A Cut Principle for Information Flow

We view a distributed system as a graph of active locations with unidirectional channels between them, through which they pass messages. In this context, the graph structure of a system constrains the propagation of information through it. Suppose a set of channels is a cut set between an information source and a potential sink. We prove that, if there is no disclosure from the source to the cut set, then there can be no disclosure to the sink. We introduce a new formalization of partial disclosure, called *blur operators*, and show that the same cut property is preserved for disclosure to within a blur operator. This cut-blur property also implies a compositional principle, which ensures limited disclosure for a class of systems that differ only beyond the cut.Comment: 31 page

A Large Fragment of Proboscidian Tusk Found near Glenwood, Iowa, and Notes of Similar Finds

In September, 1929, Mr. Howard Miller showed the writer a partly exposed tusk which he thought was a petrified log. It was dug out on October 7th, and found to be 6 feet long, 7¾ inches by 6 inches at the big end, and over 5 inches in diameter at the broken end. It lay in the bed of some tiny glacial or post-glacial stream. Most of it fell to fragments when moved. At a point 1½ miles west the author has found 7 proboscidian teeth and some other bones in the present stream bed

Synthesis of neopentyl derivatives of triphenyl carbinol and the kinetics of Bamberger's reaction

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston UniversityThe following new compounds were prepared by adaptations of standard methods: p-neopentylphenyldiphenyl carbinol, di-p-neopentylphenylphenyl carbinol, tri-p-neopentylphenyl carbinol, m-neopentylphenyldiphenyl carbinol, and di-m-neopentylphenylphenylmethyl chloride. The preparation of tri-m-neopentylphenyl carbinol was attempted unsuccessfully. Other compounds prepared for the first time as intermediates in these preparations are o- and p-nitroneopentylbenzene, o- and p-aminoneopentylbenzene, o-acetaminoneopentylbenzene, m-bromoneopentylbenzene, 3,5-di-bromoneopentylbenzene, 3-bromo-4-acetaminoneopentylbenzene, 3-bromo-4-aminoneopentylbenzene, p-bromoneopentylbenzene, p,p'-dineopentylbiphenyl, and ethyl-p-neopentylphenyldiphenylmethyl ether. [TRUNCATED

Tornado as it Passed Glenwood

All afternoon (June 2, 1925) there had been a hard southeast wind. During the day we had several small showers. From three o\u27clock till we quit at five, my brother Porter\u27s team begged by action to come home. Just after he unhitched the team he saw falling leaves and twigs. So he looked for a twister. A moment later he yelled There\u27s a cyclone! There\u27s two of them! Ah hoooraa (his call)

Full spectrum : Amnesty International and economic, social, and cultural rights

In 2001, Amnesty International, the world’s largest international human rights non-governmental organization, made the decision to change its narrow mandate into a much broader mission statement that called for the protection and promotion of both civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights. Although the organization had added to its original mandate core concerning the release of ‘prisoners of conscience’ before, the addition of economic, social, and cultural rights represented a major shift away from Amnesty International’s classic focus on civil and political rights. Amnesty International’s decision to promote all of the human rights listed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and become a ‘full spectrum’ human rights defender was a controversial one within the organization. The debate by the Amnesty membership over whether to accept an expanded form of mandate took place within the organization over a period of a decade before any changes were made. Concerns and fears over accepting economic, social and cultural rights into the mandate ranged from the practical to the theoretical. This thesis will look at the decision made by Amnesty International to begin actively promoting and defending economic, social and cultural rights. It will examine why a leading human rights organization decided to modify its focus considerably and what the challenges were in doing this. In exploring the issues of contention brought up during the debates by the organization’s membership, the larger questions surrounding international political acceptance of economic, social, and cultural rights will be examined

The Use of Videotape during Post-Flight Debriefing of Simulator Flights to Improve Student Learning and Reduce Instructional Time

The purpose of this study was to determine if videotaping students during simulator flights and using the results as a teaching tool would improve student learning and require less instructional time. Thirty subjects were randomly selected from students enrolled in an instrument rating flight course at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. A Frasca 141 simulator and a Panasonic video camera were used as the data gathering instruments. The treatment group reviewed the instructional lessons on videotape during their post-flight debriefing. At the end of the experiment, both groups received a posttest. The results of the posttest and the amount of instructional hours given was used to evaluate the experiment. The treatment group required less instruction, scored higher on the posttest, and accomplished the learning in less time

Ethical considerations in using student data in an era of ‘big data’

Learning with technology enables the collection of data on students at a level unprecedented in face-to-face tuition and paper-based academic administration. Universities see the advantage in tracking students’ engagement and progress, particularly when it comes to putting interventions in place for at-risk students. Our use of these data should be legal, ethical and seen as fair use by students. At no time should it cross the boundaries into the realm of ‘creepy’, a word used by Gartner analyst Frank Buytendijk in several of his presentations at the Gartner ITExpo in Cape Town in September 2014.Universities South Afric

A Hybrid Analysis for Security Protocols with State

Cryptographic protocols rely on message-passing to coordinate activity among principals. Each principal maintains local state in individual local sessions only as needed to complete that session. However, in some protocols a principal also uses state to coordinate its different local sessions. Sometimes the non-local, mutable state is used as a means, for example with smart cards or Trusted Platform Modules. Sometimes it is the purpose of running the protocol, for example in commercial transactions. Many richly developed tools and techniques, based on well-understood foundations, are available for design and analysis of pure message-passing protocols. But the presence of cross-session state poses difficulties for these techniques. In this paper we provide a framework for modeling stateful protocols. We define a hybrid analysis method. It leverages theorem-proving---in this instance, the PVS prover---for reasoning about computations over state. It combines that with an "enrich-by-need" approach---embodied by CPSA---that focuses on the message-passing part. As a case study we give a full analysis of the Envelope Protocol, due to Mark Ryan