Training Student Organizers Curriculum (Revised Edition)

This second edition of the Training Student Organizers Curriculum has been written to reflect the project organizing experiences of students, teachers and staff participating in the Council on the Environment of New York City\u27s Training Student Organizers Program (TSO) since the first edition of the curriculum was published in 1983. We have expanded the lessons/narratives in Part I to include more information on environmental issues and have also added lessons and/or narratives for specific environmental action projects. The how to\u27s of project organizing are described, step by step, in specific improvement projects in Part I, and reviewed as a total process in Part II. While this has led to some repetition, teachers, youth leaders, and student organizers can turn to any specific project and read the lessons and/or statements in that section without having to read Part II unless clearly designated in the specific lessons. We have also added three issue units to Part I: Noise --an addenda section in the original version; Transportation; and Nuclear Issues

"A Change is gonna come"

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der US-amerikanischen Bürgerrechtsbewegung, dem Musikgenre des Soul der 1960er Jahre und den Berührungspunkten zwischen den beiden Bereichen. Der erste Teil der Arbeit befasst sich mit den gesellschaftlichen und politischen Aspekten der Bürgerrechtsbewegung. Zunächst soll ein historischer Bogen über die Entwicklung des „civil rights movement“ und der schwarzen Popmusik im 20. Jahrhundert gespannt werden. Dabei werden die beiden Hauptprotagonisten der Bewegung – Martin Luther King und Malcolm X – im Speziellen vorgestellt. Das Konzept der sozialen Bewegungen bildet den theoretischen Unterbau der Arbeit. Der zweite – musikspezifische – Teil der Arbeit widmet sich Soul als Musikstil und seiner soziokulturellen Bedeutung. Anhand von „Message Songs“ soll der sozialkritische Charakter von Soul-Musik näher erläutert werden. Die These, dass Soul eine kritische und politische Musik war, soll anhand von Beispielen geklärt werden

Improving HEVC Encoding of Rendered Video Data Using True Motion Information

This paper shows that motion vectors representing the true motion of an object in a scene can be exploited to improve the encoding process of computer generated video sequences. Therefore, a set of sequences is presented for which the true motion vectors of the corresponding objects were generated on a per-pixel basis during the rendering process. In addition to conventional motion estimation methods, it is proposed to exploit the computer generated motion vectors to enhance the ratedistortion performance. To this end, a motion vector mapping method including disocclusion handling is presented. It is shown that mean rate savings of 3.78% can be achieved.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Gauge Independence of IR singularities in Non-Commutative QFT - and Interpolating Gauges

IR divergences of a non-commutative U(1) Maxwell theory are discussed at the one-loop level using an interpolating gauge to show that quadratic IR divergences are independent not only from a covariant gauge fixing but also independent from an axial gauge fixing.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, v1 minor correction

Transcriptional Silencing of Multiple Genes in Trophozoites of Entamoeba histolytica

In a previous work we described the transcriptional silencing of the amoebapore A (AP-A) gene (Ehap-a) of Entamoeba histolytica strain HM-1:IMSS. The silencing occurred following transfection with a plasmid containing a 5′ upstream region (473 bp) of Ehap-a that included a truncated segment (140 bp) of a short interspersed nuclear element (SINE1). Silencing remained in effect even after removal of the plasmid (clone G3). Neither short interfering RNA nor methylated DNA were detected, but the chromatin domain of Ehap-a in the gene-silenced trophozoites was modified. Two other similar genes (Ehap-b and one encoding a Saposin-like protein, SAPLIP 1) also became silenced. In the present work we demonstrate the silencing of a second gene of choice, one that encodes the light subunit of the Gal/GalNAc inhibitable lectin (Ehlgl1) and the other, the cysteine proteinase 5 (EhCP-5). This silencing occurred in G3 trophozoites transfected with a plasmid in which the 473 bp 5′ upstream Ehap-a fragment was directly ligated to the second gene. Transcriptional silencing occurred in both the transgene and the chromosomal gene. SINE1 sequences were essential, as was a direct connection between the Ehap-a upstream region and the beginning of the open reading frame of the second gene. Gene silencing did not occur in strain HM-1:IMSS with any of these plasmid constructs. The trophozoites with two silenced genes were virulence-attenuated as were those of clone G3. In addition, trophozoites not expressing Lgl1 and AP-A proteins had a significantly reduced ability to cap the Gal/GalNAc-lectin to the uroid region when incubated with antibodies against the heavy (170 kDa) subunit of the lectin. Lysates of trophozoites lacking cysteine proteinase 5 and AP-A proteins had 30% less cysteine proteinase activity than those of HM-1:IMSS strain or the G3 clone. Silencing of other genes in G3 amoebae could provide a model to study their various functions. In addition, double gene-silenced, virulence-attenuated trophozoites may be an important tool in vaccine development

A Systematic Evaluation of Transient Execution Attacks and Defenses

Research on transient execution attacks including Spectre and Meltdown showed that exception or branch misprediction events might leave secret-dependent traces in the CPU's microarchitectural state. This observation led to a proliferation of new Spectre and Meltdown attack variants and even more ad-hoc defenses (e.g., microcode and software patches). Both the industry and academia are now focusing on finding effective defenses for known issues. However, we only have limited insight on residual attack surface and the completeness of the proposed defenses. In this paper, we present a systematization of transient execution attacks. Our systematization uncovers 6 (new) transient execution attacks that have been overlooked and not been investigated so far: 2 new exploitable Meltdown effects: Meltdown-PK (Protection Key Bypass) on Intel, and Meltdown-BND (Bounds Check Bypass) on Intel and AMD; and 4 new Spectre mistraining strategies. We evaluate the attacks in our classification tree through proof-of-concept implementations on 3 major CPU vendors (Intel, AMD, ARM). Our systematization yields a more complete picture of the attack surface and allows for a more systematic evaluation of defenses. Through this systematic evaluation, we discover that most defenses, including deployed ones, cannot fully mitigate all attack variants

Downgrading Recent Estimates of Land Available for Biofuel Production

Recent estimates of additional land available for bioenergy production range from 320 to 1411 million ha. These estimates were generated from four scenarios regarding the types of land suitable for bioenergy production using coarse-resolution inputs of soil productivity, slope, climate, and land cover. In this paper, these maps of land availability were assessed using high-resolution satellite imagery. Samples from these maps were selected and crowdsourcing of Google Earth images was used to determine the type of land cover and the degree of human impact. Based on this sample, a set of rules was formulated to downward adjust the original estimates for each of the four scenarios that were previously used to generate the maps of land availability for bioenergy production. The adjusted land availability estimates range from 56 to 1035 million ha depending upon the scenario and the ruleset used when the sample is corrected for bias. Large forest areas not intended for biofuel production purposes were present in all scenarios. However, these numbers should not be considered as definitive estimates but should be used to highlight the uncertainty in attempting to quantify land availability for biofuel production when using coarse-resolution inputs with implications for further policy development