School leavers and rural development : case studies from Sarawak and Papua New Guinea

This thesis has its origins during a period from 1964 to 1969 when I was the headmaster of a rural secondary school in Sarawak, East Malaysia. Initially my students experienced little difficulty in finding work when they left school, but by the end of my time there the situation had changed drastically. Many school leavers were unable to find work in the modern wage-paying sectors of the economy and had little alternative but to return to their home villages and long-houses. Follow-up studies showed these school leavers as being either unemployed or engaged in farming, but there was generally little reliable information about their activities. It seemed to me of vital importance to find out more about the extent of their participation in village agriculture and to discover whether they were able to use their education to make changes and improvements. If we were now educating the majority of our students for life in the village it was important to determine if this education was having a positive or negative effect. If the latter was the case, the next stage was to consider the possible changes that might be made, either in the school system itself or in rural development policies.My initial studies in Sarawak were followed, in 1972, by a period of research at the Centre for South East Asian Studies at the University of Hull. During this time I also returned to Sarawak and carried out further field studies among school.leavers in the Bau and Baram districts. Since then I have been concerned with education and training for rural development in Papua New Guinea. This newly independent country is facing similar problems to Sarawak, although at the time of my research it was mainly the primary school leavers who were experiencing difficulty in finding employment.Sarawak and Papua New Guinea have formed the two case studies on which my thesis is based, but inevitably the study of the relationship between education and rural development has extended over a wide area. It has involved the examination of different methods used to determine the economic returns to education, also the factors which lead to change and agricultural innovations. I have also investigated possible solutions to the school leaver problem. In many cases these involve a closer integration of the education system with development programmes; in my conclusion I have suggested some methods by which this might be achieved

A laboratory model for respiratory disease investigation and its application to variations in climatic environment

The problems associated with investigation of respiratory disease in calves are examined and the need for a laboratory model study presented.A germ free mouse colony is described and evaluated in terms of residual disease. Methods are described for exposing germ free mice to aerosols of parainfluenza 1 (Sendai)virus. The distribution of viras within lung tissue was ascertained using immunofluorescent stains. The interaction of Sendai viras with the germ free mouse was measured by titrating virus in lung tissue. The interaction of the germ free mouse with Sendai virus was measured by histological quantitation. A method for comparing the uninfected animal with the infected was developed to produce a numerical count of bronchiolar mucosal cells per millimetre of basement membrane.The effect of climate on the function of respiratory physiology and pathology is reviewed. The effect of varying environmental temperature and relative humidity on mice infected with Sendai virus is examined. Temperature and relative humidity are both shown to affect the pathogenesis of the disease.It is concluded that a cooler environment (10°C) allows a higher virus titre to develop with a resultant increase in cellular destruction, while a lower relative humidity (55%) delays bronchiolar mucosal cell regeneration during the post viral recovery phase

'Family members screaming for help makes it very difficult to don PPE'. A qualitative study on UK ambulance staff experiences of infection prevention and control practices during the COVID-19 pandemic

© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/BACKGROUND: During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, ambulance staff continued to deliver direct patient care whilst simultaneously adapting to a considerable escalation in evolving infection prevention and control (IPC) practices. AIM: To enable learning to benefit future planning, this qualitative article aims to describe ambulance staff's experiences of this rapid escalation of IPC practices. METHOD: Three online surveys were presented during the acceleration, peak, and deceleration phases of the pandemic's first wave in the UK (2020). Overall, 18 questions contributed 14,237 free text responses that were examined using inductive thematic analysis at both descriptive and interpretive levels. FINDINGS: Many participants lacked confidence in policies related to the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) because of perceived inadequate supporting evidence, confusing communication, and low familiarity with items. Compliance with policy and confidence in PPE use were further influenced by discomfort, urgency, and perceptions of risk. Various suggestions were made to improve IPC practices within the work environment, including reducing unnecessary exposure through public education and remote triage improvements. DISCUSSION: Some participants' poor experiences of escalating IPC practices were shared with health care workers studied in other environments and in previous epidemics, emphasising the need for lessons to be learnt. PPE should be developed with consideration of ambulance staff's unique working environment and regular familiarisation training could be beneficial. Pragmatic, evidence-based, clearly communicated policies implemented with sufficient resources may protect staff and facilitate them to maintain standards of care delivery during a pandemic.Peer reviewe

