Early childhood education : the natural starting point for environmental education

Young children are most vulnerable to, and most at risk from, environmental and sustainability challenges. Early education investments aimed at addressing such issues, until recently however, have been neglected or under-rated. Fortunately, this is changing. A groundswell of practitioner interest in early childhood environmental education/ education for sustainability is emerging, in contrast to the ‘patches of green’ that have characterised previous decades. Indeed, an international coalition for early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) is beginning to develop, evidenced by The Gothenburg Recommendations on Education for Sustainable Development (2008) that identifies early childhood, within a framework of lifelong learning, as a ‘natural starting point’ for all ongoing education for sustainability. This document is important as it is the first international statement to explicitly identify ECEfS as contributing to education for sustainability. The next challenge for ECEfS is for practitioner mobilisation to be matched by research activity aimed at broadening and deepening practice-based responses. This is the next exciting frontier in the legitimisation of ECEfS.

A starting point for addressing product innovativeness in the Fuzzy Front-End

Product innovativeness is a primary contingent factor to be addressed for the development of flexible management for the front-end. However, due to complexity of this early phase of the innovation process, the definition of which attributes to customise is critical to support a contingent approach. Therefore, this study investigates front-end attributes that need to be customised to permit effective management for different degrees of innovation. To accomplish this aim, a literature review and five case studies were performed. The findings highlighted the front-end strategic and operational levels as factors influencing the front-end attributes related to product innovativeness. In conclusion, this study suggests that two front-end attributes should be customised: development activities and decision-making approach. Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

The Colombian Constitution of 1991 as the Starting Point of a new Constitutionalism in Latin America

The objective of this article is to show that the Colombian Constitution of 1991 has certain traits that clearly differentiate it from Western constitutional tradition. Some of these traits would later be included in constitutional processes and constitutions in Venezuela (1999), Ecuador (1998 and 2008) and Bolivia (2009), in a process collectively known as Latin American Neo-Constitutionalism. This paper intends to demonstrate how the text of the Colombian Constitution represents a turning point that marks the beginning and establishes the foundations for the development of a home-grown constitutional form in Latin America over the last two decades.

Starting point towards bilingualism in higher education : results in english at the university entrance test from a gender perspective. 'Punto de partida hacia el bilingüismo en Educación Superior : resultados de inglés en la prueba de acceso a la universidad desde una perpectiva de género'.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Poetry as a starting point for drama: learning to tolerate ambiguity

This article explores the use of process drama in an English classroom to explore issues raised by 'A poem for the Rainforest' by Judith Nicholls. The drama is used to explore both the themes and forms of the poem, the episodic nature of the drama reflecting the episodic form of the poem. The work engages the students, and the process drama works to layer complexity onto the issues rather than simplifying them.

The 0-1 Knapsack polytope – a starting point for cryptanalysis of Knapsack ciphers?

The Knapsack Cryptosystem of Merkle and Hellman, 1978, is one of the earliest public-key cryptography schemes. The security of the method relies on the difficulty in solving Subset Sum Problems (also known as Knapsack Problems). In this paper, we first provide a brief history of knapsack-based cryptosystems and their cryptanalysis attacks. Following that, we review the advances in integer programming approaches to 0 − 1 Knapsack Problems, with a focus on the polyhedral studies of the convex hull of the integer set. Last of all, we discuss potential future research directions in applying integer programming in the cryptanalysis of knapsack ciphers.

Evaluation of the Counterweight Programme for obesity management in primary care: a starting point for continuous improvement

Background Evaluation for obesity management in primary care is limited, and successful outcomes are from intensive clinical trials in hospital settings.

Aim To determine to what extent measures of success seen in intensive clinical trials can be achieved in routine primary care. Primary outcome measures were weight change and percentage of patients achieving ≤5% loss at 12 and 24 months.

Design of study Prospective evaluation of a new continuous improvement model for weight management in primary care.

Setting Primary care, UK.

Method Primary care practice nurses from 65 UK general practices delivered interventions to 1906 patients with body mass index (BMI) ≥30 kg/m2 or ≥28 kg/m2 with obesity-related comorbidities.

