Liminality and racial hazing of Muslim migrants: media framing of Albanians in Shepparton,Australia, 1930–1955

This article is a historical empirical study of the Albanian Muslim migrant community of Shepparton. Through analysing newspaper reports, the authors discuss how these migrants were portrayed as liminal between their first arrival and acceptance as Australians a generation later. This is characteristic of a practice which the authors term “migrant hazing”, where a migrant group is demonized as a threat to the society during the liminal phase. Migrant hazing occurs in public discourse, particularly the media, and ceases with the replacement of the group by newer migrants, who are subjected to the same process. Furthermore, migrant hazing remains present in contemporary depictions of Australian Muslims. In this longitudinal study, media reports on Albanian Muslims revolved around three persistent themes: their supposed criminality, the wrongful use of land and the threat of dual-loyalty. These three items constituted the main weapons of the media in hazing the first, liminal generation.     

Dancing to the top: How collective action revitalized arts education in Boston

In 2009, a group of local foundations, the school district, arts organizations, and the Mayor's Office launched the Boston Public Schools Arts Education Initiative (BPS-AE)—a multiyear, citywide, public–private initiative aimed at increasing BPS students' access to in-school arts education. Managed by a strong local intermediary with deep experience in education, this initiative used several complementary, overlaid strategies: direct service, system building, and community engagement—all of which were supported by a philanthropic collaborative of local and national funders. Today, 17,000 more BPS students receive arts education; nearly 130 additional full-time certified arts teachers have been hired; and district spending on arts has risen to $26 million annually, compared to $15 million in 2009. There is also growing demand from the larger community for more and better arts education. In 2015, BPS-AE produced a case study that provides a more detailed explication of the multitiered strategy it used to achieve these results. The study offers recommendations as to how other cities can involve diverse key constituencies to advance this kind of initiative, create leadership structures that support effective citywide collaboration, engage community stakeholders in participatory planning processes, leverage private philanthropy to boost public funding, and develop a centralized support system for school principals and arts teachers.     

Contestation or Collaboration? A Comparative Study of Home–School Relations

In this article we focus on two public elementary schools that are known to have a great deal of parental participation, examining the relationships parents and school personnel build, and how these relationships unfold. We found that accommodation and community typified parent–teacher interactions at one school, while interactions at the other could be characterized as ambivalent and fraught with competing demands. We argue that social class and school culture interact to shape what is possible for parents and teachers to accomplish in the way of forming strong and meaningful relationships, ultimately leading to quite different outcomes.     

Implementation of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions by New York City Public Schools to Prevent 2009 Influenza A

Introduction

Children are important transmitters of influenza in the community and a number of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including hand washing and use of hand sanitizer, have been recommended to mitigate the transmission of influenza, but limited information is available regarding schools'' ability to implement these NPIs during an influenza outbreak. We evaluated implementation of NPIs during fall 2009 in response to H1N1 pandemic influenza (pH1N1) by New York City (NYC) public schools.

Methods

From January 25 through February 9, 2010, an online survey was sent to all the 1,632 NYC public schools and principals were asked to participate in the survey or to designate a school nurse or other school official with knowledge of school policies and characteristics to do so.

Results

Of 1,633 schools, 376(23%) accessed and completed the survey. Nearly all respondents (99%) implemented at least two NPIs. Schools that had a Flu Response Team (FRT) as a part of school emergency preparedness plan were more likely to implement the NPI guidelines recommended by NYC public health officials than schools that did not have a FRT. Designation of a room for isolating ill students, for example, was more common in schools with a FRT (72%) than those without (53%) (p<0.001).

Conclusions

Implementing an NPI program in a large school system to mitigate the effects of an influenza outbreak is feasible, but there is potential need for additional resources in some schools to increase capacity and adherence to all recommendations. Public health influenza-preparedness plans should include school preparedness planning and FRTs.     

Year-Round Schools and the Politics of Time

This ethnographic study explores the politics of time in a multitrack, "yearround" school in inner-city Los Angeles. We analyze different types and experiences of time within the school and time collisions across institutions in this densely populated immigrant community. Viewing time as a contested commodity, we examine the politics behind the presumed impartiality of the clock and calendar. The school's year-round schedule is especially problematic, involving multiple tracks with lengthened days and a shortened school year. We show how issues of educational equity go to the core of debates over alternative school schedules.     

