bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Higher residual wage dispersion for white workers in post apartheid South Africa, 1995-2006: composition effects or higher skill prices?
Authors: Agesa Richard U. , Agesa Jacqueline , Bongani Geoffrey
Published: June 2010

Apartheid in South Africa ensured whites received more and better-quality schooling relative to Africans, coloreds, and Asians. It is hence conceivable, consistent with human-capital theory whites would receive relatively higher prices to their measured human-capital skills and would have higher dispersion of their unmeasured human-capital skills. We test this hypothesis. Specifically, we employ a semiparametric procedure to decompose 1995-2006 racial wage differences into regression coefficients, covariates and residuals and extend the literature by decomposing residuals into unmeasured skills and skill prices. Our findings support the theory: whites receive relatively higher prices to measured skills and have relatively higher dispersion of unmeasured skills, with the latter attributed to higher prices of unmeasured skills. We suggest better-quality schooling yielded higher returns to measured human-capital attributes for whites, and higher skills enabled whites to benefit more from on-the-job-training resulting in higher dispersion of their unmeasured human-capital attributes.
A cross-national study of child labor and its determinants
Authors: Saad-Lessler Joelle
Published: June 2010

This paper investigates the determinants of global child labor among countries with non-zero child labor rates. I find that the average child labor rate across countries rises with the size of the rural population, female labor force participation and fertility, whereas it falls with increases in GDP per capita, the share of public educational expenditures in gross national income, life expectancy and the share of the labor force in industry or agriculture. Over time, as GDP per capita rises and as trade expands, the child labor rate falls, whereas increases in the size of the rural population and in the female participation rate lead to increases in the child labor rate. Results indicate that the most effective ways to combat child labor are to increase GDP per capita, improve life expectancy, expand trade, increase spending on education and raise the GDP growth rate.
The factors affecting Bangladesh's exports: evidence from the gravity model analysis
Authors: Rahman Mohammad Mafizur
Published: June 2010

This paper attempts to identify the factors that affect Bangladesh's exports. The panel data estimation technique and a generalized gravity model have been used to analyze Bangladesh's export trade pattern. A theoretical justification for using the gravity model in the analysis of bilateral trade has been reaffirmed. The estimated results reveal that the main contributors to Bangladesh's exports are the exchange rate, partner countries' total import demand and the openness of the Bangladesh economy. All these factors affect the country's exports positively. Transportation costs have negative but insignificant effect on Bangladesh's exports. The country specific effects show that neighboring countries' influence on the Bangladesh's exports is more than the influence of other distant countries. Therefore, Bangladesh should reduce trade barriers, pursue competitive devaluation of its currency, improve product quality and increase product varieties.
Purchasing power parity puzzle: evidence from Ghana
Authors: Oguanobi Chibuike R. , Chukwu Jude Okechukwu , Akamobi Anthony A. , Amuka Joseph I.
Published: June 2010

This paper tests the validity of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) doctrine for Ghana using the conventional relative PPP equation. We conducted a univariate Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test on the model variables. Exchange rate and CPI data for Ghana and the USA were collected on annual basis for the period between 1970 and 2005 inclusive. The result of the PPP test shows non-rejection of the null hypothesis of the failure of PPP. The result of the unit root test suggests that Ghana's exchange rates are mean reverting. Exchange rates and inflation differentials were found to be stationary at the same order of integration. Consequently, cointegration is suspected between GHANEX and GHANINF, though this paper did not investigate the presence of cointegration because even if it exists, we conclude that there is a long-run relationship between the two variables. Based on the result, it is concluded that a common basket of goods, when quoted in either cedi or dollar is not expected to cost the same in both countries. From the policy point of view, we established that PPP can be used to assess the level of exchange rates.
Modeling the informal economy in Mexico. a structural equation approach
Authors: Macias José Brambila , Cazzavillan Guido
Published: June 2010

This paper uses annual data for the period 1970-2006 in order to estimate and investigate the evolution of the Mexican informal economy. In order to do so, we model the informal economy as a latent variable and try to explain it through relationships between possible cause and indicator variables using structural equation modeling (SEM). The model uses tax burden, salary levels, inflation, unemployment and excessive regulation as potential incentives or deterrents for the informal economy. Our results indicate that the Mexican informal sector at the beginning of the 1970's accounted for 40 percent of GDP, and then it slightly decreased to stabilize around 30 percent of GDP from the late 1980's onwards. The results also confirm the importance of salaries and excessive regulation as causes of the informal economy in Mexico and the existence of a positive relationship between informality and GDP.
Operational performance of commercial banks in the Chinese transitioal economy
Authors: Wu Hsiu-Ling , Chen Chien-Hsun
Published: June 2010

