Policy, politics and pendidikan: teacher deployment in Indonesia

The problem of uneven teacher deployment has long been recognized in Indonesia. With an overall ratio of approximately one teacher to 16 primary school students (1:13 in juniorsecondary), there is a substantial oversupply of teachers. However, these are poorly distributed. Urban schools are commonly overstaffed while schools in rural and isolated areas are understaffed. This situation creates inefficiencies within the system and penalizes poor and marginalized communities. The end result is a disparity in education quality between schools, and an overall constraint to quality improvement. A joint Five Minister Edict was issued in 2011, requiring all districts to redistribute teachers evenly and according to need. The edict was issued by the Ministers of Education, Religious Affairs, Finance, Home Affairs and State Bureaucracy. Although this regulation required the redistribution to be implemented by end of 2013, few districts have complied. The major challenges to implementation are vested political interests and local resistance. Teachers and their spouses (many of whom are civil servants) commonly provide a political support base for local politicians and are rewarded with attractive placements. In addition, districts lack the capacity to accurately map teacher distribution or conduct analysis to identify policy solutions. As teachers are under the authority of districts, the central and provincial governments have played no significant role. The USAID-funded PRIORITAS project developed and implemented a teacher deployment program known as Penataan dan Pemerataan Guru (PPG) in 23 districts. Using the national education database (DAPODIK) and working with local partners from the districts, universities and province-level education quality assurance agencies (LPMP), the project has successfully mapped teacher distribution, developed policy solutions, conducted public consultations (multistakeholder forums) and is supporting implementation in these districts. The program is being expanded to more districts and a national policy dialogue is underway. The analysis of teacher needs is based on minimum service standards and requirements of the curriculum (2006 and 2013). Results from the initial sample of 23 districts were collated at national level and are summarized in this paper. The policy solutions vary depending on local contexts. These include teacher transfers, incentives for remote placements, school mergers, multi-grade teaching, mobile teachers, and retraining teachers to enable them to teach different subjects or levels. Such policies have the potential to greatly improve the quality of education throughout the country by ensuring that schools are properly staffed, improving equity, and improving system efficiency, releasing funds for quality improvement

Collaborative Aerospace Research and Fellowship Program at NASA Glenn Research Center

During the summer of 2004, a 10-week activity for university faculty entitled the NASA-OAI Collaborative Aerospace Research and Fellowship Program (CFP) was conducted at the NASA Glenn Research Center in collaboration with the Ohio Aerospace Institute (OAI). This is a companion program to the highly successful NASA Faculty Fellowship Program and its predecessor, the NASA-ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program that operated for 38 years at Glenn. The objectives of CFP parallel those of its companion, viz., (1) to further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty,(2) to stimulate an exchange of ideas between teaching participants and employees of NASA, (3) to enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of participants institutions, and (4) to contribute to the research objectives of Glenn. However, CFP, unlike the NASA program, permits faculty to be in residence for more than two summers and does not limit participation to United States citizens. Selected fellows spend 10 weeks at Glenn working on research problems in collaboration with NASA colleagues and participating in related activities of the NASA-ASEE program. This year's program began officially on June 1, 2004 and continued through August 7, 2004. Several fellows had program dates that differed from the official dates because university schedules vary and because some of the summer research projects warranted a time extension beyond the 10 weeks for satisfactory completion of the work. The stipend paid to the fellows was $1200 per week and a relocation allowance of$1000 was paid to those living outside a 50-mile radius of the Center. In post-program surveys from this and previous years, the faculty cited numerous instances where participation in the program has led to new courses, new research projects, new laboratory experiments, and grants from NASA to continue the work initiated during the summer. Many of the fellows mentioned amplifying material, both in undergraduate and graduate courses, on the basis of the summer s experience at Glenn. A number of 2004 fellows indicated that proposals to NASA will grow out of their summer research projects. In addition, some journal articles and NASA publications will result from this past summer s activities. Fellows from past summers continue to send reprints of articles that resulted from work initiated at Glenn. This report is intended primarily to summarize the research activities comprising the 2004 CFP Program at Glenn. Particular research studies include: 1) Development of an Imaging-Based, Computational Fluid Dynamics Tool to Assess Fluid Mechanics in Experimental Models that Simulate Blood Vessels; 2) Analysis of Nanomaterials Produced from Precursors; and 3) LEO Propagation Analysis Tool

Characterization of the Metabolically Healthy Phenotype in Overweight and Obese British Men

We calculated the prevalence of the metabolically healthy but obese (MHO) phenotype in (n=9 177) British men (age 48.9±7.4 years) attending preventive health screening between 2000 and 2009. We examined differences in cardiorespiratory fitness (Fitness) and self-reported physical activity levels, according to whether the men were metabolically healthy (<2 components of the metabolic syndrome), and by BMI category (normal-weight, over-weight, obese). Fitness was estimated from treadmill exercise as VO2peak and classified as: Low, Moderate, or High using age-specific cut-offs. We identified 21.6% of our sample as obese, of whom 83.1% were metabolically healthy. Compared with the metabolic unhealthy obese (MUO; 3.7% of sample), MHO phenotypes were fitter (effect size d=0.21) and were more physically active (d=0.31). Logistic regression showed high fitness (OR=2.40, 95%CI 1.38-4.19), and being physically active (OR=1.71, 95% CI 1.14-2.56) to be independently associated with the MHO phenotype. Our findings agree with US data suggesting that higher cardiorespiratory fitness is a characteristic of the MHO phenotype. Our finding that meeting physical activity guidelines was associated with the MHO phenotype independent of fitness is, however, novel. If confirmed, our findings indicate that public health messages that en-courage active lifestyles to promote fitness should be encouraged regardless of weight sta-tus

