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Critical and Analytical Thinking

February 14, 2019August 10, 2017 by admin

What is critical and analytical thinking?

Critical analytical thinking is a key part of university study. Many first year students receive comments such as 'not analytical enough' on their early assignments. You will find that you develop your critical and analytical skills as you go through university. In brief, this means looking very closely at the detail and not taking what you read or hear for granted. Your tutors will expect you to:

•Evaluate how far materials are appropriate, and up-to-date.

•Evaluate how far the evidence or examples used in materials really proves the point that the author claims.

•To weigh up opinions, arguments or solutions against appropriate criteria.

•To think a line of reasoning through to its logical conclusion.

•Check for hidden bias or hidden assumptions.

•Check whether the evidence and argument really support the conclusions.

You will need to do this for materials that you read. For example, when you cite a source of evidence for your own arguments, you will need to be

Business Coordination and Tax Politics

December 22, 2018August 9, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Business interests groups are crucial actors for tax policy-making, but it is still unclear under which conditions they are more successful than politicians in shaping taxation. This article argues that centralized coordination and high-levels of policy integration make business interest groups more influential in the tax policy-making process. If there is no ideological convergence between agenda-setters and business, highly centralized, and well-integrated business interest groups are more successful in blocking or softening revenue-raising tax reforms, or simply transferring tax burdens to consumers or non-organized citizens. To evaluate this theoretical framework, I have compiled an original data set on business groups and associations for 18 countries in Latin America between 1990 and 2010. This theory uncovers a strong link between the patterns of business coordination and the feasibility of implementing distributive tax policies. This article also contributes to the study of business politics beyond the limited sample of developed countries.

A Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis

February 18, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

THE “MIND-SET” CHALLENGE

Using the analytic techniques contained in this primer will assist analysts in dealing with the perennial problems of intelligence: the complexity of international developments, incomplete and ambiguous information, and the inherent limitations of the human mind. Understanding the intentions and capabilities of adversaries and other foreign actors is challenging, especially when either or both are concealed. Moreover, transnational threats today pose even greater complexity, in that they involve multiple actors including nonstate entities that can adapt and transform themselves faster than those who seek to monitor and contain them. Finally, globalization has increased the diversity of outcomes when complex, interactive systems such as financial flows, regional economies or the international system as a whole are in flux. The first hurdle for analysts is identifying the relevant and diagnostic information from the increasing volume is acquired through open source and clandestine means. Analysts must also pierce the shroud of secrecy and sometimes mdeception that state and nonstate actors use to mislead. A systematic approach that considers a range of alternative

Tortious Interference: The Limits of Common Law Liability for Newsgathering

February 18, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

Media lawyers have recently been confronted with a relatively new source of litigation: the tort of intentional interference with contractual relations, which arises out of confidentiality agreements. In this Article, the authors identify the elements of tortious interference with contracts and examine the key issues presented when this tort is applied to newsgathering. The authors then consider a potential defense based on the First Amendment. In light of the public and constitutional interests at stake, the authors conclude that the breach of a confidentiality agreement should not sustain a tortious interference claim when the press is involved in newsgathering activity.

INTRODUCTION

The revelation that CBS had decided not to air an interview with a former tobacco executive on the news magazine program 60 Minutes sent media lawyers across the country scrambling to understand the tort of intentional interference with contractual relations, a little-litigated tort in the media context. This Article addresses some of the many questions raised by the CBS announcement .

Terror Management Theory: Interplay between Mortality Salience, Death-Thoughts, and Overall Worldview Defense

February 18, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

This study examines both the generalizability of Terror Management Theory (TMT) and the mechanisms by which individual difference variables work in the TMT model. A plethora of research exists to support TMT, a theory that explains much of human behavior as attempts to buffer the potential for anxiety provoked by being aware of one‟s own inevitable mortality (Pyszczynski et al., 2003). This dissertation investigated the generalizability of Terror Management Theory (TMT) and the mechanisms by which individual difference variables work in the TMT process. In order to do so, an operationalization of the variable “overall worldview” was provided. Participants consisted of 367 college students from the Psychology Department Experimental Subject Pool of a mid-sized Midwestern university. Subjects were quasi-randomly assigned to a 2 (mortality salience vs. control) x 2 (death-thought word stems vs. neutral word stems) between subjects design. Results suggested that humanists defended humanism more in the mortality salience condition than in the dental pain condition.

