Rifat Atun, Martin McKee, Francis Drobniewski, Richard Coker
OBJECTIVE: To develop a methodology and an instrument that allow the simultaneous rapid and systematic examination of the broad public health context, the health care systems, and the features of disease-specific programmes. METHODS: Drawing on methodologies used for rapid situational assessments of vertical programmes for tackling communicable disease, we analysed programmes for the control human of immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and their health systems context in three regions in the Russian Federation. The analysis was conducted in three phases: first, analysis of published literature, documents and routine data from the regions; second, interviews with key informants, and third, further data collection and analysis. Synthesis of findings through exploration of emergent themes, with iteration, resulted in the identification of the key systems issues that influenced programme delivery. FINDINGS: We observed a complex political economy within which efforts to control HIV sit, an intricate legal environment, and a high degree of decentralization of financing and operational responsibility. Although each region displays some commonalities arising from the Soviet traditions of public health control, there are considerable variations in the epidemiological trajectories, cultural responses, the political environment, financing, organization and service delivery, and the extent of multisectoral work in response to HIV epidemics. CONCLUSION: Within a centralized, post-Soviet health system, centrally directed measures to enhance HIV control may have varying degrees of impact at the regional level. Although the central tenets of effective vertical HIV programmes may be present, local imperatives substantially influence their interpretation, operationalization and effectiveness. Systematic analysis of the context within which vertical programmes are embedded is necessary to enhance understanding of how the relevant policies are prioritized and translated to action.
If you plan to cover climate change, thicken your skin. The topic is one of the most highly politicized areas in science journalism today. It's not surprising, given that so much is at stake. Environmentalists fear for the very future of the planet, while conservative politicians and energy industry leaders dread pollution controls that could threaten the nation's prosperity. As with all controversial issues, stakeholders on both sides are quick to attack reportsāand reportersāthat do not promote their point of view. I have been criticized by conservative think tanks for overplaying the potential dangers of climate change and scolded by environmentalists for downplaying those same dangers. It gives me solace to think that if I am aggravating both sides, then I am being fair. Critics of climate change coverage are right to some extent. The area, in my opinion, is among the most poorly covered in science journalism. This is because politically motivated campaigns of misinformation muddy the issue and because the science of climateāboth highly complex and uncertaināis difficult to convey. Much climate change coverage exaggerates potential problems or greatly oversimplifies the issues. Reports are spotty at best, coming in droves when a particularly large piece of ice breaks off of Antarctica or there is a heat wave on the East Coast, but evaporating with the cool of autumn. Events from malaria outbreaks to species declines are attributed to climate change without adequate proof. Climate change coverage too often falls through the cracks between beats. Climate is not only a science story. It is a political story, a foreign story, and a business story as well. It would be best if climate were covered from all of these myriad angles; more commonly, no one takes ownership of it. Science writers, with their technical expertise, ability to translate jargon, and patience with details, are in prime position to be on the front lines of climate coverageāperhaps with occasional forays into political and economic terrain when necessary. The topic, with its interminable feedback loops and references to past epochs, can be intimidating.
Esoteric protocols, such as electronic cash, electronic voting and selective disclosure protocols, use special message constructors that are not widely used in other types of protocols (for example, in authentication protocols). These message constructors include blind signatures, commitments and zero-knowledge proofs. Furthermore, a standard formalization of the Dolev-Yao intruder [6] does not take into account these message constructors, nor does it consider some types of attacks (such as privacy attacks, brute-force dictionary attacks and known-plaintext attacks) that esoteric as well as other types of protocols are designed to protect against. This paper aims to present an extension of typed MSR [3, 4] in order to formally specify the needed message constructors, as well as the capabilities of a Dolev-Yao intruder designed to attack esoteric protocols.
This paper explores the epistemic and ethical questions posed by cinematic representations of blindness. How do experiences of the blind challenge and extend the notion of visuality? At stake is an understanding of blindness not simply as a negation of vision but as a fundamentally different mode of beingāan understanding that puts pressure on, and decenters, standard paradigms of perception, cognition and human subjectivity. Drawing on the Australian film Proof (1992), I argue for a politics of representation that acknowledges and accommodates the irreducible difference that constitutes the experience of blindness.
