April 21st Research Articles

Assessing the impact of environment on life styles and life chances among out of school youths in Lagos metropolis

This research is motivated as a result of rapid changes in the lifestyle of our youths and the increasing deterioration of their welfare in terms of the increase in the number of out of school youth in the country, high incidence of child participation in economic activities and incidence of street children in Nigeria. Although, many researches have been conducted in areas of child welfare, most of these researches neglected the determining factors of these welfare indices as well as relationship between environment, poverty and life styles and life chances of our youth. This may have contributed to poor policy response to youth welfare in Nigeria as the literature has shown that child welfare continues to deteriorate. This study was based on primary survey data collected in Lagos between 7th and 21st of April, 2009 from 200 youth (boys and girls) aged 10-24. The sample, a one-stage purposive sampling, is representative of the city of Lagos. This stage increases the use of accidental sampling to select respondents around the Oshodi Motor parks. The individual based questionnaire schedule consists of 60 questions under six sub-sections. The purpose of the survey was to collect information on youth and vocational training. Retrospective longitudinal data were collected concerning residence, education, occupation, sexual unions, family backgrounds, and social attachments among others. Both male and female youth were asked about their perception on vocational training and skills acquisition. The quantitative data were entered, edited, transformed and cleaned. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used in analyzing the data. Simple statistical techniques like Percentile and cross-tabulations were carried out. The study found among other things that participation in school or work is dictated by region, sector, child, parent and household characteristics. The study also noted that incidence of street children is a response to poverty, parental interest and regional and environment differences. The study thus suggested that policies aiming at improving child welfare in Nigeria should consider environment, sector, region, child, parents, household and community characteristics in their policy. Key words: Lagos, lifestyle, youth, Oshodi motor park, Nigeria.

Dispatches

Dispatches

The Mysterious Death of a Commercial Agent and the Kārguzār of Mashhad, 1890

AbstractOn the night between the 21st and 22nd of April 1890 Gregory Karikoor, known as "Suleiman", was found dead in his home in Mashhad. Suleiman was the commercial agent of one of the most enterprising British firms in Iran, Messers Ziegler & Co., for some twenty years. A few days before his sudden death, the firm had transferred a large sum of money (about 2000 tūmāns, i.e. £46,600 in 2009 retail prices) to him. Not a single shāhī (penny) of this amount was found at his home or office. Rumours spread in Mashhad that Suleiman had been murdered. Ziegler's head office in Tehran was also of the opinion that a serious crime was committed in Mashhad. The firm was anxious to discover what had happened to its agent and to recover the money transferred to him. Against this background the kārguzār of Mashhad opened an inquiry into the Suleiman case. Seven Iranian subjects were summoned to the kārguzār's majlis and were interrogated. A copy of the proceedings of the inquiry, found in the files of the British consulate general in Mashhad deposited in the National Archives of the United Kingdom, give the historian a rare glimpse of the details of how the kārguzār and his court functioned. The nature of the inquiry and the broader historical significance of the process are discussed in this article.

Torturing America

Even before his inauguration, President Barack Obama made it clear that he believed torture was morally reprehensible and promised that under his administration the U.S. would no longer practice torture. Accordingly, on April 16th, 2009 Mr. Obama and the U.S. Department of Justice authorized the release of C.I.A memos detailing the methods of torture that were authorized under the George W. Bush administration. The release of the C.I.A. memos elicited an almost immediate reaction from former Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney, who in an interview with Fox News on April 21st, 2009 criticized Mr. Obama for failing to disclose documents detailing the “success” of torture in garnering intelligence that was vital to the U.S. War on Terrorism.3 Mr. Obama’s efforts to discredit torture as a justifiable tool for preserving U.S. national security and Mr. Cheney’s rebuke of those efforts attest to the importance and contentious nature of the debate about whether torture is in the U.S national interest. 
 Using this debate as motivation, I answer the question of whether or not the use of torture is in the U.S. national interest. To do this, I first chronicle the history of U.S. torture practices since the Cold War to provide a reference point for the rest of the paper. Second, I empirically demonstrate the negative impact of these practices on international U.S. credibility, the War on Terrorism and U.S. presidential approval ratings. Third, I consider the theoretical value of torture in context to its empirical utility as an intelligence-gathering tool, and vis-à-vis possible alternatives, to ultimately make a qualitative assessment of torture’s actual utility for preserving U.S. national security. Finally, I compare the international and domestic consequences of U.S. torture (section 2) to its actual utility (section 3) to ultimately conclude that torture is not in the U.S. national interest.

