The South Won\u27t Rise Again But It\u27s Time to Study the Defunct Confederacy\u27s Constitution

The premise of this essay is not to espouse that the Southern ideological and constitutional theorists were correct. I propose, however, that an understanding of the historical basis of constitutional law, and a recognition of evolving doctrinal issues of Federalism, will enhance law school curriculum. Presentation of these topics dictates the introduction of the Confederate Constitution into the curriculum of required courses and electives. This effort, I propose, would be a prudent step, to be amply repaid in terms of higher understanding and scholarly benefit

Discussing controversial issues in the classroom

Discussion is widely held to be the pedagogical approach most appropriate to the exploration of controversial issues in the classroom, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the questions of why it is the preferred approach and how best to facilitate it. Here we address ourselves to both questions.We begin by clarifying the concept of discussion and justifying it as an approach to the teaching of controversial issues.We then report on a recent empirical study of the Perspectives on Science AS-level course, focusing on what it revealed about aids and impediments to discussion of controversial ethical issues

Assessing distances and consistency of kinematics in Gaia/TGAS

We apply the statistical methods by Schoenrich, Binney & Asplund to assess the quality of distances and kinematics in the RAVE-TGAS and LAMOST-TGAS samples of Solar neighbourhood stars. These methods yield a nominal distance accuracy of 1-2%. Other than common tests on parallax accuracy, they directly test distance estimations including the effects of distance priors. We show how to construct these priors including the survey selection functions (SSFs) directly from the data. We demonstrate that neglecting the SSFs causes severe distance biases. Due to the decline of the SSFs in distance, the simple 1/parallax estimate only mildly underestimates distances. We test the accuracy of measured line-of-sight velocities (v_los) by binning the samples in the nominal v_los uncertainties. We find: a) the LAMOST v_los have a ~ -5 km/s offset; b) the average LAMOST measurement error for v_los is ~7 km/s, significantly smaller than, and nearly uncorrelated with the nominal LAMOST estimates. The RAVE sample shows either a moderate distance underestimate, or an unaccounted source of v_los dispersion (e_v) from measurement errors and binary stars. For a subsample of suspected binary stars in RAVE, our methods indicate significant distance underestimates. Separating a sample in metallicity or kinematics to select thick-disc/halo stars, discriminates between distance bias and e_v. For LAMOST, this separation yields consistency with pure v_los measurement errors. We find an anomaly near longitude l~(300+/-60)deg and distance s~(0.32+/-0.03)kpc on both sides of the galactic plane, which could be explained by either a localised distance error or a breathing mode.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures accepted by MNRAS; now also includes comparison to Astraatmadja & Bailer-Jones distance

Origin of the high v_los feature in the Galactic bar

We analyse a controlled N-body + smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation of a growing disc galaxy within a non-growing, live dark halo. The disc is continuously fed with gas and star particles on near-circular orbits and develops a bar comparable in size to the one of the Milky Way (MW). We extract line of sight velocity v_los distributions from the model and compare it to data recently obtained from the APOGEE survey which show distinct high velocity features around v_los ~ 200 km/s. With an APOGEE like selection function, but without any scaling nor adjustment, we find v_los distributions very similar to those in APOGEE. The stars that make up the high v_los features at positive longitudes l are preferentially young bar stars (age <~ 2-3 Gyr) which move away from us along the rear side of the bar. At negative l, we find the corresponding low v_los feature from stars moving towards us. At l>10 degrees the highest v_los stars are a mixture of bar and background disc stars which complicates the interpretation of observations. The main peak in v_los is dominated by fore- and background stars. At a given time, ~40-50 per cent of high v_los stars occupy x_1 like orbits, but a significant fraction are on more complex orbits. The observed feature is likely due to a population of dynamically cool, young stars formed from gas just outside the bar and subsequently captured by the growing bar. The high v_los features disappear at high latitudes |b|>~2 degrees which explains the non-detection of such features in other surveys.Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Final proposal for encoding the Glagolitic script in the UCS

This is a proposal to encode the Glagolitic script in the international character encoding standard Unicode. The script was published in Unicode Standard version 4.1 in March 2005. Glagolitic is thought to have been created by St. Cyril around 862 CE for his translation of the Scriptures and liturgical books into Slavonic. Glagolitic was eventually eclipsed by the Cyrillic script

Management in engineering consultancies: with special reference to the Carl Bro Group and Peter Deer and Associates: executive summary

In my portfolio I have attempted, through projects and post module work in both a large and a small start up company, to examine consulting engineering firms as businesses. Firstly identifying the key issues then developing a framework of ideas that could be used by others. Because of the lack of literature directly related to the practice of consultipg engineering in construction I have looked outside that industry for references to guide me. In this summary I have attempted to consolidate the information gained. This would be useful as a starting point when assessing an existing businesses or as guidance for start-up firms

The double challenge of transformation and integration: German experiences and consequences for Korea

While the DPRK (North Korea) is on its way ahead to reform the socialist based economic system, since a few years the Republic of Korea (South Korea) is integrating into East Asian economic structures like ASEAN plus 3. In this way a possible reunification of Korea as well as a single transformation process in North Korea in the near future will be connected closely with the question of economic integration in Northeast Asia. Fortunately, this situation is not singular in economic history but has some models in Europe. For instance, in 1990 Germany reunified during an important deepening phase of the European Union. When Western and Eastern Germany became unified in 1990, Western German political, economic and social institutions were transferred to the former German Democratic Republic (Eastern Germany) by a one-to-one imitation process. The institutional transfer from Western Germany to the Neue Bundesländer (new federal states) meant that Eastern Germans had to accept not only Western German laws, legal norms, organizations as a whole. Additionally, East Germany had to accept the acquis communautaire, the set of rules of the European Union. Considerable changes were achieved and Eastern Germans today enjoy a standard of living much higher than in all other transformation states in Central and Eastern Europe. But also problems of the coincident process of transformation and integration must be mentioned. As will be discussed in this paper lessons to be learned in Korea from the German case are a lot. --Institutional economics,transformation,economic integration,Germany,Korea

The Infrared Emission from the Narrow Line Region

We present models for the mid- and far- infrared emission from the Narrow Line Region (NLR) of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). Using the MAPPINGS III code we explore the effect of typical NLR parameters on the spectral characteristics of the IR emission. These include useful IR emission line ratio diagnostic diagrams for the determination of these parameters, as well as Star formation--AGN mixing diagnostics. We also examine emission line to continuum correlations which would assist in separating the IR emission arising from the NLR from that coming from the inner torus. We find for AGN like NGC 1068 and NGC 4151 that the NLR only contributes ~10% to the total IRAS 25 mum flux, and that other components such as a dusty torus are necessary to explain the total AGN IR emission.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in A&A. Paper with full resolution figures available at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~brent/publications/bgrovesnlrIRpaper.pd