Maya Paintings as Teachers of Justice: Art Making the Impossible Possible

This article examines Maya paintings as historical documents, political platforms and conduits for cultural transmission in two local Maya communities. Particular attention is paid to the recent history of genocide of Maya peoples in Guatemala and the production of paintings as visual reminders of cultural loss and regeneration, as well as visual means to protect Maya future generations. Collaborative ethnography and decolonizing methodologies (Lassiter, 1998; Tuhiwai-Smith, 1999) are used in this study; thus, Maya artists speak through written dialogues and interviews in first voice regarding massacres that were kept clandestine for three decades. This paper addresses the potential and capacity for paintings to relay concepts of social justice. In two Maya contexts, paintings are seen by artists as didactic works that express outrage and concurrent hope. Art is used to transform that which feels impossible into possibility(ies)

Making the impossible possible: the prospects for visa-free movement between the EU and its eastern partners. OSW Point of View Number 27, May 2012

To make the abolition of visas in relations between the EU and the Eastern European countries possible, the ”spell cast” must be broken on this issue. With the present levels of mobility and people-to-people, business and political contacts the introduction of a visa-free regime will be a natural consequence of the liberalisation processes which have been at work for years.Moreover, the decision to lift the visa requirement is unlikely to significantly stimulate an increase in migration pressure from Eastern European countries but could reduce the operating costs of expanded Schengen consular network. Lifting the visa requirement for Eastern European citizens can be temporary and conditional and allow for actual implementation of an increased conditionality rule. In political terms, making visa liberalisation a key issue would fundamentally change the partners’ approach to the Eastern Partnership and would provide a link to the Partnership for Modernisation targeted at Russia

Positively Deviant Organizational Performance and the Role of Leadership Values

Cameron cites the infusion of collaborative values and restructuring of relationships as a primary reason for the successful clean up and closure of Rocky Flats, one of U.S.’s most hazardous and controversial toxic dumps. Success was contingent upon mutual trust and respect of and between traditionally adversarial groups by adopting a mutual proactive, sharing orientation and empathetic attitudes. The true leaders in this venture shifted from a profit-first stance to changing organizational culture, ensuring that individuals (especially leaders and influencers) pursued an abundance-based vision

The prevalence of psittacine circovirus in native and exotic parrots in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Conservation Biology at Massey University

Psittacine circovirus (PCV) has been identified in more than 60 psittacine species worldwide in both aviary and wild populations. The virus is a causative agent of psittacine circoviral disease (PCD), a highly infectious disease characterised by beak and feather dystrophy, high juvenile mortality or long-term immunological suppression. The virus is known to be very difficult to control or eradicate and among wild Australian parrots, the prevalence of infection is 10-20 %. No information on the incidence of PCV in parrots in New Zealand was available. The aims of this study were 1) to determine the prevalence of PCV in wild exotic parrots, 2) to determine the prevalence of PCV in wild native parrots, 3) to identify the incidence of PCV in captive native parrots, and 4) to suggest recommendations for the future conservation management of native parrots populations in New Zealand. Two species of exotic parrots; eastern rosella and sulphur-crested cockatoo, and four species of native parrots; kakapo, kaka, kea and parakeet were examined. Feathers of these parrots were collected from different regions in New Zealand and PCR assay was conducted to identify the presence of PCV. The prevalence of PCV in wild exotic parrots in New Zealand was considerably high in both species of exotic parrots, as the prevalence of PCV at the 95% confidence intervals ranged from 19.17 - 44.02% in eastern rosellas and 22.04 - 33.07% in sulphur-crested cockatoos. No wild native parrots showed any evidence of PCV in PCR assay and given the sample sizes in this study, the prevalence of PCV was estimated as less than 4-7% if PCV is present in the populations. However, the first isolation of PCV in native parrots occurred in two species of parakeets in captivity; red-crowned parakeets and Antipodes Island parakeets. No significant abnormalities were detectable in the red-crowned parakeets but the Antipodes Island parakeet died shortly after translocation. The presence of PCV was confirmed in contact birds in both cases

