Professor James Cameron: introduction by a late-coming beneficiary

Mark Elliot’s introduction to this selection of papers from the symposium presents a sketch of James Cameron’s contribution to scholarship as encountered through some of his notable writings. The result is a fascinating tour of Scottish church history in the Reformation era, taking in many of the texts, ideas and personalities that helped shape a church and a nation.Publisher PD

Rural Poverty Dynamics, Agricultural Productivity and Access to Resources

The objectives of this paper are: measure the prevalence of rural poverty in 1997 and 2000, based on the nationwide Tegemeo survey; categorize households according to whether they were above the poverty line in both 1997 and 2000, entered into poverty or exited from poverty between 1997 and 2000, or were above the poverty line in both years; identifies the household-level and community-level factors associated with rural poverty through econometric analysis; and the implications of these results for the design of appropriate poverty reduction strategies. Such analysis is intended to guide donor programs and interventions designed to attack the roots of chronic poverty.Food Security, Food Policy, Kenya, Rural Poverty, Food Security and Poverty, Productivity Analysis, Q18,

Food Pricing Policy and Rural Poverty: Insights from Maize in Kenya

This study estimates the effects on poverty resulting from maize price changes associated with the operations of the maize marketing board in Kenya. We consider both supply and demand responses and the accompanying adjustments in rural labor markets in estimating a second order approximation to equilibrium income changes. We then use stochastic dominance techniques to generate poverty rankings between the distribution of income with the effects of the government marketing operations and the distribution of counterfactual incomes. This approach effectively addresses concerns regarding the sensitivity of poverty estimates to the type of poverty measure used. Results indicate that the price-elevating effects of government maize marketing operations have exacerbated rural poverty in all regions of the country except the region from which the largest part of surplus maize originates.Kenya, income transfers, maize policy, Crop Production/Industries, Food Security and Poverty, C22, O2, Q13, Q18,

Development of lubricating oils suitable for use with liquid oxidizers Final summary report, 4 Dec. 1969 - 4 Oct. 1970

Development of lubricating oils suitable for use with liquid oxidizer

Ecodriving and Carbon Footprinting: Understanding How Public Education Can Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Fuel Use

Ecodriving is a collection of changes to driving behavior and vehicle maintenance designed to impact fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in existing vehicles. Because of its promise to improve fuel economy within the existing fleet, ecodriving has gained increased attention in North America. One strategy to improve ecodriving is through public education with information on how to ecodrive. This report provides a review and study of ecodriving from several angles. The report offers a literature review of previous work and programs in ecodriving across the world. In addition, researchers completed interviews with experts in the field of public relations and public message campaigns to ascertain best practices for public campaigns. Further, the study also completed a set of focus groups evaluating consumer response to a series of websites that displayed ecodriving information. Finally, researchers conducted a set of surveys, including a controlled stated-response study conducted with approximately 100 University of California, Berkeley faculty, staff, and students, assessing the effectiveness of static ecodriving web-based information as well as an intercept clipboard survey in the San Francisco Bay Area. The stated-response study consisted of a comparison of the experimental and control groups. It found that exposure to ecodriving information influenced people’s driving behavior and some maintenance practices. The experimental group’s distributional shift was statistically significant, particularly for key practices including: lower highway cruising speed, driving behavior adjustment, and proper tire inflation. Within the experimental group (N = 51), fewer respondents significantly changed their maintenance practices (16%) than the majority that altered some driving practices (71%). This suggests intentionally altering driving behavior is easier than planning better maintenance practices. While it was evident that not everyone modifies their behavior as a result of reviewing the ecodriving website, even small shifts in behavior due to inexpensive information dissemination could be deemed cost effective in reducing fuel consumption and emissions

Why does consumer sentiment predict household spending?

Consumer behavior ; Consumption (Economics) ; Economic conditions

Fast computation of effective diffusivities using a semi-analytical solution of the homogenization boundary value problem for block locally-isotropic heterogeneous media

Direct numerical simulation of diffusion through heterogeneous media can be difficult due to the computational cost of resolving fine-scale heterogeneities. One method to overcome this difficulty is to homogenize the model by replacing the spatially-varying fine-scale diffusivity with an effective diffusivity calculated from the solution of an appropriate boundary value problem. In this paper, we present a new semi-analytical method for solving this boundary value problem and computing the effective diffusivity for pixellated, locally-isotropic, heterogeneous media. We compare our new solution method to a standard finite volume method and show that equivalent accuracy can be achieved in less computational time for several standard test cases. We also demonstrate how the new solution method can be applied to complex heterogeneous geometries represented by a grid of blocks. These results indicate that our new semi-analytical method has the potential to significantly speed up simulations of diffusion in heterogeneous media.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures, 5 table

Smallholder Farming Under Increasingly Difficult Circumstances: Policy and Public Investment Priorities for Africa

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Reflexiones acerca de la alfabetización.

Sin resume

Cognición y Representación: Persiguiendo un Sueño

La verdadera equidad educacional no se logra con sólo abrir los colegios a todos los niños, sino ofreciéndoles oportunidades de éxito escolar a través del cultivo de la diversidad cognoscitiva, considerando el rol de la cultura y de la escuela en este proceso. La mente es un logro cultural cuya conformación está influida significativamente por el tipo de experiencias vivenciadas por una persona en el transcurso de su vida. Las formas de representación que se usan como sistemas de símbolos para representar lo que se piensa influyen en los procesos de pensamiento y en los productos de éste, desarrollan diferentes destrezas cognoscitivas e inciden en lo que uno es capaz de ver y de representar. En el trabajo docente, ellas pueden combinarse para enriquecer el conjunto de recursos ofrecidos a los alumnos a modo de que entiendan ideas importantes, útiles, hermosas y poderosas; que piensen analítica y críticamente; que especulen imaginativamente para ver conexiones en las ideas y que usen lo que saben para mejorar sus vidas y contribuir a la cultura