Women and Peace: Female Political Empowerment & the Prevention of Civil Violence

Today conflict mainly occurs within nations (as opposed to between nations), and the importance of women in creating and maintaining peace (which can be most simply defined as the absence of violence) through informal and formal leadership roles has also become known, offering much for the possibility of the reduction of violence within nations. Testing this relationship through a Poisson regression for the hypothesis that countries that have higher political empowerment for women will have less civil violence in their nations than countries with a lower level of political empowerment for women, this study is able to reject the null hypothesis (that no such relationship exists) by finding that the political empowerment of women has a statistically significant impact in the reduction of civil violence. In testing three additional intervening variables (democracy, GDP per capita, and primary education), it is determined that the political empowerment of women has the greatest impact on the reduction of civil violence, implying that, in the future, more effort should be placed on empowering women as a means for establishing peace

Fearless Friday: Piper O\u27Keefe

This Friday we celebrate the fearless leadership of Piper O’Keefe! Piper is a senior studying globalization and political science. Currently, Piper is the president of the College Democrats, a fellow with the Eisenhower Institute, and involved with the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega (APO). [excerpt

Origin of the n-type conductivity of InN: the role of positively charged dislocations

As-grown InN is known to exhibit high unintentional n-type conductivity. Hall measurements from a range of high-quality single-crystalline epitaxially grown InN films reveal a dramatic reduction in the electron density (from low 1019 to low 1017 cm–3) with increasing film thickness (from 50 to 12 000 nm). The combination of background donors from impurities and the extreme electron accumulation at InN surfaces is shown to be insufficient to reproduce the measured film thickness dependence of the free-electron density. When positively charged nitrogen vacancies (VN+) along dislocations are also included, agreement is obtained between the calculated and experimental thickness dependence of the free-electron concentration

Legal aspects of open disclosure II: Attitudes of health professionals - Findings from a national survey

Objective: To assess the attitudes of health care professionals engaged in open disclosure (OD) to the legal risks and protections that surround this activity. Design and participants: National cross-sectional survey of 51 experienced OD practitioners conducted in mid 2009. Main outcome measures: Perceived barriers to OD; awareness of and attitudes towards medicolegal protections; recommendations for reform. Results: The vast majority of participants rated fears about the medicolegal risks (45/51) and inadequate education and training in OD skills (43/51) as major or moderate barriers to OD. A majority (30/51) of participants viewed qualified privilege laws as having limited or no effect on health professionals' willingness to conduct OD, whereas opinion was divided about the effect of apology laws (state laws protecting expressions of regret from subsequent use in legal proceedings). In four states and territories (Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory), a majority of participants were unaware that their own jurisdiction had apology laws that applied to OD. The most frequent recommendations for legal reform to improve OD were strengthening existing protections (23), improving education and awareness of applicable laws (11), fundamental reform of the medical negligence system (8), and better alignment of the activities of certain legal actors (eg, coroners) with OD practice (6). Conclusions: Concerns about both the medicolegal implications of OD and the skills needed to conduct it effectively are prevalent among health professionals at the leading edge of the OD movement in Australia. The ability of current laws to protect against use of this information in legal proceedings is perceived as inadequate

