Old Home Week

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-me/1349/thumbnail.jp

United Nations Police Evolution, Present Capacity and Future Tasks

政治学 / Political Science and International RelationsUnited Nations policing in the context of peace operations evolved rapidly during the 1990s after three decades of serving as a minor adjunct to the principal, military, purposes of UN peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War, UN policing became a recognized component of operations, but lacked doctrine, administrative structure, quality assurance in recruitment or adequate training. Each is being addressed with some urgency at present, as UN police deployments head toward 15,000 officers. Although Headquarters police support capacity has grown, the United Nations still has proportionately far fewer people at Headquarters supporting deployed personnel than do developed states, such as Australia, that deploy international police contingents. The objectives of UN police operations meanwhile remain a matter of debate: to stabilize post-conflict public security while others rebuild local police capacity or to engage actively in capacity-building and associated institutional reform. UN police support programs need to partner with development institutions that can offer the budget support for local infrastructure, equipment, and salaries that UN peacekeeping budgets cannot fund. UN programs also may need to take more account of extensive “informal” justice and security institutions in many of the post-conflict states where they work.Prepared for the GRIPS State Building Workshop 2010: Organizing Police Forces in Post-Conflict Peace-Support Operations, January 27-28th, 201

A versatile protocol for Stille−Migita cross coupling reactions

The combination of catalytic amounts of [Pd(PPh3)4], copper thiophene-2-carboxylate (CuTC) and [Ph2PO2][NBu4] allowed a series of exigent Stille–Migita reactions to be performed with high yields; as the protocol is fluoride free, a variety of O-silyl and C-silyl groups remained intact

Small Big Data: Using multiple data-sets to explore unfolding social and economic change

Bold approaches to data collection and large-scale quantitative advances have long been a preoccupation for social science researchers. In this commentary we further debate over the use of large-scale survey data and official statistics with ‘Big Data’ methodologists, and emphasise the ability of these resources to incorporate the essential social and cultural heredity that is intrinsic to the human sciences. In doing so, we introduce a series of new data-sets that integrate approximately 30 years of survey data on victimisation, fear of crime and disorder and social attitudes with indicators of socio-economic conditions and policy outcomes in Britain. The data-sets that we outline below do not conform to typical conceptions of ‘Big Data’. But, we would contend, they are ‘big’ in terms of the volume, variety and complexity of data which has been collated (and to which additional data can be linked) and ‘big’ also in that they allow us to explore key questions pertaining to how social and economic policy change at the national level alters the attitudes and experiences of citizens. Importantly, they are also ‘small’ in the sense that the task of rendering the data usable, linking it and decoding it, required both manual processing and tacit knowledge of the context of the data and intentions of its creators

HAND-FOOT-UTERUS SYNDROME

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32999/1/0000383.pd

Moraine crest or slope: An analysis of the effects of boulder position on cosmogenic exposure age

Terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide dating of ice-marginal moraines can provide unique insights into Quaternary glacial history. However, pre- and post-depositional exposure histories of moraine boulders can introduce geologic uncertainty to numerical landform ages. To avoid geologic outliers, boulders are typically selected based on their depositional context and individual characteristics but while these criteria have good qualitative reasoning, many have not been tested quantitatively. Of these, boulder location is critical, as boulders located on moraine crests are prioritised, while those on moraine slopes are typically rejected. This study provides the first quantitative assessment of the relative utility of moraine crest and moraine slope sampling using new and published 10Be and 36Cl ages (n = 19) and Schmidt hammer sampling (SH; n = 635 moraine boulders, ∼19,050 SH R-values) in the northern and southern Pyrenees. These data show that for many of the studied moraines, the spatial distribution of “good” boulders is effectively random, with no consistent clustering on moraine crests, ice-proximal or -distal slopes. In turn, and in contrast to prior work, there is no clear penalty to either moraine crest or moraine slope sampling. Instead, we argue that landform stability exerts a greater influence on exposure age distributions than the characteristics of individual boulders. For the studied landforms, post-depositional stability is strongly influenced by sedimentology, with prolonged degradation of matrix-rich unconsolidated moraines while boulder-rich, matrix-poor moraines stabilised rapidly after deposition. While this pattern is unlikely to hold true in all settings, these data indicate that differences between landforms can be more significant than differences at the intra-landform scale. As ad hoc assessment of landform stability is extremely challenging based on geomorphological evidence alone, preliminary SH sampling, as utilised here, is a useful method to assess the temporal distribution of boulder exposure ages and to prioritise individual boulders for subsequent analysis

A unique, large-sized stem Odonata (Insecta) found in the early Pennsylvanian of New Brunswick (Canada)

A stem relative of dragon- and damselflies, Brunellopteron norradi Béthoux, Deregnaucourt and Norrad gen. et sp. nov., is documented based on a specimen found at Robertson Point (Grand Lake, New Brunswick, Canada; Sunbury Creek Formation; early Moscovian, Pennsylvanian) and preserving the basal half of a hindwing. A comparative analysis of the evolution of wing venation in early odonates demonstrates that it belongs to a still poorly documented subset of species. Specifically, it displays a MP + CuA fusion, a CuA + CuP fusion, and a CuP + AA fusion, but it lacks the “extended” MP + Cu / CuA fusion and the “extended” (CuP / CuA + CuP) + AA fusion, the occurrence of which is typical of most Odonata, including Meganeura-like species. The occurrence of intercalary veins suggests that its closest relative might be Gallotypus oudardi Nel, Garrouste and Roques, 2008, from the Moscovian of northern France.</p

Ideological Labels in America

This paper extends Ellis and Stimson’s (Ideology in America. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2012) study of the operational-symbolic paradox using issue-level measures of ideological incongruence based on respondent positions and symbolic labels for these positions across 14 issues. Like Ellis and Stimson, we find that substantial numbers—over 30 %—of Americans experience conflicted conservatism. Our issue-level data reveal, furthermore, that conflicted conservatism is most common on the issues of education and welfare spending. In addition, we also find that 20 % of Americans exhibit conflicted liberalism. We then replicate Ellis and Stimson’s finding that conflicted conservatism is associated with low sophistication and religiosity, but also find that it is associated with being socialized in a post-1960s generation and using Fox News as a main news source. Finally, we show the important role played by identities, with both conflicted conservatism and conflicted liberalism linked with partisan and ideological identities, and conflicted liberalism additionally associated with ethnic identities