Family Dynamics in Ecuador

While still in the midst of their study abroad experiences, students at Linfield College write reflective essays. Their essays address issues of cultural similarity and difference, compare lifestyles, mores, norms, and habits between their host countries and home, and examine changes in perceptions about their host countries and the United States. In this essay, Peyton Smith describes her observations during her study abroad program at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador

Civil Liberty and National Security: The Implications of the Debate for the United States Intelligence Community

For years, the US Intelligence Community has worked to maintain the thin and often wavering line between civil liberty and national security in its attempts to protect the American people while simultaneously preserving their constitutional rights. However, this line has often shifted with the course of American history, including events such as the Alien and Sedition Acts, the establishment of the Church Committee, and the publication of the NSA’s data collection program. One of the most significant of these factors was the passage and eventual amendment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which opened the door to later constitutional controversies. In the midst of this ever-changing national landscape, how is the US Intelligence Community to strike a balance between protecting the American people and ensuring their civil freedoms? The Intelligence Community must remember that it has a responsibility to protect both the American people and their constitutional freedoms. The Intelligence Community faces the unique challenge of reconciling the freedom of the American people to live safely and the freedom of the US government, embodied by the executive branch, to lead. In recent history, it has done a remarkable job of instituting measures of oversight and enacting greater controls on itself as part of the executive branch to avoid the unconstitutional missteps it has taken in the past. Intelligence agencies in the present and future must continue to prioritize not only on the safety of the United States and its people but also on the maintenance of the liberties guaranteed to them under the US Constitution

Crowdsourcing the Worlds, Blog 4

Student blog posts from the Great VCU Bike Race Book

Praeludium et fuga VII

Thesis (M.M.)--Boston Universit

Enforcing compulsory schooling by linking welfare payments to school attendance: lessons from Australia’s Northern Territory

Efforts to enforce compulsory schooling by linking welfare assistance to school attendance are rarely successful in themselves, according to this report. Abstract Efforts to enforce compulsory schooling by linking welfare assistance to school attendance are rarely successful in themselves. One reason is a lack of credibility: targeted families may anticipate that welfare administrators will be reluctant to withdraw support when attendance does not improve. Australia\u27s School Enrolment and Attendance through Welfare Reform Measure (SEAM) demonstrates the impact of a credible threat. Targeting the Indigenous population of the Northern Territory, its credibility stemmed from the extreme circumstances created by the Northern Territory Emergency Response Act and from the troubled history of race relations in Australia. We show, using a difference-in-difference analysis of standardized test data (NAPLAN), that SEAM had a substantial, immediate impact: in its first year it triggered an increase in test participation rates of 16- 20 percentage points over pre-SEAM levels; and it significantly increased the share of tested cohorts achieving national minimum standards by 5-10 percentage points. However, welfare payments were rarely withheld from truant families and participation rates fell in subsequent years, though remaining significantly above pre-SEAM levels. This suggests that initiatives such as SEAM will not be fully effective in the longer term unless accompanied by measures that increase parents’ and children’s appreciation of the value of schooling

How windfall income increases gambling at poker machines

In December 2008 and March-April 2009 the Australian Government used fiscal stimulus as a short-run economic stabilization tool for the first time since the 1990s. In May-June 2012, households received lump sum cheques as compensation for the introduction of the Carbon Tax scheduled for 1 July 2012. This paper examines the relationship between these financial windfalls and spending at electronic gaming machines (EGMs) using data from 62 local government areas in Victoria, Australia. The results show large increases in spending at EGMs during the periods when Australian households received economic stimulus cheques. Increased spending at EGMs in December 2008 amounted to 1% of the total stimulus for that period. We conclude that the 2008-2009 stimulus packages substantially increased gambling at EGMs in Victoria. We find no unexpected increase in spending at EGMs in the months when Carbon Tax compensation cheques were paid

An explicit mapping between the frequency domain and the time domain representations of nonlinear systems

Explicit expressions are presented that describe the input-output behaviour of a nonlinear system in both the frequency and the time domain. The expressions are based on a set of coefficients that do not depend on the input to the system and are universal for a given system. The anharmonic oscillator is chosen as an example and is discussed for different choices of its physical parameters. It is shown that the typical approach for the determination of the Volterra Series representation is not valid for the important case when the nonlinear system exhibits oscillatory behaviour and the input has a pole at the origin (in the frequency domain), e.g. the unit-step function. For this case, resonant effects arise and the analysis requires additional care.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures, .pd

MEASUREMENT OF GRADING ERROR COSTS IN THE BEEF INDUSTRY

This paper models the market for beef products when quality production is stochastic and quality information is asymmetric between producers and consumers. Independent sorters act as intermediaries to enhance market efficiency by guaranteeing minimum quality levels. Market shares, effort levels, prices, and quality standards are obtained for general market equilibrium.Marketing,

Investigation of Batch Foamer Efficacy and Optimisation in North Sea Gas Condensate Wells

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