Treasonous Patriot: A Comparative Content Analysis of the Media\u27s Portrayals of Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden

On June 9, 2013, the world was introduced to Edward Joseph Snowden, a 29-year-old NSA contractor and the man responsible for the biggest leak of classified government documents in American history. Almost immediately, comparisons were drawn between Snowden and another famous whistleblower--Daniel Ellsberg, the man behind the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers. The overwhelming rhetoric surrounding the comparison was that Ellsberg was a true American patriot and that Snowden was nothing like him, that he was a traitor. Despite Ellsberg\u27s own claims that he and Snowden are exactly alike, the media still finds Snowden lacking when comparing him with Ellsberg. This research examined a sample of new organizations\u27 portrayals of Ellsberg and Snowden during their respective whistleblowing scandals to determine what similarities and differences exist in the coverage

Assessing the effectiveness of the mining regulatory regime in supporting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for sustainable mining in Malawi

This study provides an assessment of the effectiveness of mining regulatory regime in Malawi in promoting the adoption and practice of Corporate Social Responsibility for sustainable mining. This comes from the background that CSR was traditionally business driven and was practiced voluntarily. However, the increased involvement of the public sector and the role it is playing to promote and enhance the agenda, prompted the assessment of the mining regulatory regime. This was a desk study which involved a comprehensive document review. The study reviewed government policies, legislations, journals, government reports and mining company reports. The study shows that CSR in the mining sector in Malawi is supported by the regulatory frameworks. The regulatory frameworks showed that they contained the CSR terminology which is implied. In addition, the sector has some recent legislations which emphasise the need to enhance sustainable mining. However, enforcement and monitoring of legal frameworks and policies is poor due to lack of capacity and poor funding of institutions. The study also found that the mining sector does not have a deliberate national CSR policy or guidelines to support the CSR agenda by mining companies. It should be noted that the precise and detailed specifications of the regulation to achieve the objectives and robust institutions improves the effectiveness of the regulatory regime to support CSR in the mining sector. Though there are policies, strategies and laws in the mining sector which play the important role of strengthening the CSR agenda, they lack supportive efforts by the government to make them more effective

Computation Research

Contains reports on two research projects.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DA 36-039-AMC-03200(E

Nonexpansive directions in the Jeandel-Rao Wang shift

We show that $\{0,\varphi+3,-3\varphi+2,-\varphi+\frac{5}{2}\}$ is the set of slopes of nonexpansive directions for a minimal subshift in the Jeandel-Rao Wang shift, where $\varphi=(1+\sqrt{5})/2$ is the golden mean. This set is a topological invariant allowing to distinguish the Jeandel-Rao Wang shift from other subshifts. Moreover, we describe the combinatorial structure of the two resolutions of the Conway worms along the nonexpansive directions in terms of irrational rotations of the unit interval. The introduction finishes with pictures of nonperiodic Wang tilings corresponding to what Conway called the cartwheel tiling in the context of Penrose tilings. The article concludes with open questions regarding the description of octopods and essential holes in the Jeandel-Rao Wang shift.Comment: v1: 24 pages, 19 figures; v2: 30 pages, 23 figures, new section with open questions on octopods and essential holes; v3: small fixe

Parents\u27 Reasons for Opting-Out Students from High-Stakes Tests

An increasing number of parents are opting-out their children from high-stakes. Accountability systems in education have used students\u27 test scores to measure student learning, teacher effectiveness, and school district performance. Students who are opted-out of high-stakes tests are not being evaluated by the state tests, making their level of achievement or proficiency unknown by the state government. The purpose of this basic interpretive qualitative study was to gain an understanding of the various reasons, factors, experiences, and personal events that led parents to opt-out their children from at least one 3rd through 8th grade high-stakes test. Data were collected using a researcher-designed semi-structured interview protocol developed using ecological approaches to systems theories and critical pedagogy theories. The study was set in New York and 10 participants were interviewed, all from different rural or small suburban school districts throughout the state. Five themes and 12 subthemes emerged from first and second cycle coding. Key findings indicated that parents decided to opt-out their children from high-stakes tests because they felt high-stakes were inappropriate and unfair. Further, parents were dissatisfied with current high-stakes testing practices. Previous 3rd through 8th grade testing procedures that allowed teachers to make and grade the state tests were seen as acceptable. Parents indicated no issue with testing. However, from a social change perspective they felt the current system of high stakes testing was used improperly to rate students, teachers, programs, and school districts, and that testing should be used to drive instruction and help struggling students. This study is beneficial for school personnel and policy makers because it provides different ways to assess student achievement

An Integrated Approach Toward Identifying Resistance to Cotton Fleahopper (Pseudatomoscelis seriatus) in Upland Cotton

