bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Revisiting Foreign Aid Theories
Authors: Pankaj Ashok Kumar
Published: June 2005

Foreign aid, as a subject matter of political economy, has been intensely debated in global development discourse and international politics. Does aid lead to growth and development of the underdeveloped countries? Or is it an instrument used by donor countries to promote their domestic and foreign policy interests? The theory and practice of foreign aid suggest that even if it may be useful for the economic development of underdeveloped and developing countries in the initial stages; development comes through indigenous efforts and not through foreign aid. Moreover, there are serious political and economic hazards of a foreign aid led growth model and long-term dependence on foreign aid. Therefore, foreign aid may be desirable but not essential for the development of these countries. But more importantly, while negotiating aid, the recipient countries should be cautious of donor motives and their own national and foreign policy interests.
A Plea for Engendering Human Security
Authors: Chenoy Anuradha M.
Published: June 2005

The human security concept centred around rights is a radical departure from the traditional state-centric approach to security issues. However this paradigm needs to be engendered because experience has shown that the concept of “people” still leaves out women, especially those at the margins. Threats from militarism, patriarchy, chauvinism, sectarianism, poverty and denial of rights affect women differently than they do men and since structures and institutions of power remain patriarchal, there is need for a gender balance as well as a feminization of security. Many countries in principle accept people's rights and yet discriminate against women in practice. It is time that steps like evolving gendered security indicators in order to assess the threats to human security are brought on the security agenda.
Technology, Narratives, Vignettes, and the Intercultural and Cross-Cultural Teaching Portal
Authors: Tettegah Sharon Y.
Published: June 2005

This article presents information on the history and role of Web-based tools and vignette use in education by providing a definition of a vignette and other Web-based collaboration tools. After providing background on the use of vignettes and case-based scenarios in teaching and learning, the author discusses how Web-based tools may be used to examine how educators perceive and solve a particular classroom interaction involving two children. The author presents an example of how data can be gathered through the use of Web-based cultural learning portals.
Serving Underserved Communities with Instructional Technologies
Authors: Clark Kevin
Published: June 2005

The goal of this exploratory research study was to use the self-directed learning framework in a nonformal learning environment to determine how an underserved community would use technology. The factors that support self-directed learning in a nonformal learning environment were the ability to communicate, access information, and acquire knowledge. The primary focus was on the needs of the residents as learners; looking at why, when, what, and how community members wanted to involve technology in their learning and living. Residents identified needs that included issues related to housing, health care, child care, finances, education, and community unity.
The Legacy of the Digital Divide
Authors: Ching Cynthia Carter , Basham James D. , Jang Eunice
Published: June 2005

This study investigates how college students’ current levels of technology use might be affected by digital divide issues. Survey data were collected from 130 students in colleges of education at two midwestern universities. Factor analysis yielded that students’ uses of technology can be described using three broad categories: entertainment, communication, and construction. Each is important to consider, in that high levels of use across categories indicate a broad base of technology skills. Multiple regression results indicate that male students from higher family income levels who had access to a computer at home before age 10 show significantly higher levels of full-spectrum technology use than other demographic groups. Students’ age of first encounter with computers at school had no significant impact on their full-spectrum technology use. These results have implications for how we address digital divide issues, and the article discusses what may be critical differences between home and school access.
Are Electronic Conferences a Solution in Search of an Urban Problem?
Authors: Klecka Cari L. , Clift Renee T. , Cheng Yu-Ming
Published: June 2005

This article briefly reviews initiatives that have attempted to create communities of educators using Web-based, electronic conferencing. The authors critically analyze the advocacy for electronic communication as a medium for bringing educators together across time and distance with an emphasis on what is known about urban schools, access to Internet connections, and teachers’workloads. Although not a research report, the analysis is grounded in 4 years of ongoing research and development of the Novice Teacher Support E-mentoring Project and in the evaluation of the expansion of this concept to institutions in the Greater Chicago area. The authors raise questions about the role of technology and the intensification of expectations of urban educators.
Changing Eklingji
Authors: Teuscher Ulrike
Published: June 2005

This article examines the relationship between a Śaiva cult—that of Eklingji—and processes of legitimation in the context of early medieval Rajasthan. It focuses on the multiple strategies of legitimation associated with the Guhilas of Mewar, and explores the complex ways in which the history of the lineage and the cult centre was interwoven. The study shows how the cult and the sacred site acquired different meanings over the early medieval period, and how the heterodox ascetics—the Śaiva Pāśupatas—were displaced by Brahmans after the thirteenth century. These changes are located within the broader cultural, social and political contexts of the seventh to the fifteenth centuries.
Procreation and Pleasure
Authors: Gupta Charu
Published: June 2005