Botswana is a landlocked semi-arid country sharing boundaries with Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Its land area is 581,730 square kilometers, most of which (about 60%) is covered by the Kalahari Desert. The desert, consisting of rolling sandy land with wide plains, depressions, and pans, covers a major part of the southern and western parts of the country. The eastern part, characterized by fertile grassland savannah, accounts for nearly two thirds of the population. The country has four seasons: summer (November-January), autumn (February-April), winter (May-July) and spring (August-October). Most of the rainfall is experienced during the summer time. Temperatures range from a maximum of about 40Ā°C (104Ā°F) in the hottest parts of the country during summer, to a minimum of about 2.6Ā°C (approx. 37Ā°F) and an occasional 0.0Ā°C (32Ā°F) in some places, in the coldest winter months (Central Statistics Office 2000).The countryās enumerated population was 1,680,863 during the 2001 population census, with an average annual growth rate of about 2.4%. The population structure indicates a youthful population, with a mean age of 24.5. The age below 15 years constitutes about 36.7%, while those between 15 and 64 constitute about 58.3% of the total population. The population at 65 and older constitutes an average of 5.0% of the total population (Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, 2003). The population is mainly concentrated along the eastern belt of the country, where there is better rainfall and cultivatable land, and comparatively fewer people are scattered in the western parts of the country and the Kalahari Desert. Noted from the 2001 population census were declining fertility rateāfrom 6.6 in 1981 to 3.3 in 2001, increasing mortality rate, and a decline in life expectancy from 65 in 1991 to 55.3 in 2001. Due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the crude death rate rose between 1991 and 2001 from 11.5 to 13.5 (Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, 2003). The fall in life expectancy, notwithstanding a significant rise in living standards, is largely due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic that has been most severe among the most disadvantaged, especially women and girls who constitute more than 50% of the population and within the most economically productive ages of 20 to 49 years.Setswana and English are the official languages, with English being the most used as the language of government and business transactions. In comparison to most African countries, Botswana is culturally homogenous, and nearly 80% of the population belongs to one ethnic and linguistic group (Tau, 2003). For close to 4 decades since independence in 1966, Botswana has maintained a stable democracy, experienced a stable government, and a steadily expanding economy. This has contributed to a steady growth in the education system.In 1966, the landlocked Botswana was labeled āthe least educationally developed British African colony ā¦ caught in a poverty trap,ā with no infrastructure or financial resources and extremely limited developed human capital (Colclough & McCarthy 1980). A railway line connecting the two then-apartheid neighbors of Northern Rhodesia in the north and South Africa in the south was the only reliable mode of transport along the eastern part of the country. There was not a single tarmac road. Communication across the country depended on a very poor postal service. The western part of the country, which is mainly covered with the thick sands of the Kgalagadi Desert, with difficult terrain, was then accessible by fourwheel drive vehicles only (Mokaeya, 1986).The above scenario posed a grave access challenge for the education sector of an extremely poor country situated within a politically hostile immediate environment and a fast-moving international economy. The first 10 years of independence were an uphill struggle for the education sector, services impossible to take to some parts of the country. Botswanaās tradition of shuttling between village, cattle-post, and land areas throughout the year compounded the problem. Seasonally, boys followed their fathers to the cattle posts and girls their mothers to go and mind crops at the land areas. The much more nomadic groups in the Kgalagadi and other remote areas were the hardest hit with inequalities of service provision and scarcity of education opportunities.Until 1935, there was neither a government school nor an education department within the country (Mokaeya, 1992). At the time, the few Botswana students who obtained secondary or higher education qualifications did so through South African and Southern Rhodesian institutions. Secondary education was introduced in the Botswana education system in the late 1940s through efforts of the Roman Catholic Church, followed later by the establishment of a tribal college. Mokaeya (1992) notes that it was only toward independence, around 1958, that plans to develop the education system of Botswana began. Records indicate that, by 1966, there were 251 primary schools with an enrolment of 71,546, serviced by a teaching force of 1,673 (Ministry of Education, 1986). There were nine secondary schools with 1,531 students between 89 teachers, most of whom were expatriates, and only about 40 Batswana graduates at the time (Crowder, 1998). With this state of affairs, government (a major employer) depended mainly on expatriates.At independence in 1966, development and expansion of education was identified as a major tool for Botswanaās development process (Crowder, 1984) through which government intended to make available a stock of trained local manpower capable of servicing the countryās economy.Table 1 reflects, by percentage of age group, expansion of enrollment at the various levels of the education system between 1965 and 1975. To date, there is only oneAs noted by Tau (2003), education developments in Botswana are attributed to two landmark policies. The first National Policy on Education, adopted in 1977, put more emphasis on access, mainly to basic education and, to a lesser extent, other levels. Consequently, educational opportunities were substantially expanded at this level, as evidenced by increased enrollments between 1979 and 1991. There were about 700 primary schools by 1991, while secondary schools increased from 23 to 230 during the same period. Teacher training colleges increased threefold from two in 1979, while vocational institutions were introduced in most of the major population centers. Implementation of the 1977 National Policy on Education saw a massive expansion of school places. Between 1979 and 1991, enrollments in primary, secondary, and the University of Botswana rose by 91%, 342% and 315% respectively. Corresponding expansion was experienced in the teacher training sector, where the Ministry of Education succeeded in reducing dependence on expatriate teachers and achieved a significant drop in pupil-teacher ratio, from 1:40 in the 1980s to 1:27 in 1999 (Nhundu, Kamau, & Thutoetsile, 2002).As part of the Ministry of Education policy to increase access into postprimary education, a 10-year basic education program is being implemented, consisting of 7 years of primary and 3 years of junior secondary schooling. Examinations are taken at the end of each level to qualify students for entry into the next higher level, depending on availability of places. A 100% transition rate has been achieved for primary to junior secondary school while, in 2003, about 52% of students who completed Junior Certificate were able to gain admission into senior secondary schools (Tau, 2003). The remaining 48% find places in private secondary schools, brigades, and distance education. The transition rate into senior secondary schools is expected to increase to 100% by the year 2016, as per the National Vision 2016, when Botswana will attain 50 years of independence. The second education policy, the Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE), was adopted in 1994 following recommendations of a 1993 Presidential National Commission on Education. Though quantitative expansion of education is still a major concern, the second and current education policy focuses mainly on qualitative improvement of the education system.The 1993/1994 review of the education