How Bebop Came to Be: The Early History of Modern Jazz

Bebop, despite its rather short lifespan, would become a key influence for every style that came after it. Bebop’s effects on improvisation, group structure, and harmony would be felt throughout jazz for decades to come, and the best known musicians of the bebop era are still regarded as some of the finest jazz musicians to ever take the stage. But the characteristics of bebop can easily be determined from the music itself. [excerpt

3/2 Firefighters are not enough

The firefighter problem is a monotone dynamic process in graphs that can be viewed as modeling the use of a limited supply of vaccinations to stop the spread of an epidemic. In more detail, a fire spreads through a graph, from burning vertices to their unprotected neighbors. In every round, a small amount of unburnt vertices can be protected by firefighters. How many firefighters per turn, on average, are needed to stop the fire from advancing? We prove tight lower and upper bounds on the amount of firefighters needed to control a fire in the Cartesian planar grid and in the strong planar grid, resolving two conjectures of Ng and Raff.Comment: 8 page

The Measurement of Output and Productivity in the Health Care Sector in Canada: An Overview

To achieve efficient allocation of resources in the health care sector, accurate measures of health care output and productivity are essential. According to official estimates of productivity produced by Statistics Canada, labour productivity in the business sector of the health care (excluding hospitals) and social assistance industry declined 0.28 per cent per year between 1994 and 2003. Estimates of productivity produced by the CSLS, based on official Statistics Canada employment and real GDP figures, show that labour productivity in the health care and social assistance industry declined by 0.69 per cent per year between 1987 and 2006. It is widely recognized that official output and productivity figures may seriously underestimate the true contribution of the health care sector to real output, and more importantly to the economic well-being of Canadians. Alternative approaches show that price indices for health care output may be overestimated and, therefore, quality improvements may not be accurately captured by estimates of real health care output. More resources are needed to further investigate the alternative approaches discussed in this report and develop better output measures that adjust for outcomes directly related to health care spending.Health sector, Productivity, Measurement, Canada, Outcomes.

Using A Story-Building Approach To Research Comprehensive Community Initiatives

This article is the story of the author\u27s experiences as a researcher-storyteller. She delineates the process used to build a story of the planning and development of a rural comprehensive community initiative. In a critically reflective look at this approach to community research, the author describes how she selected the research topic, defined the purposes of the research, selected the methods used in data collection and analysis, and approached the construction process of building the story through literary elements such as plot, scene, and voice. The strengths and pitfalls of this approach and suggestions for future research are discussed

The Pipeline: A Dangerous Education

From both a societal and institutional level, the school-to-prison pipeline continues to be an issue confronting historically marginalized youth. The harsh realities of discrimination and the lack of funding supporting equal education opportunities are directly connected to the perpetuation of stigmatization and overrepresentation in the criminal justice system. By evaluating the pipeline from both a structural and experiential level, it is possible to identify key target areas for future policy changes and theoretical evaluations. Looking at the current structures underpinned by social and legal systems, countless voices have argued that a shift must occur, and it must be sweeping in nature. If future generations of youth have any hope of escaping the subjugations currently embedded in the pipeline, greater attention must be given toward implementing rehabilitative justice instead of retributive measures and the ingrained trends of discrimination must be addressed

Death with Dignity for the Seemingly Undignified: Denial of Aid in Dying in Prison

The medical community has fundamentally changed how we think about life and death. Humans in privileged parts of the world are living longer and have access to life-saving treatment. The focus on quantity of life then has shifted to emphasizing quality of life and questioning whether longevity should at the expense of comfort or satisfaction. The conversation surrounding quality of life, and by extension end-of-life care, has included whether a competent adult has a right, or should have a right to end their own life on their own terms. The history of aid in dying is wrought with political ideology, notions of morality, and discussions of autonomy. In the wake of an aging population, aid in dying is more relevant now than ever. Aid in dying is often supported by notions of autonomy and dignity in choosing the conditions of if, when, and how to end one’s life, however, there is one noticeable segment of the population entirely left out: incarcerated individuals. The incarcerated population is particularly relevant to the aid in dying conversation because, as the justice system continues to balloon and incarcerate more people, prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, and ill-equipped to support terminally ill and aging inmates. This leaves the aging incarcerated population vulnerable. As states continue to contemplate and pass legislation that permits aid in dying in particular circumstances, one is left wondering how, if at all, this legislation will affect those incarcerated. Early signs, in the form of prison policies and regulations, of how prisons will approach aid in dying for qualifying inmates suggests that the same dignitary respect afforded to non-incarcerated folk is explicitly forbidden to inmates in prison. This Comment seeks to answer the question of who may choose to die on their own terms, in their own way. If we find that incarcerated individuals have a right to aid in dying, are there reasons or justifications for why we should not permit it