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The Life and Death of Mr. Badman June 18, 2017 - The Life and Death of Mr. Badman
Chapter 19 – Future Happiness Not To Be Hoped In A Quite Hardened Death - Part 1
We continue on in this chapter with more of the reasons of certainty that Badman did not go to heaven. Let's look at the word, consternation. According to vocabulary.com, it means; "Consternation is a noun that can stop you in your tracks because it means "a sudden, alarming amazement or dread that results in utter confusion; dismay." If you have a sense of consternation you have become afraid, disoriented, or completely befuddled. It kind of sounds like Alzheimer's too doesn't it. It causes people to lose their memory, their mind, speaking things they wouldn't normally have spoken, their under fear etc. This is too what happens to people as they die.
Let's read a bit of what Wiseman says regarding the kinds of death that people die.
WISEMAN Suppose one man should die quietly, another should die suddenly, and a third should die under great consternation of spirit; no one can judge of their eternal condition by the way they died. He who dies quietly, suddenly, or under consternation of spirit, may go to heaven or to hell; no one can tell where a man goes by the way he died.
Mr. Badman had no remorse for his sin and yet died with a peaceful look on his countenance and peaceful state on his body. The external does not determine the internal condition of the heart and whether they are right with God or not. There is strong deception in drawing conclusions about how a person appears emotionally when they die as we've just read. Assuming that someone is going to heaven solely based on their countenance at death, doesn't determine heaven or hell. This has to be very clear in the hearts of the reader today.
Let's continue to read what Wiseman says about suicide and by despair as Badmans two brothers did.
"However, there is in some cases a judgement to be made of a man's eternal condition by the way he died. Suppose a man murdered himself, or live a wicked life, and, after that, died in utter despair. Without doubt, this sort of man will go to hell. And here I take the occasion to speak of two of Mr. Badman's brothers, for you know I told you before that he had brothers, and how they died. One of them killed himself, and the other, after a wicked life, died in utter despair. Now, I should not be afraid to conclude concerning both of them, that they went by and through their death to hell."
Suicide is a sensitive subject that most people shun from. Reality is, if someone commits murder, it leads to hell and eternal damnation, if not repented of. 1 John 3:14-15 says; "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Murder as we sees has it's root in hate. So whether it's hatred to others or self-hatred.
Wiseman describes in detail how Badman's brother committed suicide. People will justify suicide by saying that since it's their own body, they can do whatever they want to it. No, you're made in the image of God and there is no right to murder yourself. Murder is murder, whether it's someone else or yourself.
The conversation continues talking about a very famous King in the Old Testmant, that is King Saul. So let's read about him in 1 Samuel 28:3-19; "Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had lamented for him and buried him in Ramah, in his own city. And Saul had put the mediums and the spiritists out of the land. Then the Philistines gathered together, and came and encamped at Shunem. So Saul gathered all Israel together, and they encamped at Gilboa. When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly. And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or by the prophets. Then Saul said to his servants, "Find me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman inquire of her." And his servants said to him, "In fact, there is a woman who is a medium at En Dor." So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothes, and he went, and two men with him; and they came to the woman by night. And he said, "Please conduct a séance for me, and bring up for me the one I shall name to you." Then the woman said to him, "Look, you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the spiritists from the land. Why then do you lay a snare for my life, to cause me to die?" And Saul swore to her by the Lord, saying, "As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing." Then the woman said, "Whom shall I bring up for you?" And he said, "Bring up Samuel for me." When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And the woman spoke to Saul, saying, "Why have you deceived me? For you are Saul!" And the king said to her, "Do not be afraid. What did you see?" And the woman said to Saul, "I saw a spirit ascending out of the earth." So he said to her, "What is his form?" And she said, "An old man is coming up, and he is covered with a mantle." And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground and bowed down. Now Samuel said to Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?" And Saul answered, "I am deeply distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God has departed from me and does not answer me anymore, neither by prophets nor by dreams. Therefore I have called you, that you may reveal to me what I should do." Then Samuel said: "So why do you ask me, seeing the Lord has departed from you and has become your enemy? And the Lord has done for Himself as He spoke by me. For the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David. Because you did not obey the voice of the Lord nor execute His fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day. Moreover the Lord will also deliver Israel with you into the hand of the Philistines. And tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The Lord will also deliver the army of Israel into the hand of the Philistines ."
King Saul initially was doing what God had commanded him to do by removing the wickedness from the land, including spiritists and mediums. But as he had lost favour with God, God wasn't speaking to him anymore, he goes to enquire of the demonic realm through this witch.The spirit who was brought up from the dead, was not the prophet Samuel, it was a demon, a familiar spirit, clothed to look like Samuel.