Landslides induced by the April 2007 Aysén Fjord earthquake, Chilean Patagonia

On the 21st of April 2007, the Aysen Fjord earthquake (Mw 6.2) in southern Chile (45.3° S, 73.0° W) triggered hundreds of landslides in the epicentral area along the fjord coast and surroundings. Some of these landslides induced large tsunami waves within the fjord causing fatalities and damaging several salmon farms, the most important economic activity of the area. The landslides included rock slides and avalanches, rock falls, shallow soil and soil–rock slides, and debris flows. The earthquake was the climax of a seismic swarm that began 3 months earlier. The seismicity is associated with tectonic activity along the Liquine–Ofqui fault zone (LOFZ), a major structural feature of the region. The earthquake-induced landslides were mapped and classified from field observations and remote sensing analysis. The landslide areas and epicentral distances are within the expected range for the earthquake magnitude according to worldwide data, while the position of landslides on the slopes strongly suggests topographic amplification effects in triggering the failures. The location of the landslides is also clearly related to some of the main fault branches of the LOFZ. The seismic event has configured a new situation of seismic and landslide hazard in the Aysen region and along the LOFZ, where the presence of towns and economic infrastructure along the coasts of several fjords constitutes a potential risk that was not considered before this seismic event.

К новой архитектуре европейской безопасности

On April 21st, 2010, the session of the Academic Council of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences, took place, where the keynote report "Towards New Architecture of European Security" was presented by N.K. Arbatova, Dr. Sci. (Political Science), Head of Department for European Political Studies at IMEMO. The session was run by N.I. Ivanova, Corresponding Member of RAS, Deputy Director of IMEMO. The IMEMO employees – A.G. Arbatov, Corresponding Member of RAS, V.G. Baranovskii, Corresponding Member of RAS, K.V. Voronov, Cand. Sci. (History), V.K.Zaitsev, Dr. Sci. (Economics), N.I. Kalinina, Dr. Sci. (Medicine), S.P. Peregudov, Dr. Sci. (History), А.А. Pikaev, Cand. Sci. (Political Science), as well as PIR Center employees – K.V. Smertina, V.A. Yaroshenko – participated in discussion of the report. The keynote report and the discussion succeded are introduced for readers' consideration.

Adrenal corticosteroid effects in the central nervous system on long-term control of blood pressure

Adrenal corticosteroid effects in the central nervous system on long-term control of blood pressure

A Case Study of the Molecular Genetical Diagnosis of a Small African Elephant (Loxodontasp.) “Nana” Kept at Asahiyama Zoo

