Special Grant Research Articles

NSF to Send College Students Into Schools

SCIENCE EDUCATIONThe National Science Foundation (NSF) has decided to go national with efforts to place science-literate students into elementary and secondary school classrooms. The new program would offer students something on a par with the prestigious NSF graduate research fellowships as a way to help teachers and entice more graduates into science teaching careers. NSF officials have yet to work out details of the program, which would begin with a special grants competition this winter to give out $12 million in 3-year awards to universities.

Gruppo Massone ‐ acquisition venture into the UK

This case study sets out the strategic options available to the Massone Group for its possible entry into the UK catering market. It outlines and summarises the contract catering market including an analysis of the major players in the industry. There is little consolidation across the manufacturing and catering sectors and so it is necessary to examine the food manufacturing sector separately. With this background, we describe and illustrate the grants available from both the UK and EU to any potential investment. This section outlines the funds applicable to each strategic category (greenfield, premises or acquisition) described later in the case study. Included within the analysis of greenfield sites are two examples from nearby Merseyside and a specific evaluation of the specific grants or assistance available for such sites.

Promoting nurses' positive attitudes toward cancer prevention/screening.

From 1991 to 1994, a special projects grant to teach nurses cancer prevention/screening theory and clinical skills was developed, implemented, and evaluated. Approximately 60 nurses in Colorado rural settings attended five two-day training sessions over a 20-month period. Attitudes, constructive or destructive, regarding specific behaviors lead to intentions to perform those behaviors and have an important impact on cancer-related nursing practice. Two cancer-related attitude scales, Cancer Prevention/Early Detection Attitude Inventory and Fanslow Cancer Attitudes Scale, were administered prior to the first training session, following the final session, and at six-month follow-up. Data reflecting program impact on nursing practice were obtained from follow-up self-assessment of confidence in implementing new knowledge and skills. Significant differences in pre- and post-training attitude scores and fairly high-level confidence ratings suggest that these nurses will continue to use their cancer prevention and detection skills in practice. Documentation of practice activities to date has been impressive.

Sentencing Federal Sex Crimes

US Sentencing Commission Federal sex offenses can be divided into three groups: criminal sexual abuse, pornography, and prostitution. In the past few years Congress has shown increasing interest in legislating against (i) the production and trafficking of child pornography and (2) the enticement of minors to engage in prostitution or other illicit sexual activity. The Sex Crimes Against Children Prevention Act of 1995 (SCAPA) created new prohibitions against child pornography and other sex crimes against children. Additionally, Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 created the new offense of prohibiting the persuasion, inducement, enticement, or coercion of a minor to engage in prostitution or other prohib ited sexual activity. These latest legislative initiatives by the federal government join several other statutes prohibiting such crimes as aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact, and transporting a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. Along with these new prohibitions came directives to the U.S. Sentencing Commission to increase punishments. The Commission responded in 1996 with guideline amendments that: Increased most pornography sentences by at least 25%; Increased all pornography production sentences by an additional 25% if computers were used to solicit sexually explicit conduct by or with a minor for the production of pornography; and Increased sentences for the most dangerous repeat offenders by broadening the definition of pattern of activity of sexual exploitation of a minor in the pornography trafficking guideline. While the federal government continues to enact sex crime legislation, state governments prosecute the vast majority of sex offenders. Federal authority over sex crimes, as with all types of crime, is limited by the Constitution. Federal jurisdiction is generally based on (1) specific constitutional grants of author ity, such as Congress's authority to regulate interstate or foreign commerce or (2) federal interests in specified pieces of property, such as military posts, national parks, or Native American reservations. This limited scope of federal jurisdiction is reflected in the small number of cases prosecuted and the type of cases prosecuted. This article will look at several of the federal sex crime statutes and the federal sentencing guidelines used to sentence offenders convicted of violating them. I. Criminal Sexual Abuse

In-service education and training: the response of local education authorities in greater London to changes in the funding mechanisms

Local Education Authorities (LEAs) in the United Kingdom continue to have a statutory duty to provide efficient and sufficient schooling. This entails a concern for the professional quality of teaching. To meet this responsibility LEAs have traditionally employed advisers/inspectors and maintained teachers'/professional development centres. In recent years, however, changes in the funding of LEAs and the introduction of specific grants have had a significant impact on the organisation and delivery of In-service Education and Training (INSET). This research ascertains the INSET provision in a sample of LEAs in Greater London. It identifies the similarities and differences between LEAs in the responses to the funding mechanisms and examines the underlying rationale for the variation in INSET provision

Neglected roots of regionalism? The Commissioners for the special areas and grants to hospital services in the 1930s.

