Is a British Senate any closer now? Or will the House of Lords still go on and on?

Labour enters the 2015 election pledged to make creating a British Senate a key part of a new Constitutional Convention. The SNP surge in Scotland gives much greater urgency to the idea, since a new upper House could be one of the most important components for re-binding together a fully federal UK. Richard Reid and Patrick Dunleavy read the runes on a century-old area of constitutional controversy, which just might get resolved soon

It is time to adopt a different approach to appointing members of the Intelligence and Security Committee

The Intelligence and Security Committee which oversees Britain’s Security Services (MI5, SIS, and GCHQ) has come under sustained scrutiny for its perceived reluctance to exert scrutiny over those it is tasked with watching. Andrew Defty argues that recent events show the need to change the appointments procedure in order to buck the trend of appointing establishment figures who aren’t known for asking ‘difficult questions’

Got Privilege? An Honors Capstone Activity on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In May 2013, Patrick was a participant in a multiday workshop sponsored by our university’s Diversity Action Council. The goal of the workshop, led by off-campus experts commissioned by the university, was to help educate faculty and staff on issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and to foster conversations on these topics among these members of the university community. The workshop had several positive outcomes, which included facilitating faculty/staff interactions and fostering a sense of university-wide community as participants worked together to explore identity, intersectionality, and other issues related to diversity in the academic setting. Most importantly, the workshop served as the genesis for a class activity that was piloted in the fall 2013 semester

Got Privilege? An Honors Capstone Activity on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In May 2013, Patrick was a participant in a multiday workshop sponsored by our university’s Diversity Action Council. The goal of the workshop, led by off-campus experts commissioned by the university, was to help educate faculty and staff on issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and to foster conversations on these topics among these members of the university community. The workshop had several positive outcomes, which included facilitating faculty/staff interactions and fostering a sense of university-wide community as participants worked together to explore identity, intersectionality, and other issues related to diversity in the academic setting. Most importantly, the workshop served as the genesis for a class activity that was piloted in the fall 2013 semester

Management and training of linguistic volunteers: a case study of translation at Cochrane Germany

Cochrane is a global, non-profit organisation that synthesizes health-related research evidence. It established a translation strategy in 2014 to increase the significance of its information beyond the English-speaking world. Under the strategy, translation at Cochrane is achieved mostly through the efforts of linguistic volunteers. Translation in crisis settings, too, relies on the work of volunteers; however, appropriate ways to manage and train these volunteers are unclear. We carried out a study of the case of translation at one part of Cochrane, Cochrane Germany, to learn about the management and training of linguistic volunteers there and in Cochrane more broadly. Thematic analysis of data gathered by the researcher during a two-month secondment to the offices of Cochrane Germany– including data from formal interviews, informal meetings, field notes, a reflective journal, and a large corpus of grey literature – generated three main themes. The themes relate to appropriate conceptualisations of linguistic volunteers, project management in the assurance of quality volunteer work, and feedback as a form of volunteer training. Recommendations are made to apply these lessons learned to future work on crisis translation and for possible improvements to linguistic volunteer management and training at Cochrane

Junior Recital: Brian Reid, jazz piano

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Reid studies jazz piano with Tyrone Jackson.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1121/thumbnail.jp

Not Alone: Tracing the Origins of Very Low Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs Through Multiplicity Studies

The properties of multiple stellar systems have long provided important empirical constraints for star formation theories, enabling (along with several other lines of evidence) a concrete, qualitative picture of the birth and early evolution of normal stars. At very low masses (VLM; M <~ 0.1 M_sun), down to and below the hydrogen burning minimum mass, our understanding of formation processes is not as clear, with several competing theories now under consideration. One means of testing these theories is through the empirical characterization of VLM multiple systems. Here, we review the results of various VLM multiplicity studies to date. These systems can be generally characterized as closely separated (93% have projected separations Delta < 20 AU) and near equal-mass (77% have M_2/M_1 >= 0.8) occurring infrequently (perhaps 10-30%). Both the frequency and maximum separation of stellar and brown dwarf binaries steadily decrease for lower system masses, suggesting that VLM binary formation and/or evolution may be a mass-dependent process. There is evidence for a fairly rapid decline in the number of loosely-bound systems below ~0.3 M_sun, corresponding to a factor of 10-20 increase in the minimum binding energy of VLM binaries as compared to more massive stellar binaries. This wide-separation ``desert'' is present among both field (~1-5 Gyr) and older (> 100 Myr) cluster systems, while the youngest (<~10 Myr) VLM binaries, particularly those in nearby, low-density star forming regions, appear to have somewhat different systemic properties. We compare these empirical trends to predictions laid out by current formation theories, and outline future observational studies needed to probe the full parameter space of the lowest mass multiple systems.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, contributed chapter for Planets and Protostars V meeting (October 2005); full table of VLM binaries can be obtained at http://paperclip.as.arizona.edu/~nsiegler/VLM_binarie

Partisanship in the Brexit News Media – A Content Analysis of Newspapers of Record in Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland

The representation of Brexit in the news media has been a point of debate since the referendum announcement by then UK Prime Minister David Cameron in February 2016. Formal studies by academics, academic institutions and news organisations, in addition to anecdotal reports, have scrutinised coverage and dissected news and opinion across the UK and beyond. This study explores Brexit-orientated articles from The Irish Times, The Times(UK edition) and The Belfast Telegraph in the week leading up to the Brexit referendum, providing a comprehensive insight into Brexit coverage in three newspapers of record in key jurisdictions across the UK and Ireland. This study organises predominantly quantitative data to collate and categorise a large body of articles from across the five days prior to the referenduma nd to a lesser extent, adopts a lighter qualitative approach to examine the data more closely. The study attempts to ascertain whether the newspapers’ overarching preference tilts toward Remain or Leave and whether examining articles in three different segments –political, financial and human-interest –reveal partisanship. It also examines the prevalence of key quoted individuals and the quantity and coverage afforded to each side. The study finds that empirically,all three newspapers appear to favour a Remain result to varying degrees, but that coverage of each side, individuals and their respective campaign messages is mixed,with a slight tilt toward Leave

The Revolution Will Be Open-Source: How 3D Bioprinting Can Change 3D Cell Culture

(First paragraph) The development of three-dimensional culture scaffolds represents a revolutionary step forward for in vitro culture systems. Various synthetic and naturally occurring substrates have been developed that support 3D growth of cells. In most fields, including mammary gland biology and tumorigenesis, the two most common substrates used are the basement membrane rich extracellur matrix (ECM) isolated from EngelbrethHolm-Swarm (EHS) mouse sarcomas (e.g. Matrigel) and collagen extracted from rat-tails. The processes of 3D culture in these two substrates has remained unchanged for nearly half a century: cells are either mixed with unpolymerized matrix to disperse them randomly throughout the substrate upon polymerization or overlaid randomly on top of a preformed hydrogel. While effective in generating organoid/tumoroid structures, the random nature of these processes has many drawbacks that limit the reproducibility and tunability of the experimental design. Furthermore, random cellular distributions limit the utility of these substrates for studying interactions within the cellular microenvironment, which have been shown to be critical for the control of stem and cancer cell function [1]