This article questions neat dichotomies between subaltern/hegemonic and feminine/masculine, which are often made while examining the impact of modern, Western, biomedical systems on traditional, indigenous medical practices in colonial societies. It does so by studying the extensive writings of Yashoda Devi, a famous woman ayurvedic practitioner in north India at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is unfortunate that this remarkable ayurvedic doctor has not found a place in the history of health and medicine in colonial India. Yashoda Devi negotiated the terrain of tradition and modernity in her discourse on women's health, often with contradictory and ambivalent implications. As a moral sexologist, she had a complex relationship to both the indigenous and Western knowledge systems: she praised the indigenous medical system as well as distanced herself from it, she partially affirmed the new systems of public health and hygiene, while simultaneously critiquing Western medicine. She offered indigenous methods for regulating the bodies of Hindu women, as well as men, within the home and the nation, at times reordering gender hierarchies. Indigenous healing, within the project of Yashoda Devi, became a site on which cultural identities were constructed, a project that simultaneously endorsed procreation and pleasure with regard to the woman's body. In exploring these issues, this article also reveals what happens when a woman enters the domain of male practitioners, covertly contesting male control over the discipline.
Tool Center Trajectory Planning for Industrial Robot Manipulators Using Dynamical Systems
Authors: Ellekilde Lars-Peter , Perram John W.
Published: June 2005

In this paper we generalize previous work in which the fixed points of dynamical systems were used to construct obstacle-avoiding, goal-attracting trajectories for robots to more complex attractors such as limit cycles in the form of closed planar curves. Following the development of a formalism for dealing with a mechanical system, some of whose coordinates are constrained to follow the trajectories of a set of coupled differential equations, we discuss how to construct, analyze, and solve a planar dynamical system whose limit set is one or more user-specified closed curves or limit cycles. This work finds its relevance in a wide range of applications. Our focus has mainly been on planning tool trajectories for industrial robot manipulators with applications such as welding and painting. However, the generalization from fixed points to limit cycles is also applicable when controlling automatic guided vehicles.
Sensor-based Planning for a Rod-shaped Robot in Three Dimensions: Piecewise Retracts of R3 × S2
Authors: Lee Ji Yeong , Choset Howie
Published: June 2005

We present a new roadmap for a rod-shaped robot operating in a three-dimensional workspace, whose configuration space is diffeomorphic to R3 × S2. This roadmap is called the rod hierarchical generalized Voronoi graph (rod-HGVG) and can be used to find a path between any two points in an unknown configuration space using only the sensor data. More importantly, the rod-HGVG serves as a basis for an algorithm to explore an unknown configuration space without explicitly constructing it. Once the rod-HGVG is constructed, the planner can use it to plan a path between any two configurations. One of the challenges in defining the roadmap revolves around a homotopy theory result, which asserts that there cannot be a one-dimensional deformation retract of a non-contractible space with dimension greater than two. Instead, we define an exact cellular decomposition on the free configuration space and a deformation retract in each cell (each cell is contractible). Next, we “connect” the deformation retracts of each of the cells using a roadmap of the workspace. We call this roadmap a piecewise retract because it comprises many deformation retracts. Exploiting the fact that the rod-HGVG is defined in terms of workspace distance measurements, we prescribe an incremental procedure to construct the rod-HGVG that uses the distance information that can be obtained from conventional range sensors.
Fully Isotropic Four-Degrees-of-Freedom Parallel Mechanisms for Schoenflies Motion
Authors: Carricato Marco
Published: June 2005

This paper presents a novel family of fully isotropic parallel mechanisms whose output link is provided with Schoenflies motion, i.e., it can freely translate in space and rotate about a fixed direction. A methodology is proposed that makes use of the theory of screws to synthesize desired forms for both the direct and the inverse Jacobian matrices. In particular, these are made diagonal and constant throughout the workspace. Motors are mounted one per leg and each one of them actuates one of the degrees of freedom of the output body through a constant one-to-one velocity relation. As a consequence, motors may apply, with equal ease, a twist or a wrench of any amplitude (within the motor operation range) to the end-effector around any screw congruous with the admitted motion, so that full isotropy is achieved. Kinematic analysis is trivial and no computation is required for real-time control. Furthermore, actuator motion ranges can be easily related to the theoretical workspace dimensions and the problem of link interference is potentially simplified.
Study of Multiresponse Optimization for Fiber-reinforced Poly(Butylene Terephthalate)
Authors: Fung Chin-Ping , Tien Yung-Feng
Published: June 2005

