Quality Rating and Improvement Systems: Considerations for Children from Immigrant Families

As the percentage of immigrants in the U.S. has steadily increased over the last forty years, it is not surprising to find that many children in the U.S. are now born to at least one foreign-born parent or are immigrants themselves. As the U.S. becomes more minority majority, cultural and linguistic diversity will become a key issue when developing goals, policies, and practices to meet the needs of children and families.However, questions remain about whether Quality Rating and Improvement Systems and other quality initiatives are considering the needs of immigrant families and children. This issue of Making the Link discusses some of these concerns and recommendations that can improve systems for immigrant children

Housing Ranking: a model of equilibrium between buyers and sellers expectations

The equilibrium set of housing units (alternatives) can be characterized from the standpoint of both the demander and the supplier. The current work describes an application of the multicriteria single price model to the ranking of alternatives. By a generalization of the single price model and from both viewpoints an efficiency index can be calculated. We demonstrate how, in equilibrium, the two viewpoints result inevitably in inverse orders of ranking. The model is illustrated by a sample of housing units in the city of Valencia, Spain.

Immigrant population, public space and housing in Barcelona

Demographic change occurred in the last decade by the arrival of immigrant population has produced significant social and physical transformations in the Spanish cities. This article is part of a research on the residential and urban conditions of immigrant population in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona. In this study we have analyzed through case studies the relation between immigration and city through the study of the use of public space and housing characteristics. The immigrant population is generally a very diverse collective. We propose that points in common can be drawn from analyses that take into account other major characteristics, beyond country of origin, such as gender, economic situation and education level. Through observation of groups in public spaces, especially squares, it is possible to identify aspects related both to social status and to gender roles assigned by their original and adopted cultures. This paper focuses on Metropolitan Region of Barcelona, and analyzes its reality based on concrete data and specific in case studies, to verify and compare the initial proposal. To be able to determine parameters for comparison, we have worked with a methodological strategy based of several quantitative and qualitative tools to get an insight on residential and urban conditions of the immigrant population. The main technique used was the participant observation, involving direct observation and presence in different interaction spaces: streets, squares and public facilities. The observations involve two dimensions to make the analysis and the comparison between different fields of study easier: Physical dimension and Social dimension. This made it possible for us to become aware of the different uses made by immigrants and by the Spanish population based on their activities, gender, age, and interaction with other persons.

Path Diagram of the Reputation of Faculties of Social Work in Central Mexico

Corporate governance as a knowledge management system has been approached from the organizational reputation as a result of alliances with institutions. In the health sector, the demand for a quality service has led to a system of professional practices and deregulated social service in which the image of the universities and health centers involved is questioned. The objective of the present work was to contrast a model for the study of the phenomenon with the intention of specifying the relationships between variables. A non-experimental exploratory and cross-sectional study was conducted with a non-probabilistic and intentional sample of 1018 administrative, professional and students of the health sector. It was found that the follow-up factor of cases reflected the image of the universities as trainers of intellectual capital by competences. In relation to the literature consulted, research lines are proposed to specify the model

The Geographic Concentration of Population and Income in Europe: Results for the Period 1984-1999

In this paper we use the Gini index to analyze the spatial concentration of income and population across European Union regions over the period 1984-1999. The results of our analysis show an slow but increasing pattern of geographic concentration of population and income. The critical threshold where the effects of the geographic concentration become remarkable is when we reach the 45-50% band of the richest population.EU regions

An experiment on subjective game valuations

We report experimental results on a prisoners' dilemma implemented in a way which allows us to elicit incentive-compatible valuations of the game. We test the hypothesis that players'' valuations coincide with their Nash equilibrium earnings. Our results offer significantly less support for this hypothesis than for the prediction of Dominant Strategy (DS) play.

Salmonella enterica induces and subverts the plant immune system

Infections with Salmonella enterica belong to the most prominent causes of food poisoning and infected fruits and vegetables represent important vectors for salmonellosis. Whereas it was shown that plants raise defense responses against Salmonella, these bacteria persist and proliferate in various plant tissues. Recent reports shed light into the molecular interaction between plants and Salmonella, highlighting the defense pathways induced and the means used by the bacteria to escape the plant immune system and accomplish colonization. It was recently shown that plants detect Salmonella pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), such as the flagellin peptide flg22, and activate hallmarks of the defense program known as PAMP-triggered immunity (PTI). Interestingly, certain Salmonella strains carry mutations in the flg22 domain triggering PTI, suggesting that a strategy of Salmonella is to escape plant detection by mutating PAMP motifs. Another strategy may rely on the type III secretion system (T3SS) as T3SS mutants were found to induce stronger plant defense responses than wild type bacteria. Although Salmonella effector delivery into plant cells has not been shown, expression of Salmonella effectors in plant tissues shows that these bacteria also possess powerful means to manipulate the plant immune system. Altogether, the data gathered suggest that Salmonella triggers PTI in plants and evolved strategies to avoid or subvert plant immunity

numericalsgps, a GAP package for numerical semigroups

The package numericalsgps performs computations with and for numerical and affine semigroups. This manuscript is a survey of what the package does, and at the same time intends to gather the trending topics on numerical semigroups