The Putin phenomenon

The Putin presidency in Russia became increasingly popular as it progressed and a leadership cult developed around the president himself. Not only was there general satisfaction with the leadership as a whole, there was also evidence that it was regarded as increasingly successful in all fields of policy, particularly in international affairs; and focus group discussions as well as surveys suggested the newly elected president, Dmitri Medvedev, would be expected to continue those policies. A closer examination of the survey evidence suggests that the Putin leadership in fact had relatively weak roots in the wider society, and drew widely but superficially on public support. More than anything else it was the strong economic performance of these years that generated support for the Putin presidency, and this suggested that any future leader would depend for his position on maintaining that economic performance in what were now more difficult circumstances

Russia and its neighbours: East or West?

As ‘Europe’ becomes more diverse, the countries that were formerly part of the USSR face new choices. One of the most fundamental is whether they identify with the economic and military institutions of the ‘West’, such as NATO and the European Union, or with the Commonwealth of Independent States and other forms of association with the Slavic ‘East’. We examine these choices in each of three societies—Belarus, Russia and Ukraine—on the basis of national surveys conducted between 2000 and 2008. Across the three, ‘Eastern’ orientations have more popular support than ‘Western’ ones, but Ukrainian opinion is more sharply polarised than opinion in the other two countries. There is more support for a ‘Slavic choice’ in Russia than in either of the other two countries, and particularly large numbers there who regret the demise of the USSR; but opinion on such matters is moderate rather than fundamentalist and does not necessarily exclude a closer relationship with the European Union and NATO

Media effects and Russian elections, 1999-2000

The Russian parliamentary and presidential elections of December 1999 and March 2000 appeared to have been won in large part through the partisan use of (particularly state) television. According to the evidence of a spring 2001 national survey, television was the main source of political information for the supporters of all parties and candidates. However, state television (which had been most supportive of the Kremlin) was much more likely to be favoured by the supporters of the pro-regime Unity party; while commercial television (which had provided a more even-handed coverage of the elections) was more popular and respected among the supporters of anti-Kremlin parties and candidates and less popular among supporters of Vladimir Putin. Regression analysis that takes account of reciprocal causation between media source and vote choice indicates that these were not spurious associations. The findings suggest that the state itself may exercise a disproportionate influence upon the electoral process in newly established systems in which social structures and political allegiances remain fluid

Science, Advocacy, Policy, Planning: Tools for Advancing Transportation Equity

The theme of this portfolio is how different tools and approaches can be used for advancing transportation equity. Broadly defined, transportation equity is about fairness in transportation. There are a number of ways this fairness can be assessed. The most common way to assess transportation equity is by looking at the fairness of outcomes, distributed geographically, socially, or even by mode of transportation. Equity can also be defined by the fairness of processes. The first half of the portfolio illustrates some of the problems with the current transportation system and how it is unhealthy (Piece 1) and unjust (Piece 2). The second half of the portfolio focuses on one of the potential solutions: encouraging and promoting increased levels of multimodal transportation (Piece 3); and then analyzing how community planners and leaders best work to achieve this in an equitable way (Piece 4). The first piece of this portfolio is a literature review of how scientists measure near-road air pollution exposure from mobile sources, which provides a better understanding of just one important environmental health impact our transportation systems. There are key social and geographic equity implications from those studies, which planners and activists can use as evidence in arguments for solutions. The second piece is an environmental justice analysis of a road expansion project in Missoula, Montana. This piece seeks to better understand the procedural, distributive, and social impacts from the project and brings in themes of advocacy and best practices in an effort to argue for sensible alternatives. The third piece is a reflection essay from my internship with the Missoula Metropolitan Planning Organization, where I wrote a white paper as part of the 2016 update to the Long Range Transportation Plan. This white paper discusses multimodal solutions to vehicle-oriented transportation development and provides a policy-based approach to increasing levels of multimodal transportation rates in Missoula. The last piece is a case study of a multimodal transportation project in Miami, Florida. This piece analyzes transportation planners’ approaches to procedural equity and discusses successes and areas for improvement.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/grad_portfolios/1009/thumbnail.jp

Method for preventing excessive trimming of a previously written data track when appending data in a magnetic tape recording device

This invention provides a means for protecting previously written data tracks on magnetic tape from excessive trimming due to tape expansion or contraction caused by changes in environmental conditions. The width of tape media varies based on environmental conditions. If data tracks are written on a magnetic tape at one environmental condition and then data is later written to the same tape at a significantly different environmental condition, the previously written tracks can be over written to the point that the data on the previously written tracks can no longer be read. This invention measures the width of the data band on the tape at the time the data is written and records that information for later reference. If data is to be written to the tape at a later time when the environmental conditions may have changed, the new width of the data band is measured and compared to the previously recorded width when the adjacent track was written. If the difference in widths is determined to be large enough to compromise the adjacent track, the write operation will be modified or disabled in order to protect the previously written data

Self-identity, embodiment and the development of emotional resilience

This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. Copyright @ The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Recent social work reforms in the UK have highlighted the need for social work practitioners to be empathetic, reflexive and resilient. Current literature defines resilience as the individual's adaptive response to adversity, stress-resistant personality traits and the ability to ‘bounce back’, yet the processes by which resilience is developed remain underexplored. The stressors associated with training to be a social worker particularly necessitate such an investigation. This study adopts a phenomenological approach to explore social work students' lived experiences of managing emotion and developing resilience. Emotion is constructed as a relational concept, developed within intersubjective space and as an embodied experience. Findings indicate tensions in student narratives around the expression of emotion and ‘being professional’. Critical incident narratives reveal often overwhelming difficulties experienced by students, prior to and during the social work programme. A variety of coping strategies were adopted including active resistance, spirituality, critical reflection and social support. Narratives as ‘discourses-in-the-making’ highlight embodiment as a valuable analytical lens by which emotional conflicts are experienced, deconstructed and resolved through the process of integrating the personal and professional self. Spaces to develop emotional resilience within the social work curriculum are discussed

Belorussiya, Ukraina i Rossiya: vostok ili zapad?

No abstract available