Advanced electro-optical imaging techniques

The papers presented at the symposium are given which deal with the present state of sensors, as may be applicable to the Large Space Telescope (LST) program. Several aspects of sensors are covered including a discussion of the properties of photocathodes and the operational imaging camera tubes

An intrinsic homotopy for intersecting algebraic varieties

Recently we developed a diagonal homotopy method to compute a numerical representation of all positive dimensional components in the intersection of two irreducible algebraic sets. In this paper, we rewrite this diagonal homotopy in intrinsic coordinates, which reduces the number of variables, typically in half. This has the potential to save a significant amount of computation, especially in the iterative solving portion of the homotopy path tracker. There numerical experiments all show a speedup of about a factor two

Participation, Representation, and Social Justice: Using Participatory Governance to Transform Representative Democracy

The direct incorporation of citizens into complex policymaking processes is the most significant innovation of the third wave of democratization in the developing world. Participatory governance (PG) institutions are part of a new institutional architecture that increases the connections among citizens and government officials. This article draws from a single case of participatory governance to explore how its particular mechanisms work to transform representative democracy. In the cases examine here, PG institutions are grafted onto representative democracy and existing state institutions. These are state-sanctioned venues that require the intense involvement of citizens and government officials, without which the programs would grind to a halt. These features can expand citizen participation, enrich political representation, and enhance social justice

Re-Engineering the Local State: Participation, Social Justice and Interlocking Institutions

The municipalization of basic social service delivery in Brazil provides significant incentives for local public officials to have a better understanding of their constituents’ needs and requirements both to govern and for political purposes. The broadening of participatory venues under the 1988 Constitution allowed for the establishment of a broad number of public venues that civil society leaders could use to represent their associations. Government officials and civil society leaders have constant contact with each other as each seek to promote polices that advance their narrow and broader concerns. This article focuses on the establishment of three governing principles of five successive governments in Belo Horizonte: Social justice, popular participation, and interlocking institutions. The government and its allies in civil society redesigned citizen access points into the state as means to clarifying the signals sent from citizens to government officials, to allow civil society organization (CSO) leaders to act as intermediaries between citizens and public officials and to allow government officials’ to tap into CSO leaders and citizens’ attitudes on a wide range of pressing political issues. These interlocking venues are a key moment of interest mediation, which partially accounts for how Belo Horizonte produces robust social policy change in a context of a highly fragmented party system. Participatory governance is now the key mechanism that allows for constant dialogue among citizens and government officials. This article is part of a larger research project seeking to understand how and why the local Brazilian state was restructured in the 1990s, how citizens are incorporated into state-sanctioned governance bodies, and importantly, how the new institutional environment has helped to transform state-society relations

Piracy and Religion: Navigating Their Connections during the Golden Age

The Golden Age of Piracy saw piracy and institutionalized religion attempt to create order within the vast new sea of challenges presented in the wake of the Reformation and the discovery of the New World. Piracy and religion both served as tools of the state used to assert policy and control over an ever-expanding world. At the same time each existed outside of the state and were yet directly linked to it. Like Kidd and his buried bible, these two concepts often seen as opposites, one moral and ordered the other chaotic and corrupt, became two sides of the same multinational phenomenon of rearranging world politics and control. The leading nations in Europe during this tumultuous and ever-changing era were all fighting for control of land, sea, and faith with little regard for how they accomplished this task, only that it be accomplished. England, Spain, and France as three of the leading nations in Europe were competing fiercely for control over what at the time was the world. The establishment of global trade routes gave new meaning to imperialism and European political disputes expanded to worldwide conflict that led to the capture of over two thousand ships on Atlantic trade routes alone during the Golden Age. The Reformation then added a religious dimension to these conflicts and offered moral justification for the actions of the nations involved. Piracy and religion offered two options for how to win at this new power politics game without ever directly getting involved and starting a war; Piracy did so with great force and violence, and religion by influencing ideals and asserting control over peoples’ moral code. Piracy at times took on religious undertones and became a sort of radical Reformation movement, while religion was able to use piracy as justification for the damnation of other faiths or states

Affirmative Action: Diverse Goals, Diverse Policies

Presented January 19, 1998 for Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Western Michigan University. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society, the Department of Philosophy and the Wesley Foundation

The Effect of Omega-3 Fatty Acids on Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury

Past research has been conducted on rats and mice to determine behavioral and physiological effects of omega-3 fatty acids on recovery from traumatic brain injury (TBI). These studies found that omega-3s can be helpful for recovery from TBI, however, the results did not carry over to human clinical trials. This paper aimed to compare and analyze the results of these studies through meta-analysis to help explain why omega-3 fatty acids were not as effective for human recovery from head injury. A systematic literature search was completed to obtain all studies that looked at this effect. Some of the articles acquired looked at the effect of DHA which is specific kind of omega-3 in the body. It was found that most studies did not provide enough statistical data to complete a meta-analysis; therefore, the results were analyzed and compared without statistical methods. For the rest of the paper, the results of various behavioral tests and histological tests were compared among the studies. Many of the studies showed that omega-3s had effects that were statistically significant, however, they had small sample sizes which could have exaggerated the effect size seen. This overestimation may explain why similar results were not shown in human studies. Future studies should include all statistical information found so other studies can complete meta-analyses. Future studies should also use larger sample sizes to improve the likelihood that an estimated effect size is similar to the real effect size. While the functions of omega-3s appear to be a good treatment for the complexities of traumatic brain injuries, it is still unclear if they will be effective enough to help recover from this debilitating injury