“It’s made a huge difference” : recognition, rights and the personal significance of Civil Partnership

In this paper we map briefly some of the arguments around the meaning and significance of the introduction of Civil Partnership in England and Wales, and in this way show how contested these meanings are. We then turn to our empirical data to explore the extent to which these arguments and issues are part of the everyday decision making processes of same sex couples who have decided to register their partnerships or to undergo a commitment ceremony of some kind. In doing this, we were interested in how people make their own meanings (if they do) and whether they actually frame important decisions in their lives around the ideas that are part of the current political debates. We are interested in whether the public debates are featured in the accounts of our interviewees but our concern is also that these broader political debates appear to offer two alternatives to same sex couples. In one scenario same sex couples appear to be striking a blow for equality and are cultural heroes, in the other they appear as cultural dupes who are unintentionally falling into a government trap to de-radicalise their relationships and defuse the possibility of a queer alternative to heteronormativity. Our data give some insight into how same sex couples negotiate these alternatives and may, in fact, circumnavigate them

Over the Rim

Over the Rim is the first book about an important but little-known expedition sent by Brigham Young to explore southern Utah. Led by Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt, the party traveled from Salt Lake City south across the rim of the Great Basin to the Virgin River near future St. George. They brought back to Mormon leaders their first detailed portrait of the country to the south that the church planned to settle. By 1849, the new Mormon settlement at Great Salt Lake City was taking on an air of permanence as companies of Latter-day Saints continued to arrive. Brigham Young and other leaders needed to find homesites for the growing body of settlers and to learn more about the expansive region, extending as far south as the coast, they had selected for colonization. Pratt\u27s party of fifty set out in the winter of 1849-50. They followed the Spanish Trail and other existing paths but also found new routes. As they went, they noted possible town sites, agricultural and mineral potential, water supplies, and other resources, creating an often-followed blueprint for the Mormon push south. Their descriptions of the Utes and Paiutes, including leaders Walkara and Arapeen, are among the most valuable parts of the journals. The Indians welcomed the travelers but were suffering from disease, increasing white settlement and travel in their territories, and trade in Indian slaves. Such encounters helped shape future relations with the tribes. Made in the depth of winter, the arduous journey included many hardships and adventures but had a permanent impact on Utah history.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1101/thumbnail.jp

The Rise of Accelerated Seasoned Equity Underwritings

Seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) executed through accelerated underwritings have increased global market share recently, raising over $850 billion since 1998, and now account for over half (two-thirds) of the value of U.S. (European) SEOs. We examine 31,242 global SEOs, executed during 1991-2004, which raise over$2.9 trillion for firms and selling shareholders. Compared to fully marketed deals, accelerated offerings occur more rapidly, raise more money, and require fewer underwriters. Importantly, accelerated deals reduce total issuance cost by about 250 basis points. Accelerated deals sell equal fractions of primary and secondary shares, whereas in traditional SEOs primary shares dominate. Announcement period returns are comparable for traditional and accelerated offerings, while secondary and mixed offerings trigger more negative market responses than do primary offerings. We conclude that this rapid, worldwide shift towards accelerated underwriting creates a spot market for SEOs, and represents the long-predicted shift towards an auction model for seasoned equity sales.Equity Offerings, Underwriting, Investment Banking

Mining topological relations from the web

Topological relations between geographic regions are of interest in many applications. When the exact boundaries of regions are not available, such relations can be established by analysing natural language information from web documents. In particular we demonstrate how redundancy-based techniques can be used to acquire containment and adjacency relations, and how fuzzy spatial reasoning can be employed to maintain the consistency of the resulting knowledge base

Why do firms go public? evidence from the banking industry

The lack of data on private firms has made it difficult to empirically examine theories of why firms go public. However, both public and private banks must disclose financial information to regulators. We exploit this requirement to explore the going-public decision. Our results indicate that banks that convert to public ownership are more likely to become targets than control banks that remain private. Banks that go public are also more likely to become acquirers than control banks. IPO banks grow faster than control banks after going public, although there is some evidence that their performance deteriorates.Financial institutions

Teaching Middle School Children Affected by Homelessness: An Interpretive Phenomenological Investigation of Teachers’ Lived Experiences

