66 research outputs found
Analysis of Literary Devices in Selected Novels of Severine Ndunguru
No full textThis study was conducted in Dar es Salaam and it was a library based study and
interview. Data was collected at The Open University of Tanzania, The University of
Dar es salaam and The Tanganyika libraries. The study was set to analyze literary
devices in selected novels of Severine Ndunguru. Specifically, the study identified
the types of literary devices used by the author, evaluated the employment of
language in the literary devices in four novels of Severine Ndunguru, namely, A
Wreath For Father Mayer, The Lion of Yola, Spared and Divine Providence.
Furthermore, it assessed the usefulness of the literary devices in the novels. The
study adapted a qualitative research design. An intensive reading of the novels was
done by the researcher. An interview was also with the author, Mr. Severine
Ndunguru. Moreover, both primary and secondary data were collected and utilized.
The methods of data collection employed were content analysis and analysis of
written texts. The study revealed that Severine’s novels have extensively utilized
literary devices such as allusion, imagery, exclamation, dialogue, repetitions, hubris,
symbolism and personification. Also the writer succeeds in employing the English
language to present these literary devices, and these literary devices show their
usefulness in the thematic part of the novels. The analysis of these works offers a
contribution to the existing knowledge in the way literary devices are analyzed, as
well as promotes Ndunguru’s works by making them available for further scrutiny.
In addition, researchers are encouraged to conduct further research focusing on other
aspects in Ndunguru’s novels which were not the focus of this study
Organización sociopolítica Rarámuri en la Ciudad de Chihuahua. Intermediarios y actores de la intervención en el asentamiento “El Oasis”
No full textTesis para optar por el grado de maestría en Antropología Social</p
A pragmatic randomized trial of a polypill-based strategy to improve use of indicated preventive treatments in people at high cardiovascular disease risk
No full textBackground: Most individuals at high cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk worldwide do not receive any or optimal preventive drugs. We aimed to determine whether fixed dose combinations of generic drugs ('polypills') would promote use of such medications. Methods: We conducted a randomized, open-label trial involving 623 participants from Australian general practices. Participants had established CVD or an estimated five-year CVD risk of ≥15%, with indications for antiplatelet, statin and ≥2 blood pressure lowering drugs ('combination treatment'). Participants randomized to the 'polypill-based strategy' received a polypill containing aspirin 75 mg, simvastatin 40 mg, lisinopril 10 mg and either atenolol 50 mg or hydrochlorothiazide 12.5 mg. Participants randomized to 'usual care' continued with separate medications and doses as prescribed by their doctor. Primary outcomes were self-reported combination treatment use, systolic blood pressure and total cholesterol. Results: After a median of 18 months, the polypill-based strategy was associated with greater use of combination treatment (70% vs. 47%; relative risk 1.49, (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.30 to 1.72) p < 0.0001; number needed to treat = 4.4 (3.3 to 6.6)) without differences in systolic blood pressure (-1.5 mmHg (95% CI -4.0 to 1.0) p = 0.24) or total cholesterol (0.08 mmol/l (95% CI -0.06 to 0.22) p = 0.26). At study end, 17% and 67% of participants in polypill and usual care groups, respectively, were taking atorvastatin or rosuvastatin. Conclusion: Provision of a polypill improved self-reported use of indicated preventive treatments. The lack of differences in blood pressure and cholesterol may reflect limited study power, although for cholesterol, improved statin use in the polypill group counter-balanced use of more potent statins with usual care.Anushka Patel, Alan Cass, David Peiris, Tim Usherwood, Alex Brown, Stephen Jan, Bruce Neal, Graham S Hillis, Natasha Rafter, Andrew Tonkin, Ruth Webster, Laurent Billot, Severine Bompoint, Carol Burch, Hugh Burke, Noel Hayman, Barbara Molanus, Christopher M Reid, Louise Shiel, Samantha Togni, and Anthony Rodgers, for the Kanyini Guidelines Adherence with the Polypill, (Kanyini GAP), Collaboratio
Effect of lifestyle-focused text messaging on risk factor modification in patients with coronary heart disease: A randomized clinical trial
No full textFree to read\ud
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Abstract\ud
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Importance Cardiovascular disease prevention, including lifestyle modification, is important but underutilized. Mobile health strategies could address this gap but lack evidence of therapeutic benefit.\ud
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Objective To examine the effect of a lifestyle-focused semipersonalized support program delivered by mobile phone text message on cardiovascular risk factors.\ud
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Design and Setting The Tobacco, Exercise and Diet Messages (TEXT ME) trial was a parallel-group, single-blind, randomized clinical trial that recruited 710 patients (mean age, 58 [SD, 9.2] years; 82% men; 53% current smokers) with proven coronary heart disease (prior myocardial infarction or proven angiographically) between September 2011 and November 2013 from a large tertiary hospital in Sydney, Australia.\ud
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Interventions Patients in the intervention group (n = 352) received 4 text messages per week for 6 months in addition to usual care. Text messages provided advice, motivational reminders, and support to change lifestyle behaviors. Patients in the control group (n=358) received usual care. Messages for each participant were selected from a bank of messages according to baseline characteristics (eg, smoking) and delivered via an automated computerized message management system. The program was not interactive.\ud
