The global human security index: Can disaggregations help us to forge progress?

A Human Security Index (HIS) enumerating 200 countries was introduced in 2008. A community-level HSI is under development in the USA. Coastal communities face large disparities in components of human security. How can a HSI support improved policies/services (such as environmental or public health forecasts or warnings) for improving lives? Several issues are discussed. (PDF contains 4 pages)

A study of the nutrition of the Rotifer Asplanchna, with the help of Carbon 14 [Translation from: Byulleten ' Instituta Biologii Vodokhranilishch, No. 12, pp.17-20, 1962]

Laboratory research was done in order to study the feeding of larval Cricotopus silvestris F. in relation to characters of structure of oral apparatus. Results of the experiments are summarised and the oral apparatus morhologically described.

Women in the December 26 Tsunami: how have they coped; how can we help?

Fishing communities around the Indian Ocean were severely affected by the December 2004 tsunamis. Programs for rebuilding coastal fisheries livelihoods need to address the pre-tsunami situation that was characterized by overfishing and degraded natural resources. Adopting appropriate strategies to ensure sustainable livelihoods will require community involvement, as well as cross-sectoral, integrated planning and management at ascending government levels. Key recommendations from the WorldFish Center study Sustainable Management of Coastal Fish Stocks in Asia are presented to encourage discussion and debate.

Identification and effectiveness of self-help groups in Cambodia

The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) seeks to reduce poverty and improve food security for the millions of small-scale fishers and farmers who depend on the world’s floodplains, deltas and coasts. AAS combines more conventional approaches for introducing and scaling technical innovations, such as applied research and training, with approaches that foster innovation and promote institutional and policy change. Specifically, AAS utilizes participatory action research with communities to identify technology and policy solutions that best meet community long-term needs. One of the themes identified under AAS is the role of self-help groups in increasing livelihood resilience of agriculture and fisheries communities. As AAS establishes a hub of operations in Cambodia, AAS and Oxfam America are cooperating to investigate the potential of community-based self-help groups as a strategy for AAS implementation. As part of this cooperation, Oxfam America undertook this consultancy to analyze and describe the role, efficiency and effectiveness of the various types of self-help groups in Cambodia. This report gives an overview of this program which aims to conduct a field-based study to identify the types, main characteristics and effectiveness of self-help groups, with a particular focus on livelihood resilience of agriculture and fisheries communities.

data transformation and attribute subset selection: do they help make differences in software failure prediction?

IEEE, IEEE Comp Soc, Tech Council Software Engn

Muscle function and body composition profile in adolescents withrestrictive anorexia nervosa: Does resistance training help?

The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of short-term resistance training on the body composition profile and muscle function in a group of Anorexia Nervosa restricting type (AN-R) patients. The sample consisted of AN-R female adolescents (12.8 ± 0.6 years) allocated into the control and intervention groups (n¼18 each). Body composition and relative strength were assessed at baseline, after 8 weeks and 4 weeks following the intervention. Body mass index (BMI) increased throughout the study (p = 0.011). Significant skeletal muscle mass (SMM) gains were found in the intervention group (p = 0.045, d = 0.6) that correlated to the change in BMI (r = 0.51, p < 0.031). Meanwhile, fat mass (FM) gains were significant in the control group (p = 0.047, d = 0.6) and correlated (r > 0.60) with change in BMI in both the groups. Significant relative strength increases (p < 0.001) were found in the intervention group and were sustained over time.

Can Object (Instance) Diagrams Help First Year Students Understand Program Behaviour?

Thomas, L.A., Ratcliffe, M.B. and Thomasson, B. J., Can Object (Instance) Diagrams Help First Year Students Understand Program Behaviour? in Diagrammatic Representation and Inference, Diagrams 2004, editors A. Blackwell, K. Marriot and Atushi Shimojima, Springer Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence, 2980.

Constructing extensions of CP-maps via tensor dilations with rhe help of von Neumann modules

Gohm, Rolf; Skeide, M., (2005) 'Constructing extensions of CP-maps via tensor dilations with rhe help of von Neumann modules', Infinite Dimensional Analysis, Quantum Probability and Related Topics 8(2) pp.291-305 RAE2008

Teaching English tense and aspect with the help of cognitive grammar: An empirical study

Form-focused instruction is usually based on traditional practical/pedagogical grammar descriptions of grammatical features. The comparison of such traditional accounts with cognitive grammar (CG) descriptions seems to favor CG as a basis of pedagogical rules. This is due to the insistence of CG on the meaningfulness of grammar and its detailed analyses of the meanings of particular grammatical features. The differences between traditional and CG rules/descriptions are exemplified by juxtaposing the two kinds of principles concerning the use of the present simple and present progressive to refer to situations happening or existing at speech time. The descriptions provided the bases for the instructional treatment in a quasi-experimental study exploring the effectiveness of using CG descriptions of the two tenses, and of their interplay with stative (imperfective) and dynamic (perfective) verbs, and comparing this effectiveness with the value of grammar teaching relying on traditional accounts found in standard pedagogical grammars. The study involved 50 participants divided into three groups, with one of them constituting the control group and the other two being experimental ones. One of the latter received treatment based on CG descriptions and the other on traditional accounts. CG-based instruction was found to be at least moderately effective in terms of fostering mostly explicit grammatical knowledge and its effectiveness turned out be comparable to that of teaching based on traditional descriptions.