Gangs and the Culture of Violence in El Salvador (What role did the US play?)

Gang violence in El Salvador has resulted in conditions that have perpetuated an environment of terror and culture of violence. This paper aims to understand the emergence of transnational gangs in El Salvador and the US involvement in this process. The article is divided into the following subtitles; 1980s civil war and the repercussions of US involvement, Salvadorans migration to the US and reverse migration (with a focus on Los Angeles and San Salvador), and US exportation of heavy-handed policies to El Salvador’s institutionalized use of political violence. The paper concludes that US involvement in El Salvador created a foundation for a culture of violence and through interlinked factors US influence and actions instigated circumstances for gang proliferated in El Salvador

A Process for Capturing the Art of Systems Engineering

There is both an art and a science to systems engineering. The science of systems engineering is effectively captured in processes and procedures, but the art is much more elusive. We propose that there is six step process that can be applied to any systems engineering organization to create an environment from which the "art" of that organization can be captured, be allowed to evolve collaboratively and be shared with all members of the organization. This paper details this process as it was applied to NASA Launch Services Program (LSP) Integration Engineering Branch during a pilot program of Confluence, a Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) wiki tool

Phosphorous characterization and quantification in CVD SiO2(P,B)/SiO2/si multilayer system by low energy PIXE

BIA

CALL FOR NGO ACCOUNTABILITY AND STAKEHOLDER APPRAOCH

ABSTRACT Recent growth in calls for and exanimation of accountability of non-governmental organisations has arisen from the corporate, state and civil society sectors. Such calls raised a number of intriguing issues about the nature of accountability, the forms of accountability by answering the questions: to whom; for what; and how NGOs are accountable. More specifically, many calls demand of NGOs and funders to try move beyond a narrow functional accountability (upward accountability) focus and establish means of allowing the embracement of broader accountability for their wider social impacts (social or downward accountability) encompassing accountability for the impacts of their practices that have upon other organisations, individuals and the wider environment. Some of these calls directed the attention to largely unaccustomed articulations of the accountant���¢��������s craft within civil society context and challenges that may arise for such matters as the elusive nature of the accounting entity and what constitutes appropriate reporting performance. NGOs have been continuously challenging companies, governments and multilateral organizations to become more transparent and accountable within their practices towards their stakeholder. In this context, NGOs are no different from other organisations, thus having to become more transparent and accountable through their practices regarding the impact of their activities that could affect or affected their stakeholders. In this perspective, through this research the main goal was to examine the level of accountability and transparency of five INGOs through their practices via their websites and their annual reports. In particular, the researched conducted aimed investigating information concerning the forms of INGO accountability, to which stakeholders groups the INGO are accountable to, the degree the stakeholder approach is followed via their annual reports and web sites and the demonstration of transparency and accountability disclosed in their reports. The methodology used to conduct this research was a combination of content analysis and counter accounting. Web sites were analysed regarding the information disclosed and the annual reports were analysed with respect of the INGO Accountability Charter reporting guidelines. The results of the analysis produced indicated that a small percentage of INGOs are demonstrating downward accountability within their practices effectively and a small percentage is also demonstrating transparency via their web sites and annual reports, since they fail to comply with all the reporting requirements of the INGO Accountability Charter

Effect of the granular size on the zeolite content in the natural zeolite ores

  Natural zeolite which named TS-14 from Tel- Asis area in Syria has beenstudied. The sample was crashed under fixed force, 5kg/cm2 and sieved with differentsizesieves. The product was divided to five samples with different size, andnamedTS-14-1,<0.125mm, TS-14-2, 0.125-0.3mm, TS-14-3, 0.3-0.6mm, TS-14-4, 0.6-85mm, TS-14-5, 0.85-1.4mm. The specific surface area was calculated. The maximum specific surface area was 84.6m2/g for the first sample which has minimum size, then the value of surface area decreases to become 54.2m2/g for the second sample, therefore the value of surface area increases for third and fourthsamples to became 60.3m2/g and 66.3m2/g, respectively. The adsorption of the Ni(II) ions was studied using the samples. The capacity of the samples is increasing when the granule size is increasing, and the maximum capacity was 91.7mg/g as Ni(II) ions for last sample. The adsorption process of Ni(II) ions takes place on the heterogeneous centers.

PIXE micro-PIXE and RBS analysis of thermal aged rubber material : on the additive behaviour versus aging time

BIA

Hypertension treatment intensification among stroke survivors with uncontrolled blood pressure

Objective The study objective was to evaluate a pharmacist hypertension care management program within the patient-centered medical home. Methods This was a retrospective case-control study. Cases included all patients with hypertension who were referred to the care management program, and controls included patients with hypertension who were not referred to the program during the same 1-year period. Each case was matched to a maximum of 3 controls on the basis of primary care physician, age ±5 years, gender, diagnoses of diabetes and kidney disease, baseline systolic blood pressure ±10 mm Hg, and number of unique antihypertensive medications. Pharmacists provided a hypertension care management program under an approved scope of practice that allowed pharmacists to meet individually with patients, adjust medications, and provide patient education. Primary outcomes were systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure at 6 and 12 months. Multivariate regression models compared each blood pressure end point between cases and controls adjusting for age, comorbidities, baseline blood pressure, and baseline number of blood pressure medications. Results A total of 573 patients were referred to the hypertension program; 86% (465/543) had at least 1 matched control and were included as cases in the analyses; 3:1 matching was achieved in 90% (418/465) of cases. At baseline, cases and controls did not differ with respect to age, gender, race, or comorbidity; baseline blood pressure was higher (139.9/80.0 mm Hg vs 136.7/78.2 mm Hg, P ≤ .0002) in the cases compared with controls. Multivariate regression modeling identified significantly lower systolic blood pressure for the cases compared with controls at both 6 and 12 months (6-month risk ratio [RR], 9.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.7-35.3; 12-month RR, 20.3; 95% CI, 4.1-99.2; P < .01 for both comparisons). Diastolic blood pressure was significantly lower at 12 months (RR, 2.9; 95% CI, 1.2-7.1; P < .01) but not at 6 months (RR, 1.0; 95% CI, 0.31-3.4; P = .9) for the cases compared with controls. Conclusions Patients who were referred to the pharmacist hypertension care management program had a significant improvement in most blood pressure outcomes. This program may be an effective method of improving blood pressure control among patients in a medical home model of primary care

A Process for Capturing the Art of Systems Engineering

No abstract availabl

Clarifying the relationship between metformin, acute kidney injury and lactic acidosis

No abstract available

Determination of the Specific Surface Acidity of Al2O3 / CdO System by TPD Method using Pyridine as a Base

In this work, six different samples of the  Al2O3 / CdO system were prepared in a co-precipitation method. Samples were prepared from saturated solutions for cadmium and aluminum salts using concentrated ammonia as a precipitating agent at pH = 8 and after settling and drying the sample was calcined at 400°C for two hours. In order to studied the surface acidity by temperature programmed desorption (TPD) method. The calcined sample was divided to two parts: The TG-DTA measurements was carried on for the first part in order to determine the loss weight using thermal program in the range 20-900°C and 10°C/min. The second part was impregnated in pyridine for 24h, and dried at 120°C to remove the physical adsorbed pyridine and the TG-DTA measurements were performed at the same conditions for the first part. Differential curves were studied to calculate the weight loss produced by the desorption  of pyridine. The AC8 (1-1) showed the highest surface acidity value (0.47m.mol / g), while the sample AC8 (1-0.25) gave the lowest acidity surface value (0.11m.mol / g).