Suicide Responsibility of Hospital and Psychiatrist

February 18, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

SUICIDE IS NOW THE TENTH GREATEST CAUSE of death in the UnitedStates. It has become an increasingly larger factor statistically, because, as other causes of death come under medical control, the prevalence of suicide becomes more noticeable. In the last ten years, at the very minimum, two-hundred thousand (200,000) Americans have killed themselves, and in all likelihood, more Americans have died in the last twenty years at their own hands than were killed in World War II and the Korean War combined. It is also possible that suicides outnumber those killed in automobile accidents as is clearly the case in England.2 Thus the problem of suicide is a prominent public health problem in this country. Physicians and hospitals have an obvious concern, as do the law courts, where actions for wrongful death and negligence may involve suicide as a result of a tortious act. An example of the extremes reached in law was

The Stock Market Credit and Capital Formation

February 18, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

1. The various types of borrowers, WILO compete for the limited supply of credit, evoke very different sentiments among critical observers of the economic system.The class of borrowers which is least sympathetically regarded by the critics is that which uses the purchasing power, put at its disposal, on the stock exchange. This is not surprising considering the exchange attitude adopted by a large section of the community towards stock exchanges, towards the business that is transacted thereon, and towards the people who frequent them. In so far as this is the mere expression of the resentment of the general public toward the "easy" and "effortless" gains of traders on the stock exchange, or the contempt of the moralists for "unscrupulous" speculation or even the lack of respect of naive economic politicians for every kind of activity which is unproductive in a technical-physical sense, there is no scientific problem involved.

A Study Of Lip Movements During Spontaneous Dialog And Its Application To Voice Activity Detection

February 18, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

This paper presents a quantitative and comprehensive study of the lip movements of a given speaker in different speech / non speech contexts, with a particular focus on silences (i.e., when no sound is produced by the speaker). The aim is to characterize the relationship between “lip activity” and “speech activity”, and then to use visual speech information as a Voice Activity Detector (VAD). To this aim, an original audio-visual corpus was recorded with two speakers involved in a face-to-face spontaneous dialog, although being in separate rooms. Each speaker communicated with the other using a microphone, a camera, a screen, and headphones. This system was used to capture separate audio stimuli for each speaker and to monitor each speaker’s lip movements in synchrony with the recorded sound. A comprehensive analysis was carried out on the lip shapes and lip movements corresponding to either silence sections or non-silence sections (i.e. speech + non-speech audible events). A single visual parameter, defined to characterize the lip movements, was

Integrated United States Security Database (IUSSD): Data on the Terrorist Attacks in the United States Homeland, 1970 to 2011

February 18, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

About This Report and the Global Terrorism Database

The authors of this report are Gary LaFree (START Director, UMD), Laura Dugan (START Associate, UMD), Erin Miller (GTD Project Manager). Questions about this report should be directed to Gary LaFree (garylafree@gmail.com).

The initial collection of data for the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) data was carried out by the Pinkerton Global Intelligence Services (PGIS) between 1970 and 1997 and was donated to the University of Maryland in 2001. Digitizing and validating the original GTD data from 1970 to 1997 was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice in 2004 (PIs Gary LaFree and Laura Dugan; grant number: NIJ2002-DT-CX-0001) and thereafter in 2005 as part of the START Center of Excellence by the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), Office of University Programs (PI Gary LaFree; grant numbers N00140510629 and 2008-ST-061-ST0004). Data collection funding for GTD from 1998 to 2007 was supplied by the DHS S&T Human Factors/Behavioral Sciences

Countering Radicalization in America

February 18, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

Summary

• The recent surge in the number of American Muslims involved in terrorism has led U.S. authorities to question the long-held assumption that American Muslims are immune to radicalization, and to follow the example of other Western democracies in devising a comprehensive counterradicalization strategy.

• Radicalization is a highly individualized process determined by the complex interaction of various personal and structural factors. Because no one theory can exhaustively explain it, policymakers must understand the many paths to radicalization and adopt flexible approaches when trying to combat it.

• The role of religion in the radicalization process is debated, but theories that set aside Ideology and religion as factors in the radicalization of Western jihadists are not convincing. Policymakers who choose to tackle religious aspects should do so cautiously, however, cognizant of the many implications of dealing with such a sensitive issue.

• Policymakers need to determine whether a counterradicalization strategy aims to tackle violent radicalism alone or, more ambitiously, cognitive radicalism.

Ad Hoc Arsenals PSSM Practices of Selected Non-state Actors

February 18, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

The physical security and stockpile management (PSSM) of small arms and light weapons and their associated ammunition is a topic of growing interest to researchers and policy-makers. In recent years the Small Arms Survey and other research organizations have examined national (government) PSSM practices and international standards. These analyses have shed new light on the strengths and shortcomings of existing controls and the dangers associated with poor PSSM. With some notable exceptions,1the PSSM practices adopted by armed groups have received far less attention. Yet their arsenals often contain similar weapons and ammunition to those of government arsenals and cause similar problems when not properly secured or maintained. The small arms and light weapons held by armed groups pose multiple threats. Weapons that are lost or stolen from poorly secured stockpiles can fuel conflict and violent crime, both locally and abroad. Poor stockpile management practices can also lead to or fail

When Did Prisons Become Acceptable Mental Healthcare Facilities?

