Parade Disputes in Northern Ireland: Roadblocks on the Path to a Lasting Peace

Since the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the peace process in Northern Ireland has seen mixed success. One area that has seen less success is the disputes over Unionist parades. The majority of the routes used for Orange Order parades remain undisputed, but tensions arise in interface areas, where Republican neighborhoods connect with those of the Loyalists. Even though these parades have been conducted since the 1800s, they have not been contested until recently. The reasons for the creation of disputes could be political leverage or financial gain for certain community groups and political parties. By examining the case study of the historic dispute surrounding the Drumcree parade in Portadown that began in 1986, interviewing academics who are subject matter experts, and utilizing archival data, this project will analyze the recent and ongoing parade dispute in the Ardoyne area of Belfast to understand how this and future disputes disrupt the peace process

A CLEAN WATER ACT, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT

The Clean Water Act has traveled a successful but tortuous path. From combustible beginnings on the Cuyahoga River; through the Lake St. Clair wetlands; to reservoirs near the Miccosukee; and eventually discharged (or “functionally” discharged) off the Maui coast. With each bend, the nearly fifty-year-old Act has proven to be not just resilient, but among our most successful environmental laws. Much of that success stems from an effective enforcement structure that focuses more on treating pollutant sources rather than just impaired waters. The text creating that structure has largely remained untouched by Congress for decades. This article begins by posing a thesis: The Clean Water Act regulates all “waters of the United States.” It then suggests a two-part antithesis: Congress violated the nondelegation and void-for-vagueness doctrines by defining the Clean Water Act only as reaching “waters of the United States.” And it resolves the conflict with a synthesis: a call for Congress to amend the Clean Water Act by providing the statute with a more stable and intelligible jurisdictional reach. Federal oversight in water quality regulation is a necessity. But to what degree is a policy decision that Congress has yet to make

Evolution of Network Enumeration Strategies in Emulated Computer Networks

Successful attacks on computer networks today do not often owe their victory to directly overcoming strong security measures set up by the defender. Rather, most attacks succeed because the number of possible vulnerabilities are too large for humans to fully protect without making a mistake. Regardless of the security elsewhere, a skilled attacker can exploit a single vulnerability in a defensive system and negate the benefits of those security measures. This paper presents an evolutionary framework for evolving attacker agents in a real, emulated network environment using genetic programming, as a foundation for coevolutionary systems which can automatically discover and mitigate network security flaws. We examine network enumeration, an initial network reconnaissance step, through our framework and present results demonstrating its success, indicating a broader applicability to further cyber-security tasks

beta-Secretase1 biological markers for Alzheimer's disease : state-of-art of validation and qualification

beta -Secretase1 (BACE1) protein concentrations and rates of enzyme activity, analyzed in human bodily fluids, are promising candidate biological markers for guidance in clinical trials investigating BACE1 inhibitors to halt or delay the dysregulation of the amyloid-beta pathway in Alzheimer's disease (AD). A robust body of evidence demonstrates an association between cerebrospinal fluid/blood BACE1 biomarkers and core pathophysiological mechanisms of AD, such as brain protein misfolding and aggregration, neurodegeneration, and synaptic dysfunction.In pharmacological trials, BACE1 candidate biomarkers may be applied to a wide set of contexts of use (CoU), including proof of mechanism, dose-finding, response and toxicity dose estimation. For clinical CoU, BACE1 biomarkers show good performance for prognosis and disease prediction.The roadmap toward validation and qualification of BACE1 biomarkers requires standardized pre-analytical and analytical protocols to reduce inter-site variance that may have contributed to inconsistent results.BACE1 biomarker-drug co-development programs, including biomarker-guided outcomes and endpoints, may support the identification of sub-populations with a higher probability to benefit from BACE1 inhibitors with a reduced risk of adverse effects, in line with the evolving precision medicine paradigm

Tanamu 1: A 5000 year sequence from Caution Bay

[Extract] Archaeological sites across Caution Bay often contain distinctive artefactual horizons of varying ages, making it possible to investigate cultural trends at a range of spatial and temporal scales over extended periods of time. Tanamu 1 is a site of particular interest because of its three distinct major occupation horizons that start with the pre-ceramic, followed by Lapita, and end with post-Lapita. The aim of this chapter is to report details of the site, focusing on its chronostratigraphy, so that its various cultural materials (reported in detail in Chapters 3–7) can be examined in context

Detection of volcanic ash clouds from Nimbus 7/total ozone mapping spectrometer

Measured radiances from the Version 7 reprocessing of the Nimbus 7/total ozone mapping spectrometer (TOMS) 340- and 380-nm channels are used to detect absorbing particulates injected into the atmosphere after the El Chichon eruption on April 4, 1982. It is shown that while the single-channel reflectivity determined from the 380-nm channel is able to detect clouds and haze composed of nonabsorbing aerosols, the spectral contrast between the 340- and 380-nm channels is sensitive to absorbing particulates such as volcanic ash, desert dust, or smoke from biomass burning. In this paper the spectral contrast between these two channels is used to detect the volcanic ash injection into the atmosphere and to track its evolution for several days. The movement of the ash clouds is shown to be consistent with the motions expected from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)-derived balanced wind fields in the troposphere and lower stratosphere. The movement of the volcanic SO2 cloud detected from TOMS data was also in agreement with the NCEP wind at higher altitudes of up to 100–10 mbar. The vertical wind shear in the neighborhood of the eruption site resulted in a clear separation of the ash and SO2 clouds. The location and movement of the ash cloud are consistent with information obtained by the advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) instrument on board the NOAA 7 satellite and to ground reports of ash fall

The deep history of Earth's biomass

This paper was improved by the comments and suggestions of Graham Shields-Zhou and two anonymous reviewers. We thank E. Buitenhuis for sharing insights into aquatic biomass. S.M. acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement 747877.Peer reviewedPostprin

A Genome Wide Survey of SNP Variation Reveals the Genetic Structure of Sheep Breeds

The genetic structure of sheep reflects their domestication and subsequent formation into discrete breeds. Understanding genetic structure is essential for achieving genetic improvement through genome-wide association studies, genomic selection and the dissection of quantitative traits. After identifying the first genome-wide set of SNP for sheep, we report on levels of genetic variability both within and between a diverse sample of ovine populations. Then, using cluster analysis and the partitioning of genetic variation, we demonstrate sheep are characterised by weak phylogeographic structure, overlapping genetic similarity and generally low differentiation which is consistent with their short evolutionary history. The degree of population substructure was, however, sufficient to cluster individuals based on geographic origin and known breed history. Specifically, African and Asian populations clustered separately from breeds of European origin sampled from Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. Furthermore, we demonstrate the presence of stratification within some, but not all, ovine breeds. The results emphasize that careful documentation of genetic structure will be an essential prerequisite when mapping the genetic basis of complex traits. Furthermore, the identification of a subset of SNP able to assign individuals into broad groupings demonstrates even a small panel of markers may be suitable for applications such as traceability