The ban on reason: Gays in the military

This thesis seeks to explain how and why President Bill Clinton\u27s 1993 attempt to drop the ban on homosexuals serving in the military was vehemently opposed by key stakeholders, even though empirical evidence strongly indicates that the ban is unwarranted and conflicts with America\u27s democratic ethos; The theoretical framework for this paper is based on Roger Cobb and Charles Elder\u27s writings on the political use of symbols. By manipulating cultural symbols, such as that of the masculine warrior, opponents of policy change forced Clinton into a compromise, the unsuccessful don\u27t ask, don\u27t tell policy. In torpedoing Clinton\u27s effort, these antagonists employed the same rhetoric that conservatives used to oppose desegregating the military during World War II; Ultimately, this thesis argues that the best chance for dropping the ban involves bold and decisive executive branch leadership that must take into account anticipated problem areas of implementation

Assessing Plasticity : The Populations Responsible for the Epithelial Engraftment on Marrow-Derived Cells

Bone marrow-derived cells (BMDCs) have significant plasticity allowing them to give rise to various non-hematopoietic cell types including epithelial cells of the lung, liver, gut, and skin. These findings offer tremendous possibilities for the use of cell therapy to treat tissue injury and disease. However, the specific populations of cells responsible for this phenomenon are still unclear with considerable controversy over the mechanism of this transformation. In this study, we sought to compare the epithelial engraftment ability of two populations enriched for hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), specifically the fractionated, lineage-depleted, and homed subset (FLH) and the lineage-Sca-1+c-Kit+ sorted population (LSK), to whole bone marrow (WBM). Plasticity capability was assessed by examining the engraftment of type II (T2) pneumocytes in the lung following sex-mismatched bone marrow transplantation in mice. The recipient mice were knockouts of surfactant protein C (SPC), a T2-specific protein, thereby allowing detection of the transplanted wild-type cells in the lung using immunofluorescence for SPC on paraffin sections and cytospins. Additionally, quantitative PCR (qPCR) for SPC transcripts provided a sensitive method of detecting engraftment of these BMDCs. Our data suggest that the FLH and LSK populations engraft in the lung at least as well as the control WBM. Despite our effective detection techniques, only exceedingly rare donor-derived T2 cells could be found by both microscopy and qPCR. Therefore, fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) of the digested lung was tested and found to be reliable in isolating and enriching for these conversion events. Vav ancestry mice were also utilized in a similar transplantation model to directly evaluate the engraftment ability of the hematopoietic and non-hematopoietic fractions of the bone marrow. Preliminarily, the hematopoietic populations showed higher levels of epithelial engraftment by both immunofluorescence and qPCR. Interestingly, a second dose of targeted lung irradiation was necessary to elicit this effect suggesting that greater levels of tissue damage may be necessary for this model\u27s success. When taken as a whole, our results seem to implicate HSC subpopulations as enriched for highly plastic cells which are able to engraft as T2 cells in the lung. The mechanism behind this conversion still remains to be studied but we hypothesize that both cell fusion and incidental entrapment of transplanted BMDCs are responsible

An Experimental test of the endowment effect

Thesis (M. Com. (Economics))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Economic & Business Sciences, 2017In this study, I use a computer game based lab experiment to investigate the existence of the Endowment Effect. Previous empirical evidence has been criticised for failing to adequately account for the effects of transactions costs and other frictions. The structure of the game used in this study allows me to control for these effects, and the results provide evidence in support of the existence of an Endowment Effect. The effect is found to be stronger when transactions costs are present.GR201

Browser Based Multi-Account Notifications

A system and method are disclosed for accurately delivering notifications to devices with multiple users. The system uses a notification server and operates using cookies on the user device. When a user enables notifications, the device is registered with the server backend. Such info is then copied to the client device and stored in a cookie. At the time of notifying a particular user, the notification service will retrieve a list of devices registered to that user id. It then sends a notification fingerprint indicating the notification payload and intended account to the device. When the client device receives the push notification, it pings the server requesting the payload contents, the ping including data from cookies describing the multiple accounts that are logged in, and their active status. The server then sends the notification to the device which then distributes the notification to the specific users active on the device

DYNAMIC NOTIFICATION SETTINGS FOR NEW OR UNUSED NOTIFICATION TYPES

A mechanism to provide notification settings to a user may be based on the interaction of the user at a content item service. For example, a likelihood of the user receiving particular notifications may be identified. The notifications may identify a particular content item at the content item service or a feature of the content item service. Settings for such notifications that have not been previously specified by the user may be identified. Subsequently, the notification settings may be provided to the user so that the user may enable or disable the receiving of future notifications that may be more likely provided to the user

Notification Features For Digital Content In A Mobile-Optimized Format

Disclosed herein is a mechanism for providing notification features for digital content that is in a mobile-optimized format. The mechanism can, for example, provide one or more tags in the mobile-optimized format that specify a uniform resource locator (URL) for a notification content item. Such a URL provided in the one or more tags can enable digital content that is in a mobile-optimized format to request notification permissions from a parent page or domain of the digital content. Such a URL provided in the one or more tags can also enable digital content that is in a mobile-optimized format to specify a separate real-time notification content stream for in-app notifications

Geo-Restricted In-Video Annotations

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for video annotation that allow a content creator to specify whether a video annotation appears or changes based on the viewer’s geolocation to provide relevant content. The system uses four core components viz. video annotation editing tool, annotation storage mechanism, video metadata serving system and conversion mechanism. When a user clicks on media in a client application to view a video, the conversion mechanism converts the profile data of the user into geographic data using GPS or other methods. The metadata server then applies the geographic restrictions (step F) and shows the video with the annotations appropriate to the geolocation. The client application could provide the user with a manual override to specify viewing annotations of a different geolocation. The system of video annotations gives content creators and publishers the ability to create interactive elements within their videos to merchandise, thereby providing significant monetization opportunities

Connecting Devices Based On Captured Image Data

Disclosed herein is a mechanism for connecting devices based on captured image data. A streaming media device can transmit content information indicating content that is currently being presented on a display associated with the streaming media device to a server device. A user device can transmit image data (e.g., captured by a camera associated with the user device) to the server device that represents content that is currently being presented on a display device. The server device can, in turn, compare the content information received from multiple streaming media devices with the image data received from the user device to identify a streaming media device that is currently presenting the content represented by the image data transmitted by the user device. The server device can then determine whether the user device has permission to access the identified streaming device, and can transmit a reference to the user device that allows the user device to connect to the streaming media device and to control the playback of content using the streaming media device