A procedure that employed the grey relational analysis was proposed to optimize the multiresponse problem. The procedure was demonstrated by investigating fiber-reinforced poly(butylene terephthalate). Ultimate stress and fracture toughness were selected to be the multiple qualities. The Taguchi method was also employed to obtain the optimal process condition for a single response of ultimate stress and again for fracture toughness. The results showed that the recommended condition obtained using grey relational analysis gave satisfactory results in both the S/N ratios of ultimate stress and fracture toughness. This demonstrates the proposed procedure is effective for the optimization of multiresponse problems.
Impact Studies in Elastomer, Fly Ash, and Hybrid-filled Epoxy Composites: Part I - Room Temperature Curing
Authors: Kishore  , Santra S.
Published: June 2005

This study involves a system where epoxy as matrix and two reinforcements, namely an elastomer and a less dense oxide known as fly ash, differing in their response to mechanical loading to yield hybrid composite, are used. As rubber particles are known for their resistance to dynamic loading situations, poly(acrylonitrile-co-butadiene), carboxyl terminated, CTBN as the elastomer constitutes the first of the filler. The incorporation of rigid fly ash, as a second filler, has been made to see the change in the behavior in the response to the impact test. Their roles as individual fillers as well as hybrid fillers are studied at various compositions. The directly observed experimental values such as total energy and the derived data like ductility index (DI) are catalogued. While the fly ash-bearing composites show maximum absorption of energy at 3% by weight, the rubber-bearing ones display the same trend at 1%. The values recorded for the hybrid type having 1% were high. The DI showed highest values for the maximum filler bearing compositions in all cases. The scanning electron micrographs of the impact-failed samples helped in understanding the trends seen in the impact data.
Reliability of Composite Laminates in Ship Hulls
Authors: Rao Ch. G.K. , Bhar Ashoke
Published: June 2005

The main objective of this paper is to compare the reliability of the different laminates used in ship hulls. The randomness in the material properties and the lateral impact load have been considered. The laminate analysis is carried out by considering the shear deformation (the Mindlin’s plate theory). The probability of failure of different laminates is calculated by using the finite element method and the Monte Carlo simulation technique. The reliability of the laminates is then estimated from the response of the laminated plate. The reliability indices are then calculated for laminates of chopped strand mat, woven roving, and their combinations.
A plea for detached involvement: Norbert Elias on intellectuals and political imagination in inter-war Germany
Authors: BjÖrk Micael
Published: June 2005

Elias’s view of democracy and German Sonderweg is discussed by looking at his analysis of intellectuals. How should the figuration of culture and politics be conceived at a time when the civilizing process could trigger both democracy and autarchy? It is argued that Elias’s answer was that democracy is always accompanied by discontinuity in existence, and that the Weimar Republic therefore needed intellectual spokespersons promoting tolerance of political uncertainty. Such democratic culture demanded a fair balance between involvement and detachment. Elias claimed that intellectuals ought to act as defenders of chance and a fragmented society, and moreover as critics of political romanticism and utopian myths.
What do individuals in different science groups within a life sciences organization think about genetic modification?
Authors: Fisher Mark , Small Bruce , Roth Hein , Mallon Mary , Jerebine Bryce
Published: June 2005

An assessment was undertaken of the attitudes of individuals within the science community towards a program to produce genetically modified cattle for altered milk composition, expectantly allowing for research into the treatment of multiple sclerosis in humans. The majority of respondents to an electronic survey expressed favorable attitudes to the program, thought it beneficial, respected individual freedom and was fair and just and disagreed that it was harmful. A passion for science and having a suitable lifestyle were the most important motivating factors for individuals. Finally, there were a wide range of responses to a number of cultural beliefs or myths. Science grouping significantly affected the responses. Compared with Systems and Land groups, Plant and Reproduction groups more strongly agreed with the project, thought it less harmful to interest groups, felt that genetic modification of animals was more morally acceptable, and more strongly agreed with the myth statements. These results indicate a diversity of beliefs and attitudes towards genetic modification amongst those within the science community, and highlight the importance of understanding ethics and myths in dealing with them. It is suggested that the diversity of beliefs could be better used to help shape public policy and understanding of biotechnology.
Did Kettlewell commit fraud? Re-examining the evidence
Authors: Rudge David Wÿss
Published: June 2005

H.B.D. Kettlewell is famous for several investigations conducted in the early 1950s on the phenomenon of industrial melanism, which are widely regarded as the classic demonstration of natural selection. In a recent (2002) book-length popularization of this episode in the history of the science, science writer Judith Hooper draws attention to what she interprets as discrepancies in the results reported by Kettlewell in his first scientific papers on the subject. On the basis of correspondence among Kettlewell and his associates, a survey of scientific publications that mention outstanding questions surrounding the phenomenon, as well as interviews with his son, surviving colleagues, and scientists who have worked on industrial melanism, Hooper all but explicitly concludes that Kettlewell committed fraud. The following essay critically examines her evidence in support of this allegation, including her discussion of his character, the alleged motives, and whether fraud was even committed. None of Hooper’s arguments is found to withstand careful scrutiny. The concluding section draws several conclusions about how history of science should be depicted to the public.
Regionalization for Turkey
Authors: Dulupçu Murat Ali
Published: June 2005

