The Role of Data in Organizing an Access to Justice Movement

reminds us that civil justice reform has to start with compelling human stories. She’s right. Building a movement requires drawing in the care and effort of those who previously had not seen the problem. A story of a mother and her family unjustly evicted from their home, of an older gentleman whose life savings are unjustly taken, or of a father fighting for visitation rights unjustly denied: each of these personal stories is an outrage and will often generate anger in the listener. Stories lead those who do not live the injustices of our civil justice system every day to ask: How can this be? Broad outrage, the “how can it be?” question, and the demand for answers and action, are the fuel of any social justice movement. But in a social justice movement, personal stories rarely allow us to see the complete picture. To change the system, we as advocates also need the wider communities in which we live to see that the personal stories are representative of thousands more that are the product of the same and related systemic failures. Individual acts of compassion for those whose stories we hear will not help the thousands whose stories we never hear. The “complete picture” of the lack of access to civil justice is that the problem is systemic and that fixing it will require big changes and concerted action

Impact of national FFA contests on participants\u27 educational and occupational aspirations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Future Farmers of America\u27s National Judging Contests. A correlational design was used in the investigation, with select causal-comparative statistical techniques used for data analysis. The sample consisted of 225 contest participants between the years 1979 to 1981. The sample was selected by systematic sampling and included individuals from all nine contest areas;Data were collected by the use of a mailed questionnaire that was developed by the researcher. Instrument items were validated by a group of individuals knowledgeable in both the FFA and the vocational agriculture curriculum. The instrument was field tested with 100 national contest participants not selected as a part of the sample;Data analysis consisted of frequency counts, t-tests, ANOVAs, chi-squares, factor analysis, multiple regression, and discriminant analysis. Cronbach\u27s coefficient alpha for instrument reliability was determined to be .80, with all individual concepts having a reliability of .90 or higher;The following conclusions were drawn from the analysis and interpretation of the data collected. The most important benefits participants received from their contest experiences were interpersonal. The two highest mean scores on benefit measures were for improvements to their self-confidence and self-esteem. Thirty-seven percent of the participants were found to have occupational aspirations directly related to their contest training. No one contest was found to have a significantly higher proportion of its participants aspiring to related occupations. Females were found to have received fewer occupational advantages from having participated than were males. No relationships could be determined between participant characteristics and perceived benefits received from having participated. Participants most likely to have contest-related occupational aspirations were found to: have lower post-secondary educational aspirations, be less likely to have served as FFA officers, were less likely to have conducted a supervised occupational experience program, and were poorer students academically. All tests were conducted at the .05 level of significance

A Survey Of Attitudes Toward The Importance Of A Year- Round Recreation Program At Lincoln High In Port Arthur, Texas

It has often been said throughout the years that whatever we do in our free time is important to the community, Therefore, it is important for communities to provide facilities, services, and leadership for ever-expanding leisure—time activities because good recreation makes good citizens. Recreation must not only supply the public with the worthy leisure time activities it wants but must be prone to supply the public with what is needed but not recognized as a need. This study attempts to discover the attitudes of four different classifications of people in the Port Arthur community that supports Lincoln High toward the importance of a year-round recreation program at the school. The writer\u27s interest in the study is stimulated somewhat by the belief that this Is the first of its nature done in the Port Arthur area and the writer\u27s curiosity of why community leaders and educators have not made any noticeable attempt to provide a year-round recreation program at Lincoln High School, Port Arthur, Texas. Statement of the problem Fun is the birthright of every child and prerogative of every adult. Since earliest time, recreation like work, love, and worship, has been a major form of human activity. Festivals, dances, and games have always been a part of life. The playground provides opportunities for every child to have fun, and enjoy himself completely. Some children are denied these opportunities. The survey is done in an attempt to determine attitudes of four selected categories of people in the Port Arthur community toward the importance of a year-round recreation program at Lincoln High School, Port Arthur, Texas, Importance of the studyRecreation has advanced rapidly, but not exclusively in the United States. The progress will be more widespread in the future because the conditions, approaches, methods, and often the content changes with the time and culture. The responsibility for organized recreation rest in the local community. It has been demonstrated that community recreation properly organized, contributes to the building of sound physical and mental health, to molding citizenship, and promoting social well-being

Activity and Culture: The Contribution to Health and Well-being in Later Life

A nurse-led multi-agency team worked with older people to develop a model of activity and culture, and evaluate its impact to health and well-being. Underpinned by a needs analysis, the project sought to identify the range of activities that older people used to engage in, currently undertake and what they aspire to engage with both inside their home and in the community. Initial findings revealed that lack of confidence, restricted opportunities and physical barriers such as transport, limited tenants' involvement with physical, social and cultural activities that could improve their health and wellbeing. The project has therefore aimed to develop a more diverse and accessible programme of activities that better reflects individual and collective needs. Following early positive evaluations, the project team are now considering how the centre could be accessed by, and benefit, a wider group of community dwelling older people and would hope to collaborate with other groups to explore how this model can be developed for use with a wider range of older people

An examination of the force-interval relationship in rat cardiac muscle: Evidence for length modulation of force recovery.

