Hard measures for soft stuff: citizenship indicators and educational policy under the Lisbon Strategy

How far is the European Union a vehicle for inclusion and empowerment of a new range of policy actors in education? This article explores the role of actors in policy formation through a case study. It examines European Union attempts since 2000 to develop indicators of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘education and training for active citizenship’. It is based on two main sources: policy documents on the development of indicators and benchmarks; and a case study of an exercise (2005-07) to develop such indicators, initiated by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture. It shows that policy actors have attempted to take advantage of the Open Method of Coordination, often seen as a neo-liberal control mechanism, to ensure that citizenship remains on the policy agenda

The annual cycle of Northern Hemisphere storm-tracks. Part 2: regional detail

In Part 1 of this study, the annual cycle of the Northern Hemisphere storm-tracks was investigated using feature tracking and Eulerian variance based diagnostics applied on both vorticity and meridional wind. Results were presented and discussed for the four seasons at both upper (250hPa) and lower (850hPa) tropospheric levels. Here, using the meridional wind diagnostics, the annual cycles of the North Pacific and North Atlantic storm-tracks are examined in detail. This is done using monthly and 20° longitudinal sector averages. Many sectors have been considered, but the focus is on sectors equally spaced in the two main oceanic storm-tracks situated at their western, central and eastern regions, the western ones being mainly over the upstream continents. The annual cycles of the upper and lower tropospheric storm-tracks in the central and eastern Pacific, and western and central Atlantic sectors all have rather similar structures. In amplitude, each sector at both levels has a summer minimum and a relatively uniform strength from October to April, despite the strong winter maxima in the westerly jets. However, high intensity storms occur over a much wider latitudinal band in winter. The storm-track in each sector moves poleward from May to August and returns equatorward from October to December, and there is a marked asymmetry between spring and autumn. There are many differences between the North Pacific and North Atlantic storm-tracks, and some of these seem to have their origin in the behaviour over the upstream East Asian and North American continents, suggesting the importance of seeding from these regions. The East Asian storm-track near 48°N has marked spring and autumn maxima and weak amplitude in winter and summer. The 33°N track is strong only in the first half of the year. In contrast, the eastern North American storm-track is well-organised all year, around the baroclinicity that moves latitudinally with the seasons. The signatures associated with these features are found to gradually decrease downstream in each case. In particular, there is very little latitudinal movement in the storm-track in the Eastern Atlantic

The annual cycle of Northern Hemisphere storm-tracks. Part 1: seasons

In this paper and Part 2 a comprehensive picture of the annual cycle of the Northern Hemisphere storm-tracks is presented and discussed for the first time. It is based on both feature tracking and Eulerian based diagnostics, applied to vorticity and meridional wind in the upper and lower troposphere. Here, the storm-tracks, as diagnosed using both variables and both diagnostic techniques, are presented for the four seasons for each of the two levels. The oceanic storm-tracks retain much of their winter mean intensity in spring with only a small change in their latitude. In the summer they are much weaker, particularly in the Pacific and are generally further poleward. In autumn the intensities are larger again, comparable with those in spring, but the latitude is still nearer to that of summer. However, in the lower troposphere in the eastern ocean basins the tracking metrics show northern and southern tracks that change little with latitude through the year. The Pacific mid-winter minimum is seen in upper troposphere standard deviation diagnostics, but a richer picture is obtained using tracking. In winter there are high intensities over a wide range of latitudes in the central and eastern Pacific, and the west Pacific has high track density but weak intensity. In the lower troposphere all the diagnostics show that the strength of the Pacific and Atlantic storm-tracks are generally quite uniform over the autumn-winter-spring period. There is a close relationship between the upper tropospheric storm-track, particularly that based on vorticity, and tropopause level winds and temperature gradients. In the lower troposphere, in winter the oceanic storm-tracks are in the region of the strong meridional SST gradients, but in summer they are located in regions of small or even reversed SST gradients. However, over North America the lower tropospheric baroclinicity and the upstream portion of the Atlantic storm-track stay together throughout the year

Beating the blackberry

The blackberry is an aggressive, strongly-growing plant that has spread throughout parts of the south-west of Western Australia. Although most blackberry infestations on agricultural land have been dramatically reduced since compulsory control measures were introduced 30 years ago, about 3,600 hectares are still infested today. Recent research has shown that three new herbicides are highly effective against blackberry, and much safer to use than the older ones. Effective biological control of blackberry may also be possible

Phenomenological Modeling of Memristive Devices

We present a computationally inexpensive yet accurate phenomenological model of memristive behavior in titanium dioxide devices by fitting experimental data. By design, the model predicts most accurately I-V relation at small non-disturbing electrical stresses, which is often the most critical range of operation for circuit modeling. While the choice of fitting functions is motivated by the switching and conduction mechanisms of particular titanium dioxide devices, the proposed modeling methodology is general enough to be applied to different types of memory devices which feature smooth non-abrupt resistance switching.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Cereal weed control, Cereal disease, Roundup effects on wheat & barley, Noxious weed control.

Pre-seeding Grass Control, 85AL41. Sorrel control with Ally, 85AL39. Capeweed control pre-seeding, 85AL40. Effect of PP 450 on wheat diseases, 83AL36. Roundup effects on wheat and barley, 85AL64. History effects on wheat responses, 85AL42. Garlon 480 time of spraying on blackberry. Blackberry herbicide (high volume) demonstrations and observations. Blackberry herbicide (low volume) demo sites. Comparison of sprayers and spray volume for blackberry control. Blackberry herbicides screening. Krenite on blackberry, 76 AL 8. Methods of Krenite application for blackberry Control. Blackberry Wettability. Ropewick applied 2,4-D Amine for Arum Lily control. Arum lily herbicide screening. Herbicide screening for Arum lily control. Herbicide screening on gorse