Administrative support staff in schools : ways forward

The aims of the research were to establish: • the impact of administrative support in school; • how teachers employ any time released by the presence of extra administrative support; • how the effective use of administrative support, including teacher time released, can best be used to support pupil attainment

Nation-State Attackers and their Effects on Computer Security

Nation-state intelligence agencies have long attempted to operate in secret, but recent revelations have drawn the attention of security researchers as well as the general public to their operations. The scale, aggressiveness, and untargeted nature of many of these now public operations were not only alarming, but also baffling as many were thought impossible or at best infeasible at scale. The security community has since made many efforts to protect end-users by identifying, analyzing, and mitigating these now known operations. While much-needed, the security community's response has largely been reactionary to the oracled existence of vulnerabilities and the disclosure of specific operations. Nation-State Attackers, however, are dynamic, forward-thinking, and surprisingly agile adversaries who do not rest on their laurels and are continually advancing their efforts to obtain information. Without the ability to conceptualize their actions, understand their perspective, or account for their presence, the security community's advances will become antiquated and unable to defend against the progress of Nation-State Attackers. In this work, we present and discuss a model of Nation-State Attackers that can be used to represent their attributes, behavior patterns, and world view. We use this representation of Nation-State Attackers to show that real-world threat models do not account for such highly privileged attackers, to identify and support technical explanations of known but ambiguous operations, and to identify and analyze vulnerabilities in current systems that are favorable to Nation-State Attackers.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143907/1/aaspring_1.pd

Does ASEAN need a Supranational Approach to Its Competition Law and Policy to Create a Highly Competitive AEC? Case Studies on Abuse of Dominance in Singapore and Thailand

ASEAN aimed to create a highly competitive, single market, production-based AEC in 2015 by applying strategic measures set out in the AEC Blueprint. However, after seven years of its adoption, the deadline has become merely the beginning of the AEC, not the finished line. Since November 2015, ASEAN has adopted the AEC Blueprint 2025 which aims to create a competitive, innovative, and dynamic AEC by 2025. One of the measures ASEAN uses is ensuring effective competition policy through greater harmonisation and convergence of national competition law. The key concept of this thesis is competitiveness. It applies Professor Michael E Porter’s concept of competitive advantage and gathers 15 years of data on the ASEAN Member States’ competitiveness. And it questions whether competition law and policy attribute to a nation’s competitiveness. If yes, to what extent. Then it questions whether it is necessary for ASEAN to take a supranational approach to become a competitive region because ASEAN has its own norm of cooperation, the ASEAN way, which is ingrained in ASEAN since its establishment. And it is now formally recognised in the ASEAN Charter. The results show that competition law and policy is not a sole key determinant of competitiveness. Having a low degree of market concentration, effective competition law and policy, and efficient goods market does not necessarily correlate to high competitiveness. A country’s competitiveness is affected by its stage of development too. Additionally, the political economy of a country has a certain degree of effect on efficiency in competition law enforcement. However, the determinant factor of efficient competition law enforcement lies on political will rather than type of the government administration as in the case of Taiwan and South Korea. The disparities in the economic development of AMSs are obvious. Therefore, trying to harmonise AMSs’ competition law and policy using an all-sector approach is not recommended and proved difficult, if not impossible. Moreover, a supranational approach is not compatible with the ASEAN way. Hence, a sectoral approach is more likely to help ASEAN achieve its goal. ASEAN has already begun its own sectoral approach to competitiveness in the aviation market. The Aviation Agreements which the AMSs have signed between them provide much more details and commitments on competition rules concerning this industry than in the Regional Guidelines 2010. The application of sectoral approach alongside with the comprehensive approach to competition law and policy to enhance competitiveness of the relevant market is practiced in many countries. Examples of how regulatory body in electricity in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea collaborate with their competition agencies provide evidence that it is possible and efficient. Therefore, ASEAN does not need a supranational approach to improve its competitiveness regarding competition law and policy. This thesis suggests that ASEAN should pursue a sectoral approach in dealing with competition issues among member state the ASEAN way

