The life-course transitions of young women in a Maltese context

This study analyzed how a cohort of eight young women who underwent certain difficulties whilst at secondary school experienced their transition from secondary school to either work or further education. It explores changes in their perception of events and happenings that they classified as significant to them, and the influence that these changes of perception had on their evolving life-course. While not formally classified as emotionally or behaviorally challenged, all the participants in this study claimed to have had varying depths of difficulty when at secondary school, some alleging that they had been classified as troublesome by their teachers and others claiming to have seen themselves as disruptive in classroom settings. The study was informed by the participants’ voices about how they saw their transitions being forged and has a phenomenological focus.peer-reviewe

Infinite Distances and the Axion Weak Gravity Conjecture

The axion Weak Gravity Conjecture implies that when parametrically increasing the axion decay constants, instanton corrections become increasingly important. We provide strong evidence for the validity of this conjecture by studying the couplings of R-R axions arising in Calabi-Yau compactifications of Type IIA string theory. Specifically, we consider all possible infinite distance limits in complex structure moduli space and identify the axion decay constants that grow parametrically in a certain path-independent way. We then argue that for each of these limits a tower of D2-brane instantons with decreasing actions can be identified. These instantons ensure that the convex hull condition relevant for the multi-axion Weak Gravity Conjecture cannot be violated parametrically. To argue for the existence of such instantons we employ and generalize recent insights about the Swampland Distance Conjecture. Our results are general and not restricted to specific examples, since we use general results about the growth of the Hodge metric and the sl(2)-splittings of the three-form cohomology associated to each limit.Comment: 40 pages, 2 figure

Assessment of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Contamination of Breeding Pools Utilized by the Puerto Rican Crested Toad, Peltophryne lemur.

Habitat preservation and management may play an important role in the conservation of the Puerto Rican crested toad, Peltophryne lemur, due to this species' small geographic range and declining native wild population. Bioavailable water concentrations of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) contaminants within breeding pools at 3 sites were established using Passive Sampling Devices (PSDs) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS). A more diverse population of PAH analytes were found in higher concentrations at the breeding site that allowed direct vehicular access, but calculated risk quotients indicated low risk to toad reproduction associated with the current PAH analyte levels

An insight into the interplay between culture, conflict and distance in globally distributed requirements negotiations

© 2003 IEEE. There is an increasing interest in research addressing issues of global software development. Specifying software requirements is a communication-intensive collaborative activity that is increasingly performed across cultural, language and time zone boundaries. While inadequate communication significantly impacts the bridging of geographical distance between stakeholders, the cultural differences cannot be considered less significant. Findings from two global software development organizations enables us to present a model of impact of distance and the affected requirements activities due to problems of cultural diversity, inadequate communication, knowledge management and time differences. This evidence provides an important insight into the interplay between culture and conflict as well as the impact of distance on the ability to reconcile different viewpoints with regards to requirements and requirements processes

Pláticas de Doctrina Christiana [Manuscrito]

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Prevention of infections in hyposplenic and asplenic patients: an update

Patients with functional or anatomic asplenia are at a significantly increased risk of overwhelming infection, particularly involving the encapsulated bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae. The risk is highest in infants and young children, but adults also have an increased risk of infection. Preventive strategies are very important and fall into three major categories: immunoprophylaxis, antibiotic prophylaxis and education. Studies have shown that many asplenic patients are unaware of their increased risk for serious infection and the appropriate health precautions that should be undertaken. In this article we emphasise the need for preventive measures in hyposplenic and asplenic patients. We discuss the value of newly developed conjugate vaccines and the need for revaccination. Finally we draw up a recommendation for the preventive management in functional and anatomical asplenic patients

Give CRISPR a chance : the GeneSprout Initiative

Did you know that a group of early-career researchers launched an initiative enabling open dialog on new plant breeding techniques, such as genome editing? We developed a wide-ranging initiative that aims to facilitate public engagement and provide a platform for young plant scientists to encourage participation in science communication

Electoral news sharing: a study of changes in news coverage and Facebook sharing behaviour during the 2018 Mexican elections

Patterns of news consumption are changing drastically. Citizens increasingly rely on social media such as Facebook to read and share political news. With the power of these platforms to expose citizens to political information, the implications for democracy are profound, making understanding what is shared during elections a priority on the research agenda. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no study has yet explicitly explored how elections transform news sharing behaviour on Facebook. This study begins to remedy this by (a) investigating changes in news coverage and news sharing behaviour on Facebook by comparing election and routine periods, and by (b) addressing the ‘news gap’ between preferences of journalists and news consumers on social media. Employing a novel data set of news articles (N = 83,054) in Mexico, findings show that during periods of heightened political activity, both the publication and dissemination of political news increases, the gap between the news choices of journalists and consumers narrows, and that news sharing resembles a zero-sum game, with increased political news sharing leading to a decrease in the sharing of other news