The FY2006 Economic Impact of Continuing Operations of the University of Connecticut Health Center (Fourth Report)

This report provides the financial detail to re-enforce the activities of the UConn Health Center as a significant surce of new state tax revenue, with a economically viable and vital fiscal basis. In addition to its fiscal engagement within Hartford county, the UConn Health Center contributes significant public health services, and is the source of new medical research.UConn, medical college, fiscal review, "quality of life"

Agroecological aspects of evaluating agricultural research and development:

In this paper we describe how biophysical data can be used, in conjunction with agroecological concepts and multimarket economic models, to systematically evaluate the effects of agricultural R&D in ways that inform research priority setting and resource allocation decisions. Agroecological zones can be devised to help estimate the varying, site-specific responses to new agricultural technologies and to evaluate the potential for research to spill over from one agroecological zone to another. The application of agroecological zonation procedures in an international agricultural research context is given special attention.Agricultural research., Technological innovations., Agricultural economics and policies.,

Efficient reconstruction of partitions

AbstractWe consider the problem of reconstructing a partition x of the integer n from the set of its t-subpartitions. These are the partitions of the integer n-t obtained by deleting a total of t from the parts of x in all possible ways. It was shown (in a forthcoming paper) that all partitions of n can be reconstructed from t-subpartitions if n is sufficiently large in relation to t. In this paper we deal with efficient reconstruction, in the following sense: if all partitions of n are t--reconstructible, what is the minimum number N=N-(n,t) such that every partition of n can be identified from any N+1 distinct subpartitions? We determine the function N-(n,t) and describe the corresponding algorithm for reconstruction. Superpartitions may be defined in a similar fashion and we determine also the maximum number N+(n,t) of t-superpartitions common to two distinct partitions of n

Intrusion detection and response for system and network attacks

This work focuses on Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Intrusion Response System (IRS) model for system and network attacks. For decades, IDS has evolved tremendously and has become highly sophisticated. However, the response to an attack is still manually triggered by an administrator who relies on static mapping to counteract the intrusion. The speed of attack-spread and its increased complexities in recent years have shown that it is highly critical to develop an automatic IRS. Moreover, manual responses are not flexible and effective in distributed environment without infrastructure. This work presents a cost based response model that is tightly coupled with multi-source IDS. It is a known fact that any system can be broken down into smaller granules of services and resources. A dependency graph is employed to describe the relations between services and resources in a system. This dependency graph is also used to propagate the total value of the system down to the service and resource levels. The damage cost of the intrusion and the response cost of the responses are evaluated using the dependency graph. Using several performance metrics, a response which brings the most benefit to the system is deployed. We demonstrate the abilities of our model by using buffer overflow attack caused by a computer worm on Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol on a wireless ad-hoc network environment. Experimental results show that our model is effective and is highly practical

Bovine Mastitis: The Differential Cell Content of Milk in Relation to Sub-Clinical Mastitis

Using a differential staining technique, total and differential cell counts were carried out on more than 5,000 milk samples. A bacteriological examination of the samples was also made. In 1,710 of the samples the stage of lactation of the cows was known. Pathological and bacteriological examinations were made on the udders of 13 of the heifers, from which milk samples had been examined at regular intervals. The following is a brief list of the main findings. 1. The majority of cells in both normal and abnormal milk fall into three groups: a. granular leucocytes, b. lymphocytes and c. epithelial cells. 2. In the diagnosis of mastitis the total and differential cell counts combined showed no marked advantage over the total cell count alone, except when the milk came from cows in late lactation. 3. A rise in cell count with a high proportion of granular leucocytes in the milk, was invariably associated with acute mastitis as shown by pathological examination of the quarter. Acute mastitis may however exist if the proportion of granular leucocytes is low. 4. The presence of 150,000 to 200,000 granular leucocytes per ml. in the milk was found to correlate with the fact that about 4 per cent, of the lobules of the mammary tissue were affected with acute mastitis. 5. The earliest lesion of mastitis in a lactating udder consists of an acute cellular exudate into the acini of a lactating lobule. As a rule an acute lesion causes the affected lobule to involute. 6. A lobule which has undergone post-inflammatory involution may be differentiated from one which has involuted normally by the cellularity of its intralobular tissue. 7. The occurrence of post-inflammatory involution indicates that acute lesions have existed in a quarter. Lesions in the ducts appear to be, as a rule, secondary to lesions in the lobules. 8. Of the 52 quarters of the 13 heifers examined post-mortem 25 were normal and 27 abnormal. Only 4 quarters found to be normal had cell counts of over 100,000 per ml. and in three of these the proportion of granular leucocytes was under 30 per cent. This shows that during normal involution these cells may escape into the milk up to a proportion of 30 per cent. of the cells present. 9. The micro-organisms found in the milk ante-mortem and in the tissues post-mortem of the 52 quarters examined were haemolytic staphylococci, non-haemolytic staphylococci, atypical streptococci, Streptococcus bovis and diphtheroids. Except for Streptococcus bovis there was little or no difference in the incidence of the various organisms in the normal and abnormal quarters. With the exception of haemolytic staphylococci, none of the typical mastitis organisms were obtained from the milk or the tissues. Evidence is presented to show that infection of the udder by way of the blood stream is probable

