The Hindered Self-Help: Housing Policies, Politics And Poverty In Kolkata, India

The housing dimension in Kolkata has been changing in recent years. Since 1991, the city has initiated housing reform that has taken many forms and manifestations characterized by the reduction in social allocation, cutbacks in public funding and promotion of a real estate culture in close partnership between the state and private actors. There has been increasing concern about the housing condition of the poor in the deserted slums and bustee settlements amidst the evident ‘poor blindness’ in housing and investment policies. Against this background the paper discusses self-help housing in Kolkata. It seeks to answer a simple question – why the concept of self-help has not been recognised as a viable policy option for a city with widespread slums and bustee settlements by visiting the complex urban context of Kolkata set within the city's politics, poverty and policies. The paper concludes that there is a need to recognise the existing structural duality in the city and support self-help housing as a parallel housing approach.

Accounting Undergraduates’ Perceptions of Cooperative Learning as a Model for Enhancing their Interpersonal and Communication Skills to Interface Successfully with Professional Accountancy Education and Training

To interface effectively with professional accountancy training, accounting educationalists should ensure that they turn out graduates who possess the interpersonal and communication skills required of today's accountant. Attainment of these skills is promoted by group work. However, little empirical evidence exists to help academics make an informed choice about which form of group learning enhances interpersonal and communication skills. This paper addresses this deficiency by comparing perceptions of skills enhancement between accounting students who experienced traditional or simple group learning and those who undertook cooperative learning. The findings reveal that the cooperative learning cohort perceived their learning experience to be significantly more effective at enhancing interpersonal and communication skills than that of the simple group learning cohort. This study provides evidence that cooperative learning is a more effective model for delivering interpersonal and communication skills than simple group learning, thereby creating a more successful interface between academic accounting and professional accountancy training.

Turbo channel estimation and equalisation for a superposition-based cooperative system

This study investigates the superposition-based cooperative transmission system. In this system, a key point is for the relay node to detect data transmitted from the source node. This issued was less considered in the existing literature as the channel is usually assumed to be flat fading and a priori known. In practice, however, the channel is not only a priori unknown but subject to frequency selective fading. Channel estimation is thus necessary. Of particular interest is the channel estimation at the relay node which imposes extra requirement for the system resources. The authors propose a novel turbo least-square channel estimator by exploring the superposition structure of the transmission data. The proposed channel estimator not only requires no pilot symbols but also has significantly better performance than the classic approach. The soft-in-soft-out minimum mean square error (MMSE) equaliser is also re-derived to match the superimposed data structure. Finally computer simulation results are shown to verify the proposed algorithm.

An Assessment of Sheltered Housing Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland

This article presents a UK-based research that has studied the existing sheltered or assisted living housing population and its future housing options and preferences. This meets an identified need to know and understand users' needs and requirements in much more detail that outlines what is liked and disliked by older people about sheltered housing, so that those who plan and design such housing can be aware of their views. The study also sought to understand the architects' challenges in designing and adapting this type of housing. The sheltered housing managed by housing associations in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was assessed through a series of site visits, structured interviews, and a focus group with stakeholders. Findings revealed older users' keen interest in participating in their housing needs assessment, identified building design concerns and provided recommendations for potential design guidelines. The findings of this research have provided important policy and design guidance to NI housing providers, and also allowed various stakeholders to participate in the debate about the quality of housing provided for the older people. This is a significant research study that generated considerable interest from various housing providers. This is an international peer reviewed journal.

Sex differences in responsiveness to begging in a cooperative mammal

In species where young are provisioned by both parents, males commonly contribute less to parental care than females, and are less responsive to variation in begging rates. Similar differences in the care of young occur among adults in cooperative breeders, but fewer studies have investigated whether these are associated with differences in responsiveness. Here, we present results from a playback experiment investigating responsiveness to begging in the meerkat (Suricata suricatta), a cooperatively breeding mammal. Although increased begging rate raised the feeding rate of adults of both sexes, there was no consistent tendency for females to be more responsive than males. However, when we examined changes in the proportion of food items found that were fed to pups (generosity), we found that females were more responsive than males to increased begging rate. These results can be explained in terms of sex differences in dispersal: in meerkats, females are philopatric and receive considerable benefits from investing in young, both directly, by increasing group size, and indirectly, by recruiting helpers if they inherit the breeding position. In addition, they emphasize that generosity provides a more sensitive measure of responsiveness to begging than feeding rate, as it accounts for variation in foraging success. © 2008 The Royal Society.