“I am in a constant state of insecurity trying to make ends meet, like our service users”: Shared austerity reality between social workers and service users: Towards a preliminary conceptualization

This article introduces the concept of an emerging shared austerity reality, which refers to the socio-economic context of austerity that is shared both by social workers and service users, albeit to different degrees. Traditionally, the concept of the shared reality has been utilized to encompass the experiences of welfare professionals working in situations where both they and service users are exposed to the adverse effects of a natural disaster, war or terrorist attack. Here, the concept of shared reality is expanded through the introduction of the context of austerity. Drawing on 21 in-depth interviews with public sector social work practitioners in Greece it discusses, among other things, social anxieties about their children’s future, and their inability to take care of their elderly relatives that suggest an emerging shared austerity reality, reflecting the deterioration of socio-economic conditions. The paper ends with a discussion about the possibilities of alliance and division that emerge from the concept and future research directions. Moreover, it concludes with a reflection on the role of the social work profession and recent political developments in Greece in anti-austerity struggles.

How to achieve gender diversity in top management : A qualitative study of gender equal companies listed on the Swedish stock exchange

Alarming statistics provides that only 10,2 percentage of companies listed on the Swedish stock exchange has achieved gender equality in their top management. The fact is that women being discriminated, since men dominates these positions of power. The study is of a qualitative nature and aims to achieve a deeper understanding and knowledge contribution of how gender equal companies´ has achieved this gender diversity in their top management. Sweden's highest ranking business leaders has been interviewed in order to obtain their view, and the companies they represent, in order to get an answer to what the most important requirements has been in the achievement. The study's main result has shown that strong core values and corporate culture are basic and required condition for a successful gender equality strategy. A deliberate or emergent strategy can then be successfully implemented, and it is mainly the impact of structural barriers that determine which strategy a company uses. At a deliberate strategy, following measures are in additional to core values and corporate cultural crucial; commitment towards gender equality, a specific plan with clear objectives, and a conscious objective recruitment process. The result found aboute these two factors and three measures also identified a required specific order to follow in order to achieve gender diversity in top management. These findings, which in a near future, aims to contribute to a more gender equal Sweden.

"Everything was designed to make sure that this thing endured" : Processus de légitimation et la Responsabilité de protéger

L’objet de cette thèse est la « Responsabilité de protéger » (RdP), son émergence et les processus de légitimation qui ont contribué à son acceptation dans les arènes de la politique globale. Le principe d’une intervention militaire à des fins humanitaires gagne en légitimité dans les années 1990, bien qu’il soit marqué par d’intenses polémiques dans la pratique. Les situations de conflits où les civils sont brutalement persécutés et les interventions demandées et organisées pour y répondre sont maintenant largement justifiées dans les termes de la RdP. Est donc apparu d’abord un changement normatif. Ce changement s’est cristallisé dans le rapport de la Commission internationale sur l’intervention et la souveraineté des États (CIISE) qui a forgé l’expression « responsabilité de protéger ». Le point de départ ici est cependant que la RdP marque un changement discursif dans la manière de parler et de justifier ces pratiques. Je montre comment les termes de la RdP en sont venus à être ceux qui dégagent le plus large consensus autour de la question de l’intervention à des fins humanitaires. La thèse centrale de cette recherche est que le relatif succès de la RdP tient au fait que les architectes de la CIISE et les entrepreneurs de la RdP ont déployé un sens pratique aiguisé du champ de la politique globale. Le procédé principal employé est de mettre en lumière les processus de légitimation activement mis en oeuvre pour stimuler ce changement discursif. J’avance que les agents ont su placer la RdP, et par extension le principe de l’intervention à des fins humanitaires, dans le domaine du non problématique en déployant un langage et des pratiques vus comme ne posant pas problème. Concrètement, il s’est agi de choisir les agents à qui serait accordée la reconnaissance de parler, mais qui seraient aussi en mesure de proposer une solution d’une manière considérée comme légitime dans les arènes de la politique globale. Traquer les processus de légitimation est un procédé analytique qui permet de comprendre le succès de la RdP, mais qui révèle également des éléments fondamentaux du fonctionnement formel et informel de la politique globale.

Helping you to make the right choice for your web filtering

We have designed this flowchart to help you choose the web filtering option that best suits your needs from three different options: Our free standard web filtering service, enhanced user based filtering or a solution from our framework agreement.

