bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Schooling Resources, Educational Institutions and Student Performance: the International Evidence
Authors: Wößmann Ludger 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThis paper estimates the effects of family background, resources and institutions on mathematics and science performance using an international database of more than 260,000 students from 39 countries which includes extensive background information at the student, teacher, school and system level. The student‐level estimations show that international differences in student performance cannot be attributed to resource differences but are considerably related to institutional differences. Among the many institutions which combine to yield major positive effects on student performance are centralized examinations and control mechanisms, school autonomy in personnel and process decisions, individual teacher influence over teaching methods, limits to teacher unions’ influence on curriculum scope, scrutiny of students’ achievement and competition from private schools.
Fractional Integration and the Dynamics of UK Unemployment*
Authors: Gil‐Alana Luis A. , Brian Henry S. G. 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThis article is concerned with estimating the dynamic behaviour of UK unemployment using fractional integration methods. The question it considers is whether an unemployment model using a relatively small set of determinants of unemployment is consistent with the persistence which estimates an integrated model yield, or the much long‐lasting estimates obtained from fractional integration. Our empirical tests favour the latter version. The results show that when accounting for UK unemployment in terms of lagged values of the real oil price and the real interest rate, unemployment appears fractionally integrated. This finding means that although unemployment is mean reverting, once it is shocked it may take a very long time to recover, and our estimates of the response times are considerably in excess of those previously reported in the literature.
Children of Misfortune: Parallels in the Cases of Child Murderers Thompson and Venables, Barratt and Bradley
Authors: Rowbotham Judith , Stevenson Kim , Pegg Samantha 
Published: May 2003

AbstractWere Victorian attitudes towards child murderers harsher than those now? Theparallel cases of the notorious Bulger and Burgess murders, 1993 and 1861,demonstrate any such assumption is simplistic. Reactions from the public and legalsystem to these disturbingly similar murderers are explored, including significantlydiffering responses to the trial reportage, pointing up the debate over ‘fair’ trials and themedia's role in that process. Though newspapers present such subject matter‘sensationally’, contextual examination of the coverage demonstrates they are reactingto, not creating, public reactions. Differences in public attitudes between the two arehighlighted, suggesting disquieting reasons for modern responses.
Women Behind Bars: Explanations and Implications
Authors: Deakin Jo , Spencer Jon 
Published: May 2003

AbstractIncreases in the women's prison population in the UK, in line with many other industrialised countries, is occurring at an alarming rate and yet the types of offences for which women are imprisoned and the lengths of sentences they receive suggest that most present little risk to society. However, the personal and social costs to these women and their families of being imprisoned, and the economic costs to society, can be immense. Through an analysis of official statistics, this article explores some possible explanations for the growth in female imprisonment set within the framework of effective practice with a particular emphasis on the actuarial approach to managing offenders.
Privatisation and Innovation — Rhetoric and Reality: The Development of a Therapeutic Community Prison
Authors: Genders Elaine 
Published: May 2003

AbstractPrivatisation is here to stay, albeit under the rhetorical guise of public‐private partnership. All new prisons are now provided by means of competition. The recent issuing to potential contractors of the invitation to tender, and award of contract to Premier Prisons, for the DCMF (design, construction, management and finance) of the first purpose built therapeutic community prison HMP Dovegate (opened in November 2001) illustrates well some of the advantages and disadvantages inherent in the private as opposed to public mode of provision of innovative regimes.
Probation, Punishment and Restorative Justice: Should Al Turism be Engaged in Punishment?
Authors: Duff R. A. 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThe argument of this article is that we should understand probation as a mode of punishment: not as the kind of ‘merely punitive’ punishment which is all too familiar in our existing penal systems, but as a mode of constructive punishment which seeks to bring offenders to face up to the effects and implications of their crimes, to rehabilitate them, and to secure the kinds of goal — reparation and reconciliation — that are emphasised by advocates of restorative justice. To support this argument, I sketch a conception of punishment as a communicative enterprise in which probation officers would play a crucial role — not merely in administering sentences, but as mediators between offenders, victims and the wider community.
Cutting the Bank Down to Size: Efficient and Legitimate Decision‐making in the European Central Bank After Enlargement
Authors: Heisenberg Dorothee 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThis article examines the problems enlargement poses for one specific supranational organization, the European Central Bank (ECB). The article synthesizes three different literatures, on enlargement, ECB transparency and legitimacy, and effective monetary policy‐making, which up until now have not been linked. The three issues are related, and ought to be considered together when policy choices regarding institution‐building are made, because the choices in one issue constrain those in the others. Specifically, the argument is that transparency in the decision‐making process is key to allowing the denationalization of decision‐making to make it more effective. The more transparent the policy‐making process is, the easier it is to have a rotation of votes. Conversely, if the policy‐making process is opaque, a system of combining regions into one voting entity is better because the citizenry is represented in every vote, even if in a highly diluted fashion. The proposed ECB reform does not adequately address legitimate concerns on the part of the public as to how the decisions are made within the Governing Council.
Deficit Targeting Strategies: Fiscal Consolidation and the Probability Distribution of Deficits under the Stability Pact
Authors: Hughes Hallett A.J. , McAdam Peter 
Published: May 2003