Since the process of economic reform began in China, the Chinese banking system has grown impressively. The aim of this paper is therefore to examine the differences in operational efficiency between China's state-owned commercial banks (SCBs) and shareholding commercial banks using pooled cross-section and time-series data to observe the period between 1996 and 2002. The results showed that, on average, shareholding commercial banks have lower operating costs than the SCBs; that is to say, they display a higher level of "vitality", and greater efficiency. The empirical results also indicated that there has been a significant improvement in the overall operational performance of China's commercial banks in the last few years. By 2002, average operating costs were much lower than during the period 1996-1998. This improvement is clearly related to the growth of the shareholding commercial banks.
Testing the export-led growth hypothesis: empirical evidence from Turkey
Authors: Ozturk Ilhan , Acaravci Ali
Published: June 2010

In this paper the Turkish export-led growth hypothesis is examined from the trade liberalisation process initiated in 1980. The paper has employed Toda and Yamamoto (1995) procedure for testing for Granger non-causality in the augmented vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology to analyze the dynamic relationship between export growth and economic growth in Turkey using quarterly data from 1989 to 2006. The empirical results support the export-led growth hypothesis for Turkey and that Granger causal flow is unidirectional from real exports to real GDP.
Divergence of electric power consumption: evidence from the SAPP
Authors: Jaunky Vishal C.
Published: June 2010

With the relatively low per capita electric power consumption in Africa, several electric power pools have been emerging recently. The South African Power Pool (SAPP), the first of those power pools, started operating in 1995 under the aegis of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). This paper attempts to assess the convergence pattern of relative per capita electric power consumption within the SAPP over the period 1995-2005. A comparative study across regions is first conducted. Evidence in support of neoclassical convergence hypotheses such as the β -convergence and σ -convergence is obtained. Stochastic convergence is investigated by applying panel unit roots tests. In contrast, stochastic divergence of electric power consumption is found. Additionally, stochastic kernel analysis provides some evidence of club-formation.
Economic freedom, ethnic separatism, and ethnic conflict
Authors: Osborne Evan
Published: June 2010

Ethnic conflict has not been tested using economic theory, except its most extreme forms - violence and warfare. This paper adopts the newer economic approach to conflict to analyze ethnic conflict more broadly defined. The analysis is able for the first time to derive equilibrium discrimination by a dominant group and separatism by a weaker group. Consistent with the predictions developed, cross-sectional instrumental-variables estimates and other evidence indicate that government restrictions on commerce promote separatism and conflict and hamper trust. Economic freedom is thus argued to be a key if thus far largely neglected force for ethnic cooperation within states, consistent with the empirical findings for nation-state interactions.
Horticultural exports and livelihood linkages of rural dwellers in southern Ghana: an agricultural household modeling application
Authors: Afari-Sefa Victor
Published: June 2010

Increasing foreign exchange problems and the deteriorating prices of traditional export commodities in developing countries are leading agricultural policy makers and donor agencies to seek diversification in export crop production. In Ghana, horticultural crops such as pineapples, mangoes and papaya appear promising because of their high labor intensity and the expanding demand for fruits in industrialized nations. Consequently, few studies have examined the linkage between export diversification and microeconomic performance. In this study, a non-linear programming model of farm-household behavior is applied to households with different resource endowments and socio-economic characteristics by exploring observed responses to alternative factor and output price scenarios. Model results show significant differences in household responses to changes in wages, prices of local staples and world market prices of horticultural crops where, beyond critical price ranges and resource constraints leads to inverse supply responses for poor households. The findings suggest the need to design an integrated policy framework that is orientated towards improving rural market imperfections for sustaining the livelihoods of smallholders.
Explaining exchange rate movements: an application of the market microstructure approach on the Pakistani foreign exchange market
Authors: Jalil Abdul , Feridun Mete
Published: June 2010

This present article aims at explaining the exchange rate movements in the Pakistani foreign exchange market using the market micro structure approach, which has not been applied to date due to the unavailability of high-frequency data on the order flow for Pakistan. The novelty of the present article is that it uses publicly unavailable micro data obtained from the State Bank of Pakistan and that it employs ARCH/GARCH regression methods in addition to the OLS technique suggested by the existing literature. Strong evidence emerged suggesting that order flow is a key variable that explains the movements in exchange rate over a short term in the case of Pakistan.
Black feminization of poverty: evidence from the U.S. cross-regional data
Authors: Ezeala-Harrison Fidel
Published: June 2010

