City Systems: Building Blocks for Achieving Sustainability and Creating Good Jobs

In this issue brief, we examine three different systems that underlie cities and keep them running: water, waste, and energy. Within each of these systems are opportunities for states and cities to modernize their local infrastructure, improve their communities, and ultimately create jobs

Rectifying the Tilt: Equality Lessons from Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation, and Transgender

It was an honor and a joy to deliver the Tenth Annual Frank M. Coffin Lecture on Law and Public Service and to publish it now in the Maine Law Review. I thank you for this opportunity. I have always believed that a life worth living includes two necessary components: passion and connection. I experience those components both in my work and in my personal life. I love the passion I find in my work - both in my advocacy efforts to advance justice in the world and in the teaching through which I try to pass on to others whatever skills and wisdom I have accumulated over the years. And I love the passion I find in my personal life, in my efforts to explore and commit to the joys and challenges of intimacy and friendship. The connections that I treasure track my various passions: starting from the connections I experience in an intimate relationship and in personal friendships, to the connections I have with colleagues, students, and mentors. Judge Frank Morey Coffin is a remarkable and joyous connection in my life. It is the connection of a mentor, of a teacher, and of a friend. And in the example of his life, Judge Coffin has demonstrated his passion for making the world a better place, for imparting wisdom (and jibes and practical jokes) to his students, and for maintaining a full and happy home life. I have been enriched by this connection with Judge Coffin - both enriched with little pearls of wisdom and with great peals of laughter - and I am everlastingly grateful for those riches. I can think of no finer way to honor that connection, and to pay back some of the amazing gifts showered on me by Judge Coffin, than to deliver (and publish) the Coffin lecture on law and public service, which encompasses so many of the passions and connections of my life. And on this occasion of the Tenth Annual Coffin Lecture, I feel I stand here as a representative of every former, and current, law clerk of Judge Coffin, all of whom, I know, would echo my gratitude and joy for their connection to the judge

Context modeling and constraints binding in web service business processes

Context awareness is a principle used in pervasive services applications to enhance their exibility and adaptability to changing conditions and dynamic environments. Ontologies provide a suitable framework for context modeling and reasoning. We develop a context model for executable business processes { captured as an ontology for the web services domain. A web service description is attached to a service context profile, which is bound to the context ontology. Context instances can be generated dynamically at services runtime and are bound to context constraint services. Constraint services facilitate both setting up constraint properties and constraint checkers, which determine the dynamic validity of context instances. Data collectors focus on capturing context instances. Runtime integration of both constraint services and data collectors permit the business process to achieve dynamic business goals

Administering Health Insurance Mandates

Provides an overview of health insurance mandates and administrative considerations. Based on a review of existing and proposed employer and individual mandates, outlines ways to structure them to be administered fairly and effectively

Promoting Economic Mobility by Increasing Postsecondary Education

Explores policy options for expanding educational opportunities for low-income students to enhance upward economic mobility. Examines the effectiveness of student aid in promoting college completion and proposes a plan for better guidance and preparation

Teacher training and employment

This briefing gives an overview of developments relating to teacher education and career long learning stemming from the 2010 Donaldson review of teacher education. It also looks at the changes to terms and conditions originating in the 2010 spending review agreement between COSLA and the Scottish Government, the 2011 McCormac review of teachers’ terms and conditions and public sector pension reform