216 research outputs found
Acafan Identity, Communities of Practice, and Vocational Poaching
No full textIn a conceptualization and critique of the implications motivating a set of teaching and learning sessions designed to introduce undergraduate students to the professional role of location scouts and managers, two main interventions are offered. First, discussion of acafan identities is advanced by considering how this subject position applies to teaching and learning contexts rather than individual research dispositions, with acafans transferring competencies developed through fan practices that appropriate industry-located forms of knowledge to inform pedagogical design. Second, the concept of vocational poaching is applied as an alternative of fannish appropriation that acafans can engage in when designing teaching and learning sessions. Vocational poaching involves individual acafans performing tactical raids on industrially located forms of knowledge via fan practices such as location visiting and using these to satisfy the requirements of neoliberal teaching policies
Post trade liberalization policy and institutional challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean
No full textArgentina, Chile, Colombia, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay undertook extensive trade reform at a time of crisis, at which time institutional reform was difficult to undertake. Many of the countries had become members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in the late 1980s and anticipated institutional reform. Only later did they reform trade policymaking institutions to bring them somewhat in line with trade policy regimes and GATT rules. These countries have all used reference prices and antidumping provisions of GATT, rather than safeguards, to provide relief from import surges. They have all tried to centralize trade policy by moving it from different agencies into a single agency. Despite liberalization, some sectors -- including automobiles, textiles and agriculture -- remain protected. Lessons the author draws from experience in these coutries: 1) the deteriorating macroeconomic situations are the main challenge to maintaining open trade policy; 2) trade policymaking must be constantly reviewed to prevent reversals, and the costs of protection must be communicated to the public at large; 3) There must be short-run measures to help domestic activities adjust to short-run price movements and alleviate pressure for protection. The danger -- such measures (unrelated to long-run price trends) can become permanent. 4) external commitments (through WTO or customs unions) can be used to discourage a return to protection; 5) extending reform (to labor and capital markets and the regulatory framework) will help maintain and extend trade liberalization. Allowing factors of production to move smoothly from one activity to another could help prevent the buildup of pressures that lead to protection; 6) an institution to consider exceptional protection should be advisory (independent of day-to-day trade policymaking), so that it works steadily, free from administrative pressures and exigencies. Requests for protection must be handled openly and transparently, with the findings subject to public scrutiny. Procedures for granting relief through safeguards and similar mechanisms must reflect all interests, including those of consumers, exporters, and users of the product; and 7) the analysis to establish injury must conform to high technical standards. The criteria to consider trade policies must reflect national interests, not those of any particular sector.Economic Theory&Research,Common Carriers Industry,Trade Policy,Environmental Economics&Policies,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Environmental Economics&Policies,Transport and Trade Logistics
Symphony No. 1 Op. 19, “Fantasia” for orchestra and choir
No full textThis thesis consists of an original composition by the author. The full score is included
Juvenile homicide : a criminological study on the possible causes of juvenile homicidal delinquency in Jamaica
No full textJamaica, the so-called land of wood and water, normally is the embodiment of a dream holiday destination with white sandy beaches, tropical palm trees, dazzling sunshine and the typical Caribbean flair. Generally, murder and manslaughter are not associated with Jamaica. However, international comparisons of crime rates reveal that Jamaica has persistently had one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Jamaica has been described as the murder capital of the world in 2006 by the BBC news after more than 1’600 people were killed in the year 2005; a tally of at least five people murdered a day. The majority of the homicides are caused by young men. Despite the dimension and severity of the homicidal problem in Jamaica, it is astonishing that literature on this phenomenon in Jamaica is very sparse and the literature that is available either doesn’t conform to the current homicide situation in Jamaica anymore or is inconsistent with other studies. The aim of the present research study was thus to close this gap and to help the process of comprehending the problem of fatal juvenile delinquency by engaging empirical research in serious efforts to describe and explain the epidemic. According to the author, understanding juvenile homicidal delinquents and their actions and thus ascertaining a plausible explanation for their high homicide rate can only be achieved by going back to those whose acts are to be explained: The juvenile homicidal delinquents themselves. The findings of the present study are therefore based upon the data gathered by means of 20 face-to-face, semi-standardised interviews with young men who have committed at least one homicide during the last five years prior to the interview and were aged between 12 and 25 years at the time of the respective homicide(s). The author acts on the assumption that homicides by juveniles can be understood as a reaction that emerges situationally and is based on a complex bundle of causes which leads to an increased susceptibility to homicides. The aim of the present study was to generate a plausible and scientifically substantiated hypothesis to explain the high proportion of male juveniles responsible for the homicide rate in Jamaica. Three groupings were examined: The individual personality characteristics of the homicide delinquents, the social context influencing the individual’s thoughts and actions and the triggering factors in the homicide context.
