The social impact of a WTO agreement in Indonesia

Indonesia experienced rapid growth and the expansion of the formal financial sector during the last quarter of the 20th century. Although this tendency was reversed by the shock of the financial crisis that spread throughout Asia in 1997 and 1998, macroeconomic stability has since then been restored, and poverty has been reduced to pre-crisis levels. Poverty reduction remains nevertheless a critical challenge for Indonesia with over 110 million people (53 percent of the population) living on less than $2 a day. The objective of this study is to help identify ways in which the Doha Development Agenda might contribute to further poverty reduction in Indonesia. To provide a good technical basis for answering this question, the authors use an approach that combines a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with a microsimulation model. This framework is designed to capture important channels through which macroeconomic shocks affect household incomes. It allows making recommendations on specific trade reform options as well as on complementary development policy reforms. The framework presented in this study generates detailed poverty outcomes of trade shocks. Given the magnitude of the shocks examined here and the structural features of the Indonesian economy, only the full liberalization scenario generates significant poverty changes. The authors examine their impact under alternative specifications of the functioning of labor markets. These alternative assumptions generate different results, all of which confirm that the impact of full liberalization on poverty would be beneficial, with wage and employment gains dominating the adverse food price changes that could hurt the poorest households. Two alternative tax replacement schemes are examined. While direct tax replacement appears to be more desirable in terms of efficiency gains and translates into higher poverty reduction, political and practical considerations could lead the Government of Indonesia to choose a replacement scheme through the adjustment of value-added tax rates across nonexempt sectors.Rural Poverty Reduction,Economic Theory&Research,Poverty Assessment,Achieving Shared Growth,Inequality

Reconciling household surveys and national accounts data using a cross entropy estimation method:

This paper presents an approach to reconciling household surveys and national accounts data that starts from the assumption that the macro data represent control totals to which the household data must be reconciled. The economic data gathered in the survey are also assumed to be accurate, or have been adjusted to be accurate. Given these assumptions, the problem is how to use the additional information provided by the national accounts data to re-estimate the household weights used in the survey so that the survey results are consistent with the aggregate data. The estimation approach represents an efficient “information processing rule” using an estimation criterion based on an entropy measure of information. The survey household weights are treated as a prior. New weights are estimated that are close to the prior using a cross-entropy metric and that are also consistent with the additional information. This approach is implemented to reconcile LSMS survey data and macro data for Madagascar. The results indicate that the approach is powerful and flexible, supporting the efficient use of information from a variety of sources to reconcile data at different levels of aggregation in a consistent framework.National income Accounting., Household surveys., Madagascar.,

Gender role and future orientation in a university population.

Dept. of Psychology. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1985 .R635. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 40-07, page: . Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1985

Are Some Deaths Worse Than Others? The Effect of 'Labelling' on People's Perceptions

This paper sets out to explore the extent to which perceptions regarding the 'badness' of different types of deaths differ according to how those deaths are 'labelled' in the elicitation procedure. In particular, we are interested in whether responses to 'contextual' questions - where the specific context in which the deaths occur is known - differ from 'generic' questions - where the context is unknown. Further, we set out to test whether sensitivity to the numbers of deaths differs across the 'generic' and 'contextual' versions of the questions. We uncover evidence to suggest that both the perceived 'badness' of different types of deaths and sensitivity to the numbers of deaths may differ according to whether 'generic' or 'contextual' descriptions are used. Qualitative data suggested two reasons why responses to 'generic' and 'contextual' questions differed: firstly, some influential variables were omitted from the 'generic' descriptions and secondly, certain variables were interpreted somewhat differently once the context had been identified. The implications of our findings for 'generic' questions, such as those commonly used in health economics (for example, the EQ 5D), are discussed.Preferences, Context effects, Affect heuristic

A Study of Inspiring Australian Music Teachers

This study explores the qualities of inspiring Australian music teachers. Beginning with a review of previous studies of teachers described as passionate, successful, effective and expert, the researcher explores the interpersonal interactions between music teachers and students to discover the inspirational element. The literature revealed few studies on inspiring music teaching world-wide, with no specific Australian study found. This qualitative, ethnographic study uses multiple case studies and employs the principles of narrative inquiry to analyse data. The participants are music teachers from New South Wales who have received the Australian Society for Music Education (ASME) Award for Excellence, and their students from five high schools across the greater Sydney metropolitan area. In addition, a group of nationally recognised music educators from four states of Australia were invited to participate. The study involved interviews with the teachers, educators (national treasures) and students as well as classroom observations. The results revealed six characteristics of inspiring music teaching: knowledge and passion, the importance of connection through Music, inclusivity and equity, relational capacity and trust, facilitating reflection and empowerment. Results also point to the need for further research to broaden the scope of the study. This research comes at an important time in education with a recent initiative from the New South Wales Department of Education and Communities being the ‘Great Teaching, Inspired Learning’ forum which seeks to prepare for student learning in the 21st century by aiming to develop teachers who will inspire their students. This research also has implications for those aspiring to become inspirational music educators

