Applying Online: Technological Innovation for Income Support Programs in Four States

A study examining the development, implementation, and best practices for online applications for public benefits programs in California, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Washington based on interviews with state agencies and community-based organizations

Critical sets of nonlinear Sturm-Liouville operators of Ambrosetti-Prodi type

The critical set C of the operator F:H^2_D([0,pi]) -> L^2([0,pi]) defined by F(u)=-u''+f(u) is studied. Here X:=H^2_D([0,pi]) stands for the set of functions that satisfy the Dirichlet boundary conditions and whose derivatives are in L^2([0,pi]). For generic nonlinearities f, C=\cup C_k decomposes into manifolds of codimension 1 in X. If f''0, the set C_j is shown to be non-empty if, and only if, -j^2 (the j-th eigenvalue of u -> u'') is in the range of f'. The critical components C_k are (topological) hyperplanes.Comment: 6 pages, no figure

David Atkinson, The english traditional ballad: theory, method, and practice, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002

I have been waiting for this book for a long time. This is not to say that David has been behind-hand, but rather that it is a very useful combination of introduction and detailed examination of a great tradition. It is well known that “traditional” singers rarely differentiate between ballads and the myriad other songs that pass for traditional

Tradition as communication

Tradition is communication, the passing on of (social) culture through shared practices and lore. It is an expression of an intense emotional bond between performer and source and, by extension, the cultural manifestations of that relationship at the intersections of memory, orality, and literacy.Not

The life and songs of Iain 'an sgiobair' MacNeacail and the role of a song-maker in a Hebridean community

Iain MacNeacail of the Isle of Skye has been making songs since 1917, when he was fourteen years old; he still composes today. His style is that of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century bàird bhaile [township poets] who compose on a huge range of subjects. This dissertation explores the world of a Gaelic song- maker, largely in his own words through the use of tape recorded interviews and investigates his thoughts on his motives and his methods of composition. These aspects of song scholarship are under -researched in many cultures and though there are extensive collections of Gaelic songs available which allow study of the textual /musicological side, the maker's own perceptions of his work and the community's perception of their bard have been neglected. The picture that emerges is of a living village song -maker in the context of a community rich in song and cultural life, where villagers look to their local bards for articulation of their own feelings.Functional local song in its element operates on many levels. Chapter one is the biography of Iain MacNeacail, largely in his own words, which sets the scene and provides some historical background on north Skye itself. Chapter two describes the community social life, centering on the taigh céilidh [céilidh or visiting house] and other pastimes during the long winter months. Chapter three consists of an edition of MacNeacail song's, with notes and detailed transcriptions of interviews relating to their background and genesis. Chapter four elucidates the actual process of making a song: how they come to him, his conscious technique and his unconscious skill. Chapter five discusses the function of song in MacNeacail's Hebridean community. This ranges from amusement to revenge and protest and looks particularly at song as a form of response, whether to adversity, requests or questions. The functional aspect of song has changed dramatically since World War II; these changes and how MacNeacail has adapted to cope with them are discussed in some detail. The final chapter examines the song- maker's aesthetic: what poets he likes and why. MacNeacail views his world through a song- maker's eyes and everything is therefore interpreted in relation to and through the words of the great bards of the past that he admires so much and quotes so often. It concludes by examining others' and his own opinions of himself and his abilities.Iain MacNeacail's knowledge and experience provides a unique opportunity to record one of the last Gaelic bards reflecting upon his life, his art, and his role in tradition. These reflections, together with information gathered in further fieldwork, present a portrait of a type of village life once common in Gaelic society, but now rarely seen and even less frequently preserved