system identified several key issues that will continue to guide developments in the education sector in Botswana over a period of 25 years from 1994.Equity in terms of delivery of social services, including education, remains a far cry since rural/urban disparities are huge, mainly due to the terrain. To date, even though the situation has changed dramatically, and primary as well as secondary level education is reaching most parts of the country with comparative ease, the western part is still the most disadvantaged. There is still one university in Botswana, and the majority of students access university education outside the country, which is a huge expense for the government. Access, equity, and equality of opportunity are still a challenging concern for the education sector.Another serious challenge for education and all sectors of the economy, threatening to undermine or even reverse achievements recorded so far, is the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Botswana, with a prevalence of about 35.4% within the 15ā49 years population (Ministry of Finance & Development Planning, 2003). HIV/ AIDS has far-reaching implications for efforts so far made in education, resulting in slow pace of expansion and service improvement. Absenteeism, increased morbidity, and mortality of teachers affect productivity adversely. Learner attendance is also highly affected, with students either ill or nursing relatives. Currently, more and more children of school-going age are becoming heads of families because of loss of parents and the need to look after orphaned siblings. The epidemic is reported to be more prevalent and claiming life mainly in the 15-49 age bracket, which is the most sexually active and also including the majority of trained personnel. In a few years, the economy might be back to where it was at independence in terms of skilled and experienced manpower if people continue to die at the present alarming rate. Another challenge for the education sector is to provide adequate support, knowledge, and skills to students and teachers to cope with the challenges of HIV/AIDS.Since the colonial era, through independence, and until 1973, adult Batswana needing formal qualifications could only enroll with institutions from outside the country for correspondence courses, mainly through South African, British, and Rhodesian institutions. For university education, the University of South Africa was the main correspondence institution in the region (Mokaeya 1992). Within the country, government and nongovernmental organizations offered sporadic and nonexamination courses of various lengths. Churches were the first to offer adult literacy classes. Government departments started offering nonformal courses immediately after independence.According to Mokaeya (1992) the first traces of formal distance education date back to before independence when an Elementary Teacher Training project of 1960-1965 was undertaken at Lobatse Teacher Training College, facilitated by colonial masters from Mafeking in South Africa. By the time the project came to an end, it had demonstrated the viability of distance education as an alternative method of training teachers. Hence, government attempts to overcome severe shortages of trained primary school teachers due to post-1966 demographic pressure for education should be attributed to the success of the 1960-1965 project (Tau, 2003). The local Ministry of Educationās first attempt at an organized distance education program developed in Botswana was another teacher-training project for primary school teachers, from 1968 to 1973 in Francistown. About 700 teachers joined the program, receiving self-instructional printed materials at their schools, supported by radio broadcasts. Occasionally the student teachers had access to some face-to-face tutorial assistance from tutors at the Francistown Teacher Training College, as well as regular assistance from qualified teachers from their own schools. By the end of the project in 1973, about 88% of the teachers had graduated (Mokaeya, 1992). The success of this project influenced the government to set up the Botswana Extension College (BEC). Two consultancies by UNESCO and International Extension College (IEC) UK spearheaded the establishment of Botswana Extension College in 1973, with financial support from the Ford Foundation and professional guidance for setting up the institution from IEC. BEC became the first government secondary-level correspondence school in Botswana.BECās mandate was to offer a wide range of subjectsā using ācorrespondence courses, radio and face to face methods. The college intended to offer Junior Certificate courses to upgrading adults and young people who did not do well in their examinations at this level and then move on to offer Ordinary Level courses.In addition to formal courses leading to examinations, BEC also offered nonformal courses to the adult rural population, and some extension workers in other Ministries. The college and the Ministry of Local Government and Lands ran a program for Village development Committees, with Ministry of Agriculture a program for 4B clubs (clubs that provide youth with agricultural skillsāed.) and a land reform program through radio learning groups (Mokaeya, 1992). BEC, in collaboration with UNESCO and the Extra Mural Services of the University of Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland, which later became the Institute of Adult Education, initiated consultations for a functional literacy training program that targeted about 250,000 adults and youth. A literacy project by BEC was consequently implemented from 1977 to 1978 (Mokaeya, 1986).Experiences of BEC resulted in the creation of the Department of Non-formal Education (DNFE) in 1978, following recommendations of the 1977 National Commission on education. DNFE created several units, among them a unit responsible specifically for the development and delivery of a distance education program. The distance education program of DNFE got entangled into the problem of inadequate Junior Certificate places in secondary schools for primary school leavers. DNFE found itself having to admit children of schoolgoing age (i.e. primary school leaving), into Junior Certificate program, which was for adults and youth who were from the Junior Certificate program and to their The unit developed printed materials for and secondary school teachers as support at learning centers. The department experienced several in the of distance education among them were the as identified by the 1993 National Commission on the of the second National Commission on Education the establishment of a distance education college that take over the of the distance education unit of the Department of Non-formal Education. 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I consider it important to begin this article by making an essential observation: research on distance education in Mexico is still in the embryonic stage, in spite of its long history. One indication is that among the lines of research defined by the Mexican Council on Educational Research, the leading organization in the field in Mexico, distance education does not even appear. Only recently, in the last few years, has an effort been made by educational institutions and professionals interested in doing research in this field, to set up working associations, such as the Distance education Researchersā Network and Technologies for Learning.Since research on distance education is just beginning, it should come as no surprise that the definition of its field of inquiry and its conceptualization are imprecise as yet. As a result, the theory and methodology of research into its history are in their infancy, and studies must resort to methodological tools taken from other fields or use information technology and tele-communications as partial reference points. The limitations of these approaches make it difficult to offer in-depth explanations of the current status of distance education, not to mention justifiable proposals for its further development.It is the intention of this article to look for criteria that take the historical character of education as a starting point. In its origins, education was open and ongoing, a process that is innate in the human condition. In its process of