Understanding Legislator Experiences of Family-Friendly Working Practices in Political Institutions

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edit version of an article published in Politics and Gender. © 2015, Cambridge University Press

AN ECONOMETRIC MODEL OF THE SADC MAIZE SECTOR

In almost all of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries maize is cropped on a commercial basis except in Mauritius and Seychelles. Maize meal is the most important food staple in Southern and Eastern Africa. This is one of the main reason many governments in the region implement various policies to protect the maize sector. With adoption of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) in the late 1990s, there has been a wave of market liberalization in the region. Maize production and marketing have seen major reforms with the URAA, market liberalization, and the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). Private sector participation in the supply of maize inputs (improved seed and fertilizer) and grain marketing has steadily increased during this same period (Hassan et al., 2000). The pace of change differed however from country to country, as did the impacts of the reforms.International Relations/Trade, Productivity Analysis,

To be African or Not to Be: An Autoethnographic Content Analysis of the Works of Dr. Asa Grant Hilliard, III (Nana Baffour Amankwatia, II)

The purpose of this research was to explore the work of Dr. Asa Grant Hilliard, III (Nana Baffour Amankwatia, II) in three areas: (1) traditional African education and socialization, (2) responsibilities of African teachers, and (3) the need for inter/multicultural teacher education programs. It was also the purpose of this research to explore my African identity development and transformation as I interacted with, studied, and read works by Dr. Hilliard. Data used in the study include a selection of works by Dr. Hilliard, fieldnotes, fieldletters, original poetry and essays, and memory data (St. Pierre, 1997). Qualitative content analysis and autoethnography were combined to present an autoethnographic content analysis (ACA) of Dr. Hilliard’s work. The ACA method is unique to this study and provided a reflexive analysis of documents (Altheide, 1987) complimented by recognition of the events that contributed to my African identification. Findings from the study revealed several major themes in Dr. Hilliard’s work: (a) African socialization to challenge the MAAFA, (b) traditional African education for all children, (c) African teachers as responsible teachers, and (d) teacher education for inter/multicultural perspectives. The final product is an amalgamation of academic and literary writing, and includes poems, vignettes, and autobiographical narratives

The effect of distance on observed mortality, childhood pneumonia and vaccine efficacy in rural Gambia.

We investigated whether straight-line distance from residential compounds to healthcare facilities influenced mortality, the incidence of pneumonia and vaccine efficacy against pneumonia in rural Gambia. Clinical surveillance for pneumonia was conducted on 6938 children living in the catchment areas of the two largest healthcare facilities. Deaths were monitored by three-monthly home visits. Children living >5 km from the two largest healthcare facilities had a 2·78 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1·74-4·43] times higher risk of all-cause mortality compared to children living within 2 km of these facilities. The observed rate of clinical and radiological pneumonia was lower in children living >5 km from these facilities compared to those living within 2 km [rate ratios 0·65 (95% CI 0·57-0·73) and 0·74 (95% CI 0·55-0·98), respectively]. There was no association between distance and estimated pneumococcal vaccine efficacy. Geographical access to healthcare services is an important determinant of survival and pneumonia in children in rural Gambia

A Knowledge-Based Approach to Configuration Layout, Justification, and Documentation

The design, development, and implementation of a prototype expert system which could aid designers and system engineers in the placement of racks aboard modules on the Space Station Freedom are described. This type of problem is relevant to any program with multiple constraints and requirements demanding solutions which minimize usage of limited resources. This process is generally performed by a single, highly experienced engineer who integrates all the diverse mission requirements and limitations, and develops an overall technical solution which meets program and system requirements with minimal cost, weight, volume, power, etc. This system architect performs an intellectual integration process in which the underlying design rationale is often not fully documented. This is a situation which lends itself to an expert system solution for enhanced consistency, thoroughness, documentation, and change assessment capabilities

Matching times of leading and following suggest cooperation through direct reciprocity during V-formation flight in ibis

One conspicuous feature of several larger bird species is their annual migration in V-shaped or echelon formation. When birds are flying in these formations, energy savings can be achieved by using the aerodynamic up-wash produced by the preceding bird. As the leading bird in a formation cannot profit from this up-wash, a social dilemma arises around the question of who is going to fly in front? To investigate how this dilemma is solved, we studied the flight behavior of a flock of juvenile Northern bald ibis (Geronticus eremita) during a human-guided autumn migration. We could show that the amount of time a bird is leading a formation is strongly correlated with the time it can itself profit from flying in the wake of another bird. On the dyadic level, birds match the time they spend in the wake of each other by frequent pairwise switches of the leading position. Taken together, these results suggest that bald ibis cooperate by directly taking turns in leading a formation. On the proximate level, we propose that it is mainly the high number of iterations and the immediacy of reciprocation opportunities that favor direct reciprocation. Finally, we found evidence that the animals' propensity to reciprocate in leading has a substantial influence on the size and cohesion of the flight formations

Blended Feedback II: Video feedback for individual students is the norm, on an undergraduate computer programming unit

The use of video feedback is popular, even usual, in fields involving social behaviour and interaction or physical performance. In other academic subject areas, the use of video as feedback is, as yet, uncommon. The work of others in this field covers group work, generic feedback, small numbers of students, samples and trials. We believe this may be one of the first studies on returning individual personalised feedback to a sizeable number of first year undergraduate students taking Computer Programming, or any other academic subject, for every assessment submitted on the unit. Student engagement with feedback is often lacking and in that case, a valuable learning opportunity is missed. Previous work using audio as feedback showed 80% of students would prefer audio to written feedback. However, the separation of submitted programming code from audio comments still limits ease of reference to the work. The next natural step was to use video screen capture to augment the student experience by improving easy reference to work by simultaneously providing contextually relevant narrative and visually referring to elements of the work