Recent debate on the reconfiguration of space exaggerates the roles of either economic motives of capitalist restructuring (such as ‘competitiveness’) or non-economic factors of social and cultural landscapes (for instance ‘social capital’) or both (as in the literature on learning regions). It generally aligns emerging structures of new scales with regional governance. This has been mainly due to a concentration of the literature on the developed economies at different scales - such as the EU (European Union) at a supranational scale or Baden-Württemberg or Silicon Valley at subnational scales. Relatively little work has been done to understand the relations between different emerging scales and alternative mechanisms of regionalization in developing countries. This paper explores the impetus of state restructuring (namely Europeanization) in Turkey, and argues that at the regional scale Turkey follows a route apart from the implications of ‘new regionalism’. By doing so the paper also extends the critique of ‘new regionalism’ through an analysis of Turkey. The paper also aims to explain how the failure to regionalize effectively is halting the development of the Turkish economy, and what the hollowing-out of the state implies when statism resists a downward power shift while accepting and even accelerating an upward power shift through Europeanization.
Product, Process and Place
Authors: Ilbery Brian , Morris Carol , Buller Henry , Maye Damian , Kneafsey Moya
Published: June 2005

Considerable academic interest now revolves around the recomposition of specific (or ‘alternative’) food chains based on notions of quality, territory and social embeddedness.A key to such recomposition is the marketing of ‘difference’ through a range of accreditation and labelling schemes. Using examples from Europe and North America, this paper examines how ‘difference’ is constructed by producers and other actors in the food supply chain by combining the attributes of ‘product, process and place’ (PPP) in a range of marketing and labelling schemes. Results indicate that it is possible to identify ‘critical’ and ‘territorial development’ rationales that influence the ways in which the three Ps are combined. An examination of the rationales and practices sustaining such labelling schemes provides insights into some of the opportunities and threats shaping the emergence of new geographies of food production and consumption in Europe and North America.
Spatial Disparities in Productivity and Industry Mix
Authors: Benito Juan Miguel , Ezcurra Roberto
Published: June 2005

This paper applies non-parametric techniques to examine the evolution of the distribution of regional productivity in the European Union between 1977 and 1999. Likewise, we study the strength of the respective roles played by regional and sectoral factors in the convergence in productivity observed in the European context. To achieve this aim, we consider a new methodology involving a modification of conventional shift-share analysis and various theoretical results obtained in the literature on personal income distribution. Our findings suggest that regional inequality in productivity is closely linked to intrinsic differences between regions. Similarly, the analysis carried out reveals the major role played by the national component and spatial dimension in the explanation of regional disparities in product per worker in the European Union. In addition, our results support the relevance of one-sector growth models for analysing regional disparities in per-capita income.
The Twelfth SAARC Summit
Authors: Dubey Muchkund
Published: June 2005

The adoption of the Framework Agreement on South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) at the Islamabad SAARC Summit imparted a major thrust to the movement for regional integration in South Asia. Advantages of an FTA are derived not only from the enlargement of the market and enhanced investment flows but also from measures of deeper integration included in FTAs. These measures include trade facilitation, investment, services, joint development of infrastructure, monetary and financial cooperation, cooperation in science and technology, harmonisation of macro-economic policies, structural changes in production patterns and common strategy for negotiating in international fora and with other regional groupings. The article summarises the measures of deeper integration provided in regional groupings of developing countries. It gives a rough sequencing of such measures along the path of regional integration. Finally, it analyses the scope, significance and prospects of deeper integration in South Asia in selected areas.
The Twelfth SAARC Summit
Authors: Mohsin Mohammed
Published: June 2005

The article begins with an examination of the many weaknesses of SAARC, such as its restrictive agenda and its weak Secretariat. The lack of a dispute settlement mechanism within SAARC has impacted adversely on regional peace, security and development. The asymmetrical configuration of the region, with India both dominant and centrally located, has resulted in the Indian regional policy of bilateralism instead of a regional approach. Several important SAARC initiatives in the past have met with a lack of enthusiasm about making them operational. Thus, the major decisions taken at the 12th SAARC Summit in Islamabad were remarkable, and reflected a refreshing combination of realism about current feasibility and ambitiousness about future aims. The article makes several recommendations: giving SAARC an effective institutional support base; broadening the SAARC agenda to facilitate discussions on all issues that create tension and mistrust among the regional countries; and involving non-governmental groups in promoting regional cooperation.
India-Pakistan Conflict over Kashmir
Authors: Harshe Rajen
Published: June 2005