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Main Outcomes and Measures The primary end point was low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) level at 6 months. Secondary end points included systolic blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), physical activity, and smoking status.\ud
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Results At 6 months, levels of LDL-C were significantly lower in intervention participants (mean difference, −5 mg/dL [95% CI, −9 to 0]; P = .04). There were concurrent reductions in systolic blood pressure (−7.6 mm Hg [95% CI, −9.8 to −5.4]; P < .001) and BMI (−1.3 [95% CI, −1.6 to −0.9]; P < .001), significant increases in physical activity (+345 metabolic equivalent task min/wk [95% CI, 195 to 495]; P < .001), and a significant reduction in smoking (26% vs 44%; relative risk, 0.61 [95% CI, 0.48 to 0.76]; P < .001). The majority reported the text-message program to be useful (91%), easy to understand (97%), and appropriate in frequency (86%).\ud
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Conclusions and Relevance Among patients with coronary heart disease, the use of a lifestyle-focused text messaging service compared with usual care resulted in a modest improvement in LDL-C level and greater improvement in other cardiovascular disease risk factors. The duration of these effects and hence whether they result in improved clinical outcomes remain to be determined.\ud
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Trial Registration anzctr.org.au Identifier: ACTRN1261100016192
Book Review: Building a Peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the Establishment of Sovereignty in Tanzania 1960-1964
No full textBook Title: Building a Peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the Establishment of Sovereignty in Tanzania 1960-1964Book Author: Paul BjerkNew York: University of Rochester Press, 2015. 374pp. ISBN-13:978-1-58046-505-2. Price $75 Hardcover
Measuring the Effects of "Adults Only" Age Restrictions on Condominium Prices
No full textCurrent U.S. housing policy prohibits discrimination in the sale or rental of housing or in the provision of brokerage services on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or familial status. Since 1988, an exception to this policy has permitted owners and operators of buildings and facilities that were intended to be operated as housing for older persons to discriminate against younger residents, including families with children and pregnant women, without violating the nation's fair housing laws. This exception was clarified by the Housing for older persons. The purpose of this study is to consider whether such restrictions have a measurable effect on housing prices. Based on data from condominium transactions in southeast Florida, the results presented here suggest that age restrictions have a positive price effect, holding other determinants of condominium prices constant.
Radio, scène et documentaire sonore de recherche: : explorations sonores de la peinture de Mark Rothko
No full textThe sound scenes proposed in this article aim to expand the notion by looking at three sound forms linked together by the aesthetic experience that Mark Rothko's painting provokes. The aim is to observe how the sound documentary on the creation of Rothko produced by Claire ingrid Cottanceau and Olivier Mellano for the France Culture radio channel provided the impetus for the stage form Rothko Untitled #2 conceived by the same authors, and how this creative process gave rise to the production of a sound research documentary by the author of this article.Les scènes du son proposées dans cet article visent à déployer la notion en abordant trois formes sonores reliées entre elles par l’expérience esthétique que suscite la peinture de Mark Rothko. Il est question d’observer comment le documentaire sonore de création Rothko produit par Claire ingrid Cottanceau et Olivier Mellano pour la chaîne de radio France Culture a donné l’impulsion à la forme scénique Rothko Untitled #2 conçue par les mêmes auteurs et comment ce processus de création a donné lieu à la production d’un documentaire sonore de recherche réalisé par l’autrice de cet article
Radio, scène et documentaire sonore de recherche: : explorations sonores de la peinture de Mark Rothko
No full textThe sound scenes proposed in this article aim to expand the notion by looking at three sound forms linked together by the aesthetic experience that Mark Rothko's painting provokes. The aim is to observe how the sound documentary on the creation of Rothko produced by Claire ingrid Cottanceau and Olivier Mellano for the France Culture radio channel provided the impetus for the stage form Rothko Untitled #2 conceived by the same authors, and how this creative process gave rise to the production of a sound research documentary by the author of this article.Les scènes du son proposées dans cet article visent à déployer la notion en abordant trois formes sonores reliées entre elles par l’expérience esthétique que suscite la peinture de Mark Rothko. Il est question d’observer comment le documentaire sonore de création Rothko produit par Claire ingrid Cottanceau et Olivier Mellano pour la chaîne de radio France Culture a donné l’impulsion à la forme scénique Rothko Untitled #2 conçue par les mêmes auteurs et comment ce processus de création a donné lieu à la production d’un documentaire sonore de recherche réalisé par l’autrice de cet article
But Is It Art? Female Performers in the Café-Concert
No full textThe Café-Concert as an object of study has tended to attract the interest of art rather than theatre historians, despite the fact that it was the major form of popular entertainment in France during the nineteenth century. Similar but not identical to the English music hall of the same period, the Café-Concert produced a number of stars of national importance, a large majority of whom were women. Through the writings of journalists and commentators of the period, this article explores how these female performers were perceived and constructed as objects of the public gaze. The author, Geraldine Harris, is a Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Lancaster, with interests in both popular and feminist theatre