The African elephant genus Loxodonta consists of two distinct species, savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana, Blumenbach 1797) (Fig. 1A) and forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis, Matschie 1900) (Fig. 1B) (Grubb et al. 2000; Roca et al. 2001, 2005). The savanna elephants are widely distributed in bush areas of the sub-Sahara and their body sizes are larger than those of the forest elephants. On the other hand, the forest elephants inhabit tropical rain forest areas of Central Africa and the coastline of the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa (Nowak 1999; Grubb et al. 2000). There are several morphological differences between them (e.g., the shape of the cranium, ears, tusks, body build and so on; Grubb et al. 2000). However, occasionally there are individuals for which it is difficult to identify the species (Groves and Grubb 2000; Debruyne 2005). The forest elephants are endangered and adequate breeding plans in zoological gardens are urgently needed. Therefore, accurate identifications of the species are important. The conventional method of species identification used in Japanese zoological gardens, however, has some problems. A small female Loxodonta named “Nana” (died on April 21st, 2006) was being kept as a forest elephant at Asahiyama Zoo (Asahikawa City, Hokkaido, Japan) (Fig. 1C). She was a wild-born individual (geographical origin unknown), and was purchased in 1980 at the approximated age of 2–3 years old. At first, she was considered to be a savanna elephant, but later features attributed to a forest elephant were identified in her morphological characters. Firstly, her body size was small. Secondly, she had the same hoof structure as forest elephants (5 hooves on the forelimb and 4 on the hindlimb). Thirdly, her ears overlap across the top of the neck. From these reasons, she was identified as a forest elephant. But uncertainties to this identification remained. For instance, it is generally said that savanna elephants have 4 hooves on the forelimb and 3 on the hindlimb (Nowak 1999), and forest elephants have more hooves on both the forelimb and hindlimb (Debruyne 2005). However, it is known that there are variations among the African elephants (Sikes 1971; Grubb et al. 2000). The savanna elephants have 4 or 5 hooves on the forelimb, and 3 to 5 on the hindlimb. Corresponding numbers for the forest elephants are 5 hooves on the forelimb, and 4 to 5 on the hindlimb (Sikes 1971). Therefore, the number of hooves cannot be a diagnostic character of the species in this case. Concerning the ear shape, the character described above is rather that of the savanna elephants than that of the forest elephants (Grubb et al. 2000). In addition, concerning the body build of the African elephants, the back of the savanna elephants tend to be markedly concave, and that of the forest elephants tend to be nearly straight (Grubb et al. 2000; see also Fig. 1A and B). The back of Nana was relatively concave (Fig. 1C). In Japan, there were three forest elephants (e.g., JAZA 1991; Nana of the Asahiyama Zoo, Mari of the Tokuyama Zoo, and Bebe of the Okinawa Kids Discovery Kingdom), and all of them were identified as forest elephants mainly based on the body size and hoof structure (in the case of Bebe, the nearly linear back and rounded ears were also used). As we mentioned above, it

Episode of Low Level Jets in the north and northeast coast of state of Para: a case study of 2002 april 21st to 22nd

In this study the characteristics of the vertical structure of an episode of Low Level Jets (LLJ) occurring in the coast of Para is described. Radiosonde data of Ajuruteua city in Bragança collected during the DESMATA Experiment (Impact of the Deforestation the Atlantic Coast of the Amazonian), taking place in 2002, from April 08th to 22th, are used. Among the detected cases during the rainy period, one specific case with 12 hours duration, average velocity of 15m/s and directed from NE to E in the point of maximum velocity was selected. The observational results have indicated that this LLJ located in the coast of Para was due to the combined action of two factors: (1) inertial oscillation and (2) superficial baroclinicity. These two combined factors sustained this LLJ with velocities between 10 and 13m/s during the day and between 14 and 16m/s during the night, at an average altitude of 800m above surface.

Diophantische Approximationen

Diophantische Approximationen

Prevalencia de sepsis grave en las Unidades de Cuidado Intensivo: Primer estudio nacional multicéntrico