The study comes to the conclusion that the homicides of the respondents of the present study – additionally to the basic prerequisites of the occurrence of homicides in general such as a life in deprivation and the failure of the institutions of socialisation to sufficiently socialise their members – can be explained in high gear by the widely dispread culture of violence. Within this culture, violence constitutes a part of every-day behaviour and killing is perceived as a legitimate form of dispute resolution to which one has adapted because it utterly works. This is an instrumental understanding of violent behaviour. This apparent culture of violence of the underclass society with the deeply embedded willingness to apply violence to solve even seemingly minor disputes is intensified by a high gun prevalence and easy firearm accessibility as well as the wide distribution of and attachment to gangs. Firearms as well as delinquent gangs are two powerful factors that accord power, a feeling of strength and superiority to the individual. Status, power and respect rank high within the impecunious underclass society in Jamaica. Violence is perceived as a necessary instrument to sustain the own identity, status and respect. Thus, the fight for respect in the street culture of Jamaica’s urban inner-city youth depicts an act in self-defence for the parties involved. And such an act in self-defence legitimises to kill
Stock market development and financial intermediaries : stylized facts
No full textWorld stock markets are booming. Between 1982 and 1993, stock market capitalization grew from 10 trillion, an average 15 percent a year. A disproportionate amount of this growth was in emerging stock markets, which rose from 3 percent of world stock markets capitalization to 14 percent in the same period. Yet there is little empirical evidence about how important stock markets are to long-term economic development. Economists have neither a common concept nor a common measure of stock market development, so we know little about how stock market development affects the rest of the financial system or how corporations finance themselves. The authors collected and compared many different indicators of stock market development using data on 41 countries from 1986 to 1993. Each indicator has statistical and conceptual shortcomings, so they used different measures of stock market size, liquidity, concentration, and volatility, of institutional development, and of international integration. Their goal: to summarize infromation about a variety of indicators for stock market development, in order to facilitate research into the links between stock markets, economic development, and corporate financing decisions. They highlight certain important correlations: (i) In the 41 countries they studied, there are enormous cross-country differences in the level of stock market development for each indicator. The ratio of market capitalization to the gross domestic product (GDP), for example, is greater than 1 in five countries and less than 0.10 in five others. (ii) There are intuitively appealing correlations among indicators. For example, big markets tend to be less volatile, more liquid, and less concentrated in a few stocks. Internationally integrated markets tend to be less volatile. And institutionally developed markets tend to be large and liquid. (iii) The three most developed markets are in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The most underdeveloped markets are in Colombia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, and Switzerland seem to have highly developed stock market, whereas Argentina, Greece, Pakistan and Turkey have underdeveloped in richer countries, but many markets commonly labeled"emerging"(for example, in Korea, Malaysia,and Thailand) are systematically more developed than markets commonly labeled"developed"(for example, in Australia, Canada, and many European countries). (iv) Between 1986 and 1993, some markets developed rapidly in size, liquidity, and international integration. Indonesia, Portugal, Turkey, and Venezuela experienced explosive development, for example. Case studies on the reasons for (and economic consequences of) this rapid development could yield valuable insights. (v) The level of stock market development is highly correlated with the development of banks, nonbank financial institutions (finance companies, mutual funds, brokerage houses), insurance companies, and private pension funds.Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Banks&Banking Reform
An aerostable drag-sail device for the deorbit and disposal of sub-tonne, low earth orbit spacecraft
No full textThere is an increasing amount of debris in low Earth orbit arising from the
disintegration and collision of old spacecraft which have not been removed from
orbit. A ‘bolt-on’ deorbit device to be attached to new spacecraft is therefore
proposed, which would deploy an aerostable drag sail at end-of-life. This drag sail
would interact with the rarefied atmospheric gases and plasma present at altitudes of
up to 1,000 km and thus denude energy from the orbit, causing it to become lower
and lower until final re-entry of the host becomes inevitable. At this point the drag
sail would collapse and both the host and the deorbit device would be destroyed by
aerothermodynamic forces.
This work develops the deorbit device concept by demonstrating that aerostable drag
enhancement is an effective and competitive deorbit mechanism. This is done by:
• Calculating the aerodynamic, solar radiation pressure and gravitational
influences on the deployed drag sail and using them to model the
performance of the device.
• Using the results of that modelling to identify the optimum shape, size and
deployment conditions of the drag sail.
• Further calculating the structural strength required to resist the aerodynamic
loads until the desired collapse altitude.
• And finally by using that information to assemble a conceptual design which
demonstrates the practicability of the system
Listening to the voices of pupils: an alternative route to a balanced curriculum for junior middle schools in China
No full textThe development and understanding of curriculum are much influenced by learners’ cognitive and intellectual development. Since breadth, balance, relevance and differentiation are the four main factors to consider in the process of planning, implementing and assessing curriculum, this essay aims to provide the educators with a critical overview of the curriculum for junior middle schools in China with a focus on the issue of balance. In so doing, the author emphasizes with the support of a range of literature in the UK context the importance of voices of pupils (Garner & Sandow, 1995, Shevlin & Rose, 2003) in their intellectual development and academic attainment in regards of curriculum (Byers and Rose 2004, Darling, 1994, Sebba et al 1995). Meanwhile, the author listens to the perspectives of pupils with special educational needs as consumers on the current curriculum in their schools which show a strong desire for a balanced curriculum (Farrell, 1997; Rayner, 1998; McLaughlin & Tilstone, 2000). The author tends to argue by analyzing the sample curricular in two key junior middle schools of two cities in a province in China that there still exists a lack of balance in the curriculum in terms of the time allocation for the core and peripheral subjects and the balance within individual subjects in teaching and learning. The author thus suggests the decision makers of the curriculum and those who are involved in the implementing of the curriculum listen and respond to the voices as an alternative route to identify the causes for the failure of meeting the expectations of the curriculum by those pupils with special needs and develop a much appropriate balance in curriculum for them
Where has all the education gone?
