Special Education 2000 : the implementation experience : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Policy at Massey University

Since 1877 the state has provided free, secular and compulsory education for most of the children of school age in New Zealand. In 1989 legislation was passed that gave the right to enrol and attend at the local school to all children. For more than one hundred years children with disabilities and special educational needs were supported in a piecemeal fashion. The influences and practices from the medical discourse often dominated their education and services when they were available. With the passage into law of a right to an education in the mainstream for all children the state accepted the responsibility for the full range of students with special educational needs. At the same time as passing into law the opportunities for these children the Fourth Labour Government was initiating major reforms in education administration. The Education Act 1989 made provision for the governance of schools by locally elected Boards of Trustees. In 1995 after a hiatus with no special education policy for an interval of almost six years the policy Special Education 2000 was announced. This policy programme was to complete the work of education reform commenced under Tomorrow's Schools. The feature of this was to be the shift in responsibility for the education of students with special educational needs from the Ministry of Education to local school Boards of Trustees. This study examines the experiences of a small group of stakeholders as they implement the policies of Special Education 2000. Four secondary school principals participated in interviews that complemented policy analysis as part of this study .The outcomes of implementation varied for the participants. For two of them the policies appeared to offer continuity and opportunity to extend school services for students with high and very high special educational needs. For the other two this was not the case and a redirection or cessation of services appeared to be the outcome of the new policies. The findings of this study pinpoint the issues arising from the selection of policy instruments to implement and achieve policy goals, difficulties are identified due to a mismatch between the two

Draught Animal Systems and Management: An Indonesian Study

Livestock Production/Industries,

The mechanosensitive ion channel TRAAK is localized to the mammalian node of Ranvier.

TRAAK is a membrane tension-activated K+ channel that has been associated through behavioral studies to mechanical nociception. We used specific monoclonal antibodies in mice to show that TRAAK is localized exclusively to nodes of Ranvier, the action potential propagating elements of myelinated nerve fibers. Approximately 80 percent of myelinated nerve fibers throughout the central and peripheral nervous system contain TRAAK in what is likely an all-nodes or no-nodes per axon fashion. TRAAK is not observed at the axon initial segment where action potentials are first generated. We used polyclonal antibodies, the TRAAK inhibitor RU2 and node clamp amplifiers to demonstrate the presence and functional properties of TRAAK in rat nerve fibers. TRAAK contributes to the leak K+ current in mammalian nerve fiber conduction by hyperpolarizing the resting membrane potential, thereby increasing Na+ channel availability for action potential propagation. We speculate on why nodes of Ranvier contain a mechanosensitive K+ channel

Downs, Stokes and the Dynamics of Electoral Choice

A six-wave 2005–09 national panel survey conducted in conjunction with the British Election Study provided data for an investigation of sources of stability and change in voters’ party preferences. The authors test competing spatial and valence theories of party choice and investigate the hypothesis that spatial calculations provide cues for making valence judgements. Analyses reveal that valence mechanisms – heuristics based on party leader images, party performance evaluations and mutable partisan attachments – outperform a spatial model in terms of strength of direct effects on party choice. However, spatial effects still have sizeable indirect effects on the vote via their influence on valence judgements. The results of exogeneity tests bolster claims about the flow of influence from spatial calculations to valence judgments to electoral choice.</jats:p

To Eat or Not to Eat? Animals and Categorical Fluidity in Shang Society

In Shang scholarship, animals have frequently been understood in terms of religion. Animals are viewed as powerful totemic symbols of clans or fantastic vehicles connecting shamans to the spirit realm, or the central components of ritual sacrifice. Such discourses take modern Western ontological assumptions concerning human– animal and religious-secular distinctions for granted, however. Incorporating new textual and archaeological data, as well as theoretical advances made in related disciplines, we examine the consumption of animals to shed new light on the nature of Shang being, society, and animality. A wide theoretical stance is taken to untangle some of the underlying assumptions that have governed research on the Shang. The Shang world that emerges was characterized by a fluid sense of being. Some creatures were especially mutable and so assumed many functions in Shang society, from prized companions to offerings and food sources. Our findings call into question the reification of religion and ritual as spheres of action fundamentally separate from daily activities, as has often been implicitly assumed by Shang scholars. We argue that divination and offerings to the spirits and the dead were important practices of the general social economy of the Shang