Severe sepsis (SS) is the leading cause of death in the Intensive Care Units (ICU). To study the prevalence of SS in Chilean ICUs. An observational, cross-sectional study using a predesigned written survey was done in all ICUs of Chile on April 21st, 2004. General hospital and ICU data and the number of hospitalized patients in the hospital and in the ICU at the survey day, were recorded. Patients were followed for 28 days. Ninety four percent of ICUs participated in the survey. The ICU occupation index was 66%. Mean age of patients was 57.7+/-18 years and 59% were male, APACHE II score was 15+/-7.5 and SOFA score was 6+/-4. SS was the admission diagnosis of 94 of the 283 patients (33%) and 38 patients presented SS after admission. On the survey day, 112 patients fulfilled SS criteria (40%). APACHE II and SOFA scores were significantly higher in SS patients than in non SS patients. Global case-fatality ratio at 28 days was 15.9% (45/283). Case-fatality ratio in patients with or without SS at the moment of the survey was 26.7% (30/112) and 8.7% (17/171), respectively p <0.05. Thirteen percent of patients who developed SS after admission, died. Case-fatality ratios for patients with SS from Santiago and the other cities were similar, but APACHE II score was significantly higher in patients from Santiago. In SS patients, the independent predictors of mortality were SS as cause of hospital admission, APACHE II and SOFA scores. Ninety nine percent of SS patients had a known sepsis focus (48% respiratory and 30% abdominal). Eighty five patients that presented SS after admission, had a respiratory focus. SS is highly prevalent in Chilean ICUs and represents the leading diagnosis at admission. SS as cause of hospitalization, APACHE II and SOFA scores were independent predictors of mortality.

Nigeria: Presidential Election April 21st 2007

Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social and Cultural SeriesVolume 44, Issue 4 p. 17033A-17033A Nigeria: Presidential Election April 21st 2007 First published: 31 May 2007 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-825X.2007.00936.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume44, Issue4May 2007Pages 17033A-17033A RelatedInformation

Loss and Presence in Three Poetic Texts of Mourning

In Truinas, le 21 avril 2001 Philippe Jaccottet recounts the funeral of Andre du Bouchet, which took place in Truinas on that day. (1) He describes the extraordinary non-ceremony; there was no liturgy, only a reading of du Bouchet's poem L'Avril, and informal addresses by friends and writers, including Jaccottet himself. (2) I shall discuss Jaccottet's text in conjunction with two others: Tubingen, le 22 mai 1986, in which du Bouchet responds to the work of Paul Celan, who died in 1970, and Yves Bonnefoy's L'Etranger de Giacometti, published in 1967 shortly after the death of Alberto Giacometti. (3) There are a number of connections between these figures, but the most important are ties of friendship. Jaccottet went to Truinas on the 21st of April 2001 to mourn his friend. Similarly, du Bouchet was a friend of Celan, as well as a translator of his work into French. Bonnefoy was not friends with Giacometti in quite the same way because he was born thirty years later than the artist, but Giacometti is famous for his friendships and associations with writers. Many writers considered they had affinities with him, and several of them collaborated on the journal L'Ephemere, the first issue of which was dedicated to his work. All issues would carry a Giacometti drawing of a standing nude on the front cover. Bonnefoy's text was published in this first number, alongside other tributes that included a piece by du Bouchet, although this is less easily described as a text of loss. Du Bouchet worked with Bonnefoy on the editorial board of L'Ephemere, and Jaccottet contributed occasionally to the journal. (4) With friendship, however, came difference. Bonnefoy is writing about an artist who worked in a different medium--plastic art--a medium that is other to language. Du Bouchet is discussing a writer to whom he felt very close, but who wrote in a foreign language that du Bouchet considered he did not know well. Conversely, Jaccottet and du Bouchet are usually viewed in similar terms, as poets of the natural world and the impersonal poetic subject. It is in Jaccottet's text, moreover, that we note the greatest sense of loss. In those by du Bouchet and Bonnefoy, otherness, or strangeness, paradoxically brings the lost person closer to the writer. Mourning is discussed in contemporary theoretical works as a realization of absence; the specter of loss haunts texts and shows presence to be an illusion. In this paper, I shall consider how these texts by Bonnefoy and du Bouchet work to nuance that conclusion. Mourning Presence Freud's distinction between mourning and melancholia has been questioned in recent work. Freud argues that mourning that is not successfully completed leads to melancholia, in which the subject is unable to detach him- or herself from the person s/he has lost and is therefore caught in a fixed attachment to an absent person. (5) Derrida considers whether successful mourning is possible or even desirable. (6) He refuses discussion of whether someone who was present can be successfully accepted as absent, because he insists that people are never present to one another in the first place. In Memoires: pour Paul de Man he writes that the other might only fully come to us as other after his or her death, through the experience of mourning. (7) The subject of mourning is especially pertinent to Derrida's later work, including his tributes to friends published as The Work of Mourning. (8) In their introduction to this volume, the editors stress that, for Derrida, loss was inherent in friendship; friends always know that one of them is bound to lose the other (1). They also discuss his dilemma over whether, and how much, to quote his friends' own words in these addresses. Derrida writes in his piece on Roland Barthes: Two infidelities, an impossible choice: on the one hand, not to say anything that comes back to oneself, to one's own voice, to remain silent, or at the very least to let oneself be accompanied or preceded in counterpoint by the friend's voice. …

