Death Row Conditions Through an Environmental Justice Lens

Glenn Ford lived on death row at Louisiana State Penitentiary for twenty-nine years, three months and five days. Typically, he was confined in his cell for at least twenty-three hours of a given day, seven days a week. Glenn was convicted of the armed robbery and murder of Isadore Rozeman. After prosecutors Martin Stroud and Carey Schimpf used six of their eight peremptory challenges to exclude African-Americans from the jury venire, Glenn was sentenced to death in 1984 by an allwhite jury. He was a devoted friend to many and, to the extent possible given his incarceration, a committed father and grandfather. Glenn Ford was released in March 2014 after the state conceded that he was wrongly convicted of armed robbery and murder. During his decades on death row, he was involuntarily exposed to hazardous chemicals, sewage, toxic mold, excessive heat, rust, and lead

With comfort and dignity and support: An evaluation of the Hospice at Home service delivered by Milford Care Centre

Copyright @ 2011 University of LimerickMilford Care Centre is the lead organisation that provides a comprehensive range of services for the elderly and palliative care patients in the Mid West Region. In tandem with the growing requirement for specialist palliative care in the community, it expanded its existing and limited community-based services in 2006 to include a specialist ‘Hospice at Home’ service for patients who require palliative care in their own homes. With inputs from a multi-disciplinary clinical team, the Hospice at Home Service delivered by Milford Care Centre represents the first service of its kind within the Republic of Ireland. The Hospice at Home Service is supported by funding from the HSE and donations from the public, as well as a significant donation from The Atlantic Philanthropies. A condition of the funding from The Atlantic Philanthropies was that the Service would be evaluated, thus providing Milford Care Centre with research information regarding various of aspects of the service, including the viewpoints of carers and patients. In 2009, Milford Care Centre commissioned the University of Limerick to undertake an independent evaluation of the Hospice at Home Service, with the aim of examining whether it offered a viable and effective model for delivering a range of palliative care services to patients and their families in the community. The evaluation was conducted between February 2009 and June 2011. It should be noted that an evaluation of the cost effectiveness of the Service was also commissioned and will be undertaken by another group

Competitor-oriented Objectives: The Myth of Market Share

Competitor-oriented objectives, such as market-share targets, are promoted by academics and are commonly used by firms. A 1996 review of the evidence, summarized in this paper, indicated that competitor-oriented objectives reduce profitability. However, we found that this evidence has been ignored by managers. We then describe evidence from 12 new studies, one of which is introduced in this paper. This evidence supports the conclusion that competitor-oriented objectives are harmful, especially when managers receive information about market shares of competitors. Unfortunately, we expect that many firms will continue to use competitor-oriented objectives to the detriment of their profitability

A Comparative Study of Methods for Long-Range Market Forecasting

The following hypotheses about long-range market forecasting were examined: Hl Objective methods provide more accuracy than do subjective methods. H2 The relative advantage of objective over subjective methods increases as the amount of change in the environment increases. H3 Causal methods provide more accuracy than do naive methods. H4 The relative advantage of causal over naive methods increases as the amount of change in the environment increases. Support for these hypotheses was then obtained from the literature and from a study of a single market. The study used three different models to make ex ante forecasts of the U.S. air travel market from 1963 through 1968. These hypotheses imply that econometric methods are more accurate for long range market forecasting than are the major alternatives, expert judgment and extrapolation, and that the relative superiority of econometric methods increases as the time span of the forecast increases.long-range market forecasting, forecasting methods, forecasting

Using Multibeam Echosounders for Hydrographic Surveying in the Water Column: Estimating Wreck Least Depths

Wreck superstructure can extend into the water column and pose a danger to navigation if the least depth is not accurately portrayed to mariners. NOAA has several methods available to acquire a wreck least depth: lead line, wire drag, diver investigation, side scan shadow length, single beam bathymetry, and multibeam bathymetry. Previous studies have demonstrated that the bottom detection algorithm can fail to locate a wreck mast that is evident in the water column data. Modern multibeam sonars can record water column data in addition to bottom detections. NOAA’s current Hydrographic Specifications do not require water column collection; the best practice is to collect additional bathymetry data during wreck developments. Several multibeam bathymetry and multibeam water column datasets collected by NOAA vessels are evaluated and the wreck least depth results are compared to previous international field trials. A workflow to extract filtered and sidelobe suppressed water column point clouds is presented using currently available software packages. This paper explores the challenges encountered with water column data collection and processing and finds that analysis of water column data provides an improvement to finding wreck least depths, in some cases

A new model for procuring e-books

This paper draws on a recent ground-breaking tender for e-books for higher education libraries in the UK. The strategy for the tender was informed by standard procurement practice and by the experience of acquiring other e-resources, particularly journals under the so-called big deal. Both are examined as background to the discussion of e-books in general and the tender in particular

Demand Forecasting: Evidence-based Methods

We looked at evidence from comparative empirical studies to identify methods that can be useful for predicting demand in various situations and to warn against methods that should not be used. In general, use structured methods and avoid intuition, unstructured meetings, focus groups, and data mining. In situations where there are sufficient data, use quantitative methods including extrapolation, quantitative analogies, rule-based forecasting, and causal methods. Otherwise, use methods that structure judgement including surveys of intentions and expectations, judgmental bootstrapping, structured analogies, and simulated interaction. Managers' domain knowledge should be incorporated into statistical forecasts. Methods for combining forecasts, including Delphi and prediction markets, improve accuracy. We provide guidelines for the effective use of forecasts, including such procedures as scenarios. Few organizations use many of the methods described in this paper. Thus, there are opportunities to improve efficiency by adopting these forecasting practices.Accuracy, expertise, forecasting, judgement, marketing.