Closing the Transition Gap: The Rule of Law Imperative in Stabilization Environments

Using Afghanistan as a case study, examines strategic and moral aspects of establishing effective rule of law institutions to prevent and punish corruption following interventions; implications, such as for counterinsurgency efforts, and recommendations

How do Early Years Educators sustain and define their professionalism? A methodological approach to eliciting early years educators’ thinking

This research has been concerned with eliciting the voices and thinking of a group of early years’ educators across three Local Education Authorities in West Yorkshire. The early years of education require a reflective, articulate and highly qualified workforce. The ability to reflect on and evaluate practice, prescription and one’s own thoughts about it must be the key to professionalism in the early years. The objective of this research was to extrapolate the thinking of a small group of EYEs across three local education authorities (LEAs) in West Yorkshire. The methodology of eliciting teacher thinking was employed to gain access to their voices and discover what were their critical issues and interests, their professional and practical knowledge. Rather than directing the participants to responding to specific aspects, the research was conducted to enable them to demonstrate any areas of interest and critical issues arising from their professional roles.Teacher thinking’ is an effective methodology to determine the thinking and knowledge of experienced and complex professionals working in a variety of settings. This empirical research was undertaken to elicit educators' perspectives to determine their own understandings, with accounts in their own terms through in-depth open-ended interviews, questionnaires, personal/professional time-lines, video-reflective interviews on practice and focus group interviews. These varied different data collection strategies are key to the research as they elicited holistic and varied perspectives on the early years educators professionalism. The aim was to give early years educators a voice, promote recognition of the complexity of the phenomena to be studied and determine the most effective method of eliciting their thinking. This article presents the methodology and findings from this research

Master\u27s Project: Relationship With and Within the Land at a Preschool - Grade 12 School

This project explored the role that relationship with and within a place can play in fostering environmental and community ethics at Riverstone International School in Boise, Idaho. Riverstone International School is an organization recognized for its academic achievement and outdoor program, however, recent events and dialogues have indicated that it does not necessarily always outwardly or inwardly embody right environmental or social relationships. This project focused primarily on two groups, with different, but ultimately convergent objectives: 1) teachers remembering stories associated with the place and, 2) students reimagining what environmental stewardship could look like. Each of these processes provided an opportunity to strengthen individual and collective awareness of responsibility and possibility for growth. Ultimately the process resulted in visible changes to the school campus, deepened relationships, and deepened understanding of individual values, strengths and callings, especially in relation to those voiced and practiced by the school. An additional and related focus of the project was the author’s own reflection on, and nurturing of, his personal and leadership practices which ultimately resulted in reframing of personal and professional calling

Hunters like skewness, not risk: evidence of gambling behaviors in the Alaska hunting permit lottery

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2018In Alaska, hunting permits are distributed by traditional lottery. The absence of a preference point system means that applicants have little invested in their applications, and there are a variety of fallback hunting opportunities. Not unlike a jackpot-style state lottery, the cost to play is low relative to the potential prize winnings. These factors may cause risk-averse or risk-neutral individuals to exhibit a preference for positive skewness in their bets. Analysis in this paper is focused on four prevalent game species: moose, dall sheep, mountain goat, and bison. Pooled Ordinary Least Squares regression models were constructed to predict permit application levels as a function of various hunt characteristics, qualities, and restrictions. Permit descriptions are provided to applicants in a published document called the drawing supplement, which is the primary source of data for this study. Additional hunter-reported data is obtained from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website. A comparison of calculated permit values and private ranch hunting opportunities validates many of the observations drawn from the models. Permit values are also used to fit a cubic model of bettor utility. Even when awarded prizes are not monetary, applicants exhibit a preference for positive skewness and aversion from risk that is typically associated with gambling

How does the WFD address cumulative stress (including mixture toxicity) of pollutants to achieve good chemiscal and ecological status of water bodies?

It is now more than ten years ago that the Water Framework Directive (WFD) was adopted by the European Parliament. The main objectives of the WFD are (i) to achieve good ecological and chemical status for inland surface waters, transitional waters and coastal waters in EU Member States, (ii) to assess the ecological and chemical status of these water bodies by means of monitoring programmes, and (iii) to implement programmes of measures to reduce environmental stress to an acceptable level. By adopting the WFD a fundamental change in management objective was introduced in the European Union, from merely pollution control to ensuring ecosystem integrity as a whole [1]. The ecological status of WFD water bodies is assessed by monitoring of biological quality elements (e.g. fish, macroinvertebrates, macrophytes, benthic diatoms, phytoplankton), general chemical and physico-chemical quality elements (e.g. pH, alkalinity, nutrients) and hydromorphological quality elements. These quality elements monitored in water bodies are compared with the status of more or less pristine reference ecosystems. If in WFD water bodies the ecological status deviates too much from the reference condition action is needed for achieving the acceptable ecological status. The chemical status of water bodies is assessed by comparing chemical monitoring data with Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) for priority (hazardous) substances and other relevant substances. Currently, 41 priority (hazardous) substances are listed in the European Union, but a regular update of this list with emerging substances is anticipated. If in water bodies exposure concentrations of one or more of these priority (hazardous) substances are not in compliance with the officially published EQS’s for these pollutants a good chemical status is not reached and action is needed to improve this. In contrast to the EU-level priority (hazardous) substances the other relevant substances are river basin or Member State specific. These other relevant substances have been selected because they are believed to potentially impair the ecological status of specific WFD water bodies and/or related human health aspects. The methodology to derive the EQS’s for other relevant substances is similar to that of the priority (hazardous) substances. This methodology is described in the new Technical Guidance Document for deriving Environmental Quality Standards (will be officially released in 2011). In European river basins the priority (hazardous) substances and river specific pollutants have to be measured on a regular basis. Under the umbrella of the WFD, EQS derivation is primarily based on a single substance toxicity assessment approach. In exceptional cases EQS’s for mixtures may be derived when their qualitative and quantitative composition is well-defined and/or well described (e.g. biocide preparations, PCB’s, dioxins). The concentration addition (CA) concept is used as a default when setting EQS’s for mixtures. Although compliance with good chemical status is primarily based on EQS’s for individual substances, cumulative stress (including mixtures) of toxicants may be identified as a main pressure affecting ecological status. In that case the cumulative risks caused by pollutants have to be reduced

Letters from the Executive Director Jonathan Brock

Task Force on Excellence in State and Local Government Through Labor-Management Cooperation (1994-1996)CombinedExcellenceaskLetter.pdf: 285 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Some operations on database universes

Operations such as integration or modularization of databases can be considered as operations on database universes. This paper describes some operations on database universes. Formally, a database universe is a special kind of table. It turns out that various operations on tables constitute interesting operations on database universes as well.

A New 3D Potential-Density Basis Set

A set of bi-orthogonal potential-density basis functions is introduced to model the density and its associated gravitational field of three dimensional stellar systems. Radial components of our basis functions are weighted integral forms of spherical Bessel functions. We discuss the properties of our basis functions and demonstrate their shapes for the latitudinal Fourier number $l=2$.Comment: 2 pages. To appear in the proceedings of IAU Symposium 245, "Formation and Evolution of Galaxy Bulges," M. Bureau, E. Athanassoula, and B. Barbuy, ed