The Cuban economy is less vulnerable to a reversal of US rapprochement than many realise

Though Cuba has gained economically from improved relations with the US, it is far from dependent on their continuation. If the Trump administration adopts a hard line, it will hurt emerging entrepreneurs more than the state, while also reinforcing Cuban efforts to find new partners elsewhere, writes Emily Morris

Restorative practices in education: a case study

Literature shows that restorative justice practices, over time, are an effective practice for reducing negative student behaviors. This study will examine teacher and staff viewpoints on restorative practices and how they are being implemented on our campus. Additionally, this study will explore what impact restorative practices have on our campus, according to teachers and staff. My goal is to answer some of the questions that were unanswered through the literature. For instance, do the restorative justice consequences have a positive impact on student behavior? Do the staff feel that the current system, which uses restorative practices, is effective in dealing with negative student behaviors

Developing a Practical Consumable Reinforcer for the Experimental Analysis of Human Operant Behavior

Two projects tested the reinforcing efficacy of a reduction in effort associated with a computer-based laboratory task. In both projects, college students could earn points exchangeable for money by working on an Imposed task or, by executing a changeover response, they could earn the points on an Alternate task. Of interest was whether access to the Alternate task would reinforce the changeover response. In Project 1 the students tracked a moving target on the screen. In the Imposed task the target was programmed to move faster and change directions more frequently relative to the target in the Alternate task. Despite several manipulations of the task parameters, changeover responding failed to occur reliably. In Project 2 the students copied a string of words that appeared on the screen. In the Imposed task the characters of the words were garbled such that they appeared nonsensical to the student. The words in the Alternate task were written in English and followed a comprehensive storyline. During this project changeover responding was reliably maintained. Developing an effective yet practical method of reinforcing human operant behavior in laboratory experiments remains a challenge

Intuitive Patenting

Patentable subject matter determinations are ultimately based not on judicial doctrines, tests, statutes, or even on the economic rationales underlying the patent system; rather, the fundamental touchstone for what qualifies as patentable technology is simply intuition. Specifically, despite the Federal Circuit\u27s rejection of technological arts as a linguistically bright-line test, patentable subject matter decisions inevitably devolve into what is, at base, an intuitive sense of what constitutes technology of the type protectable under the patient system

Evidence for the presence of mesic herbaceous shrub tundra with isolated stands of trees in south central Beringia during glacial stages 2 - 16

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2018Palynological analysis of assemblages from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 323, Bering Sea Expedition, site U1343, located in deep water adjacent to the Bering Sea shelf edge, permit reconstruction of the terrestrial vegetation of the southern margin of central Beringia. Previous research done by Rachel Westbrook on marine isotope stages (MIS) 1-6 indicates that the southern coast of central Beringia was a glacial refugium for boreal forest vegetation. This study extends and augments Westbrook's research by analyzing additional samples from IODP site U1343 spanning the last 258 - 615.3 kya, during glacial stages 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16. Grass (Poaceae) and sedge (Cyperaceae) pollen dominate the assemblages with small but persistent amounts of boreal forest taxa, such as alder (Alnus), birch and dwarf birch (Betula and Betula nana), and spruce (Picea). A set of modern surface samples forming a transect from the southwestern margin of the Bering Sea shelf to Nome, AK were obtained and analyzed as potential modern analogs for the palynofloral assemblages from site U1343. Low percentages of boreal forest taxa in nearshore samples from this Bering Sea shelf transect reflect the vegetation of the coastal Seward Peninsula and the Yukon/Kuskoskim delta, regions dominated by herbaceous tundra with isolated stands of trees. Comparison of modern and fossil assemblages via canonical community ordination indicates that the IODP samples from site U1343 and modern samples from the Bering Sea shelf are most similar to surface samples from lakes and bogs surrounded by moist herbaceous/shrub tundra. These data suggest that boreal forest taxa persisted throughout MIS 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 on the southcentral Beringian coast, where the vegetation was primarily moist herbaceous/shrub tundra with intermittent stands of trees

What is Technology

Patent protection is limited to technology, but technology is so difficult to define that the Supreme Court has taken up the issue several times in the last several years. The Supreme Court\u27s recent decisions in Bilski, Prometheus, and Myriad have left patentable subject matter doctrine just as confused as ever, however. What is patentable technology? The answer turns out to have nothing to do with the various pragmatic rationales that courts commonly cite. Rather, the patent system has defined patentable technology according to much simpler criteria - artifice and action. Artifice is the quality of being created by humans, not by nature. Action is the quality of behaving or operating in some active way. Together, artifice plus action explain and, perhaps more importantly, unify the law on patentable subject matter. By focusing on artifice plus action as the primary criteria defining patentable technology, the patent system can provide clearer guidelines than it has been able to achieve thus far