Madam President: Progress, Problems, and Prospects for 2008

Women have made great progress in electoral politics both in the United States and around the world, and at all levels of public office. However, although a number of women have led their countries in the modern era and a growing number of women are winning gubernatorial, senatorial, and congressional races, the United States has yet to elect a female president, nor has anyone come close. This paper considers the prospects for electing a woman president in 2008 and the challenges facing Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice—potential frontrunners from both major parties&nmash;given the historical experiences of women who pursued the nation’s highest office

Role Models Against All Odds

This project aims to empower young girls and women who have never been told, “you can do it too.” In order to fight gender disparity in the workforce, I have created a book that collects various biographies of successful women in STEM. The book is entirely in Spanish, as my goal is to reach young girls and women, specifically from Hispanic countries in North, Central, South America, and the Caribbean. In these countries, girls are advised against going into STEM fields because they are professions ‘for the men.’ With this book, I wish to break that cycle and empower these girls, letting them know that they, too, can be part of the conversations taking place, that their voices are equally as significant, and that they can create tremendous impact. Throughout history, women have exceeded all expectations imposed on them, even when often told otherwise. I want to ensure girls know they have role models from whom they can take inspiration and see the similarities in the struggles surpassed. The book has a story of a successful woman from each Hispanic country in the region mentioned above; however, it is not finished yet. I want to have a story for each stem field, politics, and activism. All the fields mentioned above are male-dominated, but with continuous work, I hope to aid young girls and women to find the strength to go beyond expectations and follow whatever their dreams and ambitions are, knowing that as their predecessors, they will succeed

AlGaInN laser diode technology for GHz high-speed visible light communication through plastic optical fiber and water

AlGaInN ridge waveguide laser diodes are fabricated to achieve single-mode operation with optical powers up to 100 mW at ∼420  nm∼420  nm for visible free-space, underwater, and plastic optical fiber communication. We report high-frequency operation of AlGaInN laser diodes with data transmission up to 2.5 GHz for free-space and underwater communication and up to 1.38 GHz through 10 m of plastic optical fiber

Women World Leaders: Comparative Analysis and Gender Experiences

Research suggests that executive political office poses additional and different political challenges for women than legislative office. Yet, a few dozen women have attained their nations’ highest executive office. Surprisingly little research has been devoted to the experiences of these women world leaders. This study builds profiles of the women world leaders in the modern era and analyzes their backgrounds and political experiences in an effort to both identify commonalities among the women leaders and assess the challenges they faced on account of their sex

Child handwashing in an internally displaced persons camp in Northern Iraq: A qualitative multi-method exploration of motivational drivers and other handwashing determinants.

BACKGROUND: Children in humanitarian situations are particularly vulnerable to diseases such as diarrhoea. Handwashing with soap can greatly reduce transmission but handwashing rates are often low and traditional interventions ineffective. To aid future intervention design, this study aims to understand the determinants of child handwashing and the key motivational drivers of children's behaviour within a specific humanitarian setting. METHODS: In an internally displaced persons camp in Northern Iraq we conducted a series of 36 friendship-paired interviews with children aged 7-12 years, six semi-structured caregiver interviews, and three semi-structured hygiene promoter interviews. Perceived determinants of child handwashing were explored qualitatively, and motivational drivers were explored quantitatively with children in a rating exercise. Qualitative data were analysed thematically, using an inductive approach, and logistic regression analyses of motive rating data were performed to determine the predicted probabilities of motives being rated as important. RESULTS: Access to soap and water was perceived to be high across all participant groups. Children, caregivers and hygiene promoters all perceive the determinants of child handwashing to be associated with familial role, environmental factors pertaining to location and quality of handwashing materials and facilities, and level of exposure to hygiene promotion, and children also attribute their handwashing to social norms. We find that children in this context are motived most by play and nurture. CONCLUSIONS: Provision of soap and water alone is not sufficient to encourage children to practice handwashing with soap in a humanitarian context. Our findings suggest that equal consideration should be given to the quality and location of handwashing materials and facilities and social norms could be leveraged to promote and enhance child handwashing. Motive-based interventions targeting play or nurture may be a promising approach and are likely most effective when used in conjunction, along with other motivational drivers such as affiliation and love

Novel strategies and techniques for performing elemental speciation.

This thesis reports on the hyphenation of well known individual techniques into novel combinations which allow the creation of new strategies and techniques for performing speciation analysis. Speciation analysis is a relatively new and exciting area of analytical chemistry which gives the analyst a greater understanding of the impact of elemental species on the environment. The use of microcolumns filled with either acidic alumina or sulphydryl cotton to preconcentrate and separate selenium(IV) and selenium(VI) species is reported. The microcolumns were incorporated into flow analysis systems using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for detection of the selenium-82 isotope. With optimised conditions the limits of detection for selenium(VI) using the alumina microcolumn was 8 ng/l while selenium(IV) was separated from selenium(VI) using the sulphydryl cotton microcolumn and gave a detection limit of 15 ng/l. Preliminary results from the combination of gel electrophoresis with laser ablation ICP-MS are reported. This novel combination of the separation technique of gel electrophoresis with the localised solid analysis of laser ablation, gave us the ability to identify and quantify cobalt-protein complexes. The limit of detection for cobalt in the electrophoretic gel was 8 mug/l. The resolution for mapping a crossed immunoelectrophoretic gel was 1 mm. Preliminary studies into the novel combination of electrothermal vaporisation with time-of-flight mass spectrometry are reported. This system gave the ability to perform multielement elemental analysis on small volumes (10 mul) of sample giving detection limits in the mug/l range. Then by changing the instrumental parameters the instrument performed speciation analysis on different chromium complexes and identified the chromium and copper species in a simple standard mixture