Visit to Pakistani Women's Madrasas: April 2007

I visited five women's madrasas, in addition to meeting separately with other male madrasa leaders and briefly sitting in on Hafiz Khalil and Shabbir Ahmed's own 10-day workshop. The report documents the experiences of the author touring women's madrasas in Pakistan

Contrast sensitivities in the Gaia Data Release 2

The source detection sensitivity of Gaia is reduced near sources. To characterise this contrast sensitivity is important for understanding the completeness of the Gaia data products, in particular when evaluating source confusion in less well resolved surveys, such as in photometric monitoring for transits. Here, we statistically evaluate the catalog source density to determine the Gaia Data Release 2 source detection sensitivity as a function of angular separation and brightness ratio from a bright source. The contrast sensitivity from 0.4 arcsec out to 12 arcsec ranges in DG = 0-14 mag. We find the derived contrast sensitivity to be robust with respect to target brightness, colour, source density, and Gaia scan coverage.Comment: Accepted to A&A. 3 pages, two figure

Does It Pay to Be Productive? The Case of Age Groups

Using longitudinal matched employer-employee data for the period 1999-2006, we investigate the relationship between age, wage and productivity in the Belgian private sector. More precisely, we examine how changes in the proportions of young (16-29 years), middle-aged (30-49 years) and older (more than 49 years) workers affect the productivity of firms and test for the presence of productivity-wage gaps. Results (robust to various potential econometric issues, including unobserved firm heterogeneity, endogeneity and state dependence) suggest that workers older than 49 are significantly less productive than prime age and young workers. In contrast, the productivity of middle-age workers is not found to be significantly different compared to young workers. Findings further indicate that average hourly wages within firms increase significantly and monotonically with age. Overall, this leads to the conclusion that young workers are paid below their marginal productivity while older workers appear to be "overpaid" and lends empirical support to theories of deferred compensation over the life-cycle (Lazear, 1979).aging, matched panel data, wages, productivity

Evaluación de programas hipermedia educativos de producto final y en un contexto similar al de aplicación

Siguiendo con la temática de la construcción de hipermedias (Cataldi, Lage et al., 2001), en este artículo se presenta la evaluación del software educativo hipermedial como una herramienta para la selección de las aplicaciones. A través de la evaluación preliminar de los 25 programas más utilizados en todos los niveles del sistema educativo, se detectó la necesidad de estandarizar el diseño y la evaluación de los hipermedias didácticos. Se presentan las grillas de evaluación en forma exhaustiva considerando los aspectos pedagógicos y didácticos, comunicacionales, organizativos y, técnicos y económicos. Éstas se aplican de un hipermedia utilizado como programa didáctico para cursos de iniciales de algoritmia, como así la evaluación efectuada en forma contextualizada. Esta evaluación surge como complemento de las evaluaciones interna y externa que se realizan en el caso de los programas educativos. Se presenta también un modelo de ficha general del programa, la que debería acompañar a la aplicación para facilitar la elección del docente. Finalmente se realiza una evaluación contextualizar de una aplicación, detallando cada una de las etapas de la misma y el tratamiento estadístico de los resultados de la misma y las conclusiones a las que se arribó.Following the thematic of the hypermedia construction (Cataldi, Lage et al., 2001), in this article it is presented the evaluation of hypermedial educative software as a tool for the applications selection. Through the preliminary evaluation of the 25 most used programs in all the levels of the educative system, the necessity to standardize the design and the evaluation of the didactic hypermedia was detected. We present the evaluation grids in an exhaustive form, considering the pedagogical, didactic, communicational, organizational aspects as well as the economics and technicians facets. The grids applied to a hypermedia program used like a didactic tool for initials courses of algorithms, as therefore the evaluation conducted in a contextualized form. This evaluation arises as a complement of the internal and external evaluations made in the educational software. A general card model of the program also appears to accompany the application to facilitate the tutor selection. Finally, a contextualized evaluation of an application is made, detailing each of the steps of the procedure, the stages of the statistical treatment of the results and the conclusions at which we have arrived

Il genere Saxifraga sulle Alpi Apuane: status delle conoscenze e aspetti di conservazione

