“I haven’t earned the right to just play around with my literacy programme”: strategies, tactics and policy actors/subjects

Purpose The purpose of this New Zealand study is to analyse the influence of the literacy course from an initial teacher education degree, to support beginning teachers to view themselves as policy actors, not mere policy subjects. In our role as teacher educators, we sought to support beginning teachers to find freedom within the constraints of official literacy policy to include multiliteracies. Design/methodology/approach Using de Certeau’s dialectic of strategies and tactics, the authors critically analysed the influence of the literacy course. The data included an assignment from the literacy course, an end-of-literacy course survey and a follow-up interview six months into their first teaching position with a group of five beginning primary school teachers. Findings The findings shed light on our apparent inability to support beginning teachers to see themselves as policy actors/subjects. The analysis reveals the beginning teachers’ tactical responses to our strategies intended to position them as policy actors. The analysis also illustrates how the tactics the authors deployed were viewed as strategies by the beginning teachers, ironically further solidifying the literacy policy they had sought to critique and destabilise and (re)positioning them as policy subjects. Originality/value de Certeau’s framework supported the illumination of the complex interplay of strategies and tactics deployed by ourselves and beginning teachers as the authors sought to support them to identify the freedoms within the constraints of official literacy policy. Any future attempt to develop beginning teachers as policy actors/subjects will benefit from the careful examination of the strategies and tactics at play in initial teacher education.

External audit quality and clients' corporate governance mechanisms in Nigeria: Any nexus?

This study examined the influence of an entity's corporate governance practices on independent external auditor quality, proxied with auditor industry specialization, in Nigeria. The explanatory research design was adopted. Data were sourced from annual reports and accounts of thirty-five (35) quoted non-financial firms for 11 years from 2008 to 2018. After that, panel regression analyses were employed as the estimating technique for the model specified. The empirical results revealed that independent external audit quality is positively influenced by the firm's size but negatively influenced by board Independence and the proportion of female directors on board. Overall, aggregate explanatory variables adopted in this study accounted for 50% changes in external audit quality. Though these findings largely negate previous ones, they contribute to the extant literature and provide further directions for a future attempt at researching within emerging territories.

Alexander’s Foundation of Alexandria

Many reasons have been offered for Alexander the Great’s foundation of Alexandria in Egypt. He wished to create a great economic and cultural centre, or a naval base from which to control the Aegean, or simply to expand his prestige. It has also been argued that Alexander may have had no greater purpose at all and that this entire episode in the Alexander saga owes much to Ptolemaic propaganda. This paper will argue that this Alexandria, like the Conqueror’s other foundations, was primarily to be a military base in a foreign land, designed to thwart any future attempt, in this case by the Egyptians, to free themselves from his control.

The interaction between suicidal ideation, insomnia symptoms, and student status

Evidence demonstrates increased vulnerability to thoughts and behaviors related to suicide (i.e., suicidal ideation) in students. This study examined the interaction between insomnia-symptoms and student-status (students vs. non-students) on reports of suicidal thoughts of behaviors. A total of 363 (N = 363) university students and 300 (N = 300) members of the general population provided complete data on measures of insomnia-symptoms and suicidal ideation. Students indicated greater reports of both total and lifetime ideation while also considering suicidal behavior within the past year. However, no differences were observed in reports of possible future attempt(s) and the disclosure of suicidal thoughts and behaviors to another person. Moreover, students presenting concurrent symptoms of insomnia reported significantly elevated levels of suicidal ideation relative to nonstudents. These outcomes highlight the possible role of insomnia symptoms in accentuating suicidal thoughts and behaviors in the student population.

The Mytilenaian Peraia and the Aktaian Cities

This chapter explores the relationship between Lesbos and Anatolia by examining Mytilene’s relationship with communities in the coastal Troad and Aiolis before and after Athens confiscated its mainland territorial possessions (the peraia) in 427 BC. It is argued that Mytilene, like many other Aegean islands with peraiai, actively suppressed polis status in these off-island territories in the Troad and Aiolis so as to extract greater profit from them. This provides another example of an unequal form of regional integration to complement that which was discussed in Chapter 3, and also helps explain how Mytilene was in a position to attempt to dominate all of Lesbos through an enforced synoikism in 428. A reconsideration of the evidence of the Athenian tribute assessment decrees from 425/4 and 422/1 suggests that, by contrast with how the Mytilenaians had treated these communities, the Athenian Empire actively encouraged them to become poleis so as to disrupt any future attempt by the rebellious Mytilenaians to reconstitute the peraia. While the political relationship between Mytilene and the mainland was therefore very different post-427, numismatic evidence shows that it still maintained a vibrant commercial network on the mainland. Mytilene’s relationship with the mainland therefore did not end in 427 but rather transformed.