Citizen Engineers: Leaders in Building a Sustainable World

As with the “citizen soldiers” of World War II, the engineering industry must produce “citizen engineers” who will accept the leadership challenge necessary to deliver a combination of technical, economic, social, and environmental values to its stakeholders that will truly improve people’s quality of life

Mobile access to personal digital photograph archives

Handheld computing devices are becoming highly connected devices with high capacity storage. This has resulted in their being able to support storage of, and access to, personal photo archives. However the only means for mobile device users to browse such archives is typically a simple one-by-one scroll through image thumbnails in the order that they were taken, or by manually organising them based on folders. In this paper we describe a system for context-based browsing of personal digital photo archives. Photos are labeled with the GPS location and time they are taken and this is used to derive other context-based metadata such as weather conditions and daylight conditions. We present our prototype system for mobile digital photo retrieval, and an experimental evaluation illustrating the utility of location information for effective personal photo retrieval

Properties of CP Violation in Neutrino-Antineutrino Oscillations

If the massive neutrinos are the Majorana particles, how to pin down the Majorana CP-violating phases will eventually become an unavoidable question relevant to the future neutrino experiments. We argue that a study of neutrino-antineutrino oscillations will greatly help in this regard, although the issue remains purely academic at present. In this work we first derive the probabilities and CP-violating asymmetries of neutrino-antineutrino oscillations in the three-flavor framework, and then illustrate their properties in two special cases: the normal neutrino mass hierarchy with m_1 = 0 and the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy with m_3 = 0. We demonstrate the significant contributions of the Majorana phases to the CP-violating asymmetries, even in the absence of the Dirac phase.Comment: LaTex 9 pages, 1 figure. More discussions and references added. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Lorentz invariance violation in top-down scenarios of ultrahigh energy cosmic ray creation

The violation of Lorentz invariance (LI) has been invoked in a number of ways to explain issues dealing with ultrahigh energy cosmic ray (UHECR) production and propagation. These treatments, however, have mostly been limited to examples in the proton-neutron system and photon-electron system. In this paper we show how a broader violation of Lorentz invariance would allow for a series of previously forbidden decays to occur, and how that could lead to UHECR primaries being heavy baryonic states or Higgs bosons.Comment: Replaced with heavily revised (see new Abstract) version accepted by Phys. Rev. D. 6 page

Advancing High-Speed Rail Policy in the United States, Research Report 11-18

This report builds on a review of international experience with high-speed rail projects to develop recommendations for a High-speed rail policy framework for the United States. The international review looked at the experience of Korea, Taiwan, China, and several countries in Europe. Countries in Asia and Europe have pursued high-speed rail (HSR) to achieve various goals, which include relieving congestion on highway networks, freeing up capacity on rail network for freight train operations, and reducing travel time for travelers. Some of the key rationales do not work well in the US context. As an example, in the US, freight companies own most of the rail network and, hence, do not need government intervention to free up capacity for their operations. We concluded the potential to reduce travel times coupled with improved travel time reliability and safety will be the strongest selling points for HSR in the US. HSR lines work best in high-density, economically active corridors. Given that there are a limited number of such corridors in the US, our study recommends the US HSR project funding mix be skewed heavily toward state bonds guaranteed by the federal government. This will ensure that the states that benefit directly from the projects pay most of the costs, making it more palatable to states that may not have HSR projects. For the projects that span multiple states, member states may have to negotiate the level of financial responsibility they will bear, and this will require detailed negotiations and financial setups that are not addressed in this report. Other measures the federal government needs to put in place include designating a key agency and dedicated funding source, and developing regulations and specifications for HSR design and construction. States that embark on HSR projects should start with formal legislation and put in place structures to ensure sustained political support throughout the planning and construction of the project. The federal government also needs to move quickly to foster educational and training centers to build up the HSR workforce in the country