The Silver Realigning: How Baby Boomers Who Have Lost Their Jobs Can Become More Positive and Find New Meaning in Their Lives

Many Baby Boomers are finding (or may be finding) themselves in a difficult transition, as they lose their jobs in this listless economy. For most of them, not yet ready to retire, finding a new, equally well-paying job in their field will be extremely difficult. How can they go through the initial disbelief, anger, sadness and fear that come with losing their jobs; and rediscover their sense of direction, purpose, security and identity? As 8,000 Baby Boomers turn 60 each day for the next ten years, this question takes on enormous proportions. Positive psychology offers many insights and interventions for individuals who are facing such a challenging time. By identifying and focusing on their inherent strengths; developing ways to reflect more deeply; amplifying their optimism; enhancing their resilience; and connecting more genuinely with others, they may open themselves up to new possibilities – discovering a new sense of purpose and meaning in their next chapter. From there, they will be able to craft a compelling new vision of themselves, connecting who they are with what happened, where they are going, and how they plan to get there. The intention of this work is to provide hope, solace, insights, and direction for individuals who are feeling lost – helping them find their own compass, pointing in a new, more positive direction

The Growing Necessity of Radicalism in Library Advocacy and Political Outreach

Patrick Sweeney, Political Director for EveryLibrary, calls to foster radical library supporters and for the development of data sets that can be used to better understand the political climate and context during ballot initiatives and campaigns for library funding

Systematics and Floral Evolution in the Plant Genus Garcinia (Clusiaceae)

The pantropical genus Garcinia (Clusiaceae), a group comprised of more than 250 species of dioecious, trees and shrubs, is a common component of lowland tropical forests and is best known by the highly prized fruit of mangosteen (G. mangostana). The genus exhibits as extreme diversity of floral form as is found anywhere in angiosperms and there are many unresolved taxonomic issues surrounding the genus. To understand patterns of floral evolution within the group and to evaluate morphology-based classification schemes involving Garcinia and its relatives, relationships among a broad sample of Garcinia and close relatives were inferred by conducting Bayesian, parsimony, and likelihood analyses of sequence data from two nuclear genes, granule-bound starch synthase (GBSSI) and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS). The phylogenies suggest that all species of Garcinia fall into two major lineages one of which is characterized by the occurrence of nectariferous floral structures of uncertain derivation such as antesepalous appendages and intrastaminal disks and rings and the other by their absence. Several additional clades are supported each sharing particular combinations of floral characters and that generally correspond to sections recognized in the most recent taxonomic treatment of the genus. These results support a broad circumscription of Garcinia to include the segregate genera Ochrocarpos, Pentaphalangium, Rheedia, and Tripetalum. The monophyly of tribe Garcinieae is supported. The nectariferous floral appendages, disks and rings that characterize one of the major lineages identified in the molecular phylogenetic analyses have been hypothesized to represent an outer whorl of stamens. The position of these structures in mature Garcinia flowers does not support this interpretation. To better understand the nature of these structures in Garcinia, floral development and anatomy were studied in a sample of six Garcinia species. An outer whorl, staminodal origin for the disks and appendages is not supported by developmental timing or position. Disks and appendages are not apparent until late in development and the disks arise in the center of flower. Anatomical data are equivocal. These data also reject a gynoecial origin for these structures, and suggest that they are instead intrastaminal receptacular nectaries that are independent of the floral organs

An Anxious State: The Search for Identity and the Struggle for Peace in Irish and Palestinian Literature

This thesis works to connect the literature of two geographically and historically disparate people – the Irish and the Palestinians. One can observe patterns of disjuncture, identity crisis, and identity formation in the history of one people; one can then apply the principles learned to analogous historical situations. I argue that the Irish and the Palestinians share a kind of communal psychological trauma brought about by the experience of imperial/colonial domination, violence, and especially diaspora. Because of this shared trauma, Ireland’s historical experience can offer insight into that of Palestine. The situations are unique, but at certain human levels they have a great deal in common. Out of a shared struggle for identity, competing and sometimes mutually exclusive claims to legitimacy rise – but so too do voices calling for humility, empathy, and unity. These are the voices I attempt to locate in the literature I engage. In the first chapter, I introduce the initial theoretical framework I employ to analyze two Irish novels. Bakhtin offers an understanding of speech in the context of a novel that I find to be a valuable lens through which to view Irish (and later, Palestinian) society itself. I identify Bakhtin’s heteroglossia as an inalienable truth underlying the makeup of all societies. I then note some of the connections – not only theoretical, but political, social, and ideological – between the Irish experience of diaspora and identity formation and the Palestinian experience of the same. In the second chapter, I deepen my theoretical approach significantly to supplement the theory I borrow and modify from Bakhtin. I then use several Palestinian works to locate certain trauma-induced commonalities between the texts, and show how this trauma creates an anxious field of possibilities for the diasporic population. I conclude by showing that current events continue to point to the ongoing traumatization and polarization of Israelis and Palestinians, and note that even in Ireland and Northern Ireland “peace” can be an anxious state. I attempt to show how real peace can only be found through empathy, which comes through listening to and caring for the voices of the Other

Enabling Intrusion Detection in IPSEC Protected IPV6 Networks through Secret-Key Sharing

As the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) implementation becomes more widespread, the IP Security (IPSec) features embedded into the next-generation protocol will become more accessible than ever. Though the network-layer encryption provided by IPSec is a boon to data security, its use renders standard network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) useless. The problem of performing intrusion detection on encrypted traffic has been addressed by differing means with each technique requiring one or more static secret keys to be shared with the NIDS beforehand. The problem with this approach is static keying is much less secure than dynamic key generation through the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol. This research creates and evaluates a secret-key sharing framework which allows both the added security of dynamic IPSec key generation through IKE, and intrusion detection capability for a NIDS on the network. Analysis shows that network traffic related to secret-key sharing with the proposed framework can account for up to 58.6% of total traffic in the worst case scenario, though workloads which are arguably more average decrease that traffic to 10-15%. Additionally, actions associated with IKE and secret-key sharing increase CPU utilization on the NIDS up to 20.7%. Results show, at least in limited implementations, a secret-key sharing framework provides robust coverage and is a viable intrusion detection option