An Experimental Approach to Social Capital in South Africa

This paper measures the social capital of trust and trustworthiness in South Africa using an experimental protocol designed to distinguish these norms from altruism. Experimental participants played multiple roles, making it impossible to construct theoretically-grounded norm measures based on an individual's play across roles. Two-stage estimates of a social interaction model of norms identifies the presence of endogenous social effects, indicating that communities can be meaningfully typified as having and maintaining distinct normative environments. However, in contrast to studies that rely on less direct social capital measures, we do not find that trust boosts mean household living standards when controlling for the endogeneity of norms.

Physical therapy differential diagnosis for a patient with viral central nervous system infection in acute care: a case study

Introduction: This case report presents a patient with respiratory distress who went into coma and was admitted in the intensive care unit (ICU). The paper will discuss the initial impressions in the ICU and the differential diagnosis considered to arrive at an accurate diagnosis. It will demonstrate how information from physical therapy contributed to discern the proper diagnosis, and the evolving treatment plan and interventions as the patient progressed and discharged out of the ICU into the hospital floors. Methods: This is a case of a 32-year-old male who self-admitted to the emergency department (ED) of his local hospital due to shortness of breath, weakness, and high fever. The study will detail how physical therapy helped analyze the patient’s condition to arrive at the most appropriate management of the patient. Results: The patient underwent 10 physical therapy sessions in the acute care setting before being transferred out to an acute rehabilitation unit, and then discharged to home. Discussion: This article highlights the role of physical therapy in acute care rehabilitation of a patient with a complex presentation following a viral central nervous system (CNS) disease and its efforts in ensuring proper discharge disposition

Uptake of an OHS code of practice by construction firms : barriers and enablers in an Australian industry

The Australian construction industry, reflecting a global trend, is moving towards the implementation of a voluntary code of practice (hereafter VCP) for occupational health and safety. The evidence suggests that highlyvisible clients and project management firms, in addition to their subcontractors, look set to embrace such a code. However, smaller firms not operating in high-profile contracting regimes may prove reticent to adopt a VCP. This paper incorporates qualitative data from a high-profile research project commissioned by Engineers Australia and supported by the Australian Contractors’ Association, Property Council of Australia, Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Association of Consulting Engineers Australia, Australian Procurement and Construction Council, Master Builders Australia and the Australian CRC for Construction Innovation. The paper aims to understand the factors that facilitate or prevent the uptake of the VCP by smaller firms, together with pathways to the adoption of a VCP by industry

The Origins of Underperformance in Higher Education in America: Proximal Systems of Influence

In this paper, we examine the problem of underachievement in higher education. We begin by seeking to establish that the quality of learning among undergraduates is, as a whole, limited. Undergraduate underachievement cannot be attributed to any single cause. Quite the contrary, we argue that the origins of underperformance in the academy are systemic, coactive and multi-layered. At the proximal level of teaching and learning, we identify four mutually reinforcing processes that contribute to student underachievement: (a) fragmentation of the curriculum, (b) entrant knowledge level and skills gaps; (c) student culture, and (d) pedagogical ineffectiveness. At a more distal level, these processes operate within a set of macro-level systems and influences, including (a) economic pressures and academic commercialization, (b) specialization of expertise within the academy, (c) a culture of entitlement, amusement, and indulgence outside of the academy, and (d) constraints related to governmental and socio-economic infrastructure. In this paper, we examine the interplay among systems of teaching and learning operating within the academy that lead most directly to academic underachievement. We argue that any attempts to improve student learning must proceed by seeking systemic change, however incremental and long term. Such change requires acknowledging the ways in which fissures and tensions within the academy work against the goal of fostering integrative teaching and learning

The Role of Women's Education in the Modern Nation-State

The authors examine the history of women’s education and the rise of the modern nation-state. The paper seeks to correlate advances in women’s education to the rising status of nations within the global state system. It does this through a historical and a cross-sectional analysis of women’s education and national rankings in terms of such indicators as GDP, public health, rates of crime, technological innovation and government stability. The authors argue that the ability of a nation to compete within the global system is directly tied the educational attainment of its female population. We also put forth strategies that may be used to increase a government’s willingness to invest in the education of its female population

Some Observations From A Very Telling Innocuous Query: An Essay On The State Of Higher Education In America

We presents a self-reflective assessment of higher education from the perspective of educators and administrators prompted by a common question addressed to many of us, perhaps hundreds of times in the year; “What’s my grade?” Upon some scrutiny, we find a series of troubling interrelated issues that more or less depict a system of higher education adrift in a sea of maladies and its course in need of correction, lest a total ‘wreck’ befall the system

Stabilization in a two-species chemotaxis system with logistic source

We study a system of three partial differential equations modelling the spatiotemporal behaviour of two competitive populations of biological species both of which are attracted chemotactically by the same signal substance. For a range of the parameters the system possesses a uniquely determined spatially homogeneous positive equilibrium (u?, v?) globally asymptotically stable within a certain nonempty range of the logistic growth coefficients

On the Keller-Segel System with External Application of Chemoattractant

Chemotaxis is the ability of microorganisms to respond to chemical signals by moving along the gradient of the chemical substance, either toward the higher concentration (positive taxis) or away from it (negative taxis)

Designing Affirmative Action Policies under Uncertainty

We study university admissions under a centralized system that uses grades and standardized test scores to match applicants to university programs. In the context of this system, we explore affirmative action policies that seek to narrow the gap between the admission rates of different socio-demographic groups while still accepting students with high scores. Since there is uncertainty about the score distribution of the students who will apply to each program, it is unclear what policy would have the desired effect on the admission rates of different groups. We address this challenge by using a predictive model trained on historical data to help optimize the parameters of such policies. We find that a learned predictive model does significantly better than relying on the ideal parameters for the last year. At the same time, we also find that a large pool of historical data yields similar results as our predictive approach for our data. Due to the more complex nature of the predictive approach, we conclude that a simpler approach should be preferred if enough data is available (e.g., long-standing, traditional university programs), but not for newer programs and other cases in which our predictive strategy can prove helpful.Peer reviewe

Transmisor en frecuencias RF basado en radio sobre fibra óptica

Investigación TecnológicaEl proyecto de grado se basó en el desarrollo de un transmisor de frecuencias de radio sobre fibra, específicamente para tener una gran capacidad de transmisión y pérdidas de propagación bajas y obtener un amplio ancho de banda en transmisión de señales de RF. Para la elaboración del sistema se realizaron pruebas de laboratorio que permitieron llegar a resultados y conclusiones en pro del avance del proyecto, trabajando en la caracterización de los elementos hasta llegar a la construcción de una antena que permitiera la transmisión de la señal. De esta manera se pudo concluir que con la implementación de este sistema se genera un bajo consumo de potencia y resalta un ancho de banda generoso que brinda la fibra óptica para la transmisión de señales de radio frecuencia.INTRODUCCIÓN 1. GENERALIDADES 2. OBJETIVOS 3. JUSTIFICACIÓN 4. MARCO DE REFERENCIA 5. METODOLOGÍA 6. IMPLEMENTACIÓN 7. DESCRIPCIÓN ECONÓMICA DEL PROYECTO 8. CONCLUSIONES BIBLIOGRAFÍA ANEXOSPregradoIngeniero Electrónic