An evaluation of the Raukawa Health Services Kaumatua Mirimiri Programme

The Kaumatua Mirimiri Programme was funded as a Service to Improve Access project under a contract which ran from 1st September 2004 to 30th June 2005. Its aim was to provide a “culturally based treatment and recovery programme to restore the health and independence” of people aged 40 years and over (Pinnacle Group Ltd, 2004a, p.1). However, as the service specification in the contract made clear, the programme was not designed be exclusive: it has attracted younger as well as older people, non-Māori as well as Māori, and people seeking help for a wide range of ailments and pain

Women and the Superintendency: Perceptions of Gender Bias

This research explored how 15 female superintendents from a southwestern state experienced issues of gender bias. Participants came from a mix of urban, rural, and suburban districts that varied in size from 150 to 25,000 students. Using in-depth interviews and a transcendental phenomenological qualitative approach, the researchers examined how these women perceived that gender bias affected their accession to and work in the school superintendency. Three major themes emerged from their experiences: overcoming obstacles in the career path, the importance of mentoring, and surmounting gender-related stereotypes of leadership. The lack of female superintendents leading American public school districts highlights the question: What role does gender inequality play in this phenomenon? Historically, little attention has been given to the experiences and perceptions of women superintendents in the educational administration literature (Bell, 1988; Brunner, 2000; Shakeshaft, 1989; Skrla, Reyes, & Scheurich, 2000). However, an emerging body of research on women and educational administration examines the under representation of women in building and district leadership positions. A theme in this literature is associated with gender inequities or biases and stereotypes associated with women and leadership (Brunner, 2000; Young & McLeod, 2001). Attention to these issues is continually examined to gain more insight and explore factors to reduce these barriers. The purpose of this exploratory study was to discern how 15 women leaders in southwestern state school districts perceived gender bias affected their progress toward and work in the superintendency. Three key themes emerged from the data: overcoming obstacles in the career path, the importance of mentoring, and surmounting gender-related stereotypes of leadership

Women and the Superintendency: Perceptions of Gender Bias

This research explored how 15 female superintendents from a southwestern state experienced issues of gender bias. Participants came from a mix of urban, rural, and suburban districts that varied in size from 150 to 25,000 students. Using in-depth interviews and a transcendental phenomenological qualitative approach, the researchers examined how these women perceived that gender bias affected their accession to and work in the school superintendency. Three major themes emerged from their experiences: overcoming obstacles in the career path, the importance of mentoring, and surmounting gender-related stereotypes of leadership. The lack of female superintendents leading American public school districts highlights the question: What role does gender inequality play in this phenomenon? Historically, little attention has been given to the experiences and perceptions of women superintendents in the educational administration literature (Bell, 1988; Brunner, 2000; Shakeshaft, 1989; Skrla, Reyes, & Scheurich, 2000). However, an emerging body of research on women and educational administration examines the under representation of women in building and district leadership positions. A theme in this literature is associated with gender inequities or biases and stereotypes associated with women and leadership (Brunner, 2000; Young & McLeod, 2001). Attention to these issues is continually examined to gain more insight and explore factors to reduce these barriers. The purpose of this exploratory study was to discern how 15 women leaders in southwestern state school districts perceived gender bias affected their progress toward and work in the superintendency. Three key themes emerged from the data: overcoming obstacles in the career path, the importance of mentoring, and surmounting gender-related stereotypes of leadership

Optimizations for a Java Interpreter Using Instruction Set Enhancement

Several methods for optimizing Java interpreters have been proposed that involve augmenting the existing instruction set. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of three such optimizations for an efficient Java interpreter. Specialized instructions are new versions of existing instructions with commonly occurring operands hardwired into them, which reduces operand fetching. Superinstructions are new Java instructions which perform the work of common sequences of instructions. Finally, instruction replication is the duplication of existing instructions with a view to improving branch prediction accuracy. We describe our basic interpreter, the interpreter generator we use to automatically create optimised source code for enhanced instructions, and discuss Java specific issues relating to these optimizations. Experimental results show significant speedups (up to a factor of 3.3, and realistic average speedups of 30%-35%) are attainable using these techniques

Towards Superinstructions for Java Interpreters

The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is usually implemented by an interpreter or just-in-time (JIT) compiler. JITs provide the best performance, but interpreters have a number of advantages that make them attractive, especially for embedded systems. These advantages include simplicity, portability and lower memory requirements. Instruction dispatch is responsible for most of the running time of efficient interpreters, especially on pipelined processors. Superinstructions are an important optimisation to reduce the number of instruction dispatches. A superinstruction is a new Java instruction which performs the work of a common sequence of instructions. In this paper we describe work in progress on the design and implementation of a system of superinstructions for an efficient Java interpreter for connected devices and embedded systems. We describe our basic interpreter, the interpreter generator we use to automatically create optimised source code for superinstructions, and discuss Java specific issues relating to superinstructions. Our initial experimental results show that superinstructions can give large speedups on the SPECjvm98 benchmark suite

Habitat Use by Juvenile Gag, Mycteroperca microlepis (Pisces: Serranidae), in Subtropical Charlotte Harbor, Florida (USA)