The human experience occupies the central role in phenomenological research. In this interpretive phenomenological study, the researcher recruited and interviewed secondary school teachers from three public urban schools in the Pacific Northwest in order to have them describe their lived experiences that relate to instructing students affected by homelessness. The researcher used two semi-structured, conversational interviews with six participants who reflected on how their classroom experiences influenced their teaching, engagement strategies, emotional states, and student relationships. The conceptual framework for this study included: Homelessness in America, public school setting, impact of homelessness, and teacher perspective. In this study, the researcher identified gaps in pre-service teacher programs with regard to support the marginalized population of students affected by the homeless experience. The essence of the lived experience of the participants’ in this study is centered around a teachers’ drive to seek introspective reflection and gain knowledge, along with building positive relationships with their students, which leads to increasing engagement strategies with all students, including those affected with homelessness. Based on discovering the essence of the lived experience of educators who work with homeless adolescents in a public school, the researcher has begun to fill in the missing gap of literature and potentially assist educators to be more effective in supporting this marginalized population of students

Mormonism\u27s Last Colonizer: The Life and Times of William H. Smart

By the early twentieth century, the era of organized Mormon colonization of the West from a base in Salt Lake City was all but over. One significant region of Utah had not been colonized because it remained in Native American hands--the Uinta Basin, site of a reservation for the Northern Utes. When the federal government decided to open the reservation to white settlement, William H. Smart--a nineteenth-century Mormon traditionalist living in the twentieth century, a polygamist in an era when it was banned, a fervently moral stake president who as a youth had struggled mightily with his own sense of sinfulness, and an entrepreneurial businessman with theocratic, communal instincts--set out to ensure that the Uinta Basin also would be part of the Mormon kingdom. Included with the biography is a searchable CD containing William H. Smart\u27s extensive journals, a monumental personal record of Mormondom and its transitional period from nineteenth-century cultural isolation into twentieth-century national integration.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1044/thumbnail.jp

A Strategy for Planting a Growing Seventh-day Adventist Church in Rivers West Conference, Nigeria

Problem Rivers-West Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Church, like most Seventh-day Adventist Conferences in Nigeria, is growing at 1% (GC Statistics 2020) while the population of Nigeria is growing at 2.5% (The World Bank Data, 2021). The local Adventist church membership growth is not matching the country\u27s population growth when compared to the obvious spontaneous growth of other Christian churches like the Redeem Christian Church of God (RCCG) which began thirty-eight years after the advent of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Nigeria; they have about twenty thousand (20,000) churches (History and Growth of RCCG, 2014) while the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Nigeria has two thousand seven hundred and ninety four (2,794) churches in 2021 (GC Annual Report 2021). A major contributing factor is the Conference\u27s lack of a strategy for planting churches. Method Under the author\u27s leadership, and the support of the Conference, a vision for church planting, as well as a strategy for accomplishing this vision, was developed. Volunteers, which composed the church-planting team were drawn from the Conference in 2019 for this mission endeavor. These volunteers were inspired and trained to become missionaries for this enterprise. At the conclusion of the project, 17 people from the church planting team were given questionnaires to evaluate the outcome of the church planting project and their spiritual growth and maturation over the course of the process. Result In the Rivers-West Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Church, a church was planted at Anyu in the Odul clan of Abua/Odual Local Government Area, Rivers State, Nigeria. Volunteers chosen from different parts of the Conference reported a greater awareness of the secrets for success in church planting. These success secrets include: (a) creating a mindset for pioneering mission among the members and within the conference, (b) longer-term planning, and training of volunteers, (c) creating a process for volunteers working in the church plant effort to grow and become mature disciples, and (d) recruiting participants who understand the language and the culture. Finally, the need to plant more churches and recruit volunteers for future church planting efforts was noted. Conclusions From the Conference\u27s perspective, the volunteer\u27s feedback, and the author\u27s experience and engagement with this church-planting project, it was demonstrated that a combination of vision, strategy, planning, training, and perseverance resulted in a significant impact upon Anyu, Nigeria. Further, some volunteers developed a stronger drive for future church planting. But, most compelling, was the demonstration of how essential revival is, and complete reliance on the Holy Spirit. Further, research on integrating a deeper discipleship model with the volunteers and those who formed the new church plant is recommended