Choosing Your Ground on the Endangered Species Act: How Do the Ninth, Tenth, and District of Columbia Circuit Courts of Appeal Evaluate Water Management Decisions Made by Federal Water Agencies?

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, federal agencies are responsible for the development and implementation of ESA documents, and knowing what a court will look for and at when that document is challenged can help the agencies to develop a document that can better survive court review. Second, a plaintiff who challenges such a document can benefit from that same knowledge, by knowing which elements of the document to best challenge. The intent of this article is to provide practitioners, both agency and non-, with an introduction to that knowledge, to identify some of those difficulties, dangers, and distances, with the ultimate goal of adding clarity to an often confusing battlefield. This article first provides, in Part II, an overview of how the ESA applies to federal actions, and then discusses in Part III how the Ninth, Tenth, and District of Columbia Circuit Courts of Appeal analyze, under the ESA, the decisions made by the federal agencies. The discussion includes specific analytic tests the courts have developed. Finally, in Part IV, the article describes a hypothetical decision on a large river system with multiple dams operated by Reclamation and the Army Corps as a hypothetical case study to illustrate the Courts’ tests. Different federal circuits utilize different tests to determine whether or not the decisions made under the ESA satisfy the statute and court precedent. The intent of this article is to illustrate the particular criteria some of the courts use in those tests, and thus to provide information for federal agencies and litigants to use in crafting their documents and, if necessary, their arguments

Seismic vulnerability assessment and evaluation of high rise buildings in Islamabad

Primarily the aim of this research is to carry out seismic evaluation study of buildings structures in Islamabad in order to propose basic guidelines and suggestions for Pakistan Code. Knowing the important nature of the subject, the earthquake based organizations are serious to compile a document for seismic threatened countries and areas. It is aimed that the document will work as a guideline source for the seismic evaluation, calculation and assessment of strength, behavior and expected performance and also the safety of already existing buildings. This study is based on review of already available documents on seismic vulnerability and evaluation of present buildings at different sites is carried out in order to know the key components of this very procedure so that it can be used in Pakistan and also in other developing countries as well. This would not only be robust, safe and reliable, but also can be convenient to use within the domain of available resources. ASCE 31-03 guidelines among the available documents are considered to be a suitable and the most reliable for to be in Pakistan

The Elimination of the Sexual Exploitation of Children: Two Policy Briefings

The Oak Foundation child-abuse programme has funded and supported a range of civil society actors over the course of the last ten years, with the aim of reducing the incidence of the sexual exploitation of children, focusing primarily on work in East Africa, Eastern and Central Europe, Brazil and India. The Foundation is committed to expanding this work, focusing 50 percent of resources over the next five years, within two priority areas: * The elimination of the sexual exploitation of children; * The positive engagement of men and boys in the fight against the sexual abuse of children. Under the first of these priorities Oak Foundation requested Knowing Children to produce two documents to guide a strategic-planning meeting of the child-abuse team in mid-October 2011: * Reducing societal tolerance of sexual exploitation of children; * Preventing children's entry into all forms of sexual exploitation

A Phenomenological Investigation of Knowing Events Among Women Headteachers of Government Schools

The main purpose of this study was to understand the nature of knowing for women headteachers in leadership and decision-making. The study was carried out through three research questions. They include: (1) what are the characteristics of knowing events for women headteachers as experienced by them? (2) what are the influences that shape women headteachers' knowing? (3) what are the specific ways of knowing that women headteachers engage in? These questions aimed to determine the characteristics, factors that influence, and structure of the knowing phenomenon among women headteachers in leadership and decision-making. The phenomenological approach was selected since it was deemed the most appropriate for the study of a phenomenon of this nature. Data were gathered from nine women headteachers in primary and secondary government schools. The participants were selected from excellent and successful women headteachers through purposeful sampling. The data collection methods employed were mainly in-depth interviews with the participants. Each interview was taped recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed. In addition, informal observation and review of accessible official documents were also carried out. The validity of the study was ensured through clarifying the researcher's biases at the outset of the study, triangulation, member checks, peer examination and rich, thick description of results. The reliability was furthered ensured through stating the researcher's position, triangulation and maintaining an audit trail. The findings yielded characteristics of knowing events as experienced by the women headteachers, influences that shape their knowing, ways of knowing women headteachers engaged in. The knowing events represent the phases that every woman headteacher in the study had passed through from accession or entry into headship to refocusing of values in the securely established state. The influences that shape knowing began in the formation years and occur throughout headship. In addition it also represents the development of knowing from a dependency on authorities to autonomy of self, knowledge as abstract and objective to being relative and subjective, and the cognitive process of receiving knowledge to one of generating knowledge. The study concludes that the knowing practiced among the women headteachers in leadership and decision making is unique to the participants of this study. The findings are conceptualized into a thematic portrayal of knowing. Specific recommendations for further research are also suggested

Global Heuristic Search on Encrypted Data (GHSED)

Important document are being kept encrypted in remote servers. In order to retrieve these encrypted data, efficient search methods needed to enable the retrieval of the document without knowing the content of the documents In this paper a technique called a global heuristic search on encrypted data (GHSED) technique will be described for search in an encrypted files using public key encryption stored on an untrusted server and retrieve the files that satisfy a certain search pattern without revealing any information about the original files. GHSED technique would satisfy the following: (1) Provably secure, the untrusted server cannot learn anything about the plaintext given only the cipher text. (2) Provide controlled searching, so that the untrusted server cannot search for a word without the user's authorization. (3) Support hidden queries, so that the user may ask the untrusted server to search for a secret word without revealing the word to the server. (4) Support query isolation, so the untrusted server learns nothing more than the search result about the plaintext

Parents: Active partners in the educational achievement of their children

Parents exercise a significant influence on student achievement and psychosocial functioning within the school environment. However, the best way to involve parents as active partners in the education of their children is not always evident. This article explores the perceptions of parents and their role in the academic achievement of students in nine high performing Catholic secondary schools in Western Australia. Initially, the review of literature focuses on three constructs: relational trust, parental involvement and policy documents for Catholic schools. Data collection involved a series of focus group interviews in which parents were invited to reflect not only on their role but also on the impact of school leaders, teachers and student peers on their sons and daughters achievement. The findings of the study are outlined under the following themes: the place of school leadership; the significant role of teachers in their child’s academic achievement; teachers knowing the students; the influence of school culture; and parental reflections on their own capacity to enhance the educational experience of their child