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Shrieks and complaints, accompanied by body language, contribute markedly to Malory's representation of Elaine of Ascolat's emotionality. Elaine's two shrieks echo Lancelot's and indicate change from sorrow for a wounded beloved to heartbreak when he rejects her. When Elaine is compared with speakers in love lyrics, allegories, and romances, the thoughts in her unarticulated complaints after the pained second shriek may be understood and related to her defence of complaint and perseverance in love despite rejection. Similarly, Elaine's complaint letter, including its overlooked moan to ladies, reflects a state of tranquility and brings about a just resolution.

This article describes the use of visual methodologies to examine images of girls used by development agencies to portray and promote their work in girls' education, and provides a detailed discussion of three report cover images. It details the processes of methodology and tool development for the visual analysis and presents initial 'readings' of the selected images. This initial study highlights the relevance of image analysis to the field of gender, education and development and of critical reflection on the different messages and meanings inherent in images of girls and girls' education which relate to complex questions of power and privilege, position and post-coloniality. The authors recommend that within development agencies education and communication specialists work together to develop more sophisticated processes for image selection, review and feedback, and that researchers in the field further engage with visual methodologies to inform current theories of girlhood, education, schooling and empowerment.

In the last decade, gender equity has become one of the most prominent issues in education reform efforts worldwide. Yet, questions of gender equity have received very little attention in the education reform efforts in the post-socialist countries during the transition period. Focusing on the political, economic, and social changes of the 1990s, this article examines school-based gender equity as it is treated in textbooks, curriculum, teacher attitudes, school environment, leadership and tracking. The article presents gender-sensitive strategies for reform and explores how existing `genderneutral' education practices detrimentally affect gender equity in schools, providing country-specific examples. The article concludes with recommendations for teaching in transition, given the education sphere's strong potential to redress gender inequities. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

P¿Countries are showing interest in accumulating foreign reserves to ensure macroeconomic stability. There has been some debate whether to beef up the level of nations' foreign reserves or make it lower, especially in developing countries like Nigeria. Whereas some argue that the foreign reserve determines the country's rating in the global market, others hold opposing views. In this light, this paper examined the interactive influence of foreign reserve (FRS) on some macroeconomic variables such as: economic size (GDP); trade; level of capital inflows (KFL); exchange rate (EXR); and inflation. Analyzing secondary data from CBN statistical bulletins (1970-2007), the econometric results obtained from cointegration test, vector error correction (VEC) within the framework of autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) revealed the following: (1) existence of a long-run relationship between the variables and two cointegrating equations; (2) possibility of convergence of the variables from the short run to the long run with slow speed of adjustment. It is thus the conclusion of this paper that accumulation of large foreign reserves is not very productive in Nigeria due to its inability to induce some of the macroeconomic variables.

In this paper, we examine the differences in information asymmetry and financing patterns and a generalized version of the trade-off theory across countries with different institutional environments. We find that firms in Civil law countries have higher information asymmetry, rely more on internally generated funds, and use more short-term debt to finance their financing deficit, relative to those in Common law countries. In both Civil law and Common law countries, factors suggested by the trade-off theory explain the financing deficit coefficient in the generalized version of the trade-off model. Overall, the generalized version of the trade-off theory provides a better explanation for the changes in capital structure relative to the pecking order theory, even in countries with higher information asymmetry.

How do noise and manipulation affect the accuracy of collective decision rules? This paper presents simulation results that measure the accuracy of ten well known collective decision rules under noise and manipulation. When noise is low these rules can be divided into accurate ("good") and inaccurate ("bad") groups. The bad rules' accuracy improves, sometimes significantly, when noise increases while the good rules' performance steadily worsens with noise. Also, when noise increases the accuracy of the good rules deteriorates at different rates. Manipulation delays the effects of noise: Accuracy improvement and deterioration due to noise emerge only at higher noise levels with manipulation than without it. In some cases at high noise levels there is only a negligible difference between the accuracy of good and bad collective decision rules. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

For small open economies, an understanding of movements in the exchange rate is imperative in analyzing trade and capital flows. In addition, reliable forecasting of exchange rate volatility is important in risk-taking assessment and investment decision-making, both of which are critical to long-term growth. Using an asymmetric GARCH-type approach, this paper examines the implications of economic liberalization on the stochastic behavior of the exchange rate series in a sample of sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries over the 1970-2004 period. The results indicate that exchange rate volatility is variable, and is less volatile under fixed exchange rate regime (pre-economic liberalization) and higher under flexible regime (post-economic liberalization), that is, it is asymmetric. For most of the countries, the EGARCH and TGARCH models are robust to parameter stability and gives better forecasting performance compared to the standard GARCH model.

Emerging market stock returns have been characterized as having higher volatility than returns in the more developed markets. But previous studies give little attention to the fundamentals driving the reported levels of volatility. This paper investigates whether dynamics in key macroeconomic indicators like exchange rates, interest rates, industrial production and money supply in four Latin American countries significantly explain market returns. The MSCI world index and the U.S. 3-month T-bill yield are also included to proxy the effects of global variables. Using a six-variable vector autoregressive (VAR) model, the study finds that the global factors are consistently significant in explaining returns in all the markets. The country variables are found to impact the markets at varying significance and magnitudes. These findings may have important implications for decision-making by investors and national policymakers. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In an attempt to predict a peak in the US economy using a classical statistical decision methodology and a Bayesian methodology and using the 1996 revised composite leading economic indicators (CLI), it is learned that the Bayesian models have generally outperformed the classical statistical ones and, among the Bayesian models, the two using two and three consecutive CLI growth rates are superior in reliability and in accuracy. These two models, however, failed to correctly predict the 2001 recession. In investigating the reasons behind their failures, we learned that: (1) if the concurrent data for the economic structure of 1983-1999 are used for the prediction, they have also been able to predict the 2001 recession correctly, but their overall reliability is not as strong as before; (2) given the overwhelming weight of the monetary policy tools in the CLI-1996 design and the combination of the economic and political events in the year 2000, the less than expected effectiveness of the monetary policy since 2001 has contributed to this failure; and (3) a possible structural change in the US economy since 2000 has also contributed to this prediction failure. © World Scientific Publishing Company.

The Ferrar Large Igneous Province forms a linear belt for 3500 km along the Transantarctic Mountains, and as a geochemical province extends into southeastern Australasia. The principal components of the Ferrar are: intrusive - Ferrar Dolerite sills and dikes, and Dufek intrusion; pyroclastic - the Prebble, Mawson and Exposure Hill Formations; effusive - the Kirkpatrick Basalt. In terms of the three dimensional architecture of the Ferrar, a range of "facies" can be recognized in each of the principal components. The Ferrar province was initiated with a major episode of phreatomagmatism leading to formation of tephra cones and associated deposits, and near-surface vent structures. Activity switched to predominantly quiet effusion of alternating thick flood basalt flows and thin pahoehoe lobes and flows. Intrusive bodies were emplaced early, given the occurrence of dolerite clasts in tuff-breccias, but most sills were probably intruded after accumulation of extrusive rocks. Pre-existing rift structures played a major role in controlling the transport and distribution of the Ferrar magmas and the apparent centers of extrusive activity. The associated paleohydrology controlled the eruption styles. © 2008.

Albeit growing in number, lesbian mothers and their children remain a statistical minority in schools. Lesbian mothers in this study described their families as “normal” or “just like any other family.” From the perspective of queer theory, normal is a socially constructed and insidious concept. This study analyzes both the strategies participants used to be recognized as normal in their children’s schools and the reasons such recognition was perceived to be important by participants. © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.