In the process of capturing a critical overview of the India–Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, this article argues that the causes of such conflict can be traced to the processes of state formation and nation building in India and Pakistan that began after the partition of the subcontinent. Thus the notions of secular nationalism and two-nation theory were deployed, by India and Pakistan respectively, to integrate Kashmir within their fold. While assessing the viewpoints of the contending parties, the article suggests that resolution of the Kashmir question is dependent on the overall cordiality in India–Pakistan ties. In this context, it suggests constructive alternatives to prevent conflicts and ameliorate India–Pakistan relations on the basis of prevailing realities, in two ways. Initially it reflects briefly on the possible measures to reconstruct the conflict-ravaged state of Jammu and Kashmir and subsequently it underscores the significance of the hitherto neglected peace related projects built through trade and development cooperation.
Ethnic Conflicts in South Asia
Authors: Chatterjee Shibashis
Published: June 2005

This article is an attempt to employ the constructivism of Alexander Wendt to understand ethnic conflicts in South Asia. The article surveys the theoretical literature on constructivism to create a set of propositions regarding ethnic conflicts and attempts to test these propositions for several of South Asia's ethnic conflicts. The article argues that ethnic conflicts are essentially identity conflicts in which the definition or construction of threats, enemies and friends plays a pivotal role. Ethnic conflicts evolve according to how identities are defined, the definitions being predicated on the material condition facing the communities themselves in relation to the manifest practices of the state. In contrast to realist discourses that see only endless conflicts and an invariable security dilemma for groups, and liberalism that defines ethnic peace (or conflict) in terms of transaction costs and utility calculations, the constructivist reading of ethnicity enables International Relations to interrogate ethnicity in cultural-ideational terms. By using constructivist propositions to a select set of ethnic conflicts in South Asia, the article attempts to explain the salience of ethnicity as a pervasive mode of conflict in the subcontinent.
Battlefield Nuclear Weapons in South Asia
Authors: Rajen Gaurav , Vannoni Michael G.
Published: June 2005

India and Pakistan have developed and tested weapons with the stated intention of creating strategic deterrence with a minimum credible nuclear force. In spite of this, internal pressures in both nations to obtain the ability to fight a ‘limited nuclear war’ are increasing. Such a strategy would probably require a new class of low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons. This article, focused primarily on India's dilemma with nuclear strategy, first surveys Indian and Pakistani academic and official statements on the utility of battlefield nuclear weapons, then demonstrates that the military utility of these weapons is very limited in the South Asian context. The article concludes that an India–Pakistan restraint regime for battlefield nuclear weapons is needed and explores how such a regime might be structured and monitored.
Public–Private Partnership in the Development of the Hepatitis B Vaccine in Korea
Authors: Mahoney Richard T.
Published: June 2005

National innovation in science and technology depends on many factors. This article presents a case study of the development of hepatitis B vaccine in Korea. It examines the influence of government policy, private sector strategies, intellectual property rights, regulatory frameworks, and programmes of foundations and other donors. The article leads to the conclusion that the most important factor to stimulate the development of products for developing countries is the creation of markets through, for example, the creation of international procurement funds to bridge the gap between real needs and effective demand. Intellectual property rights are often portrayed as a major deterrent to the availability of products for the poor in developing countries, but the hepatitis B case study does not support this assertion. On the national front, the most important inputs of the government are to support biomedical research, to provide transparent means of intellectual property protection and to support the development of national drug regulatory agencies.
Does Property have a Gender? Household Goods and Conceptions of Law and Justice in Late Medieval and Early Modern Saxony
Authors: Gottschalk Karin
Published: June 2005

The subject of this essay is the so-called Gerade, a term used in medieval and early modern Saxon law to designate those objects of personal and household use that were classified as the property of women and were inherited only by descendants of the female line. On the basis of a corpus of documents from the city of Leipzig related to succession wills, inventories, records of negotiation and arbitration of conflicts the meanings and usage of the Gerade within the household economy and the broader context of late medieval and early modern urban life have been brought out. An underlying principle of the Gerade was a gendered ordering of objects and proprietary rights, one which the emergence of a modern, uniform civil law no longer held to be compatible with Enlightenment notions of universality, equality and abstract ideals.
Veil, Hat or Hair? Reflections on an Asymmetrical Relationship
Authors: Signori Gabriela
Published: June 2005

The letters of the apostle Paul to the Corinthian community were a keystone in the edifice of Christian thought during the Middle Ages, as far as evaluating the positions of men and women went. Particularly decisive in this regard was the section of the letters in which Paul explained why women were expected to wear the veil in church while men had to keep their heads uncovered. The history of the reception of this section of the Corinthian letters has till now not been traced. This history was an asymmetrical one: it hinged mainly on the references to women, occasionally on those to members of the clergy, but rarely did men of the laity figure in the discussion.
The Cod-piece—A Renaissance Fashion between Sign and Artefact
Authors: Lüttenberg Thomas
Published: June 2005

