Critique [of Racism and the Canadian State by Daiva K. Stasiulis]

Stasiulis\u27s two-part essay offers a critique of the policies on immigration and racism pursued by the Canadian government during the past decade or so. While the government\u27s multicultural institutions seek to ameliorate racism, its immigration agencies get blamed for intensifying the problem. The latter agencies are better supported than the former which are on the fringes of state power, and, according to the author, have little chance of changing immigration policies

Gasoline Prices: Cyclical Trends and Market Developments

Gasoline prices experience volatility often credited to fluctuations in the crude oil market, but gasoline is subject to its own supply and demand pressures. Cyclical trends such as seasonal changes in refining costs, production adjustments, and changes in demand contribute to gasoline price movements over a typical year. Recently, however, market developments not influenced by seasonal fluctuations have affected prices. From 2010 to 2014, increased access to cost-advantaged domestic sources of crude oil has expanded domestic gasoline production, and evolving consumption patterns in the United States and abroad have altered both import and export demand. Between January 2005 and September 2008, the producer price index for gasoline trended generally higher. (See chart 1.) The onset of the Great Recession pressured producer prices lower in the fourth quarter of 2008, a 67.8-percent drop, before prices started to rebound in early 2009. By mid-2011, prices reached prerecession levels and remained in a tight range before dropping more than 50 percent in the latter half of 2014 and early 2015. This Beyond the Numbers article examines the many factors that contributed to shifting producer gasoline prices from 2005 through 2014

Output-Based Refunding of Emission Payments: Theory, Distribution of Costs, and International Experience

In this paper, we discuss the effect of refunding environmental charges. Taxes often are resisted by polluters because they imply both abatement and tax costs. We show that when charges are refunded, the incentives for abatement are essentially the same as for a tax, but the output reduction that often accompanies a tax scheme is forgone. We describe and examine the refund emissions payment (REP) scheme as a policy instrument for emissions abatement and compare it with taxes and permits with regard to allocative properties, distribution of costs, property rights, and, consequently, the politics of implementation. As an empirical example, the Swedish charge on nitrogen oxides is analyzed.

Effects of edge disorder in nano-scale antiferromagnetic clusters

We study the distribution of local magnetic susceptibilities in the two-dimensional antiferromagnetic S=1/2 Heisenberg model on various random clusters, in order to determine whether effects of edge disorder could be detected in NMR experiments (through the line shape, as given by the distribution of local Knight shifts). Although the effects depend strongly on the nature of the edge and the cluster size, our results indicate that line widths broader than the average shift should be expected even in clusters as large as $\approx 1000$ lattice spacing in diameter. Experimental investigations of the NMR line width should give insights into the magnetic structure of the edges.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The Validity, Reliability, Measurement Error, and Minimum Detectable Change of the 30‐Second Fast‐Paced Walk Test in Persons with Knee Osteoarthritis: A Novel Test of Short‐Distance Walking Ability

Objective To develop and establish the reliability, validity, measurement error, and minimum detectable change of a novel 30‐second fast‐paced walk test (30SFW) in persons with knee osteoarthritis (OA) that is easy to administer and can quantify walking performance in persons of all abilities. Methods Twenty females with symptomatic knee OA (mean age [SD] 58.30 [8.05] years) and 20 age‐ and sex‐matched asymptomatic controls (57.25 [8.71] years) participated in the study. Participants completed questionnaires of demographic and clinical data, the Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS), and the 36‐item Short Form Health Survey (SF‐36) followed by 30SFW performance. Participants returned 2‐7 days later and performed the 30SFW again. Results The knee OA group reported function that was worse than controls (all KOOS subscales; P \u3c 0.0001). The 30SFW intrarater and interrater reliability were excellent [ICC(2,1) = 0.95‐0.99]. Knee OA participants walked a shorter distance in the 30SFW than controls (mean [SD]: OA 44.4 m [9.5 m]; control 58.1 m [7.8 m]; P \u3c 0.0001). Positive strong correlations were found between the 30SFW and the KOOS–Activity of Daily Living, SF‐36‐Physical Functioning, and SF‐36‐Physical Health Composite scores (P \u3c 0.0001). A nonsignificant, weak correlation between 30SFW and SF‐36‐Mental Health scores was present (r = 0.32, P = 0.05). Conclusion The 30SFW has excellent intrarater and interrater reliability. The 30SFW demonstrated excellent known groups, convergent, and discriminant validity as a measure of short‐distance walking ability in persons with knee OA. Clinicians and researchers should consider using the 30SFW to quantify walking ability in persons with knee OA and assess walking ability change

Catastrophic Transculturation in Dracula, The Strain and The Historian

The article notes that what Paul Brantlinger has referred to as the Imperial Gothic insists that the encounter between cultures results not in a transcultural merger, but in an apocalyptic struggle for survival. As this struggle is often tied to past and present-day imperial sentiment, the article suggests that both late-Victorian and contemporary fiction can effectively be discussed with the help of Marie Louise Pratt's concept transculturation. Through a reading of three vampire narratives, Stokers's Dracula (1897), Del Toro and Hogan's The Strain (2009) and Kostova's The Historian (2005), the article demonstrates how past and present imperial gothic texts describe the derailment of European modernity and insists that cultural encounter produce monstrous hybrids that threaten an ontological and/or epistemological apocalypse. In this way, the cultural encounter that these gothic novels imagine result in catastrophic transculturation and the article argues that this is a common way of understanding the transnational meeting in American neo-imperial discourse