Historical Intersections: Africa, Canada and Empire

The histories of Canada and of other places around the globe can intersect in ways that are as fascinating as they are unexpected. I have found this to be the case in my own research on colonial African legal appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in London and the impact of these cases on the colonial enterprise

Noise in homodyne detection

A simple but rigorous analysis of the important sources of noise in homodyne detection is presented. Output noise and signal-to-noise ratios are compared for direct detection, conventional (one-port) homodyning, and two-port homodyning, in which one monitors both output ports of a 50-50 beam splitter. It is shown that two-port homodyning is insensitive to local-oscillator quadrature-phase noise and hence provides (1) a means of detecting reduced quadrature-phase fluctuations (squeezing) that is perhaps more practical than one-port homodyning and (2) an output signal-to-noise ratio that can be a modest to significant improvement over that of one-port homodyning and direct detection

The Memory of Water by Allen Smutylo and Traveling the 38th Parallel: A Water Line Around the World by David Carle and Janet Carle

Review of The Memory of Water by Allen Smutylo and Traveling the 38th Parallel: A Water Line Around the World by David Carle and Janet Carle

Where is the "Frugal Olympics"?

The one-year countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and its media fanfare have come and gone, leaving behind persistent calls for an "economical and practical" Olympics to counteract perceived waste and excess in preparing for the Games. Increasingly, in the past few years, such sentiments have found their way onto the Internet, in blogs, discussion forums and local papers as a full accounting of the spending on various Olympic constructions and events has yet to be fully disclosed to the public.Similar to the open letter "OneWorld,One Dream and Universal Human Rights" from 40 Chinese academics, writers and human rights activists, these sentiments against an extravagant and wasteful Olympics provide another perspective often hidden from themedia glare aimed at festivities and publicity campaigns. This HRIC Issues Brief provides a sample of the range and diversity of these critical views on the Beijing Olympic Games expressed by Chinese Netizens on general blogs and Internet discussion and news forums

New Jersey 9-1-1 Consolidation Study: Site Visit Results and Implications for Consolidation

In 1999, the Center for Government Services at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey completed a study of New Jersey's E9-1-1 system. The study offered a snapshot of the extensive and decentralized network of communications centers that receive incoming calls requesting emergency assistance and that dispatch police, fire, and medical units. In 2005, the New Jersey Office of Management and Budget commissioned the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University to build on the findings of the 1999 study by exploring ways to improve the efficiency of New Jersey's E9-1-1 system while maximizing the use of available funding.This report is the result of site visits and interviews with officials from 12 PSAPs. The focus of this report is on the current landscape of local operations, funding, staffing, equipment, and technology. In addition, this report identifies issues associated with consolidation, including barriers and opportunities, and presents recommendations for promoting consolidation in New Jersey. It is the third of four deliverables to be produced by the Heldrich Center for the State of New Jersey's 9-1-1 Consolidation Study.Presently, there are over 200 Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) and more than 100 enhanced Public Safety Dispatch Points (PSDPs) operating in New Jersey. The central goal of this study is to determine whether a consolidation of PSAPs and PSDPs could reduce costs while maintaining and/or improving the level of service. In this report, consolidation is defined as the reduction in the number of locally managed PSAPs and PSDPs that provide emergency communications services

Egranary as a Digital Resource in Uganda: Preliminary Findings

In this paper, we address preliminary findings from a digital literacy study on the use the portable digital library, eGranary, currently being conducted in a rural Ugandan school. The eGranary system is an intranet that comprises a 750Gb harddrive with specialized browsing software, which can be attached to a PC or a local area network. It contains approximately 10 million educational documents, including Wikipedia, which can be searched like the internet (see www.egranary.org). Drawing on theories of new literacies and identities, the two research questions we are addressing in our current project are as follows: (i) how does eGranary function as a placed resource in Ugandan society? (ii) to what extent do identities shift as teachers learn from and contribute to global knowledge production? These research questions are centrally concerned with the innovative use of educational resources to promote social inclusion in poorly resourced regions of the world.\u

Service Activity Report/Participants Enrolled in the September 11th Fund's Employment Assistance Program

This report profiles the services received by the 11,393 individuals served through the September 11th Fund's Employment Assistance Program (EAP). The report defines and describes the types of services available to EAP participants, analyzes how the different groups of participants took advantage of the array of services, and shows the similarities and differences among service providers. The report also presents detailed statistical tables on the services received by participants