What Makes A Court Problem-Solving: Universal Performance Indicators for Problem-Solving Justice

This report identifies a set of universal performance indicators for specialized "problem-solving courts" and related experiments in problem-solving justice. Traditional performance indicators related to caseload and processing efficiency can assist court managers in monitoring case flow, assigning cases to judges, and adhering to budgetary and statutory due process guidelines. Yet, these indicators are ultimately limited in scope. Faced with the recent explosion of problem solving courts and other experiments seeking to address the underlying problems of litigants, victims, and communities, there is an urgent need to complement traditional court performance indicators with ones of a problem-solving nature. With funding from the State Justice Institute (SJI), the Center for Court Innovation conducted an investigation designed to achieve three purposes. The first was to establish a set of universal performance indicators against which to judge the effectiveness of specialized problem-solving courts, of which there are currently more than 3,000 nationwide. The second purpose was to develop performance indicators specific to each of the four major problem-solving court models: drug, mental health, domestic violence, and community courts. The third purpose was to assist traditional court managers by establishing a more limited set of indicators, designed to capture problem-solving activity throughout the courthouse, not only within a specialized court context

Specifying and Executing Optimizations for Parallel Programs

Compiler optimizations, usually expressed as rewrites on program graphs, are a core part of all modern compilers. However, even production compilers have bugs, and these bugs are difficult to detect and resolve. The problem only becomes more complex when compiling parallel programs; from the choice of graph representation to the possibility of race conditions, optimization designers have a range of factors to consider that do not appear when dealing with single-threaded programs. In this paper we present PTRANS, a domain-specific language for formal specification of compiler transformations, and describe its executable semantics. The fundamental approach of PTRANS is to describe program transformations as rewrites on control flow graphs with temporal logic side conditions. The syntax of PTRANS allows cleaner, more comprehensible specification of program optimizations; its executable semantics allows these specifications to act as prototypes for the optimizations themselves, so that candidate optimizations can be tested and refined before going on to include them in a compiler. We demonstrate the use of PTRANS to state, test, and refine the specification of a redundant store elimination optimization on parallel programs.Comment: In Proceedings GRAPHITE 2014, arXiv:1407.767

Wiener Komödie und Londoner Theater: Dokumentation und Skurrilität eines marginalen Kulturtransfers im 18. Jahrhundert

Während sich zahlreiche literaturwissenschaftliche Studien mit dem Einfluss und der Rezeption der englischen Literatur im deutschen Sprachraum um 1800 beschäftigen, haben gegenläufige Entwicklungen bisher kaum das Interesse der Fachöffentlichkeit erwecken können. Die Abwesenheit der österreichischen Literatur des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts innerhalb des deutschsprachigen Literaturkanons hat dazu beigetragen, dass eingehende Analysen zu ihren Autoren die Ausnahme darstellen, und somit auch fremdsprachige Übersetzungen und Bearbeitungen unbeachtet geblieben sind. Wenn ich in der Folge die erste englische Adaption eines österreichischen Sprechtheatertextes für ein Londoner Theater als Exempel für einen österreichisch-englischen Kulturtransfer heranziehe, der in Wahrheit eigentlich nur sehr begrenzt stattgefunden hat, sollen in erster Linie die Schwierigkeiten eines solchen Unterfangens skizziert werden. So muss es durchaus als Kuriosum angesehen werden, wenn sich die anfängliche Rezeption deutscher Dramentexte im englischsprachigen Raum aufgrund der mangelnden Sprachkenntnis vorerst über den Umweg von französischen Kommentaren, Kritiken und Übersetzungen ereignete. Während Französisch als die Zweitsprache des ‚English man of letters‘ fungierte, entwickelten sich in England erst ab 1790 deutschsprachige Lesezirkel, die vor allem aus Interesse am deutschen Drama ins Leben gerufen wurden (vgl. Charles 1957, 2). Es wird nicht zuletzt zu zeigen sein, wie sich gerade durch die Verwirrungen, die eine derartige Rezeption evozieren kann, die Probleme literatur-und theaterhistorischer Forschung am Rande des heutigen Literaturkanons offenbaren

Bringing Iris into the Verified Software Toolchain

The Verified Software Toolchain (VST) is a system for proving correctness of C programs using separation logic. By connecting to the verified compiler CompCert, it produces the strongest possible guarantees of correctness for real C code that we can compile and run. VST included concurrency from its inception, in the form of reasoning about lock invariants, but concurrent separation logic (CSL) has advanced by leaps and bounds since then. In this paper, we describe efforts to integrate advancements from Iris, a state-of-the-art mechanized CSL, into VST. Some features of Iris (ghost state and invariants) are re-implemented in VST from the ground up; others (Iris Proof Mode) are imported from the Iris development; still others (proof rules for atomic operations) are axiomatized, with the hope that they will be made foundational in future versions. The result is a system that can prove correctness of sophisticated concurrent programs implemented in C, with fine-grained locking and non-blocking atomic operations, that yields varying soundness guarantees depending on the features used.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure

Josephinische Italienblicke. Zu Cornelius von Ayrenhoffs 'Briefe über Italien'

A conference paper given while the author was a fellow of the IGRS. A revised and expanded version of this paper was published in Studia Austriaca 18 (2010), 37-50

Recent Advances in HTLV Research 2015

The human T-cell leukemia virus types 1 and 2 (HTLV-1 and HTLV-2) were both discovered over three decades ago and infect millions people worldwide. HTLV-1 is associated with the adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) in about 2% of individuals infected, and another 2 to 3% of individuals develop a neurologic disorder called HTLV-associated myelopathy (HAM). HTLV-2 causes HAM in approximately 1 to 2% of infected individuals, but does not cause ATLL. HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 have served as excellent models for the study of the epidemiology and pathogenesis of virus-associated cancers as well as autoimmune conditions such as multiple sclerosis. Recently, two new members—HTLV-3 and HTLV-4—have been discovered in bushmeat hunters from central Africa, which emphasizes the urgent need for continual surveillance for new human retroviruses and their capacity to cause disease. Important public health issues remain open issues to be addressed in spite of the basic epidemiology of HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 being reasonably well defined. Clinical research is needed in developing potential HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 vaccines, as well as development of treatment options for ATLL and HAM. This ‘Recent Advances Issue’ contains both reviews and updates on research that encompasses these areas

Aging, human immunodeficiency virus, and bone health

Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has had a profound impact on improving the long-term prognosis for individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HAART has been available for close to two decades, and now a significant number of patients with access to HAART are over the age of 50 years. Many clinical studies have indicated that HIV infection, as well as components of HAART, can increase the risk in these individuals to a variety of noninfectious complications, including a risk to bone health. There is a significant need for detailed mechanistic analysis of the aging, HIV-infected population regarding the risk of HIV infection and therapy in order to maintain bone health. Insights from basic mechanistic studies will help to shed light on the role of HIV infection and the components of HAART that impact bone health, and will help in identifying preventative countermeasures, particularly for individuals 50 years of age and older