We explore the issue of feminization of poverty among Black women despite their much improved labor market advantages relative to White women and Black men. Black women generally possess comparable human capital and positive work ethic attributes and characteristics, and face comparable unemployment rates. One would therefore expect that their overall income levels and degree of poverty be comparable to those of their White female and Black male counterparts. The question then arises as to why Black women experience relatively higher poverty rates than White females and Black males. The work applies a simple theoretical and empirical framework utilizing Current Population Surveys (CPS) sources to analyze cross-regional U.S. data to verify the extent to which the causal factors of Black feminization of poverty can be traced to labor market attributes.
Forcing Africa to open up to trade: is it worth it?
Authors: Vlastou Ioanna
Published: June 2010

This study investigates the relationship between openness and growth for a sample of 34 African countries over the period 1960-2003. Unlike previous research on the subject we use novel time series techniques concentrated around panel unit root, panel cointegration and panel causality tests, which are more powerful for inference. In addition, the structural relationship is estimated by dynamic OLS. In contrast to previous analyses, the empirical findings reveal a negative and significant impact of openness on output growth and causality that runs only from openness to growth.
Gauging bank efficiency during card insolvency crisis: the case of the Taiwanese banks
Authors: Tsai Bi-Huei
Published: June 2010

Previous studies mostly focus on bank performance, but few studies have effectively investigated how efficiency is reduced as banks expand credit card or cash card issuances. This study seeks to investigate how bank's relaxations of card issuance and credit revolvers reduce bank efficiency during card insolvency crisis in the Taiwanese banking industry. The results show that the credit card insolvency crisis reduces bank efficiency. Particularly, banks with low card issuance levels perform better than those with high card issuance levels. This suggests that if banks approve card applications while neglecting an applicant's capability to repay the card debt, they will suffer losses. Furthermore, the regression used in this study indicates that bank efficiency is negatively related to the issuances of credit cards, issuances of cash cards, and the revolving amount of credit cards. These findings imply that the relaxations relating to the card issuance or loosened approvals of credit revolvers reduced bank profits resulting from unpaid debts.
Impact of technology and physical capital on export quality
Authors: Faruq Hasan A.
Published: June 2010

This paper examines why different countries export different qualities of products. While previous studies have attributed quality differences to differences in physical capital endowments, there is a dearth of empirical work focusing on the effect of technology on the quality of exports. Using data on U.S. imports from 58 countries, we analyze the impact of technology and physical capital on quality. Our findings suggest that the export of high quality differentiated goods is associated with research and development (R&D) activities and foreign direct investment (FDI). However, physical capital has no effect on quality in the technology-intensive machinery industry. These results imply that if countries are interested in increasing the quality of the goods they export, they might consider implementing policies that promote R&D activities or attract FDI.
Energy consumption in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan: cointegration analysis
Authors: Chary Swaroop R. , Bohara Alok K.
Published: June 2010

Recognizing the significant role that energy plays on growth, the South Asian countries are beginning to focus on their energy issues and formulate common energy policies. The SAARC Energy Center (SEC) was established in 2005 to address energy challenges in the South Asian region. In this paper the authors investigate the presence of cointegration and causality relationships for energy consumption in the three largest SAARC countries: Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan and argue that establishing mutually beneficial energy policies in the three countries helps the SEC meet its goals and objectives.
Election induced fiscal and monetary cycles: evidence from the Caribbean
Authors: Peters Amos C.
Published: June 2010

This study examines whether governments in the Caribbean systematically attempt to alter voter preferences through the use of fiscal and monetary policy tools during election periods. It also investigates whether governments reverse their pre-election excesses in the year after a general election. I estimate a variant of the Nordhaus politico-economic model for selected Caribbean countries. The Arellano-Bond dynamic panel estimator is employed to empirically test this model, and the results indicate that there is evidence to suggest that Caribbean governments pursue electorally timed interventions in fiscal and monetary instruments but do not reverse their policies in the aftermath of an election.
Income distribution, persistent unemployment, and the classical growth cycle: evidence from South Africa
Authors: Malikane Christopher
Published: June 2010

I formulate and calibrate a small 3D classical growth cycle model to explain the rise of income inequality, growth stagnation and the persistence of unemployment in South Africa between 1970-2005. This model exhibits interactions between economic growth, the employment rate, and the rate of profit. Simulation of the estimated model produces an underlying 59-year growth cycle for the South African economy, which is close to the one observed in the data. I find that the South African economy entered a phase of employment-enhancing growth in output around 2005, implying an estimated 37-year depression of the labour market.
Colonial dependency, core-periphery, and capitalism: a case study of the Guyana economy
Authors: Ramrattan Lall , Szenberg Michael
Published: June 2010