An agenda for ethics and justice in adaptation to climate change

As experts predict that at least some irreversible climate change will occur with potentially disastrous effects on the lives and well-being of vulnerable communities around the world, it is paramount to ensure that these communities are resilient and have adaptive capacity to withstand the consequences. Adaptation and resilience planning present several ethical issues that need to be resolved if we are to achieve successful adaptation and resilience to climate change, taking into consideration vulnerabilities and inequalities in terms of power, income, gender, age, sexuality, race, culture, religion, and spatiality. Sustainable adaptation and resilience planning that addresses these ethical issues requires interdisciplinary dialogues between the natural sciences, social sciences, and philosophy, in order to integrate empirical insights on socioeconomic inequality and climate vulnerability with ethical analysis of the underlying causes and consequences of injustice in adaptation and resilience. In this paper, we set out an interdisciplinary research agenda for the inclusion of ethics and justice theories in adaptation and resilience planning, particularly into the Sixth Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6). We present six core discussions that we believe should be an integral part of these interdisciplinary dialogues on adaptation and resilience as part of IPCC AR6, especially Chapters 2 (“Terrestial and freshwater ecosystems and their services”), 6 (“Cities, settlements and key infrastructure”), 7 (“Health, wellbeing and the changing structure of communities”), 8 (“Poverty, livelihoods and sustainable development”), 16 “Key risks across sectors and regions”), 17 (“Decision-making options for managing risk”), and 18 (“Climate resilient development pathways”).: (i) Where does ‘justice’ feature in resilience and adaptation planning and what does it require in that regard?; (ii) How can it be ensured that adaptation and resilience strategies protect and take into consideration and represent the interest of the most vulnerable women and men, and communities?; (iii) How can different forms of knowledge be integrated within adaptation and resilience planning?; (iv) What trade-offs need to be made when focusing on resilience and adaptation and how can they be resolved?; (v) What roles and responsibilities do different actors have to build resilience and achieve adaptation?; (vi) Finally, what does the focus on ethics imply for the practice of adaptation and resilience planning

NASA-OAI Collaborative Aerospace Research and Fellowship Program

During the summer of 2003, a IO-week activity for university faculty entitled the NASA-OAI Collaborative Aerospace Research and Fellowship Program (CFP) was conducted at the NASA Glenn Research Center in collaboration with the Ohio Aerospace Institute (OAI). The objectives of CFP are: (1) to further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty, (2) to stimulate an exchange of ideas between teaching participants and employees of NASA, (3) to enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of participants' institutions, and (4) to contribute to the research objectives of Glenn. This report is intended primarily to summarize the research activities comprising the 2003 CFP Program at Glenn

2003 NASA Faculty Fellowship Program at Glenn Research Center

The Office of Education at NASA Headquarters provides overall policy and direction for the NASA Faculty Fellowship Program (NFFP). The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) have joined in partnership to recruit participants, accept applications from a broad range of participants, and provide overall evaluation of the NFFP. The NASA Centers, through their University Affairs Officers, develop and operate the experiential part of the program. In concert with co-directing universities and the Centers, Fellows are selected and provided the actual research experiences. This report summarizes the 2003 session conducted at the Glenn Research Center (GRC).Research topics covered a variety of areas including, but not limited to, biological sensors, modeling of biological fluid systems, electronic circuits, ceramics and coatings, unsteady probablistic analysis and aerodynamics, gas turbines, environmental monitoring systems for water quality, air quality, gaseous and particulate emissions, bearings for flywheel energy storage, shape memory alloys,photonic interrogation and nanoprocesses,carbon nanotubes, polymer synthesis for fuel cells, aviation communications, algorithm development and RESPlan Database

A quantitative comparison of towed-camera and diver-camera transects for monitoring coral reefs

Novel tools and methods for monitoring marine environments can improve efficiency but must not compromise long-term data records. Quantitative comparisons between new and existing methods are therefore required to assess their compatibility for monitoring. Monitoring of shallow water coral reefs is typically conducted using diver-based collection of benthic images along transects. Diverless systems for obtaining underwater images (e.g. towed-cameras, remotely operated vehicles, autonomous underwater vehicles) are increasingly used for mapping coral reefs. Of these imaging platforms, towed-cameras offer a practical, low cost and efficient method for surveys but their utility for repeated measures in monitoring studies has not been tested. We quantitatively compare a towed-camera approach to repeated surveys of shallow water coral reef benthic assemblages on fixed transects, relative to benchmark data from diver photo-transects. Differences in the percent cover detected by the two methods was partly explained by differences in the morphology of benthic groups. The reef habitat and physical descriptors of the site—slope, depth and structural complexity—also influenced the comparability of data, with differences between the tow-camera and the diver data increasing with structural complexity and slope. Differences between the methods decreased when a greater number of images were collected per tow-camera transect. We attribute lower image quality (variable perspective, exposure and focal distance) and lower spatial accuracy and precision of the towed-camera transects as the key reasons for differences in the data from the two methods and suggest changes to the sampling design to improve the application of tow-cameras to monitoring