No full textCross-national data on economic growth rates show that increases in educational capital resulting from improvements in the educational attainment of the labor force have had no positive impact on the growth rate of output per worker. In fact, contends the author, the estimated impact of growth of human capital on conventional nonregression growth accounting measures of total factor productivity is large, strongly significant, and negative. Needless to say, this at least appears to contradict the current conventional wisdom in development circles about education's importance for growth. After establishing that this negative result about the education-growth linkage is robust, credible, and consistent with previous literature, the author explores three possible explanations that reconcile the abundant evidence about wage gains from schooling for individuals with the lack of schooling impact on aggregate growth: 1) that schooling creates no human capital. Schooling may not actually raise cognitive skills or productivity but schooling may nevertheless raise the private wage because to employers it signals a positive characteristic like ambition or innate ability; 2) that the marginal returns toeducation are falling rapidly where demand for educated labor is stagnant. Expanding the supply of educated labor where there is stagnant demand for it causes the rate of return to education to fall rapidly, particularly where the sluggish demand is due to limited adoption of innovations; and 3) that the institutional environments in many countries have been sufficiently perverse that the human capital accumulated has been applied to activities that served to reduce economic growth. In other words, possibly education does raise productivity, and there is demand for this more productive educated labor, but demand for educated labor comes from individually remunerative but socially wasteful or counterproductive activities - a bloated bureaucracy, for example, or overmanned state enterprises in countries where the government is the employer of last resort - so that while individuals'wages go up with education, output stagnates, or even falls.Capital Markets and Capital Flows,Economic Theory&Research,Decentralization,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Achieving Shared Growth,Governance Indicators,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Growth
The Celebrity of Charlotte Smith: Private Sorrows, Public Tears
No full textThe celebrity of Charlotte Smith was initiated by the publication ofElegiac Sonnets in 1784. The large subscription lists that successiveeditions garnered confirms her status as a popular writer. Smith'scelebrity is unique when compared to other late eighteenth-centurycelebrities as she resided outside of London, and did not associate, inpublic, with other famous writers, artists, and actors of her time. Hersolitary existence away from the public view created speculation andgossip about the melancholic poet, which in turn led to an outpouring offinancial support. Her celebrity, instigated by the public display of her private sorrows,is inextricably tied to two dominant cultural features: the cult of sensibilityand the neoclassic tradition. The culture of sensibility created an idealatmosphere in which to publish an emotive text, as the public sought outworks that would trigger an emotional response. She creates sympathywithin her reader, eliciting a strong emotional reaction and acts of charity.Smith also uses a neoclassical poetic convention, quoting profusely fromother famous authors to create a connection between her poetry andtheirs. Smith foregrounds herself as an educated author, slightlymodifying each poetic quotation, and in doing so establishes her ownunique niche within the poetic tradition. Smith's celebrity is heavily dependent upon her ability to arouse pityand more importantly charity within the reader. Smith's goal, prior topublication, was to be self-sufficient and garner enough money to providefor her family. Her celebrity can therefore be viewed as a deliberate moveinto the public sphere.Master of Arts (MA
The integration of stimulus dimensions in the perception of music
No full textA central aim of cognitive psychology is to explain how we integrate stimulus dimensions into a unified percept, but how the dimensions of pitch and time combine in the perception of music remains a largely unresolved issue. The goal of this study was to test the effect of varying the degree of conformity to dimensional structure in pitch and time (specifically, tonality and metre) on goodness ratings and classifications of melodies. The pitches and durations of melodies were either presented in their original order, as a reordered sequence, or replaced with random elements. Musically trained and untrained participants (24 each) rated melodic goodness, attending selectively to the dimensions of pitch, time, or both. Also, 24 trained participants classified whether or not the melodies were tonal, metric, or both. Pitch and temporal manipulations always influenced responses, but participants successfully emphasized either dimension in accordance with instructions. Effects of pitch and time were mostly independent for selective attention conditions, but more interactive when evaluating both dimensions. When interactions occurred, the effect of either dimension increased as the other dimension conformed more to its original structure. Relative main effect sizes ({pipe} pitch η 2 - time η 2 {pipe}) predicted the strength of pitch-time interactions (pitch × time η 2); interactions were stronger when main effect sizes were more evenly matched. These results have implications for dimensional integration in several domains. Relative main effect size could serve as an indicator of dimensional salience, such that interactions are more likely when dimensions are equally salient
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