AbstractUsing stochastic simulations, this article analyses the probability distribution of a country's deficit ratio under fixed exchange rates and a variety of monetary and fiscal policy rules. The purpose is to show how the probability of an ‘excessive deficit’, defined by Europe's Stability Pact as a deficit to GDP ratio above 3 per cent, varies with different deficit targets and policy rules. Using a macro model, we find that when subject to historically consistent shocks, these fiscal ratios typically have a wide distribution, with fat tails and significantly longer tails on the upper side. That means fiscal targets may have to be country‐specific and conservative, and that fiscal policy has to be forward‐looking to keep the probability of excessive deficits below acceptable limits.
The Creation, Interpretation and Contestation of Institutions — Revisiting Historical Institutionalism
Authors: Lindner Johannes , Rittberger Berthold 
Published: May 2003

AbstractOne shortcoming of much of the historical institutionalist literature is its alleged lack of testable propositions and the elusive notion of ‘unintended consequences’ of initial institutional choices. This article, which offers an historical institutionalist explanation of institutional creation and operation, aims to overcome these shortcomings. We develop a set of propositions and demonstrate their plausibility by exploring the creation of the European Community's budgetary treaty in 1970 and the operation of the enacted treaty provisions. We demonstrate that, under specific conditions, actors may be doomed to opt for ‘dysfunctional’ institutions at the moment of their creation. Furthermore, we show that the notion of ‘unintended consequences’ does not necessarily help us to understand the reason for the contestation of treaty provisions.
European Integration: Between Micro‐Regionalism and Globalism
Authors: Longo Michael 
Published: May 2003

AbstractWith the Convention on the Future of the European Union (EU) now in progress, it is opportune to examine the processes and forces currently shaping the EU's constitutional development and impacting on governmental arrangements. For some time, debate on the constitutionalization of the EU has focused on whether the EU needs a constitution and, if so, what kind of constitution. It is argued that analysis of these core issues cannot be conducted in isolation from the processes and forces currently shaping the EU, chief among which are micro‐regionalization, Europeanization and globalization. Moreover, a comprehensive understanding of the nature and degree of interaction between these processes and forces is required to inform theory and guide constitutional practice.
Costs, Commitment and Compliance: The Impact of EU Democratic Conditionality on Latvia, Slovakia and Turkey
Authors: Schimmelfennig Frank , Engert Stefan , Knobel Heiko 
Published: May 2003

Abstract‘Democratic conditionality’ is the core strategy of the EU to induce candidate states to comply with its human rights and democracy standards. How does it work and when is it effective? This article reports findings of a comparative study of ‘hard cases’: Slovakia under Meciar; Turkey; and Latvia. We argue that EU democratic conditionality is a strategy of ’reinforcement by reward’ which works through intergovernmental material bargaining. Its efficacy depends on the candidate governments' domestic political costs of compliance. By contrast, social influence and transnational mobilization have proved ineffective.
Price Insurance Aspects of Monetary Union
Authors: VON FURSTENBERG GEORGE M. 
Published: May 2003

AbstractOmitted from traditional optimal currency area criteria, price effects are important because regional monetary union protects from pricing risks and contributes to greater uniformity and efficiency in price‐setting. Among member countries it reduces price dispersion in tradeables in part by irrevocably fixing the internal exchange rate and in part by facilitating arbitrage. The larger integrated market of the euro area also encourages outside producers to engage in more ‘pricing to market’ within it. With inflation differentials in tradeables reduced throughout the euro area, systematic national inflation differentials are likely to be limited to those attributable to productivity differentials that cause differences in the inflation rate of non‐tradeables.
Democratic Deficits in Comparison: Best (and Worst) Practices in European, US and Swiss Merger Regulation
Authors: Zweifel Thomas D. 
Published: May 2003

AbstractPolicy‐makers and scholars continue to express concerns that the EU suffers from a ‘democratic deficit’. But most democratic deficit arguments are not based on recent empirical research; and seeing the EU as sui generis, they fail to compare the EU to other polities. This article compares the European ‘regulatory state’ with two federal democracies, the United States and Switzerland, in recent merger regulation. Its main finding is that European merger regulation is less democratic than American, but more democratic than Swiss regulation. If the EU suffers from a democratic deficit, it is hardly alone.
Developing geographic information infrastructures for local government: the role of trust
Authors: Harvey Francis 
Published: May 2003