Once you've died, you cannot go back to earth unless God raises you from the dead, which Jesus did and has been done throughout history in His name. Hebrews 9:27 says; "And as it appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." But conjuring up someone who has died and is buried in the ground, their spirit cannot return to even talk or communicate with the living. Oh, mediums and the demons will say that they're that person, but they're not.
So here are the lies and the deception that came upon King Saul; he not only had God depart from him because he rebelled and didn't do what God had commanded, he's now consulting witches, talking to demons and does die as the demon said he would. If God had forsaken Saul, do you think He'd turn around and give him direction through a witch? No. How deceptive of the devil to say that that very day, King Saul and his sons would be with him. Saul thought he'd be in Paradise with Samuel so it brought him comfort, but no, he'd be in hell with the devil. The devil wanted to take King Saul out, so he coerced him by going into battle and hence Saul died.
I'd like to share what Matthew Henry's Commentary says about this story. "We have here the conference between Saul and Satan. Saul came in disguise (1 Sam. 28:8), but Satan soon discovered him, 1 Sam. 28:12. Satan comes in disguise, in the disguise of Samuel's mantle, and Saul cannot discover him. Such is the disadvantage we labour under, in wrestling with the rulers of the darkness of this world, that they know us, while we are ignorant of their wiles and devices. I. The spectre, or apparition, personating Samuel, asks why he is sent for (1 Sam. 28:15): Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up? To us this discovers that it was an evil spirit that personated Samuel; for (as bishop Patrick observes) it is not in the power of witches to disturb the rest of good men and to bring them back into the world when they please; nor would the true Samuel have
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman acknowledged such a power in magical arts: but to Saul this was a proper device of Satan's, to draw veneration from him, to possess him with an opinion of the power of divination, and so to rivet him in the devil's interests ."
Is this going on in the body of Christ today? Are mediums working in your midst? There is a tragic end to Sauls life as we read in 1 Samuel 31:1-6; "Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. Then the Philistines followed hard after Saul and his sons. And the Philistines killed Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua, Saul's sons. The battle became fierce against Saul. The archers hit him, and he was severely wounded by the archers. Then Saul said to his armorbearer, "Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised men come and thrust me through and abuse me." But his armorbearer would not, for he was greatly afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword and fell on it. And when his armorbearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword, and died with him. So Saul, his three sons, his armorbearer, and all his men died together that same day." King Saul tried to commit suicide by falling on his sword but he didn't die, so he asks his armourbearer - but he didn't and as we read in the following scripture, he asks for his enemy, an Amalakite to finally kill him.
2 Samuel 1:1-16 tells us about how the news of Saul's death reached David. It says; "Now it came to pass after the death of Saul, when David had returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, and David had stayed two days in Ziklag, on the third day, behold, it happened that a man came from Saul's camp with his clothes torn and dust on his head. So it was, when he came to David, that he fell to the ground and prostrated himself. And David said to him, "Where have you come from?" So he said to him, "I have escaped from the camp of Israel." Then David said to him, "How did the matter go? Please tell me." And he answered, "The people have fled from the battle, many of the people are fallen and dead, and Saul and Jonathan his son are dead also." So David said to the young man who told him, "How do you know that Saul and Jonathan his son are dead?" Then the young man who told him said, "As I happened by chance to be on Mount Gilboa, there was Saul, leaning on his spear; and indeed the chariots and horsemen followed hard after him. Now when he looked behind him, he saw me and called to me. And I answered, 'Here I am.' And he said to me, 'Who are you?' So I answered him, 'I am an Amalekite.' He said to me again, 'Please stand over me and kill me, for anguish has come upon me, but my life still remains in me.' So I stood over him and killed him, because I was sure that he could not live after he had fallen. And I took the crown that was on his head and the bracelet that was on his arm, and have brought them here to my lord." Therefore David took hold of his own clothes and tore them, and so did all the men who were with him. And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son, for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword. Then David said to the young man who told him, "Where are you from?" And he answered, "I am the son of an alien." So David said to him, "How was it you were not afraid to put forth your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed?" Then David called one of the young men and said, "Go near, and execute him!" And he struck him so that he died. So David said to him, "Your blood is on your own head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, 'I have killed the Lord's anointed.'"
Saul was ultimately killed by someone, an Amalekite, from the same tribe that God gave Saul instruction to totally destroy but Saul disobeyed God and did not follow his orders, and lost his kingdom and in the end was murdered by that enemy, after a failed attempt of suicide. Look at the damage and trouble that King Saul was in as a result of not dealing with the enemy that God commanded him to deal with in his life. After his failed death in falling on his own sword, Saul requests this Amalakite to finish him off. Today we could call it assisted suicide.