Mereological concepts for modelling parthood relations between אלהים and natural phenomena in the Hebrew Bible

In the Hebrew Bible, some texts represent what we would call �natural� phenomena as being in some way related to entities classed to be אלהים in some sense of the Hebrew term; that is, God, gods, divine, deity, etc. Although various perspectives on these relations already exist in the available research on the topic, no philosophical approach to the data has of yet been conceived. In order to facilitate the latter, this study brackets the question as to what the relations between אלהים and natural phenomena in any given biblical context actually were. Yet its contribution lies in the way it aims to offer an introductory overview of some of the potentially relevant core concepts in mereology (parthood theory in metaphysics) that may be of aid in any future attempt at modelling such relations, however they were conceived.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article challenges the tradition of non-philosophical discourse in Old Testament theology, particularly with reference to the relational properties of Yhwh vis-a-vis natural phenomena. Its meta-theoretical application of concepts in formal descriptive mereological analysis represents an interdisciplinary supplementation of current ways of modelling God/World in the text.Keywords: Hebrew Bible; natural phenomena; philosophy; mereology; parthood; relations

Phenological and growth response of legume cover crops to shading

SUMMARYAnnual medics and clovers have distinct properties in terms of usage as cover crops in Mediterranean orchards, but little is known of their capacity to adapt to the level of shading encountered on an orchard floor. A 2-year field experiment was conducted in South–Eastern Sicily to investigate the effects of withholding 0·50 of sunlight on the phenology and growth pattern of four medic and five clover accessions, focusing on traits known to be important for cover cropping. Shading delayed both seedling emergence and the onset of flowering (by up to 5 and 9 days, respectively), while it extended both the growth period and the overall life-cycle duration (by up to 5 and 11 days, respectively). It also induced an increase in cover crop height (from 34 to 38 cm) and crop light use (from 0·60 to 0·94 g DW/m2/MJ), but a reduction in soil coverage, above-ground dry biomass, maximum growth rate and maximum relative growth rate (by up to 13, 18, 21 and 7%, respectively), so compromising the competitiveness of cover crops against weeds. The responses to shading varied between genotypes. Medicago polymorpha ecotype S. Rosalia, Medicago rugosa ecotype Piano Lauro and ecotype Zappulla were the strongest competitors against weeds, whereas Trifolium tomentosum ecotype Bucampello was interesting in terms of its biomass yield and crop light use. The performance was unstable over seasons, so any future attempt to improve the species’ performances under shade by breeding will need to focus on reseeding capacity.

Cardiovascular fitness in early adulthood and future suicidal behaviour in men followed for up to 42 years

BackgroundCardiovascular fitness influences many aspects of brain function. However, the relationship between cardiovascular fitness and suicidal behaviour is unknown. Therefore, we aimed to determine whether cardiovascular fitness at age 18 years is associated with future risk of suicide attempt/death.MethodWe performed a population-based Swedish longitudinal cohort study of male conscripts with no previous or ongoing mental illness (n = 1 136 527). The conscription examination, which took place during 1968–2005, included the cycle ergonometric test and tests of cognitive performance. Future risk of suicide attempt/death over a 5- to 42-year follow-up period was calculated with Cox proportional hazards models controlling for several confounders including familial factors.ResultsAt least one suicide attempt was recorded for 12 563 men. Death by suicide without a prior attempt was recorded in 4814 additional individuals. In fully adjusted models low cardiovascular fitness was associated with increased risk for future attempt/death by suicide [hazard ratio (HR) 1.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.64–1.94]. The HR changed only marginally after exclusion of persons who received in-patient care for depression (HR 1.76, 95% CI 1.61–1.94). Poor performance on both the cardiovascular fitness and cognitive tests was associated with a fivefold increased risk of suicide attempt or suicide death (HR 5.46, 95% CI 4.78–6.24).ConclusionsLower cardiovascular fitness at age 18 years was, after adjustment for a number of potential confounders, associated with an increased risk of attempt/death by suicide in adulthood. It remains to be clarified whether interventions designed to improve fitness in teens can influence the risk of suicidal behaviour later in life.

Improvement and evaluation of simulated global biogenic soil NO emissions in an AC-GCM

Soil biogenic NO emissions (SNOx) play important direct and indirect roles in chemical processes of the troposphere. The most widely applied algorithm to calculate SNOx in global models was published 15 years ago by Yienger and Levy (1995), was based on very few measurements. Since then numerous new measurements have been published, which we used to build up a atabase of field measurements conducted world wide covering the period from 1978 to 2009, including 108 publications with 560 measurements. Recently, several satellite based top-down approaches, which recalculated the different sources of NOx (fossil fuel, biomass burning, soil and lightning), have shown an underestimation of SNOx by the algorithm of Yienger and Levy (1995). Nevertheless, to our knowledge no general improvements of this algorithm have yet been published. Here we present major improvements to the algorithm, which should help to optimize the representation of SNOx in atmospheric-chemistry global climate models, without modifying the underlying principal or mathematical equations. The changes include: 1) Using a new up to date land cover map, with twice the number of land cover classes, and using annually varying fertilizer application rates; 2) Adopting the fraction of SNOx induced by fertilizer application based on our database; 3) Switching from soil water column to volumetric soil moisture, to distinguish between the wet and dry state; 4) Tuning the emission factors to reproduce the measured emissions in our database and calculate the emissions based on their mean value. These steps lead us to increased global yearly SNOx, and our total SNOx source ends up being close to one of the top-down approaches. In some geographical regions the new results agree better with the top-down approach, but there are also distinct differences in other regions. This suggests that a ombination of both top-down and bottom-up approaches could be combined in a future attempt to provide an even better calculation of SNOx.