The impact of minimum wage legislation in developing countries where coverage is incomplete

This paper examines the impact of minimum wage legislation in developing countries where coverage is incomplete. Using a rich data set from Ghana, it estimates the extent to which a binding minimum wage alters employment in both the formal and informal sectors of the labor market. The data reveal that Ghana’s minimum wage policies during the 1970s and 1980s led to a reduction of formal sector jobs and an increase in informal sector jobs. In addition, there is some evidence to suggest that a large proportion of the displaced workers from the formal sector ended up working in the informal sector

OFMTutor: An operator function model intelligent tutoring system

The design, implementation, and evaluation of an Operator Function Model intelligent tutoring system (OFMTutor) is presented. OFMTutor is intended to provide intelligent tutoring in the context of complex dynamic systems for which an operator function model (OFM) can be constructed. The human operator's role in such complex, dynamic, and highly automated systems is that of a supervisory controller whose primary responsibilities are routine monitoring and fine-tuning of system parameters and occasional compensation for system abnormalities. The automated systems must support the human operator. One potentially useful form of support is the use of intelligent tutoring systems to teach the operator about the system and how to function within that system. Previous research on intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) is considered. The proposed design for OFMTutor is presented, and an experimental evaluation is described

Catholic social teaching and the peripheries: the case for addressing prostitution

Catholic social teaching (CST) has shown little interest in structural and social forces that impact negatively on the dignity and flourishing of women. Such inattention diminishes CST's credibility and neglects its liberative potential. This article examines an area of structural violence against women, the social reality of prostitution, to illuminate the imperative to expand normative CST to address specific experiences of women. Given the inadequacy of the Catechism's treatment of prostitution as an area of personal moral failing, a reading which fails to understand how cultural and legislative structures bear down on women's freedom and agency, a task for CST emerges. When CST principles are brought into dialogue with empirical attention to women's experience of prostitution, the tradition stands in solidarity with those who inhabit an existential and social periphery. The article argues that CST perspectives should nudge the Catholic Church towards proposing an abolitionist ethic in relation to prostitution

Discovering the Common Good in Practice: The Catholicity of Catholic Charities

This research examines a group of UK Catholic charities working in the field of homelessness and social exclusion in order to understand how their Catholicity is constituted and how this impacts on their practice. I argue that their Catholicity is primarily found in how their practices enact, test and extend Catholic social vision rather than in institutional alignment. I demonstrate that the charities have an ecclesiological specificity which official Catholic texts fail to recognise. They operate across the porous boundaries of the visible Church, drawing into their work people who share elements of the social vision articulated in Catholic thought and tradition. Theologically, they enact the Catholic intuition about the meaning of social bonds and reciprocal human flourishing by working to counter social exclusion and vulnerability and point social realities towards the Kingdom. Their location on ecclesial boundaries, their inclusiveness, and their embeddedness in secular structures of social welfare and politics, are necessary conditions of social mission. I use the concept of the common good as a hermeneutic in order to read the charities as a case study testing how Catholic social teaching’s methodological strategies propose shared moral horizons. Using Thomas Bushlack’s concept of civic virtue in conversation with normative Catholic social teaching about the common good enables fresh insights into the practices which enact this principle. The charities discover the meaning of the common good by recognising and wrestling with the absence of the conditions that enable people to seek fulfilment. Their asymmetrical relational work, shaped by their narratives, renders an abstract and elusive concept as a real and practical task. Their communally held and inclusively enacted intuitions disclose pragmatic coherence with Conciliar ecclesiology and validate its orientations. The charities act as agents and inventors of mediated social mission, illuminating an expansive Catholicity

Did the colonial powers pick the economic winners?

This paper proposes a new instrument for institutional quality—the salary of colonial governors—to investigate whether variations in the quality of British colonial rule continue to have an impact on the economic performance of former colonies. Governors’ salaries provide a good source of exogenous variation because the ranking of salaries across the British Empire remained relatively fixed from the late nineteenth century onwards. Perhaps most important, this instrument varies widely across colonies with historically low rates of European settlement—that is, most countries in today’s developing world. Using a two-stage least squares estimation procedure, I find that colonies with higher paid governors developed better institutions (and higher per capita income) than colonies with lower paid governors

Community capital and the role of the state : an empowering approach to personalisation

Personalisation was a key element in reform to the Adult and Social Care system in England exploring long-term funding options in response to demographic change where people are increasingly living longer with complex conditions and needs (Department of Health, 2007). Personal budgets are central to this reform to enable recipients of social care to choose and commission their own services. Reform was not expected to require structural reorganisation but local authority leadership to promote genuine partnerships between social care providers, users and their carers as well as the wider community. However, there is potential for a shift in power to service users which goes beyond collaboration, especially where there is scope to build long-term relationships around long-term needs. This study is based on one local authority partner’s innovative development of local communities’ social capital around personal budgets for vulnerable adults, which took up the challenge that “personalisation has the potential to deliver services in new and different ways that are nearer to what service users and their carers want and need”. One of the gaps in research regards the crucial role of carers, which is fundamental to the personalisation agenda reaching its real objectives. Taking an asset-based approach to informal care via social networks, the local authority was able to empower a community-run organisation in one of its most deprived and diverse wards by brokering support for vulnerable residents and embracing a neighbourhood perspective to examine collective as well as individual solutions