Students and a "Culture of Resistance" in Provincetown's Schools

Provincetown, Massachusetts is a popular multigendered tourist destination where openness to diversity is part of the school and wider community ethos. Youth encounter their hometown as a place whose cultural ethos they do not always embrace. Based on participant-observation fieldwork from 1995 to 2002, this article explores how students have developed a "culture of resistance" to dominant discourses of tolerance and acceptance. By deconstructing how schools are sites of intergroup conflicts over gender tolerance and public school ownership, student-resistance conduct is shown to be a response to perceived alienation from mainstream social norms and discourses.     

Evaluation of a radar-activated,demand-performance bird hazing system

We evaluated a radar-activated integrated hazing system for the protection of waterfowl at large contaminated ponds at a power plant. The hazing devices in the system included acoustic alarm calls, pyrotechnics and chemical repellents dispersed in the form of a bird tear-gas. Unlike, timed interval systems, or systems with random activation sequences, birds did not habituate to the demand-performance system tested. Over the course of a year, we documented that waterfowl were 12.5 times less likely to fly over the hazed contaminated ponds relative to a non-hazed control pond. Of the waterfowl that did fly over both ponds, the likelihood of landing on the hazed contaminated pond was 4.2 times less relative to the control. Hazing also altered the flight direction and altitude of waterfowl. Mortality during the year the hazing system was in place decreased by a factor 6.5 relative to previous years where the system was not in operation. Demand-performance integrated hazing systems show promise in protecting large areas where placement of operators is not practical for logistic, safety, or long-term cost reasons.     

A first attempt to bring computational biology into advanced high school biology classrooms

Computer science has become ubiquitous in many areas of biological research, yet most high school and even college students are unaware of this. As a result, many college biology majors graduate without adequate computational skills for contemporary fields of biology. The absence of a computational element in secondary school biology classrooms is of growing concern to the computational biology community and biology teachers who would like to acquaint their students with updated approaches in the discipline. We present a first attempt to correct this absence by introducing a computational biology element to teach genetic evolution into advanced biology classes in two local high schools. Our primary goal was to show students how computation is used in biology and why a basic understanding of computation is necessary for research in many fields of biology. This curriculum is intended to be taught by a computational biologist who has worked with a high school advanced biology teacher to adapt the unit for his/her classroom, but a motivated high school teacher comfortable with mathematics and computing may be able to teach this alone. In this paper, we present our curriculum, which takes into consideration the constraints of the required curriculum, and discuss our experiences teaching it. We describe the successes and challenges we encountered while bringing this unit to high school students, discuss how we addressed these challenges, and make suggestions for future versions of this curriculum.We believe that our curriculum can be a valuable seed for further development of computational activities aimed at high school biology students. Further, our experiences may be of value to others teaching computational biology at this level. Our curriculum can be obtained at http://ecsite.cs.colorado.edu/?page_id=149#biology or by contacting the authors.     

Nine-spined sticklebacks exploit the most reliable source when public and private information conflict

Social foragers can potentially use private information gained from personal experience and public information gained from observing the foraging success of others to determine the profitability of a foraging patch. We investigated how nine-spined sticklebacks use conflicting public and private information of variable reliability to make foraging decisions. In a first experiment, when private information was reliable, sticklebacks ignored public information and based their foraging decision on private information. However, when private information was less reliable, sticklebacks tended to use public rather than private information. A second experiment investigated how the time since experiencing private information affected sticklebacks' use of this information when it conflicted with recent public information. Fish based their foraging decisions on recently acquired private information, but reliance on private information diminished as the period since experiencing it increased. Fish used public information if 7 days had elapsed since updating their private information. Our findings suggest that nine-spined sticklebacks flexibly adjust their decision making to exploit the most reliable information available, be it public or private, and that animals will weight private and public information appropriately depending on circumstances.     