This paper presents the economic development of Guyana, from several novel analytic technical perspectives. The development spans three dominant regimes in Guyana, starting just before its independence from Great Britain in 1966. The country has moved from a colonial type of development strategy to a modified socialist system and returned to a capitalist approach over the last 40 years. New paradigms such as information theory, game theory, convergence theory, and cross-border analysis have improved our insights into economic development through improvement of classical and neoclassical equilibrium models. However, rather than using the traditional equilibrium model, we will, through a rivalry hypothesis, examine patterns of behavior among Guyana's sectors and its external trading partners for the different regimes. We will also point out anomaly in the behavior of the service sector, unjustified inverted leader-follower relationship among trading partners, unheeded signaling of information from cross-border financial ratios and overlooked implications of non-convergence. We believe that the results of this case study will enhance our understanding of the development process.
What drives microfinance institution's financial sustainability
Authors: Ayayi Ayi Gavriel , Sene Maty
Published: June 2010

Microfinance promises to trim down poverty. To achieve this noble objective microfinance institutions (MFIs) have to become steady profitable because donor constancy is not a given. Thus important question is: what factors drive the financial sustainability of MFIs? Using data on 217 MFIs in 101 countries distributed by region and type of MFIs over the period of 1998-2006, we report three important findings. First, we show that a high quality credit portfolio, coupled with the application of sufficiently high interest rates that allow a reasonable profit and sound management are instrumental to the financial sustainability of MFIs. Second, we show that the percentage of women among the clientele has a weak statistically non-significant negative effect on financial sustainability of MFIs. Third, we find that the client outreach of microfinance programs and the age of MFIs have a positive but lesser impact on attainment of financial sustainability. The policy implication is that MFIs have to emulate profit-making banking practices by implementing a sound financial management and good managerial governance to assure their financial sustainability.
"A Black Girl Should Not be With a White Man": Sex, Race, and African Women's Social and Legal Status in Colonial Gabon, c. 1900–1946
Authors: Jean-Baptiste Rachel
Published: June 2010

This article reviews representations and lived experiences of interracial sex and métissage in twentieth-century colonial Gabon to argue that African communities and colonial societies debated over "the métis problem" as question of how to demarcate African women's sexuality, and socioeconomic and political power in the urban locale. These discourses and social realities reflected ambiguous and contradictory colonial discourses and polyvalent struggles among Gabonese populations to recast gender and respectability in the colonial capital city. Mpongwé women's participation in interracial relationships, frequently brokered by male kin, had unintended consequences that threatened colonial order and reordered gender hierarchies within Mpongwé communities. Following World War I through the 1950s, shifting coalitions of elite African men, colonial officials, and private French citizens—anxious of the social mobility black and mixed race women achieved and sought to maintain—frowned upon and sought to restrict interracial liasons. Mpongwé women, both black and métis, involved in interracial relationships struggled to maintain control over their property, their labor, and insist upon their respectability in the precarious urban milieu. Using oral and written sources, this article addresses a gap in the scholarship on gender, sexuality, and colonialism by foregrounding how African women and men engaged in and reflected on miscegenation at the center of analysis. Furthermore, this article emphasizes the colonial encounter as a dialectic in which the actions of African women shaped colonial perceptions and policies.
Lavender, Menaced: Lesbianism, Obscenity Law, and the Feminist Antipornography Movement
Authors: Strub Whitney
Published: June 2010

This article examines the means by which obscenity law, as an instrument of heteronormativity, operated against depictions of lesbianism in the post-World War II United States. As persistent obscenity charges served to reify the conflation of lesbianism and obscenity, bolstering an already operative antigay framework, judicial rulings repeatedly ratified this equation, holding depictions of lesbianism to arbitrary and anomalous legal standards that insured its continued stigmatization. After an analysis of case law and the legal targeting of lesbian imagery, the article goes on to argue that this hitherto unexamined story provides a crucial backdrop for understanding lesbian responses to the feminist antipornography movement that emerged in the 1970s, as lesbians often proved resistant to a movement whose discourse frequently resonated with earlier legal language utilized in the suppression of lesbian imagery.
Colonizing Women's Bodies: Population Policies and Nationhood in Eighteenth-Century Sweden
Authors: Edgren Monika
Published: June 2010