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EU Contractual Protection of Creators: Blind Spots and Shortcomings
No full textOne key objective of copyright is to grant exclusive rights to authors and creators to enable them to reap the full value of their creations. As a consequence, they should be able to transfer or license their rights to persons and companies more apt to exploit them commercially, thereby earning some revenues from such exploitation. Both United States and the European Union recognize the creator as the primary copyright owner. Because copyright is transferable, at least the economic rights, the work can transform into an economic asset whose rights are acquired by producers, publishers or other economic actors whose purpose is to make it available on the market. The creation then becomes a book, a film, a music album, a play. In most cases, producers and publishers take the risk and investment needed for the work to yield some revenue and provide access to the market for authors. The first modern copyright law, the U.K. Statute of Anne, recognized early on this reality, as its first provisions already mentioned the author and publisher side by side.
Therefore, one of the first relevant acts accomplished by the author, after the creation itself, is to entrust someone else to commercially exploit her rights, hence to give up some part of control over her work. This first contract may be a tricky episode for creators as they will in most cases be in a weaker bargaining position, due to their inexperience, lack of information or desire to be published or produced at any cost.
Conversely, commercial undertakings exploiting musical, audiovisual, literary or other works are generally better equipped—and more accustomed—than individual creators to draft contracts that protect their interests. The increasing concentration in the economic sector of entertainment and media strengthens even more their bargaining power and their possibility to impose unilateral and standard exploitation contracts that tend more and more to be so-called “adhesion contracts,” that are proposed to authors with no real margin for negotiation, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. As cultural markets are considered by economists to be winner-take-all markets, they hold a great part of risk for creators and commercial exploiters alike, a risk that has even been increased in the digital environment with the piracy threat. As a result, only a few creators can earn a sufficient income out of their creation and it has been estimated that the top ten percent of the U.K. creators get about sixty to eighty percent of the total income of the creative profession.
It will come as no surprise that, on average, incomes of creators are well below the median income. The current economic situation of creators in Europe, who will be directly affected by austerity policies and the ensuing reduction of culture funding, might further increase their vulnerability. The same could be said of countries outside of the European Union.
The European Union has so far declined to harmonize the legal provisions aimed at protecting creators in the contracts they enter into, the matter being left to Member States. Some (e.g. Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain or Italy) have a detailed and protective set of legal provisions aimed at rebalancing the bargaining power between the creator and her publisher/producer. Other countries have no rules at all (e.g. U.K.) or only partial ones (e.g. Denmark).
The legal protection that exists in some countries consists of default and mandatory rules that copyright contracts should comply with: they deal with transferability of rights (including the issue of moral rights), required formalities, restrictions on transfer of rights, obligations to specify the scope, duration, territorial scope and remuneration of the transfer, obligations of exploitation imposed to the person acquiring the rights, interpretation rules, and termination or revision of contract. Some specific provisions also apply to contracts applicable to defined categories of works, such as publishing contracts for literary works, production contracts for audiovisual works, etc.
Additionally, the general rules of contract law can be used to confer more protection to the authors. As the area of contract law is less harmonized in the European Union, the rules will differ greatly from one Member State to the other, but could include the principles of good faith, fairness or equity, the prohibition of unfair terms, some principles of interpretation of contracts, the recourse to usage, etc.
This paper is based on a study commissioned in 2013 by the European Parliament to assess the situation of European creators and the contractual protection conferred to them by E.U. Member States.
Part I rapidly summarizes the legal provisions existing in some European countries that protect authors when transferring their copyright.
Part II zooms out of the specific rules regulating the copyright contracts to draw the overall context of exploitation of creative works and of its many actors to challenge the central role that such national laws confer to the first contract entered upon between the creator and her publisher or producer. This insufficiency is illustrated by selected issues for which these specific rules are incapable to provide a satisfactory solution or protection to the author.
Part III offers a conclusion in the form of some recommendations for a better treatment of creators when transferring their rights for exploitation of their works. These recommendations take into account the broader picture of exploitation of creative content and the shortcomings of the current legal provisions, when they exist
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