institutionalization, it took on the form of school systems, with a structure and a legitimizing function that excluded those who could not, or would not, adapt to schoolsā schedules, spaces, and learning methods. This situation created a need for educational programs that were not bound by such rigid conditions. On the basis of these considerations, I undertake this study with the following premises as my starting point: (a) education is a sociocultural product that had a beginning, has evolved, and will one day disappear; (b) distance education develops just as school-based education does, but with an inversely proportional growth curve, because as schools make their admissions and operating processes more closed and rigid, alternative educational options arise; and (c) research into the history of distance education needs its own theoretical and methodological approach, because it is a field that is still in the process of formation. It is hoped that this article will contribute to the development of the field.To begin, it is important to take a look at the concepts of open and distance education. Depending on the context, they are sometimes taken as synonyms, and other times their uses can be confused.Unlike in other places, where open refers to unrestricted access to educational institutions with no need to demonstrate previous studies, in Mexico the concept refers to the fact that traditional school processes are made more flexible; for example, class attendance, the school calendar, and examination periods for certifying learning. The documentation of previous studies, however, is still a prerequisite.Distance education refers more often to the methodological and technological strategies that make it possible to deliver educational contents and provide communication among participants in an educational process even though they do not coincide in space and time. As paradoxical as it may sound, the driving force behind distance education is the desire to do away with distance.In view of the ambiguities in the use of the term, and not wishing to enter into a debate about its concept or use, I will consider distance education not in its literal meaning, but as the intention to overcome the distances that deny many people access to educational services. In short, and from a social standpoint, we should conceive of distance education as more than a way to overcome distance in space and time, for which a number of methodological and technological resources are available. Our biggest challenge is to overcome the tremendous social, cultural, and economic distances reflected in unequal access to educational services.The purpose of this article is to establish a perspective for the historical analysis of distance education by proposing categories that coincide with the premises that underlie this mode of education: (a) greater and more equitable coverage; (b) self-reliance and independent learning; and (c) flexibility in adapting to participantsā living conditions. From this perspective, there are many approaches for looking at the changes that have taken place in distance education, such as educational policies and their social orientation, distance education models that have been implemented, and the most typical approach, the technological supports on which they are based.Among the factors that have had an impact on the origin and development of distance education, there are three that I consider crucial: (a) the development of traditional classroom education, which limited the times, places, and modes available for learning, and thus led inexorably to the creation of new modes for those who could not go to school; (b) the development of different media and modes of communication that allowed for contact among people from different locales who were participating in the same educational process; and (c) the educational policies that were implemented in each stage of the history, and the role played by distance education. These considerations will give structure to my analysis within the historical framework outlined below, which does not so much mark boundaries between periods as indicate educational policy shifts that led to new perspectives for distance education.Itinerant distance education was characterized by the distribution of educational materials designed for independent study and subsequent visits by educators to studentsā places of residence, as in the cultural missions created in 1923 to provide service to rural professors in their own community. This model was formalized in 1945 with the Federal Teachersā Training Institute, which provided an array of support services, combining long-distance communication like radio and mail service with face-to-face individual and group advisory sessions, as well as different learning situations such as correspondence courses, complementary oral courses, individual study, local study and advisory centers, and group classes. The institute was phased out in 1971, but its methods have survived in teacher training institutions.Correspondence courses date back to the nineteenth century, when regular postal service was institutionalized, and continue up to the present day. In fact, educational programs that limit their activities to distributing courses, giving online educational support, and evaluating by Internet, are in essence offering correspondence courses.The creation of telesecundarias in the 1960s ushered in large-scale use of educational television that now reaches over 30,000 locations. The coverage and student-support strategies used in this experience give it a massbased, standardized quality, which allows it, on the one hand, to reach large numbers of students, while on the other hand running the risk of offering inadequate support to each student in his or her regional and personal circumstances. Face-to-face instructors are an attempt to remedy this situation. Television has also been used for educational purposes in higher education, but not on a systematic, massbased, and exclusive basis.The 1960s witnessed the influx of the universities into distance education, a new era marked by the opening of the great European universities that worked within these educational frameworks, such as the Open University in Great Britain and the Universidad Nacional de EducaciĆ³n a Distancia (UNED) in Spain. Along these same lines, the National Autonomous University of Mexico created the Open University System, aimed mainly at people who for one reason or another could not study within the traditional system. The Open Teaching System of the National Polytechnic Institute, while not distance education per se, did represent a milestone in the creation of nonclassroom formats of higher education. When the National Pedagogical University (UPN, in its initials in Spanish) created the Distance Education System in 1979, it became the first public institution of higher learning in Mexico to offer this type of education on a nationwide basis, by setting up distance education units in every state. The UPN to this day has continued to give priority to the use of printed materials for independent study, while maintaining the Saturday advisory sessions that require professors and students to meet face-to-face. In this sense, the itinerant model of the last century is still in use.In the 1990s, the e-learning rush began in earnest, owing to the development of the Internet, which made communication access easy and readily available, thereby providing distance education with an excellent platform for educational communication, access to information, and more reliable learning processes. The momentum continues to grow as technological innovations open avenues for new educational possibilities.We must not lose sight of the uneven Development of these processes. Many institutions remain faithful to the structures and practices of the time of their founding, and new proposals are often overlaid on traditional processes. Socioeducational practices tend to encompass processes that are simultaneous and disparate, even recurrent and regressive. It is not at all uncommon to find the most traditional teaching methods presented with the latest technology, or trend-setting pedagogical innovations supported by traditional technologies. We can therefore conclude that the new media are not about to displace the old