Final Report of the AFIT Quality Initiative: Gap Analysis and Investment Strategy Guidance

This report presents the investment strategy guidance emanating from the Air Force Institute of Technology’s (AFIT’s) Quality Initiative. This report culminates a two-year effort involving external discovery, internal discovery, gap analysis, and investment strategy guidance formulation. The overarching purpose of the Quality Initiative is to recommend investment strategy guidance with the intention of modernizing AFIT’s instructional capabilities. Although this report provides an overview of the entirety of AFIT’s quality initiative efforts, the two primary foci of this report are (1) discussing the six initiatives identified by the Gap Analysis Committee and (2) presenting investment strategy guidance

Window series

The series of paintings that I have been working on is concerned with views from windows; that is window frames and that which is outside the windows. Each painting combines interiors and exteriors. The viewer sees the paintings as if he were standing in the constructed interiors of a room. He looks outside the window into a world of landscapes and housescapes, into a world of changing seasons and light. The views are not always straight ahead, since I have used different angles looking out the windows. My work combines two of the concepts of painting that I like best. One is the concept of nature evident in the works of the Northern Forest people, the Dutch, Flemish, German, and English painters. Their work has a delightful, intimate quality. The works project a strong feeling of control by the artist and the way he used the brush and paint on the canvas. The strong control does not manifest itself into hard, forceful work. Most of the paint has a freshness in the application that is very free. I am working to develop from the Northern Forest Artist the qualities I find most useful for my work. Another concept that I employ in my work is Cubism. The Cubists express movement and space in their basic geometric form which, for my work, makes some areas easily read, and grasps the attention of the viewer. I have employed some of the same principles that some cubists use; for example, the frame is a basic geometric form and it directs movement in the painting

The motherless child : the absent mother in twentieth-century Southern fiction

Many twentieth-century Southern works feature at least one dead, absent, or incapacitated mother, leaving the child vulnerable but also helping him or her develop maturity and strength. Generally, though, this literature is full of lost children who grow up to be lost adults. The loss of the mother in Southern literature is more than a plot device or an appeal for pity; the absent mother in Southern fiction represents the loss of the motherland. For white Southerners, the motherland is the antebellum South, in which one knew one's place. The New South is uncertain, like a child without a mother and, consequently, without an identity. White Southern women writers such as Porter, McCullers, Welty, O'Connor, and Alther often use the absent mother to represent freedom from the patriarchy of the Old South. Reynolds Price does so, as well. Generally, however, white men who write in the South, such as Faulkner, Warren, Price, Ehle, and Tate, mourn the loss of the mother and the motherland, as white men lose their identity and power

Necrotic gangrenous intrathoracic appendix in a marfanoid adult patient: a case report

BACKGROUND: A diaphragmatic hernia is defined as a defect in part of the diaphragm through which abdominal contents can protrude into the thorax. It may be congenital or acquired. In this case report, we aim to demonstrate a congenital diaphragmatic hernia in an adult marfanoid patient which required emergency treatment CASE PRESENTATION: A 43 year old woman was admitted with classical appendicitis requiring surgery. She incidentally had Marfan's clinical features with a positive family history for the syndrome. At operation she had grossly abnormal abdominal anatomy. Radiological investigations demonstrated a large right congenital diaphragmatic hernia with an intrathoracic hernial sac containing a perforated gangrenous appendix. The hernial sac was opened surgically and the appendix excised. The patient made a full recovery. CONCLUSION: Diaphragmatic hernias are usually congenital in nature often requiring early corrective surgery for future survival. We have demonstrated the presence of an unusually large diaphragmatic defect, almost a hemidiaphragmatic defect, of unknown direct etiology, but of some possible association with Marfan's syndrome in an adult patient presenting with an acute perforated gangrenous appendix requiring emergency life-saving surgery

Tom Stoppard: A Life

Book review: Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee. (New York: Knopf, 2021.) Pp. 896. ISBN: 978045143224. Hardcover, $35

Betrayal on Broadway

Theater review: Betrayal, directed by Jamie Lloyd, presented at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, October 19, 2019. Scenicand costume design by Soutra Gilmour, lighting design by Jon Clark, sound design by Ben & MaxRingham. Zawe Ashton (Emma), Charlie Cox (Jerry), Tom Hiddleston (Robert), Eddie Arnold (Waiter)

Leopoldstadt

Theater review: Leopoldstadt. Longacre Theatre, New York City. Opening night 2 October 2022. Director: Patrick Marbe

The Academics Athletics Trade-off: Universities and Intercollegiate Athletics

This analysis focuses on several key issues in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). The intrinsic benefits of athletic programs are discussed in the first section. Trends in graduation rates and academic performance among athletes and how they correlate with the general student body are discussed in the second section. Finally, an overview of the revenues and expenses of athletic department budgets are discussed in an effort to gain a better understanding of the allocation of funds to athletics. In spite of recent growth in revenues and expenses, the athletic department budget comprises on average only 5 percent of the entire university budget at an FBS school, though spending and revenues have increased dramatically in recent years. In the grand scheme of things, American higher education faces several other, arguably more pressing, areas of reform. However, athletics is a significant and growing dimension of higher education that warrants in-depth examination

The New Deal: jeopardised by the geography of unemployment?

The New Deal is the Labour government's flagship programme to "end the tragic waste of youth and long-term unemployment" by getting people off welfare benefits and into work. This paper argues that the principal weakness of the New Deal is that it seeks to influence the character of labour supply (i.e. the motivation and skills of the unemployed) while neglecting the state of labour demand, which varies greatly between places. The uneven geography of unemployment in the UK is likely to have a crucial bearing on the programme's impact and effectiveness, but this has been largely ignored in its development. The paper outlines some of the practical consequences of this imbalance and suggests how it could be rectified for the programme to be more effective