Regulatory Reform: In the Land of the \u27Coffeenet\u27

Sitting down to write this article at a desk some 30 miles south of central London, and less than one degree west of the Greenwich meridian, I became immediately more conscious than usual of geography. The frequently interwoven use of such western-centric cartographic labels as Middle East, and Far East, with the geographically more precise terms of Western or Central Asia, and East and South-East Asia, sometimes causes us to confuse the actual proximity of Europe\u27s, much larger, near-neighbour

Overview: A+B+C = VSAT

The benefits of VSAT systems and services are being realised in all spheres across the globe, both private and public. Banks, government departments, schools, hospitals, home offices, small enterprises, multi-national corporates, and rural telephony… all sectors are seizing upon the opportunity to get connected through satellite communications

Divided attention, selective attention and drawing: Processing preferences in Williams syndrome are dependent on the task administered

The visuo-spatial abilities of individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) have consistently been shown to be generally weak. These poor visuo-spatial abilities have been ascribed to a local processing bias by some [30] and conversely, to a global processing bias by others [24]. In this study, two identification versions and one drawing version of the Navon hierarchical processing task, a non-verbal task, were employed to investigate this apparent contradiction. The two identification tasks were administered to 21 individuals with WS, 21 typically developing individuals, matched by non-verbal ability, and 21 adult participants matched to the WS group by mean chronological age. The third, drawing task was administered to the WS group and the TD controls only. It was hypothesised that the WS group would show differential processing biases depending on the type of processing the task was measuring. Results from two identification versions of the Navon task measuring divided and selective attention showed that the WS group experienced equal interference from global to local as from local to global levels, and did not show an advantage of one level over another. This pattern of performance was broadly comparable to that of the control groups. The third task, a drawing version of the Navon task, revealed that individuals with WS were significantly better at drawing the local form in comparison to the global figure, whereas the typically developing control group did not show a bias towards either level. In summary, this study demonstrates that individuals with WS do not have a local or a global processing bias when asked to identify stimuli, but do show a local bias in their drawing abilities. This contrast may explain the apparently contrasting findings from previous studies

Block design performance in the Williams syndrome phenotype: A problem with mental imagery?

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder which, among other characteristics, has a distinctive cognitive profile. Non-verbal abilities are generally poor in relation to verbal abilities, but also show varying levels of ability in relation to each other. Performance on block construction tasks represents arguably the weakest non-verbal ability in WS. In this study we examined two requirements of block construction tasks in 21 individuals with WS and 21 typically developing (TD) control individuals. The Squares task, a novel two-dimensional block construction task, manipulated patterns by segmentation and perceptual cohesiveness to investigate the first factor, processing preference (local or global), and by obliqueness to examine the second factor, the ability to use mental imagery. These two factors were investigated directly by the Children?s Embedded Figures Test (CEFT; Witkin, Oltman, Raskin & Karp, 1971) and a mental rotation task respectively. Results showed that individuals with WS did not differ from the TD group in their processing style. However, the ability to use mental imagery was significantly poorer in the WS group than the TD group. This suggests that weak performance on the block construction tasks in WS may relate to an inability to use mental imagery

Regulatory Reform: WANTED: A bridge for Africa\u27s digital divide APPLY: Pretty much anywhere in Africa QUOTE REFERENCE: VSAT

For Africa, and for the economy of the whole planet, those hundreds of millions of people across the continent who are currently denied reasonable access to even simple voice service represent a vast untapped pool of creativity. This very large and potentially very powerful economic dynamo demands access to more than the simplest tools of communication, and requires the means to unleash the potential productivity of its own knowledge-base into an increasingly connected world. The International Telecommunications Union acknowledges this, as does its sister organisation, the United Nations. The Global VSAT Forum enjoins you to acknowledge it too

Three Essays on the Economics of Education

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on the economics of education. The first and third chapters examine marijuana legalization and its effects on students, while the second chapter examines the impact of pension incentives on teacher quality.The first chapter examines the extent to which there are negative spillovers of recreational marijuana legalization on underage marijuana use and educational outcomes. I use two complementary identification strategies that rely on plausibly exogenous spatial and temporal variation in access to marijuana in Oregon. In November of 2014, Oregon passed Measure 91, a referendum to legalize recreational marijuana. Unlike other legal states, Oregon allowed counties that voted against the legalization measure by at least 55% to opt out. Difference-in-differences estimates suggest that self-reported access to marijuana from the Oregon Student Wellness and Oregon Healthy Teens surveys did not change in counties above versus below the vote-share threshold after legalization, but that use increased, particularly for 11th-grade girls. Additionally, using data on high schools from the Oregon Department of Education, I find that chronic absenteeism, dropout rates, and English proficiency all get worse after legalization. The second chapter, which is co-authored with Patten Priestley Mahler, studies the impact of pension incentives on teacher quality by analyzing a return-to-work policy in North Carolina that effectively removed the push incentives embedded in teacher pensions by allowing them to tap into their pension while teaching. Using administrative public-school data from the North Carolina Research Data Center, we estimate the impact of teachers who returned to work after retirement on student outcomes. We develop an instrumental variable identification strategy centered on the cancellation of the policy and find small improvements in both reading and math achievement for students in the same school who had one of these teachers in their grade during the policy relative to students who did not. The results suggest that schools are losing effective teachers because of pension incentives and that return-to-work policies may be a way to retain them. The final chapter estimates the effect of recreational marijuana legalization on educational outcomes using exogenous spatial variation in access to marijuana dispensaries in Washington. In November 2012, Washington passed Initiative-502, a referendum to legalize recreational marijuana. As part of the initiative, the state capped the number of dispensaries at 334. It held a lottery to assign licenses in localities where the number of license applicants exceeded the local dispensary quota, thus generating exogenous variation in dispensary locations. Using an instrumental variable strategy and data on public high schools from Washington\u27s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, I find that schools near open dispensaries have worse chronic absenteeism, dropout rates, and discipline rates relative to schools near dispensaries that did not open. This is consistent with the negative effects of legalization that I estimate for Oregon in the first chapter