The privatisation of public schooling in New Zealand

This paper examines recent privatisation practices in New Zealand public schooling. The standard political rhetoric is that free publicly provided schooling is guaranteed by statute. This position may be challenged by reference to two apparently insignificant practical examples of the way in which policy gives effect to privatisation in public schooling: (1) the commissioning of national assessment strategy policy advice, and (2) the award of contestable funding for the provision of support services to schools. It is argued that such practices advance neoliberal theories of schooling at the expense of the previous social democratic liberal settlement. The paper considers some possible consequences of increased privatisation of policy advice and service provision for understandings of and commitments to public schooling.     

Improving the learning of Boolean queries by means of a multiobjective IQBE evolutionary algorithm

The Inductive Query By Example (IQBE) paradigm allows a system to automatically derive queries for a specific Information Retrieval System (IRS). Classic IRSs based on this paradigm [Smith, M., & Smith, M. (1997). The use of genetic programming to build Boolean queries for text retrieval through relevance feedback. Journal of Information Science, 23(6), 423–431] generate a single solution (Boolean query) in each run, that with the best fitness value, which is usually based on a weighted combination of the basic performance criteria, precision and recall.     

Spontaneous Tumor Lysis Syndrome in an Infant: A Case Report

Tumor lysis syndrome has been observed in patients with malignancies with high cellular burden and high cell turnover, tumor sensitive to therapy, especially after initiating medical treatment. It very rarely occurs spontaneously. The case described here is of 6 months male infant who presented with fever since 1 month and loose stools associated with blood since 15 days. The laboratory investigations showed lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) of 6,192 IU/L and serum uric acid 18.2 mg/dl along with pancytopenia. The infant presented with electrolyte abnormalities and renal failure.     

Rapid mask prototyping for microfluidics

With the rise of microfluidics for the past decade, there has come an ever more pressing need for a low-cost and rapid prototyping technology, especially for research and education purposes. In this article, we report a rapid prototyping process of chromed masks for various microfluidic applications. The process takes place out of a clean room, uses a commercially available video-projector, and can be completed in less than half an hour. We quantify the ranges of fields of view and of resolutions accessible through this video-projection system and report the fabrication of critical microfluidic components (junctions, straight channels, and curved channels). To exemplify the process, three common devices are produced using this method: a droplet generation device, a gradient generation device, and a neuro-engineering oriented device. The neuro-engineering oriented device is a compartmentalized microfluidic chip, and therefore, required the production and the precise alignment of two different masks.     

Analysis of publications of the pilot issue of the data collection of the All-Russia Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Industry of Nanosystems and Nanomaterials”

The pilot issue of the data collection of the All-Russian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Industry of Nanosystems and Nanomaterials” gives an approximate view of the state of this field of science at the beginning of 2007. The topics of articles in the pilot issue are analyzed. The directions of development of nanotechnologies are shown. The basic types of nanomaterials, the methods of their production, and their properties and applications are given.