L’obiettivo del presente lavoro è lo studio della distribuzione sulle Alpi Apuane di alcune specie critiche del genere Saxifraga. Sono stati raccolti dati bibliografici e di erbario sulla distribuzione di tutto il genere Saxifraga nella regione apuana, dal XIX secolo a oggi; tra i più significativi lavori consultati si ricordano i contributi di Pellegrini (1942) e di Ferrarini e Marchetti (1994). I dati sono stati raccolti in tabelle e riportati su cartografia digitale. Quindi sono state selezionate le specie critiche da sottoporre a indagini sul campo, volte a verificarne l’attuale effettiva consistenza. I taxa selezionati sono Saxifraga aspera, S. exarata ssp. pseudoexarata, S. granulata e S. adscendens. Per tre delle entità indagate si è osservata una riduzione dell’area di distribuzione, rispetto a quella ricavata dai dati bibliografici e d’erbario, integrati da segnalazioni in verbis; massima per S. aspera, di poco inferiore per S. adscendens, più contenuta per S. exarata ssp. exarata. Gli esiti dei sopralluoghi sul campo, inoltre, non consentono di confermare la presenza di S. granulata in territorio apuano. Tutte le stazioni delle entità indagate ricadono nell’ambito dei Siti di Importanza Regionale definiti dalla Legge Regionale 56/2000

Da "aggro" a "zergare". Lingua e lessico del gaming italiano

This study focuses on the language of the Italian gaming world by analysing its structures and linguistic features. It is divided into three parts: the first chapter is a general overview of the attitudes and trends about gaming and its evolution in Italy; in the second chapter a wordlist has been built up ad hoc in order to collect and categorise the most popular words in the Italian language of gaming; the third part is an analysis of the above-mentioned language and its users, known as gamers, resulting in the massive presence of anglicisms in the whole corpus. Firstly, some statistical comparisons prove that in the last decades gaming has become a real worldwide phenomenon, even though data collections conducted by research institutes cannot give an actual and useful estimate of the number of gaming language speakers. Therefore, this study is meant to analyse mostly PC gamers category, since they massively use the gaming language into their chats. The dictionary has been composed by referring to more than 120 online sources like Wikipedia, Treccani, Dizionario del Corriere, several fan blogs and websites. The final part is a review from a grammatical and linguistic viewpoint and gives some reasons why the gaming language has developed. Among these, three main dimensions are discussed: diffusion, immediacy and personal user choice. The last chapter is an attempt to provide an anthropological analysis of the users' choices by contextualising the gamers community into an unreal coexisting world, that is the cyberspace

Socioeconomic impact of youth mental health disorders and abuse of substances in West and Central Africa

Mental health disorders and substance abuse are major causes of disability worldwide [1] and the leading causes of years lived with disability (YLDs) among all disease groups [2]. In particular, young children and adolescents (aged between 10 and 24 years) are deeply affected by this problem [3], with as many as 20% developing serious common disorders, such as depression and anxiety, or other severe illnesses like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and psychosis, as well as abuse of alcohol and other substances [4]. In sub-Saharan countries in Africa, key adverse conditions are known to increase the prevalence of mental illnesses and dramatically influence the abuse of legal and illegal drugs. Years of civil conflicts [5], gender-related prejudice, unemployment and poverty are major drivers that have contributed significantly to the rise of mental health diseases, hampering social development and decreasing the quality of life of children and adolescents [6, 7]. Moreover, childhood physical, emotional and sexual violence are also known to predispose children to mental health disorders [7, 8]. This article will discuss the prevalence of mental health disorders in the context of West and Central Africa (WCA), in particular their socioeconomic impact, the current efforts in mitigating such problems, and future foci in supporting children and adolescents in WCA

THE ENRICA LEXIE AWARD AMID JURISDICTIONAL AND LAW OF THE SEA ISSUES

This article analyzes the Enrica Lexie Arbitral Award, first of all, in relation to international law issues concerning the application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The article then focuses on the question of the functional immunity of the two marines, from the point of view of the Tribunal’s assertion of its incidental jurisdiction to deal with the matter, as well as of the Tribunal’s affirmation of the existence of a customary international law rule applicable in the present case. Both conclusions appear unconvincing, also in light of the role of the two marines on board a merchant ship. In any case, the fact remains that the judgment has the merit of finally putting an end to a long-standing dispute, to the satisfaction of the two parties involved