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This paper aims to investigate the academic library’s role in supporting transfer student success, specifically by providing information literacy (IL) instruction. This paper examines whether IL instruction contributes to a transfer student’s sense of academic integration.

The author designed and distributed a survey to incoming undergraduate transfer students at Valparaiso University, gathering information about students’ IL instruction experiences, their attitudes and their preferences for receiving information about the library at their new university. Inferential statistics were used to test correlations between IL instruction and students’ attitudes.

In all, 38 students completed the survey. The t-test results show significantly higher levels of confidence among those students who had participated in formal IL instruction. IL instruction is shown neither to contribute to transfer students’ sense of academic integration nor to benefit students during the transfer process. Respondents believed that transfer students do need information about their new library. They preferred small group settings or private communications for receiving this information, and the critical window is the period from when they arrive on campus through the second week of class.

This study provides guidance into librarians’ outreach efforts to transfer students, including the desirability, format and timing of this information.

This paper is the first to situate IL instruction as a factor in transfer success.

Purpose: We critically examine the idea of neurodiversity, or the uniqueness of all brains, as the foundation for the neurodiversity movement, which began as an autism rights movement. We explore the neurodiversity movement's potential to support cross-disability alliances that can transform cultures.

Methods/Approach: A neurodiverse team reviewed literature about the history of the neurodiversity movement and associated participatory research methodologies and drew from our experiences guiding programs led, to varying degrees, by neurodivergent people. We highlight two programs for autistic university students, one started by and for autistics and one developed in collaboration with autistic and nonautistic students. These programs are contrasted with a national self-help group started by and for stutterers that is inclusive of “neurotypicals.”

Findings: Neurodiversity-aligned practices have emerged in diverse communities. Similar benefits and challenges of alliance building within versus across neurotypes were apparent in communities that had not been in close contact. Neurodiversity provides a framework that people with diverse conditions can use to identify and work together to challenge shared forms of oppression. However, people interpret the neurodiversity movement in diverse ways. By honing in on core aspects of the neurodiversity paradigm, we can foster alliances across diverse perspectives.

Implications/ Values: Becoming aware of power imbalances and working to rectify them is essential for building effective alliances across neurotypes. Sufficient space and time are needed to create healthy alliances. Participatory approaches, and approaches solely led by neurodivergent people, can begin to address concerns about power and representation within the neurodiversity movement while shifting public understanding.

To summarize for registered broker-dealers and their customers upcoming margin requirements for “to-be-announced” (TBA) transactions on mortgage-backed securities pursuant to recently-amended FINRA Rule 4210.

This article explains the various margin requirements that are expected to come into effect on June 25, 2018. A chart summarizing the applicability of margin requirements for various types of accounts is also provided. Additionally, the article addresses practical steps to bring Master Securities Forward Transaction Agreements (“MSFTAs”) governing relevant transactions into compliance with the amended rules.

The compliance date for margining under FINRA Rule 4210 is approaching. Broker-dealers will be required to collect (but not post) daily variation margin and, depending on the type of account, maintenance margin, from their customers on specified transactions. Broker-dealers should become familiar with the relevant requirements in order to amend (or enter into new) MSFTAs by the deadline. Customers also should become familiar with, and consider the implications of, these margin requirements.

Concisely summarizes and explains the key requirements and provides practical guidance regarding compliance from experienced derivatives attorneys.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to date, has not directly addressed how liability for Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) violations involving blockchain or distributed ledger technology should be allocated among the various parties involved in the distributed ledger network, such as the network itself, persons running consensus nodes, developers building applications on the platform, and businesses and end users using such applications. This article discusses recent statements by CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz regarding this issue and the approach that the CFTC may take going forward.

This article examines the allocation of liability in the context of smart contracts that may violate the CEA. The article discusses how the CFTC, despite its significant focus in recent years on virtual currency and blockchain, has not addressed the issue of liability allocation directly. Recent remarks by Commissioner Quintenz may shed light on the CFTC’s future approach.

This article finds that liability allocation questions may become increasingly pressing as smart contracts that potentially violate the CEA proliferate, possibly exposing a broad range of parties involved in a distributed ledger network to liability. To the extent that Commissioner Quintenz’s recent remarks are indicative, the CFTC ultimately may adopt a foreseeability standard in determining liability.

Applications of distributed ledger technology (DLT) are ever-expanding, continually posing novel CFTC regulatory issues. This is especially the case with respect to smart contracts that may be subject to CFTC jurisdiction. Parties involved in such applications should be mindful of potential liability.

Practical guidance from experienced finance and derivatives lawyers with strong CFTC expertise.

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumer perceptions of more sustainable protein alternatives to conventional meat.

A mixed method design of interviews and an online survey identified key drivers and barriers to the consumption of laboratory-grown meat, edible insects and plant-based meat substitutes, with meat attachment accounted for in analyses. Differences between personal preference and perceptions of alternative proteins’ role in addressing global environmental concerns were also explored.

Findings indicated that plant-based substitutes were favoured for personal consumption for moral and ethical reasons and edible insects were least favoured due to aversion. Meat attachment was significantly associated with personal willingness to consume alternative proteins in each of the three cases. Results challenged previous research that had proposed that when considering the effectiveness of certain alternatives in addressing global environmental issues, people may advocate them but not want to consume them personally. Results imply that the congruity of these perceptions is more complex.

Avenues for future research, including applications for exploring tailored marketing are suggested based on the preliminary findings of this study.

This study asked consumers to consider three alternative proteins alongside one another for the first time, exploring how meat attachment is associated with perceptions and quantifying the congruity of consumers’ personal perceptions and global perceptions of these alternative proteins.