ones; instead, they serve to diversify the menu of possibilities, in an ongoing search for the best options for distance education.In general, it can be stated that distance education in Mexico is a mixture of the traditional and the modern, forever caught in a tugof-war between the inertia of routine on the one hand, and rupture and progress on the other. Some aspects of the educational system become more flexible, such as classroom time, curricular options, and so forth, while other control mechanisms typical of school systems remain firmly entrenched, such as the centralization of teacher-training processes and an overall school-bound vision of educational situations.The following categorization shows different organizational models for defining the relationship between educational modes and institutions.The National Pedagogical University in its beginnings could be considered emblematic of this category, when its Distance Education System controlled more than 70 centers all over the country and concentrated academic, administrative, and educational processes. This model, with its mass production of materials, permits greater coverage and exclusive, specialized personnel, but at a cost: standardization, lack of regional variation, and obsolescence of materials due precisely to their mass production. This model eventually came under the fire of teachersā unions and decentralization policies and gradually lost ground. Now the academic oversight of curricula remains centralized, but the administration has been delegated to the state governments, and the professors themselves are in charge of evaluating the studentsā learning processes.An illustrative case is the National Autonomous University of Mexico, which organizes its Open University System on the basis of its existing structure, by simply adding to each department a division that takes care of open education, with a separate faculty, but the same programs, curricula, and calendars as the classroom-based system. It has the advantage of making use of resources that are already in place, and offers the possibility of introducing flexibility into the classroom-based system, but runs the risk of imposing school-bound structures on distance education.With this model, nonclassroom education can have its own curriculum, with specially developed spaces, materials, and personnel. This obviously implies an extra investment, but allows for an organizational model that is designed expressly for this kind of education. An example is the National Polytechnic Institute, which in 1974 started up its own program of nonconventional educationāthe Open Teaching Systemāwith its own curriculum, personnel, study materials, and administration. More recently, in 2005, the Virtual University System of the University of Guadalajara was created, with its own administration and its own academic offerings.With these models, the members negotiate their academic, administrative and technological responsibilities. This format also allows for optimal use of resources, manageable production scales, and regional and institutional adaptations. Problems can arise, however, if collaboration and cooperation policies are not renewed and the results of joint work are not distributed evenly. Of the examples of this type of collaboration in Mexico, the EDUSAT Network deserves special mention. It provides a technological platform that covers a significant portion of the population of Latin America, and serves educational institutions using all modes of learning, at all levels.Outside influences are undeniable in our educational culture in general, and in distance education in particular. This influence is evident in a number of aspects, including: (a) the way institutions from countries with preponderant economic power have gained easy entry into our educational systems by taking advantage of their technological advances, their excess academic production, and the need for flexible versions of higher education to meet the demand of Latin American institutions; (b) the tendency to imitate foreign models, either conventional universities that incorporate distance education in different ways, or universities that engage exclusively in distance education; or c) alliances among institutions from different countries, alliances that are not always balanced or beneficial to our needs and purposes.The history of distance education in Mexico is highly complex, and reflects the multiple causes to which it owes its origin, as well as the outside influences that have shaped the programs and institutions that work in this educational mode. The origin and subsequent trends are characterized by the following features:There is a certain amount of confusion and ambiguity in the definitions given to the concepts of open and distance education, and even more in the uses to which these concepts are put, which makes it difficult to delineate the field and object of study with any kind of precision.Distance education systems tend to preserve their original format; they are unwilling to abandon the strategies, methods, type of material, and media they used when they first started up. It is thus common for programs to include a hodgepodge of learning and teaching strategies, resources, and media from all the stages of distance education.Distance education has been used primarily for compensatory purposes, intended for people who do not have access to traditional education, rather than as a strategy for diversifying and strengthening learning processes.Depending on the role that we wish to assume in the global knowledge society, we can aim at a whole range of goals: from being knowledge generators, to being knowledge disseminators, or merely consumers. Here is where key decisions must be made that will allow us to move up from our status as technology and information consumers, which relegates us to a position of dependence, and aspire to full participation in the globalization process by means of our own home-grown proposals, rooted in our particular identities and social projects.In terms of organization, the trend seems to point to institutions that engage exclusively in distance education, or that combine it with face-to-face education, which is the tendency that is gaining momentum and moving toward proposals involving formats without borders.Depending on the coverage strategies, we have, on the one hand, large-scale, standardized systems for the majority population groups that demand education and, on the other hand, personalized systems with greater academic and technological support for the privileged few. An alternative proposal for distance education should offer quality education for all. If distance education is to continue promising a ticket to better living conditions in Mexico, it needs to open up more and overcome distances in time and space, but above all, social, economic, and cultural distances.The problems affecting distance education are serious, numerous, and hard to overcome: dependence on imported projects, standardization, a bureaucracy that leads back to traditional school-bound formats, traditionalism, a lack of adequate policies, and isolation. However, we must not overlook its strengths, such as the existing infrastructure, the wide range of valuable proposals that have already been made and, above all, the spirit of collaboration that characterizes us, and that only needs greater organizational efforts to become a consolidated force.
This article, extracted from an Implementation Completion Report, centers on the Mauritania Natural Resources Management Project ( Projet de Gestion des Ressources Naturelles en Zones Pluviales - PGRNP ) ( 1998-2003 ), which had two specific objectives : 1) empowering rural communities, i.e., providing skills to organize and manage common resources, and obtain access to financing; and (2) improving the institutional environment in the rural sector, including securing access to natural resources. Lessons learned from this project including the need for a critical mass of investment activities in communities and adequate time to build community capacity; transparent, well-publicized procedures to neutralize political interference and cornering by the elite; baseline data and a functional monitoring and evaluation system; decentralized project management; and using mass media communications.