This article explores the establishment of a population policy in Sweden in the eighteenth century. Swedish population policy, making use of systematic church registers, became the basis for a new system of knowledge built on gender and sexual differences. In order to increase the population rate, the Swedish state promoted motherhood, thus qualitatively binding the state and its nation's inhabitants. Parliament's foundation of a Department of Public Economics was the cornerstone of a national discourse on population, laden with references to "the common good." In the mercantile era, when people were viewed as resources and more people meant an increased capacity to compete in the international economy, new forms of knowledge were created to manage and promote population growth. Children were regarded as the hope of the future. This discourse colonized women's bodies by giving women a national task to become child bearers, child carers, and, accordingly, guardians of the nation. Carl Linnaeus, one of the most well-known scientists of the time, championed the importance of the biological mother's milk for children and the strengthening of "natural" motherhood in general. Nevertheless, population growth and workforce reproduction were of such a high priority to the state that even unwed mothers had a role in growing the nation. Poor relief regulations offered economic compensation to mothers, including those who were sole providers. Motherhood as a national resource and as a symbol in nationalistic projects incorporated women into the state as mothers, not as individuals.
From Cloister to Court: Nuns and the Gendered Culture of Disputing in Early Modern France
Authors: Tuttle Leslie
Published: June 2010

This article examines how limited access to the courts and gendered norms of behavior combined to shape early modern women's strategies to pursue and resolve disputes. It describes the decades-long conflict that troubled the Franciscan convent of Sainte-Catherine-lès-Provins in Provins, France. Divided over the issue of reform that would impose stricter enclosure, the community became factionalized and unable to resolve its disputes internally. But access to France's civil courts was limited by the women's ecclesiastical status. Episcopal visitation records permit us to see how gender was implicated in the ways women pursued their grievances with one another behind cloister walls, and in how they shaped those grievances into legal suits civil judges would adjudicate.
Hers by Right: Gendered Legal Assumptions and Women's Property in the Medieval Crown of Aragon
Authors: Kelleher Marie A.
Published: June 2010

This article explores women's property rights in the Crown of Aragon (Spain) during the high Middle Ages, focusing on the gendered legal assumptions that governed women's economic lives. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Iberian jurists came under the influence of Roman law, which assumed a male-dominated household economy. Yet medieval women had long exercised substantial property rights that could not simply be abrogated by the new legal culture. An examination of women's litigation from the fourteenth-century Crown of Aragon, placed in the context of particular Roman legal principles that influenced the way cases were adjudicated, reveals a paradox: women's litigation to assert independent property rights depended on the use of laws that were grounded in an assumption of married women's subordination to their husbands. Women's own litigation thus helped to solidify a gendered legal system that would shape women's economic lives for centuries thereafter.
Louise Talma's Christmas Carol
Authors: Leonard Kendra Preston
Published: June 2010

Discovered in 2009 at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, Louise Talma's 1959 Christmas carol, playfully titled Chorus Angelorum, Piccolassima Fughetta, Molto Tonale, Sopra un Téma, Torentoni Niventis Wilderi , is a fugal motet for three voices. Written for Thornton Wilder, Talma's collaborator on her opera The Alcestiad , the work is unusual in that it represents a completely tonal work by Talma during a period when she was working in her own distinct nonstrict serial idiom, and is the only fully tonal work she composed after being inspired to work in a serial style by Irving Fine's String Quartet of 1952. It is also a glimpse into Talma's psyche at the time when she was orchestrating The Alcestiad , and into her close friendship with Wilder.
A View of Music Librarianship as Seen Through its Journals: A Comparison of Notes and Fontes Artis Musicae , 1977-2007
Authors: Dougan Kirstin
Published: June 2010

MLA's Notes and IAML's Fontes Artis Musicae are well known as two primary channels of printed scholarly communication in music librarianship. This article evaluates the similarities and differences between the content of these journals over a thirty-one-year time span in an attempt to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and to determine whether their strengths lie more in the field of music, or in librarianship. Trends in overall subject coverage, and the contributions to the journals by successive editors, are also examined. The article finds that, while the journals do have some common traits, they vary in their overall coverage of particular subject areas. In addition, both journals are wanting in terms of the currency of their coverage. Further research is warranted to determine how well these journals meet the scholarly communications needs of music librarians.
Self-Publishing and Musicology: Historical Perspectives, Problems, and Possibilities
Authors: Saffle Michael
Published: June 2010

Although the terms "publishing" and "self-publishing" have meant quite different things at various times and to various individuals, publishers today decide which documents will be produced and for what purposes. This article examines the evolution of self-publishing past and present, especially (but not exclusively) insofar as musicology is concerned. Important self-publications discussed or at least mentioned are John Milton's Areopagitica ; editions of music by Telemann, C. P. E. Bach, and Muzio Clementi; some of the books and magazines written and sold by Upton Sinclair; the samizdat of 1960s and 1970s Soviet dissidents; Richard Wagner's autobiography Mein Leben and Mary Burrell's unfinished documentary Wagner biography; fanzines of various kinds; and the celebrated Anthology of American Folk Music , for which editor Harry Smith compiled an influential set of homemade program notes. Since the 1960s the rise of desktop publishing, new forms of digital word-formatting and -retrieval systems, and the Internet have challenged musicologists and other scholars to think outside the box of traditional, hard-copy, peer-reviewed monographs; in a few cases, online periodicals and other kinds of publications have begun to be accepted. One example of recent self-publishing is Anthony Linick's biography of his stepfather, composer Ingolf Dahl, also reviewed separately in this issue of Notes . Whatever the problems associated with it, virtual publishing offers libraries as well as scholars and their audiences a variety of new opportunities.
Toward a Theory of Feminist Hospitality
Authors: Hamington Maurice
Published: June 2010

