Black Labor at Pine Grove & Caledonia Furnaces, 1789-1860

Black labor operating under various degrees of freedom found a suitable working environment, if not a safe haven, in several iron forges of South Central Pennsylvania, from the late 1790s through the 1850s. Primary accounts indicate that two in particular, Pine Grove Furnace of Cumberland County, and Caledonia Furnace of Franklin County, harbored runaway slaves to augment their work force. Pine Grove records, dating from 1789 – 1801, specify names of “negro” employees, verifying that black labor coexisted with white, but day books, journals, and ledgers do not denote status.1 Whether they were free men, or slaves rented out by Pennsylvania slave owners, or runaways from the South cannot be gleaned from the day books. All three combinations were possible, especially in the 1790s. Circumstantial evidence suggests that escaped slaves did bolster the ranks of both forges until 1860. With renowned abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens in ownership of Caledonia, and proprietors sympathetic to the same cause at Pine Grove, the environment favored Underground Railroad activity. When this circumstance is coupled with the presence of a Quaker Meeting House in northern Adams County, and the recognition that both forges were within a thirty mile radius of the Maryland slave-state border, then a recipe existed for hide-outs to be employed in area furnaces. [excerpt

International development in transition

This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: HARMAN, S. and WILLIAMS, D. (2014), International development in transition. International Affairs, 90: 925–941. doi: 10.1111/1468-2346.12148, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12148International development is in a period of transition. While the outcome of this is still unclear, this article argues that there are at least four areas in which the project of international development is changing. First, there is a debate, especially within the World Bank, about development strategy and how we think about development, particularly in terms of the balance between states and markets. This is evident in the debate over state failure and the new structural economics. Second, there is increasing evidence of a shift in lending, away from projects of 'small' human development, perhaps best encapsulated by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, towards more transformative 'big' development projects such as infrastructure. Third, 'non-traditional' aid donors and new forms of private philanthropy are playing a more significant role in development financing and this, in turn, offers developing countries a new range of choices about what kinds of development assistance they receive. Fourth, aid relations are changing as a result of the renewed agency of developing states, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and shifts towards increased South-South cooperation are growing as evidenced by increased funding from regional development banks and increased trade flows. The article reviews these changes and suggests a series of questions and challenges that arise from them for analysts of international development, developing countries and traditional aid donors. © 2014 The Royal Institute of International Affairs

Search-based amorphous slicing

Amorphous slicing is an automated source code extraction technique with applications in many areas of software engineering, including comprehension, reuse, testing and reverse engineering. Algorithms for syntax-preserving slicing are well established, but amorphous slicing is harder because it requires arbitrary transformation; finding good general purpose amorphous slicing algorithms therefore remains as hard as general program transformation. In this paper we show how amorphous slices can be computed using search techniques. The paper presents results from a set of experiments designed to explore the application of genetic algorithms, hill climbing, random search and systematic search to a set of six subject programs. As a benchmark, the results are compared to those from an existing analytical algorithm for amorphous slicing, which was written specifically to perform well with the sorts of program under consideration. The results, while tentative at this stage, do give grounds for optimism. The search techniques proved able to reduce the size of the programs under consideration in all cases, sometimes equaling the performance of the specifically-tailored analytic algorithm. In one case, the search techniques performed better, highlighting a fault in the existing algorith

Disambiguation strategies for cross-language information retrieval

This paper gives an overview of tools and methods for Cross-Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) that are developed within the Twenty-One project. The tools and methods are evaluated with the TREC CLIR task document collection using Dutch queries on the English document base. The main issue addressed here is an evaluation of two approaches to disambiguation. The underlying question is whether a lot of effort should be put in finding the correct translation for each query term before searching, or whether searching with more than one possible translation leads to better results? The experimental study suggests that the quality of search methods is more important than the quality of disambiguation methods. Good retrieval methods are able to disambiguate translated queries implicitly during searching

Stop-list slicing.

Traditional program slicing requires two parameters: a program location and a variable, or perhaps a set of variables, of interest. Stop-list slicing adds a third parameter to the slicing criterion: those variables that are not of interest. This third parameter is called the stoplist. When a variable in the stop-list is encountered, the data-flow dependence analysis of slicing is terminated for that variable. Stop-list slicing further focuses on the computation of interest, while ignoring computations known or determined to be uninteresting. This has the potential to reduce slice size when compared to traditional forms of slicing. In order to assess the size of the reduction obtained via stop-list slicing, the paper reports the results of three empirical evaluations: a large scale empirical study into the maximum slice size reduction that can be achieved when all program variables are on the stop-list; a study on a real program, to determine the reductions that could be obtained in a typical application; and qualitative case-based studies to illustrate stop-list slicing in the small. The large-scale study concerned a suite of 42 programs of approximately 800KLoc in total. Over 600K slices were computed. Using the maximal stoplist reduced the size of the computed slices by about one third on average. The typical program showed a slice size reduction of about one-quarter. The casebased studies indicate that the comprehension effects are worth further consideration