China’s unprecedented emergence as an economic and political power has created a new geopolitical economy for semi-industrialised and developing economies in Southeast Asia. This paper examines China’s trade relationships with Thailand and Indonesia using the concepts of uneven and combined development (UCD) and unequal exchange. The mass of surplus value obtained through China’s trade with the developed economies has flowed into the considerable expansion in China’s imports from developing countries since 2000. China has maintained a consistent trade deficit with the latter. While the developing countries concerned have benefitted from this set of relationships, the extent to which they have done so has been determined by national strategies. In countries like Thailand – where manufacturing capital and a significant working class has emerged – exports expanded on the basis of mutually advantageous technologically and skills intensive goods. These are produced with a similar organic composition of capital as in China. The result has been a further consolidation of the hegemony of manufacturing capital. Indonesia, however, has a political system and economy long dominated by resource exploitation linked fractions of capital. The result has been a surge in primary goods exports. The current commodity price cycle has meant these goods exchange at prices above their value. The current looming price correction, however, may have negative repercussions. In the meantime, the concentration in raw materials exports is helping to prevent the emergence of a circuit of productive capital in manufacturing. The evidence from these contrasting cases suggests that the degree to which developing economies can benefit from China’s own historically unparalleled combined development remains highly contingent on the strength of the combined development possibilities and efforts within these other national social formations. Above all, there is the degree to which manufacturing sectors of capital can obtain hegemony.

We are over‐impressed just now by the importance of what are usually described as “the working‐classes,” as though there were any classes in this country which did not work with head or hand. There is “the middle‐class,” which is also a working class; and, if truth be told, probably the hardest working class. It knows nothing of the forty‐four hour week, of constantly rising incomes, or of ca' canny methods. This is the class which forms the backbone of the country, and its marked characteristics, as opposed to the manual workers, are its lack of class consciousness and its want of class cohesion. In years that have gone by, the assumption was, of course, that if anyone wore a black coat instead of fustian he must necessarily be in possession of a larger income than the ordinary working man. He became the target of every Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, nervous of offending the working‐classes, thought little or nothing of any injustice which he might place upon those who formed the middle‐class. That criticism bears upon no particular party, but upon all political parties. Correspondence which has recently appeared in our columns suggests that the middle‐class is beginning to realise the disabilities that patience and forbearance have brought upon it in cumulative measure. On the one hand, it forms a reservoir upon which the nation is always able to draw in times of emergency, as the Great War proved; and, on the other, its very pride and its cultivation of the virtue of individualism rob it of cohesion. As a rule, the man of the middle‐class is neither the direct producer of wealth nor even a minor captain of industry. He supplies, however, the intellect and industry without which Labour would be reduced to idleness and Capital would be denied its dividends. In addition, he and his fellows, besides “carrying on,” recruit the great professions, and are mainly responsible for the research which enables science to come to the aid of the manufacturer and workman. The secret of our prosperity is to be found less conspicuously in the foresight and courage of the Capitalist and the skill of the workman than in the trained intelligence and arduous and unremitting labours of those who constitute the middle‐class. We do not underrate the value of Capital or the achievement of Labour, but it cannot be doubted that the most important element in the community consists of those who occupy the midway position between the extremes. No one can enter a factory or an office without being impressed by the important functions which the great middle‐class performs. One of the greatest dangers associated with Sovietism is that its aim is to stamp out the middle‐class. As soon as Trotsky, Lenin, and their associates had successfully asserted their dictatorship, they turned upon what they described as the “bourgeoisie,” determined to extinguish it. What they did not realise was that without the middle‐class, with its trained knowledge, sense of discipline, and power of command, Russia would be reduced to misery. Soviet Russia is the theatre in which the follies of headstrong and ignorant men are illustrated to the world. We shall do well to take warning by its mistakes. The middle‐class in this country represents elements of strength which we cannot spare, and we trust that British statesmen will walk warily lest in these difficult times of financial stress and strain further burdens are pressed upon it which it cannot bear. — The Daily Telegraph.

This paper aims to develop a stable gel-type lubricant emulating commercial conditions. This encompassed rheological and tribological assessments, alongside field trials on the Medellín tram system.

The gel-type lubricant with graphite and aluminum powder is synthesized. Rheological tests, viscosity measurements and linear viscoelastic regime assessments are conducted. Subsequently, tribological analyses encompassing four-ball and twin disc methods are executed. Finally, real-world testing is performed on the Medellín tram system.

An achieved lubricant met the stipulated criteria, yielding innovative insights into the interaction of graphite and aluminum powder additives under varying tests.

Novel findings are unveiled regarding the interaction of graphite and aluminum powder additives in tribological, rheological and real-world trials. In addition, the wear behavior of polymers is observed, along with the potential utilization of such additives in tramway systems.

As recently highlighted by Creaby-Attwood and Allely (2017), it is crucial that the possible innate vulnerabilities that contributed to sexual offending behaviour in an individual with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are taken into consideration for the application of a diversion programme to avoid the stigma of a criminal conviction or during sentencing for a non-custodial outcome. Specifically, in those defendants with a diagnosis of what used to be referred to as Asperger’s syndrome (AS) and now is recognised as an ASD and who are charged and convicted of a non-contact sexual offense, education and mental health intervention will best serve the interests of justice. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper focusses on one particular type of sexual offending behaviour, namely, possession of child pornography. A systematic PRISMA review was conducted.

The authors linked examples of child pornography in the research literature to the ASD symptomology and describe how the symptomology explains such behaviour as not reflecting actual sexual deviance.

Downloading and viewing of child pornography by individuals with ASD has received relatively little research outside the mental health field. This review is of particular importance to those in the criminal justice system who may not have much knowledge and understanding of ASD. It is suggested that diversion programmes and mental health courts should be set up for this particular population charged with this particular crime in mind so that the necessary treatment/intervention/support and care can be given to this particular group.