Capturing the big picture

This project report describes an internal scan of library staff involved in instruction in a large academic library system. 64 semi-structured interviews were conducted and qualitatively analysed in order to produce a summary of instruction across the library system, and both the challenges faced and supports desired by these instructors. The most often mentioned challenges included the wide variety of students and class characteristics encountered, limitations around time, and navigating faculty expectations. The supports described with greatest frequency were professional development opportunities to support instruction practice, a greater sense of community among those doing instruction, and increased awareness of instruction practices both across the library system and in the institution at large. These finding allowed the authors to form recommendations for the library system to help advance instruction in support of teaching and research in the institution

Monte Carlo studies in weakly interacting quantum systems

This thesis is composed of two parts. In part one we report results of two quantum Monte Carlo methods - variational Monte Carlo and diffusion Monte Carlo - on the potential energy curve of the helium dimer, the prototypical van der Waals system. In contrast to previous quantum Monte Carlo calculations on this system, we have employed trial wave functions of the Slater-Jastrow form and used the fixed node approximation for the fermion nodal surface. We find both methods to be in excellent agreement with the best theoretical results at short range. In addition, the diffusion Monte Carlo results give very good agreement across the whole potential energy curve, while the Slater-Jastrow wave function fails to bind the dimer at all. In part two we switch to investigations of many-body systems at finite temperature. We use the path integral representation of statistical mechanics to investigate the symmetry properties of the canonical ensemble partition function and find a representation in terms of irreducible representations of the symmetric group. We use this as a foundation to propose a novel technique for the stochastic sampling of the bosonic partition function for quantum gases. It is shown that in principle we are able to use two operators which enable us to construct a Markov chain through a graph of the irreducible representation of the symmetric group. As an illustration of this method, a test calculation of four particles in a harmonic trap is performed

Courting Faith: An empirical study of lawyers’ perceptions of the relationship between religion and judicial decision-making

The traditional view of judicial behaviour posits that only the evidence and the law form the basis of a judicial decision. However, research shows that judging is influenced by a variety of legal and non-legal factors, particularly in cases involving judicial discretion. Whilst there is a wealth of empirical research that explores the interplay between religion and judging in other jurisdictions, particularly in the US where judges’ faith has been found to affect judicial decisions in certain legal areas, much less scholarly attention has been paid to this relationship in the context of the British courts. This socio-legal study uses semi-structured interviews with barristers and an online questionnaire completed by solicitors, both predominantly practising in employment or family law, to explore whether the religious beliefs of judges are perceived by lawyers to influence individual judicial decision-making in the English courts and, if so, how. The study finds that judges’ faith is perceived to potentially influence the decisional process in cases which, directly or indirectly, involve religious issues. However, the effect of such influence is considered to be marginal, being generally confined to that which is unconsciously manifested and not determinative of case outcomes. Constraints on judging are thought to be central in ensuring that judicial decision-making remains within the limits of the law. Whilst lawyers are largely confident that the influence of religious beliefs is not a cause of concern in judicial decision-making in the English courts, the evolving religious and legal landscapes in Britain means that there is no room for complacency. Judicial training, both in relation to understanding religiously sensitive issues and the role played by unconscious biases, is vital to ensure that judgments are reached on the basis of sound legal reasoning and not on the basis of judges’ personal proclivities

Presence of antibodies against cyclic citrullinated peptides in patients with 'rhupus': a cross-sectional study

'Rhupus' is a rare condition sharing features of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). If rhupus is a distinctive entity, an overlap between RA and SLE or a subset of SLE is currently debated. This study was performed to explore the prevalence of antibodies against cyclic citrullinated peptides (anti-CCP antibodies) in rhupus. Patients meeting American College of Rheumatology criteria for RA, SLE, or both were included. Clinical and radiographic features were recorded and sera were searched for anti-CCP antibodies, rheumatoid factor, antinuclear antibodies, anti-extractable nuclear antigens, and antibodies against double-stranded DNA (anti-dsDNA antibodies). Seven patients for each group were included. Clinical and serological features for RA or SLE were similar between rhupus and RA patients, and between rhupus and SLE patients, respectively. Values for anti-CCP antibodies obtained were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in RA (6/7) and rhupus (4/7) than in SLE patients (0/7) and healthy subjects (0/7). Our data support the possibility that rhupus is an overlap between RA and SLE, because highly specific autoantibodies for RA (anti-CCP) and for SLE (anti-dsDNA and anti-Sm) are detected in coexistence