The United States's National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) model presumes that the local government agencies of counties and municipalities will share their geographic information freely with government agencies of regions, states and federal agencies. This article takes up the issue of local government involvement in the NSDI by asking the question: why should local governments involve themselves in the NSDI? This question is informed by considering the social and technological imbrication of the NSDI. One of the oldest spatial data infrastructure projects, the NSDI offers insights into the complexity of implementing infrastructure in federal models of shared governance. This article focuses on the political and financial dimensions of developing infrastructure among local governments. Trust is quintessential at this level of government. Local government agency activities experience an inherently closer coupling with political representatives and with different agencies in both intramunicipal and intermunicipal activities. Building the NSDI is fundamentally an interagency act and thus a matter of trust. Trust is a key issue in the development of the NSDI, as the results of a study of Kentucky local government agencies indicate.
The true cost of spatial data in Canada
Authors: Klinkenberg Brian 
Published: May 2003

The evolution of the Information Age, in Canada, has meant an unheralded parallel social evolution—the development of a class structure, if you will, that is tied to data accessibility. While other countries have made data freely available for use by industry, education and the public, Canada has opted to follow a restrictive data policy under which data are essentially available to a select few—those who can afford the prices. While anyone can purchase the data, not everyone can pay the price. The implications of this in our society are immense and are felt throughout our social structures. One obvious example of this is the lack of quality, high‐resolution Canadian data freely available for use in the Canadian education system, particularly in the university classes in which students today are usually introduced to GIS, visualization and data interpretation. Our students have data to work with, but often they are the freely available American data. They learn from examples derived in the mountains of Wyoming or the forests of Washington. How did this Canadian data restriction happen? In this paper, the evolution of GIS classicism is explored through examination of the evolution in Canada of GIS itself. The data situation elsewhere in the world is reviewed, the feasibility of ‘freeing’ data is discussed and a call for a radical change in the way data/information are handled in Canada is presented.
Public participation geographic information systems across borders
Authors: Sieber R.E. 
Published: May 2003

Geographic information systems (GIS) technology is increasingly being used by nongovernmental organizations, grassroots organizations and other activist groups involved in transforming social, economic and environmental policy in multiple countries. The use of GIS represents a response to the fact that environmental problems are multidimensional and refuse to acknowledge political borders. It also represents a growing awareness that, for activism to compete in an era of globalization, it must utilize tools that scale from a local to a multinational level. A research field called public participation GIS (PPGIS) has emerged to investigate the use and value of GIS by marginalized peoples and communities engaged in social change. It has yet to formally examine cross‐border and multinational applications. This paper makes a substantial contribution to moving the PPGIS research agenda forward to pace existing nonprofit activities. The paper considers the critical aspects of PPGIS being used across borders and in scaling up nonprofit organizations. The paper briefly reviews the PPGIS literature on issues of resources and data access and the role of GIS expertise. It then analyzes the use of PPGIS across borders as a function of building organizational capacity. Theory is reinforced with examples of nonprofits currently using GIS in multiple countries. A transnational PPGIS is framed, which can serve as a base for further investigation and discussion.
Comparison of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Viral Loads in Kenyan Women, Men, and Infants during Primary and Early Infection
Authors: Richardson Barbra A. , Mbori-Ngacha Dorothy , Lavreys Ludo , John-Stewart Grace C. , Nduati Ruth , Panteleeff Dana D. , Emery Sandra , Kreiss Joan K. , Overbaugh Julie 
Published: May 2003

ABSTRACTSteady-state levels of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) RNA in plasma reached at approximately 4 months postinfection are highly predictive of disease progression. Several studies have investigated viral levels in adults or infants during primary and early infection. However, no studies have directly compared these groups. We compared differences in peak and set point plasma HIV-1 RNA viral loads among antiretrovirus-naive Kenyan infants and adults for whom the timing of infection was well defined. Peak and set point viral loads were significantly higher in infants than in adults. We did not observe any gender-specific differences in viral set point in either adults or infants. However, infants who acquired HIV-1 in the first 2 months of life, either in utero, intrapartum, or through early breast milk transmission, had significantly higher set point HIV-1 RNA levels than infants who were infected after 2 months of age through late breast milk transmission or adults who were infected through heterosexual transmission.
Simian Virus 5 Is a Poor Inducer of Chemokine Secretion from Human Lung Epithelial Cells: Identification of Viral Mutants That Activate Interleukin-8 Secretion by Distinct Mechanisms
Authors: Young Virginia A. , Parks Griffith D. 
Published: May 2003