The inter-war years in the UK were notable for debates about the extent to which an extension of state intervention in hospital provision was desirable and necessary, and about the limits to and future of the voluntary hospital system which relied largely on various forms of private charity. These themes were intertwined in the UK's 'Special Areas', locations recognized as having suffered adversely from the inter-war depression, with consequent effects on their ability to finance desirable investments in social infrastructures. Grant aid was offered to hospitals in these locations under the terms of the Special Areas legislation of 1934, but there were extensive debates about the principle and practice of such subsidies to hospital development. This paper reviews these debates and considers whether the measures taken by the Commissioners can be seen as neglected antecedents of the regionalism detected in British hospital policy by several commentators.

Cancer‐Related Web Sites

In this bibliography, Shedivy includes selected Internet resources for four different audiences interested in cancer. Researchers will find sites for searching the CANCERLIT and Medline databases as well as how to apply for specific research grants, obtain human tissue for their studies, and contact fellow oncology experts. Health care professionals can search for related articles and find up‐to‐date cancer descriptions with standard therapy protocols plus documents they can use in patient education. Patients and their families can learn how to research specific cancers and can read documents on screening, detection, diagnosis, treatment, and more. The general public can access a wealth of highly readable factual information.

U.K. Lottery Profits of Finance Space Center

Space science has hit the jackpot: Profits from the British lottery, thanks to a special grants committee, are going to help pay for construction of a National Space Science Center (NSSC) in Leicester, United Kingdom. The lottery-funded Millennium Commission announced early this week that it would spend 23 million pounds ($37.6 million) on the NSSC, which will feature a planetarium, exhibits, and access to scientists working on satellites and other instruments.

Eastern North Greenland 1994, the 1:500 000 mapping project

The second field season of the Geological Survey of Greenland's (GGU) mapping project in eastern North Greenland (1993–95) was carried out according to plan and with full accomplishment of all geoscientific goals. The programme aims at producing a general overview of the onshore geology of the Jokelbugten to Kronprins Christian Land region (78–81 °N) in eastern North Greenland (Fig. 1) to be compiled as sheet no. 9 in GGU's 1:500 000 geological map sheet series; this is the last remaining incomplete map sheet at this scale in North and North-East Greenland. The field work was initiated in 1993 with limited reconnaissance work (Henriksen, 1994a), and in 1994 the first of two more intensive field campaigns was carried out. In addition to establishing a general overview of the regional geology the work aims at obtaining an evaluation of the economic geological potential of the region, in respect of both minerals and hydrocarbons. Two glaciological programmes were fully integrated with the project: one was carried out by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWi), Bremerhaven, Germany, while the other was partly based on a special grant from the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Recovering endangered species and restoring ecosystems: conservation planning for the twenty‐first century in the United States

The Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended, is one of the most significant pieces of conservation legislation ever passed in the United States. The passage of this act spawned the creation of the Endangered Species Program of the US. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Under the Act, the USFWS has responsibility for implementing many provisions of the Act: listings, consultations, enforcement of prohibitions and recovery planning. Recovering threatened and endangered species, as well as other declining species yet to be listed, is accomplished through many of the activities that occur under the auspices of the Act, not only through the formal recovery planning process. The Act is fundamentally an instrument for ecosystem conservation, although this aspect of the Act is often over‐looked. Planning and implementing an ecosystem approach to conservation activities is a priority for the USFWS, not only for threatened and endangered species but for all wildlife. The recent emphasis on regional habitat conservation planning and the development of regional and multi‐species recovery plans are indicative of the priority placed on sound ecosystem conservation planning. All of these processes are implemented with the participation of the potentially affected communities and state wildlife management agencies through a public review process. State conservation agencies are part of the process through a special grant programme.