So let me ask you today, what are the areas in your life that God wants you to utterly do away with before they gain entrance into your life and destroy you? Some examples could be keeping bad company, secular
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman entertainment, social media sites that are bombarding your life with all sorts of temptation; be it sexual sin, materialism, secular humanism, seeker friendly comfort churches that don't talk about sin, etc. Whatever the situations that are setting you up to sin, if they are not dealt with and done away with in your life, they can and will lead you down a road of destruction, like that of Saul.
Matthew 7:13 says, "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it."
Let's look at some examples in the Bible of those who committed suicide.
1. Abimelech, who was one of the sons of Gideon and also one of the Judges in Israel. He committed suicide as it says in Judges 9:54; "Abimelech called hastily unto the young man his armour-bearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died."
2. "And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed with all his might; and the house fell...upon all the people that were therein (Judges 16:30)."
3. "Saul took a sword and fell on it (1 Sam. 31:4)."
4. "When [Saul's] armour-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise upon his sword, and died (1 Sam 31:5)."
5. "When Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he...got him home to his house, to his city, and put his house in order, and hanged himself, and died (2 Sam. 17:23)."
6. "It came to pass, when Zimri saw that the city was taken, that he went into the palace of the king's house, and burnt the king's house over him with fire, and died (1 Kings 16:18)."
7. "[Judas] cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself (Matt. 27:5)."
I'd like to continue to read what Wiseman says; "I must confess, I am no admirer of sick-bed repentance, for I think truthfully it is seldom good for anything. But I say, he who has lived in sin and profaneness all his days, as Mr. Badman did, and yet dies quietly — that is, without repentance — enters in between life and death, and has assuredly gone to hell and is damned. This was so in Mr. Badman's case. He had behind him a sinful life, and that to the very last, yet he died quietly and without repentance, and has gone to hell and is damned. For the nature of repentance, I have touched on that already, and shown that it is never present in a quiet death where the life has been accompanied by sin; and therefore Mr. Badman has gone to hell."
So the conclusion that we can draw from the above examples, is that they didn't go to heaven, but to hell. It is a spirit of murder that is behind this when people commit suicide.
Romans 8:14-16 says; "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father." The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God." If you are a born again
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman
Christian - truly - you will not consider taking your life because you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is your heavenly Father and He loves you and you love Him!
John 8:31-47 says; "Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." They answered Him, "We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, 'You will be made free'?" Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. "I know that you are Abraham's descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with[a] your father." They answered and said to Him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. You do the deeds of your father." Then they said to Him, "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God." Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God."
These were the religious leaders who said they believed in Jesus, but really didn't, as Jesus saw their hearts. What it comes right down to is this; are you serving your father in heaven on earth leading you to eternal life in heaven or are you serving your father the devil on earth leading you to eternal life in Hell? There's no in between, no middle ground, no half stepping it as a Christian. There has to be a lifestyle of repentance that leads to salvation. Being a Christian requires repentance of your sins.
Revelation 3:15-22
"I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, 'I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing'—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked— I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."'"
Jesus is talking to the churches in this scripture, not to unbelievers. A lukewarm Christian is the one Jesus will vomit out of his mouth, not thinking that you don't need a lifestyle of repentance in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus says, be zealous and repent! 1 John 1:5-10 says; "This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. "
There is such a need of confession of sins that leads to repentance. Your Christian life and walk has to be walked out daily. It's not a onetime prayer, you work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Jesus told his disciples to forgive up to 70 times 7 in a day! Don't think you don't need to be walking in forgiveness and repentance on a daily basis. We can't say that those who commit suicide have mental illness, depression or any other name; no, it's a spirit of murder, self-murder. If repentance of sins occurs, suicide will not take over your life because you no longer live for self but to serve the Lord Jesus.
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Discretionary Housing Payments
DHP Policy
September 2016
Contents
Background
Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are allocated by local authorities to help those in receipt of Housing Benefit (HB), or the housing costs element of Universal Credit (UCHC), who require further financial assistance to meet their housing costs.
The legislation governing DHPs can be found in s69 of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 and in the Discretionary Financial Assistance Regulations 2001 (SI 2001 No. 1167).
The DWP set a maximum amount each year that Exeter City Council can award through DHP.
DHPs play an important role in helping tenants retain their tenancies, prevent homelessness, and enable tenants to move to more affordable accommodation. The payments can cover all or part of a shortfall in a tenant's rent, or cover rent in advance, deposits, and other costs that a tenant may incur to secure a new affordable tenancy.
