A Roof Over Their Heads: Housing Public Policies for Returning Inmates

Returning from prison can be a daunting experience and a difficult adjustment for anyone. Prisoner reentry programs are needed for public policies advocating for a new approach to an old problem: How do recently released inmates successfully reenter society once they have served their societal debt? There are tremendous obstacles to reentering society, yet housing is among the most pressing reentry problems to solve. In our research, we discuss and consider the public policy issue most pertinent to successful reentry, affordable, and available housing as a necessity for returning inmates. Housing is key to solving even a tiny part of a much bigger problem in criminal justice public policy circles: the public management of crime in America.

Swamp wallaby (Wallabia bicolor) distribution has dramatically increased following sustained biological control of rabbits

Swamp wallabies have dramatically extended their distribution through western Victoria and south-eastern South Australia over the last 40 years. Newspaper reports from 1875 onwards show that on European settlement, wallaby populations were confined to eastern Victoria, including the ranges around Melbourne, the Otway Ranges and Portland District of south-western Victoria, and a tiny part of south-eastern South Australia. Populations contracted further with intense hunting for the fur trade until the 1930s. In the late 1970s, however, wallabies began spreading into drier habitats than those initially recorded. Possible causes underlying this change in distribution are discussed; some seem unlikely but, because wallabies began spreading soon after the introduction of European rabbit fleas as vectors of myxomatosis, the cumulative effects of releases of biological agents to control rabbits appear important. A caution is given on assuming that thick vegetation in high-rainfall areas provides the only habitat suitable for swamp wallabies, but, most importantly, the study shows how native mammals may benefit if rabbit abundance is reduced.

Development of a Music Recommender System Based on Content Metadata Processing

Music recommender systems (MRS) help users of music streaming services to find interesting music in the music catalogs. The sparsity problem is an essential problem of MRS research. It refers to the fact that user usually rates only a tiny part of items. As a result, MRS often has not enough data to make a recommendation. To solve the sparsity problem, in this paper, a new approach that uses related items’ ratings is proposed. Hybrid MRS based on this approach is described. It uses tracks, albums, artists, genres normalized ratings along with information about relations between items of different types in the music catalog. The proposed MRS is evaluated and compared to collaborative method for users’ preferences prediction.

Epidemiology and health policy in Africa

Chapter 6 describes the epidemiological challenges facing Africa, the way in which the wider determinants of health affect the population, and the wider international context within which health systems developed in recent years. It covers how Africa is facing a disproportionately large share of the world’s burden of disease with a tiny part of its resources, and also how Africans, supported by international partners, have tackled these problems with considerable success. It also discusses how some of the intractable public health challenges and underlying systems’ issues remain serious challenges to be tackled in coming years. It concludes with thoughts on how health in Africa has changed in the last 10 years and the need for a more holistic health systems approach in the future.

APULIAN VASE-PAINTING BY NUMBERS: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PRODUCTION OF VASES DEPICTING INDIGENOUS MEN

This paper examines the place of vases depicting indigenous men in the wider context of Apulian red-figure pottery production. Through an analysis of 13,577 vases, it is shown that those depicting indigenous men were only ever a tiny part of the overall output. The overwhelming majority of surviving Apulian vases lack a proper archaeological provenance, but although this limits certainty, the evidence suggests that the vases in question were primarily used in Central Puglia. The iconography of the vessels shows indigenous men in a positive light, as successful warriors who participated in banqueting and religious rituals. The scenes all have direct parallels in the wider iconography of Apulian red-figure, where Greek men are shown engaged in a similar range of activities. The paper considers why this idealized representation of indigenous male lifestyles is so indebted to Greek culture and argues for the continued importance of local identities.

HAPPINESS AND THE RESTLESS HEART: AN AUGUSTINIAN CONFESSION

Saint Augustine opens his Confessions with the words “Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is thy power, and of thy wisdom there is no number. . . . this tiny part of all that Thou hast created desires to praise Thee. Thou dost so excite him that to praise Thee is his joy. For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” The author discovered these words, in the translation of Frank Sheed (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1943), at a young age, and the concluding line in particular, “For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee,” has occasioned continual return and reflection. In this article, the author investigates the meaning of this line in its context, following the phrase “to praise Thee is his joy.” Adopting a generous construal of his own experience with the text, the author examines some of the ways in which a person who wishes to be a Christian thinks about the elusive yet all-important dimension of human existence called happiness or joy.

The Research of Electrical Equipment Identification Technology Based on Image Processing

Insulator is a tiny part in electrical equipment, but whether its working condition is safe or not plays a vital role in the safe operation of the entire power system. In this paper, digital image processing technology based on MATLAB is applied, the obtained image of the insulator is processed through filtering, gray-scale processing and binarization processing. The parameters such as insulator's bottom circle area and edge width are extracted, and compared with the calibration parameters to determine the size of insulators. The method to getting more precise characteristic values of insulators is described in this paper. It provides the evidence of judging the working state by comparing with the calibration value to capture measurements of insulators. The digital image processing technology based on MATLAB can effectively monitor the working status, high efficiency and accuracy of the insulator.

Moral Custom Exploration Facing Transhuman Stage of Evolution

We have transited far from an ancient culture of hunters to the world of today when our conditions as human beings are changing. We recognize that our biological-cultural co-evolution has privileged reason. Even if it takes a tiny part of our mind; first memory and then reason have become protagonists in our relation with the landscape. It also means that pain control became a social custom for developing morality: this is the central thesis of this essay. This conclusion derives from our experimental research on the symbolic image of the world, that was guided mainly by Jung’s psychology and by Aristotle’s Poetics and Ethics