Health care technology in France

The French health care system combines freedom of medical practice with nation-wide social security. The system is centrally regulated with specific attention to technology. Prices and budgets are also regulated. Despite these controls, concerns about quality of care began to appear in France in the 1970s. At the same time, increasing costs became an issue. Health care technology assessment has been under discussion as part of the solution to these problems since the early 1980s, but little was done until 1989, when a national agency was established to develop and coordinate health care technology assessment in France. In 1991, a new law on hospitalization strengthened the role of the government in health care and required extensive evaluation activities. The law has made legal requirements for the health care system and the government at all levels, as well as establishing specific institutions and public grants to support evaluation and related activities. While further evolution of the health care system is inevitable, it seems clear that technology assessment is becoming one of the key tools for addressing problems of quality of care and rising costs.

On the SUT Special Grant for Research Promotion

On the SUT Special Grant for Research Promotion

Implementing supported housing in state and local mental health systems.

The Ohio Department of Mental Health has aggressively promoted the development of supported housing--affordable, permanent community housing along with a system of needed support services--for adults with serious mental illness. The authors outline the development of supported housing programs by the state and by Franklin County, Ohio, beginning in the mid-1980s. The county's program, implemented mainly through the county authority for substance abuse and mental health services and a separate nonprofit housing corporation, was assisted by a major grant and loan from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Program on Chronic Mental Illness, federal Section 8 housing certificates, and special grants from the Ohio Department of Mental Health. Both the state and the county formulated and followed comprehensive housing development plans. Both entities used creative financing mechanisms, including leveraging, to bring in additional public and private funds, and they worked to involve consumers and families in formulating policies and developing services.

Meeting the nation's health objectives: special project grants.

The purpose of this article is to encourage and motivate the nursing community to become active partners with the US Public Health Service in meeting the health objectives for the nation by the year 2000. The three major public health goals to be achieved during the 1990s are identified. The Special Project Grant Program in the Division of Nursing, Bureau of Health Professions, Health Resources and Services Administration, United States Public Health Service, is described as an opportune resource for nurses to use in their search for funds to demonstrate the ability and capacity of nursing to promote health and prevent disease in this nation's high-risk and underserved populations. Several descriptions of highly successful grants, funded by the Division of Nursing's Special Project Grant Program, are featured as motivating examples of creative and original endeavors by nursing to assist in meeting this nation's health objectives during the 1990s.

“The Struggle Continues”: Métis Lands and Self-Government

April 1875 Vital Grandin, Catholic bishop for the Canadian North Western parish of St. Albert, wrote to the Minister of the Interior regarding conditions in the region. Grandin raised concerns about the Metis population, relaying their continuing claim of mistreatment by the Dominion government. [W]e know too well that we have nothing to hope from the Canadian government except and contempt, the Metis had reportedly told the bishop, ... the facts which have occurred and are still taking place at Red River are proof of it.(f.1) Generating this ill will issues relating to Metis tenure and self government, elements which early studies have portrayed as sites of struggle for Metis people during the late nineteenth century.(f.2) According to several works written by Joe Sawchuck, Don McLean and Donald Purich over the past 15 years, the Metis during this century have remained locked in conflict with the Canadian government over the same two issues.(f.3)The Dumont case, a lawsuit currently being waged by the Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF) against the federal government, is one indication that the struggle does continue for the Metis. Lawyers representing the MMF maintain that Canada used legislative amendments to circumvent its obligations to the Metis under Sections 31 - 33 of the Manitoba Act. The end result, noted one MMF lawyer, was that the Metis were promised and didn't get it. This allegation is the focal point of Metis Lands in Manitoba, the product of research conducted on be - half of the federal Department of Justice by Thomas Flanagan, a political scientist at the University of Calgary.At the outset Flanagan insists that, while the Department of Justice commissioned this research, his analysis is an uncompromised examination of the issue. Lawyers with the department reportedly asked only for the facts as I saw (viii), a claim that is intended to assure readers that Flanagan's conclusions are based on a thorough review of the documentary record and nothing more.(f.4) The endnotes lend credence to this, illustrating the impressive array of archival materials which Flanagan consulted, including the diaries of Abbe N.L. Ritchot, a Metis delegate who played a prominent role in the negotiation of what became the Manitoba Act.The facts, according to Flanagan, show that Canada faithfully discharged its duties as setout by Section 31 of the Manitoba Act regarding the distribution of 1.4 million acres of to the Metis. There is simply no evidence to sustain that the government never gave the 1.4 million acres to the Metis, notes Flanagan, or that it defrauded them of their land (94). He expresses similar sentiments regarding the federal government's compliance with Section 32 of the act guaranteeing Metis settlers ownership of lands settled prior to 1870. In all parishes Manitoba Act [land] patents granted where people really lived, while homesteads and special grants used to give free in marginal cases (189). What, then, spawned the so - called wild allegations that the Dominion government failed to fulfill its responsibilities to the Manitoba Metis? The author cites misinterpretation by the Metis of the purpose of the Manitoba Act and the manner of its application after 1870.Ritchot's diaries are fundamental to Flanagan's sub - thesis of the Metis misinterpretation of the intention of the Manitoba Act. According to Flanagan the diaries reveal that Metis support for the Manitoba Act was based on both the written text of the act and certain assurances offered during negotiations between the Metis and Georges Etienne Cartier. the end, argues Flanagan, the Metis assumed that the 1.4 million - acre grant promised in Section 31 would be allocated in large segments for the purpose of creating French enclaves in the province of Manitoba (46, 67 - 68). Flanagan suggests that this interpretation read too much into what general assurances on the part of the Canadian government that the Metis would receive a certain amount of land. …

