"Borders and Neighbourhood in Eastern and Central Europe. A Study of the Historic Development after World War II with the Case Study of the Oder-Neisse Region"

[From the Introduction]. Since the beginning of the European Union a number of scientists and politicians discuss about what the EU in the practice really means. Is it an international regime or either a federal state? In the opinion of some of them the EU is a network of states involving the pooling of sovereignty. The European Union was founded on a series of intergovernmental bargains, bargains which have more recently included the Single European Act (1986), the Maastricht Treaty (1991) and the Amsterdam Treaty (1997). More than any other kind of international organisation, the political process of the EU can be described by the term supranationality

Markovian Monte Carlo program EvolFMC v.2 for solving QCD evolution equations

We present the program EvolFMC v.2 that solves the evolution equations in QCD for the parton momentum distributions by means of the Monte Carlo technique based on the Markovian process. The program solves the DGLAP-type evolution as well as modified-DGLAP ones. In both cases the evolution can be performed in the LO or NLO approximation. The quarks are treated as massless. The overall technical precision of the code has been established at 0.05% precision level. This way, for the first time ever, we demonstrate that with the Monte Carlo method one can solve the evolution equations with precision comparable to the other numerical methods.Comment: 38 pages, 9 Postscript figure

The idea of freedom in Poland

'Polen musste im Laufe der Geschichte immer wieder um seine Freiheit kämpfen: zuerst nach den Teilungen und der nationalen Wiederbegründung 1918, dann während des Zweiten Weltkrieges und schließlich während der kommunistischen Herrschaft. Bei der Wiedererlangung seiner Unabhängigkeit 1918 wie 1989 standen die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika im Verständnis Polens Pate. Das führte zur Entstehung eines Mythos und zur Idealisierung der USA in Polen. Der Beitrag untersucht das Freiheitsverständnis in der polnischen Bevölkerung, vergleicht die amerikanischen und polnischen Werte miteinander und behandelt abschließend die Wahrnehmung der USA in Polen.' (Autorenreferat

College Student Adjustment: Examination Of Personal And Environmental Characteristics

This study used a multi-dimensional model of college adjustment to examine the relationships between multiple layers of personal influences and college adjustment (academic, social, personal/emotional, attachment to the institution, and overall adjustment) among emerging adults in a large urban university. The sample included 177 undergraduate students, ages 18-25, attending Wayne State University, who completed on-line questionnaires. Race and cumulative college GPA were related to academic adjustment. Being Arabic/Middle-Eastern was a consistent predictor of college adjustment. It was found that higher college GPA and being White was related to higher academic adjustment, while being Arabic/Middle-Eastern was related to lower academic adjustment. College GPA was the only personal/demographic variable predicting social adjustment. A positive relationship was found between the self-reported social class and the personal-emotional adjustment. Being Arabic/Middle-Eastern, first generation college student, or on-campus living, were related to a lower sense of attachment to the institution, while higher college GPA was related to higher levels of attachment. Higher GPA was related to higher overall adjustment, while being Arabic/Middle Eastern was associated with lower overall adjustment. The perceived classroom comfort was positively related to all aspects of college adjustment. The number of hours spent socializing with students outside of class was positively related to social adjustment, attachment to the institution, and the overall adjustment. Current family obligations were related to stronger attachment to the institution as well as the overall adjustment. Lastly, conflict between school and family responsibilities was related to lower college adjustment scores. It would be helpful for university officials to pay special attention to students of various ethnic/racial backgrounds and first generation college students when designing special programs for students at-risk. In addition, enhancing classroom experiences could improve students\u27 adjustment. Lastly, support should be provided to students who are struggling with managing the conflict between family and school responsibilities

