Note by Note

My poster describes the initial goals and functions of a new organization that I am starting. The organization, Note by Note, is a local program that aims to engage children in the arts. Its current activities include providing enriching performances to younger students in the district 200 area. Every year, kids drop out of performing arts programs for a variety of reasons. This limits the important benefits provided by learning music. The main goal of this organization is to keep more students in the arts programs because of the benefits it has on child education and quality of life

A study of twenty-three cases involving homosexual behavior.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Trends in Irish Fertility Rates in Comparative Perspective

This paper examines trends in Irish fertility rates over the past four decades in the context of fertility trends in developed countries generally. Irish fertility rates have stabilised at the upper edge of the European range in the 1990s. This seems surprising, since the level of direct and opportunity costs of children would seem to be no more favourable to childbearing in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe. However, while Irish fertility rates are still reasonably high by European standards they are not particularly high by the standards of the “new world” countries – fertility rates in the US and New Zealand have been higher than in Ireland for much of the 1990s. The present paper explores the historical background and significance of these similarities and differences. It interprets trends in fertility rates in Ireland by reference to changes in supply and demand constraints and in the shifting balance between the two since the 1960s.

Distribution and abundance of organic thiols

The role of glutathione (GSH) in protecting against the toxicity of oxygen and oxygen by products is well established for all eukaryotes studied except Entamoeba histolytica which lacks mitochrondria, chloroplasts, and microtubules. The GSH is not universal among prokaryotes. Entamoeba histolytica does not produce GSH or key enzymes of GSH metabolism. A general method of thiol analysis based upon fluorescent labeling with monobromobimane and HPLC separation of the resulting thiol derivatives was developed to determine the occurrence of GSH and other low molecular weight thiols in bacteria. Glutathione is the major thiol in cyanobacteria and in most bacteria closely related to the purple photosynthetic bacteria, but GSH was not found in archaebacteria, green bacteria, or GRAM positive bacteria. It suggested that glutathione metabolism was incorporated into eukaryotes at the time that mitochondria and chloroplasts were acquired by endosymbiosis. In Gram positive aerobes, coenzyme A occurs at millimolar levels and CoA disulfide reductases are identified. The CoA, rather than glutathione, may function in the oxygen detoxification processes of these organisms

Carsey Perspectives: Children in United States, Both White and Black, Are Growing Up in Dramatically Smaller Families

In this perspectives brief, author Tony Fahey presents novel findings on how much smaller family sizes are among children in the United States today, particularly African American children, than they were fifty years ago. Using data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series from the U.S. Census and the Current Population Survey, he reports that the average African American child was one of 6.53 siblings in 1960 and today is one of 3.18. Because smaller families may enable parents to devote more resources to each child, these trends raise the so-far unrecognized possibility that the fall in children’s family size, especially among the less well-off, may have been a positive and egalitarian transformation in their lives. The trend toward smaller families potentially offsets some of the negative effects on children of the transition from two-parent families to single-parent families. The loss of family resources caused by the absence of one parent is paired with a smaller number of siblings who need support. To better understand how family change has affected children’s well-being, the hidden story of children’s family size and how it relates to other aspects of children\u27s changing family circumstances needs to be recognized and explore

The Global Dimension of the EU’s AFSJ: On Internal Transparency and External Practice

The ‘global’ forms an increasingly regular, active and explicit part of the daily business of the EU. The paper argues that there is a specific mismatch between the commitment to transparency on a daily level in international and external fields and practices of EU law and the actual substantive law-making practice evolving. While the EU’s vision of the global is to a degree the most transparent ever, the converse is not necessarily the case as to its legal content. The global dimension to EU law has increasingly expansive subjects and objectives, in areas of existing strength in global actorness (e.g. trade) and in more evolving competences (e.g. security). It argues that while the EU is a significant soft power in trade, it is arguably less so in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) where its global reach becomes more challenging. The relative weakness of the EU’s global approach in the AFSJ is usually or acutely felt by individuals who face challenges in seeking redress increasingly as to aspects of transparency. The paper argues that there is a significant mismatch of internal transparency practices concerning the EU’s global law-making. Ultimately, mismatches between internal procedures and external law-making as to transparency operate adversely upon the global in a variety of ways, e.g. as to transparency and clarity, good administration and territoriality claims taken by individuals. It outlines the express approach to the global in EU policy in (i) migration (ii) passenger name records and the non-express approach to the ‘global’ in EU data protection and data transfers

