The “Other” athletes: Representations of disability in Canadian print media during the London 2012 Paralympic Games

In our highly mediated society, media culture plays a critical role in socialization and offers a conduit for the naturalization of ideas. By this reasoning, stories told by the media about Paralympic athletes have the potential to influence our understanding of disability. This study reveals the representation of Paralympic athletes in Canada’s two national newspapers The National Post and The Globe & Mail surrounding the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Eighty-eight articles were collected over a 40-day period from August 15, 2012 – September 23, 2012. A critical disability studies lens guided methods of media frames analysis. Results demonstrated that coverage favoured an athletic frame, but medicalization and ‘supercrip’ stories remained highly pervasive. The presence of these underlying messages indicates that disability is still viewed as a problem to be solved or a situation to be overcome. These ideas are discussed as forms of “Othering,” problematizing representations that the media continues to present

Isolating electrons on superfluid helium

Electrons floating on the surface of superfluid helium have been suggested as promising mobile spin quantum bits (qubits). Transferring electrons extremely efficiently in a narrow channel structure with underlying gates has been demonstrated, showing no transfer error while clocking $10^9$ pixels in a 3-phase charge coupled device (CCD). While on average, one electron per channel was clocked, it is desirable to reliably obtain a single electron per channel. We have designed an electron turnstile consisting of a narrow (0.8$\mu$m) channel and narrow underlying gates (0.5$\mu$m) operating across seventy-eight parallel channels. Initially, we find that more than one electron can be held above the small gates. Underlying gates in the turnstile region allow us to repeatedly split these electron packets. Results show a plateau in the electron signal as a function of the applied gate voltages, indicating quantization of the number of electrons per pixel, simultaneously across the seventy-eight parallel channels

Strategi Penciptaan Pelayanan Kesehatan Dasar untuk Kemudahan Akses Penduduk Desa Miskin

Improving health care service access for the poor is a complex and challenging effort. Various health care facilities are often located in hardly accessible spots for the poor. This research seeks to develop policy options that can be used to create primary health care services became more accessible to the poor. A mobile facility-based health care service system or a service system which allows accessible health facility for the society, especially the poor, needs to be developed. This system needs regulation, institutional, human resources and financial support, and also good coordination among institutions which have related functions and duty on primary health care services

La productividad del crédito en las pequeñas y medianas industrias (pymi) del sector manufacturero

The sustainability of productivity growth in an economy is not only generated by the utilization level of production factors - capital and labor - but also by the efficiency increase in the use and combination of these factors. In this sense, this research analyzes credit productivity in SMI in the manufacturing sector of the state of Yaracuy, in order to demonstrate the efficiency of credit use by industries’ owners or managers and its relationship with searching of productivity, through the factors profitability in final goods. This is a field design descriptive study, which addressed nine industries in the footwear, textiles, clothing and metallurgical sectors. Relevant conclusion shows that the desired productivity was not generated by the granted financing, according with the production indicators and employment generation, due to the country's economic environment and administrative barriers that significantly affected the industrial sector.La sostenibilidad del crecimiento de la productividad en una economía, no sólo se genera por el nivel de utilización de los factores de producción - capital y trabajo - sino también por el incremento en la eficiencia con la que se utilizan y combinan estos factores. En este sentido, la presente investigación analiza la productividad del crédito en las PYMI del sector Manufacturero del estado Yaracuy, con el propósito de demostrar la utilización eficiente de los créditos por parte de los dueños/gerentes de las industrias y su relación en la búsqueda de la productividad, por medio del aprovechamiento de los factores utilizados en la producción de bienes finales. El estudio es descriptivo bajo un diseño de campo, en el cual se abordó nueve industrias en áreas del calzado, textil, ropa y metalúrgico. Entre las conclusiones relevantes está que los indicadores de producción y generación de empleo con respecto al financiamiento otorgado, no generaron la productividad deseada, debido a coyunturas económicas propias del país y barreras administrativas que afectaron de manera significativa al sector industri

