Alien Registration- Leblanc, William (Ashland, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/27388/thumbnail.jp

Alien Registration- Leblanc, Joseph William (Sangerville, Piscataquis County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/8611/thumbnail.jp

When parties are not teams: party positions in single-member district and proportional representation systems

Theoretical analyses of party positions commonly assume that parties act as teams to maximize their legislative representation. This assumption runs counter to another line of theorizing in which individual legislators maximize their own chances of winning reelection. To resolve this tension, the paper presents a model of partyplatform choice that relaxes only the assumption that parties are teams in the classical two-party spatial model. Platforms are chosen by majority rule among all legislators within a party. Politicians seek to win their own seats in the legislature, but they must run under a common party label. In both single-member district and proportional representation systems, equilibrium platforms are shown to diverge substantially, with one party located near the 25th percentile of the voter distribution and the other near the 75th percentile, rather than converge to the median. The model also yields predictions concerning short-term economic shocks, incumbency advantages, and gerrymandering.Governmen

Natural resource management and Indigenous food systems in Northern Ontario

The forests and freshwaters of Northern Ontario are complex socio-ecological systems that have provided opportunities to sustain local lives, economies, and cultures since time immemorial. Through nation-to-nation agreements, Indigenous nations ceded land title to the Crown through treaties in which the Crown promised them enhanced livelihood. The treaties articulated the rights of each party to share access to these lands, and the Canadian courts continue to describe the nature and extent of the rights of each party as well as their duties and responsibilities. Despite great developments in Canadian society, descendants of the Indigenous treaty signatories have experienced disproportionately high rates of unemployment, negative health outcomes, low education rates, and increased food insecurity. The legislative framework guiding Crown land management in Ontario is strongly rooted in Canada’s colonial past; thus the Indigenous land user’s access to foods is largely disassociated from the perspective of the Crown land manager. This research explores assumptions associated with Crown forest management in Ontario based on the purposes of the Crown Forest Sustainability Act, with specific objectives linking participant action research with independent thesis-action research. Community-based research priorities are reflected in in each chapter within the context of Indigenous food systems and natural resource management in Northern Ontario. The major findings of this research confirm that if meeting social, economic, and environmental needs of present and future generations is the purpose of Crown forest management, then based on experiences of Indigenous land users, the paradigm in which natural resource management occurs should be re-evaluated. The researcher provides recommendations for forest managers, including shifting the current knowledge paradigm from the primarily quantitative approach to a more holistic paradigm that includes qualitative information. To achieve this recommendation, the need to reform required training for forest management authorities, to include Indigenous worldviews as well as Aboriginal and Treaty Rights. Furthermore, in order to meet the needs of Indigenous land users, the natural resource management paradigm should be expanded to include food system management. Finally, lessons learned from the research project are presented as the 4Rs for rebuilding food sovereignty: reclaim, reorganize, re-skill, and restore

Quantification and Dosing of Renal Replacement Therapy in Acute Kidney Injury: A Reappraisal

Background/Aims: Delivered dialysis therapy is routinely measured in the management of patients with end-stage renal disease; yet, the quantification of renal replacement prescription and delivery in acute kidney injury (AKI) is less established. While continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) is widely understood to have greater solute clearance capabilities relative to intermittent therapies, neither urea nor any other solute is specifically employed for CRRT dose assessments in clinical practice at present. Instead, the normalized effluent rate is the gold standard for CRRT dosing, although this parameter does not provide an accurate estimation of actual solute clearance for different modalities. Methods: Because this situation has created confusion among clinicians, we reappraise dose prescription and delivery for CRRT. Results: A critical review of RRT quantification in AKI is provided. Conclusion: We propose an adaptation of a maintenance dialysis parameter (standard Kt/V) as a benchmark to supplement effluent-based dosing of CRRT. Video Journal Club "Cappuccino with Claudio Ronco" at http://www.karger.com/?doi=47545