Dynamic Geomorphology of the Drumlin Coast of Southeast Cape Breton Island

The southeastern coast of Cape Breton Island from Gabarus Bay to Framboise Cove has been investigated as a typical example of a drumlin coast. Landforms have been mapped from ground observations and air photographs. Time series of coastal profiles of both beaches and eroding drumlin cliffs have been measured. Nearshore sediment distribution has been mapped. An analysis has been made of wind and wave frequency and direction data. Four coastal segments are distinguished: (1) the south coast of Gabarus Bay has rock-cored drum-11ns separated by small barrier beaches; (2) the coast around Winging Point has a relatively stable depositional tombolo coast; (3) Fourchu Bay and Framboise Cove are developed in an area of thick till drumlins, and consist of barrier bars backed by lagoons and drumlins; and (4) the Fourchu Head and Red Cape are rocky coastlines from which all till has been removed by marine erosion, The geomorphologlcal evolution is a consequence of the initial drumlin landscape, the availability of a wide range of sediment sizes, and the type and intensity of marine erosion processes including the effects of transgression. Two types of coast are developed: a) in irregular hilly areas, where the till is thin and occurs in rock-cored drumlins; and b) in valley areas, where thick till drumlins are found. In each of these types, three stages of coastal development are distinguished. These represent the effect of differing rate of maturation, dependent on the configuration of drumlins and varying type and intensity of marine erosion. RÉSUMÉ Depuis la baie de Gabarua jusqu'à l'anse Framboise, la côte sud-est de l'ile du Cap-Breton a été étudiée en tant qu'exemple type d'une côte à drumlins. Les formes de relief ont été cartographies à partlr d'observations sur le terrain et de photographies aériennes. On a mesure à différents intervalles de temps, des séries de proflis côtiers comprenant des plages ainsi que des falaises de drumlins soumises à l’érosion. La distribution des sédiments littoraux a été cartographiée. On distingue quatre environnements côtiers. Le littoral sud de la baie de Gabarus est caractérise par des drumlins à noyau rocheux separes par des plages barrières de faibles dimensions. La côte à tombolos qui entoure la pointe Winging est un environnement de déposition relativement plus stable. Dans les régions de la baie Fourchu et de l'anse Framboise, des drumlins constitues d'un till epais sont 2 l'origine d'une côte barrière appuyée par des langunes et des drumlins. Les côtes rocheuses du cap Fourchu et de Red Cape ont été denudfies de leur till par l’action érosive de la mer. L'évolution géomorphologique de la côte ressort du paysage à drumlins original, de la disponibilité d'une vaste gamme de sédiments, ainsi que du type et de l'intensité des processus d’érosion marine, y compris les effets de la transgression. On reconnect deux types de côtes: l'une caractérisée par un paysage semé de collines oul'on retrouve un till mince associé à des drumlins à noyau rocheux; l’autre, que l'on retrouve dans les vallées, se distingue par d'épais drumlins constitues de till. Chacun de ces types de côtes se développé en trois étapes correspondent à des régimes de maturation différents qui dépendent de la configuration des drumlins ainsi que de l’intenuité et du caractére particuller de l’érosion marine. [Traduit par le journal

An investigation of the effectiveness of interdiction regimes against terrorist attacks in an urban transport hub

This paper examines the effect of varying attack and interdiction strategies, both alone and in combination, in an urban transport hub. Particular attention is paid to the potential disruption to normal commuter services resulting from an intrusive stop and search regime. The work presented here represents a qualitative investigation in that many parameters relating to the details of the interdiction mechanisms are first-order approximations. However, the background against which the investigation is conducted has been constructed to be as realistic as possible. The simulation is performed using our generalised microsimulation framework Simulacron , along with a reper- toire of simulation modules. Changes and additions to these modules required for the present study are de- scribed. The station is modelled using 454 distinct locations, most of which are interconnected to form a directed graph to permit commuter movement. An average of some 8,300 commuters move through the station, outbound and inbound. Figure 1 is a frame from the baseline simulation of the station, generated by a custom post-processing tool and rendered by LightWave, showing commuters and trains. The train schedule is constructed from the real schedule for the 3 rd of June, 2013. It is from this that the commuter population is derived. Five attack strategies (including no attack) are matrixed against four interdiction strategies (including no pro- tection) to produce 20 scenarios. Some key results are presented, along with brief remarks on the remainder. An additional 30 variant scenarios were used to examine a stop and search interdiction strategy. For these scenarios, impact on commuters was inferred from the number of outbound commuters missing their intended train, how long commuters spent waiting in checkpoint queues, and the size of these queues, on average and at peak. Congestion at the search point was also used as an indication of the increased vulnerability resulting from stop and search. Our conclusions from this work are that overt, intrusive protection schemes appear to be more efficacious than passive or covert means. However, the former present their own problems in both disruption to commuter activities and the creation of new potential targets. In the case of stop and search, this takes the form of unacceptable commuter delays and congestion at the checkpoints. As a result of this, the overall interdiction regime must be adjusted to protect the new target. Doing so without introducing additional targets may prove challenging. It seems that the best likely outcome is to redirect the terrorist attack to a softer target

Core-level photoemission spectroscopy of nitrogen bonding in GaNxAs1–x alloys

The nitrogen bonding configurations in GaNxAs1–x alloys grown by molecular beam epitaxy with 0.07=0.03, the nitrogen is found to exist in a single bonding configuration – the Ga–N bond; no interstitial nitrogen complexes are present. The amount of nitrogen in the alloys is estimated from the XPS using the N 1s photoelectron and Ga LMM Auger lines and is found to be in agreement with the composition determined by x-ray diffraction