Profile of reslizumab in eosinophilic disease and its potential in the treatment of poorly controlled eosinophilic asthma

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Last man standing: Mike Walsh on new films by Hong Kong's Johnnie To

Sydney, NS

Nga Rauru : ka maro te kaki o te Kotuku : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University

This thesis is concerned with the development of a resource: land, so as to provide an economic base that will sustain social and cultural activities for the iwi of Nga Rauru. Chapter One of the thesis reveals the various Acts and legislations and reasons that made land a source of conflict between Maori and Pakeha during the Nineteenth century. This is the first period of land alienation. Chapter Two highlights the Acts and legislation of the Twentieth century that continued to alienate Maori from their land. Attempts to counter this land alienation are also discussed. In Chapter Three a block of Maori land, originally Crown granted in 1882, is used to show the process of fragmentation and alienation which has produced the situation today: there is still Maori land left in the block, but it is largely leased to local Pakeha farmers. The consequences of land alienation to Maori in general, and where possible Nga Rauru specifically, is discussed in Chapter Four. Economic, cultural, spiritual, social and political factors are viewed in an attempt to gauge Nga Rauru's present 'well-being'. The final chapter calls for the utlisation of Nga Rauru lands to be returned to the iwi. A scenario concentrating on forestry development is used to indicate possible costs and returns to the iwi, in economic and social terms. The chapter concludes that there is a need for Nga Rauru to establish a Development Unit to facilitate desired economic growth for the iwi

Riblets for aircraft skin-friction reduction

Energy conservation and aerodynamic efficiency are the driving forces behind research into methods to reduce turbulent skin friction drag on aircraft fuselages. Fuselage skin friction reductions as small as 10 percent provide the potential for a 250 million dollar per year fuel savings for the commercial airline fleet. One passive drag reduction concept which is relatively simple to implement and retrofit is that of longitudinally grooved surfaces aligned with the stream velocity. These grooves (riblets) have heights and spacings on the order of the turbulent wall streak and burst dimensions. The riblet performance (8 percent net drag reduction thus far), sensitivity to operational/application considerations such as yaw and Reynolds number variation, an alternative fabrication technique, results of extensive parametric experiments for geometrical optimization, and flight test applications are summarized

Japan's experience with flexible exchange rates

Foreign exchange rates - Japan ; Japan

Rational acyclic resolutions

Let X be a compactum such that dim_Q X 1. We prove that there is a Q-acyclic resolution r: Z-->X from a compactum Z of dim < n+1. This allows us to give a complete description of all the cases when for a compactum X and an abelian group G such that dim_G X 1 there is a G-acyclic resolution r: Z-->X from a compactum Z of dim < n+1.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol5/agt-5-12.abs.htm

Policy coordination and financial intermediaries

Summary of proceedings from the 1986 Fall Academic Conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of San FranciscoMonetary policy ; Monetary policy - United States ; International economic relations ; Bank supervision ; Financial institutions

The potential of mobile phones to transform teacher professional development

Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English language teacher professional development (TPD) project, used futures thinking to author possible, probable and preferable future scenarios to solve the project’s greatest technological challenge: how to deliver audio-visual TPD materials and hundreds of classroom audio resources to 75,000 teachers by 2017. Authoring future scenarios and engaging in possibility thinking (PT) provided us with a taxonomy of question-posing and question-responding that assisted the project team in being creative. This process informed the successful pilot testing of a mobile phone-based technology kit to deliver TPD resources within an open distance learning (ODL) platform. Taking the risk and having the foresight to trial mobile phones in remote rural areas with teachers and students led to unforeseen innovation. As a result EIA is currently using a mobile phone-based technology kit with 12,500 teachers to improve the English language proficiency of 700,000 students. As the project scales up in its third and final phase, we are using the new technology kit—known as the ‘trainer in your pocket’—to foster a ‘quiet revolution’ in the provision of teacher professional development at scale to an additional 67,500 teachers and 10 million students

Impact of Livestock on Hill Environment

End of Project ReportThe hill and mountain landscape of western Ireland is an area of high scenic value as well as contributing to the livelihood of local farmers mainly through extensive grazing. Measures that were intended to support lamb prices led to increased ewe numbers. Public concern attributed this increase to an apparent deterioration in the status of the semi-natural vegetation and to an increase in the rate of soil erosion. In the absence of an existing databank, Teagasc undertook a research programme to quantify the impact of hill sheep on the semi-natural vegetation, the progress of soil erosion and changes in certain weather elements e.g. ‘driving rain’. A detailed database of the physical background (physiography and soils) of the Teagasc hill sheep farm, Leenaun, was compiled on the basis of a grid, 100 m x 100 m. Changes in the frequency of vegetation on the unimproved hill were monitored, 1995-2002, by point quadrat. Ten permanent exclosures representing the main vegetation types and a controlled grazing experiment on the upper steep slope were established. Sequential aerial photography (1973/7-1996/8) for selected sites in western counties and wind and rain data (1957-2000) for five western synoptic stations were obtained. The classification of the peatland and heathland habitats was considered. Analysis of data highlighted a range of issues among which were the physical complexity and fragility of the landscape, the sustainability of the hill sheep system on the Teagasc hill sheep farm, the beneficial effects of controlled grazing, the progressive erosion of hill soils and an increase in high intensity levels of ‘driving rain’. The classification of the habitats, peatland and heathland, should encompass other forms of biodiversity as well as flora. The sustainable use of this landscape requires a deep knowledge of the of the grazing management system, which increasingly involves part-time farming, and its impact on the soils and semi-natural vegetation