Does an International Academic Environment Promote Study Abroad?

Although many studies on international student mobility have examined the impact of individual factors (e.g., gender, age, family background) on students’ decision to study abroad, much less attention has been devoted to the role played by the institutional climate and characteristics of one’s home university. Using data from an Italian survey containing information on a large number of university students, this research investigated the extent to which a more international academic environment incentivizes students to participate in study abroad programs. A logit model was developed to estimate the effect that the degree of internationalization of one’s home university has on the probability that its students will study abroad, while controlling for several student-level factors. The empirical estimates indicate that this effect is significant, suggesting that being part of an international academic environment, where domestic students can interact more frequently with international students, helps motivate them to undertake study abroad. This result stresses the importance of engaging domestic students in the internationalization process of their universities

Changes in socioeconomic inequality in access to study abroad programs: a cross-country analysis

The growing evidence about the benefits of studying abroad calls for increased public efforts to equalize study abroad opportunities among university students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Using student-level data from the nationally representative surveys of three European countries (Italy, France and Germany) between the 2000s and mid-2010s, this paper investigates how the social gap in access to study abroad programs changed over time and what are the factors driving these changes. Logistic regressions are used in order to identify the determinants of study abroad program participation and a decomposition technique is employed in an attempt to both determine how much of the gap each factor explains and compare its relative contribution over time. The results indicate that, not only has disparity in study abroad participation rate between students from more and less advantaged backgrounds not decreased in any of the countries considered here, but there is consistent evidence showing that it has increased in Germany. Differences in earlier educational trajectories and performance between these two groups of students are important predictors of the gap. However, a large part of this gap remains unexplained, and this underscores the important role played by unobserved or difficult-to-measure factors in accounting for inequality

Tribal Court Jurisdiction and Public Law 280: What Role for Tribal Courts in Alaska

GPS data from Challenging Mini-satellite Payload (CHAMP) is used for its orbit determination for the epoch day of January 1st 2002.  The orbit of CHAMP is computed from the GPS data and ionospheric effects are removed by frequency combination. Further, the orbits of CHAMP for the same epoch day are computed using the satellite tool kit (STK) employing simplified general perturbations (SGP4) and a high precision orbit propagator (HPOP). Furthermore, orbits computed using GPS data are also compared with jet propulsion laboratory’s published CHAMP spacecraft orbit and we have found that root mean square difference in ECEF position X component is below 0.01km other than some spikes at poles. The standard deviation of the difference in ECEF position X coordinate (JPL results – GPS computed results) is 11.7m. Since JPL computed orbits are considered as true orbits of CHAMP with accuracy of centimeter level (https://gipsy-oasis.jpl.nasa.gov/). Therefore this difference can also be referred as observed error in GPS computed orbits. Considering above discussion, we can expect that accuracy of our computed satellite positions (using GPS data) is about 12 metres for other than poles area. However there are some occasional spikes, especially at poles, having maximum errors (about 0.055 km)

Popular songs, social struggles and conflictual identities in Mestre-Marghera (1970s-1980s)

Through the analysis of popular song the chapter examines some of the ways in which local radical identities have been transformed as a result of changes in radical cultural practices in Mestre-Marghera, the industrial district in the mainland of Venice

Military Conscription and University Enrolment: Evidence from Italy

Given that a growing number of countries have abolished or are considering the abolition of military conscription, understanding the consequences of this measure is of increased importance. In this paper we study the effect of the suppression of compulsory military service on university enrolment in Italy using double and triple differences models. The empirical results show that there is no compelling evidence suggesting that the abolition of military conscription has a causal effect on university enrolment. However, although there is no significant overall effect, we find some evidence of heterogeneous effects. While this measure seems to increase university participation among individuals from more advantaged backgrounds, it appears to have a detrimental effect on the enrolment of those from less advantaged backgrounds.compulsory military service, university enrolment

The Impact of Degree Class on the First Destinations of Graduates: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

This paper uses a regression-discontinuity design to identify the causal impact of degree class on the first destinations of UK graduates. We exploit the discontinuous relationship between degree class and the mean grade achieved by graduates in their last year at university, which is induced by the administrative rules used for the determination of degree class. More specifically, we compare the average first-destination outcome of graduates with a mean grade that just allowed them to get a given class of degree with the average first-destination outcome of those with a mean grade that made them just miss the chance of achieving the same class of degree. Our empirical analysis focuses on graduates who graduated from a post-1992 university in the period January-July 2008. The results are consistent with the view that degree class does not truly affect the first destinations of graduates, but it picks up the effect of other ability indicators that are typically not observed by researchers. Hence this finding questions the signaling role of degree class.first destinations of graduates, regression discontinuity design, degree classification

Deformable kernels for early vision

Early vision algorithms often have a first stage of linear filtering that 'extracts' from the image information at multiple scales of resolution and multiple orientations. A common difficulty in the design and implementation of such schemes is that one feels compelled to discretize coarsely the space of scales and orientations in order to reduce computation and storage costs. This discretization produces anisotropies due to a loss of traslation-, rotation- scaling- invariance that makes early vision algorithms less precise and more difficult to design. This need not be so: one can compute and store efficiently the response of families of linear filters defined on a continuum of orientations and scales. A technique is presented that allows (1) to compute the best approximation of a given family using linear combinations of a small number of 'basis' functions; (2) to describe all finite-dimensional families, i.e. the families of filters for which a finite dimensional representation is possible with no error. The technique is general and can be applied to generating filters in arbitrary dimensions. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate the applicability of the technique to generating multi-orientation multi-scale 20 edge-detection kernels. The implementation issues are also discussed