Getting to know you: Engagement and relationship building: First interim national positive futures case study research report

This report represents the culmination of the first phase of the Positive Futures (PF) Case Studies Research Project rather than a definitive set of findings as such. Rather like the PF programme itself it is very much a work in progress which is evolving all the time in the context of the action research approach we have adopted. This approach involves a cycle of action and reflection, with both the projects and research adapting in relation to the themes that emerge from the study as it progresses. Nevertheless whilst this element of the research has been concerned as much with the establishment of relations with projects and participants as investigating the relationships between them, we have begun to identify a number of tentative themes and findings. These themes are presented in a fashion which is intended to guide the future direction of projects every bit as much as to gain abstract theoretical insight. Yet this recognition of the importance of practicality and direction should not distract from the importance of gaining a wider contextual feel for the programme. For whilst this summary is intended to highlight the key themes emerging from the research and the policy and practice issues associated with them, it is in the detail of the main report that a full appreciation of the PF approach emerges. It is from the more narrative accounts in these subsequent parts that we have drawn the conclusions and recommendations presented here and which will provide the baselines against which we assess future progress. Indeed these accounts are themselves drawn from three regional reports focused on the seven case studies that constitute the overall national research project

Getting Started

In the following pages, you will find resources, research, and reflection to help you get comfortable talking about race first before talking to your kids about it. Once you are ready, you will find three concrete strategies and developmental goals to help you start and continue conversations with your young kids. Getting Started will increase your confidence and competence to embrace race-conscious learning and discussions.https://griffinshare.fontbonne.edu/westories-getting-started/1000/thumbnail.jp

On what we experience when we hear people speak

According to perceptualism, fluent comprehension of speech is a perceptual achievement, in as much as it is akin to such high-level perceptual states as the perception of objects as cups or trees, or of people as happy or sad. According to liberalism, grasp of meaning is partially constitutive of the phenomenology of fluent comprehension. I here defend an influential line of argument for liberal perceptualism, resting on phenomenal contrasts in our comprehension of speech, due to Susanna Siegel and Tim Bayne, against objections from Casey O'Callaghan and Indrek Reiland. I concentrate on the contrast between the putative immediacy of meaning-assignment in fluent comprehension, as compared with other, less ordinary, perhaps translation-based ways of getting at the meaning of speech. I argue this putative immediacy is difficult to capture on a non-perceptual view (whether liberal or non-liberal), and that the immediacy in question has much in common with that which applies in other, less controversial cases of high-level perception

Unifying neutron stars: getting to GUNS

The variety of the observational appearance of young isolated neutron stars must find an explanation in the framework of some unifying approach. Nowadays it is believed that such scenario must include magnetic field decay, the possibility of magnetic field emergence on a time scale $\lesssim 10^4$--$10^5$ yrs, significant contribution of non-dipolar fields, and appropriate initial parameter distributions. We present our results on the initial spin period distribution, and suggest that inconsistences between distributions derived by different methods for samples with different average ages can uncover field decay or/and emerging field. We describe a new method to probe the magnetic field decay in normal pulsars. The method is a modified pulsar current approach, where we study pulsar flow along the line of increasing characteristic age for constant field. Our calculations, performed with this method, can be fitted with an exponential decay for ages in the range $8\times 10^4$--$3.5 \times 10^5$ yrs with a time scale $\sim 5 \times 10^5$ yrs. We discuss several issues related to the unifying scenario. At first, we note that the dichotomy, among local thermally emitting neutron stars, between normal pulsars and the Magnificent Seven remains unexplained. Then we discuss the role of high-mass X-ray binaries in the unification of neutron star evolution. We note, that such systems allow to check evolutionary effects on a time scale longer than what can be probed with normal pulsars alone. We conclude with a brief discussion of importance of discovering old neutron stars accreting from the interstellar medium.Comment: 6 pages, submitted to AN, proceedings of the workshop "The Fast and the Furious: Energetic Phenomena in Isolated Neutron Stars, Pulsar Wind Nebulae and Supernova Remnants" ESAC, Madrid, Spain 22nd - 24th May 201

Impact of the Vatican's new financial regulations on money laundering and terrorism financing

The smallest country of the world, the Vatican City State, holds on its territory a financial institute called the IOR. It is not a bank stricto sensu as it does not offer conventional banking services but acts as the financial arm of the Holy See. Since at least the scandal of the Banco Ambrosiano in 1982, the IOR has been regularly in the newspapers due to insufficient corporate governance. Until 2010, the Vatican did not have any anti-money laundering and counter terrorism law but hopefully, transparency and integrity in the financial sector are now priorities for the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI started and Pope Francis continues now the modernization process of the Holy See, and to support this change, more lay experts are being brought in, even if it disturbs some persons to give key positions to non-religious people. The creation of committees, commissions and institutions managed and composed by laymen are examples of this change in the governing style of the Vatican. Moreover, since centuries Italians have always occupied key positions within the Holy See and more recently in the Vatican. The actual Pope is as well looking at internationalizing the Roman Curia to decrease the risks of nepotism and cronyism. Importantly, the legal and regulatory frameworks in the Vatican are getting more adapted to the actual financial threats. Furthermore, the regulations are respected and accurately applied by the staff, which gives very good results for the new norms. At the international level, the Holy See applies the FATF standards, and through the Financial Information Authority (AIF), is being part of Egmont Group and participates to Moneyval in order to exchange expertise and good practices in the domain of the combat against money laundering and terrorism financing. In 2012, Moneyval, who supervises the proper implementation of the international and FATF standards, has reviewed the Holy See and it was compliant with most of their recommendations. According to Moneyval, the work has been efficiently done over a short period of time and by now the recommendations have all been implemented. The Institute for the Works of the Religion (IOR) and more generally the financial operations of the Vatican are now complying with the highest international standards. Accountability and transparency are now the new key words in the Catholic Church

Getting Back to Basics

One of the challenges of working with students across a college campus is achieving consistency with instruction. Student writers learn varied methods for revision and receive different (and often ineffective) kinds of feedback on their writing. When peer tutors work with these writers, they often have to start with the basics and teach them how to edit and revise. They have to show them what tools exist to help them become independent writers. One of the ways that tutors bridge the gap between what students learn in the classroom and what they learn in the writing center is through their use of a writing handbook.University Writing Cente

Getting From Here to There in Resistricting Reform

This symposium has been largely devoted to whether and how we ought to reform our districting process. Today I want to talk about a related but often neglected question: if we are serious about reform, how do we make it happen? I will thus set aside some of the important normative and practical questions associated with what kind of redistricting reform we should pursue and focus instead on how to get from here to there. As we think about getting redistricting reform passed, we ought to ask ourselves three questions. First, what should our goals be during the 2010 cycle? Second, moving from principle to practice, what specifically can we do to promote reform during this period? Third, if we succeed in getting some traction with reform post-2010, what kind of reform proposals should we push

Getting from research to practice in M4D

In this paper we argue that, if technical M4D research is going to contribute positively to development, the activities of specialized, highly paid ‘researchers’ must be combined with skilled contributions from many other actors. In particular, there is a critical need to develop the capacity available in development organizations, community based organizations, and in local economies, to innovate and to adapt technologies to support their objectives. This suggests that the methods that we adopt in research and in design should be open to local appropriation and contribute to capacity building, and that education programmes are needed in developing countries to support the broader processes of innovation. We describe the Mobile Innovation & Enterprise partnership, which is working to develop the innovation capacity available in Uganda.</p