Women’s political representation in small island developing states : a comparative analysis of Mauritius and Seychelles

A notable feature of the island studies literature is the gap at the level of research and data on gender issues. This paper look at the gender dimensions of political representation in two Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Indian Ocean: Mauritius and Seychelles. The paper discusses the gendered aspects of scale, boundedness, isolation and fragmentation that are characteristic of island states in the contexts of Mauritius and Seychelles. Mauritius and Seychelles both inherited British colonial structures and became independent in 1968 and 1976. Smallness is a salient feature of both islands, but women’s political trajectories and success differ substantially. Drawing from published sources, this paper attempts to explain the different trends in gendered political presence in Mauritius and Seychelles. The paper also discusses the implications for women’s political empowerment in SIDS.peer-reviewe

Globalisation, Internationalisation and Higher Education in Mauritius: The Compromise of Quality

This article discusses the implications, risks and benefits of globalisation and  internationalisation of higher education in Mauritius. Mauritius is one of Africa’s success stories in terms of political stability, democracy, peace and development.  Being a resource-poor country and because of the remoteness and small size of the island, diversity of the population and lack of indigenous culture, Mauritius has  always been closely connected to the global economy and society. Given the  absence of high-value natural resources, a key resource the csuntry has had to rely  on is human capital and Mauritius has invested heavily in education through the  welfare state which provides free education at all levels. In order to widen access to  higher education, the Mauritian government has opened up the sector to foreign  higher education institutions. A growing number of Western and Indian foreign  accreditation bodies offer courses in the country in parallel with the local tertiary  institutions. The article shows that while Mauritius has been open to   internationalisation to enable the higher education sector to grow, this is taking  place at a substantial financial cost, which is to the detriment of the quality of  education and also to local higher education and examination bodies. The sector has become riddled with corruption as politicians bypass regulations and quality for  financial gain. Moreover, the form and direction that internationalisation is taking is highly imbued with a Western bias which is more expensive, does not encourage the development of local knowledge and also portrays an image that western academic certificates carry a higher value. Mauritius is also not linking up sufficiently with  African higher education institutions, apart from a few South African universities. l’île Maurice. L’île Maurice est l’une des réussites de l’Afrique en matière de stabilité politique, de démocratie, de paix et de développement. Etant un pays à faibles ressources et en raison de l’éloignement et de la petite taille de l’île, de la diversité de sa population et du manque de culture autochtone, Maurice a toujours été étroitement liée à l’économie et à la société mondiales. Face à l’absence de ressources naturelles de grande valeur, le pays a dû s’appuyer sur le capital humain, une ressource clé, et investi massivement dans l’éducation par l’intermédiaire de l’Etat providence qui offre une éducation gratuite à tous les niveaux. Afin d’élargir l’accès à l’enseignement supérieur, le gouvernement mauricien a ouvert le secteur aux établissements d’enseignement supérieur étrangers. Un nombre croissant d’organismes d’accréditation étrangers occidentaux et indiens offrent des cours dans le pays parallèlement aux institutions locales d’enseignement supérieur. Le présent article montre que l’ouverture de l’Ile Maurice à l’internationalisation pour permettre au secteur de l’enseignement supérieur de se développer s’est faite à un coût financier substantiel, qui est au détriment de la qualité de l’éducation, mais aussi de l’enseignement supérieur et des organismes examinateurs locaux. Le secteur est maintenant gangréné par la corruption puisque les politiciens contournent les règlements et la qualité pour le gain financier. De plus, la forme et la direction que prend l’internationalisation sont fortement imprégnées d’un parti pris pour l’Occident qui est plus couteux, ne favorise pas le développement du savoir local et donne aussi l’image que les diplômes universitaires occidentaux ont plus de valeur. En outre, l’île Maurice ne s’associe pas suffisamment avec les  établissements d’enseignement supérieur africains, à l’exception de quelques universités sud-africaines

Lexical access and representations in children : naming and word learning

This thesis is concerned with naming and word learning in typical children. The investigations of naming concerned lexical processes and representations associated with children’s quick and accurate picture naming. The investigations of word learning concerned the development of naming processes and representations during word learning. The aim of the investigations of naming was to better understand the way that different cognitive processes contribute to the speed and accuracy of discrete and serial naming. The contribution of age, gender, semantic abilities, phonological abilities and speed of response to non-lexical stimuli was analysed in relation to children’s speed and accuracy of naming. The findings indicated that age, but not gender, was related to the naming process; that different processes are involved in discrete and serial naming, and that speed of non-lexical information processing speed appeared to be an important variable to accurate (and fast) naming. Additional analyses on a sample of children with Word Finding Difficulties concerned errors and the role of lexical factors in the naming process. These findings revealed that lexical factors were not as important as participant characteristics, such as age or language ability. The aim of the investigations of word learning was to assess the role of semantic and phonological information in relation to the development of lexical representations. Children learnt a set of nonsense words and their knowledge of these words was assessed using a comprehensive range of tasks involving different lexical abilities. The children had greater difficulty with assessments of production than assessments of comprehension, and did poorly on tasks involving the retrieval of semantic representations. In addition, comparisons of the effectiveness of different types of input revealed that visual input was most effective and that children were able to use information from one modality to form lexical representations in another modality. The implications of these findings for existing knowledge about typical populations, as well as for understanding atypical development, are discussed