The Flowering Thorn

The flowering thorn expresses the dual nature of the ballad: at once a distinctive expression of European tradition, but also somewhat tricky to approach from a scholarly perspective, requiring a range of disciplines to illuminate its rich composition. Most of this latter quality has to do with the very features that characterize ballads... or narrative songs. These include an appearance of fragmentation; a wide range of cultural and social referents; complex, evocative symbolic language; and variation. The notable multiformity of meaning, text and tune is mirrored in scholarship, too. The Flowering Thorn is therefore wide ranging, with articles written by world authorities from the fields of folklore, history, literature, and ethnology, employing a variety of methodologies—structuralism to functionalism, repertoire studies to geographical explorations of cultural movement and change. The twenty-five selected contributions represent the latest trends in ballad scholarship, embracing the multi-disciplinary nature of the field today. The essays have their origins in the 1999 International Ballad Conference of the Kommission fur Volksdichtung (KfV), which focused particularly on ballads and social context; performance and repertoire; genre, motif, and classification. The revised, tailored, and expanded essays are divided into five sections—the interpretation of narrative song; structure and motif; context, version, and transmission; regions, reprints, and repertoires; and the mediating collector\u27s offering a range of examples from fifteen different cultures, ten of them drawing on languages other than English, resulting in a series of personal journeys to the heart of one of Europe\u27s richest, most enduring cultural creations. —Thomas McKean, from the Introduction CONTRIBUTORS: Mary Anne Alburger, David Atkinson, Julia C. Bishop, Valentina Bold, Katherine Campbell, Nicolae Constantinescu, Luisa Del Giudice, Sheila Douglas, David G. Engle, Frances J. Fischer, Simon Furey, Vic Gammon, Marjetka Golez-Kaucic, Pauline Greenhill, Cozette Griffin-Kremer, J. J. Dias Marques, William Bernard McCarthy, Isabelle Peere, Gerald Porter, James Porter, Roger de V. Renwick, Sigrid Rieuwerts, Michèle Simonsen, Larry Syndergaard, Stefaan Top, Larysa Vakhnina, Lynn Wollstadthttps://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1062/thumbnail.jp

MULTI-LAYERED COMMUNICATION AND FUNCTION IN SCOTTISH TRAVELLER CANT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI am grateful to Jess Smith, Eilidh Whiteford, and John D. Niles for their many helpful suggestions as I worked on this paper. Thanks, too, to Linda Williamson for her perspica-cious and prompt replies to my queries. Most of all, thank you to all my Traveller friends who have shared so openly of their lives and experience. You are Scotland’s royalty.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A novel search for gravitationally lensed radio sources in wide-field VLBI imaging from the mJIVE-20 survey

We present a novel pilot search for gravitational lenses in the mJIVE-20 survey, which observed $24\,903$ radio sources selected from FIRST with the VLBA at an angular resolution of 5 mas. We have taken the visibility data for an initial $3\,640$ sources that were detected by the mJIVE-20 observations and re-mapped them to make wide-field images, selecting fourteen sources that had multiple components separated by $\geq100$ mas, with a flux-ratio of $\leq15$:$1$ and a surface brightness consistent with gravitational lensing. Two of these candidates are re-discoveries of gravitational lenses found as part of CLASS. The remaining twelve candidates were then re-observed at 1.4 GHz and then simultaneously at 4.1 and 7.1 GHz with the VLBA to measure the spectral index and surface brightness of the individual components as a function of frequency. Ten were rejected as core-jet or core-hotspot(s) systems, with surface brightness distributions and/or spectral indices inconsistent with gravitational lensing, and one was rejected after lens modelling demonstrated that the candidate lensed images failed the parity test. The final lens candidate has an image configuration that is consistent with a simple lens mass model, although further observations are required to confirm the lensing nature. Given the two confirmed gravitational lenses in the mJIVE-20 sample, we find a robust lensing-rate of $1$:($318\pm225$) for a statistical sample of 635 radio sources detected on mas-scales, which is consistent with that found for CLASS.Comment: 31 pages, 22 figures; accepted for publication in MNRA

Heating and acceleration of coronal and chromospheric ions during solar flares

One-dimensional, electrostatic, particle-in-cell simulations are used to explore two mechanisms proposed to explain turbulent broadening of soft x ray emission lines of heavy ions observed during solar flares and the presence of blue-shifted components. Results from the simulations are in qualitative agreement with the observations