Waiting experience at train stations

In the railway sector there is a great deal of interest in objective time but hardly any in passengers’ subjective experience of time. The focus of this publication is thus not on (shortening) objective time but on how time itself is experienced and how this can be improved. \ud Aware that a journey must not only be quick but also pleasant, Netherlands Railways (NS) consequently sets itself the following objective: “To transport our passengers safely, on time and in comfort via appealing stations.” Particularly the wait is found to be unpleasant, with passengers regarding stations and especially platforms as sombre, boring and grey places, devoid of atmosphere and colour. By improving the waiting environment, we can kill two birds with one stone: passengers will find waiting more pleasant and the waiting time will appear to be shorter. The practical question in this research thus reads: “Which measures are effective to make the waiting time at stations more pleasant and/or to shorten the perception of waiting time?” The conclusion is that by adding the right environmental stimuli at the right moment, both the station and the wait are more positively evaluated, resulting in the score for the general appraisal of the platform increasing by half to one full point

The simplicial boundary of a CAT(0) cube complex

For a CAT(0) cube complex $\mathbf X$, we define a simplicial flag complex $\partial_\Delta\mathbf X$, called the \emph{simplicial boundary}, which is a natural setting for studying non-hyperbolic behavior of $\mathbf X$. We compare $\partial_\Delta\mathbf X$ to the Roller, visual, and Tits boundaries of $\mathbf X$ and give conditions under which the natural CAT(1) metric on $\partial_\Delta\mathbf X$ makes it (quasi)isometric to the Tits boundary. $\partial_\Delta\mathbf X$ allows us to interpolate between studying geodesic rays in $\mathbf X$ and the geometry of its \emph{contact graph} $\Gamma\mathbf X$, which is known to be quasi-isometric to a tree, and we characterize essential cube complexes for which the contact graph is bounded. Using related techniques, we study divergence of combinatorial geodesics in $\mathbf X$ using $\partial_\Delta\mathbf X$. Finally, we rephrase the rank-rigidity theorem of Caprace-Sageev in terms of group actions on $\Gamma\mathbf X$ and $\partial_\Delta\mathbf X$ and state characterizations of cubulated groups with linear divergence in terms of $\Gamma\mathbf X$ and $\partial_\Delta\mathbf X$.Comment: Lemma 3.18 was not stated correctly. This is fixed, and a minor adjustment to the beginning of the proof of Theorem 3.19 has been made as a result. Statements other than 3.18 do not need to change. I thank Abdul Zalloum for the correction. See also: arXiv:2004.01182 (this version differs from previous only by addition of the preceding link, at administrators' request

The Not-So-Secret Ballot: How Washington Fails to Provide a Secret Vote for Impaired Voters as Required by the Washington State Constitution

Secrecy in voting ensures that elections represent the true will of the people by permitting a voter to freely express his or her convictions without fear of even the most subtle form of influence, ridicule, intimidation, corruption, or coercion. Article VI, section 6 of the Washington State Constitution protects this secrecy by requiring the legislature to provide every voter with a method of voting that will secure absolute secrecy in preparing and casting his or her ballot. To that end, Washington election law requires that new technology be implemented by January 1, 2006 to provide visually impaired voters with a secret vote to the extent feasible. However, no similar provision exists for manually impaired voters. Manually impaired voters include a wide range of individuals who lack the manual dexterity to complete a paper ballot, such as amputees and individuals with cerebral palsy. Manually impaired voters must waive their constitutional right to vote in secret and instead must disclose their selections to a third party, usually in an open polling place where not only the person assisting the voter hears the selection, but so does everyone in the vicinity. Voting technology now exists and is approved for use in Washington that allows manually impaired voters to vote in secret. This Comment argues that in light of the plain language of the constitution, the framers\u27 intent in requiring absolute secrecy, and persuasive precedent from other jurisdictions, the Washington State Constitution requires that the legislature provide for secrecy in voting to the extent feasible. By failing to provide a secret vote for manually impaired voters to the extent feasible, the Washington legislature has not complied with the requirements of article VI, section 6

Compact G2 holonomy spaces from SU(3) structures

We construct novel classes of compact G2 spaces from lifting type IIA flux backgrounds with O6 planes. There exists an extension of IIA Calabi-Yau orientifolds for which some of the D6 branes (required to solve the RR tadpole) are dissolved in $F_2$ fluxes. The backreaction of these fluxes deforms the Calabi-Yau manifold into a specific class of SU(3)-structure manifolds. The lift to M-theory again defines compact G2 manifolds, which in case of toroidal orbifolds are a twisted generalisation of the Joyce construction. This observation also allows a clear identification of the moduli space of a warped compactification with fluxes. We provide a few explicit examples, of which some can be constructed from T-dualising known IIB orientifolds with fluxes. Finally we discuss supersymmetry breaking in this context and suggest that the purely geometric picture in M-theory could provide a simpler setting to address some of the consistency issues of moduli stabilisation and de Sitter uplifting.Comment: 32 pages; v2. minor changes and corrections, version accepted on JHE

Exploring School Counselors’ Narratives of CACREP Accredited Online Education Programs

Online education is a growing part of academia. The number of online school-counseling programs is also increasing and beginning to include face-to-face and online programs. Little research describes online education and even less discusses online school-counseling programs. The purpose of this study was to examine and interpret participants’ experiences of being trained and graduating from a CACREP online school-counseling master’s program, as well as how their training prepared them for their current role as a school counselor. A qualitative inquiry was conducted to understand online school-counseling programs and reported how six professional school counselors perceived their online program with a Council for Accreditation for Counseling and Related Educational Programs accreditation prepared them for their role in schools. Participants revealed information about their reasons for choosing an online program, interactions with peers and faculty, and how the program impacted their role as a current professional school counselor

Introduction: Edgy Romanticism

This introduction provides a rationalisation for a special issue of Romanticism on edges, boundaries, and borders. The Romantic period and Romantic studies have both been fascinated by the marginal, the exile, and the outsider. 'Edgy Romanticism', inspired by a conference held in April 2016 at Edge Hill University, looks again at these figures, but we are also interested in new work that is being done at the edges of the discipline, thinking about new methodologies and themes as constituting the borders and boundaries of Romanticism as such. So, our collection of articles begins and ends with new ways to conceptualise Romantic understandings of history, continuing with novel approaches to place, canonical Romantic poetry, and women's writing. The introduction concludes with a consideration of the effect the digital turn in the humanities will have on Romantic studies. © 2018 Edinburgh University Press