Linfield College: Study Abroad in Spain

This letter from returnee Patrick Miller explains the value of studying abroad in Spain

A black British male perspective of identities

Recently an email was circulated requesting papers for “the first scholarly investigation of the African Diaspora as an aspect of intra-European history” (Johann-Gutenberg-University, 10-13 November, 2005). The organizers’ stated goal was also to “advance the development of new theoretical and methodological tools to understand the African Diaspora within Europe.” The supporting literature provided a diagram that considers Black European identity in relation to a number of constitutive factors (for instance, social and economic variables, ‘White sample’ ideology, etc). These factors underpinned the motivation for the conference, the recognition that the African Diaspora is understood ‘with’ and through North American academia. Implicitly, the conference literature recognized African-American influence in a detailed list of measurement scales used to generate dimensions of Black identity. Such an approach, in wanting to measure a substance-type identity, embraces positivism and tends to be at odds with Africentricism. This raises a number of problems concerning Black identity: (1) the need for an understanding of Black identity within a local context while recognising the hegemonic position of African-American accounts; (2) finding an appropriate means of empirically giving voice to this conception whilst recognizing the claims of an African particularism, and; (3) allowing a diversity of views or consensus about Black identity to emerge. The aim of this paper is to respond to these questions from a particular region, that of Black British male identity. This paper will present some of the identity positions articulated by British born African-Caribbean men. In a previous paper, Hylton & Miller (2004) considered Black Identity in term of macro-narratives. That paper provided a historical context to notions of ‘Blackness’, this paper provides a more micro-analytic, fine-grained analysis of Black identity, from an exclusively Black British stance

Minimum Weight Resolving Sets of Grid Graphs

For a simple graph $G=(V,E)$ and for a pair of vertices $u,v \in V$, we say that a vertex $w \in V$ resolves $u$ and $v$ if the shortest path from $w$ to $u$ is of a different length than the shortest path from $w$ to $v$. A set of vertices ${R \subseteq V}$ is a resolving set if for every pair of vertices $u$ and $v$ in $G$, there exists a vertex $w \in R$ that resolves $u$ and $v$. The minimum weight resolving set problem is to find a resolving set $M$ for a weighted graph $G$ such that$\sum_{v \in M} w(v)$ is minimum, where $w(v)$ is the weight of vertex $v$. In this paper, we explore the possible solutions of this problem for grid graphs $P_n \square P_m$ where $3\leq n \leq m$. We give a complete characterisation of solutions whose cardinalities are 2 or 3, and show that the maximum cardinality of a solution is $2n-2$. We also provide a characterisation of a class of minimals whose cardinalities range from $4$ to $2n-2$.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure

All-Payer Claims Databases: State Initiatives to Improve Health Care Transparency

Examines states' efforts to support transparency and reform by developing claims databases with comprehensive information on disease incidence, utilization patterns, costs, and health outcomes. Outlines benefits, models, and implementation challenges

GPU Acceleration of Image Convolution using Spatially-varying Kernel

Image subtraction in astronomy is a tool for transient object discovery such as asteroids, extra-solar planets and supernovae. To match point spread functions (PSFs) between images of the same field taken at different times a convolution technique is used. Particularly suitable for large-scale images is a computationally intensive spatially-varying kernel. The underlying algorithm is inherently massively parallel due to unique kernel generation at every pixel location. The spatially-varying kernel cannot be efficiently computed through the Convolution Theorem, and thus does not lend itself to acceleration by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). This work presents results of accelerated implementation of the spatially-varying kernel image convolution in multi-cores with OpenMP and graphic processing units (GPUs). Typical speedups over ANSI-C were a factor of 50 and a factor of 1000 over the initial IDL implementation, demonstrating that the techniques are a practical and high impact path to terabyte-per-night image pipelines and petascale processing.Comment: 4 pages. Accepted to IEEE-ICIP 201

Oil prices: backward to the future?

A useful first guess about the future spot price of a commodity is usually found in its current futures price. But it doesn’t work that way when the commodity in question is oil. This Commentary explains why the characteristics of oil, particularly the value it can offer its owner by remaining in the ground, cloud the information that oil futures prices give about future oil prices.Petroleum industry and trade ; Futures

Not so flat and boring after all: how the Kansas Senate racebecame 2014’s most improbable tossup

Before this summer, few commentators would have thought that the state of Kansas would move from a safe Republican seat to a tossup race that may have implications for the control of the Senate. Patrick Miller looks at the state of the race between the three term time incumbent Pat Roberts and his Independent challenger, Greg Orman. He writes that a combination of poor campaigning, residency questions, and the withdrawal of the Democratic candidate from the ballot have come together to provide an unexpected challenge for Pat Roberts this midterm cycle