Denying the Dream: How the Proposed Changes to the US Naturalization Test Would Prevent Immigrants from Becoming Citizens

This report details how (as of September 2003) efforts by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (former Immigration and Naturalization Service) to redesign the citizenship test could threaten the aspirations of many immigrants, particularly Latinos and others with lower levels of education, to gain US citizenship

Influência dos cancros ginecológicos e de mama no ajustamento conjugal

Tese de mestrado integrado em Psicologia (Psicologia Clínica e da Saúde - Núcleo de Saúde e Doença), apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa através da Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação, 2008Nesta investigação pretende-se avaliar a influência dos cancros ginecológicos ou de mama no nível de ajustamento conjugal, através da percepção retrospectiva da mulher. A visão prospectiva da mulher acerca do ajustamento marital também é objectivo deste estudo. Desta amostra fizeram parte 17 mulheres com cancro ginecológico ou de mama. Estas encontravam-se em período de internamento depois da cirurgia. Foi aplicada às participantes uma tradução da Revisão da Escala de Ajustamento Diádico (Busby, Christensen, Crane & Larson, 1995) duas vezes, a primeira baseada na fase até o conhecimento do diagnóstico, e a segunda referente ao período desde o conhecimento do diagnóstico até ao pós-cirurgico. Por último, realizou-se uma entrevista semiestruturada, que visava explorar as diferenças nas respostas da Escala nos dois momentos, o apoio do companheiro na doença e a percepção futura do nível de ajustamento conjugal. Os resultados mostraram que existe um aumento no nível de ajustamento marital na fase posterior ao diagnóstico. Ainda que algumas participantes tenham afirmado a inexistência de alterações na vida conjugal depois do diagnóstico, outras manifestaram a implementação de mudanças positivas, como a aproximação do casal. Estas percepções levam a que o futuro do casal não seja uma preocupação para estas mulheres, que reconhecem a importância do apoio do marido neste processo. Apesar das dificuldades com que estes casais se deparam ao longo desta vivência, estas mulheres reconhecem a existência de aspectos positivos que decorrem da mesma.The aim of the present study is to assess the influence of gynaecologic and breast cancer on the marital adjustment level, through a woman’s retrospective perception. The woman’s prospective perception is an additional aim of this study. Data was collected on 17 women with gynaecologic and breast cancer. These women were hospitalised, after the surgery. The participants answered a Portuguese translation of the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS; Busby, Christensen, Crane, & Larson, 1995). This scale was applied twice, the first application was carried out in the period before diagnosis, and the second application took place during the phase since diagnosis knowledge up to the moment after surgery. Finally, a semi-structured interview was conducted to explore the different responses of these two moments assessed by the scale, as well as the husband’s support through the illness and the woman’s future perception of the adjustment marital level. The results indicate that there is an increase in the marital adjustment level in the post-diagnosis phase. Although some participants affirmed that there were no changes in conjugal life after diagnosis, others revealed positive changes like an increase in the couple’s closeness. These perceptions imply that these women are not concerned with the future status of their relationship and that they recognise their husband’s support through this process. In spite of the difficulties encountered by these couples living through the process of this disease, these women are able to recognise the positive outcomes that are derived from it

Open source environment to define constraints in route planning for GIS-T

Route planning for transportation systems is strongly related to shortest path algorithms, an optimization problem extensively studied in the literature. To find the shortest path in a network one usually assigns weights to each branch to represent the difficulty of taking such branch. The weights construct a linear preference function ordering the variety of alternatives from the most to the least attractive.Postprint (published version

The Libyan Spring and NATO: an opportune responsibility

Texto da comunicação apresentada a 6th Graz Workshop on the Future of Security, Graz, Áustria, 10-11 de junho de 2013In the context of popular demonstrations and political upheavals of the Arab Spring, this paper addresses the 2011 intervention in Libya as a case for deepening the understanding of individual-centred security policies. Drawing on a conceptual and normative approach of R2P and NATO, it seeks to denaturalize the idea that Operation Unified Protector is a success in organizational terms, in order to uncover the underlying implications of “efficiency” in running an intervention based on R2P. It argues that there is a dissonance between the normative evolution towards ethics and military deeds which blurs the significance of responsibility. This results in a twisted sense of cosmopolitanism which primarily affects the referent object of security that has been dominant in contemporary interventionism, i.e., the unsecured civilian

Équivalences et forme prénexe pour les formules booléennes quantifiées.

La plupart des procédures pour résoudre le problème de validité desformules booléennes quantifiées prennent en entrée seulement des formules sous forme normale conjonctive. Or, il est rarement naturel d’exprimer un problème directement sous cette forme. Dans ce travail, nous exhibons un motif possédant d’intéressantes propriétés, particulièrement lors de la mise sous forme prénexe. Les résultats expérimentaux montrent qu’utiliser nos équivalences logiques améliore le temps de résolution par les différentes procédures

Drones and the uninsurable security subjects

This paper engages with the security dynamics underlying the use of drones and their impact on security subjects – individuals and groups that are the ultimate recipients of specific security policies, regardless of whether these have beneficial effects on them. Using Mark Duffield’s distinction between the insured Global North and the non-insured Global South, this paper discusses how drones generate a radical dissociation between the intervener and the intervened that ultimately produces new security environments at the margins of the international system. These new security environments are defined by the articulation between space, technologies and bodies: bodies of invisible subjects; bodies that are uninsurable

Visibility and politics: an Arendtian reading of the US drone policy

This article analyses the critical connections between drones as lethal technological devices, visibility, and the very possibility of politics. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s core postulates on politics, modern security and society, it problematises the political implications of using drones as a prominent security instrument in contemporary life. This reading is unpacked through the concept of visibility as a critical reference to analyse how security policies are dealt with politically. It suggests that drones have operated as an instrument of double invisibility, both to those living in the contexts where they are employed, and to those under whose name they are being used. The consequences of this invisibility for political life and the practice of security are also discussed in the light of the policy under the Obama administration

A generalization of the S-function method applied to a Duffing-Van der Pol forced oscillator

In [1,2] we have developed a method (we call it the S-function method) that is successful in treating certain classes of rational second order ordinary differential equations (rational 2ODEs) that are particularly `resistant' to canonical Lie methods and to Darbouxian approaches. In this present paper, we generalize the S-function method making it capable of dealing with a class of elementary 2ODEs presenting elementary functions. Then, we apply this method to a Duffing-Van der Pol forced oscillator, obtaining an entire class of first integrals