Cotton fleahoppers (Pseudatomoscelis seriatus) are an early season pest of upland cotton. Feeding damage is characterized by death and abscission of developing cotton floral buds, called squares, and is thought to result from infection of the plant tissue with the bacterial pathogen, Pantoea ananatis, which is vectored by the insect during feeding. Heavy infestations cause delayed maturity and can result in substantial yield loss. Cotton fleahoppers are primarily controlled by chemical insecticides, and thus there exists a strong need to identify resistance in the available upland germplasm for resistance breeding purposes. To that end, three integrated projects were designed to identify and characterize host plant resistance in the available upland germplasm: (1) field evaluation of candidate germplasm to identify resistance and introgression of the resistance trait through backcross breeding, (2) characterization of resistance identified in the first objective through assays of feeding behavior and morphological analysis of the plants and cotton fleahoppers, and (3) RNA-seq transcriptome analysis of plant response to herbivory in one susceptible and three resistant genotypes identified in the first objective. Germplasm obtained from a previous cotton fleahopper breeding effort at Texas A&M and from the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Cotton Improvement Lab at College Station was screened for resistance by estimating percent square loss in three years of field tests in College Station and Corpus Christi, TX and included two high-yielding breeding lines and 18 lines derived from crosses of Pilose (a densely pubescent cultigen resistant to cotton fleahopper) with ‘Deltapine50,’ ‘All-Tex Atlas,’ and ‘TAM 96 WD- 69s’. Field evaluations identified resistance to cotton fleahoppers in lines derived from crosses with Pilose. Field evaluations of backcross progeny lines identified one line, 12525, with high resistance to cotton fleahoppers in both College Station and Corpus Christi and good yield and fiber traits. Behavioral assays examined the interactions of adult cotton fleahoppers with excised cotton squares. Behavior was categorized as walking, resting, probing, feeding or cleaning. Analysis revealed significant differences among parental and backcross progeny lines in time cotton fleahoppers spent feeding, indicating non-preference as a mechanism of resistance. Morphological analysis of square structure, in which square width and length and depth of the developing ovary were measured, indicated variation in depth of the developing ovary may contribute to resistance to cotton fleahoppers; squares with greater ovary depth may escape direct penetration by the proboscis of a feeding cotton fleahopper. RNA-seq transcriptome profilining examined the effects of cotton fleahopper herbivory on gene expression. Analysis revealed differential expression of transcripts associated with three regulators of the hypersensitive response (HR)—myb transcription factor, alternative oxidase (AOX), and BAX inhibitor-1— and indicated the difference between susceptible types (plants that shed squares) and resistant types (plants that retain squares) may lie in regulation of HR-associated lesion formation. Together, the projects presented in this dissertation indicate that the relationship between cotton fleahopper and upland cotton is complex and involves several host plant resistance mechanisms that can be exploited in future efforts to breed for resistance to this insect in cotton

Modelling saturated tearing modes in tokamaks.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1992.In this thesis a model for saturated tearing mode islands is developed. The equations for the mode amplitudes are essentially those of R B White et al,after a pertubation expansion has been made. It is well known that these equations are not then analytic at the mode rational surface. In our model this problem is overcome when a suitable choice of the axisymmetric current density perturbation is added to the unperturbed equilibrium current density profile. The modelled axisymmetric current density perturbation flattens the unperturbed profile locally at the rational surface and is sufficient to induce an island. No modelling in the interior of the island is necessary. The axisymmetric perturbation has a free variable which adjusts the amount of local flattening. However, when the boundary conditions are taken into account, this free parameter is determined, and the problem becomes an eigenvalue problem. The boundary condition thus determines the amount of local flattening at the rational surface. The saturated island widths are determined using D.' (W) criterion. The model allows for non axsymmetric plasma surface in a simple way, requiring careful choice of D (W). The different criteria are compared to establish the validity of the use of such criteria for perturbed boundaries. In the cylindrical approximation, one or two modes may be included in the model. In the case of two modes, non-linear coupling via the current density profile is introduced. Toroidal coupling between modes can also be simply introduced. Two modes that are toroidally coupled are considered, but mode-mode coupling is ignored. The emphasis falls in large part on the boundary conditions. Various boundary conditions can be considered because distortion of the plasma surface can be fixed by wall effects, plasma rotation, external DC coil currents, plasma rotation with external coil currents, etc. Of particular interest is the case of toroidally coupled modes, coupled in turn to these external conditions as this is the first study of such a nature. Results flowing from the study include among others that: for the special case of circular boundaries the model agrees reasonably with the results of R B White et al. No significant difference was found between the D. I (W) criterion of P H Rutherford, which is valid for circular boundaries, and that of A H Reiman, which is also valid for perturbed boundaries, when the boundary is perturbed significantly. Toroidally coupled islands do not increase in size if the boundary condition of that particular mode is not changed. If a coil current of particular helicity is switched on, it will only affect the mode of that particular helicity. Toroidally induced sideband islands have approximately the same width as natural tearing islands when the size of the natural island is large