Community Development Evaluation Storymap and Legend

Community based organizations, funders, and intermediary organizations working in the community development field have a shared interest in building stronger organizations and stronger communities. Through evaluation these organizations can learn how their programs and activities contribute to the achievement of these goals, and how to improve their effectiveness and the well-being of their communities. Yet, evaluation is rarely seen as part of a non-judgemental organizational learning process. Instead, the term "evaluation" has often generated anxiety and confusion. The Community Development Storymap project is a response to those concerns.Illustrations found in this document were produced by Grove Consultants

MICROFINANCE– A WAY TO CONFORNT POVERTY AND STIMULATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP WORLDWIDE

The study presents the microfinance sector, by analyzing the general context in which this type of economic activity has appeared and developed since early age. While microfinance clients have certain profiles, sector’s products are diverse. Moreover, Microfinance Institutions are different from classic bank structures, they have specific juridical background, often launching as non-profit organizations and they have developed in time complex assistance services. In Romania, non-financial institutions have mostly implemented a commercial strategy that guarantees a higher capitalization of invested funds. Still, Institutions have difficulties in adapting to market evolution; therefore some of them prefer becoming banking institutions instead. Nevertheless, present socialeconomic context points up the high demand and necessity of this type of services.microfinance, international organizations, poverty, international economy

A meta-analysis of the relation between therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome in eating disorders.

The therapeutic alliance has demonstrated an association with favorable psychotherapeutic outcomes in the treatment of eating disorders (EDs). However, questions remain about the inter-relationships between early alliance, early symptom improvement, and treatment outcome. We conducted a meta-analysis on the relations among these constructs, and possible moderators of these relations, in psychosocial treatments for EDs. Twenty studies met inclusion criteria and supplied sufficient supplementary data. Results revealed small-to-moderate effect sizes, βs = 0.13 to 0.22 (p < .05), indicating that early symptom improvement was related to subsequent alliance quality and that alliance ratings also were related to subsequent symptom reduction. The relationship between early alliance and treatment outcome was partially accounted for by early symptom improvement. With regard to moderators, early alliance showed weaker associations with outcome in therapies with a strong behavioral component relative to nonbehavioral therapies. However, alliance showed stronger relations to outcome for younger (vs. older) patients, over and above the variance shared with early symptom improvement. In sum, early symptom reduction enhances therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome in EDs, but early alliance may require specific attention for younger patients and for those receiving nonbehaviorally oriented treatments

Before and Beyond the Bachelor Machine

This paper will examine the importance of Marcel Duchamp’s La Machine Célibataire (The Bachelor) on Art and Technology in the 20th and 21st centurie

Eulerian Derivation of the Coriolis Force

In textbooks of geophysical fluid dynamics, the Coriolis force and the centrifugal force in a rotating fluid system are derived by making use of the fluid parcel concept. In contrast to this intuitive derivation to the apparent forces, more rigorous derivation would be useful not only for the pedagogical purpose, but also for the applications to other kinds of rotating geophysical systems rather than the fluid. The purpose of this paper is to show a general procedure to derive the transformed equations in the rotating frame of reference based on the local Galilean transformation and rotational coordinate transformation of field quantities. The generality and usefulness of this Eulerian approach is demonstrated in the derivation of apparent forces in rotating fluids as well as the transformed electromagnetic field equation in the rotating system.Comment: Added references. Corrected typo

Integrable supersymmetric correlated electron chain with open boundaries

We construct an extended Hubbard model with open boundaries from a $R$-matrix based on the $U_q[Osp(2|2)]$ superalgebra. We study the reflection equation and find two classes of diagonal solutions. The corresponding one-dimensional open Hamiltonians are diagonalized by means of the Bethe ansatz approach.Comment: latex, 14 page

The Turing Machine on the Dissecting Table

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century there has been an increasing awareness that software rep- resents a blind spot in new media theory. The growing interest in software also influences the argument in this paper, which sets out from the assumption that Alan M. Turing's concept of the universal machine, the first theoretical description of a computer program, is a kind of bachelor machine. Previous writings based on a similar hypothesis have focused either on a comparison of the universal machine and the bachelor machine in terms of the similarities of their structural features, or they have taken the bachelor machine as a metaphor for a man or a computer. Unlike them, this paper stresses the importance of the con- text as a key to interpreting the universal Turing machine as a bachelor machine and, potentially, as a self-portrait

Research activities in the first two cycles of European Biosystems engineering university studies - Situation in the Netherlands

Wageningen University has implemented the bachelor – master model by 2003. The biosystems related programmes of Wageningen University are the BSc Agrotechnology and the MSc Agricultural and Bioresource Engineering. The bachelor programme has a size of 180 credits and the master programme a size of 120 credits. Both 1st and 2nd cycle programmes have a strong focus on research. A thesis is part of both programmes; the size is 12 credits for the bachelor thesis (to be increased to 24 by 2010) and 36 for the master thesis. An important difference between the bachelor and the master thesis is the level of independence. The bachelor thesis work is more structured than the master thesis work. Most of the thesis work is related to ongoing research projects. In the bachelor programme there are several courses that confront students with research and in which they learn research and academic skills. In this way the students gradually learn what research is and how to do it. In the master programme there are only a few courses related to the research skills; the students that start with the master are supposed to posses these skills. The BSc degree is not considered as an end point but is a pivot point for choosing a master. Therefore there are no research positions for persons having only BSc degree. Research positions in industry require at least a MSc degree but the trend is that more and more a PhD is required. Senior research positions within the research organizations require in most cased a PhD and within the university it is a basic requirement