Due to the limited nature of the fund, DHPs are normally only awarded to provide short term help and not on an ongoing basis. This will allow applicants time to consider their housing options, to take reasonable steps to improve or resolve their situation, and come to a long term sustainable solution. Supporting people in the short term to help them to improve their own situation is a key aim of the DHP policy.
The main features of the scheme are that:
DHPs are discretionary
Applicants do not have a statutory right to a payment
It is a cash limited fund
The Benefits and Welfare Service administers the scheme
DHPs are not a payment of Housing Benefit or Universal Credit
Housing Benefit or Universal Credit with a Housing Costs element must be in payment in the benefit week that a DHP is awarded for.
Purpose of the Policy
The purpose of this policy is to specify how Exeter City Council's Benefits and Welfare Service will operate the scheme and to indicate some of the factors that will be considered when deciding if a DHP award can be made.
Each case will be treated strictly on its merits.
All applicants will be treated equally and fairly when the scheme is administered.
Statement of objectives
The Benefits and Welfare Service will seek through the operation of this policy to:
help those who are trying to help themselves
alleviate poverty
safeguard Exeter residents in their homes
encourage Exeter residents to obtain and sustain employment
support vulnerable young people in the transition to adult life
keep families together
support vulnerable people in the local community
help applicants through personal crises and difficult life events
DHP awards will not be used to undermine the ambition of welfare reform to encourage people currently out of work to take their first steps into employment, nor support irresponsible behaviour, nor assist in situations that are so prevalent that a consistent approach to making such payments would involve expenditure above the maximum allowed.
When administering DHP the Council will take a broad view, considering the whole circumstances of an applicant; all the options available to them; how the Council can use DHP to help the applicant overcome any barriers; and where necessary refer applicants to appropriate employment, welfare, budgeting and housing advice. Where it is apparent that an applicant is not claiming another state benefit they may be entitled to, they will be advised to make a claim in order to maximise their income.
Claiming a DHP
DHPs can be requested from the Benefits and Welfare Service through any channel (telephone, face to face, email, in writing etc.) by anyone (claimant, family member, landlord, support worker etc.)
Following the initial request a DHP application form may be issued to gather full details, unless the claim can be determined without a form.
The applicant will be required to return the form to the Benefits and Welfare Service within one month of its issue with any relevant supporting evidence.
The Benefits and Welfare Service may request evidence in support of an application.
The Benefits and Welfare Service reserves the right to verify any information or evidence provided as part of or in support of an application.
Awarding a DHP
The Benefits and Welfare Service will retain full discretion when deciding whether or not to award a DHP, the amount and duration of any award. Decisions will be made in compliance with the relevant legislation and case law. When considering applications, regard will be had to this policy, guidance and good practice from the DWP.
The current DWP guidance can be found on gov.uk or using the following link in the electronic version of this document. Current DWP DHP guide
When making their decision the Benefits and Welfare Service will consider:
the shortfall between Housing Benefit / Universal Credit and the rent liability
the steps taken by the applicant to reduce their rent liability
the medical circumstances (including ill health and disabilities) of the applicant, their partner and any dependants and any other occupants of the applicant's home
the income and expenditure of the applicant, their partner and any dependants or other occupants of the applicant's home
any savings or capital held by the applicant or their family
the level of indebtedness of the applicant and their family
the exceptional nature of the applicant and their family's circumstances
the length of time they have lived in the property
the possible impact on the Council and other public authorities of not making such an award, e.g. the pressure on priority homeless accommodation
previous awards
such other circumstances and information that the officer considers relevant in a particular case
The decision maker may consider it appropriate to meet with the applicant to help achieve full understanding of their circumstances. This could be at the applicant's home or council offices. Applicants may be asked to provide details of their income and outgoings to assess the extent of their financial hardship.
An award of a DHP does not guarantee that a further award will be made at a later date even if the applicant's circumstances have not changed. The DHP awarded may be less than the difference between the rent liability and the amount of Housing Benefit / Universal Credit paid.
Period of award
The Benefits and Welfare Service will decide the length of time for which a DHP will be awarded on the basis of the evidence supplied and the facts known.
The start date of an award will usually be the Monday after the written claim for a DHP is received by the Benefits and Welfare Service
The maximum length of award will usually be to the end of the tenancy or a period not exceeding 12 months.
The Benefits and Welfare Service will consider any reasonable request for starting an award from an earlier date. Awards will normally be limited to starting in the current financial year.
