War on Drugs Legislation in the 1980s: Failed Policies That Created Racial Injustice

For 40 years now, the War on Drugs has continued to damage millions of African American lives around the United States. As a result of failed drug control policies, not only have prisons become extremely overcrowded, but millions of people are still facing consequences such as massive poverty, broken family dynamics, violence, and tensions with law enforcement in their communities. Although this has become a contemporary issue, it is even more important to understand the origins of how this came to be. Digging to the source of the mess is the first step to understanding how we, as a society, can move forward and fix the issue. Massive prison booms and violence did not just arbitrarily hit these communities, but it was a result of failed government intervention that started in the 1970s and 1980s

NSA Site Access: Twenty-Fifth Air Force’s $95M+ Problem

This Organizational Action Project (OAP) examined and addressed security clearance-based delays for Twenty-Fifth Air Force (25 AF) airmen at National Security Agency (NSA) sites and other locations with that organization’s mission systems. The approximate personnel cost associated with this issue was $95.98M at the beginning of the OAP cycle. Across the enterprise, 985 airmen were unable to perform their missions due to this problem. Given its significance, the OAP focused on discovering initiatives that could be pursued at any stage of the security clearance granting process. Data relevant to the issue was collected from our field units and published weekly to senior leaders in the organization. Tracked data consisted of open National Background Investigation Bureau priority personnel security investigations and DoD Consolidated Adjudication Facility adjudications, NSA Military Affairs Division (MADO) security holds, and counter-intelligence polygraph requirements. Using this institutional data, Air Force Instruction (AFI) 65-503 (US Air Force Cost and Planning Factors) was utilized to apply costs to define the original state of affairs and determine the impact of improvements. A representative, though not all-inclusive, list of actions taken includes: 1) Applications for intelligence-related personnel are now given a priority label at Military Entrance Processing Stations, 2) four contract clearance screeners were added to the Basic Military Training workforce, 3) a personnel processing code requiring a current ci-polygraph in order to get movement orders was added to certain assignments, 4) MADO authorized site-to-site transfers, 5) MADO agreed to accept security information packages six months prior to arrival, and 6) a Clearance Workforce Verification System contract was awarded to create a web-based solution to handle transfer paperwork. By the conclusion of the OAP reporting cycle, a$15.8M (17 percent) improvement occurred. The impact of all actions taken will not be seen until 2019 and beyond. The findings and results of this project highlight that addressing a significant and potentially daunting multi-organizational problem like security clearance-based delays is not insurmountable. This OAP pursued operational improvements to gain the most from the current system. The project was not designed to overhaul the structure of the security clearance process. This author posits that what is really needed from future researchers is an approach more akin to the operational innovation described by Michael Hammer where an entirely new way of doing business alters the security clearance process to achieve breakthrough change

Perceptions from Academia on the Use of Current Marketing Metric

As a great source of generating revenue to the organization, it is agreed that marketing not only drives customer\u27s actions but also can be measured in terms of financial equity. Yet, many often view marketing as an expense rather than that of an investment. This paper looks to evaluate the common methods of measuring marketing\u27s role within the firm. A study was performed to investigate the perceptions of marketing metrics from faculties in four major business degree disciplines. These beliefs in use today demonstrate the difficulty that marketing managers have in building credibility within their departments

“Why Invest in Racism?”: Anti-Apartheid Activism at the University of Illinois, 1977-1987

On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison a free man after being held captive for over 27 years. Crowds roared with joyfulness as their beacon of hope pumped his right fist in the air triumphantly. The international community watched the occasion with hope and a feeling of success after the assistance in the struggle to bring down the brutal regime of apartheid. This inspiring movement took decades of unified activism from both South Africans and local, grassroots organizations to bring the system down. Amidst the ongoing Cold War politics and other international issues, dismantling apartheid proved to be a severe challenge. Nevertheless, activists from across the world, from small towns to large cities, united to bring about an end to the racial system. Today, the anti-apartheid movement remains a clear example of how unified activism at the local level can bring about change on the wider national and international community

The Infectious Disease Ontology in the Age of COVID-19

The Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) is a suite of interoperable ontology modules that aims to provide coverage of all aspects of the infectious disease domain, including biomedical research, clinical care, and public health. IDO Core is designed to be a disease and pathogen neutral ontology, covering just those types of entities and relations that are relevant to infectious diseases generally. IDO Core is then extended by a collection of ontology modules focusing on specific diseases and pathogens. In this paper we present applications of IDO Core within various areas of infectious disease research, together with an overview of all IDO extension ontologies and the methodology on the basis of which they are built. We also survey recent developments involving IDO, including the creation of IDO Virus; the Coronaviruses Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO); and an extension of CIDO focused on COVID-19 (IDO-CovID-19).We also discuss how these ontologies might assist in information-driven efforts to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, to accelerate data discovery in the early stages of future pandemics, and to promote reproducibility of infectious disease research

SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE\u27S EFFECT ON NICKEL-TITANIUM ROTARY INSTRUMENTS AND ITS EFFECT ON RESISTANCE TO FRACTURE

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of partial and total immersion in sodium hypochlorite on nickel-titanium rotary files and to determine whether resistance to fracture was influenced by the immersion time. One hundred K3 and 100 ProFile® rotary files were either partially or totally immersed in 5.25% sodium hypochlorite for zero, one, five, thirty, or sixty minutes. After immersion, files were subjected to cyclic fatigue testing. Time to fracture was recorded and analyzed by a two-way ANOVA. Tukey\u27s honest significant difference was used to identify any differences in immersion times. Within all ProFile groups and partial immersion K3 groups, there was no significant decrease in time to fracture with increased immersion time in sodium hypochlorite. Only the K3 total immersion groups revealed a significant decrease in time to fracture with increased immersion time in sodium hypochlorite

The Presence of Jacques Lacan\u27s Mirror Stage and Gaze in Robert Louis Stevenson\u27s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and in Rouben Mamoulian\u27s 1931 Film

For many years, theorists have turned to popular movies and books to help interpret the difficult principles of Jacques Lacan. However, one story that has gotten very little attention is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and its derivative body of film adaptations. Both the novella and Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 film are a small part of an intertextual body of work which contains scenes that play out the Lacanian principles of the mirror stage and the gaze very well. Since art imitates life, an in depth exploration of the way that these scenes play out can illuminate how Lacan’s abstract theories might look in the real life formation of identity and in male/female relations

DECEPTIVE SIGNALS: THE ANIMAL KINGDOM AND COUNTERDECEPTION

Knowledge of signals—particularly deception and counterdeception—is a crucial component of both diplomacy and war. The use and evaluation of costly signals are both central to everyday politics and war as they are pervasive in the natural world. As such, this thesis explores the underlying strategic logic of animal signaling and how this benefits us in daily foreign policy challenges. The detection of incongruous cues can index the need for further evaluation of signals while costly signals that take up significant resources are unlikely to have been sent casually. Future studies should further identify other ideas not explored in a foreign policy context and make further use of solutions to problems that predate human beings.Major, United States ArmyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Combat Vascular Trauma: From Characterization to Innovation

The way that soldiers are injured in modern conflicts has changed. Bullet and ballistic weapons are harming fewer casualties, and more commonly Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) are injuring them. The purpose of this thesis is to characterize the injury pattern of the antipersonnel IED (AP-IED) in victims from the Afghanistan conflict, to retrospectively examine the incidence and type of vascular trauma in a Canadian level 1 trauma center and to develop and novel device for control of junctional vascular injuries. The injury pattern of 100 consecutive AP-IED victims was recorded. Multiple amputations occurred in 70% of IED victims: 5 quadruple amputations, 27 triple amputations, and 38 double amputations. Pelvic fractures occurred in 21 victims and severe perineal, gluteal or genital injuries were present in 46 patients. The casualty fatality rate was 19%. All adult trauma patients who presented to a Canadian Level I trauma centre with injuries to named arterial or venous vessels from 1 January 2011- 31 December 2015 were reviewed. The majority of patients were male (70.1%) with an injury severity score of 15 or greater in 63.3%. Blunt mechanism accounted for 61.4%. Vessel injuries to the neck (20.4%), thorax (20.4%), abdomen/pelvis (19.7%), upper extremity (24.5%) and lower extremity (15.0%) were identified. Prehospital tourniquet use for arterial injuries occurred in 12.2%. Non-operative management was used in 39 patients (28.3%) and open and endovascular repair were undertaken on 59 (42.8%) and 17 (12.3%) respectively. No temporary intravascular shunts or balloon aortic occlusion devices were used. Thirteen different subspecialty disciplines managed vascular trauma at this centre. A novel device for the control of pelvic and junctional hemorrhage was developed and tested. Placement of a catheter into the femoral vessel is followed by expression of the balloon with inflation by CO2 in a proximal direction. Thus it can navigate and treat damaged pelvic vasculature, occluding the distal aorta, and is technically simple to use. This CO2 balloon system was tested on model aortas with inline fluid flow and pressure monitoring to determine the maximum pressure the balloons could occlude. The device was tested on both intact and injured cadaveric porcine aortas for its ability to occlude fluid flow and to test the devices safety for use in arteries. The device was tested on a dye-perfused human cadaveric model. It can occlude fluid flow to supra-physiologic pressures and will rupture before injuring the vessel in the event of over inflation. It has the advantage of being able to navigate and treat injured pelvic vessels and is easy to use. This device may provide a tool to community hospitals and forward medical care providers in managing non-compressible pelvic hemorrhage