Skargi mniejszości żydowskiej na arenie międzynarodowej na zachowanie się żołnierzy polskich podczas wyzwolenia Wilna w kwietniu 1919 r.

In the middle of April 1919 Polish commander Jozef Pilsudski decided to start a mi- litary operation to take Vilnius from Soviet hands. This fully successful operation was one of the first operations of the newly created Polish Army. Vilnius was liberated on April 21st 1919. During the fights 28 Polish soldiers and 60 Jewish civilians were killed. Jewish minority, the biggest in Vilnius, has written complaints to western Allies on illegal behavior of Polish Army during the fights. These complaints resulted with sending few internatio- nal commissions to Vilnius. The documents referring to this question can be found in Jewish Scientific Institute in New York (YIVO). The most important are reports of Henry Morgenthau Commission from USA and Stuart Samuel Commission from GB. There are important differences in these reports. They show how complicated the national relations were in Vilnius at this time. The analysis of reports and Polish documents gives us an op- portunity of full reconstruction of Vilnius events in 1919.

Longitudinal intensity oscillations observed with TRACE: evidence of fine-scale structure

The aim of this paper is two-fold: to increase the number of examples of observed longitudinal oscillations in coronal loops and to find evidence of the small temporal and spatial scales of these loop oscillations. Increasing the number of observed longitudinal oscillations allows for improvement in the statistics of the measured parameters, providing more accurate values for numerical and theoretical models. Furthermore, the small temporal and spatial scales of these loop oscillations could give indication of a driving force, symptomatic of coupling with the global p-modes. We found evidence that individual loop strands of wide coronal loop footpoints oscillate independently for short time periods. These strands have a diameter of the order of a few Mm, and the timescales on which the oscillations exist are typically less than an hour. We suggest that this is indicative of the oscillating strands being driven by the leakage of the global 5 min p-modes up into the corona, as simulated by De Pontieu et al. (2005, ApJ, 624, L61). Additionally, we find 25 further examples, added to those of De Moortel et al. (2002a, Sol. Phys., 209, 89), of outwardly propagating slow MHD waves in coronal loop footpoints. The datasets are taken from JOP83, observed between April 21st 2003 and May 3rd 2003, in the TRACE 171 A bandpass. The intensity oscillations travel outwards with a propagation speed of order v = 99.7 ± 3.9 kms−1 and they are of small amplitude, with variations of approximately 3.7 ± 0.2% of the background intensity. These disturbances are only detected for short distances, around 8.3 ± 0.6 Mm along the loops, and the main period of oscillation is around 300 s. A second peak of period was found at around 200 s, however no correlation with the presence of a sunspot was observed within this study. Using these measured parameters we have estimated the energy flux to be of order 313 ± 26 erg cm−2 s−1.