Temporal biomass density and filamentous bacteria effects on secondary settling

The activated sludge wastewater treatment process is the most common technology used today and solids separation is a critical and often problematic component of this technology. This leads to requirements for larger clarifiers, increased pumping costs of the diluted settled solids stream, and increased costs for solids treatment. For the past thirty years, the majority of the research in secondary settling problems has focused on the role of filamentous bacteria, and also factors such as floc size and shape. The effects of variable biomass density on settleability of biosolids produced in full scale activated sludge wastewater treatment systems has been recently been demonstrated, and seasonal variability in biomass settleability is known to occur at many wastewater treatment plants. The role of density in such temporal variations has not been previously studied. Research evaluating temporal variation in biomass density and filamentous bacteria content and the roles these parameters play in solids separation was performed. Three different filamentous bacteria quantification methods were employed and comparison of these methods was evaluated. Additionally, the effects of metal coagulant addition for phosphorus removal on biomass density and settleability were evaluated. The objectives of this research were to (1) evaluate whether biomass density varies on a seasonal basis in full scale wastewater treatment systems, and if this contributes to seasonal variations in settleability, (2) evaluate if biomass density varies on a shorter timescale (weekly), and whether this is correlated with changes in settleability, (3) compare various methods of filamentous bacteria quantification, (4) investigate how precipitant addition effects biomass density and settleability. Seasonal variation in biomass density was observed in four activated sludge plants, with high density occurring during warm weather and low density occurring during cold weather. Biomass density and filament content were both determined to influence settleability, and non-volatile solids content was strongly correlated with biomass density. Weekly variations in biomass density were not observed in selector equipped wastewater plants under stable operating conditions; however, significant variation in biomass density, settleability, and polyphosphate content were observed during process start-up and process upset events at a single full scale wastewater plant designed to perform nitrification, denitrification, and enhanced biological phosphorus removal. Methods of quantifying filament content based on microscopic imaging were compared, including the Filament Index ranking, automated image analysis, and manual tracing methods. The filament length/floc area ratio determined by automated and manual methods is a measure that is reliant only on information in microscope images. Filament length/dry solids were determined using a hemacytometer slide and manual tracing, which allows quantification of filaments within a known volume. The relationships between these three methods of measurements were determined, which may aid in comparisons of filament content presented in other studies, both past and future. Precipitant addition using aluminum and iron salts was positively correlated with biomass density; however, counter to the study hypothesis, settleability degraded rather than improved. This result may be due to the development of large precipitate structures that, although of relatively high density, inhibited compaction of the biomass

White Lies: A Critical Race Study of Power and Privilege

This was a phenomenological study of racial privilege as experienced by White people who have struggled to become more racially aware and socially active in dismantling racism and White privilege. The primary conceptual framework for this study was Critical Race Theory with Transformative Learning theory and Racial Identity Development as additional theoretical lenses. The purpose of this study was to increase our awareness of how White people come to understand their racial privilege and what change in behavior occurs as a result of that increased awareness. Its goal was to promote and influence White adult educators to find explicit ways in which to address White privilege and racism in adult education settings. There were seven participants in this study. These were White adults who could articulate their understanding of White privilege and were willing to share those critical incidents that led to an increased consciousness about that privilege. The findings of the study revealed seven common experiences among these participants. Each began an understanding of privilege through a Black/White binary and had limited contact with people of Color growing up. They had self-constructed a deep reflective process, learned empathy, and their growth and development was a continuous process. Each struggled with their intention to not be racist when in fact they could not help but act in racist ways. In addition, each experienced many critical incidents that were transformative in nature. Within these incidents, common elements emerged that contributed to and influenced their growth and development in their understanding of racial privilege. More importantly and perhaps surprisingly, these elements did not exist in isolation. Instead, there seemed to be a convergence of these elements that, when combined, fostered growth. These elements included: 1) a critical incident that challenged the participants previous assumptions; 2) a mentor-type relationship with a person of Color; 3) moral or ethical anguish or regret; and 4) a relational nature and deep commitment to the growth of themselves and others

A Dietary Analysis of the Microwhip Scorpion (Arachnida: Palpigradi) from Val Verde County, Texas

Palpigrades comprise a poorly known group of arachnids found in caves and soil from numerous localities worldwide. Prior and preliminary studies have suggested arthropods and cyanobacteria as possible diet items of these organisms. This current study uses DNA sequencing to identify contents of the digestive tract of eleven palpigrade specimens, Eukoenenia florenciae (Rucker) from Val Verde County, Texas. Three universal primer sets were used to target the COI region of arthropods, the 16S rRNA of cyanobacteria, and the ITS region of fungi. Additionally, a blocking primer was designed to prevent amplification of the palpigrade DNA itself. DNA from these specimens was extracted, amplified by PCR, and then sequenced using an Illumina MiSeq platform. Sequences were compared to the NCBI GenBank nucleotide database. The presence of arthropods, cyanobacteria, and fungi supports the premise of generalist feeding habits for this species