Extremely efficient clocked electron transfer on superfluid helium

Unprecedented transport efficiency is demonstrated for electrons on the surface of micron-scale superfluid helium filled channels by co-opting silicon processing technology to construct the equivalent of a charge-coupled device (CCD). Strong fringing fields lead to undetectably rare transfer failures after over a billion cycles in two dimensions. This extremely efficient transport is measured in 120 channels simultaneously with packets of up to 20 electrons, and down to singly occupied pixels. These results point the way towards the large scale transport of either computational qubits or electron spin qubits used for communications in a hybrid qubit system

Evaluating a community-based early childhood education and development program in Indonesia: study protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial with supplementary matched control group

BACKGROUND This paper presents the study protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a supplementary matched control group. The aim of the trial is to evaluate a community-based early education and development program launched by the Government of Indonesia. The program was developed in collaboration with the World Bank with a total budget of US$127.7 million, and targets an estimated 738,000 children aged 0 to 6 years living in approximately 6,000 poor communities. The aim of the program is to increase access to early childhood services with the secondary aim of improving school readiness. METHODS/DESIGN The study is being conducted across nine districts. The baseline survey contained 310 villages, of which 100 were originally allocated to the intervention arm, 20 originally allocated to a 9-month delay staggered start, 100 originally allocated to an 18-month delay staggered start and 90 allocated to a matched control group (no intervention). The study consists of two cohorts, one comprising children aged 12 to 23 months and the other comprising children aged 48 to 59 months at baseline. The data collection instruments include child observations and task/game-based assessments as well as a questionnaire suite, village head questionnaire, service level questionnaires, household questionnaire, and child caretaker questionnaire. The baseline survey was conducted from March to April 2009, midline was conducted from April to August 2010 and endline conducted early 2013. The resultant participation rates at both the district and village levels were 90%. At the child level, the participation rate was 99.92%. The retention rate at the child level at midline was 99.67%. DISCUSSION This protocol paper provides a detailed record of the trial design including a discussion regarding difficulties faced with compliance to the randomization, compliance to the dispersion schedule of community block grants, and procurement delays for baseline and midline data collections. Considering the execution of the program and the resultant threats to the study, we discuss our analytical plan and intentions for endline data collection. TRIALS REGISTRATION Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN76061874Menno Pradhan, Sally A Brinkman, Amanda Beatty, Amelia Maika, Elan Satriawan, Joppe de Ree and Amer Hasa

Complete Haplotype Sequence of the Human Immunoglobulin Heavy-Chain Variable, Diversity, and Joining Genes and Characterization of Allelic and Copy-Number Variation

The immunoglobulin heavy-chain locus (IGH) encodes variable (IGHV), diversity (IGHD), joining (IGHJ), and constant (IGHC) genes and is responsible for antibody heavy-chain biosynthesis, which is vital to the adaptive immune response. Programmed V-(D)-J somatic rearrangement and the complex duplicated nature of the locus have impeded attempts to reconcile its genomic organization based on traditional B-lymphocyte derived genetic material. As a result, sequence descriptions of germline variation within IGHV are lacking, haplotype inference using traditional linkage disequilibrium methods has been difficult, and the human genome reference assembly is missing several expressed IGHV genes. By using a hydatidiform mole BAC clone resource, we present the most complete haplotype of IGHV, IGHD, and IGHJ gene regions derived from a single chromosome, representing an alternate assembly of ∼1 Mbp of high-quality finished sequence. From this we add 101 kbp of previously uncharacterized sequence, including functional IGHV genes, and characterize four large germline copy-number variants (CNVs). In addition to this germline reference, we identify and characterize eight CNV-containing haplotypes from a panel of nine diploid genomes of diverse ethnic origin, discovering previously unmapped IGHV genes and an additional 121 kbp of insertion sequence. We genotype four of these CNVs by using PCR in 425 individuals from nine human populations. We find that all four are highly polymorphic and show considerable evidence of stratification (Fst = 0.3–0.5), with the greatest differences observed between African and Asian populations. These CNVs exhibit weak linkage disequilibrium with SNPs from two commercial arrays in most of the populations tested