The Dual Feminisation of HIV/AIDS

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Globalizations on 2011, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14747731.2010.49302

Mixing and merging for spoken document retrieval

This paper describes a number of experiments that explo- red the issues surrounding the retrieval of spoken documents. Two such issues were examined. First, attempting to find the best use of speech recogniser output to produce the highest retrieval effectiveness. Second, investigating the potential problems of retrieving from a so-called "mi- xed collection", i.e. one that contains documents from both a speech recognition system (producing many errors) and from hand transcription (producing presumably near perfect documents). The result of the first part of the work found that merging the transcripts of multiple recognisers showed most promise. The investigation in the second part showed how the term weighting scheme used in a retrieval system was important in determining whether the system was affected detrimentally when retrieving from a mixed collection

The Impact of Discontinuing Coverage of Second Generation Antihistamines in A Managed Care Organization

ABSTRACT Background: Second generation antihistamines (SGAs) are approved to treat seasonal and/or perennial allergic rhinitis (AR) and chronic idiopathic urticaria (CIU). It is estimated that 82% of Americans with AR use antihistamines, with the majority using SGAs due to their low side effect profile. As policy, over-the-counter (OTC) SGAs were not covered in this health plan population (cetirizine and loratadine products were available OTC prior to the study period, while fexofenadine products became available OTC during the study period). On January 1, 2012, the policy was extended to remove coverage of prescription-only SGAs (included desloratadine and levocetirizine products). Objectives: To assess the utilization of SGAs and SGA alternatives and to assess the rate of product switching associated with coverage changes. Methods: Pharmacy claim data from January 1, 2010 to October 31, 2012 were analyzed using the Truven Health Advantage Suite® system. Study participants had to be continuously enrolled, ≥18 years, and have received ≥1 prescription for a desloratadine, fexofenadine, or levocetirizine product during the study period. Three reference periods were evaluated to assess utilization patterns: (1) a period during which desloratadine, fexofenadine, and levocetirizine were covered; (2) a desloratadine and levocetirizine prescription-only coverage period during which fexofenadine OTC was introduced to the market; and (3) an SGA non-coverage period. Product switching was determined by having at least one new fill for a covered SGA or SGA alternative after a coverage change. Results: 84.6% of health plan participants taking SGAs did not switch to a prescription SGA alternative following SGA coverage discontinuation. For those who did switch, the most common therapeutic class switched to was intranasal corticosteroids (54%), which is the recommended first-line therapy for AR. More than half of the members who switched to a prescription SGA alternative were not persistent in filling the new medication, which could suggest that those members purchased an OTC SGA or left their condition untreated. Conclusion: The policy decision to discontinue coverage of SGAs was not associated with seeking a prescription alternative by the majority of plan members. With the potential for more medications to go OTC, this observational study illustrates that managed care organizations can efficiently manage drug costs for a fixed population by reserving scarce plan resources through appropriate benefit design management. Keywords: antihistamines, product switching, coverage, utilization, OTC medications What is already known about this subject For the treatment of allergic rhinitis, prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) products exist as options for the 58 million Americans impacted by the upper respiratory condition, including second generation antihistamines (SGAs). Intranasal corticosteroids have shown greater efficacy in trials, but SGAs continue to be the most heavily utilized therapeutic class. The decision not to cover prescription products within a therapeutic class that has OTC products and the opportunity costs associated with such a decision are of interest to payers and employers within the health insurance industry. What this study adds After drug coverage was removed for SGAs, increases in alternative prescription products were minimal, and the majority of health plan participants either purchased an OTC alternative or left the condition untreated. The observed results from this study may be applicable to other health plans and can be used for the decision-making process for plan sponsors. Disclosure Statement No funding was received for this study. The authors report no conflict of interest regarding this study

Journeying Home: Toward a Feminist Perspective on Pilgrimage

The archetypal feminine has earthy, creative, visceral, emotional and spiritual connotations suggestive of women’s quest for home. I wish to explore the meaning of home within the landscapes of the sacred geography of the soul, invoking the sacredness of place, the meaning of place, and the emotion of place. Findings from a seven-year autoethnographical study of women journeying home to islands in the Thousand Islands, a border region located on the St. Lawrence River between Ontario Canada and upstate New York, demonstrate that these themes figure deeply in the life decisions made by the women studied. ‘The River’ is experienced as a sacred place with great meaning and emotion for the women who call it home. The annual journey ‘home’ to the River takes priority and centrality in their lives while they are physically elsewhere, at work, raising families, getting by. The deep calling of the land and the water, the earthy and watery depths of meaning, family, history, creation, and eternity are felt more readily than expressed. For they say that once one has drunk of the River, one will always hold it in one’s heart. While this visceral lifeline is completed by the annual physical journey home, it also suggests that home is carried within: that the sacred geography of the soul is both inner and outer landscape, its quest both inner and outer pilgrimage