In search of the audience

We all are members of media audiences. On many occasions, we are self-consciously so – such as when we sit in darkness in a cinema, transfixed by a larger-than-life screen, sharing the experience with a group of relative strangers. More frequently, we are part of an audience through habit or circumstance. Much of our media use is habitual. We are often barely aware of it. We scan the morning newspaper, half-listen to the car radio or iPod on the journey to work or university, glance at billboards, check online daily news updates, glance at the evening news bulletin – all this happens amidst the clutter of domestic life and regular patterns of work and leisure

Why do people migrate? A review of the theoretical literature

Massey et al. (1994) is a ground-breaking paper in the migration literature that discusses and unifies different migration theories. However, their review and synthesis is incomplete and fairly brief for researchers interested in a deeper understanding of the migration theory literature. This paper therefore aims to review the complete spectrum of economic migration theory from the 1950s until today and to show the differences and complementarities between the different approaches.migration; migration theory

How has internal migration in Albania affected the receipt of transfers from family and friends?

Social networks of family and friends are very important in providing economic and social support to households. The massive internal migration flows towards the big cities in the transition countries like Albania can seriously affect such networks, and influence the support received. Previous migration studies have analysed mostly the transfers between the migrant and the family left behind. This study analyses households that migrate together to the peripheries of Tirana (Albania) after the fall of the communist regime. The frequencies of transfers received before and after migration are used to test the change in the composition of transfers and the substitution of family members by friends after migrating. The empirical analysis shows that households receive fewer transfers after migration, but financial transfers increase. Friends become increasingly more important after migration, substituting for transfers from siblings and more distant family relatives.kinship networks; internal migration; Albania; inter-household transfers

Financing Social Protection in the Light of International Spending Targets: A Public Sector Spending Review

This study explores the ‘affordability’ of development targets in six key sectors (health, education, water and sanitation, agriculture and infrastructure), by means of an empirical study examining sectoral expenditure in five low income case study countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Uganda) and comparing them with target levels of expenditure set out in recent international agreements to which sub-Saharan governments are signatories. The study has a particular focus on social protection in response to growing government and donor interest in the affordability of provision in this sector. This approach is taken in order to assess the limitations of the current ‘silo’ approach to sector financing which characterises much of the development financing discourse, and which results in the abstraction of one sector from the broader fiscal whole, to the detriment of overall fiscal coherence and realism. While this study looks at total expenditure per sector, it does not look at efficiency or outcomes of this spending. The report examines expenditure in 2006/ 2007 in relation to sector-specific international targets, assesses the shortfall, and then explores the fiscal feasibility of financing all six sectoral targets. The paper finds that meeting all the six targets simultaneously would require more than 100% of total government expenditure in four of the five case study countries, and 98% in the fifth, and that to meet these targets while retaining current levels of expenditure in other sectors would imply doubling current levels of government expenditure. Often it is claimed that developing country governments lack the political will to allocate resources to some sectors. However, this study suggests that the inadequacy of public expenditure in key sectors is also informed by the inherent impossibility of simultaneously meeting the range of international commitments to which developing counties are signatories. Current funding for basic social protection provision is between 0.1% and 0.7% of GDP in the case study countries, compared to target expenditure levels of 4.5% to achieve the goals of the basic social protection component of the AU Social Policy Framework. This study concludes that the social protection sector is in competition with the five other key development sectors and that not all goals can be met from available resources. While there may be potential to increase financing to this sector through the conventional range of instruments (efficiency savings, reallocation, increased borrowing, increased revenue generation, increased ODA or private sector financing) the social protection sector is in effect in competition with each of the other key development sectors in pursuit of any additional resources, and when considered in aggregate as part of the wider fiscal context, it is clear that meeting all targets is not realistic, and consequently that the development vision which underlies them, is challenged, even compromised by the fiscal reality. Input targets have a role to play in i) motivating greater effort in revenue generation (within the boundaries of sound macroeconomic policy) and ii) encourage governments and donors to prioritise spending by reallocating from low to high-priority sectors within existing budgets. While such targets can serve as useful lobbying mechanisms, spending targets should be taken ‘seriously but not literally’ (Wood, 2004): that is primarily as a guide and motivation for raising and spending public finance. This report does not conclude that such targets should be dropped, but it does caution against the argument that particular sectoral targets are ‘affordable’ in any objective sense. The report highlights the tension faced by governments between the need for good public financial management on the one hand, and the challenge of meeting international commitments on the other, raising the impossibility of meeting the key development spending targets simultaneously. Given the unavoidable overall financing shortfall, the key question becomes prioritisation of the use of existing resources, the opportunity cost of programming outside these sectors and non priority or ineffective use of resources within the sectors.social protection; affordability; development targets; government budgets; Sub-Saharan Africa

