From the Shadow of Reagan: George Bush and the End of the Cold War.

George Bush entered the presidency constantly compared and contrasted with his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. Lacking Reagan\u27s eloquence and adept use of the media, Bush was lambasted by the press as Reagan\u27s lapdog and labeled a wimp. The press pushed Bush to establish themes to match policy goals and to use the bully pulpit to lead the national debate on issues. His refusal prompted journalists to characterize the Bush presidency as lacking an agenda. Reagan\u27s success with the media and Bush\u27s failure have produced a misconception about the successes and failures of each president\u27s policies. Thus, the period usually is referred to as the Reagan-Bush years, indicating that Bush\u27s term can best be explained as Reagan\u27s third term. This distinction is partly a result of the misconception that the Cold War was basically over by the end of the Reagan administration and that Bush merely signed agreements Reagan had already negotiated. This ignores the instability of the Soviet Union, as well as the potentially explosive situation in Central and Eastern Europe, that still existed when Reagan left office. This dissertation explores how differences between Ronald Reagan and George Bush affected the end of the Cold War, examining Bush\u27s use of the media, the restructuring of the National Security Council, the subsequent fundamental shift in foreign policy approach to the Soviet Union, and the use of personal diplomacy in the reunification of Germany and the breakup of the Soviet Union. Bush led a transition: a transition from the Cold War to a post-Cold War world. Bush\u27s diplomatic strengths proved as great as his media skills and domestic agenda were weak. Bush and his advisors managed the end of the Cold War, helping it end not with a bang, but a peaceful whimper. This dissertation is funded by a Peter and Edith O\u27Donnell Grant from the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation and is based on interviews with Bush administration officials such as Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Colin Powell, Marlin Fitzwater, and Jack Matlock, plus many recently declassified documents

A highly scalable Met Office NERC Cloud model

Large Eddy Simulation is a critical modelling tool for scien- tists investigating atmospheric flows, turbulence and cloud microphysics. Within the UK, the principal LES model used by the atmospheric research community is the Met Office Large Eddy Model (LEM). The LEM was originally devel- oped in the late 1980s using computational techniques and assumptions of the time, which means that the it does not scale beyond 512 cores. In this paper we present the Met Office NERC Cloud model, MONC, which is a re-write of the existing LEM. We discuss the software engineering and architectural decisions made in order to develop a flexible, extensible model which the community can easily customise for their own needs. The scalability of MONC is evaluated, along with numerous additional customisations made to fur- ther improve performance at large core counts. The result of this work is a model which delivers to the community signifi- cant new scientific modelling capability that takes advantage of the current and future generation HPC machine

Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices on Green Technology of a Higher Education Institution in Southern Mindanao, Philippines

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are considered catalysts in environmental sustainability efforts on a global scale. This study determines the knowledge, attitudes, and practices on green technology, particularly on waste minimization, reduction of energy and resource use, and reduction of the carbon footprint of respondents from an HEI in Southern Mindanao, Philippines. A survey was conducted among 141 respondents composed of administrators, faculty, staff, and students of the HEI. Mean, variance, Pearson r, Kruskal-Wallis, and Mann-Whitney tests were the statistical tools used in this study. There was an excellent overall level of knowledge as well as a positive attitude towards green technology. In terms of practices, respondents observed green technology about 50% of the time. There was a significant difference in the level of knowledge between students and staff and between faculty and staff. Likewise, the extent of the practice varied among the respondents. Furthermore, results showed a low relationship between the level of knowledge and extent of practice and also a low relationship between the level of attitude and extent of the practice. The HEI should embark on developing transformative strategies geared towards becoming a green university that embodies sustainable development goals and principles. Keywords: sustainable development · waste minimization · energy use · resources use · carbon footprint · greening universitie

Compositions and Method of Treatment for Sickle Cell Anemia

The invention provides a new composition and method for the treatment of sickle cell anemia. . . . To see the remainder of this abstract, please download this patent

Public or private religiosity: which Is protective for adolescent substance use and by what pathways?

While it is well understood that adolescent religiosity is associated with the use and abuse of licit and illicit substances, few studies have revealed the pathways through which religiosity buffers youth against involvement in such behavior. The aim of this study is to examine the complexity of the relationships between religiosity, sensation seeking, injunctive norms, and adolescent substance use. Using a national sample of adolescents (N = 18,614), negative binomial regression and path analysis were used to examine the various components of the relationship between religiosity and the use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. Results indicate that private religiosity moderates the relationship between key risk factors and substance use. Public and private religiosity were associated with tolerant injunctive substance use norms which, in turn, were associated with substance use. Implications for research and theory related to religiosity and adolescent substance use are discussed

Multigrid preconditioners for the mixed finite element dynamical core of the LFRic atmospheric model

Due to the wide separation of time scales in geophysical fluid dynamics, semi-implicit time integrators are commonly used in operational atmospheric forecast models. They guarantee the stable treatment of fast (acoustic and gravity) waves, while not suffering from severe restrictions on the timestep size. To propagate the state of the atmosphere forward in time, a non-linear equation for the prognostic variables has to be solved at every timestep. Since the nonlinearity is typically weak, this is done with a small number of Newton- or Picard- iterations, which in turn require the efficient solution of a large system on linear equations with O(106 − 109) unknowns. This linear solve is often the computationally most costly part of the model. In this paper an efficient linear solver for the LFRic next-generation model, currently developed by the Met Office, is described. The model uses an advanced mimetic finite element discretisation which makes the construction of efficient solvers challenging compared to models using standard finite-difference and finite-volume methods. The linear solver hinges on a bespoke multigrid preconditioner of the Schur-complement system for the pressure correction. By comparing to Krylov-subspace methods, the superior performance and robustness of the multigrid algorithm is demonstrated for standard test cases and realistic model setups. In production mode, the model will have to run in parallel on 100,000s of processing elements. As confirmed by numerical experiments, one particular advantage of the multigrid solver is its excellent parallel scalability due to avoiding expensive global reduction operations

Mixed-precision arithmetic in the ENDGame dynamical core of the Unified model, a numerical weather prediction and climate model code

The Met Office's weather and climate simulation code the Unified Model is used for both operational Numerical Weather Prediction and Climate modelling. The computational performance of the model running on parallel supercomputers is a key consideration. A Krylov sub-space solver is employed to solve the equations of the dynamical core of the model, known as ENDGame. These describe the evolution of the Earth's atmosphere. Typically, 64-bit precision is used throughout weather and climate applications. This work presents a mixed-precision implementation of the solver, the beneficial effect on run-time and the impact on solver convergence. The complex interplay of errors arising from accumulated round-off in floating-point arithmetic and other numerical effects is discussed. A careful analysis is required. The mixed-precision solver is now employed in the operational forecast to satisfy run-time constraints without compromising the accuracy of the solution