PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN HUNGARY

Mrs. Deri, after stating that in Hungary today there is a satisfactory number of women students in higher education, splits up the total figures for women students at university into fields of study and shows which ones women usually prefer. She then reviews briefly the results of a sociological survey concerning various questions related to women in higher education, before and after graduation, their professional choices and career opportunities

Mrs. Vera Deri is attached to the Pedagogical Research Centre for Higher Education, Budapest, Hungary     

The multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA): a case study in European collaboration

The MRCA is being developed by a consortium of British, German and Italian industries. The respective governments supporting the project embarked on it with various economic, political and social objectives in mind. These objectives could only be resolved by a succession of compromises, some of which have proved to be to the detriment of the project.The participating aircraft industries set out to succeed where others had failed; to produce a variable-geometry multi-role aircraft at reasonable cost. The attraction of such an aircraft lies in the possibility of constructing a common structure which can be adapted, without too much extra expense, to carry out various strategic roles. But there are technological hazards to be overcome; the mechanism has to be unusually complicated, a high degree of innovation is demanded, and particular attention has to be paid to the problem of reliability.Considerable technical uncertainty surrounds the MRCA programme, especially with respect to the wing-joints. This uncertainty has been heightened by the unsatisfactory manner in which the development has been divided between the participating countries. The dispersion of engineering between Edinburgh and Turin leads to technological inefficiencies and to severe problems of communication.The Panavia organization was set up with the purpose of keeping the programme under close surveillance and control. Multi-national committees make the decisions. The organization is noted for its bureaucratic procedures and for its inflexibility; deviations from the pre-ordained plan cause considerable expense, delay and dislocation. The collaboration was expected to secure a large market for the aircraft. However, orders have fallen since the beginning of the programme, and further reductions are to be expected. As orders fall, the unit cost of the final product rises. It seems likely that the aircraft will be considerably more expensive than initially predicted.Many of the deficiencies of the MRCA project are evident in other joint programmes, military and civilian. It is concluded that collaboration is inherently an inefficient and uneconomic means of developing aircraft.     

Evaluation of a randomized intervention to delay sexual initiation among fifth-graders followed through the sixth grade

US adolescents initiate sex at increasingly younger ages, yet few pregnancy prevention interventions for children as young as 10-12 years old have been evaluated. Sixteen Washington, DC schools were randomly assigned to intervention versus control conditions. Beginning in 2001/02 with fifth-grade students and continuing during the sixth grade, students completed pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys each school year. Each year, the intervention included 10-13 classroom sessions related to delaying sexual initiation. Linear hierarchical models compared outcome changes between intervention and control groups by gender over time. Results show the intervention significantly decreased a rise over time in the anticipation of having sex in the next 12 months among intervention boys versus control boys, but it had no other outcome effects. Among girls, the intervention had no significant outcome effects. One exception is that for both genders, compared with control students, intervention students increased their pubertal knowledge. In conclusion, a school-based curriculum to delay sexual involvement among fifth-grade and sixth-grade high-risk youths had limited impact. Additional research is necessary to outline effective interventions, and more intensive, comprehensive interventions may be required to counteract adverse circumstances in students' lives and pervasive influences toward early sex.ClinicalTrials. gov identifier: NCT00341471.