School Budgets and Student Achievement in California: The Principal's Perspective

Presents the results of workshops conducted with 45 elementary, middle, and high school principals from California public schools. Documents the variety of resource allocation strategies used by principals to maximize student academic performance

Lessons from the carnival: the implications for Australian teacher education of a distance education program designed for the children of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia.

This paper examines implications for teacher education derived from the evaluation of a distance education program for the Showmen's Guild of Australasia. The program was established in 1989 to meet the educational needs of Guild members who travel from town to town providing agricultural and equestrian shows. A review of the literature reveals that there are numerous difficulties faced by highly mobile students and by rural students and teachers. Interviews conducted with children, parents, home tutors, and itinerant teachers focused on their perceptions of their lives and their general views on education. Data from the interviews revealed the existence of extended and intensive social networks that sustain the itinerant lifestyle. Respondents evaluated the distance education program positively as meeting the educational needs of show children. Work and the work ethic played an important role in the development of children's distinctive identity, while sport and play were associated with local schools and socializing with local children. This study points out the importance of teacher graduates being acquainted with the increasing variety of educational experiences, implications of distance education for children, and benefits and limitations of distance education programs. (LP

Visualizing the strain evolution during the indentation of colloidal glasses

We use an analogue of nanoindentation on a colloidal glass to elucidate the incipient plastic deformation of glasses. By tracking the motion of the individual particles in three dimensions, we visualize the strain field and glass structure during the emerging deformation. At the onset of flow, we observe a power-law distribution of strain indicating strongly correlated deformation, and reflecting a critical state of the glass. At later stages, the strain acquires a Gaussian distribution, indicating that plastic events become uncorrelated. Investigation of the glass structure using both static and dynamic measures shows a weak correlation between the structure and the emerging strain distribution. These results indicate that the onset of plasticity is governed by strong power-law correlations of strain, weakly biased by the heterogeneous glass structure.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

The use of honey in healing a recalcitrant wound following surgical treatment of hidradenitis suppurativa

Ancient civilizations used honey to heal wounds. Despite the rediscovery of honey by modern physicians1 its use in conventional medicine, unlike in complementary medicine, remains limited. Much anecdotal evidence, some clinical observations, some animal models and some randomised controlled trials support the efficacy of honey in managing wounds2,3 , but few detailed descriptions of the use of honey in healing difficult surgical wounds have previously been published

Non-Credit Services of Group-Based Financial Institutions: Implications for Smallholder Women’s Honey Income in Arid and Semi Arid Lands of Kenya

This paper analyses the effect of non-credit services of joint liability credit institutions on smallholder women beekeepers’ honey income. The non-credit services offered to the beekeepers are mainly enterprise development services (training on marketing, business, production and subsector analysis). The study uses cross-sectional data from a survey of women beekeepers participating in group-based credit programmes; the survey was conducted in September 2005 in Makueni district of Kenya. The findings indicate that the number of enterprise development related trainings attended by women beekeepers that are offered by the group-based financial institutions positively and significantly influence honey income. The results confirm that non-credit services contribute positively to the enhancement of honey income. These results imply that extension and strengthening of group-based financial institutions’ non-credit services in the marginal areas will enhance development of smallholder agriculture for improved income generation.Credit, Finance, Honey, Makueni, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Labor and Human Capital, Marketing, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,