The cod-piece, an article of male fashion during the Renaissance, has been interpreted by scholarship in divergent ways. This article assesses these interpretations against the yardstick of contemporary sources, both textual and pictorial. The apparently paradoxical situation, wherein a number of voices during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries condemned the cod-piece as being a lewd object, while at the same time numerous contemporary portraits that represented their subjects with prominent cod-pieces were in no way perceived as offensive, can only be explained by moving away from the simplistic and unequivocal meanings that have till now been ascribed to this piece of men's clothing. The article argues for a closer contextual reading of the object whose multilayered significations are embedded within the alterity of another epoch. Finally, it raises the question as to whether this paradox could be a useful point of entry to assessing notions of shame and modesty during the Renaissance.
From Heaven to Dust
Authors: Al-Bagdadi Nadia
Published: June 2005

Few objects in pre-modern Arab Culture have generated stronger expressions of veneration than the book, sacred and profane. From the idea of the Book, the immaterial yet physical presence of the Qur'an, to its presence for the book culture—of commentary, of traditions and encyclopedias— and of Islamic universities and private libraries, the book played a significant role in the transmission and dissemination of knowledge. As an object in daily life it triggered a code of conduct vis-à-vis its special status. If the ‘aura’ around the manuscript book delayed the introduction of the printing press to early eighteenth century, the large number of books still written and copied defies the assumption of the printed book as the chief means of dissemination of knowledge. The moveable print set a caesura in the life of the book.
Books or Needlework? Sophie de La Roche on the Role of Books
Authors: Flüchter Antje
Published: June 2005

The article analyses the meanings associated with the couplet ‘women and books’ in the monthly newspaper, Pomona, published by Sophie de La Roche. At the moment of transition in European history in which the ideal of an emotional and sensitive woman came to replace that of an erudite one, La Roche sought to combine these attributes in a specific understanding of female education. Female education for her was important but different from male education. Through Pomona and the responses to it, the article looks at women's reworking of a hegemonic ideal of sensitivity.
The Life and Gender of Bamboo Objects in Sunuwar Culture, East Nepal
Authors: Egli Werner M.
Published: June 2005

Among the Sunuwar, a tribal group of East Nepal, bamboo is omnipresent both as wild and cultivated plant as well as in material culture. The article tries to show that many aspects of human and social life, including gender, are potentially inscribed in the bamboo plant and are realised in bamboo objects. Culturally vitalised bamboo objects are the ideal medium for intercourse with ancestors, a practice essential for Sunuwar people to stabilise, restore and improve identity and conformity, prestige and authority as well as physical well-being. An important premise for the interpretation of bamboo objects as living is that the Sunuwar economy is mainly a gift economy. To understand how gender can be attributed to bamboo objects, the author assumes the existence of a third gender often ascribed to shamans and saints.
The House, the Hearth and the Granary—Symbols of Fertility among the West African Kasena
Authors: Fiedermutz-Laun Annemarie
Published: June 2005

The numerous parallels that can be observed within a process of gendering objects in West African cultures prompt the question of the extent to which a universal character can be ascribed to anthropomorphic symbols. This article addresses this question through examining the significance of such symbolism in the context of neighbouring ethnic groups settled in the Inner Niger basin. It argues that only through an ethnological approach that uses contextual analysis can differences that exist among groups which otherwise possess closely related forms of socio-religious organisation be adequately explained. Such a frame of enquiry would also address the issue of technological transfers and cultural changes within anthropomorphic representations, as well as their ultimate disappearance, also a product of historical processes.
A Dynamic Competition Analysis of Stock Markets
Authors: Hwang Seong-Tae , Lee Seong-Joon , Oh Hyung-Sik
Published: June 2005

This paper analyses the dynamic competition relationships of stock markets in Korea and the United States. The Lotka-Volterra system of equations, one of well-known competitive diffusion models, is adopted to represent the competitive situations of the Korean and US stock markets and it is empirically estimated using daily index data. The results show that in Korea, there existed a predator-prey relationship between KSE and KOSDAQ at the entry of KOSDAQ, and the interaction has remained unchanged during the study period. In the US, the entry of NASDAQ has had little effect on the NYSE but this effect has extended to symbiotic relationships and predator-prey relationship between the two stock markets. This article shows what differences lie in the relationships between first mover and new entrant, comparing the relatively mature US stock markets with the newly constructed Korean stock markets.
Risk Return Trade-offs from Hedging Oil Price Risk in Ecuador
Authors: Raju Sudhakar S.
Published: June 2005