This paper discusses the current situation of the local government bond in Japan, and consideration and behavior of regional banks as lenders to local governments through questionnaire surveys and interviews. We also discuss reform of the local government bond system and the decentralization of the local finance.
The number |K| of non-isotopic framed knots that correspond to a given unframed knot K ā S 3 is infinite. This follows from the existence of the self-linking number slk of a zero homologous framed knot. We use the approach of VassilievāGoussarov invariants to construct "affine self-linking numbers" that are extensions of slk to the case of nonzero homologous framed knots in 3-manifolds. As a corollary we get that |K| = ā for all knots in an oriented (not necessarily compact) 3-manifold M that is not realizable as a connected sum (S 1 Ć S 2 )# Mā². This result for compact manifolds was first stated by Hoste and Przytycki. They referred to the works of McCullough for the idea of the proof, however to the best of our knowledge prior to this work the proof of this fundamental fact was not given in literature or in a preprint form. Our proof is based on different ideas. For M = (S 1 Ć S 2 )# Mā² we construct K in M such that |K| = 2 ā ā.
Blockchain technology has been gaining great interest from a variety of sectors including healthcare, supply chain, and cryptocurrencies. However, Blockchain suffers from a limited ability to scale (i.e., low throughput and high latency). Several solutions have been proposed to tackle this. In particular, sharding has proved to be one of the most promising solutions to Blockchain's scalability issue. Sharding can be divided into two major categories: (1) Sharding-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) Blockchain protocols, and (2) Sharding-based Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Blockchain protocols. The two categories achieve good performances (i.e., good throughput with a reasonable latency), but raise security issues. This article focuses on the second category. In this paper, we start by introducing the key components of sharding-based PoS Blockchain protocols. We then briefly introduce two consensus mechanisms, namely PoS and practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT), and discuss their use and limitations in the context of sharding-based Blockchain protocols. Next, we provide a probabilistic model to analyze the security of these protocols. More specifically, we compute the probability of committing a faulty block and measure the security by computing the number of years to fail. We achieve a number of years to fail of approximately 4000 in a network of 4000 nodes, 10 shards, and a shard resiliency of 33%.
Martin Thomas Ivers, George F. Timson, Hans von Blankensee, Gary Whitfield Ā· 6 authors
The United States Veterans Administration provides a medical care delivery system comprising more than 170 hospitals, clinics and domicilliaries. Historically, these institutions have been relatively autonomous in their day-to-day operations and consequently efforts at computerization have been difficult to adequately coordinate. A recent undertaking of the VA has been to establish decentralized coordination of planning and implementation for hospital computer systems. This presents a unique opportunity to promote standard, portable and well-designed solutions to meet the widely variable needs of a large and diverse health care delivery organization. Although computer systems for each hospital will vary with the needs of the hospital, functional program packages can be delivered and maintained in a cost-effective and manpower-efficient manner. Additionally, because all systems will be based on a common data dictionary it will be possible to gracefully expand systems as needed and to study clinical care and delivery methodologies across many institutions.
New results are given for the design of a step-varying digital control system's feedback gains that shape the zero-input response of single-input plants. These gains are calculated forward in time, the only requirement being that the plant be completely controllable. An algebraic matrix proof is given that these gains provide an ongoing solution to the problem of unmodeled disturbances. The classical method used for determining deadbeat feedback gains for both discrete and continuous time-invariant plants is shown to be a subset of this procedure. This method does not require a knowledge of the system's characteristic equation or eigenvalues. A stable and efficient computational method for the calculation of these gains is introduced. A tracking system is presented, deadbeat feedback and input gains calculated, and the system response analyzed. Numerical results are presented which demonstrate the utility of this method.
Dimitrios G. Katehakis, Manolis Tsiknakis, Stelios C. Orphanoudakis
Healthcare is usually delivered within certain organizational boundaries and information produced at each site is managed by isolated autonomous clinical information systems. In some cases point-to-point communication is enabled, facilitating the exchange of information. In contrast, integrated regional health telematics; networks enable accessibility to information and services without visible organizational boundaries, to provide decentralized healthcare through integrated services for seamless and personalized information delivery. This has the advantage that enables informed citizens to have an impact on the healthcare system and to be more concerned and care for their own health. The current vision comprises affordable access to healthcare resources and services for all citizens, thus making medical expertise a shared resource wherever and whenever needed. Important areas in which information society technologies are likely to have a significant impact include those of pre-hospital health emergencies, remote monitoring of patients with chronic conditions, and medical collaboration through sharing of health-related information resources. Accessibility to these and other media-rich, user-oriented. services, in the context of the emerging global information society, will be supported by a healthcare information infrastructure, which can achieve effective horizontal integration of networked information sources.
Toshio Fukuda, Go Iritani, T. Ueyama, Fumihito Arai
This paper deals with a self-organizing robotic system that consists of a number of autonomous robots. We describe the idea of society of robots, which is based on decentralized autonomous systems such as human being or insects. As one of the self-organizing robotic systems, cellular robotic system (CEBOT) was proposed by T. Fukuda. The cellular robotic system is one of the distributed robotic systems, which is composed of a number of autonomous robotic units called cells. The cell is a fundamental unit that has a simple function. To carry out given tasks, the cells connect each other and cooperate mutually. This paper denotes the concept of the cellular robotic system (CEBOT), the social organization of robotic systems, and evolution of group systems.