Immigration, international conflicts, and world debt have contributed to rising unease over the power relations created by burgeoning globalization. Absent from much of the political rhetoric surrounding global issues is a role for the social value of hospitality. Political theorists and philosophers such as the late Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas have reinvigorated interest in hospitality. This article suggests that the work of feminist theorists such as Seyla Benhabib, Margaret Urban Walker, and Iris Marion Young on issues of identity, inclusiveness, reciprocity, forgiveness, and embodiment can contribute to an alternative theory of hospitality. Consistent with feminist care ethics, the theory of feminist hospitality proposed here integrates a moral disposition toward the Other with an open epistemological stance, funded by a metaphysical conceptualization of connected identity. Granting the historical gender division of labor associated with hospitality work, the hospitality offered integrates a healthy notion of self-care and is critical of oppressive power dynamics. Ultimately, this article proposes a feminist hospitality that reflects a performative extension of care ethics by pursuing stronger social bonds, as well as fostering inclusive and nonhierarchical host/guest relations.
Feminism Lost in Translation?: When a Chinese Woman Speaks Through an American Woman's Voice in Pearl Buck's East Wind, West Wind
Authors: Zhou Haipeng
Published: June 2010

Among all the factors that triggered Chinese feminist movements during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the introduction of Western feminism played an important role. While the Western influence on early Chinese feminism has been widely acknowledged, the problems that arose due to historical and cultural differences have yet to be more thoroughly discussed. This article will explore how Pearl Buck's first novel East Wind, West Wind problematizes Western feminism in a cross-cultural context, and how the novel criticizes the misunderstanding of Western feminism by Chinese male intellectuals. In addition, while acknowledging Pearl Buck's feminist concerns regarding the liberation of Chinese women and the representation of feminist ideals within her text, I argue that Buck gives voice to a few women at the cost of other women's silence. I argue that feminism is a complicated process that can never be translated through a single voice. The purpose of the article is to highlight the challenges of being bridges, and to call more attention to cultural differences and historical contexts in feminist practice so that the bridging function of feminism can be more effective across cultures .
Loving Her Without Class: The Politics of Feminist Love in Ann Allen Shockley's Lesbian Novel
Authors: Van Ausdall Mimi Iimuro
Published: June 2010

This article draws attention to Ann Allen Shockley's Loving Her (1974/1997), the first known novel to highlight an interracial lesbian relationship, featuring Renay (Davis) Lee, a working-class black pianist, and her lover Terry Bluvard, an upperclass white writer. While previous critics have rightly understood Shockley's novel as revolutionary in its critique of the patriarchal family as imagined by some strands of black nationalism, I argue that the book offers a relationship that is still blemished by uneven power based on class. While the novel does put forward a subtle class critique, its most intimate relationship, that between Terry and Renay, displaces class difference onto the site of racial difference and/or replaces it with romantic love. When read symptomatically, love in the novel is more, though, than an imaginary solution to class difference; it adumbrates a lack, a need to further theorize the relationship between love and power .
Is It Time to Jump Ship? Historians Rethink the Waves Metaphor
Authors: Laughlin Kathleen A. , Gallagher Julie , Cobble Dorothy Sue , Boris Eileen , Nadasen Premilla , Gilmore Stephanie , Zarnow Leandra
Published: June 2010

The waves metaphor to delineate feminist activism in the United States is troublesome, to say the least. Despite its problems, the waves model has tremendous staying power when it comes to understanding, analyzing, writing about, and teaching the history of U.S. feminism. In this collection of essays, historians revisit this model, highlighting the efficacy of feminist waves as we know them, but also challenging this model for eliding the experiences of women of color, men, young people, and others whose activist work falls under a capacious definition of feminism.
Unmirroring Pedagogies: Teaching with Intersectional and Transnational Methods in the Women and Gender Studies Classroom
Authors: Davis Dawn Rae
Published: June 2010