This paper analyses methods to reduce the price risk of Ecuadorian oil exports through hedging in the oil futures market. I simulate ex ante cross hedges over the 1991–96 period and find that in every case, ex ante hedging would have been effective in reducing risk. I provide quantitative estimates of the return/risk trade-offs from hedging Ecuadorian oil and find that for risk minimising short hedges, a 1 per cent reduction in risk would have cost a reduction in return of 0.65 per cent. In sum, I find that oil futures hedging offers Ecuador significant risk-reduction potential.
Term Structure Estimation in Illiquid Government Bond Markets
Authors: Dutta Goutam , Basu Sankarshan , Vaidyanathan Krishnamurthy
Published: June 2005

With increasing liquidity of the Indian sovereign debt market since 1997, it has become possible to estimate the term structure in India. However, the market is characterised by several frictions that cause individual securities to be priced differently from the ‘average’ pricing in the market. In such a scenario, traditional estimation procedures like ordinary least squares using various functional forms do not perform well. In this paper, we find that mean absolute deviation is a better estimation procedure in illiquid markets than the ordinary least square. We further discover a novel liquidity weighted objective function for parameter estimation. We model the liquidity function using the exponential and hyperbolic tangent functions and suggest the most robust model for estimating term structures in India.
Shiv Industries
Authors: Banerjee Arindam , Jamal Muzaffar , Awasthy Dheeraj
Published: June 2005

This is an integrative case that brings out the intricacies of globalization and provides scope for discussion on the alternate strategies Shiv Industries can take to successfully operate in a new environment. The case highlights the problems of the organized sector in the changing market context where these companies face challenges from both ends—at the lower end competition comes from the unorganized sector whereas at the higher end of technology competition comes from more evolved industries in the current Indian scenario.
Uttar Pradesh Housing and Development Board
Authors: Shukla Archana , Srinivasan R.
Published: June 2005

The new Housing Commissioner of the Uttar Pradesh Housing and Development Board (UPHDB), V N Garg, faced the challenge of building the UPHDB into a brand that reflected customer responsiveness, quality consciousness and world-class standards in operations. This case on the UPHDB focuses on the process of initializing and implementing change in a government-owned organization that had for a long time been operating in a stable monopolistic environment, while lacking a long-term perspective and being subjected to frequent changes in top management. The case documents the various initiatives/interventions in the process of making changes, and articulating and implementing a vision for the UPHDB. Issues involved in consolidating the initiatives for change, the culture change and the pursuit of ISO certification are also discussed.
Management of the Depression-Pain Syndrome
Authors: Koenig Karl
Published: June 2005

Patients often visit their primary care provider hoping to find relief from physical pain. When a physiological origin cannot be identified, one hypothesis suggests depression is responsible for the pain. Depression screening is recommended for those experiencing unexplained pain because the diagnosis may be depression-pain syndrome. A treatment plan using both pharmacologic agents and psychotherapy is suggested; however, these may not fully resolve all symptoms. Providers should be knowledgeable about complementary/alternative therapies. A balanced combination of conventional and complementary/alternative medical services can enhance treatment and provide practical tools to improve the quality of life for a patient with depression-pain syndrome.
Legitimating the Use of Force in International Politics: A Communicative Action Perspective
Authors: Bjola Corneliu
Published: June 2005

The legal provisions of the United Nations Charter offer imprecise and insufficient criteria for discriminating properly between legitimate vs illegitimate uses of force. The conflation of the concept of the legitimacy of the use of force with what is lawful, as agreed upon by a small number of major international actors, overlooks those situations in which legal standards are rendered instruments of political deception and manipulation in the hands of the most powerful actors. The solution proposed to address this problem draws on Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action, and it is subsumed by the concept of deliberative legitimacy, understood as the non-coerced commitment of an actor to obey a norm adopted on the basis of the criteria and rules reached through a process of communicative action. The analytical value of the concept of deliberative legitimacy is examined empirically in two case studies — the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo, and the 2003 US-led war against Iraq.
The Puzzle of African Party Systems
Authors: Mozaffar Shaheen , Scarritt James R.
Published: June 2005

Two puzzling features characterize African party systems: low fragmentation and high volatility. We present systematic data describing these features and provide a theoretically grounded explanation of them. The explanation emphasizes the role of strategic choice structured by the institutional legacies of authoritarian regimes in the formation and development of political parties. Political restrictions under authoritarian regimes produced severe information deficit concerning electoral mobilization, strategic coordination and the collective action problems that typically attend party formation and coalition-building. Under these constraints, political actors in Africa’s emerging democracies established political parties to preserve their fragmented power bases and relied on presidential elections and ethno-political cleavages as alternative sources of strategic coordination over votes and seats and electoral coalition-building. The result is the entry of large numbers of short-lived political parties, producing high volatility, and the electoral and legislative dominance of a small number of large parties producing low party system fragmentation.
Political Parties in Madagascar
Authors: Marcus Richard R. , Ratsimbaharison Adrien M.
Published: June 2005

