Public expenditure reviews for education : the Bank's experience

Public expenditure reviews (PERs) are an excellent vehicle for analyzing important sector issues in the context of the overall economic and fiscal situation. PERs should give as accurate a picture as possible of how funds to the sector are allocated and disbursed. The education sector (like other social sectors) has specific characteristics that affect the relationship between sector and macro expenditures that can skew the impact of"sector-neutral"policies. PERs should pay explicit attention to these concerns, which include : a) the different time frames for the attainment of macroeconomic and education sector goals; b) the often substantial part of education sector spending that is outside the purview and control of the Ministry of Education; c) the low ratio of nonwage to wage expenditures within the sector's recurrent budget; and e) the large and capital-intensive foreign financing component of sector funding in many low-income countries, which is often fragmented among many donors and projects. The treatment of the education sector in PERs must be analyzed in the broader context of Bank operations. This report is the first step in a broader research agenda which includes : 1) analysis of effects of adjustment operations on the sector; and 2) development of guidelines for an improved analysis of sector-specific cost and financing issues in the macroeconomic expenditure context.Curriculum&Instruction,Primary Education,National Governance,Gender and Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Vocational education and economic environments : conflict or convergence?

A better understanding of the relationship between economic policies and human capital formation through vocational education and training (VET) will help both development strategists and education planners. With this in mind, the paper begins with a social systems model to trace the impact of the economic environment and policies on the internal and external efficiency of VET. It continues with a discussion of how specific economic policies can shape efforts to improve the internal and external efficiency of VET. Some evidence of this relationship is provided in a review of the VET experience in selected countries. The paper concludes with some tentative lessons for VET lending and sector work as drawn from this review and offers an agenda for the further study and validation of the economic environment thesis.Economic Theory&Research,Vocational&Technical Education,Teaching and Learning,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform

Bonne Europe et mauvaise France. Les éditorialistes français interprètent la victoire du « non » au traité constitutionnel européen

Le 29 mai 2005, la majorité des électeurs français ont rejeté le projet de « traité constitutionnel européen » qui leur était soumis par référendum. Que signifie ce vote ? Comment l’expliquer ? Comme après chaque scrutin, s’est engagée une lutte symbolique pour l’interprétation des résultats faisant intervenir hommes et femmes politiques, journalistes et experts. La présente contribution se propose de réfléchir à la construction médiatique de ce vote en étudiant les réactions des commentateurs au lendemain du scrutin. Ce faisant, seront exposées leurs stratégies idéologiques, ainsi que les logiques sociales qui en sont au fondement. Cette recherche interroge ainsi le rôle des médias dans la structuration du débat public.On May 29, 2005, the European Constitution Treaty submitted by referendum had been rejected by a majority of French voters. What does this opposition to the project of a European Constitution mean ? How can it be explained ? As after each vote, the interpretation of the results raises symbolic struggles amongst politicians, journalists, and experts. This research paper aims at analysing the media coverage of this “no” vote, especially through the study of leading columns. It deals with ideological strategies as well as structural logics. It reflects on the impact of mass media on the public sphere

Metric operators, generalized hermiticity and lattices of Hilbert lpaces

A quasi-Hermitian operator is an operator that is similar to its adjoint in some sense, via a metric operator, i.e., a strictly positive self-adjoint operator. Whereas those metric operators are in general assumed to be bounded, we analyze the structure generated by unbounded metric operators in a Hilbert space. It turns out that such operators generate a canonical lattice of Hilbert spaces, that is, the simplest case of a partial inner product space (PIP-space). We introduce several generalizations of the notion of similarity between operators, in particular, the notion of quasi-similarity, and we explore to what extend they preserve spectral properties. Then we apply some of the previous results to operators on a particular PIP-space, namely, a scale of Hilbert spaces generated by a metric operator. Finally, motivated by the recent developments of pseudo-Hermitian quantum mechanics, we reformulate the notion of pseudo-Hermitian operators in the preceding formalism.Comment: 51pages; will appear as a chapter in \textit{Non-Selfadjoint Operators in Quantum Physics: Mathematical Aspects}; F. Bagarello, J-P. Gazeau, F. H. Szafraniec and M. Znojil, eds., J. Wiley, 201

L'Union libérale.: Contribution à une sociologie politique des libéraux sous le Second Empire.