As enterprises became increasingly information based, making improvements in their information activities is a top priority to assure their continuing competitiveness. A key to achieving these improvements is developing an enterprise information architecture (EIA). An EIA can be viewed as a structured set of multidimensional interrelated elements that support all information processes. The current ad hoc EIA in place within many enterprises cannot meet an organization's future needs because it has an incoherent framework, incompatibilities, missing elements, few and poorly understood standards, uneven quality and unnecessary duplications. This paper discusses the EIA developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a case study, for other information based enterprises, particularly those with decentralized and autonomous organization structures and cultures. While the technical architecture is important the organization and processes by which it is developed and sustained over time are equally important. This paper outlines the motivation for an EIA and discusses each of the interacting elements identified. It also presents an organization structure and processes for building a sustainable EIA activity.
One of the most fascinating developments in post-communist education is the emergence of private schools and reform movements at every level of schooling. Ideologies in support of private education resonate with the liberal, marketoriented philosophies prevailing in the region; the policies of private schools promote and legitimate antistate rhetoric and echo the themes of renewal and transformation heard in other policy realms. Virtually every institution favours democratization and decentralization; the monopoly of the state over the provision of goods and services must be broken. Rigid educational hierarchies must be replaced with schools and teachers who are more responsive to the needs of individual parents and children. The curriculum needs to be completely overhauled; all traces of ideological indoctrination must be expunged. The organization and financing of schools should be lodged in democratically organized community groups; schools should be controlled by the families who can best monitor the education their children receive. Schools must be liberated not only from communist doctrine but from the state as a whole; a free market for schooling should replace state control. These themes lead directly to the assumption that the only workable strategy for eradicating state control of education is to establish new, independent private schools under the control of parentsā groups.
Authentication forms the basis for most applications on the Internet. However, at the IP level, no solid mechanism yet exists for detecting 'spoofed' IP packets. The need for authenticating source IP addresses has become eminent with the advent of many ingenious DDoS attacks. In this paper, we propose a type of authentication scheme based on group (or multi party) signatures and discuss applications of such a scheme in preventing and detecting many types of DDoS attacks found on the Internet. Group signatures authenticate groups of senders rather than individuals and using such a scheme, senders can prove membership of a particular group without having to reveal their individual identity. The main idea behind our approach is to combine senders into large groups to reduce the amount of keying information kept in core routers. Our scheme also presents a method for secure routing protocols in general. Using our scheme, several autonomous networks can exercise policies on granting or denying routing privileges to other interconnected networks. Essentially, our protocol uses the concept of 'Non-interactive zero knowledge proofs of membership'
B. Walter, Marjorie Sadlo, J. KĆ¼pfer, V. Niemeier Ā· 8 authors
To the Editor: Itch is a well-known dermatological symptom whose reactions in the brain have been studied very less. In a study with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) response to histamine iontophoresis, McGlone et al (2001) showed that the forebrain regions activated by brief itch (3ā4 min) are different from those activated by pain. These findings provide insights into separate motivational and behavioral consequences of itch and pain. In previous studies, Darsow et al (2000) and Hsieh et al (1994) could also identify functional covariates of the itch sensation in the central nervous system by positron emission tomography (PET) analysis. A co-activation of the anterior cingulate cortex, supplementary motor area, premotor area, and inferior parietal lobe was found. Somatosensory areas were significantly activated only in one study (Darsow et al, 2000). All the studies reported above either used stimulation evoking short-lasting itch or recorded brain activation in a short time frame (e.g., 50 s). To our knowledge, there are no studies examining brain activations during the course of longer-lasting skin reactions usually seen after histamine prick. Therefore, we tested brain responses to longer-lasting histamine reaction in healthy participants. Effects of pain due to the prick were controlled by an additional prick condition using saline. Flare, wheal, and itch Following histamine prick, a substantial local reaction was observed. The mean diameter of flares reached 24 mm and showed a maximum about 5 min after prick. Mean wheal diameters increased continuously up to 6 mm at the end of the session. After saline prick, the flare was considerably smaller and a wheal was never detected. Accordingly, ratings of itch intensity and unpleasantness were much higher after histamine than after the saline prick (see Fig 1). Itch intensity/unpleasantness. Time course of itch intensity and unpleasantness (mean curves and standard errors of ratings, possible range: 0ā100). Brain activation corresponding to itch was found in eight clusters located mainly in frontal regions. Medial frontal activation took place in the superior frontal gyrus and the gyrus rectus in both hemispheres as well as in a small area of the left anterior cingulate gyrus. Right hemispheric clusters were found in the inferior frontal gyrus and in orbital and dorsolateral parts of the superior frontal gyrus. Further activation was located in the left temporal pole and some parts of the left cerebellum (see Table I and Fig 2). Brain areas of activation. Brain areas of activation (pooled over six subjects) related to itch sensation. Remarks: The numbers correspond to the cluster descriptions in Table I. In comparison, brain reactivity in connection with tonic itch sensations is much more difficult to investigate in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis than brain reactivity with regard to pain sensations, where short-term reactions can be evaluated. In this study, we demonstrated the brain activation under the histamine-itch condition in eight different areas of the brain in comparison with salineāplacebo control. Brain activation was shown mostly in the superior frontal gyrus, in the temporal pole, in the cerebellum, and the inferior frontal gyrus. No activation differing from the placebo control was found in the postcentral gyrus where activation of body sensations was usually found. The gyrus frontalis medius