As the U.S. academy increasingly markets "the global" and "diversity" for undergraduate student consumption, feminists face new challenges with respect to the decolonizing goals of teaching. Analyzing race, gender, and culture intersections that inform epistemological desires in the Women and Gender Studies classroom, this article examines the potential of a "pedagogy of unmirroring" to engage students in a decolonizing process of learning that facilitates intersectional and transnational feminist methods. The analysis draws from personal teaching experiences to argue that the languages of postcolonial feminist studies can be applied to a politics of knowledge in the classroom by rendering self–other relations of empire visible to the "mirror" of student perceptions in ways that help them confront epistemological desires rooted in imperialist assumptions.
Breaking the Barriers of Essentialism in Leadership Research: Positionality as a Promising Approach
Authors: Kezar Adrianna , Lester Jaime
Published: June 2010

This article reviews the promise of using positionality theory for expanding our knowledge of leadership. Based on a critique of leadership studies that have traditionally maintained a simplistic view of social identities (particularly race and gender), the authors suggest that our understanding of leadership remains partial. Using empirical research results by Adrianna Kezar that examined leadership in a higher education context using a positionality theory framework, the authors describe the benefits of using this framework and the challenges faced by the researchers. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of reconceptualizing leadership research from a positionality perspective.
The (Missing) Faces of African American Girls with AIDS
Authors: Highberg Nels P.
Published: June 2010

Although African American girls with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) make up a significant portion of those now affected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), their stories rarely appear in the mainstream media. Reflecting upon the reasons behind this absence, the few who are represented and the ways that more creative or fictional creations portray them reveal not just how HIV affects their health, but also how other social and political factors can help or hinder their lives. What we see (or do not see) about these girls and young women reveals how we need to work diligently to keep our eyes, ears, and minds open, becoming more fully aware of the individual person as well as the larger world in which she lives.
Integration of Sperm Motility and Chemotaxis Screening with a Microchannel-Based Device
Authors: Xie Lan , Ma Rui , Han Chao , Su Kai , Zhang Qiufang , Qiu Tian , Wang Lei , Huang Guoliang , Qiao Jie , Wang Jundong , Cheng Jing
Published: June 2010

BACKGROUND

Sperm screening is an essential step in in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures. The swim-up method, an assay for sperm motility, is used clinically to select the ideal sperm for subsequent manipulation. However, additional parameters, including acrosome reaction capability, chemotaxis, and thermotaxis, are also important indicators of mammalian sperm health. To monitor both sperm motility and chemotaxis simultaneously during sperm screening, we designed and constructed a microdevice comprising a straight channel connected with a bibranch channel that mimics the mammalian female reproductive tract.

METHODS

The width and length of the straight channel were optimized to select the motile sperms. We selectively cultured cumulus cells in the bibranch channel to generate a chemoattractant-forming chemical gradient. Sperm chemotaxis was represented by the ratio of the sperm swimming toward different branches.

RESULTS

The percentage of motile sperms improved from 58.5% (3.8%) to 82.6% (2.9%) by a straight channel 7 mm in length and 1 mm in width. About 10% of sperms were found to be chemotactically responsive in our experiment, which is consistent with previous studies.

CONCLUSIONS

For the first time, we achieved the combined evaluation of both sperm motility and chemotaxis. The motile and chemotactically responsive sperms can easily be enriched on a lab-on-a-chip device to improve IVF outcome.
Understanding Gender and Power Dynamics Within the Family: A Qualitative Study of Nepali Women's Experience
Authors: Regmi Kiran , Smart Rebekah , Kottler Jeffrey
Published: June 2010

Among the Maori of New Zealand, Aboriginals of Australia, and other Indigenous peoples, family dynamics strongly influence the ways that issues emerge in counseling. This study explores aspects of gender and power within the context of birth practices in rural Nepal. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 15 postpartum women, as well as family members, to collect narratives of birthing experiences that highlight issues of oppression, marginalisation, and power struggles. Implications for multicultural and social justice awareness in family therapy are discussed, especially with regard to the subtle, disguised ways that power operates behind the scenes, often sabotaging efforts by health and mental health professionals to bemost helpful.
tre albinos: the trope of albinism in Williams Sassine's Wirriyamu and Mmoire d'une peau
Authors: Baker Charlotte
Published: June 2010

This article examines the positioning of albino protagonists at the centre of Francophone Guinean writer Williams Sassine's novels Wirriyamu (1976) and Mmoire d'une peau (1998). The narratives not only focus on the visible difference of the albino characters and the alienation
that results from it but also posit various ways in which other characters might be albino. As Sassine's portrayal of the protagonist of Mmoire d'une peau demonstrates, being albino means being associated with weakness, madness, marginality and curiosity. This article proposes that
Sassine's use of the symbolic trope of albinism raises important questions about the paradigms around which the colonial and postcolonial worlds of these novels are structured and demands a re-examination of what constitutes the postcolonial African self.
Increased farm income through farmer-to-farmer learning process approach to adaptation of technologies in Northeast Thailand
Authors: Taweekul Krailert , Caldwell John , Yamada Ryuichi , Fujimoto Akimi
Published: June 2010