The Case for an EU-wide Measure of Poverty

Income poverty in the EU is normally measured by reference to income thresholds defined at the level of each member state, independently of any consideration of inequalities in income between member states. This approach has come under strain as a consequence of the recent enlargement of the EU: income differences between member states are now so wide that what is defined as the poverty threshold in the richer member states would count as an above-average income in the poorer member states. This paper proposes that, in order to cope with this new situation, measures of poverty based on EU-wide thresholds need to be utilised alongside existing measures. Quality of life indicators from the European Quality of Life Survey 2003 are used to show that the very high poverty rates in poorer member states that an EU-wide poverty measure would produce are a realistic reflection of the low living standards, strong sense of deprivation and impaired quality of life experienced by the majority of the population in those states. The policy implication drawn is that anti-poverty policy in the EU should be set as much in the context of the EU's convergence project as of social policy in the usual sense. Key words: poverty, European Union, qualitypoverty, European Union, quality of life, EU convergence policy, social policy

Hyper-legalisation and delegalisation in the AFSJ: on contradictions in the external management of EU migration

The EU governance of migration has distinct internal and external facets, which may be viewed as innately contradictory. On the one hand, for example, there is legal competence for enhanced measures to combat illegal immigration but on the other hand, it is to manage efficiently migration flows, yet with fairness towards third country nationals. These contradictions define the EU’s Area of Freedom Security and Justice more generally, as a complex and evolving site of tremendous injustice and crisis. In times of crisis, there is an increasing number of soft law tools in EU external migration, used to enable flexibility, deploying management lexicon, principles and tools as a means to avoid or minimalize the need for ‘hard’ binding law (e.g. frameworks, compacts, action plans), in a process of ‘hyper-legalisation’ of external migration. Often, it results from the multiplicity of constitutional competences applying in external migration. It mirrors well other crisis-ridden subjects of EU law, in particular as to the financial crisis. On the other hand, there is also a trend in significant recent caselaw towards the ‘de-legalisation’ of migration policy, putting key legal and policy questions in forms beyond review and outside of the treaties, as in the financial crisis as well as other leading cases. They explicitly detail the nature of the contradictions at the heart of the external dimension to the AFSJ in the area of migration and the problematic nature of EU law-making. They also provide reason for concern about basic conceptualisations of the rule of law therein. The key decisions arbitrarily decide the scope of ‘non-legislative’, ‘non-application’ and ‘European’ as to EU law. They emphasise the contradictions at the heart of the AFSJ, increasingly excluded through judicial review

European Survey Data on Attitudes to Equality and Human Rights Technical Paper. Research Series

This report maps the data available on attitudes to equality and human rights issues in Ireland collected in European surveys over the period 2000 to 2018. These surveys provide a rich source of evidence for researchers and policymakers in Ireland. We identify a total of 1,509 relevant questions from a search of over 125 attitude surveys. These questions are categorised according to the groups and topics addressed. We find that attitudes towards minority ethnic/nationality groups, gender/gender roles and social welfare recipients are the most widely covered. Questions on attitudes towards religious minorities, age groups/ageism, family status, disability and sexual orientation are much less common. Moreover, while the frequency of attitude questions relating to sexual orientation has increased over the period, questions on age and disability groups have declined. Within these equality groups the surveys cover a range of topics including social distance, social contact, tolerance and policy preferences