Physics in the pharmaceutical curriculum

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University This item was digitized by the Internet Archive.The thesis consists, in the main, of a laboratory manual in pharmaceutical physics adaptei primarily to satisfy the requirements of pharmacy students. It includes thirty-two experiments dealing with the preneral topics of mechanics, heat, electricity, and optics, those divisions of the science of physics which constitute a major portion of the fundamental physical concepts which are basic to the various sciences which comprise the pharmaceutical curriculum. More specifically, the series of experiments deals with such topics as methods of measurement, specific gravity, surface tension, viscosity, solution and solubility curves, dialysis and osmosis, absorption and adsorption, thermometry, distillation, boiling point determination, melting point determination, the gas laws, electrolysis, micrometry, colorimetry, polarimetry, spectra, and phase-testing of emulsions, topics vhlch are pharmaceutically significant since they form the basis for the comprehensive understanding of the many processes and operations encountered in the study and practice of pharmacy. Emphasis has been placed on the correlation of the basic principles and fundamental laws with specific pharmaceutical applications of these concepts. To this end, a comment on the pharmaceutical application of the principle or law which an experiment is intended to illustrate has been included, in most instances, in the introduction to the experiment. A statement of the purpose of the experiment, a list of the apparatus and materials required for performing the experiment, a theoretical introduction, working directions including photographs and diagrams of the apparatus, and questions and exercises of a pharmaceutically significant character comprise the data which have been compiled for the experiments included in the laboratory manual

Instruments of Knowledge: Music and the Brain

There is little doubt that music plays an important role in cultures all over the world and is an interconnected piece of every society. More specifically, actively engaging in the music by playing a musical instrument, particularly at a young age, has been a hot topic in neuroscience in recent decades. Playing a musical instrument has been shown to increase cognitive ability through enhanced neuronal communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, resulting in positive effects on learning, memory, fine motor skills, verbal and non-verbal reasoning, resulting in an overall more capable brain to apply in a multitude of settings. The current research and results are discussed, ultimately showing the importance of engaging children in instrument lessons of any kind to enhance the network of neuronal connections developing in the brain

Review of performance, medical, and operational data on pilot aging issues

An extensive review of the literature and studies relating to performance, medical, operational, and legal data regarding pilot aging issues was performed in order to determine what evidence there is, if any, to support mandatory pilot retirement. Popular misconceptions about aging, including the failure to distinguish between the normal aging process and disease processes that occur more frequently in older individuals, continue to contribute to much of the misunderstanding and controversy that surround this issue. Results: Review of medical data related to the pilot aging issue indicate that recent improvement in medical diagnostics and treatment technology have made it possible to identify to a high degree individuals who are at risk for developing sudden incapacitating illness and for treating those with disqualifying medical conditions. Performance studies revealed that after controlling for the presence of disease states, older pilots are able to perform as well as younger pilots on many performance tasks. Review of accident data showed that older, healthy pilots do not have higher accident rates than younger pilots, and indeeed, evidence suggests that older pilots have an advantage in the cockpit due to higher experience levels. The Man-Machine-Mission-Environment interface of factors can be managed through structured, supervised, and enhanced operations, maintenance, flight reviews, and safety procedures in order to ensure safe and productive operations by reducing the margin of error and by increasing the margin of safety. Conclusions: There is no evidence indicating any specific age as an arbitrary cut-off point for pilots to perform their fight duties. A combination of regular medical screening, performance evaluation, enhanced operational maintenance, and safety procedures can most effectively ensure a safe pilot population than can a mandatory retirement policy based on arbitrary age restrictions

NASA/NSF Antarctic Science Working Group

A collection of viewgraphs on NASA's Life Sciences Biomedical Programs is presented. They show the structure of the Life Sciences Division; the tentative space exploration schedule from the present to 2018; the biomedical programs with their objectives, research elements, and methodological approaches; validation models; proposed Antarctic research as an analog for space exploration; and the Science Working Group's schedule of events

Fitting Log-Gaussian Cox Processes Using Generalized Additive Model Software

While log-Gaussian Cox process regression models are useful tools for modeling point patterns, they can be technically difficult to fit and require users to learn/adopt bespoke software. We show that, for suitably formatted data, we can actually fit these models using generalized additive model software, via a simple line of code, demonstrated on R by the popular mgcv package. We are able to do this because a common and computationally efficient way to fit a log-Gaussian Cox process model is to use a basis function expansion to approximate the Gaussian random field, as is provided by a generic bivariate smoother over geographic space. We further show that if basis functions are parameterized appropriately then we can estimate parameters in the spatial covariance function for the latent random field using a generalized additive model. We use simulation to show that this approach leads to model fits of comparable quality to state-of-the-art software, often more quickly. But we see the main advance from this work as lowering the technology barrier to spatial statistics for applied researchers, many of whom are already familiar with generalized additive model software