Journals
2011 EN
Stefano Ugolini
The ongoing financial crisis is shaking central bankers’ certainties about their mission, and a rethinking of such mission can greatly benefit from a non-finalistic reassessment of how central banking has evolved over the centuries. This paper does so by taking a functional, instead of an institutional approach. The survey covers the provision of both microeconomic (financial stability) and macroeconomic (monetary stability) central banking functions in the West since the Middle Ages. The existence of a number of important trends (some unidirectional, some cyclical) is underlined. The findings have implications for the current debate on the institutional design of central banking, both in the U.S. and in the eurozone. Historical evidence suggests that neither changes in the organizational model of central banks nor government deficit monetization should necessarily be seen as evil; what is crucial to the success of any solution, is that the institutional agreement backing the existence of money-issuing organizations must be credible. The appendix provides a case study on Norway.
Social Science Electronic Publishing
Journals
2011 EN
Saad Al Qahtani
Patient care and safety is the main goal and mission of any health care provider. We surveyed nurses in the wards and obtained their feedback about the quality of care delivered by the Critical Care Response Team (CCRT).
Journals
2011 EN
Fort · Makin · Aaron J. Siegler
+2 more
In Malawi, cervical cancer is the most prevalent form of cancer among women, with an 80% mortality rate. The Mulanje Mission Hospital has offered free cervical cancer screening for eight years; however, patients primarily seek medical help for gynecologic complaints after the disease is inoperable.
Journals
2011 EN
Betty Tai · Sparenborg · Liu
+1 more
The National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) has faced many challenges over its first eleven years. This review explores some of these challenges and the paths the CTN took to meet these challenges, including: designing clinical trials that reflect the CTN's mission and changing public health needs, finding the synergies in the varied expertise of clinical treatment providers and academic researchers, promoting evidence-based practices and expanding the Network into mainstream medical practices to reach a broader patient population. Included in this exploration are specific examples from CTN clinical trials.
Journals
2011 EN
Dave Dargie
In the late 1970s a vinyl LP disc was published with recordings by David Marks of the Mpondo Xhosa musician Madosini Manqina [CD track 1]. The disc included several recordings of an unnamed musical instrument, referred to by Marks on the record sleeve as a ‘home-made Jew's harp'. The music produced by this instrument was a two-part overlapping polyphony, like a wind instrument accompanied by an overtone instrument - a musical bow of some sort. When I began work at the Catholic Lumko Pastoral Institute, situated then at old Lumko Mission near Lady Frere in the rural Thembu Xhosa area, I set about trying to find the instrument, to see if anyone in that area could play it. The most likely candidate was umrhubhe, a small musical bow which sounded like the accompanying instrument on the recordings. Many girls and young women still played umrhubhe in that area at that time - one could sometimes see a young woman carrying umrhubhe wedged onto herhead-dress. I took a tape copy of the Madosini recordings, and played them for people, to find out if they knew what it was. "Umrhubhe nomlozi" I was told: umrhubhe with whistling. In time I found several women who could perform umrhubhe nomlozi, some who lived in Ngqoko Village, two kilometres from Lumko, and others further afield: hence this article.
International Library of African Music
Journals
2011 EN
Christine Lucia
Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa (1908-1982) came from a third-generation Basotho family converted in the nineteenth century by the French-Swiss protestant Societe des Missions Evangeliques chez les peuples non-chretiens a Paris (SMEP; or Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, PEMS) (see Mohapeloa and Phakisi 2009; Gill 1993; Couzens 2003; Legassick 2010). The first three missionaries from PEMS had entered the world of the Basotho in 1833, one of them, Eugene Casalis, a “child of the Revolution and defender of the rights of man [who] helped build up the barricades in the revolution that overthrew the Bourbons” in Paris (Couzens 2003: 77). They were supposed to join a mission on the border of present-day Botswana, but John Philip of the London Missionary Society (LMS) under whose sway PEMS and other protestant missions fell, warned them of unrest, so they journeyed into the interior knowing that their plans might have to be changed upon their arrival at the LMS mission at Philippolis. Here, the unrest and upheaval further to the north was confirmed, and thus the PEMS missionaries were very open to Adam Krotz who directed them towards Basotho Paramount Chief Moshoeshoe (Couzens 2003: 80). He had been fending off the gunrunning and cattle-stealing Korana, and to help his task had already “sent to Philippolis to ‘buy’ a missionary”, as historian Martin Legassick puts it (2010: 235). Missions have played a long and complex role in the history of southern Africa, their impact still not fully understood in relation to the development of music in the region. PEMS became the most important mission in what is now called Lesotho, its culture enormously influencing Mohapeloa as he grew up. This article traces some of the ways in which he managed to embrace its influence as a composer while retaining the integrity of the Sotho music that was the basis of his style, in the process laying down an archive of African song.