This article examines the effectiveness of a farmer-to-farmer learning process (FFLP) developed and tested over three years in four amphoes (districts) of Northeast Thailand, and changes in adapted technologies and diversification. Assessment was made of the adaptation of four introduced
technologies and of the effects of these technologies on farm income and diversification through annual interviews of 100 farmers from 2006 to 2008. Sixty-four per cent of the farmers adapted custard apple management, 58 per cent adapted liquid organic fertilizer, 38 per cent adapted herbal
repellent extraction and 18 per cent adapted cassava-based animal feed. Farmers who adapted more technologies and generated more diversification gained higher incomes. Technologies introduced and adapted through the FFLP contributed 24 per cent of farm income and 21 per cent of the total income
of the 100 farmers.
Effects of Platelet-Rich Plasma and Chitosan Combination on Bone Regeneration in Experimental Rabbit Cranial Defects
Authors: Oktay ErolÖzgür , Demiralp Bahtiyar , Demiralp Burak , Senel Sevda , Cevdet Akman Abdullah , Eratalay Kenan , Akıncıbay Hakan
Published: June 2010

This study aimed to investigate and compare the effect of chitosan sponge and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) gel alone as well as their combination on bone regeneration in rabbit cranial defects. Four cranial defects with a 4.5-mm diameter were created in rabbit cranium and grafted with PRP, chitosan sponge alone, and chitosan sponge incorporated with PRP. The rabbits were killed by the fourth and eighth weeks, and the defects were analyzed histologically. Higher bone formation was observed in the PRP group when compared with the other groups at weeks 4 and 8. All parts of the defects were filled with thick trabecular new bone in the PRP group. The amount of new bone formation in the control groups was found to be less when compared with the PRP group and the least in the chitosan group. The defects that were filled with chitosan sponge showed a limited amount of new bone formation and an obvious fibrous demarcation line between chitosan particles and bone. Application of PRP showed a histological tendency toward increased bone formation. Other forms or derivatives of chitosan may have beneficial effects to achieve new bone regeneration.
An Alternate Pressure-Free Functional Impression Technique for Implant-Retained Overdentures
Authors: Uludag Bulent
Published: June 2010

Overdenture treatment provides an esthetic and functional result that allows proper access for hygiene and maintenance. For implant-retained overdentures to be successful, functional loads must be distributed optimally to the mucosa and the abutments. For this purpose, impressions must record the soft tissue supporting areas simultaneously with accurate registration of the implant components. Usually, finger pressure is used to make functional impressions. This article describes an alternate pressure-free functional impression technique for implant-retained overdentures.
Tectonic control on the stratigraphic framework of Late Pleistocene and Holocene deposits in Marajó Island, State of Pará, eastern Amazonia
Authors: Rossetti Dilce F.
Published: June 2010

The traditional view that the Brazilian Amazonia is located in a tectonically stable area since the Cretaceous is changing in front of the increasing documentation of fault reactivations even during the Holocene. How the sedimentary record has responded to these events is an issue that remains to be approached with basis on field data. This work focuses on the stratigraphic correlation of late Quaternary deposits from eastern Marajó Island, with the goal of demonstrating the role of fault reactivation on the origin and preservation of these deposits. Despite the location in a stable platform of a continental passive margin, three studied stratigraphic units display significant vertical offsets that define two depocenters that are better explained through tectonic displacements. This interpretation is reinforced by several morphostructural features related to faults that occur between the studied drills. Without the influence of tectonics, sediment preservation in this characteristically low-lying terrain would have been negligible. The results of the present work motivate to look for other tectonically-influenced areas in Amazonia, which similarly might have acted as sites for sediment accommodation during the late Quaternary. These sedimentary records have great potential to be the source of valuable information for reconstructing Quaternary geological events in Northern Brazil.
The gamma-Weibull distribution revisited
Authors: Pogány Tibor k. , Saxena Ram k.
Published: June 2010

The five parameter gamma-Weibull distribution has been introduced by Leipnik and Pearce (2004). Nadarajah and Kotz (2007) have simplified it into four parameter form, using hypergeometric functions in some special cases. We show that the probability distribution function, all moments of positive order and the characteristic function of gamma-Weibull distribution of a random variable can be explicitely expressed in terms of the incomplete confluent Fox-Wright Psi-function, which is recently introduced by Srivastava and Pogány (2007). In the same time, we generalize certain results by Nadarajah and Kotz that follow as special cases of our findings.