Consensus using Asynchronous Failure Detectors

The FLP result shows that crash-tolerant consensus is impossible to solve in asynchronous systems, and several solutions have been proposed for crash-tolerant consensus under alternative (stronger) models. One popular approach is to augment the asynchronous system with appropriate failure detectors, which provide (potentially unreliable) information about process crashes in the system, to circumvent the FLP impossibility. In this paper, we demonstrate the exact mechanism by which (sufficiently powerful) asynchronous failure detectors enable solving crash-tolerant consensus. Our approach, which borrows arguments from the FLP impossibility proof and the famous result from CHT, which shows that $\Omega$ is a weakest failure detector to solve consensus, also yields a natural proof to $\Omega$ as a weakest asynchronous failure detector to solve consensus. The use of I/O automata theory in our approach enables us to model execution in a more detailed fashion than CHT and also addresses the latent assumptions and assertions in the original result in CHT

Walking the talk : an investigation of the pedagogical practices and discourses of an international broadcasting organisation : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education in Adult Education, Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

Increasingly our knowledge of the world around us comes from the media, mediated by professional broadcasters. As the education and training of broadcasters has progressively become associated with educational institutions there has been more theorising about what broadcasters should know and how they should be educated, however the actual educational and training practices of broadcasting organisations remains under researched and under theorised. This research looks at the educational and training practices of an international broadcasting organisation and how they are sustained by the organisational ethos through a series of interviews with people directly involved in the organisation‟s training practices and an examination of a selection of the organisation‟s promotional and policy documents. From this comes a picture of an organisation committed to excellence and also a vision of broadcasting as an emancipatory activity. This commitment and vision is reflected in its inhouse training practices and also its media development work. The interviews with trainers, project managers, administrators and researchers reveal broadcasters who are pragmatic idealists and reflective practitioners and whose passion and commitment to the transformative powers of education and training are undeniable

Adda F. Howie: America’s Outstanding Woman Farmer

In 1894, forty-two-year-old Milwaukee socialite Adda F. Howie seemed a very unlikely candidate to become one of the most famous women in America. And yet by 1925, Howie, the first woman to serve on the Wisconsin State Board of Agriculture, had long been “recognized universally as the most successful woman farmer in America.”1 Howie’s rise to fame came at a time when the widely accepted ideas about gender were divided into the “man’s world” of business, power, and money, and the “woman’s world” devoted to family and home. Yet Howie, rather than being vilified for succeeding in the male sphere, was publicly praised for her skill in bringing traditional female values into the barns and pastures of Wisconsin. Instead of facing ridicule for her unconventional, ostentatiously feminine innovations, she was heaped with praise and her methods studied and adopted on farms across the United States and beyond

Funeral Practices in Upper Northeast Adams

In 1994 in upper north-east Adams county, local people relate thoughts of death with advanced age, hospitals, and nursing homes. Occasionally, there is an accident or irreversible medical problem involving a younger person. These infrequent occurrences receive much attention from the community. Widespread fear of infant mortality is not manifest. However, in this same area, from colonial times until about 1920 death occurred in a more widely dispersed fashion: far from being merely the prospect of the elderly, death\u27s inevitability was the unseen companion of young and old alike. Death could occur at random. Mortality was a distinct possibility for every child. The cultural effects of the ensuing, profoundly different perspective are evidenced in the area\u27s music, art, and folk beliefs. [excerpt

What Made the Ratman Sick?

Articl

Hetch Hetchy Redux: An Effort to Turn Back the Environmental Clock

If San Francisco voters pass Measure F on November 6, the city will conduct an $8 million study on the feasibility, costs, and benefits of draining the 300-foot deep reservoir created by the O’Shaughnessy Dam in 1923. The measure’s proponents see it as a first step in restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, sister valley to Yosemite, to its natural state. That the measure is even on the ballot is a significant indication of the shift in attitudes towards the ongoing conflict between nature preservation and traditional notions of progress

I Went to Learn, Meanings of the European Tour of Senator Robert M. La Follette, 1923

In 1923, progressive Senator Robert M. La Follette, an astute observer of government, economics, and social conditions, toured Europe in preparation for his third-party presidential bid. This article examines that trip and its legacy, particularly in relation to Daniel T. Rodgers\u27 1998 book Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age.