Party positions and the seats/votes relationship with ideological voters

Includes bibliographical references (p. 132-137).Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2007.Chapter 2 is based on two axioms: party members must run under common platforms, but are made up of incumbents who seek their own individual re-election. Politicians seek to win their own seats in the legislature, but they must run under a common party label. In both single-member district and proportional representation systems, equilibrium platforms are shown to diverge substantially, with one party located near the 25th percentile of the voter distribution and the other near the 75th percentile, rather than converge to the median. The model also yields predictions concerning short-term economic shocks, incumbency advantages, and gerrymandering. Chapter 3 is based on ideological voters. With purely ideological voters, party vote share depends on the distribution of voters in the entire country. Seat share depends on distribution of district medians. The seats/votes curve is therefore a combination of two different functions. This presents an identification problem for studying either function without accounting for the other. The incumbency advantage is also considered. Chapter 4 measures ideology using the Cooperative Congressional Election Study using factor analysis on voter responses to policy questions. I discuss the robustness of the measure and implications for the model of chapter 3. Chapter 5 finds little evidence of structural bias against either party under districting. However, in a hypothetical party-list system, there would be a massive structural advantage for the left party. The seats/votes curve is predicted to be approximately linear or logistic, unless one takes into account incumbency, in which case the curve becomes non-linear. Senate party platforms are predicted to be more converged than the House, with a midpoint right of center.by William Michael Leblanc.Ph.D

Reconsidering low-dose aspirin therapy for cardiovascular disease: a study protocol for physician and patient behavioral change

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There are often disparities between current evidence and current practice. Decreasing the gap between desired practice outcomes and observed practice outcomes in the healthcare system is not always easy. Stopping previously recommended or variably recommended interventions may be even harder to achieve than increasing the use of a desired but under-performed activity. For over a decade, aspirin has been prescribed for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and for patients with the coronary artery disease risk equivalents; yet, there is no substantial evidence of an appropriate risk-benefit ratio to support this practice. This paper describes the protocol of a randomized trial being conducted in six primary care practices in the Denver metropolitan area to examine the effectiveness of three interventional strategies to change physician behavior regarding prescription of low-dose aspirin.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>All practices received academic detailing, one arm received clinician reminders to reconsider aspirin, a second arm received both clinician and patient messages to reconsider aspirin. The intervention will run for 15 to 18 months. Data collected at baseline and for outcomes from an electronic health record will be used to assess pre- and post-interventional prescribing, as well as to explore any inappropriate decrease in aspirin use by patients with known cardiovascular disease.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>This study was designed to investigate effective methods of changing physician behavior to decrease the use of aspirin for primary cardiovascular disease prevention. The results of this study will contribute to the small pool of knowledge currently available on the topic of ceasing previously supported practices.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov: <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01247454">NCT01247454</a></p

Magnetoelastic coupling in Fe100−xGex single crystals with 4

In this paper we examine the elastic (c′ and c44) and magnetostrictive (λ100 and λ111) behaviors of Fe100−xGex for 4\u3cx\u3c18, quantities used further to find the fundamental magnetoelastic coupling constants b1 and b2 at room temperature. The x dependence ofb1 and b2 for Fe100−xGex is contrasted to those of Fe100−xGax and Fe100−xAlx. While the rhombohedral shear elastic constant c44 is almost insensitive to the type and amount of solute, the tetragonal shear constant c′ shows a pronounced and rapid softening with increasing x for all three alloys but with different decreasing slopes. Similarly, while the rhombohedral magnetostriction λ111 behavior is analogous for all three alloy systems, showing a sign change from negative to positive at the onset of chemical order, the tetragonal magnetostriction λ100 behavior differs. For the Ga and Al alloys, λ100 maintains positive values over the entire x range, both curves showing large peak values, whereasλ100 of Fe100−xGex exhibits a moderate positive peak followed by a negative dip, both of comparable magnitude. Finally the tetragonal coupling constant −b1 of Fe–Ge shows a marked, sharp decrease as chemical order occurs at x ∼ 12 at. % Ge. The decline continues until the ordered D03 phase is fully established at x ∼ 18 at. % Ge. The peak value of |b1| for Fe–Ge is approximately half of those for Fe–Ga and Fe–Al. This smaller value of |b1|, obtained for the higher electron concentration Ge alloy, is consistent with predictions based on band structure calculations. The rhombohedral coupling constant−b2 shows a consistent sign change at the occurrence of chemical ordering in both Fe–Ga and Fe–Ge