Politics and the peasantry in Kenya: the lessons of Harambee

As anyone familiar with Kenya knows, Harambee, or self-help is a pervasive phenomenon which engages just about all rural dwellers, many city dwellers, most politicians and many state personnel. The widespread popularity and political significance of self-help has been documented in the literature for over a decade. Most studies, however, have assumed a rather homogeneous peasantry, and failed to examine the differential popularity of self-help in terms of the varying material circumstances of different strata within the Kenyan peasantry. This essay is addressed to the neglected question of what, precisely, is the social base of self-help. Based on survey research data from 2,075 respondents in seven districts, this paper argues that Harambee is particularly popular among "small" and "middle" peasants - those who own between one and ten acres of land. The paper further argues that the landless obtain benefits from Harambee projects as virtual "free riders" while "rich" peasants (those owning more than twenty acres) subsidize the poorer elements of the community through what is in effect a progressive form of local taxation. Whether "rich" peasants support Harambee, to the extent of their ability to pay, however, is an unresolved question

The relationship between self-efficacy and persistence in adult remedial education

Persistence in remediation as preparation for higher education continues at less than 50%. Self-efficacy may be a barrier to successful academic preparation. This study at a non-profit adult education site examined a relationship between general self-efficacy and academic self-efficacy and persistence. The survey data (N=75) indicated there was no significant correlation between the demographic characteristics and general self-efficacy, academic confidence, motivation, or persistence, but there was a significant correlation between general self-efficacy and academic confidence (r=.56, r2=.32,

Flights in my hands : coherence concerns in designing Strip'TIC, a tangible space for air traffic controllers

Best Paper Honorable Mention awardInternational audienceWe reflect upon the design of a paper-based tangible interactive space to support air traffic control. We have observed, studied, prototyped and discussed with controllers a new mixed interaction system based on Anoto, video projection, and tracking. Starting from the understanding of the benefits of tangible paper strips, our goal is to study how mixed physical and virtual augmented data can support the controllers' mental work. The context of the activity led us to depart from models that are proposed in tangible interfaces research where coherence is based on how physical objects are representative of virtual objects. We propose a new account of coherence in a mixed interaction system that integrates externalization mechanisms. We found that physical objects play two roles: they act both as representation of mental objects and as tangible artifacts for interacting with augmented features. We observed that virtual objects represent physical ones, and not the reverse, and, being virtual representations of physical objects, should seamlessly converge with the cognitive role of the physical object. Finally, we show how coherence is achieved by providing a seamless interactive space

The Mechanical Behavior of a 25Cr Super Duplex Stainless Steel at Elevated Temperature

Peer reviewedPostprin

Comparative chromosome painting discloses homologous Segments in distantly related mammals

Comparative chromosome painting, termed ZOO-FISH, using DNA libraries from flow sorted human chromosomes 1,16,17 and X, and mouse chromosome 11 discloses the presence of syntenic groups in distantly related mammalian Orders ranging from primates (Homo sapiens), rodents (Mus musculus), even-toed ungulates (Muntiacus muntjak vaginalis and Muntiacus reevesi) and whales (Balaenoptera physalus). These mammalian Orders have evolved separately for 55-80 million years (Myr). We conclude that ZOO-FISH can be used to generate comparative chromosome maps of a large number of mammalian species

Transformation of Quartz to Tridymite in the Presence of Binary Silicate Liquids

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66429/1/j.1151-2916.1967.tb15146.x.pd

Constructing female entrepreneurship policy in the UK : is the US a relevant benchmark?

Successive UK governments have introduced a range of policy initiatives designed to encourage more women to start new firms. Underpinning these policies has been an explicit ambition for the UK to achieve similar participation rates as those in the US where it is widely reported that women own nearly half the stock of businesses. The data underlying these objectives are critically evaluated and it is argued that the definitions and measures of female enterprise used in the UK and the US restrict meaningful comparisons between the two. It is suggested that the expansion of female entrepreneurship in the US is historically and culturally specific to that country. UK policy goals should reflect the national socioeconomic context, while drawing upon good practice examples from a range of other countries. The paper concludes by discussing the economic and social viability of encouraging more women in the UK to enter self-employment without fully recognising the intensely competitive sectors in which they are often located

Uncertainty in United States coastal wetland greenhouse gas inventorying

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Environmental Research Letters 13 (2018): 115005, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aae157.Coastal wetlands store carbon dioxide (CO2) and emit CO2 and methane (CH4) making them an important part of greenhouse gas (GHG) inventorying. In the contiguous United States (CONUS), a coastal wetland inventory was recently calculated by combining maps of wetland type and change with soil, biomass, and CH4 flux data from a literature review. We assess uncertainty in this developing carbon monitoring system to quantify confidence in the inventory process itself and to prioritize future research. We provide a value-added analysis by defining types and scales of uncertainty for assumptions, burial and emissions datasets, and wetland maps, simulating 10 000 iterations of a simplified version of the inventory, and performing a sensitivity analysis. Coastal wetlands were likely a source of net-CO2-equivalent (CO2e) emissions from 2006–2011. Although stable estuarine wetlands were likely a CO2e sink, this effect was counteracted by catastrophic soil losses in the Gulf Coast, and CH4 emissions from tidal freshwater wetlands. The direction and magnitude of total CONUS CO2e flux were most sensitive to uncertainty in emissions and burial data, and assumptions about how to calculate the inventory. Critical data uncertainties included CH4 emissions for stable freshwater wetlands and carbon burial rates for all coastal wetlands. Critical assumptions included the average depth of soil affected by erosion events, the method used to convert CH4 fluxes to CO2e, and the fraction of carbon lost to the atmosphere following an erosion event. The inventory was relatively insensitive to mapping uncertainties. Future versions could be improved by collecting additional data, especially the depth affected by loss events, and by better mapping salinity and inundation gradients relevant to key GHG fluxes. Social Media Abstract: US coastal wetlands were a recent and uncertain source of greenhouse gasses because of CH4 and erosion.Financial support was provided primarily by NASA Carbon Monitoring Systems (NNH14AY67I) and the USGS Land Carbon Program, with additional support from The Smithsonian Institution, The Coastal Carbon Research Coordination Network (DEB-1655622), and NOAA Grant: NA16NMF4630103