Development of a decision support tool to facilitate primary care management of patients with abnormal liver function tests without clinically apparent liver disease [HTA03/38/02]. Abnormal Liver Function Investigations Evaluation (ALFIE)

Liver function tests (LFTs) are routinely performed in primary care, and are often the gateway to further invasive and/or expensive investigations. Little is known of the consequences in people with an initial abnormal liver function (ALF) test in primary care and with no obvious liver disease. Further investigations may be dangerous for the patient and expensive for Health Services. The aims of this study are to determine the natural history of abnormalities in LFTs before overt liver disease presents in the population and identify those who require minimal further investigations with the potential for reduction in NHS costs

Efficacy of temsirolimus in metastatic chromophobe renal cell carcinoma

&lt;p&gt;Background: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a histopathologically and molecularly heterogeneous disease with the chromophobe subtype (chRCC) accounting for approximately 5% of all cases. The median overall survival of advanced RCC has improved significantly since the advent of tyrosine kinase inhibitors and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors. However, high-quality evidence for the use of new generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors in patients with advanced chRCC is lacking. Few published case reports have highlighted the use of temsirolimus in chRCC.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Case presentation: Here, we report the case of a 36-year-old Caucasian woman with metastatic chRCC with predominantly skeletal metastases who was refractory to sunitinib who demonstrated a durable clinical response to temsirolimus lasting 20 months. We review the available evidence pertaining to the use of new generation molecularly targeted agents, in particular mTOR inhibitors in chRCC and discuss their emerging role in the management of this disease which would aid the oncologists faced with the challenge of treating this rare type of RCC.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Conclusion: Conducting randomised clinical trials in this rarer sub-group of patients would be challenging and our case report and the evidence reviewed would guide the physicians to make informed decision regarding the management of these patients.&lt;/p&gt

High speed synchrotron X-ray imaging studies of the ultrasound shockwave and enhanced flow during metal solidification processes

The highly dynamic behaviour of ultrasonic bubble implosion in liquid metal, the multiphase liquid metal flow containing bubbles and particles, and the interaction between ultrasonic waves and semisolid phases during solidification of metal were studied in situ using the complementary ultrafast and high speed synchrotron X-ray imaging facilities housed respectively at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, US, and Diamond Light Source, UK. Real-time ultrafast X-ray imaging of 135,780 frames per second (fps) revealed that ultrasonic bubble implosion in a liquid Bi-8 wt. %Zn alloy can occur in a single wave period (30 kHz), and the effective region affected by the shockwave at implosion was 3.5 times the original bubble diameter. Furthermore, ultrasound bubbles in liquid metal move faster than the primary particles, and the velocity of bubbles is 70 ~ 100% higher than that of the primary particles present in the same locations close to the sonotrode. Ultrasound waves can very effectively create a strong swirling flow in a semisolid melt in less than one second. The energetic flow can detach solid particles from the liquid-solid interface and redistribute them back into the bulk liquid very effectively

Early Paleozoic post-breakup magmatism along the Cordilleran margin of western North America: new geochronological and geochemical results from the Kechika Group, Yukon, Canada

Lower Paleozoic igneous rocks were emplaced along the Cordilleran margin of western North America following lithospheric breakup. Several competing rift models have been proposed to explain the significance of this magmatism to Cordilleran passive margin evolution. New field and laboratory studies of the Kechika group, south-central Yukon, were conducted to test these rift models and constrain the timing and tectonic setting of postbreakup magmatism. The Kechika group contains vent-proximal and sediment-sill facies that developed outboard of continental margin shelf and trough basins. Zircon U-Pb dates indicate that Kechika group rocks crystallized during the late Cambrian (488-483 Ma) and Early Ordovician (473 Ma). Whole-rock trace element and Nd-Hf isotope results are consistent with the low-degree partial melting of a lithospheric mantle source during margin-scale extension. Post-breakup rocks emplaced along the magma-poor North Atlantic margins, including the Orphan Knoll and Galicia Bank crustal blocks, are likely modern analogues for the Kechika group