Size and usage patterns of private TB drug markets in the high burden countries

Background

Tuberculosis (TB) control is considered primarily a public health concern, and private sector TB treatment has attracted less attention. Thus, the size and characteristics of private sector TB drug sales remain largely unknown.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We used IMS Health data to analyze private TB drug consumption in 10 high burden countries (HBCs), after first mapping how well IMS data coverage overlapped with private markets. We defined private markets as any channels not used or influenced by national TB programs. Private markets in four countries – Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia and India – had the largest relative sales volumes; annually, they sold enough first line TB drugs to provide 65–117% of the respective countries'' estimated annual incident cases with a standard 6–8 month regimen. First line drug volumes in five countries were predominantly fixed dose combinations (FDCs), but predominantly loose drugs in the other five. Across 10 countries, these drugs were available in 37 (loose drug) plus 74 (FDCs) distinct strengths. There were 54 distinct, significant first line manufacturers (range 2–11 per country), and most companies sold TB drugs in only a single study country. FDC markets were, however, more concentrated, with 4 companies capturing 69% of FDC volume across the ten countries. Among second line drugs, fluoroquinolones were widely available, with significant volumes used for TB in India, Pakistan and Indonesia. However, certain WHO-recommended drugs were not available and in general there were insufficient drug volumes to cover the majority of the expected burden of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB).

Conclusions/Significance

Private TB drug markets in several HBCs are substantial, stable, and complicated. This calls for appropriate policy and market responses, including expansion of Public-Private Mix (PPM) programs, greater reach, flexibility and appeal of public programs, regulatory and quality enforcement, and expansion of public MDR-TB treatment programs.     

Access to artesunate-amodiaquine,quinine and other anti-malarials: policy and markets in Burundi

Background

Malaria is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in post-conflict Burundi. To counter the increasing challenge of anti-malarial drug resistance and improve highly effective treatment Burundi adopted artesunate-amodiaquine (AS-AQ) as first-line treatment for uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria and oral quinine as second-line treatment in its national treatment policy in 2003. Uptake of this policy in the public, private and non-governmental (NGO) retail market sectors of Burundi is relatively unknown. This study was conducted to evaluate access to national policy recommended anti-malarials.

Methods

Adapting a standardized methodology developed by Health Action International/World Health Organization (HAI/WHO), a cross-sectional survey of 70 (24 public, 36 private, and 10 NGO) medicine outlets was conducted in three regions of Burundi, representing different levels of transmission of malaria. The availability on day of the survey, the median prices, and affordability (in terms of number of days' wages to purchase treatment) of AS-AQ, quinine and other anti-malarials were calculated.

Results

Anti-malarials were stocked in all outlets surveyed. AS-AQ was available in 87.5%, 33.3%, and 90% of public, private, and NGO retail outlets, respectively. Quinine was the most common anti-malarial found in all outlet types. Non-policy recommended anti-malarials were mainly found in the private outlets (38.9%) compared to public (4.2%) and NGO (0%) outlets. The median price of a course of AS-AQ was US$0.16 (200 Burundi Francs, FBu) for the public and NGO markets, and 3.5-fold higher in the private sector (US$0.56 or 700 FBu). Quinine tablets were similarly priced in the public (US$1.53 or 1,892.50 FBu), private and NGO sectors (both US$1.61 or 2,000 FBu). Non-policy anti-malarials were priced 50-fold higher than the price of AS-AQ in the public sector. A course of AS-AQ was affordable at 0.4 of a day's wage in the public and NGO sectors, whereas, it was equivalent to 1.5 days worth of wages in the private sector.

Conclusions

AS-AQ was widely available and affordable in the public and NGO markets of hard-to-reach post-conflict communities in Burundi. However greater accessibility and affordability of policy recommended anti-malarials in the private market sector is needed to improve country-wide policy uptake.

     

Exploring the views on hunting of Spanish hunters: effect of age and public vs. anonymous opinions

We explored the views held by Spanish hunters on hunting, and assessed how these views varied according to participant characteristics and whether or not the responses were made public via a hunter’s magazine. Hunters expressed many positive values in relation to hunting, but were critical of their own community as well as other stakeholders. Spanish hunters felt misunderstood and even attacked by society at large. There was also a widespread negative perception of the future of hunting. The frequency of references to different opinions varied between anonymous and public respondents and in relation to age group. Participants who expressed their opinions publicly mentioned the ecological values of hunting more frequently, were more critical towards their own community, and viewed the future of hunting more positively than anonymous participants. This may indicate an intended projected positive image; namely, Spanish hunters may publicly emphasize those views that improve their position in society.     