What does "liberal" mean? This contribution to a sociology of "liberalism" is a study of the so-called "Liberal Union" under the Second French Empire. In a restricted sense, the term refers to a strategy of electoral alliance which brings together "republicans" and "monarchists" who where in opposition to the Empire. These relationships, still unthinkable a few years before, were carried out under the "liberal" flag and the demand of "liberties". What significance does this form of agreement have in the political and intellectual battles of the Second Empire ? What explains the mobilizations associated with the label "liberal" ? The analysis seeks to understand the conditions and limits -of this agreement. It also explains the political and intellectual stands in relation with the dynamics of the period. It shows that the "Liberal Union" corresponds to a characteristic ideological mood of the 1860s – which saw the birth of the formula "liberal democracy". It studies the way an opposition to the Empire is formed and returns on the rallying of the "liberals" to the new political order established at the beginning of the year 1870. The approach wish to reconsider the common political classifications established by academic literature by looking for affiliations or divisions which escape narratives based on the main political "forces" or "trends".Qu’est-ce qu’un « libéral » sous le Second Empire ? Cette thèse se présente comme une enquête historique sur la pensée et l’engagement des publicistes « libéraux » du XIXe siècle, à travers l’étude de la mobilisation intellectuelle et politique caractéristique de la décennie 1860, « l’Union libérale ». L’expression désigne en premier lieu une stratégie de rapprochements entre « monarchistes » et « républicains » opposés au régime autoritaire de Napoléon III, mais rassemblés sous le mot d’ordre de la défense des « libertés ». Quelles significations revêt cette forme d’entente dans les luttes idéologiques de la période ? Pourquoi un « parti libéral » n’a-t-il finalement jamais pris forme ? C’est la question même de savoir ce que « libéral » veut dire qui se trouve posée. Cette recherche analyse également le moment d’un renouveau de la pensée libérale marquée par l’association des termes « démocratie » et « libéralisme » sous la plume d’écrivains politiques comme Anatole Prévost-Paradol, Emile Ollivier, Edouard Laboulaye ou encore Gustave de Molinari

Repeat after me: Self-supervised learning of acoustic-to-articulatory mapping by vocal imitation

We propose a computational model of speech production combining a pre-trained neural articulatory synthesizer able to reproduce complex speech stimuli from a limited set of interpretable articulatory parameters, a DNN-based internal forward model predicting the sensory consequences of articulatory commands, and an internal inverse model based on a recurrent neural network recovering articulatory commands from the acoustic speech input. Both forward and inverse models are jointly trained in a self-supervised way from raw acoustic-only speech data from different speakers. The imitation simulations are evaluated objectively and subjectively and display quite encouraging performances

Spectral Engineering of Cavity-Protected Polaritons in an Atomic Ensemble with Controlled Disorder

The paradigm of $N$ quantum emitters coupled to a single cavity mode appears in many situations ranging from quantum technologies to polaritonic chemistry. The ideal case of identical emitters is elegantly modeled in terms of symmetric states, and understood in terms of polaritons. In the practically relevant case of an inhomogeneous frequency distribution, this simple picture breaks down and new and surprising features appear. Here we leverage the high degree of control in a strongly coupled cold atom system, where for the first time the ratio between coupling strength and frequency inhomogeneities can be tuned. We directly observe the transition from a disordered regime to a polaritonic one with only two resonances. The latter are much narrower than the frequency distribution, as predicted in the context of ''cavity protection''. We find that the concentration of the photonic weight of the coupled light-matter states is a key parameter for this transition, and demonstrate that a simple parameter based on statistics of transmission count spectra provides a robust experimental proxy for this theoretical quantity. Moreover, we realize a dynamically modulated Tavis-Cumming model to produce a comb of narrow polariton resonances protected from the disorder, with potential applications to quantum networks

Genome sequence of the bioplastic-producing ‘‘Knallgas’’ bacterium Ralstonia eutropha H16

The H2-oxidizing lithoautotrophic bacterium Ralstonia eutropha H16 is a metabolically versatile organism capable of subsisting, in the absence of organic growth substrates, on H2 and CO2 as its sole sources of energy and carbon. R. eutropha H16 first attracted biotechnological interest nearly 50 years ago with the realization that the organism’s ability to produce and store large amounts of poly[R-(–)-3-hydroxybutyrate] and other polyesters could be harnessed to make biodegradable plastics. Here we report the complete genome sequence of the two chromosomes of R. eutropha H16. Together, chromosome 1 (4,052,032 base pairs (bp)) and chromosome 2 (2,912,490 bp) encode 6,116 putative genes. Analysis of the genome sequence offers the genetic basis for exploiting the biotechnological potential of this organism and provides insights into its remarkable metabolic versatility