Development plan for Malta : 1973-1980 : a strategy for independence and employment

Development plans are usually characterised by a strong emphasis on the economic aspects of development. This explains or is at least one of the reasons why development plans are sometimes heavily criticised. But economic aspects can only be emphasized or maybe overemphasized but not dealt with in a separate manner. Although it is true that the economic, social and political aspects of development can be distinguished for analytical convenience, they can never be divided from each other. It is the purpose of this article to evaluate the broad economic, social and political strategy of the Development Plan for Malta 1973-1980, further to be referred to as the Plan. The objectives and policies of the Plan will be investigated without going into the specific and detailed aspects. It will rather concentrate upon the interdependence of the objectives and policies and how the Plan arrives at a deliberate and consistent strategy.peer-reviewe

Why are users complaining more?

In an interview with the Editor, Elke den Ouden explained her study into complaints from consumers about products

Prediction error dependent changes in brain connectivity during associative learning

One of the fundaments of associative learning theories is that surprising events drive learning by signalling the need to update one’s beliefs. It has long been suggested that plasticity of connection strengths between neurons underlies the learning of predictive associations: Neural units encoding associated entities change their connectivity to encode the learned associative strength. Surprisingly, previous imaging studies have focused on correlations between regional brain activity and variables of learning models, but neglected how these variables changes in interregional connectivity. Dynamic Causal Models (DCMs) of neuronal populations and their effective connectivity form a novel technique to investigate such learning dependent changes in connection strengths. In the work presented here, I embedded computational learning models into DCMs to investigate how computational processes are reflected by changes in connectivity. These novel models were then used to explain fMRI data from three associative learning studies. The first study integrated a Rescorla-Wagner model into a DCM using an incidental learning paradigm where auditory cues predicted the presence/absence of visual stimuli. Results showed that even for behaviourally irrelevant probabilistic associations, prediction errors drove the consolidation of connection strengths between the auditory and visual areas. In the second study I combined a Bayesian observer model and a nonlinear DCM, using an fMRI paradigm where auditory cues differentially predicted visual stimuli, to investigate how predictions about sensory stimuli influence motor responses. Here, the degree of striatal prediction error activity controlled the plasticity of visuo-motor connections. In a third study, I used a nonlinear DCM and data from a fear learning study to demonstrate that prediction error activity in the amygdala exerts a modulatory influence on visuo-striatal connections. Though postulated by many models and theories about learning, to our knowledge the work presented in this thesis constitutes the first direct report that prediction errors can modulate connection strength

The Care Accelerator R&D Programme in Europe

CARE, an ambitious and coordinated programme of accelerator research and developments oriented towards high energy physics projects, has been launched in January 2004 by the main European laboratories and the European Commission. This project aims at improving existing infrastructures dedicated to future projects such as linear colliders, upgrades of hadron colliders and high intensity proton drivers. We describe the CARE R&D plans, mostly devoted to advancing the performance of the superconducting technology, both in the fields of RF cavities for electron or proton acceleration and of high field magnets, as well as to developing high intensity electron and proton injectors. We highlight some results and progress obtained so far

Colonial Violence and the Gendering of Post-War Terrain in Southern New England: Native Women and Rights to Reservation Land in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut

This essay examines the significance of reservations in southern New England as indigenous places-in-the-making in the aftermath of King Philip’s War. It highlights crucial moments in the early eighteenth-century history of reservation communities in Connecticut that were engaged in struggles to defend their lands against the imposition of private property and the violence of dispossession that targeted Native women, who were purveyors of communal land rights. These post-war histories reveal that reservations were not localities of “pacified Indians”, but rather sites of new conflicts over the rights and futures of Native peoples within which gendered forms of dissent confronted the gendered violence of colonial law

The effect of canopy position on growth and mortality in mixed sapling communities during self-thinning

This research investigates how species in the sapling phase differ in growth and survival depending on light availability (as estimated by canopy position) by means of tree-ring analysis and modelling mortality. We harvested 120 live and 158 dead saplings in self-thinning communities consisting of Silver birch (Betula pendula Roth.), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi Carr.) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii Mirb. Franco) in the Netherlands. Results are evaluated within the framework of a trade-off between high-light growth and low-growth survival. Radial growth, measured at ground level, generally declined over time. In addition, a decreasing light availability further reduced growth in all species except Douglas fir. Trees died when radial growth was reduced to about 0.5 mm year¿1. Mortality in all species except Scots pine was significantly related to recent growth, but mortality curves were not different. The light-demanding Silver birch and Japanese larch differed from the shade-tolerant Douglas fir in both high-light growth and low-growth mortality, in line with a growth-survival trade-off. The light-demanding Scots pine did not fit this pattern as it was unable to transfer high radial growth into height gain, leaving it in suppressed canopy positions. This indicates the importance of height growth in the growth-survival trade-off. Differences in mortality probabilities affect the potential for coexistence, however, in all species also fast-growing individuals died suggesting additional factors causing mortality during self-thinning, other than direct competition for ligh