12th Annual Scientific Meeting of British Association for Tissue Banking Edinburgh April 21st–23rd 2004-02-11

12th Annual Scientific Meeting of British Association for Tissue Banking Edinburgh April 21st–23rd 2004-02-11

Transverse waves in a post-flare supra-arcade

Observations of propagating transverse waves in an open magnetic field structure with the Transition Region And Coronal Explorer (TRACE) are presented. Waves associated with dark tadpole-like sunward moving structures in the post-flare supra-arcade of NOAA active region 9906 on the 21st of April 2002 are analysed. They are seen as quasi-periodic transverse displacements of the dark tadpole tails, with periods in the range of 90–220 s. Their phase speeds and displacement amplitudes decrease as they propagate sunwards. At heights of 90 and 60 Mm above the post-flare loop footpoints the phase speeds are in the ranges 200–700 km s −1 and 90–200 km s −1 respectively. Furthermore, for consecutive tadpoles the phase speeds decrease and periods increase as a function of time. The waves are interpreted as propagating fast magnetoacoustic kink waves guided by a vertical, evolving, open structure.

Simultaneous BeppoSAX and Rossi X-ray timing explorer observations of 4U 1812–12

4U1812-12 is a faint persistent and weakly variable neutron star X-ray binary. It was observed by BeppoSAX between April 20th and 21st, 2000 in a hard spectral state with a bolometric luminosity of ~2x10^36 ergs/s. Its broad band energy spectrum is characterized by the presence of a hard X-ray tail extending above ~100 keV. It can be represented as the sum of a dominant hard Comptonized component (electron temperature of ~36 keV and optical depth ~3) and a weak soft component. The latter component which can be fitted with a blackbody of about 0.6 keV and equivalent radius of ~2 km is likely to originate from the neutron star surface. We also report on the first measurement of the power density spectrum of the source rapid X-ray variability, as recorded during a simultaneous snapshot observation performed by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. As expected for a neutron star system in such hard spectral state, its power density spectrum is characterized by the presence of a ~0.7 Hz low frequency quasi-periodic oscillation together with three broad noise components, one of which extends above ~200 Hz.

21世紀に向けたロシアの安全保障―新安全保障構想及び軍事ドクトリンを中心に―

Under the leadership of young and active President V. Putin, Russia has set forth on a new policy.In the field of national security, the president has designated Russia as a“strong power, ”in spite of Russia's severe economic condition. On the 10th of January 2000, Putin, acting President at that time, approved the new National Security Concept of the Russian Federation. He also approved the new Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation on the 21st of April. These two documents clearly state threat perceptions and measure to response the threat, which was not the case in the documents issued in the Yeltsin era.This paper aims to explore the concept of national security, which Russia is carrying towards the 21st Century under Mr. Putin's Presidency. The author compares the new National Security Concept and the new Military Doctrine with the previous ones. Drafts of these documents are also analyzed.One of the main findings is that Russia is concerned over NATO's adoption of the New Strategic Concept in 1999. Russia is extremely cautious of NATO's use of force outside the region, which, she sees, is neglect of the UN Security Council, and thus is a violation of principle of non-interference in domestic affairs. This concern led Russia to revise her threat perception. The perception of“war danger”described in the old documents is graded up to“war threat.”Although defensive doctrine and deterrence of war continue to be central figures of Russia's security concept, declaratory statement of“no first use of forces”has now been omitted. The new Military Doctrine clearly states that Russia would not abandon the option of nuclear first use, especially tactical nuclear weapons in case of large-scale wars and/or regional wars.

Study on “double dawn”

The ancient record, “During the first year of King Yi, the day dawned twice at Zheng”, has provided important clues to early Chinese chronicles. The astronomical conditions and visible area distributions related to such a “double dawn” event are discussed, and the precision and current problems in the calculations of ancient astronomical phenomena are shown. On such a basis, all the solar eclipses from 1000 BC to 840 BC are calculated and their associated “double dawn” features investigated. The conclusion that the “double dawn” was a solar eclipse occurring on April 21st, 899 BC is corfirmed to be the most reasonable.