Working it out for yourself: how young people use strategies and resources to reshape or reinvent identities which they experience as problematic and/or limiting in their progress towards adulthood

Abstract Adulthood is not a destination. Youth research has shown how ‘becoming adult’ is an active relational process of identity change which, in the post-millennium world, is highly individualised. Young people’s choices, however, are contingent on their life circumstances and what they consider, for them, to be ‘plausible’ (Skeggs, 2004) or within reach. In this study I set out to explore ways in which young people exercise agency, especially in situations that offer fewer options and thinner resources that they can call upon. My concern is to uncover the strategies and resources they use to reshape or reinvent identities that they find get in the way of subjectively feeling ‘adult’ and being recognised as such by others. Rather than recruiting participants already ‘marked’ by the systems of education, youth justice or public care, I met young people through volunteering in three youth work projects. I was thus able to engage young people from 13-19 years with markedly different social experiences and characteristics. I approached the analysis of varied data gathered from narrative interviews, creative activities and ethnographic observation with theoretical tools including, but not limited to, Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital and habitus, generating insights into developing femininities, masculinities, ethnicities and friendships. Researching across three sites also enabled me to examine how young people access youth work as a resource in and of itself and as a means of bridging to further resources, whether practical or for use in their ‘identity-work’. ‘Relationships of trust’ with youth work organisations and practitioners can especially benefit young people where these are otherwise absent from their lives. However, the findings suggest that young people in many different circumstances for diverse reasons value youth-friendly space and the relative equality that characterises youth work relationships. This adds weight to arguments for expanding both universal open access provision and flexible delivery of targeted provision

The effects of water ingestion on high intensity cycling performance in a moderate ambient temperature

Eight endurance~trained cyclists rode as far as possible in 1 h on a stationary cyclesimulator in a moderate environment (20°C, 60% relative humidity, 3 m/s wind speed) while randomly receiving either no fluid (NF) or attempting to replace their ~1.7 l sweat loss measured in a previous 1 h familiarisation performance ride at ~85% of peak oxygen uptake (VO₂ peak) with artificially sweetened, coloured water (F). During F the cyclists drank 1.49 ± 0.14 1 (values are mean± SEM), of which 0.27 ± 0.08 1 remained in the stomach at the end of exercise and 0.20 ± 0.05 1 was urinated after the trial. Thus, only 1.02 ± 0.12 l of the ingested fluid was available to replace sweat losses during the 1 h performance ride. That fluid decreased the average heart rate from 166 ± 3 to 157 ± 5 beats/min (P 1.0 l/h sweat losses during high-intensity, short duration exercise in a moderate environment does not induce beneficial physiological effects, and may impair exercise performance

Folding of a single domain protein entering the endoplasmic reticulum precedes disulfide formation

The relationship between protein synthesis, folding and disulfide formation within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is poorly understood. Previous studies have suggested pre-existing disulfide links are absolutely required to allow protein folding and, conversely, that protein folding occurs prior to disulfide formation. To address the question of what happens first within the ER; that is, protein folding or disulfide formation, we studied folding events at the early stages of polypeptide chain translocation into the mammalian ER using stalled translation intermediates. Our results demonstrate that polypeptide folding can occur without complete domain translocation. Protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) interacts with these early intermediates, but disulfide formation does not occur unless the entire sequence of the protein domain is translocated. This is the first evidence that folding of the polypeptide chain precedes disulfide formation within a cellular context and highlights key differences between protein folding in the ER and refolding of purified proteins

Comparison of transfection methods on yield of recombinant human IgG1 Fc

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) share many common structural features, so understanding how each part contributes to structural characteristics of the entire molecule may unveil ways to design better therapeutics. The Fc portion of a mAb enables purification via Protein A chromatography and controls antibody effector functions (e.g. antibody dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity, complement dependent cytotoxicity) depending on glycoform presence and identity. Characterizing both aglycosylated and glycosylated Fc and their contributions to antibody stability requires adequate recombinant protein yield from mammalian cell culture. Mammalian cell cultures (e.g. CHO and HEK) used for protein production are either stable or transiently transfected, and lipofection and polyfection represent the most common methods of performing the transfection. Here, we determine head-to-head comparison of the yields of recombinant Fc protein from transient/stable and lipid/polymer mediated transfections in 30 mL scale cultures of HEK Freestyle 293 and ATCC HEK293 cells. Heterogeneous populations of stably transfected HEK cells under Zeocin™ antibiotic selection produced 5-10 mg/L yields, but further passages of these cells reduced overall production. The proprietary cationic lipid formulations resulted in the highest overall Fc amounts (5-15 mg/L) in transiently transfected cells, but PEI mediated polyfection (yielding \u3e2 mg/L) could offer greater overall cost efficiency and scalability under similar conditions