Peacekeeping Without the UN: The Multinational Force in Lebanon and International Law

The concept of peacekeeping entails a fundamental contradiction, since its success depends upon the deployment of soldiers to deter armed conflict. Some notable peacekeeping efforts since World War II have sought to overcome this contradiction by stressing their impartial character, and by adopting procedures designed to guarantee the neutral behavior of their forces. Most such peacekeeping missions have been established and conducted under UN auspices, on the assumption that an international body could best approximate the neutral, detached perspective ideally suited to successful peacekeeping. Indeed, UN-sponsored missions have reinforced this assumption by adopting a legal and technical framework which enhanced their reputation as neutral intervenors. While the appearance of neutrality has not always averted controversy in peacekeeping efforts, it has generally increased their chances of success

The clinical and academic correlates of a perceptual training programme for Grade 1 children

A training programme aimed at the motor, perceptual, conceptual and social "bases of learning was devised, in order to determine whether administration of such a programme could enhance these areas of functioning in Grade I children. Two groups of children were chosen: low socio-economic children and high socio-economic children. The experimental and control groups comprised two subgroups each: a high socio-economic sub-group and a low socio-economic sub-group. The same battery of tests assessing the motor, perceptual, conceptual and social functioning of all the children was administered before and after the training programme, which was run for the experimental group only. The comparison of before-after scores was achieved by means of analysis of variance and analysis of covariance. The results indicated that such a training programme could be successfully administered by the Grade I teacher. The results indicated further that all children subjected to the training programme improved in the areas of tactile discrimination, auditory discrimination, visualmotor co-ordination, visual discrimination, language ; development and verbal fluency and conceptual development. When children of high socio-economic status Were compared with those of low socio-economic status differences in the quality and quantity of improvement emerged. On school entry, the latter lagged behind the former in the abovementioned areas, as well as in maturity level and reading readiness. Those of low socio-economic standing showed most sensitivity to training in the tactile discrimination, visual-motor, language development and verbal fluency, social maturity and reading readiness areas. Although these children showed increased rates of improvement in these areas when compared with their high socio-economic counterparts, a ten-week programme was insufficient to bridge the gap between the groups. In view of this finding, it was suggested that the socio-economi variable be more closely heeded in future diagnosis of learning disability

Planner's Digest: Increasing Interest in 'Smart Growth' Could Change N.C.'s Role in Growth Management

The introduction this past spring of several growth management bills in the N.C. General Assembly, including two growth bills from lawmakers from Chapel Hill, suggests a dynamic change could be in store as far as the state's role in growth and development

Planner's Digest: Recovery Efforts in the Wake of Hurricane Floyd

The past hurricane season devastated much of Eastern North Carolina, killing 51 people, causing an estimated $53 1 million in crop losses, and damaging over 57.000 dwellings. Following Hurricanes Dennis, Floyd and Irene. 66 counties in North Carolina designated as disaster areas by the federal government face a long recovery process as many residents either rebuild or relocate to higher ground. Local, state and federal policy-makers face the challenge of directing recovery efforts in order to not only restore areas to pre-disaster conditions, but also make communities more disaster-resistant in the future

Library Toolkit : pathophysiology--dentistry

A case study describing the creation of a library toolkit for a pathophysiology course for Columbia dental students

When Lying Feels the Right Thing to Do.

Fraud is a pervasive and challenging problem that costs society large amounts of money. By no means all fraud is committed by 'professional criminals': much is done by ordinary people who indulge in small-scale opportunistic deception. In this paper, we set out to investigate when people behave dishonestly, for example by committing fraud, in an online context. We conducted three studies to investigate how the rejection of one's efforts, operationalized in different ways, affected the amount of cheating and information falsification. Study 1 demonstrated that people behave more dishonestly when rejected. Studies 2 and 3 were conducted in order to disentangle the confounding factors of the nature of the rejection and the financial rewards that are usually associated with dishonest behavior. It was demonstrated that rejection in general, rather than the nature of a rejection, caused people to behave more dishonestly. When a rejection was based on subjective grounds, dishonest behavior increased with approximately 10%, but this difference was not statistically significant. We subsequently measured whether dishonesty was driven by the financial loss associated with rejection, or emotional factors such as a desire for revenge. We found that rejected participants were just as dishonest when their cheating did not led to financial gain. However, they felt stronger emotions when there was no money involved. This seems to suggest that upon rejection, emotional involvement, especially a reduction in happiness, drives dishonest behavior more strongly than a rational cost-benefit analysis. These results indicate that rejection causes people to behave more dishonestly, specifically in online settings. Firms wishing to deter customers and employees from committing fraud may therefore benefit from transparency and clear policy guidelines, discouraging people to submit claims that are likely to be rejected

Deciphering the Multifactorial Nature of Acinetobacter baumannii Pathogenicity

Background: Acinetobacter baumannii is an emerging bacterial pathogen that causes a broad array of infections, particularly in hospitalized patients. Many studies have focused on the epidemiology and antibiotic resistance of A. baumannii, but little is currently known with respect to its virulence potential. Methodology/Principal Findings: The aim of this work was to analyze a number of virulence-related traits of four A. baumannii strains of different origin and clinical impact for which complete genome sequences were available, in order to tentatively identify novel determinants of A. baumannii pathogenicity. Clinical strains showed comparable virulence in the Galleria mellonella model of infection, irrespective of their status as outbreak or sporadic strains, whereas a non-human isolate was avirulent. A combined approach of genomic and phenotypic analyses led to the identification of several virulence factors, including exoproducts with hemolytic, phospholipase, protease and iron-chelating activities, as well as a number of multifactorial phenotypes, such as biofilm formation, surface motility and stress resistance, which were differentially expressed and could play a role in A. baumannii pathogenicity. Conclusion/Significance: This work provides evidence of the multifactorial nature of A. baumannii virulence. While A. baumannii clinical isolates could represent a selected population of strains adapted to infect the human host, subpopulations of highly genotypically and phenotypically diverse A. baumannii strains may exist outside the hospita