International Library of African Music
Journals
2011 EN
Tomoe Nasuno · Masaki Satoh
To gain insight into properties of in-cloud vertical motion and precipitation production in the tropics, three-dimensional outputs from an aquaplanet experiment using a 3.5-km mesh global cloud-system resolving model (GCRM) were analyzed.Probability distributions of precipitation and latent heating in the 10°N–10°S domain are evaluated in comparison with Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) observations. Despite biases of generally higher precipitation top height (PTH) and deficiencies near the melting level, the model reproduced the general morphology of the precipitation and total latent heating profiles. Relationship between PTH and cloud top height (CTH) in the simulated clouds reproduced clear contrast between deep and shallow convection in active and suppressed environments, respectively. The simulated in-cloud vertical velocities were on the order of O(0.1 m s-1) in anvil clouds and O(1 m s-1) in updraft cores, as in the range of those in previous observations. Focusing on relatively strong upward motion, the maximum in-cloud vertical motion (w_max) was defined in each column. Probabilities of w_max had double peaks (z = 1–4 and 7–12 km) with minima in the middle troposphere. Vigorous upward motions most frequently occurred in the upper troposphere as the active portion of well-organized convective systems. They were often surrounded by updrafts with w_max height in the lower to middle troposphere, forming a group of updraft regions (w_max > 1 m s-1) with horizontal scale of O(10 km). In the regions of compensating subsidence, updrafts tended to be capped below the middle troposphere and small in horizontal size. In both regions the updrafts were accompanied by cold pools of their characteristic horizontal scale.Finally, time evolutions of in-cloud updrafts were analyzed to explore the roles of in-cloud updrafts at different altitude. It was found that the updrafts with w_max height in the middle troposphere produced the heaviest surface precipitation, preceded by moisture transport in the lower to middle troposphere. This suggests that middle tropospheric updrafts most efficiently produced surface precipitation through tight linkage between dynamics and cloud processes, although their occurrence was rare.
The Meteorological Society of Japan
Journals
2011 EN
Munehisa K. Yamamoto · Kenichi Ueno · Kenji Nakamura
Rain gauge data for the period of 1998–2004 from the Syangboche Automated Weather Station (S-AWS) site in the Nepal Himalayas were compared with multi-satellite precipitation products for the period of 2003–2005, employing several retrieval algorithms: the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA), the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) morphing algorithm (CMORPH), the Precipitation Estimation from Remote Sensing Information using an artificial neural network (PERSIANN), and the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP). All the products, except GSMaP, showed an increase in precipitation during the summer monsoon, in agreement with S-AWS. However, PERSIANN showed large differences with the observed values in winter and CMORPH had a tendency to overestimate precipitation in the pre- and post-monsoon seasons relative to S-AWS/TMPA. Summer monsoon precipitation showed an increase in the evening and mid-night in all products except GSMaP, but the local-time peak in PERSIANN lagged compared to that of S-AWS by several hours, and the peak in other products was ahead of that in S-AWS by several hours. All products except for PERSIANN showed an increase in precipitation during the morning. The differences among the products may reflect microwave signatures from convection, the sun-synchronous satellite orbit, and infrared-merging processes. A verification of rain detection by GSMaP revealed good scores over global land areas except for the Tibetan Plateau (including the present study area) due to insufficient resolution for rain/no-rain classification. The peak local-time distribution of precipitation showed a relationship with the topography in the order of precipitation radar (strongest relationship), microwave radiometer, and infrared products.
The Meteorological Society of Japan
Journals
2011 EN
Chunhong Pan · Uma Das · ShihSian Yang
+2 more
Temperature data from Global Positioning System based Radio Occultation (GPS RO) soundings of the Formosa Satellite mission 3/Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC or F-3/C) micro satellites has been investigated in detail to study the Kelvin wave properties. The high temporal and spatial resolution satellite data from August 2006 to August 2009 have enabled the investigation of Kelvin wave activity on each day. The dominant waves of wave numbers 1 and 2 (W1 and W2) have been investigated in detail at three altitudes—19, 25 and 30 km, and it is found that the amplitude of W1 is greater than that of W2 during 60% of the time. A statistical study of the amplitudes of W1 and W2 is also presented and it is found that the dominant amplitudes are 0.5 to 1.0 K for both waves. At lower altitudes (19 km), the amplitudes of W1 are larger and the distribution is also broader. The amplitudes of both waves in the stratosphere are higher during the easterlies of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) and are maximum when the zonal wind changes from easterlies to westerlies. In the lower altitudes near the tropopause they vary in consonance with the outgoing long wave radiation, a proxy of deep convection. Deduction of the Kelvin wave periods and phase velocities has been possible with better accuracy with the use of the F-3/C data. The average periods of W1 for all years are 15 ± 3, 13 ± 4, and 10 ± 3 days at altitudes 19, 25, and 30 km, respectively and the average periods of W2 for all years are 10 ± 2, 7 ± 2, and 6 ± 2 days, respectively. These standard deviations are geophysical and are due to the variation in the periods of the individual Kelvin wave events and identification of the period for a single Kelvin wave event is correct to within ± one day. We found that the Kelvin waves of both the zonal wave numbers are slow in the lower altitudes and fast in the higher altitudes. Also, the periods decrease gradually with height. This is the most important result of the present study.
The Meteorological Society of Japan
Journals
2011 EN
Gerardus Polla
Building an e-learning strategy and developing e-learning action plan requires two fundamental thing: first is adequate knowledge about what you want to accomplish, and the second is a willingness to articulate your plan in a meaningful way to all your stakeholders. Before the work begins, identify the key stakeholders who should participate in the strategy development. This paper intends to enlighten how to build an e-learning strategy in higher educations with some strategies that must be considered, such as defining who should participate; analyzing the current situation; setting visions; stating mission; analyzing gap; conducting force-field and SWOT analysis; creating strategy recomendations; and building an action plan. Additionally, this paper describes some steps for developing an e-learning action plan in higher education.
Bina Nusantara University