Multijurisdictional fisheries performance reporting: How Australia’s nationally standardised approach to assessing stock status compares

Australian marine wild-capture fisheries are managed by eight separate jurisdictions. Traditionally, fishery status reports have been produced separately by most of these jurisdictions, assessing the fish stocks they manage, and reporting on the effectiveness of their fisheries management. However, the format, the type of stock status assessments, the thresholds and terminology used to describe stock status and the classification frameworks have varied over time and among jurisdictions. These differences complicate efforts to understand stock status on a national scale. They also create potential misunderstanding among the wider community about how to interpret information on the status of fish stocks, and the fisheries management and science processes more generally. This is especially true when considering stocks that are shared across two or more jurisdictional boundaries. A standardised approach was developed in 2011 leading to production of the first national Status of key Australian fish stocks reports in 2012, followed by a second edition in 2014 (www.fish.gov.au). Production of these reports was the first step towards a broader national approach to reporting on the performance of Australian fisheries for target species and for wider ecosystem and socioeconomic consequences. This paper outlines the challenges associated with moving towards national performance reporting for target fish stocks and Australia’s successes so far. It also outlines the challenges ahead, in particular those relating to reporting more broadly on the status of entire fisheries. Comparisons are drawn between Australia and New Zealand and more broadly between Australia and other countries.

make half your grains whole : 10 tips to help you eat whole grains

Any food made from wheat, rice, oats, cornmeal, barley, or another cereal grain is a grain product. Bread, pasta, oatmeal, breakfast cereals, tortillas, and grits are examples. Grains are divided into two subgroups, whole grains and refined grains. Whole grains contain the entire grain kernel—the bran, germ, and endosperm. People who eat whole grains as part of a healthy diet have a reduced risk of some chronic diseases

Study of nephrocalcinosis in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), from fry to brood stock

For survey incidence of nephrocalcinosis in rainbow trout fish, during winter 1385, samplings were performed in three fish farm with different water source: river, spring and recirculation system by using well water. In this survey 5 specimens from each 8 groups and in general 120 specimens of this fish were caught by random sampling, and also amounts of O2, CO2, pH and temperature of water were measured. Then blooding and renal tissue sampling performed that renal samples were fixed in 10% buffered formalin and blood samples after separating serum stored in -200C. Renal specimens transferred to pathology laboratory, pathological slides were prepared and stained by hematoxylin & Eosin method. From 120 specimens, 6 cases of fish represent nephrocalcinosis. Pathologic signs include: renal epithelial necrosis, dilated ureters, dense basophilic materials inside the dilated tubules and cast formation in some renal tubules. From 6 cases of nephrocalcinosis, 3 cases (7/5%) were related to recirculation system and 2 (5%) case were related to river water and 1 (2/5%) case was related to spring water. In survey amount of urea, creatinine and Uric acid between different weight groups, distinguished that difference between creatinine middling in different weight groups were significant and also in between healthy and afflicted fish, significant statistical difference were only in creatinine amount between healthy and afflicted fish in each farm. Amounts of O2, pH and temperature of water in three farms were in normal range and only rate of water CO2 in ponds of recirculatory system were very higher (25 mg/lit) than other farms. May be, this reason led to high number of nephrocalcinosis in recirculatory system, than other farms, nemley 7/5% of fish that caught from this farm .This subject is related to the role of CO2 in creating nephrocalcinosis which is descript in references.

Strategic business plan: Strategies to make coaching for all a successful project

Coaching for all (C4all) is a project created by TESE-Associação para o Desenvolvimento or TESE-Association for development (TESE), aimed at disseminating and democratizing access to coaching methods among people seeking employment and other vulnerable groups of people. The initial results of the C4All project were well below their expectations. Therefore, we developed a Business Plan in order to understand if and how the performance of C4all can be improved. The results of our analysis suggest a number of changes that C4all need to undertake in order to survive and achieve better outcomes in the future

Don’t expect me to vote for you just because I like you, even if you do make me feel warm inside: a comparison of the validity of non-ipsative measures of party support

The inclusion of non-ipsative measures of party preference (in essence ratings for each of the parties of a political system) has become established practice in mass surveys conducted for election studies. They exist in different forms, known as thermometer ratings or feeling scores, likes and dislikes scores, or support propensities. Usually only one of these is included in a single survey, which makes it difficult to assess the relative merits of each. The questionnaire of the Irish National Election Study 2002 (INES2002) contained three different batteries of non-ipsative party preferences. This paper investigates some of the properties of these different indicators. We focus in particular on two phenomena. First, the relationship between non-ipsative preferences and the choices actually made on the ballot. In Ireland this relationship is more revealing than in most other countries owing to the electoral system (STV) which allows voters to cast multiple ordered votes for candidates from different parties. Second, we investigate the latent structure of each of the batteries of party preferences and the relationships between them. We conclude that the three instruments are not interchangeable, that they measure different orientations, and that one –the propensity to vote for a party– is by far preferable if the purpose of the study is the explanation of voters’ actual choice behaviour. This finding has important ramifications for the design of election study questionnaires.

