Not Your Father’s Border: An Examination of the Border in Northern Ireland and Its Relevance to the Global Change in the Importance of World Borders

Humanity has long maintained barriers separating specific entities from others. Ranging from cultural, religious, financial, and racial differences among a few others, the reasoning behind borders has remained a purely human endeavor. But our current golden age of technology has somewhat shrunk, or at least reassessed the necessity for borders. The boundaries of today, while many remain in the same locations as in the past, are vastly different from the borders created by previous generations. Globalization, a relatively new term, has made communication simple and fast. The noticeable result has been, of course, better communication between locations, and thus easing international travel. However, many areas of the world remain torn by border conflicts. The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, appropriately deemed The Troubles, is a long-studied and well-documented one. The incredible increase in technology in the past few decades has presented the conflict with positive new alternatives to physical altercations and has been overall satisfactory. There is peace in Northern Ireland, but it is a shaky peace. Questions are raised such as why is the border still in existence and what keeps Ireland from uniting after nearly one hundred years of separation. This paper serves to answer these and similar questions and assess the results within the world arena to determine not only the need, but also the desirability for and function of borders in today’s globalized world

Public meetings and communication excellence: Exploring the intersection of public affairs and public involvement

This study explores how public meetings are currently used by government agencies and examines the meetings' effects on agency-public relationship outcomes (Hon and Grunig, 1999). The data consisted of 20 in-depth telephone interviews with public affairs practitioners in government agencies. The results suggest that practitioners perceive a fundamental incongruence in public affairs and public involvement efforts which extends to their frequent non-involvement in public meetings. The data suggests that this relates to contending responsibilities to both specific and general audiences. The discussion seeks to link these perceptions of publics and communication responsibilities to the relevant contextual factors of the public sector in order to examine theoretical prescriptions. The relevant theory suggests that the segregation of public affairs and the vehicles for public engagement limits the informational value of public input and relegates agency-public relationships to the role of process measures rather than communication goals

Building a collaborative culture in cardiothoracic operating rooms: Pre and postintervention study protocol for evaluation of the implementation of teamSTEPPS training and the impact on perceived psychological safety

IntroductionThe importance of effective communication, a key component of teamwork, is well recognised in the healthcare setting. Establishing a culture that encourages and empowers team members to speak openly in the cardiothoracic (CT) operating room (OR) is necessary to improve patient safety in this high-risk environment.Methods and analysisThis study will take place at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, an academic hospital in affiliation with Washington University School of Medicine located in the USA. All team members participating in cardiac and thoracic OR cases during this 17-month study period will be identified by the primary surgical staff attending on the OR schedule.TeamSTEPPS (Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety) training course will be taught to all CT OR staff. Before TeamSTEPPS training, staff will respond to a 39-item questionnaire that includes constructs from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, Edmondson’s ‘Measure of psychological safety’ questionnaire, and questionnaires on turnover intentions, job satisfaction and ‘burnout’. The questionnaires will be readministered at 6 and 12 months.The primary outcomes to be assessed include the perceived psychological safety of CT OR team members, the overall effect of TeamSTEPPS on burnout and job satisfaction, and observed turnover rate among the OR nurses. As secondary outcomes, we will be assessing self-reported rates of medical error and near misses in the ORs with a questionnaire at the end of each case.Ethics and disseminationEthics approval is not indicated as this project does not meet the federal definitions of research requiring the oversight of the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Patient health information (PHI) will not be generated during the implementation of this project. Results of the trial will be made accessible to the public when published in a peer-reviewed journal following the completion of the study.</jats:sec

Serializability, not Serial: Concurrency Control and Availability in Multi-Datacenter Datastores

We present a framework for concurrency control and availability in multi-datacenter datastores. While we consider Google's Megastore as our motivating example, we define general abstractions for key components, making our solution extensible to any system that satisfies the abstraction properties. We first develop and analyze a transaction management and replication protocol based on a straightforward implementation of the Paxos algorithm. Our investigation reveals that this protocol acts as a concurrency prevention mechanism rather than a concurrency control mechanism. We then propose an enhanced protocol called Paxos with Combination and Promotion (Paxos-CP) that provides true transaction concurrency while requiring the same per instance message complexity as the basic Paxos protocol. Finally, we compare the performance of Paxos and Paxos-CP in a multi-datacenter experimental study, and we demonstrate that Paxos-CP results in significantly fewer aborted transactions than basic Paxos.Comment: VLDB201

Crystal Structure and Computational Analysis of a Two-Dimensional Coordination Polymer, BiI3(DppeO2)3/2

Catena-poly[fac-triiodobismuth(III)-tris-(µ-ethane-1,2-diylbis(diphenylphosphane oxide-κ2O,O′))], a 2-D sheet network of BiI3 was synthesized from BiI3 and ethane-1,2-diylbis(diphenylphosphane oxide) (DppeO2) in tetrahydrofuran. The crystal structure revealed a trigonal structure with three-fold symmetry at Bi. Bismuth centers show fac-BiI3O3 coordination, with Bi–I = 2.9416(2) Å and Bi–O = 2.4583(17) Å. The I–Bi–I and O–Bi–O angles (95.520(7)° and 79.04(6)°, respectively) indicate trigonal distortion in the Bi octahedron. Bridging DppeO2 ligands centered on inversion centers give rise to a 2-D sheet polymer. The 8.3 Å thick sheets consist of three layers in a sandwich structure. The outer layers are composed of phenyl rings and BiI3 groups with the iodide atoms pointing outward. The central layer consists of the O=PCH2CH2P=O bridging groups. Computational results suggest that semi-conducting behavior arises from Bi(III) centers. A halide to DppeO2 π* transition is suggested by theoretical results

Non-destructive inelastic recoil spectroscopy of a single molecular ion: a versatile tool toward precision action spectroscopy

We demonstrate a novel single molecule technique that is compatible with high precision measurements and obtain the spectrum of two molecular ion species. While the current result yields modest spectral resolution due to a broad light source, we expect the method to ultimately provide resolution comparable to quantum logic methods with significantly less stringent requirements. Adaptations of this technique will prove useful in a wide range of precision spectroscopy arenas including the search for parity violating effects in chiral molecules

A Terbium Chlorobismuthate(III) Double Salt: Synthesis, Structure, and Photophysical Properties

We report on the structure and luminescence of a double salt trivalent rare earth ion acceptor, Tb3+, with octahedral [BiCl6]3– donor clusters. The novel TbBiCl6·14H2O (1) was prepared from aqueous BiOCl and TbCl3·6H2O. The crystal structure of compound 1 exhibits isolated [BiCl6]3– and [Tb(OH2)8]3+ clusters. Luminescence data show energy transfer from octahedral chlorobismuthate(III) clusters to rare earth metal ions. Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations show distinctly different emission pathways at high and low excitation energies