Twitch characteristics were collected at muscle lengths corresponding to 100, 95 and 90% Lmax. A reduction in muscle length below Lmax significantly reduced the peak developed force. A progressive reduction in both the positive and negative rates of force development was also found as the muscle was shortened from 100 to 95 and 90% Lmax. To determine the influence of muscle length on Ca\sp{++} handling during interval-dependent force recovery, force-interval data was generated in right ventricular papillary muscles from the rat. Fast-flow buffer exchange experiments were then carried out to determine a mechanism for the length-dependent alteration in the beta process. The recirculation fraction of Ca\sp{++} was determined from the beat to beat decay of potentiation at 100, 95 and 90% Lmax. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 30-03, page: 0653. Thesis (M.H.K.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1990

Introduction to the political economy of the sub-prime crisis in Britain : constructing and contesting competence

It is almost always inadvisable to try to second-guess the character of a General Election campaign before it begins in earnest. Yet, even in today’s shadow-boxing phase in advance of the British General Election due to be called in 2010, a number of important campaign contours are already in evidence. It is one of the unwritten laws of British electoral politics that governments unravel – particularly those of a certain longevity – as events appear ever more to have spiralled out of their control. The task for the Brown Government in the upcoming General Election campaign is to try to convince voters that there is still life left within Labour despite its current travails with the credit crunch and British banks’ self-imposed entrapment in the subprime crisis. Claim and counter-claim are likely to pass between the Government and the opposition parties as to where the blame lies for the current disarray of the banking sector, whose model of regulation is most responsible and who is best placed to ensure a successful clean-up operation. Whoever is perceived to have come out on top in this debate is likely to stand a very good chance of winning the election

Anaerobic Digestion From the Laboratory to the Field: An Experimental Study Into the Scalability of Anaerobic Digestion

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a unique organic waste treatment method that improves sanitation and environmental quality through pollution control, while providing organic fertilizer in the form of a liquid digestate and renewable energy in the form of clean-burning biogas. In designing AD systems efficiency is key. It can be costly in terms of time, money, and resources to dial-in systems once the full-scale has been constructed and is operational. For these reasons, bench-scale laboratory experimentation is an essential component of AD research and development. In order for bench-scale research to be applicable, a strong correlation between results obtained in the lab and actual performance of large-scale anaerobic digesters must exist. In this study, 100 mL, 1 L, and 10 L digesters treating equine waste were tested to determine the accuracy of scaling between digester sizes. Digesters were compared by the cumulative and daily biogas production, methane content, volatile solids-destruction, and pH of the digestate. Based on these results, a strong correlation was found between the yield of biogas and the digester sizes, showing that the scalability of AD is tenable, but that there is a scaling effect that must be taken into account

Persistence of a Geographically-Stable Hybrid Zone in Puerto Rican Dwarf Geckos

Determining the mechanisms that create and maintain biodiversity is a central question in ecology and evolution. Speciation is the process that creates biodiversity. Speciation is mediated by incompatibilities that lead to reproductive isolation between divergent populations and these incompatibilities can be observed in hybrid zones. Gecko lizards are a speciose clade possessing an impressive diversity of behavioral and morphological traits. In geckos, however, our understanding of the speciation process is negligible. To address this gap, we used genetic sequence data (both mitochondrial and nuclear markers) to revisit a putative hybrid zone between Sphaerodactylus nicholsi and Sphaerodactylus townsendi in Puerto Rico, initially described in 1984. First, we addressed discrepancies in the literature on the validity of both species. Second, we sampled a 10-km-wide transect across the putative hybrid zone and tested explicit predictions about its dynamics using cline models. Third, we investigated potential causes for the hybrid zone using species distribution modeling and simulations; namely, whether unique climatic variables within the hybrid zone might elicit selection for intermediate phenotypes. We find strong support for the species-level status of each species and no evidence of movement, or unique climatic variables near the hybrid zone. We suggest that this narrow hybrid zone is geographically stable and is maintained by a combination of dispersal and selection. Thus, this work has identified an extant model system within geckos that that can be used for future investigations detailing genetic mechanisms of reproductive isolation in an understudied vertebrate group