Prospects for US politics in 2022

Subject Prospects for US politics in 2022. Significance After a mixed first year in office, President Joe Biden faces a series of challenges in 2022. Despite a strong start in the first half of 2021, the persistence of the pandemic, an inability to pass key aspects of his agenda, the abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan and rising concerns about inflation have combined to diminish confidence in Biden’s claim to bring competence to government. Republicans are set to take advantage.

Dr. Uri Treisman: Five Decades of Postsecondary Innovation

Philip Uri Treisman is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor, professor of mathematics, and professor of public affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the founder and executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center, an organized research unit in the College of Natural Sciences that works to ensure that all students, regardless of their life circumstances, can access—and succeed—in rigorous mathematics and science education. Dr. Treisman is active in numerous organizations working to improve American mathematics education. He is a founder and member of the governing board of Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics (also known as TPSE-Math). He is a representative of the American Mathematical Society to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Education, Section Q) and is a senior advisor to the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences Research Advisory Group. In addition, he is a member of the Roundtable on Data Science Postsecondary Education with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dr. Treisman has served as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Education Commission of the States since 2013. He is also chairman of the Strong Start to Finish Campaign (and its expert advisory board), a joint initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, and Ascendium Education Group that works nationally to ensure that all students get a strong start in their first year of college and finish with the skills they need to thrive. Treisman has served on the STEM working group of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges of the American Association of Community Colleges, and the Commission on Mathematics and Science Education of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Institute for Advanced Study. Treisman’s research and professional interests span mathematics and science education, education policy, social and developmental psychology, community service, and volunteerism.

On the Left-/Right-Branching Asymmetry in Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi

In Mandarin, a left-/right-branching asymmetry is observed when the Tone 3 Sandhi (T3S) process interacts with the syntactic structure of an expression: while expressions that have a left-branching syntactic structure only have a non-alternating sandhi pattern in which all but the rightmost T3 is changed to the sandhi tone, for expressions that have a right-branching syntactic structure various sandhi patterns are possible. This paper proposes that T3S applies cyclically bottom-up on a prosodic structure matched from the syntactic structure of an expression, along the lines of the Match Theory of syntactic-prosodic constituency correspondence (Selkirk 2011). The interaction of Match Phrase constraints and Strong Strong Start, which is a more restricted version of Selkirk’s (2011) Strong Start constraint, predicts that different prosodic structures are possible outputs for a right-branching expression, while for a left-branching expression the only possible output is a left-branching prosodic structure. The various possible sandhi patterns for a right-branching expression and the non-alternating sandhi pattern for a left-branching expression are derived when T3S applies cyclically bottom-up on the proposed prosodic structures.

Models and/as/of Literature

Models have evolved into a major tool to analyse, understand and shape the world we live in. Ubiquitous as they are in the sciences, engineering and in public discourse, models are rarely reflected on or even used in literary studies, as testified by their conspicuous absence in most dictionaries of literary and cultural theory. This essay, first of all, provides a rough survey where models have been applied in literature, literary studies or theory. It traces the use of models from a strong start with the rise of formalism and structuralism in the twentieth century to some occasional resurfacing in the context of narratological research and literary pedagogy which, however, appears to be restricted to German academia. After a brief evaluation of these instances, new departures in the use of models in literary studies are charted before a general assessment of the prospects and profits of bringing models into the field of literature brings a conclusion with the hope of opening up new lines of research.1

Lifting COVID-19 measures may hit resilient eastern EU

Significance Available second-quarter data indicate a shallower recession in most of the eleven eastern EU member states (EU-11) than the rest of the EU in January-June. This may be due to a strong start in January-February, followed by strict but shorter lockdowns and macroeconomic measures introduced to smooth the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact. However, the number of cases is still a concern. Impacts Projections for economic recovery in the second part of the year will be subject to downside risks. European solidarity will likely continue to be tested by political controversy over the rule of law. A European-wide vision for green, digital transformation and resilience may emerge.