Regime-switching recurrent reinforcement learning for investment decision making

This paper presents the regime-switching recurrent reinforcement learning (RSRRL) model and describes its application to investment problems. The RSRRL is a regime-switching extension of the recurrent reinforcement learning (RRL) algorithm. The basic RRL model was proposed by Moody and Wu (Proceedings of the IEEE/IAFE 1997 on Computational Intelligence for Financial Engineering (CIFEr). IEEE, New York, pp 300-307 1997) and presented as a methodology to solve stochastic control problems in finance. We argue that the RRL is unable to capture all the intricacies of financial time series, and propose the RSRRL as a more suitable algorithm for such type of data. This paper gives a description of two variants of the RSRRL, namely a threshold version and a smooth transition version, and compares their performance to the basic RRL model in automated trading and portfolio management applications. We use volatility as an indicator/transition variable for switching between regimes. The out-of-sample results are generally in favour of the RSRRL models, thereby supporting the regime-switching approach, but some doubts exist regarding the robustness of the proposed models, especially in the presence of transaction cost

Pd-catalyzed enantioselective aerobic oxidation of secondary alcohols: Applications to the total synthesis of alkaloids

Enantioselective syntheses of the alkaloids (-)-aurantioclavine, (+)-amurensinine, (-)-lobeline, and (-)- and (+)-sedamine are described. The syntheses demonstrate the effectiveness of the Pd-catalyzed asymmetric oxidation of secondary alcohols in diverse contexts and the ability of this methodology to set the absolute configuration of multiple stereocenters in a single operation. The utility of an aryne C-C insertion reaction in accessing complex polycyclic frameworks is also described

Listen Up: Using young people's views to help shape education to support psychosis literacy

In the UK, schools are gradually embracing their responsibility to cater for young people’s mental wellbeing. Exploring young people’s Mental Health Literacy (MHL) is an area however that is still in its infancy. Specific focus has explored young people’s literacy of the condition of psychosis, considering how useful it is to provide biomedical information as a MHL intervention within schools. Such an approach reduces a more holistic understanding of mental illness and portrays young people as illiterate. My goal is instead to value young people as competent social agents with existing social and personal meaning in their understanding of mental illness. A peer research methodological approach has given young people the chance to explore their views and opinions without adult influence. Thirteen PRs (Peer Researchers) were involved in focus group sessions from two Further Education Colleges in the North East of England: 1) To explore young people’s own understandings of psychosis 2) To explore what aims young people may feel psychosis literacy should address and 3) To explore what strategies young people believe would be the most useful to cater for young people’s educational and health needs. AR-led (Adult Researcher) and PR-led data has been assessed for the influence of demand characteristics, adding new understanding of how young people socially constructed their responses according to an adult or non-adult audience. The need to understand young people’s social, cultural, and personal meanings attached to psychosis have been an important first step to help appreciate what holistic methods and content of literacy would be most meaningful and right for young people. Nevertheless, an emphasis on academic attainment in schools and the influence of key stakeholders’ views and opinions (including teachers and parents) may challenge the viability of implementing any form of psychosis literacy within the school environment. It is likely that adult concerns would remain and form a barrier towards listening to the voice of young people’s views and opinions in favour of their own agenda

Novel Insights Based on the Anatomy of Henle Fiber Layer

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify a precise location of deep capillary plexus (DCP) injury in acute macular neuroretinopathy (AMN) lesions using multimodal imaging. Methods: En face structural optical coherence tomography (OCT) images were manually segmented to delineate outer retinal AMN lesions involving the ellipsoid zone and interdigitation zone. AMN lesion centroid was calculated, and image distortion was applied to correct for Henle fiber layer (HFL) length and orientation. The resulting image was registered with the corresponding en face OCT angiography (OCTA) image segmented at the DCP and structural OCT volume before grading for vascular and structural features, respectively. Results: Thirty-nine AMN lesions from 16 eyes (11 female patients, mean age 34 ± 4 years) were analyzed. After correcting for HFL anatomy, in 62% of AMN lesions, the centroid co-localized with a capillary vortex (pattern 1); flow defects were detected in 33% of lesions (pattern 2); and in 5% of lesions no specific pattern could be identified (pattern 3). The detection of a specific pattern increased after correcting the projection of AMN lesion for HFL anatomy (28% vs. 5%, P = 0.04). Outer nuclear layer thickness was lower in the centroid area in 10 (29%) AMN lesions from 6 patients, all corresponding to lesions fitting pattern 2 (r = 0.78, P < 0.001). Conclusions: AMN lesions might be a result of DCP impairment at the level of the capillary vortex or draining venule. In eyes with AMN, the location of outer retinal changes associated with DCP ischemia appears to be influenced by the length and orientation of HFL.publishersversionpublishe