Relating to God: A Practical Theology of Christian Holiness

What does holiness mean to British Methodists in the twenty-first century? This thesis describes holiness from the perspective of a presbyter and over 100 participants from a Methodist church that journeyed together to discover what it means to be holy. Guided by Theological Action Research, the thesis outlines formal and normative theologies of holiness. ‘Relating to God’ is presented as a key hermeneutical phrase, showing that holiness begins with God, flows from God and flows through those who are responding to God’s love for the world. Yet when this theology was explored with participants diverse forms of welcome and resistance were encountered. These responses are presented and analysed in accounts of espoused and operant theologies. They showed that holiness is pursued in the complexity of real embodiment and everyday relationships. The author therefore argues that holiness is best understood when not generalised but rooted in a time, among a people and in their place. From a Christian perspective the whole of humanity is called to journey in holiness. This thesis contends that it is Methodism’s vocation to highlight this journey in the church and in the world, and concludes with practical suggestions for the Methodist Church of Great Britain

The significance of knowledge of social contexts to concept development in graphic design practice in New Zealand

This thesis investigates the question; what is the significance that a cross-section of New Zealand graphic designers placed on using knowledge of social contexts to inform their practice? It reveals whether graphic designers in the research, drew on knowledge of social contexts that arose from implicit knowledge, whether they relied on dedicated research to locate knowledge of social contexts and the extent to which that knowledge of social contexts was significant to their practice.The theoretical framework for the research was primarily based on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, social structure and practice, to find the degree to which knowledge of social contexts came out of either a conscious process of enhancing cultural capital in designers’ day-to-day practice, or from dispositions inculcated over designers’ lifetimes through habitus at various levels. Bourdieu’s sociological perspectives are particularly applicable to this research, because of the way in which he places great emphasis on cultural knowledge as the basis of cultural investigation.The ethnographic research modelled on Bourdieu’s methods, in which empirical studies are essential to theoretical research, used conversation analysis in which the reflexivity of the interviewer contributed strongly to the collection of data. The research method was based on a series of seven case studies conducted with New Zealand graphic designers of varying backgrounds and working situations, between 2002 and 2003. The research investigated how they had acquired knowledge of social contexts for practice and the importance that they placed on bringing this knowledge into their practice. The research group ranged from recent graduates to senior and accomplished graphic designers.Graphic designers showed the significance of knowing about social contexts, through the cultural capital that was important to their practice and to their positions in the graphic design field. This research has highlighted the difficulty that designers encountered, to varying degrees, in identifying how knowledge of social contexts came into their practice or even how they had acquired this knowledge.Knowledge of social contexts was shown to be derived from designers’ own social structures and the durable dispositions and practice relative to their background, from the habitus of the internal culture of a designer's firm, from within the wider field of graphic design practice and the changing dispositions arising from it and finally, from graphic designers’ external social worlds. This research suggests that contextual knowledge also needs to be brought into the teaching of graphic design, rather than being seen to arise implicitly in conceptualisation and studio practice

Agricultural research: a growing global divide?

"Sustained, well-targeted, and effectively used investments in R&D have reaped handsome rewards from improved agricultural productivity and cheaper, higher quality foods and fibers. As we begin a new millennium, the global patterns of investments in agricultural R&D are changing in ways that may have profound consequences for the structure of agriculture worldwide and the ability of poor people in poor counties to feed themselves. This report documents and discusses these changing investment patterns, highlighting developments in the public and private sectors. It revises and carries forward to 2000 data that were previously reported in the 2001 IFPRI Food Policy Report Slow Magic: Agricultural R&D a Century After Mendel. Some past trends are continuing or have come into sharper focus, while others are moving in new directions not apparent in the previous series. In addition, this report illustrates the use of spatial data to analyze spillover prospects among countries or agroecologies and the targeting of R&D to address specific production problems like drought-induced production risks." Authors' PrefaceResearch and development, Agricultural productivity, Investments, Agricultural research, Poverty, Public investment, Private sector, Spatial analysis (Statistics),

Quantifying the digital traces of Hurricane Sandy on Flickr

Society’s increasing interactions with technology are creating extensive “digital traces” of our collective human behavior. These new data sources are fuelling the rapid development of the new field of computational social science. To investigate user attention to the Hurricane Sandy disaster in 2012, we analyze data from Flickr, a popular website for sharing personal photographs. In this case study, we find that the number of photos taken and subsequently uploaded to Flickr with titles, descriptions or tags related to Hurricane Sandy bears a striking correlation to the atmospheric pressure in the US state New Jersey during this period. Appropriate leverage of such information could be useful to policy makers and others charged with emergency crisis management

REASSESSING PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN AFRICAN AGRICULTURE

This paper uses a new panel data set to examine sources of growth in African agriculture. While conventional inputs continue to be the main source of labor productivity growth in Africa, land and labor quality differentials are also significant in explaining observed cross-country productivity patterns.Productivity Analysis,