Political parties enhance democracy because of their role in recruiting candidates, mobilizing the electorate, articulating, aggregating and representing conflicting interests in society, and forming governments and making policies. Political parties also help maintain political leaders in power, but those that do so to the exclusion of the democracy-enhancement functions become tools for neopatrimonial rule. In Madagascar, political parties have historically served as tools of neo-patrimonial rule and not as instruments of democracy. This article first examines the roots of political parties in Madagascar to clarify why they have taken this form, and then assesses the direction of the newly formed Tiako i Madagasikara (TIM) and its potential for overcoming the country’s neopatrimonial legacy in favor of enhancing its new and fragile democracy.
The Hidden Life of Stones
Authors: Sansi-Roca Roger
Published: June 2005

In the last century, the objects of Candomblé, a religion of African origin in Bahia, suffered radical transformations in their public value. After discussing in general terms the life of ‘saint’ stones ( otã) in Candomblé, this article then focuses on the traces of the life history of one of these otã. This stone was seized in a police raid in a Candomblé house, and then displayed in a museum, until a legal action recently undertaken by political activists obliged the museum to withdraw the stone from exhibition. In the conclusion, I propose to recognize notions of historicity and materiality as keys to understanding the life and ‘agency’ of this and other objects.
Randomized controlled trial of transdermal secretin on behavior of children with autism
Authors: Ratliff-Schaub Karen , Carey Tracy , Reeves Gretchen Dahl , Rogers Mary A.M.
Published: June 2005

Previous trials of secretin for the treatment of autism have utilized a single or double dose administered intravenously. This is a report of a double-blind, randomized, controlled crossover trial of transdermally applied secretin in 15 children diagnosed with autism or pervasive developmental delay. Secretin or placebo was applied daily, in ointment form, to the backs of the children in randomized, successive 4 week periods with an intermediate 6 week washout period. Behavioral outcomes were measured by parents and teachers using the Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist. Overall, there were no statistically significant differences in speech, sociability, sensory, and health scores for treatment versus placebo periods. In addition, there were no differences in such scores for children with a history of diarrhea. Severity of autism was significantly greater at baseline in children receiving concomitant medications. Improvement in speech was found during the treatment phase of the trial ( p = 0.0479 for secretin versus placebo) only in children not using other medications.
The hero’s story and autism
Authors: Fleischmann Amos
Published: June 2005

Thirty-three websites self-published on the Internet by parents of children with autism were examined using grounded theory. The process that the parents underwent closely follows an outline drawn by Catford and Ray to describe the hero’s development. Following diagnosis, parents of children with autism underwent a period of readjustment after which each of the parents described in the study prepared himself or herself for action. In the aftermath, the parents viewed themselves and their offspring in a positive light. At the close of the life narrative, all said they had come to terms with their child’s present circumstances and were prepared to help other parents in coping with their children. Our study suggests that the Internet allows stressed parents of children with autism to forge ties among themselves and extricate themselves from their isolation.
Moral understanding in children with autism
Authors: Grant Cathy M. , Boucher Jill , Riggs Kevin J. , Grayson Andrew
Published: June 2005

Children with autism were compared with control groups on their ability to make moral judgements. Participants were presented with pairs of vignettes in which actions were either deliberate or accidental and caused injury to a person or damage to property. Participants were asked to judge which protagonist was the naughtier and to verbally justify this judgement. Results showed that the children with autism were as likely as controls to judge culpability on the basis of motive, and to judge injury to persons as more culpable than damage to property. Children with autism also offered some appropriate verbal justifications for their judgments although most justifications were of poor quality and reiterated the story. Results are discussed in terms of theory of mind and the possible role of deficits in complex reasoning and executive functions.
Medical specialists’ accounts of the impact of the Internet on the doctor/patient relationship
Authors: Broom Alex
Published: June 2005

In the context of health service delivery, deprofessionalization denotes a trend towards a demystification of medical expertise and increasing lay scepticism about health professionals, suggesting a decline in the power and status of the medical profession. This process has been linked to increasing consumerism, the rise of complementary medicine and the emergence of the Internet. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with prostate cancer specialists, this article explores their experiences of the Internet user within the context of the medical consultation. Results suggest that the deprofessionalization thesis is inadequate for capturing the complex and varying ways in which specialists view, and respond to, the Internet-informed patient. It is argued that the ways in which these specialists are adapting to the Internet and the Internet user should be viewed as strategic responses, rather than reflecting a breakdown in their authority or status. ‘Enlistment’ and ‘translation’ are presented as useful conceptual tools for understanding specialists’ experiences of the Internet.