A comparison of silent reading and listening by written recall and multiple choice type tests in grade five.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston Universit

Willingness to pay for extension services in Uganda among farmers involved in crop and animal husbandry

Although the Ugandan government is determined to aid farmers increase agricultural productivity as an intervention on increasing food security and reducing poverty through extension services, resources constraints are dampening its efforts. Private extension services providers are being invited to take up information dissemination roles with queries on the availability and demand of the services among farmers to attract private sector and factors influencing the demand for extension services. Data collected by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) on national service delivery throughout the country in 2008 among 5363 and 3318 farmers involved in crops’ and animals’ husbandry was used to predict willingness to pay, amount farmers were willing to pay for extension services and factors that were to influence willingness to pay. It was established that about 35% and 40% of the farmers were willing to pay on average Ugandan shillings 3,400 (US$1.8) and 3,700 (US$ 2) per trip for extension services in crop and animal husbandry respectively. Key farmer’s attributes that influenced willingness to pay included sex, age, education level, regions of residence and preferred means to receive the services. The demand for extension and preferred price are low for private sectors engagement and the government should first educate the public on the importance of the services.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Social Housing and Location Choices of Immigrants in France

Our study examines the empirical links between social housing policy and location choices of immigrants in France. More specifically, we characterize the main individual and contextual determinants of the probability for immigrants to live in a HLM (habitations à loyer modéré, dwelling with a moderate rent), which is the main public housing policy in France. For that purpose, we use individual information coming from large (one-fourth) extracts of the French population censuses conducted by INSEE (Paris) in 1982, 1990, and 1999. Our estimates show that, in general, migrants live more frequently in social housing than French natives, other observables being equal. In particular, this probability is higher for migrants from Turkey, Morocco, Southeast Asia, Algeria, Tunisia and Sub-Saharan Africa (in descending order). We find also that migrants of all origins live less often in a HLM when the city has plenty of social housing and when the fraction of natives is high.social magnets, migration, social housing

Electrodeposition and cathode potential

The objective of electrodeposition and control of cathode potential is the qualitative and quantitative separation of metals from their solutions. It involves the problem: (1) measuring the cathode potential in relation to the solution in order selectively to plate any metal; (2) means of treating the solution to prevent the plating of more than one metal at any particular cathode potential. The present research involved the curve of cathode potential versus copper concentration, the designing and constructing of electronic units for automatic control, and the determination of voltage error in passing current through the saturated calomel electrode

Aortic volume determines global end-diastolic volume measured by transpulmonary thermodilution

BACKGROUND: Global end-diastolic volume (GEDV) measured by transpulmonary thermodilution is regarded as indicator of cardiac preload. A bolus of cold saline injected in a central vein travels through the heart and lung, but also the aorta until detection in a femoral artery. While it is well accepted that injection in the inferior vena cava results in higher values, the impact of the aortic volume on GEDV is unknown. In this study, we hypothesized that a larger aortic volume directly translates to a numerically higher GEDV measurement. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed data from 88 critically ill patients with thermodilution monitoring and who did require a contrast-enhanced thoraco-abdominal computed tomography scan. Aortic volumes derived from imaging were compared with GEDV measurements in temporal proximity. RESULTS: Median aortic volume was 194 ml (interquartile range 147 to 249 ml). Per milliliter increase of the aortic volume, we found a GEDV increase by 3.0 ml (95% CI 2.0 to 4.1 ml, p < 0.001). In case a femoral central venous line was used for saline bolus injection, GEDV raised additionally by 2.1 ml (95% CI 0.5 to 3.7 ml, p = 0.01) per ml volume of the vena cava inferior. Aortic volume explained 59.3% of the variance of thermodilution-derived GEDV. When aortic volume was included in multivariate regression, GEDV variance was unaffected by sex, age, body height, and weight. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that the aortic volume is a substantial confounding variable for GEDV measurements performed with transpulmonary thermodilution. As the aorta is anatomically located after the heart, GEDV should not be considered to reflect cardiac preload. Guiding volume management by raw or indexed reference ranges of GEDV may be misleading

AJAE Appendix: Challenges to the Development of a Dedicated Energy Crop

The material contained herein is supplementary to the article named in the title and published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Volume 89, Number 5, December 2007.Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Multi-vanadium substituted polyoxometalates as efficient electrocatalysts for the oxidation of l-cysteine at low potential on glassy carbon electrodes

The electrochemical behaviours of the sandwich-type complex [As2W18(VO)3O66]11- were studied in a pH 7 medium and compared with those of the three following Dawson-type vanadium-substituted complexes: [P2V2W16O62]8- (P2V2W16), [P2MoV2W15O62]8- (P2MoV2W15) and [P2V3W15O62]9- (P2V3W15). Electrochemistry shows that the sandwich-type POM contains 2 VIV centers and one VV center and must be formulated As2V2IVVW18, in agreement with titration, elemental analysis and magnetic measurements on this element.. All the POMs of this work proved efficient for the oxidation of L-cysteine. Comparison of the present results with those of mono-Vanadium substituted POMs indicates that accumulation of vanadium atoms in the POM framework is beneficial in the electrocatalytic process. In addition, the present work highlights the important influence of the POM structure in the electrocatalytic oxidation of L-cysteine. The remarkable outcome of this work is that the potential for the oxidation of L-cysteine in the presence of the selected POMs has been substantially driven in the negative direction compared to the case of glassy carbon alone, a feature which is associated with faster kinetics. The stability of the systems must also be pointed out

Priority Education Zones: Which Resources Produce Which Results? An Evaluation over the 1982-1992 Period

In 1982, pilot tests breaking with the idea of equal treatment were introduced in an attempt to do something about persistent school failure rates among the most disadvantaged pupils. These priority education zones (ZEPs) initially set up in a few regions were strengthened and extended in 1989 and 1990 and the measure has been regularly renewed since. It encourages the establishments concerned to develop educational projects and local partnerships by granting them additional resources (appropriations, jobs, hours of teaching, etc.). The aim is to improve educational performance by stimulating new projects. A reduction in class sizes is also coming to be seen as a tool. The changes that ZEP status has brought about for these establishments are evaluated using administrative data on the schools. We show that it is hard to find a significant effect of the ZEP programme on pupils success rates over the 1982-1992 period.Education, Program Evaluation, Compensatory Policy

Comparing ICP variants on real-world data sets: Open-source library and experimental protocol

Many modern sensors used for mapping produce 3D point clouds, which are typically registered together using the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm. Because ICP has many variants whose performances depend on the environment and the sensor, hundreds of variations have been published. However, no comparison frameworks are available, leading to an arduous selection of an appropriate variant for particular experimental conditions. The first contribution of this paper consists of a protocol that allows for a comparison between ICP variants, taking into account a broad range of inputs. The second contribution is an open-source ICP library, which is fast enough to be usable in multiple real-world applications, while being modular enough to ease comparison of multiple solutions. This paper presents two examples of these field applications. The last contribution is the comparison of two baseline ICP variants using data sets that cover a rich variety of environments. Besides demonstrating the need for improved ICP methods for natural, unstructured and information-deprived environments, these baseline variants also provide a solid basis to which novel solutions could be compared. The combination of our protocol, software, and baseline results demonstrate convincingly how open-source software can push forward the research in mapping and navigatio