Results Mean baseline weight was 101.2 kg (BMI 37.1 kg/m2); 25% of patients had BMI ≥40 kg/m2 and 74% had ≥1 major obesity-related comorbidity. At final data capture 1419 patients were in the programme for ≥12 months, and 825 for ≥24 months. Mean weight change in those who attended and had data at 12 months (n = 642) was −3.0 kg (95% CI = −3.5 to −2.4 kg) and at 24 months (n = 357) was −2.3 kg (95% CI = −3.2 to −1.4 kg). Among attenders at specific time-points, 30.7% had maintained weight loss of ≥5% at 12 months, and 31.9% at 24 months. A total of 761 (54%) of all 1419 patients who had been enrolled in the programme for >12 months provided data at or beyond 12 months.

Conclusion This intervention achieves and maintains clinically valuable weight loss within routine primary care.

Swiss Alps Jungfrau Aletsch UNESCO World Heritage Site - The state of this World Heritage region as a starting point for regional monitoring

The UNESCO listing as World Heritage Site confirms the outstanding qualities of the high-mountain region around the Great Aletsch Glacier. The region of the World Heritage Site now faces the responsibility to make these qualities visible and to preserve them for future generations. Consequently the qualities of the site must not be regarded in isolation but in the context of the entire region with its dynamics and developments. Regional monitoring is the observation and evaluation of temporal changes in target variables. It is thus an obligation towards UNESCO, who demands regular reports about the state of the listed World Heritage assets. It also allows statements about sustainable regional development and can be the basis for early recognition of threats to the outstanding qualities. Monitoring programmes face three major challenges: first, great care must be taken in defining the target qualities to be monitored or the monitoring would remain vague. Secondly, the selection of ideal indicators to describe these qualities is impeded by inadequate data quality and availability, compromises are inevitable. Thirdly, there is always an element of insecurity in the interpretation of the results as to what influences and determines the changes in the target qualities. The first survey of the monitoring programme confirmed the exceptional qualities of the region and also highlighted problematic issues.

'Citizen of nowhere' or 'the point where circles intersect'? Impartialist and embedded cosmopolitanisms?

Erskine, Toni, 'Citizen of nowhere' or 'the point where circles intersect'? Impartialist and embedded cosmopolitanisms', Review of International Studies (2002) 28(3) pp.457-477 RAE2008

Conditions for perfect focusing multiple point sources with the SMS design method

In this work, we demonstrate how it is possible to sharply image multiple object points. The Simultaneous Multiple Surface (SMS) design method has usually been presented as a method to couple N wave-front pairs with N surfaces, but recent findings show that when using N surfaces, we can obtain M image points when Npoints through one surface, the transition from two to three objet points obtained by increasing the parallelism, and getting to the designs of six surfaces imaging up to eight object points. These designs are limited with the condition that the surfaces cannot be placed at the aperture stop. In the process of maximizing the object points to sharp image, we try to exhaust the degrees of freedom of aspherics and free-forms. We conjecture that maximal SMS designs are very close to a good solution, hence using them as a starting point for the optimization will lead us faster to a final optical system. We suggest here different optimization strategies which combined with the SMS method are proven to give the best solution. Through the example of imaging with the high aspect ratio, we compare the results obtained optimizing the rotational lens and using a combination of SMS method and optimization, showing that the second approach is giving significantly smaller value of overall RMS spot diameter.

An Asian alternative? Russia's chances of making Asia an alternative to relations with the West. OSW Point of View, June 2008

Under Vladimir Putin's rule, Russia consistently and systematically expanded its activity in Asia, establishing closer political contacts with key countries in the region, rebuilding relations with former allies from Soviet times, and strengthening its presence in the Asian markets, in the energy sphere also. These activities were accompanied by intensive Russian propaganda, the message of which was that relations with the West can be restricted in favour of developing closer relations with Asian states. A justified question concerning the Russian Federation's realistic possibilities arises in this context: To what extent can it make Asia an alternative to theWest in geopolitical, economic and energy terms? Can Russia build an anti-Western alliance with Asian states? Is it able to reduce its dependence on the European market by developing its trade with Asia? Is it possible to redirect a substantial portion of Russian energy resource exports onto Asian markets? A presentation of the existing ties between Russia and theWest (here considered as the USA and the EU) will serve as a starting point for answering these questions. The following chapters will analyse Russia's opportunities in Asia in terms of geopolitical issues, the economy and energy