February 17, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

INTRODUCTION

We can no longer ignore the massive oppression we are inflicting upon the mentally ill throughout the United States. Over a century ago, Dorothea Dix began a movement to improve the deplorable conditions of mentally ill prisoners. Despite her success in changing the country’s perception and treatment of the mentally ill in prison, we are now right back where we started in the nineteenth century. Although deinstitutionalization was originally understood as a humane way to offer more suitable services to the mentally ill in community-based settings, some politicians seized upon it as a way to save money by shutting down institutions without providing any meaningful treatment alternatives. This callousness has created a one-way road to prison for massive numbers of impaired individuals and the inhumane warehousing of thousands of mentally ill people.We have created conditions that make criminal behavior all but inevitable for many of our brothers and sisters who are mentally ill. Instead of treating them, we are imprisoning them.

Reducing a Suicidal Person’s Access to Lethal Means of Suicide

February 17, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%–50% in other countries. The theory and evidence underlying means restriction is outlined. Most evidence of its efficacy comes from population-level interventions and natural experiments. In the U.S., where 51% of suicides are completed with firearms and household firearm ownership is common and likely to remain so, reducing a suicidal person’s access to firearms will usually be accomplished not by fiat or other legislative initiative but rather by appealing to individual decision, for example, by counseling at-risk people and their families to temporarily store household firearms away from home or otherwise making household firearms inaccessible to the at-risk person until they have recovered. Providers, gatekeepers, and gun owner groups are important partners in this work. Research is needed in a number of areas: communications research to identify effective messages and messengers for “lethal means counseling,” clinical trials to identify effective interventions,

Radicalization of Teacher Education Programs in the United StatesNine Essays

February 17, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

Introduction

These nine essays chronicle prominent examples where the advancement of radical agendas has displaced the development of subject-content mastery in America’s schools of education.Institutional racism, redistributionist ideology, resisting oppression, and equipping teachers with the tools to transform their students’ perspectives each of these factor heavily into the entrenched indoctrination to which many education school candidates must prepare to expose themselves. Reading lists of prospective teachers are top-heavy with near-cult figures for the Left, such as Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire and revisionist historian Howard Zinn. The examples described in this paper are steeped in these and other agendas. Proponents of these agendas are not difficult to find within education school communities. And at national and regional conferences held by organizations like the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), workshop titles and painted banners proclaim their intentions in bold strokes.

Terrorist Precursor Crimes: Issues and Options

February 17, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

Summary

Terrorist groups, regardless of ideological ilk, geographical location, or organizational structure, have certain basic needs in common: funding, security, operatives/support, propaganda, and means and/or appearance of force. In order to meet these needs, terrorists engage in a series of activities, some of which are legal, many of which are not. Terrorist precursor crimes, offenses committed to facilitate a particular attack or promote a terrorist campaign’s objectives, are thought to be often carried out far away from the primary theater of conflict associated with a terrorist group. Much of the precursor activity, especially with regard to crimes conducted for the purpose of fundraising, takes place in wealthy Western countries, including the United States. Precursor crimes, known and/or alleged, include various fraud schemes, petty crime, identity and immigration crimes, the counterfeit of goods, narcotics trade, and illegal weapons procurement, amongst others. The implications of domestically occurring terrorist precursor crimes on the current threat environment, and specifically the United State’s security posture, are not fully understood

Private Ordering Essay

February 17, 2019August 9, 2017 by admin

Abstract

The sharing of regulatory authority with private actors ("private ordering") has lengthy historical precedent and, in recent years, has been rapidly expanding in scope, domestically and abroad. Nowhere is its expansion as prevalent as in the commercial, financial, and business sector ("commercial private ordering"), such as the recent entrusting by the U.S. government to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private nonprofit corporation, with the task of controlling the Internet domain name system and the assignment of Internet protocol numbers, or the entrusting by the Securities and Exchange Commission to the privately organized Financial Accounting Standards Board with the power to promulgate public accounting standards.

Whereas traditional private ordering derives its legitimacy from costly procedural safeguards (essentially the same as those protecting the legitimacy of administrative agency rule-making), the purported legitimacy of commercial private ordering derives from separate premises: that the goal of commercial regulation is efficiency, and that private institutions can operate more