it was imperative for the teams to develop standard visual formats that were easy to understand and re-utilize. These formats had to be flexible enough for the purpose of adding comments from the evaluators. Because the physical presence of the presenter is missing, it is necessary to adjust the content and layout of the messages in order to make them more relevant and self-explanatory. The message has to be easy to understand without the help of a presenter or lecturer. One of the most significant questions in this project was how to present multiple “layers of information” in one single image at the same time (for example, how to depict work flow, time sequence and object hierarchy in one single frame). In a normal situation (where the presenter is physically present in front of an audience) he/she can verbally add secondary information that would not be visually included but it is necessary in order to understand the relevance of the image being presented. This additional verbal information could be related to time, hierarchy, etc. This paper will discuss the development and evaluation of visual formats that present multiple layers of information in one single image. It describes the methods used and reports the solutions. Ultimately, this paper explains the relevance of using storytelling in the context of long-distance design collaboration. Keywords: Virtual Teamwork; Long-Distance Collaboration; Storytelling; Infographics</p

Interviewing the Client

This paper examines an assignment where students taking either an introductory auditing students or an accounting communications course interview a client to gain an understanding of internal control and the interview process. Students document the results of the interview in a memorandum. The paper provides detailed information regarding the design and implementation of a portion of the internal control system. The three main objectives of the assignment are 1) to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate, develop, and enhance their communication skills; 2) to convey a realistic picture of the accounting environment; and 3) to familiarize students with a typical responsibility of entry-level accountants

A framework for evaluating the effectiveness of flood emergency management systems in Europe

Calls for enhancing societal resilience to flooding are echoed across Europe alongside mounting evidence that flood risk will increase in response to climate change amongst other risk-enhancing factors. At a time where it is now widely accepted that flooding cannot be fully prevented, resilience discourse in public policy stresses the importance of improving societal capacities to absorb and recover from flood events. Flood emergency management has thus emerged as a crucial strategy in flood risk management. However, the extent to which emergency management supports societal resilience is dependent on the effectiveness of governance and performance in practice. Drawing from the extensive body of literature documenting the success conditions of so-called effective emergency management more broadly, this study formulates an evaluation framework specifically tailored to the study of Flood Emergency Management Systems (FEMS) in Europe. Applying this framework, this research performs a cross-country comparison of FEMS in the Netherlands, England, Poland, France, and Sweden. Important differences are observed in how FEMS have evolved in relation to differing contextual backgrounds (political, cultural, administrative and socio-economic) and exposures to flood hazard. Whereas the organization and coordination of actors are functioning effectively, other aspects of effective FEMS are relatively under-developed in several countries, such as provisions for institutional learning, recovery-based activities and community preparedness. Drawing from examples of good practice, this paper provides a critical reflection on the opportunities and constraints to enhancing the effectiveness of FEMS in Europe