Daily L-leucine supplementation in novice trainees during a 12-week weight training program.

PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of daily oral L-leucine ingestion on strength, bone mineral-free lean tissue mass (LTM) and fat mass (FM) of free living humans during a 12-wk resistance-training program. METHODS: Twenty-six initially untrained men (n = 13 per group) ingested either 4 g/d of L-leucine (leucine group: age 28.5 ± 8.2 y, body mass index 24.9 ± 4.2 kg/m2) or a corresponding amount of lactose (placebo group: age 28.2 ± 7.3 y, body mass index 24.9 ± 4.2 kg/m2). All participants trained under supervision twice per week following a prescribed resistance training program using eight standard exercise machines. Testing took place at baseline and at the end of the supplementation period. Strength on each exercise was assessed by five repetition maximum (5-RM), and body composition was assessed by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). RESULTS: The leucine group demonstrated significantly higher gains in total 5-RM strength (sum of 5-RM in eight exercises) and 5-RM strength in five out of the eight exercises (P < .05). The percentage total 5-RM strength gains were 40.8% (± 7.8) and 31.0% (± 4.6) for the leucine and placebo groups respectively. Significant differences did not exist between groups in either total percentage LTM gains or total percentage FM losses (LTM: 2.9% ± 2.5 vs 2.0% ± 2.1, FM: 1.6% ± 15.6 vs 1.1% ± 7.6). CONCLUSION: These results suggest that 4 g/d of L-leucine supplementation may be used as a nutritional supplement to enhance strength performance during a 12-week resistance training program of initially untrained male participants

A computational analysis of separating motion signals in transparent random dot kinematograms

When multiple motion directions are presented simultaneously within the same region of the visual field human observers see motion transparency. This perceptual phenomenon requires from the visual system to separate different motion signal distributions, which are characterised by distinct means that correspond to the different dot directions and variances that are determined by the signal and processing noise. Averaging of local motion signals can be employed to reduce noise components, but such pooling could at the same time lead to the averaging of different directional signal components, arising from spatially adjacent dots moving in different directions, which would reduce the visibility of transparent directions. To study the theoretical limitations of encoding transparent motion by a biologically plausible motion detector network, the distributions of motion directions signalled by a motion detector model (2DMD) were analysed here for Random Dot Kinematograms (RDKs). In sparse dot RDKs with two randomly interleaved motion directions, the angular separation that still allows us to separate two directions is limited by the internal noise in the system. Under the present conditions direction differences down to 30 deg could be separated. Correspondingly, in a transparent motion stimulus containing multiple motion directions, more than eight directions could be separated. When this computational analysis is compared to some published psychophysical data, it appears that the experimental results do not reach the predicted limits. Whereas the computer simulations demonstrate that even an unsophisticated motion detector network would be appropriate to represent a considerable number of motion directions simultaneously within the same region, human observers usually are restricted to seeing not more than two or three directions under comparable conditions. This raises the question why human observers do not make full use of information that could be easily extracted from the representation of motion signals at the early stages of the visual system