What can government agencies learn from the ombudsman?

No abstract available

Inclusion of African American Vernacular English in the classroom

A plethora of research exists citing the poor academic performance of African American children in this country (D\u27Angiulli, Siegel, & Maggi, 2004; Labov, 1971, 1995; Miranda, Webb, Brigman, & Peluso, 2007). A large amount of the research is specific to reading deficits identified with African American students. Students who are successful readers are also successful in the other content areas. Lytel and Botel (1990) along with the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE, 2009) contend that literacy encompasses reading, writing, speaking, and understanding. They go further to say that if one is to acquire these skills, learning has to be relevant. Sword and Wheeler (2004) contend that the traditional pedagogical practices create barriers for the child who struggles to learn mainstream American English as these methods are exclusionary and say his language is error-filled or incorrect. If teachers are to be effective in the classroom, they must create a way to overcome these linguistic barriers. A welcoming culture is crucial to the promotion of human learning, and only when we invite the whole child into our classroom will we be contributing to this element of school culture (Barth, 2002). When we include the students\u27 home language we are including his culture thereby helping him make meaning from and connect to the instruction. To include African American Vernacular English in the classroom validates the language and culture of those students who possess it as their primary language. Additionally, to include African American Vernacular can provide teachers with the tool they need to be more effective

Being Complained About: Good Practice Guidelines

No abstract available

Business Surveys and Economic Activity

In this paper we examine the information content of business survey information, focusing in particular on some of the characteristics of the net balance statistic. A number of Australian business surveys are appraised. Four aspects are examined: the extent to which surveys are correlated with economic variables that they are designed to track; advantages in terms of timeliness; the degree to which surveys are forward or backward-looking; and the ability of business surveys to pick turning points. In summary, the business conditions (including sales/output), employment and selling prices components of the business surveys seem to provide the most information, and to a lesser extent the component relating to corporate profitability. Taken together, the surveys can provide useful coincident information on the economy with some advantage in terms of timeliness. The recommended approach to the use of business surveys is to extract common themes and not place too much weight on a single result.business; confidence; sentiment; survey

The Aleph Bet: Debating Metaphors for Information, Data Handling And the Right to be Forgotten

Court rulings in the European Union (EU) have now established that individuals may seek erasure of personal information posted online. Typically, this involves de-indexing a website from search results, and in some instances the removal of content from primary sources sites. This has, in turn, led to debate around both the logistics and the unintended consequences of removing information online, and subsequent discussions have grappled with a range of images and metaphors to map that new legal reality. This essay surveys that debate, the imagery it employs, and the various logics associated with these metaphors

Cosmology on a Mesh

An adaptive multi grid approach to simulating the formation of structure from collisionless dark matter is described. MLAPM (Multi-Level Adaptive Particle Mesh) is one of the most efficient serial codes available on the cosmological 'market' today. As part of Swinburne University's role in the development of the Square Kilometer Array, we are implementing hydrodynamics, feedback, and radiative transfer within the MLAPM adaptive mesh, in order to simulate baryonic processes relevant to the interstellar and intergalactic media at high redshift. We will outline our progress to date in applying the existing MLAPM to a study of the decay of satellite galaxies within massive host potentials.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of "The IGM/Galaxy Connection - The Distribution of Baryons at z=0", ed. M. Putman & J. Rosenber

Benchmarking approaches to quality assurance in the UK ombudsman sector

No abstract available

The Impact of Public Holidays on Insurgent Attacks: The Case of Thailand

This paper analyzes Malay-Muslim insurgents’ attacks in the three southern provinces of Thailand between the years of 2010–2021 and identifies the role of public holidays on the level of violence. The existing literature suggests terrorists consider holidays during attack planning. However, there is a lack of agreement on the effect direction. Some studies have found that holidays are a force for peace while others have found they can act as trigger for more violence. Applying environmental criminology to the timing of terrorist attacks, we argue that the type of the holiday matters. Therefore, we analyze public (secular), Islamic, and Buddhist holidays separately. We show that Islamic holidays witness increased violence while Buddhist and public holidays see reductions. We discuss that Islamic holidays increase the Malay-Muslim insurgents’ motivation to attack by assigning to those dates a higher symbolic value. On the other hand, on Buddhist and public holidays, insurgents may hesitate to attack to avoid the adverse effects of losing public support and triggering a backlash. The results demonstrate the necessity to analyze the temporal dynamics of terrorist attacks

Statistical evidence for a helical nascent chain

We investigate the hypothesis that protein folding is a kinetic, non-equilibrium process, in which the structure of the nascent chain is crucial. We compare actual amino acid frequencies in loops, alpha-helices and beta-sheets with the frequencies that would arise in the absence of any amino acid bias for those secondary structures. The novel analysis suggests that while specific amino acids exist to drive the formation of loops and sheets, none stand out as drivers for alpha-helices. This favours the idea that the alpha-helix is the initial structure of most proteins before the folding process begins.UIDB/04326/2020info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Landscape Preferences, Amenity, and Bushfire Risk in New South Wales, Australia

This paper examines landscape preferences of residents in amenity-rich bushfire-prone landscapes in New South Wales, Australia. Insights are provided into vegetation preferences in areas where properties neighbor large areas of native vegetation, such as national parks, or exist within a matrix of cleared and vegetated private and public land. In such areas, managing fuel loads in the proximity of houses is likely to reduce the risk of house loss and damage. Preferences for vegetation appearance and structure were related to varying fuel loads, particularly the density of understorey vegetation and larger trees. The study adopted a qualitative visual research approach, which used ranking and photo-elicitation as part of a broader interview. A visual approach aids in focusing on outcomes of fuel management interventions, for example, by using the same photo scenes to firstly derive residents’ perceptions of amenity and secondly, residents’ perceptions of bushfire risk. The results are consistent with existing research on landscape preferences; residents tend to prefer relatively open woodland or forest landscapes with good visual and physical access but with elements that provoke their interest. Overall, residents’ landscape preferences were found to be consistent with vegetation management that reduces bushfire risk to houses. The terms in which preferences were expressed provide scope for agency engagement with residents in order to facilitate management that meets amenity and hazard reduction goals on private land