Blood glucose monitoring in children and adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

Aim: The aims of this review are to explore and quantify the importance of blood glucose monitoring on glycaemic control in children and adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM). Methods: A literature search of the major bibliographic databases found 11 observational studies which met the inclusion criteria of this review. Results: 9 of the 11 papers found a significant link between self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) frequency and HbA1c reduction, with SMBG monitoring 4 times daily leading to a further reduction in HbA1c of 1% compared to once daily monitoring. Frequent SMBG was correlated to higher social status, higher self-efficacy and increased parental involvement and was a sign of better global self-care behaviour. It was also noted that frequent SMBG leads to improved glycaemic control only if patients are taught what to do with the results and if they have an insulin regimen that allows for adjustment of insulin doses in response to blood glucose values. Conclusion: Frequent SMBG monitoring is an important part of diabetes self-management in children and adolescents with T1DM because it results in a significant reduction in HbA1c. In the long-term this will lead to a reduction in the late complications of T1DM. Providing children and adolescents with T1DM in Malta with an adequate supply of glucose test strips should serve as an incentive for them to check their blood glucose regularly.peer-reviewe

Unearthing the roots of urban sprawl: a critical analysis of form, function and methodology

Urban sprawl is one of the key issues facing cities today. There is a large volume of literature on the topic but despite this there is little agreement as to its characteristics and effects. The paper discusses some of the most contested issues of urban sprawl. It looks at the various definitions of sprawl; examines the effects of sprawl, assessing these in relation to planning and market led approaches; and discusses methodological approaches relating to measures of sprawl in terms of its impacts and forms

Women and Gender: Useful Categories of Analysis in Environmental History

In 1990, Carolyn Merchant proposed, in a roundtable discussion published in The Journal of American History, that gender perspective be added to the conceptual frameworks in environmental history. 1 Her proposal was expanded by Melissa Leach and Cathy Green in the British journal Environment and History in 1997. 2 The ongoing need for broader and more thoughtful and analytic investigations into the powerful relationship between gender and the environment throughout history was confirmed in 2001 by Richard White and Vera Norwood in Environmental History, Retrospect and Prospect, a forum in the Pacific Historical Review. Both Norwood, in her provocative contribution on environmental history for the twenty-first century, and White, in Environmental History: Watching a Historical Field Mature, addressed the need for further work on gender. Environmental history, Norwood noted, is just beginning to integrate gender analyses into mainstream work. 3 That assessment was particularly striking coming, as it did, after Norwood described the kind of ongoing and damaging misperceptions concerning the role of diversity, including gender, within environmental history. White concurred with Norwood, observing that environmental history in the previous fifteen years had been far more explicitly linked to larger trends in the writing of history, but he also issued a clear warning about the current trends in including the role of gender: The danger ... is not that gendering will be ignored in environmental history but that it will become predictable-an endless rediscovery that humans have often made nature female. Gender has more work to do than that. 4 Indeed it does. In 1992, the index to Carolyn Merchant\u27s The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History included three subheadings under women. Women and the egalitarian ideal and women and the environment each had only a few entries. Most entries were listed under the third subheading, activists and theorists, comprising seventeen names. 5 Nine years later Elizabeth Blum compiled Linking American Women\u27s History and Environmental History, an online preliminary historiography revealing gaps as well as strengths in the field emerging at the intersection of these two relatively new fields of study. At that time Blum noted that, with the exception of some scholarly interest being diverted to environmental justice movements and ecofeminism, most environmental history has centered on elite male concerns; generally, women\u27s involvement tends to be ignored or marginalized.