How Does a Community of Learners Maintain Itself? Ecology of an Innovative School

This article asks how a community of learners maintains itself with the inclusion of new generations, each of which must explore the issue of what the community is about. An example of how new parent volunteers joined an innovative public elementary school is used. Four models of community maintenance defining the relationship between the community and newcomers are described and analyzed on the basis of observational studies of an innovative school and review of the literature.     

Erhaltungszuchten von Amphibien im deutschsprachigen Raum

The global amphibian crisis is demonstrated in the number of endangered species and the hazard criteria. The development of an international response to this crisis from the Amphibian Conservation Action Plan to the Amphibian Ark is described and set forth the breeding community in the German speaking region by zoological institutions, private amphibian keepers and a school. The regulations created by a community of many zoo organizations are explained. The procedure and the educational backgrounds of the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Secondary school as part of the breeding program are presented to the reader with the successful breeding of Neurergus kaiseri.     

Does hazing actually increase group solidarity? Re-examining a classic theory with a modern fraternity

Anthropologists and other social scientists have long suggested that severe initiations (hazing) increase group solidarity. Because hazing groups tend to be highly secretive, direct and on-site tests of this hypothesis in the real world are nearly non-existent. Using an American social fraternity, we report a longitudinal test of the relationship between hazing severity and group solidarity. We tracked six sets of fraternity inductees as they underwent the fraternity's months-long induction process. Our results provide little support for common models of solidarity and suggest that hazing may not be the social glue it has long been assumed to be.     

Differentially private distributed logistic regression using private and public data

Background

Privacy protecting is an important issue in medical informatics and differential privacy is a state-of-the-art framework for data privacy research. Differential privacy offers provable privacy against attackers who have auxiliary information, and can be applied to data mining models (for example, logistic regression). However, differentially private methods sometimes introduce too much noise and make outputs less useful. Given available public data in medical research (e.g. from patients who sign open-consent agreements), we can design algorithms that use both public and private data sets to decrease the amount of noise that is introduced.

Methodology

In this paper, we modify the update step in Newton-Raphson method to propose a differentially private distributed logistic regression model based on both public and private data.

Experiments and results

We try our algorithm on three different data sets, and show its advantage over: (1) a logistic regression model based solely on public data, and (2) a differentially private distributed logistic regression model based on private data under various scenarios.

Conclusion

Logistic regression models built with our new algorithm based on both private and public datasets demonstrate better utility than models that trained on private or public datasets alone without sacrificing the rigorous privacy guarantee.

     

High Blood Pressure among Students in Public and Private Schools in Maceió, Brazil

The prevalence of hypertension in childhood is increasing, and investigation of its distribution is important for planning timely interventions. This study assessed the prevalence of high blood pressure (HBP) and associated factors in students between 9 and 11 years of age enrolled in public and private schools in Maceió, Brazil. A cross-sectional study was performed in a probabilistic sample of students (10.3 ± 0.5 years). The students were selected from a systematic sampling of 80 schools (40 public and 40 private). To maintain similar proportions of students existing in public and private schools in Maceió, 21 and 14 students were randomly selected from each public and private school, respectively. The prevalence ratio (PR) was estimated using Poisson regression. A total of 1,338 students were evaluated (800 from public schools and 538 from private schools). No differences were observed between school types in terms of student age and gender (p > 0.05). The prevalence of obesity (19.9% vs. 9.0%; PR = 2.2; 95% CI = 1.67–2.92) and hypertension (21.2% vs. 11.4%; PR = 1.86; 95% CI = 1.45–2.40) were higher in private schools. The association between high blood pressure and type of school (public or private) remained statistically significant even after adjustment for obesity (PR = 1.53; 95% CI = 1.19–1.97). In conclusion: (a) students from private schools have higher socioeconomic status, BMI, and HBP prevalence compared to those of public school; (b) among the evaluated students, the prevalence of obesity only partially explained the higher prevalence of high blood pressure among students from private schools. Other factors related to lifestyle of children from private schools may explain the higher prevalence of HBP. This results show the need to implement measures to promote healthy lifestyles in the school environment, since children with HBP are more likely to become hypertensive adults. Therefore, early detection and intervention in children with HBP is an important action for the prevention of hypertension in adulthood.     