ABSTRACT

We have compared chemokine secretion from human lung A549 cells infected with simian virus 5 (SV5) with other members of the
Rubulavirus
genus of paramyxoviruses. High levels of the chemokines interleukin-8 (IL-8) and macrophage chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) were secreted from A549 cells infected with
Human parainfluenza virus type 2
(HPIV-2) but not from cells infected with wild-type (WT) SV5. The lack of IL-8 secretion from SV5-infected cells was not due to a global block in all signal transduction pathways leading to IL-8 secretion, since SV5-infected A549 cells secreted IL-8 after stimulation with exogenously added tumor necrosis factor alpha or by coinfection with HPIV-2. A previously described, recombinant SV5 containing substitutions in the shared region of the P/V gene (rSV5-P/V-CPI−) induced IL-8 secretion by a mechanism that was dependent on viral gene expression. By contrast, an SV5 variant isolated from persistently infected cells (Wake Forest strain of
Canine parainfluenza virus
) induced IL-8 secretion by a mechanism that was largely not affected by inhibitors of viral gene expression. Together, these data demonstrate that SV5 is unusual compared to other closely related paramyxoviruses, since SV5 is a very poor inducer of the cytokines IL-8 and MCP-1. The isolation of two recombinant SV5 mutants that are defective in preventing chemokine induction will allow an identification of mechanisms utilized by WT SV5 to avoid activation of host cell innate immune responses to infection.
CHARGED BLACK HOLES IN ASYMPTOTICALLY ANTI-DE SITTER SPACETIME
Authors: MITRA P. 
Published: May 2003

Unlike the extremal Reissner–Nordström black hole in ordinary spacetime, the one in anti-de Sitter spacetime is a minimum of action and has zero entropy if (functional integral) quantization is carried out after extremalization. However, if extremalization is carried out after quantization, then the entropy is a quarter of the area as in the usual case. This is because the functional integral is dominated by non-extremal configurations of lower action. However, some special non-extremal black holes have higher action and may decay into extremal configurations. An attempt is also made to see if the anti-de Sitter version can be described by a microscopic model consisting of a one-dimensional gas of massless particles as in the usual case. Such a description is possible only in the limit of vanishing cosmological constant.
OVERVIEW ON THE ELECTROCHEMICAL DEPOSITION OF Bi-2212 FILMS
Authors: GIUNCHI G. , VILLARD G. , LEGENDRE F. , RÉGNIER P. , BIFULCO C. , POISSONNET S. 
Published: May 2003

In the framework of the coated tape superconductors, the electrolytic deposition is one of the chemical routes to obtain highly textured films either of the precursors or of the fully superconducting oxides. The technology will be reviewed with particular emphasis on the growth of Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+δ (Bi-2212) film on Ag tape. For this system, recent advancements have been achieved combining the electrolytic deposition with intermediate thermal treatments and with an adequate optimisation of the initial stoichiometry of the deposited elements. A careful control of the morphology and amount of the not superconducting alkaline earth cuprates phases, grown in the film, allows to reach high critical current density, up to 40.000 A cm -2, in self-field at 77 K. A qualitative analysis by optical and electron microscopy, as well as a more quantitative analysis by x-ray diffraction reveals that the alignment of the Bi-2212 lamellas with the substrate as well as the decrease of the amount of the cuprates correlate with the superconducting transport properties.
ASYMMETRIC DC-SQUIDS: MAGNETIC AND NOISE PROPERTIES
Authors: TESTA G. , PAGANO S. , SARNELLI E. , CALIDONNA C. R. , RUSSO M. , FURNARI M. MANGO 
Published: May 2003

SQUID configurations with an asymmetry in both the critical current and the normal resistance of the two Josephson junctions have been numerically analyzed. The analysis has been carried out on a high performance computer, by choosing parameters typical of low critical temperature SQUIDs. In particular the dependence of both the magnetic flux noise S Φ and the flux to voltage transfer function V Φ on the bias current and the normalized SQUID inductance β have been investigated. Thermal noise effects, including contributions of both junction and damping resistance have been introduced in the calculations. The results show that an increase of the asymmetry leads to higher V Φ and lower S Φ values. This suggests to use asymmetric dc-SQUIDs to improve the device performance for both small and large inductance values.
THE USE OF PETRI NETS FOR THE DESIGN AND VERIFICATION OF ASYNCHRONOUS CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS
Authors: KONDRATYEV ALEX , KISHINEVSKY MICHAEL , TAUBIN ALEXANDER , CORTADELLA JORDI , LAVAGNO LUCIANO 
Published: May 2003

Petri nets46,37,45,48 are a powerful formalism for modeling concurrent systems. They are capable of implicitly describing a vast state space by a succinct representation which gracefully captures the notions of causality, concurrency and conflict between events. Petri nets have also been chosen by many authors as a formalism to describe the behavior of asynchronous circuits by interpreting the events as signal transitions, thus coining the term Signal Transition Graph (STG).50,4 A design framework for asynchronous systems involves three main aspects: formal specification, verification and synthesis. In this paper we review the main techniques we have used to cover these aspects in recent years, with a special focus on asynchronous circuits.