The Late Modernism of Cormac McCarthy (review)

David Holloway\u27s titular phrasing late modernism has an effective ring. It captures the theoretical underpinnings of his recent book, The Late Modernism of Cormac McCarthy, evoking Fredric Jameson\u27s work, on which Holloway heavily relies, while also situating McCarthy precisely where he wants him to be, historically and culturally. According to Holloway, McCarthy\u27s fiction constitutes an important redoubt against the diminishing of modernism\u27s once-valorous stance by forging a productive opposition to what he sees as a final stage in capitalist expansion. At the heart of Holloway\u27s project is his concern to restore an oppositional vitality to literary production, or what he terms a perspective of estrangement (2). Following certain poststructuralist accounts of language\u27s inherent instability and the related impossibilities of narrative, Holloway sees McCarthy as a writer whose singular prose at once foregrounds and incorporates the deathliness of language in his stories of an evacuated yet thoroughly commercialized American West—a topos and a space defined, Holloway suggests, by the ravages of globalization

ATR-FTIR spectroscopy and Raman microscopy studies of organosilane diffusion and hydrolysis in PVC films.

Organosilanes are widely used to bond organic materials such as polymers to inorganic materials in polymer composites. However, the mechanism of adhesion is poorly understood. One postulated mechanism is the interdiffusion of the silane and polymer, along with condensation of the silane to form an interpenetrating polymer network (IPN). The techniques of attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and Raman confocal microscopy have been used to study the diffusion, hydrolysis and condensation of three organosilanes in silicon / PVC / silane laminates. These processes are thought to contribute to the formation of the IPN, and hence to be vital for adhesion. The organosilanes studied were [3-(amino)propyl]trimethoxysilane, also known as A1110, [3-(phenylamino)propyl]trimethoxysilane, known as Y9669, and [3-(mercapto)propyl]triethoxysilane, known as A1891.ATR-FTIR was shown to be an excellent technique for studying the kinetics of silane diffusion through PVC films. It was shown that at room temperature, no diffusion through unplasticised PVC films occurred. At 70 °C, however, diffusion occurred readily for Y9669 and A1891. In plasticised PVC films, diffusion was observed for all three silanes at room temperature. It was shown that the diffusion occurred more quickly with higher plasticiser concentrations, and hence lower glass transition temperatures. The kinetics of diffusion was found to fit a dual mode sorption model. Hydrolysis of the silanes was also followed by infrared spectroscopy, and the kinetics of hydrolysis and condensation were shown to be highly dependent upon silane type, the concentration of water, and the presence of an acid catalyst. The hydrolysis of the silanes was found to slow their diffusion through both plasticised and unplasticised PVC films. It was shown that the presence of water in the films caused the hydrolysis of the silanes in situ. Raman depth profiles were measured of the films before, during and after diffusion. The spatial resolution was shown to be adversely affected by refraction at the air / PVC interface. It was shown that it is possible to deconvolve the confocal response of the microscope from the depth profiles, resulting in greater spatial resolution. Hydrolysis of the silanes was followed in solution by Raman spectroscopy, and it was found that each of the three silanes showed different rates of hydrolysis and condensation. It was shown that it was also possible to follow the kinetics of diffusion by Raman microscopy, and the results agreed well with those shown by ATR-FTIR spectroscopy

Review of Bats and SARS

TOC Summary: The discovery of SARS-like coronaviruses in horseshoe bats highlights the possibility of future outbreaks caused by different coronaviruses of bat origin