DO THE JAPANESE DISCRIMINATE AGAINST AUSTRALIAN BEEF IMPORTS?: EVIDENCE FROM THE DIFFERENTIAL APPROACH

This paper considers an application of the differential approach to Japanese demand for beef imports from 1970 to 1993. Results of homothetic demand and negative (significant) own-price elasticities indicate that the Japanese did not discriminate against Australian beef, but the decrease in Australia's trade shares was due to changes in relative prices.Japan, Beef Imports, Rotterdam model, CBS model, International Relations/Trade,

Building An Earnest and Amicable Argument Culture in the Secondary Classroom

How do we build collaborative, positive argument cultures in secondary classrooms? In this article, the author walks through two methods for doing this. First, the author describes the use of organized sentence templates for making collaborative argument more accessible to students. Second, the author lays out a method for facilitating whole-class, argumentative discussions: pop-up debate. Classroom examples are provided to illustrate the concepts

Engaging the Men of Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church in Building Authentic Relationship with Other African American Men

Problem According to the Pew Study (2009), the majority of African Americans are Protestants (78%) as compared to 51% of the United States population as a whole. However, African American men (16%) are more likely than African American women (9%) to be unaffiliated with any religion. The Pew Study also noted that nearly one-in-five African Americans under age 30 (19%) are unaffiliated with any religion. Pastoral observation further reveals a disproportionate number of women attending regular church services compared to men at Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church. This is a historical problem not only with the Bethel Church, but also in many churches across denominational communities. The consequence of a large imbalance in the ratio of men-to-women within the congregation presents a need for a ministry directed toward reaching men, especially within the urban context. Purpose The purpose of this project is to identify a prescriptive approach in relationship authoring among African American men. Utilizing a small group of men who are members of Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church, it is desired that in the formulation of authentic male relationships, church growth will be a by-product of friendship evangelism. Additionally, men within Bethel church will experience deeper, more meaningful relationships with one another and be able to disciple other men in relationship-building experiences. Method In order to create a robust healthy church environment of African American (AA) men, male members of Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church (BSDAC) were invited to participate in an intervention project. This proposed project involved a process of establishing a curriculum for training, discipling, and integrating men into a community of authentic relationship building (ARB). Participants were asked to journal their experience, views, and reflections of Bible studies, socials, community engagement, and outreach opportunities. The journals would be part of the process of compiling and evaluating a qualitative research strategy that also included interviews of participants. Result The project was successful in partially completing the task I originally desired. However, my expectation regarding church growth was not realized in the outcomes. I believe the main factor affecting this was the length of time needed to develop trusting and equitable friendships with men outside the church, so that participants could then invite them to a church encounter. The interviews and reflections of participants indicate the men experienced the following: a) Increased sensitivity to personal reflection in relationship authoring; b) Increased priority to build relationships; c) Greater awareness of male leadership; and d) Clear opposition to journaling. Conclusion This project has demonstrated that there is no one method for achieving a greater representation of African American men in churches. It can, perhaps, be used in conjunction with a number of other intentional initiatives to reach the objectives set forth by a congregation to grow male participation in church, as well as enrich the relational lives of men already in attendance. Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church has the potential to be a groundbreaking congregation in Kansas City, Kansas, that reaches out to African American men. Considering the population of men in the community and the dearth of churches with a specific initiative to invest in this community, makes it a church with no rival in ministering to men

CONVERGENCE OF THE G-7: A COINTEGRATION APPROACH

Income convergence among the G-7 countries was demonstrated using Theil's inequality (entropy) index. G-7 convergence was also found for three potential factors of influence on economic growth: government expenditure, investment expenditure, and industrial employment. Pairwise cointegration tests indicated that income inequality was cointegrated with the other three inequality measures for the time period of 1950-88. Finally, Johansen's I(2) multi-cointegration tests indicated that three of the four inequality measures (i.e. income, investment expenditure, and industrial employment) were cointegrated suggesting that there exists a long-run equilibrium between the inequality in income, investment expenditure, and industrial employment.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Preliminary design of the redundant software experiment

The goal of the present experiment is to characterize the fault distributions of highly reliable software replicates, constructed using techniques and environments which are similar to those used in comtemporary industrial software facilities. The fault distributions and their effect on the reliability of fault tolerant configurations of the software will be determined through extensive life testing of the replicates against carefully constructed randomly generated test data. Each detected error will be carefully analyzed to provide insight in to their nature and cause. A direct objective is to develop techniques for reducing the intensity of coincident errors, thus increasing the reliability gain which can be achieved with fault tolerance. Data on the reliability gains realized, and the cost of the fault tolerant configurations can be used to design a companion experiment to determine the cost effectiveness of the fault tolerant strategy. Finally, the data and analysis produced by this experiment will be valuable to the software engineering community as a whole because it will provide a useful insight into the nature and cause of hard to find, subtle faults which escape standard software engineering validation techniques and thus persist far into the software life cycle

Towards as assessment of fault-tolerant design principles for software

Several topics related to the assessment of fault-tolerant design principles for software are presented in outline form. A coincident errors model, discrete intensity distribution and the effects of coincident errors are discussed