REFLECTIONS ON THE AMERICA 2000 EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION ACT

The focus of my remarks will be narrow: Title V of S.1141, the “AMERICA 2000 Excellence in Education Act.” This section of the bill, entitled “Parental Choice of Schools,” authorizes the appropriation of federal grants for local educational agencies that implement educational choice programs; assures that Chapter I remedial educational services will be available for children participating in educational choice programs; and provides special grants for educational choice programs of national significance. A key aspect of these provisions—and one of its most controversial — is the requirement that an “educational choice program” must include both public and nonpublic educational options. Thus, for example, section 523(b) defines “educational choice program” as: a program adopted by a State or by a local educational agency under which (1) parents select the school, including private schools, in which their children will be enrolled; and (2) sufficient financial support is provided to enable a significant num...

“Materials” Education: The Second Time Around

Robert Sproull, the director of AREA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) in the Pentagon, recorded that Pennsylvania State University and Carnegie Institute of Technology first made proposals in 1957 for “interdisciplinary block funding” in what would essentially become “materials” research. But it was the industrial push (by W.O. Baker of AT&T Bell Laboratories and C.G. Suits of General Electric) that helped ARPA start the funding of 12 interdisciplinary materials research laboratories (IDMRLs) between 1960 and 1963. Pennsylvania State University was added in 1963 as a special modest grant limited to materials preparation (synthesis and processing). NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission added six more within two years. The first interdisciplinary degree program in “materials” (then called solid-state technology), administered directly by a graduate school committee drawn from 10 departments, was started under my chairmanship, at Penn State in 1959-60. Probably the first departmental degree program in which a metallurgy department expanded its scope (and changed its name) to include other materials was started at nearly the same time at North western University by Prof. M.E. Fine. It is noteworthy that at least in these two cases the intellectual and curricular argument for integration of degree work preceded the research grants and organization. These two separate patterns have both now permeated the entire national system, and we should clearly distinguish between them. By 1969 the first national colloquy on materials, held at Penn State and published under the title Materials Science and Engineering in the U.S., took an evaluative look at materials education.

On the Semantics and Pragmatics of dake (and only)

No abstract.

ROAD GRANTS, INTERGOVERNMENTAL COMPETITION AND THE BENEFITS OF DUPLICATION

Abstract: This article argues that direct commonwealth involvement in road funding and road policy has benefited the states and local government. Although inefficiencies and friction are evident as a result of joint funding, the benefits of multiple accountability outweigh the costs. A competitive dynamic underlies the involvement of all three levels of government, producing outcomes that no single government dominates, but which reflect in part the responses of each to their respective constituencies. The commonwealth has been driven to more intrusive forms of intervention as existing controls failed to achieve the commonwealth's objectives, and to expanding its financial contributions to counter the diversion of funds by state governments. Its commitment to funding the road program is likely to be highest when its specific purpose grants can be identified closely with the provision of roads in particular regions and localities. In sum, joint funding of the road program produces a system that is responsive to competing conceptions and interests, and the commonwealth's “voluntary vacancy” from all but “national” roads is on balance likely to be detrimental to the program.

Grants increased by 50% but without ringfencing

Health Secretary William Waldegrave last week announced a 50 per cent increase in specific grants to local authorities for AIDS, mental illness, alcohol and drug misuse work.