Decentralization in education : an economic perspective

Evaluating decentralization in terms of three economic criteria - social efficiency, technical efficiency, and equity - the paper argues that some decisionmaking (about finance and teacher recruitment) should be provided for at the local level, and some (about school organization and curriculum) at the regional level. A system of central government grants should be used to correct problems of equity and inefficiency inherent in a decentralized system. Little is known about the economic and educational consequences of decentralization, despite a wide variety of country experiences. The effects of decentralization are difficult to isolate, so scholars have focused instead on issues of implementation.National Governance,Teaching and Learning,Gender and Education,Primary Education,Banks&Banking Reform

Foreign Demand For United States Higher Education: A Study of Developing Countries in the Eastern Hemisphere

(First Paragraph) Foreign student enrollments in the United States have increased rapidly over the past 25 years. The total number increased from 36,494 in 1954 to 336,990 in 1982. While foreign students still represent less than 2% of all higher education enrollments in the United States, this proportion is likely to grow over the next decade as enrollments of American citizens decline. One consequence of the growth to date has been that many colleges and universities depend on foreign students for an important part of their tuition revenue or enrollment-determined budget, and this dependence is also likely to grow over the next decade. Another important consequence of larger flows of foreign students is an increase in immigration to the United States of skilled labor as students adjust their visa status to immigrant

Atypicalities and Apartment Rent Concessions

This paper examines the use and value of rental concession using a 1988 sample of apartment rents in the Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem (North Carolina) MSA. The first section develops an approach to the problem and the second section estimates a logit model to predict the use of concessions as a pricing strategy based on characteristics of the apartment. The third section employs a hedonic pricing model to measure the average value of rental concessions in the Greensboro market. The final section summarizes relevant findings.

Modification of Heme Peptides by Reverse Proteolysis: Spectroscopy of Microperoxidase-10 with C-Terminal Histidine, Tyrosine, and Methionine Residues

Small-molecule analogs of the active sites of heme proteins are under investigation in many laboratories. Covalent attachment of ligands to the porphyrins is often desirable as it reduces complications due to axial ligand dissociation and scrambling in cases involving mixed axial ligation. The preparation of ligand-linked (tailed) porphyrin systems, however, often involves complex multistep syntheses. We have found that trypsin-catalyzed reverse proteolysis provides a simple preparative route to a novel class of water-soluble tailed porphyrins based on the well-characterized microperoxidase (MP) framework. Using reverse proteolysis reactions, we have obtained mutant microperoxidase decapeptides (MP10s) with C-terminal histidine (H23MP10), tyrosine (Y23MP10), and methionine (M23MP10) residues. In addition, we have investigated the electronic absorption and resonance Raman spectra of these MP10 mutants

Manganese Microperoxidase-8

Demetalation of Fe(III) microperoxidase-8 (MP8) by anhydrous HF gives metal-free MP8, a convenient starting material for a wide variety of metal-substituted MP8 derivatives, including Mn(III)MP8. Mn(III)MP8 was produced by treatment of metal-free MP8 with manganous acetate in aerated aqueous solution; it was characterized by mass spectrometry and UV−visible absorption spectroscopy. Resonance Raman spectra suggest that Mn(III)MP8 contains histidine and water axial ligands at neutral pH. The Mn(IV)=O derivative is readily prepared by oxidation of Mn(III)MP8 with hydrogen peroxide or Ru(bpy)_3^(3+) (bpy = 2,2‘-bipyridine)

Genetic Studies of Sulfadiazine-resistant and Methionine-requiring \u3cem\u3eNeisseria\u3c/em\u3e Isolated From Clinical Material

Deoxyribonucleate (DNA) preparations were extracted from Neisseria meningitidis (four isolates from spinal fluid and blood) and N. gonorrhoeae strains, all of which were resistant to sulfadiazine upon primary isolation. These DNA preparations, together with others from in vitro mutants of N. meningitidis and N. perflava, were examined in transformation tests by using as recipient a drug-susceptible strain of N. meningitidis (Ne 15 Sul-s Met+) which was able to grow in a methionine-free defined medium. The sulfadiazine resistance typical of each donor was introduced into the uniform constitution of this recipient. Production of p-aminobenzoic acid was not significantly altered thereby. Transformants elicited by DNA from the N. meningitidis clinical isolates were resistant to at least 200 μg of sulfadiazine/ml, and did not show a requirement for methionine (Sul-r Met+). DNA from six strains of N. gonorrhoeae, which were isolated during the period of therapeutic use of sulfonamides, conveyed lower degrees of resistance and, invariably, a concurrent methionine requirement (Sul-r/Met−). The requirement of these transformants, and that of in vitro mutants selected on sulfadiazine-agar, was satisfied by methionine, but not by vitamin B12, homocysteine, cystathionine, homoserine, or cysteine. Sul-r Met+ and Sul-r/Met− loci could coexist in the same genome, but were segregated during transformation. On the other hand, the dual Sul-r/Met− properties were not separated by recombination, but were eliminated together. DNA from various Sul-r/Met− clones tested against recipients having nonidentical Sul-r/Met− mutant sites yielded Sul-s Met+ transformants. The met locus involved is genetically complex, and will be a valuable tool for studies of genetic fine structure of members of Neisseria, and of genetic homology between species