and gyrus frontalis inferior are known to stimulate the motoric activities of the body, in which sensory input is necessary. In the gyrus frontalis inferior, the secondary sensoric cortex is represented and may be activated during itch reactions. In the cingulate areas emotional components of the itch reaction may exist, because the cingulate cortex is known as being highly correlated to emotions. In the temporal pole medial, there is the interpretative cortex that represents experiences and remembrance. Perhaps there the present itch is compared with former itch experiences. But all of these interpretations are still hypothetical with regard to the few studies in this area that looked for activation of the brain. Our results seem to be similar to the finding of McGlone et al (2001), who also showed activation in the forebrain (Brodman's area BA10), an area related to perception (Faw, 2003). Further activations that they found in BA21, BA22, and BA40 could not be confirmed by our results. In the PET analyses of previous studies, Darsow et al (2000), Drzezga et al (2001), Hsieh et al (1994), and Mochizuki et al (2003) identified partly different areas of activation in the anterior cingulated cortex, supplementary motor area, premotor area, and inferior parietal lobe. Hsieh et al (1994) demonstrated the coactivation of the anterior cingulate cortex, supplementary motor area, premotor area, and inferior parietal lobule and underpinned the posterior sector of the anterior cingulate cortex as being related to the sensory/affective aspect of the event. The divergent results may be due to a different method of stimulation with histamine used in this study. We decided to investigate the tonic histamine reaction by prick that produces an itch sensation without producing a substantial pain sensation in a quick and easy way. The PET analyses used in the studies mentioned above have only a very short time frame for revealing activation, whereas fMRI analysis is able to take a longer time period into account. For instance, Darsow et al (2000) described activation for 50 s beginning 2 min after stimulation in the PET analysis. Further studies should evaluate the time course of brain activation during itch. The āpain matrixā (Derbyshire, 2000; Peyron et al, 2000) also comprises very different regions from those identified in our study. Therefore, we assume that brain processes during itch differ substantially from those during pain. But data based on a small sample like ours cannot be take as proof for missing activation. Further studies with larger samples are needed to explore the āitch matrixā. Subjects Six of eight right-handed healthy non-smoking males (mean age: 25.6 y; ranging from 20 to 30 y) were selected for the study. All of them had no history of allergy, no atopic diseases in the family, no current diseases, and no current intake of drugs that could influence the study. The remaining two subjects had to be excluded from further analyses because they reported only a slight itch sensation during the experiment (see below). The study was approved by the ethics committee of the medical faculty of the University Giessen, Germany, and performed according to Declaration of Helsinki principles. Design Subjects participated in the fMRI examinations in separate sessions for each of four experimental conditions: subjects received one prick per session with either histamine or saline to the left forearm. The sessions were conducted in partly permuted order with an interval of at least 1 wk. No information about the substance used in the current session was given to the subjects. Measures and procedure After informed consent for the experimental procedure and for the fMRI examination, the participants learned how to use a visual analog scale (VAS) on a standard PC with a keypad. Then, the subjects were placed into the scanner and instructed on how to use the keypad with their right hand. The VAS were presented on a screen that was placed behind the MR scanner and could be observed by means of a mirror. VAS ratings were performed every minute starting 28 s after the onset of the experiment. The ratings could range from zero to hundred. The extremes of the scale for itch intensity were labeled āno itchā (=0) and āthe most intense itch imaginableā (=100). A second VAS was used for the unpleasantness of itch. It was labeled āno itchā (=0) and āthe most unpleasant itch imaginableā (=100) (Yosipovitch, 2003). The prick was applied 2 min after the start of the experimental session by using plastic needles (Stallergenes, Anthony-Cedex, France). Wheal and flare diameters were taken every 2 min starting 30 s after the prick. The experimental session lasted 17 min. Analysis of itch ratings Subjects who always rated their itch intensity during the histamine condition always lower than 15 were excluded from analyses. This was the case for two subjects. Due to this loss, data only of six subjects are reported here. Image acquisition and analysis fMRI uses the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response (Logothetis and Wandell, 2004), which is basically an increase of oxygenated blood in areas where neural activation takes place. Fast echo-planar imaging sensitive to BOLD signal was applied to acquire every an image of almost the whole brain 4 s. A fixed-effect general linear model for the fMRI time series at each volume element (voxel) was used in order to compare activation between the two conditions (histamine vs saline prick). The mean time course of itch sensation reported by the six subjects during the histamine sessions served as a regressor for both sessions. The comparison of regression coefficients obtained in histamine and saline sessions gives the activation correlated with itch intensity pooled over subjects. The rating procedure, the prick itself, and head motion parameters were considered as additional covariates for controlling their possibly confounding effects. The significance level was set to Ī±=0.05 after controlling for multiple comparisons due to the analysis of the whole brain volume using the random field theory. This study was supported by the āInstitut fĆ¼r Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene.ā
This paper is to discuss not only capacities needed for local governments and citizens but also to developing strategies in the decentralization era. My paper noted four key sessions to arrive at the goal of study. The first this study introduced different definitions about general capacity(or competency). Secondly, it designed capacity framework including its categories(citizen, local council, local executive) and levels(institution, organization, individual). Thirdly, issued concerned an autonomous capacity followed. The fourth, this paper established strategies to build capacity in decentralization era of South Korea. Especially, alternatives to build local governmentās capacity are focused on following three activities. Firstly, it has to organize a NGO Center to support an information and training for civil society. Secondly, it has to enlarge supporting functions or groups to develop public policy for local legislative. Thirdly, it has to implement scientific TNA(Training Needs Assessment) for effectively outcome of civil servantās training in local government.