Volatility transmission between stock and exchange-rate markets: A connectedness analysis

This paper empirically investigates volatility transmission among stock and foreign exchange markets in seven major world economies during the period July 1988 to January 2015. To this end, we first perform a static and dynamic analysis to measure the total volatility connectedness in the entire period (the system-wide approach) using a framework recently proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2014). Second, we make use of a dynamic analysis to evaluate the net directional connectedness for each market. To gain further insights, we examine the time-varying behaviour of net pair-wise directional connectedness during the financial turmoil periods experienced in the sample period Our results suggest that slightly more than half of the total variance of the forecast errors is explained by shocks across markets rather than by idiosyncratic shocks. Furthermore, we find that volatility connectedness varies over time, with a surge during periods of increasing economic and financial instability.

Do “The Best Companies to Work” have higher Stock returns?

Do “The Best Companies to Work” have Higher Stock Returns? The main purpose of this work is to prove the link between job satisfaction and the firm’s value. The «Best Companies to Work» list give us our measure for job satisfaction. The sample of this work is composed by firms listed in STOXX Europe 600 Index. We compared the monthly returns of a portfolio composed by firms present in the «Best Companies to Work» list with two other benchmark portfolios, using the four-factor model proposed by Carhart (1997), from January 2010 to December 2014. Our results show that the BCWE600 portfolio outperforms both benchmark portfolios. In other words, companies classified as Best Companies to Work generated 0.40%/month and 4.94%/year higher stock returns than their peers over the 2010-2014 period. Also, the market risk in portfolio BCWE600 is inferior compared to other portfolios. This work shows that firms with the most satisfied workers get better results, resulting in higher returns for it’s shareholders.

Are You Fit Enough to Make the Grade?

The intent of this project is to determine if a candidate's physical fitness impacts their success academically and physically during training at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy. This will be accomplished by comparing the time of the Physical Abilities Test to the numeric written tests scores and the pass rate of the proficiency tests. The averages will be compared to see if there is a trend to prove that one's physical fitness does affect success during their training .

How long is the memory of the US stock market?

The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), one of the most important hypothesis in financial economics, argues that return rates have no memory (correlation) which implies that agents cannot make abnormal profits in financial markets, due to the possibility of arbitrage operations. With return rates for the US stock market, we corroborate the fact that with a linear approach, return rates do not show evidence of correlation. However, linear approaches might not be complete or global, since return rates could suffer from nonlinearities. Using detrended cross-correlation analysis and its correlation coefficient, a methodology which analyzes long-range behavior between series, we show that the long-range correlation of return rates only ends in the 149th lag, which corresponds to about seven months. Does this result undermine the EMH?

G7 Stock Markets: Who is The First to Defeat The DCCA Correlation?

Following the methodology of Ferreira and Dionísio (2016), the objective of this paper is to analyze the behavior stock markets in the G7 countries and find which of those countries is the first to reach levels of long-range correlations that are not significant. We carry out this analysis using detrended cross-correlation analysis and its correlation coefficient, to check for the existence of long-range dependence in time series. The existence of long-range dependence could be understood as a possibility of EMH violation. This analysis remains interesting because studies are not conclusive about the existence or not of long memory in stock return rates.

Soil organic carbon, carbon stock and their relationships to physical attributes under forest soils in Central Amazonia.

The soil carbon under Amazonian forests has an important roles in global changing, making information on the soil content and depths of these stocks are considerable interest in efforts to quantify soil carbon emissions to the atmosphere.This study quantified the content and soil organic carbon stock under primary forest up to 2 m depth, at different topographic positions, at Cuieiras Biological Reserve, Manaus/ ZF2, km 34, in the Central Amazon, evaluating the soil attributes that may influence the permanence of soil carbon. Soil samples were collected along a transect of 850 m on topographic gradient Oxisol (plateau), Ultisol (slope) and Spodosol (valley). The stocks of soil carbon were obtained by multiplying the carbon content, soil bulk density and trickiness of soil layers. The watershed was delimited by using STRM and IKONOS images and the carbon contend obtained in the transects was extrapolated as a way to evaluate the potential for carbon stocks in an area of 2678.68 ha. The total SOC was greater in Oxisol followed by Spodosol and Ultisol. It was found direct correlations between the SOC and soil physical attributes. Among the clay soils (Oxisol and Ultisol), the largest stocks of carbon were observed in Oxisol at both the transect (90 to 175.5 Mg C ha-1) as the level of watershed (100.2 to 195.2 Mg C ha-1). The carbon stocks under sandy soil (Spodosol) was greater to clay soils along the transect (160-241 Mg C ha-1) and near them in the Watershed (96.90 to 146.01 Mg C ha-1).