Accountability educacional : posibilidades y desafíos para América Latina a partir de la experiencia internacional

Recoge algunos trabajos seleccionados de entre las varias ponencias presentadas en el “Seminario Accountability educacional: posibilidades y desafíos para América Latina a partir de la experiencia internacional”, una iniciativa conjunta del Preal y el CIDE desarrollada en Santiago de Chile bajo los auspicios de la USAID y la Fundación Tinker. El concepto, de aplicación reciente en América Latina, remite a la necesidad de asignar responsabilidades por las acciones propias y los resultados de las mismas. Se lo usa en el mundo financiero para aludir a los resultados de quienes resultan responsables por el manejo de dineros encomendados por terceros. Ellos están obligados a informar a sus clientes sobre los movimientos de recursos y a rendir cuentas sobre cómo se han utilizado y qué se ha logrado con ellos. Esto no sucede en el mundo de las políticas públicas y, menos aún, en aquel de la educación y la enseñanza. De hecho, los conceptos de transparencia, rendición de cuentas y responsabilidad por los resultados son relativamente novedosos cuando se refieren al quehacer de personeros que administran o manejan recursos públicos y que deben responder por el desempeño de personas y organizaciones bajo su control. En el campo educativo el concepto remite a los resultados del aprendizaje escolar y a la responsabilidad que le cabe a las escuelas –y dentro de ellas a la comunidad escolar– por los resultados que obtienen sus alumnos. Entre las acciones orientadas a lograr estos propósitos resulta prioritario evaluar periódicamente los resultados del aprendizaje y el cumplimiento de metas curriculares; alinear estas evaluaciones con estándares de contenido, desempeño y oportunidades de aprendizaje, dentro y fuera del aparato escolar; premiar o castigar el buen desempeño de los actores del sistema y, tan importante como esto, cuidar que estos ejercicios de medición y regulación no acaben distorsionando el contenido y orientación de la práctica educativa y permitan –paralelamente– fortalecer las capacidades de gestión en los establecimientos rezagados y prestar, a los maestros, el respaldo técnico necesario para realizar sus proyectos educativos con resultados de excelencia

From Nonspecific DNA–Protein Encounter Complexes to the Prediction of DNA–Protein Interactions

©2009 Gao, Skolnick. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000341DNA–protein interactions are involved in many essential biological activities. Because there is no simple mapping code between DNA base pairs and protein amino acids, the prediction of DNA–protein interactions is a challenging problem. Here, we present a novel computational approach for predicting DNA-binding protein residues and DNA–protein interaction modes without knowing its specific DNA target sequence. Given the structure of a DNA-binding protein, the method first generates an ensemble of complex structures obtained by rigid-body docking with a nonspecific canonical B-DNA. Representative models are subsequently selected through clustering and ranking by their DNA–protein interfacial energy. Analysis of these encounter complex models suggests that the recognition sites for specific DNA binding are usually favorable interaction sites for the nonspecific DNA probe and that nonspecific DNA–protein interaction modes exhibit some similarity to specific DNA–protein binding modes. Although the method requires as input the knowledge that the protein binds DNA, in benchmark tests, it achieves better performance in identifying DNA-binding sites than three previously established methods, which are based on sophisticated machine-learning techniques. We further apply our method to protein structures predicted through modeling and demonstrate that our method performs satisfactorily on protein models whose root-mean-square Ca deviation from native is up to 5 Å from their native structures. This study provides valuable structural insights into how a specific DNA-binding protein interacts with a nonspecific DNA sequence. The similarity between the specific DNA–protein interaction mode and nonspecific interaction modes may reflect an important sampling step in search of its specific DNA targets by a DNA-binding protein

In search of the authentic nation: landscape and national identity in Canada and Switzerland

While the study of nationalism and national identity has flourished in the last decade, little attention has been devoted to the conditions under which natural environments acquire significance in definitions of nationhood. This article examines the identity-forming role of landscape depictions in two polyethnic nation-states: Canada and Switzerland. Two types of geographical national identity are identified. The first – what we call the ‘nationalisation of nature’– portrays zarticular landscapes as expressions of national authenticity. The second pattern – what we refer to as the ‘naturalisation of the nation’– rests upon a notion of geographical determinism that depicts specific landscapes as forces capable of determining national identity. The authors offer two reasons why the second pattern came to prevail in the cases under consideration: (1) the affinity between wild landscape and the Romantic ideal of pure, rugged nature, and (2) a divergence between the nationalist ideal of ethnic homogeneity and the polyethnic composition of the two societies under consideration