Estuaries play a key role in the juvenile stage of gag (Myeteroperca microlepis). The use of estuarine habitats by juvenlle gag has been examined in temperate estuaries, which are at the northern limits of the range of this species, but the importance of subtropical estuaries during the early life history of this species has not been studied extensively. Gag were collected in subtropical Charlotte Harbor, Florida, during routine monthiy sampling from January 1996 to Decemher 2002. Juvenlle gag were collected using a 21.3-m seine, a 183-m haul seine, and a 183-m purse seine. A total of 738 individuals ranging from 30 to 489 mm standard length (SL) were collected in 4,480 samples. Most gag (96%) were probably young-of-the-year (\u3c 288 mm SL). The majority of juveniles were collected in polyhaline Gasparilla and Pine Island sounds from April to December, with a few larger individuals captured year-round. The observed period of gag settlement was similar to thet reported in other subtropical and temperate estuaries, but gag in Charlotte Harbor remained in the estuary longer and egressed at a larger size than did gag in other estuaries. Relative abundance of juvenile gag within Charlotte Harbor was greatest on shallow seagrass shoals but was also high along flinging mangrove shorelines, which is a habitat not previously reported for gag

Sensitivity of Simulated Global Ocean Carbon Flux Estimates to Forcing by Reanalysis Products

Reanalysis products from MERRA, NCEP2, NCEP1, and ECMWF were used to force an established ocean biogeochemical model to estimate air-sea carbon fluxes (FCO2) and partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) in the global oceans. Global air-sea carbon fluxes and pCO2 were relatively insensitive to the choice of forcing reanalysis. All global FCO2 estimates from the model forced by the four different reanalyses were within 20% of in situ estimates (MERRA and NCEP1 were within 7%), and all models exhibited statistically significant positive correlations with in situ estimates across the 12 major oceanographic basins. Global pCO2 estimates were within 1% of in situ estimates with ECMWF being the outlier at 0.6%. Basin correlations were similar to FCO2. There were, however, substantial departures among basin estimates from the different reanalysis forcings. The high latitudes and tropics had the largest ranges in estimated fluxes among the reanalyses. Regional pCO2 differences among the reanalysis forcings were muted relative to the FCO2 results. No individual reanalysis was uniformly better or worse in the major oceanographic basins. The results provide information on the characterization of uncertainty in ocean carbon models due to choice of reanalysis forcing

Technical Report Series on Global Modeling and Data Assimilation

MERRA products were used to force an established ocean biogeochemical model to estimate surface carbon inventories and fluxes in the global oceans. The results were compared to public archives of in situ carbon data and estimates. The model exhibited skill for ocean dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), partial pressure of ocean CO2 (pCO2) and air-sea fluxes (FCO2). The MERRA-forced model produced global mean differences of 0.02% (approximately 0.3 microns) for DIC, -0.3% (about -1.2 (micro) atm; model lower) for pCO2, and -2.3% (-0.003 mol C/sq m/y) for FCO2 compared to in situ estimates. Basin-scale distributions were significantly correlated with observations for all three variables (r=0.97, 0.76, and 0.73, P<0.05, respectively for DIC, pCO2, and FCO2). All major oceanographic basins were represented as sources to the atmosphere or sinks in agreement with in situ estimates. However, there were substantial basin-scale and local departures

School Choice and Accountability

This policy brief explores the intersection of school choice and accountability. Based on a review of research since 1970, the authors first develop a typology of four distinct models of accountability: bureaucratic, performance, market and professional. They both define these and demonstrate how they are embedded in the school choice movement. Second, they examine several school choice options--vouchers and tax credits, charter schools, virtual/cyber schools, home schools and inter- and intradistrict choice--and detail the varied accountability systems inherent in each. Third, they explore the impact of school choice programs on the accountability of traditional district schools. Finally, they provide practical recommendations for policymakers and other interested parties

An Empirical Approach to Ocean Color Data: Reducing Bias and the Need for Post-Launch Radiometric Re-Calibration

A new empirical approach is developed for ocean color remote sensing. Called the Empirical Satellite Radiance-In situ Data (ESRID) algorithm, the approach uses relationships between satellite water-leaving radiances and in situ data after full processing, i.e., at Level-3, to improve estimates of surface variables while relaxing requirements on post-launch radiometric re-calibration. The approach is evaluated using SeaWiFS chlorophyll, which is the longest time series of the most widely used ocean color geophysical product. The results suggest that ESRID 1) drastically reduces the bias of ocean chlorophyll, most impressively in coastal regions, 2) modestly improves the uncertainty, and 3) reduces the sensitivity of global annual median chlorophyll to changes in radiometric re-calibration. Simulated calibration errors of 1% or less produce small changes in global median chlorophyll (less than 2.7%). In contrast, the standard NASA algorithm set is highly sensitive to radiometric calibration: similar 1% calibration errors produce changes in global median chlorophyll up to nearly 25%. We show that 0.1% radiometric calibration error (about 1% in water-leaving radiance) is needed to prevent radiometric calibration errors from changing global annual median chlorophyll more than the maximum interannual variability observed in the SeaWiFS 9-year record (+/- 3%), using the standard method. This is much more stringent than the goal for SeaWiFS of 5% uncertainty for water leaving radiance. The results suggest ocean color programs might consider less emphasis of expensive efforts to improve post-launch radiometric re-calibration in favor of increased efforts to characterize in situ observations of ocean surface geophysical products. Although the results here are focused on chlorophyll, in principle the approach described by ESRID can be applied to any surface variable potentially observable by visible remote sensing