Differences in Sepsis Treatment and Outcomes between Public and Private Hospitals in Brazil: A Multicenter Observational Study

Background

Previous studies showed higher sepsis mortality rates in Brazil compared to other developed or developing countries. Moreover, another trial demonstrated an increased mortality rate in public hospitals compared to private hospitals in Brazil. The reasons for these findings may include delayed recognition and inadequate treatment of sepsis in public facilities. We designed this study to evaluate the factors associated with mortality in septic patients admitted to intensive care units in a network of public and private institutions.

Materials and Methods

This study is a retrospective analysis of a prospective cohort of sepsis patients in 19 private and public institutions in Brazil. We analyzed data from the original database and collected additional data to assess compliance to the treatment guidelines and to determine the time from the onset of organ dysfunction and the sepsis diagnosis by the healthcare team.

Results

A total of 396 patients were analyzed. Patients in public hospitals were younger, had a greater number of dysfunctional organs at baseline and a lower chance to have sepsis diagnosed within two hours of the onset of organ dysfunction. Private hospitals had a better compliance to lactate and blood culture sampling and maintenance of glycemic control. The multivariate analysis showed that age, disease severity at baseline and being treated at a public hospital were independent risk factors for mortality. A delay in the sepsis diagnosis of longer than two hours was associated with mortality only in the public setting.

Conclusions

We confirmed a lower sepsis mortality rate in the private hospitals of this network. Being treated in a public hospital was an independent factor for mortality. Delayed recognition of sepsis was more frequent in public institutions and this might have been associated with a higher mortality. Improving sepsis recognition and early diagnosis may be important targets in public institutions.     

Trends and weekly and seasonal cycles in the rate of errors in the clinical management of hospitalized patients

Studies on the rate of adverse events in hospitalized patients seldom examine temporal patterns. This study presents evidence of both weekly and annual cycles. The study is based on a large and diverse data set, with nearly 5 yrs of data from a voluntary staff-incident reporting system of a large public health care provider in rural southeastern Australia. The data of 63 health care facilities were included, ranging from large non-metropolitan hospitals to small community and aged health care facilities. Poisson regression incorporating an observation-driven autoregressive effect using the GLARMA framework was used to explain daily error counts with respect to long-term trend and weekly and annual effects, with procedural volume as an offset. The annual pattern was modeled using a first-order sinusoidal effect. The rate of errors reported demonstrated an increasing annual trend of 13.4% (95% confidence interval [CI] 10.6% to 16.3%); however, this trend was only significant for errors of minor or no harm to the patient. A strong "weekend effect" was observed. The incident rate ratio for the weekend versus weekdays was 2.74 (95% CI 2.55 to 2.93). The weekly pattern was consistent for incidents of all levels of severity, but it was more pronounced for less severe incidents. There was an annual cycle in the rate of incidents, the number of incidents peaking in October, on the 282 nd day of the year (spring in Australia), with an incident rate ratio 1.09 (95% CI 1.05 to 1.14) compared to the annual mean. There was no so-called "killing season" or "July effect," as the peak in incident rate was not related to the commencement of work by new medical school graduates. The major finding of this study is the rate of adverse events is greater on weekends and during spring. The annual pattern appears to be unrelated to the commencement of new graduates and potentially results from seasonal variation in the case mix of patients or the health of the medical workforce that alters health care performance. These mechanisms will need to be elucidated with further research.     

Caught in the Middle: Evangelical Public Elementary Educators

The tensions that arise between private beliefs and teaching in the public school are examined in a case study of three evangelical elementary classroom educators who support constructivist pedagogy. This study involves teachers at differing points in their careers who strongly advocate a transactional curriculum in their professional community while existing in a theologically conservative community that often supports a return to traditional forms of educational practice. The article informs us that such teachers do exist, describes the range of challenges they face, and examines the roles of school, church, and family in mediating such challenges.