Method of payment
The Benefits and Welfare Service will decide the most appropriate person to pay based upon the circumstances of each case. This could include paying:
the applicant or their partner
an appointee
their landlord (or an agent of the landlord) or
any third party to whom it might be most appropriate to make payment.
The Benefits and Welfare Service will pay an award of DHP by the most appropriate means available in each case.
This could include payment:
to a bank account
by crediting the applicant's rent account;
Payment frequency will normally be in line with payment of Housing Benefit.
Notification of a decision
The Benefits and Welfare Service will inform the applicant in writing of the outcome of their application as soon as is reasonably practical. Where the application is unsuccessful, the Benefits and Welfare Service will set out the reasons why this decision was made and explain the right of review. Where the application is successful, the Benefits and Welfare Service will advise:
the weekly amount of DHP awarded
whether it is paid in advance or in arrears
the period of the award
how, when and to whom the award will be paid
the requirement to report a change in circumstances
Changes of circumstances
Decisions may be reviewed where the Benefits and Welfare Service think fit. Awards of DHP, including periods already paid, may be revised where the applicant's circumstances have materially changed.
The right to seek a review
DHPs are not payments of Housing Benefit or Universal Credit and are therefore not subject to the statutory appeals process.
The Benefits and Welfare Service will operate the following principles when dealing with a review request following a refusal to award a DHP, a decision to award a reduced amount of DHP, a decision not to backdate a DHP or a decision that there has been an overpayment of a DHP.
An applicant (or their appointee or agent) who disagrees with a DHP decision may request a review. This should be delivered in writing to the Benefits and Welfare Service within one calendar month of the written decision about the DHP.
A different officer within the Benefits and Welfare Service will review the case. The officer will review all the evidence held and will make a decision within 14 days of referral or as soon as practicable thereafter.
The outcome of the review will be notified to the applicant in writing, setting out the reasons for their decision.
The decision made by the reviewing officer will be final.
In exceptional circumstances only, any of the above time periods for review may be extended by the officer. In deciding to extend, they will take into account any delay in seeking independent advice that was outside the control of the applicant.
Overpayments
The Benefits and Welfare Service will normally seek to recover any overpaid DHP if the applicant has misrepresented or failed to disclose a material fact in their application or an error was made at the point of making the decision.
An invoice will be issued to the applicant or the person to whom the award was paid.
The decision letter that notifies a decision that there is an overpayment will also set out the right of review.
Consideration of the reasonableness of recovery action in a particular case will be in line with the Council's overpayment policy.
Vulnerability and equalities
The Benefits and Welfare Service will have regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) when considering claims for DHP. It is recognised that DHP has a pivotal role to play in mitigating the harshest effects of welfare reforms on the most vulnerable households, particularly on individuals with protected characteristics.
Being a flexible and discretionary fund, DHP is capable of making finer distinctions than can be achieved through legislation governing statutory entitlements. By identifying those who suffer relative disadvantage because of their protected characteristics, DHP awards should aim to minimise or remove that disadvantage.
Examples of where DHP can be used to further the aims of the PSED:
- Age – Where young individuals cannot reasonably occupy shared accommodation, DHP can be used to top up rent on self-contained property.
- Disability – Where household members are unable to share rooms due to disability but do not meet the threshold in the Housing Benefit regulations for an extra bedroom, DHP can cover the Social Sector Size Restriction.
- Other protected characteristics (gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation) – In any case where a customer's accommodation is unsuitable due to their protected characteristic, for example harassment from neighbours, DHP can be used to help claimants move to more suitable accommodation. It can also be used to support claimants in more expensive accommodation that is particularly suitable to needs arising from their protected characteristic.
- Pregnancy and maternity – Where claimants are expecting a child which will alter their bedroom requirement, DHP can cover the shortfall in advance of the birth allowing the claimant to move and settle before the baby arrives.
Performance and Risk Management
This policy will be regularly reviewed and monitored to ensure that is effective and fit for purpose. The highest risk to the scheme will be the potential to overspend the fund. Expenditure will be reviewed on a monthly basis and reported through the appropriate channels.
Publicity
The Benefits and Welfare Service will publicise the scheme and will work with all interested parties to achieve this. A copy of this policy statement will be made available for inspection and will be posted on Exeter City Council's website.
Fraud
The Benefits and Welfare Service is committed to the fight against fraud in all its forms. An applicant who tries to fraudulently claim a DHP by falsely declaring their circumstances, providing a false statement or evidence in support of their application, may have committed an offence under the Social Security Administration Act 1992 or the Theft Acts 1968 and 1978. Where the Benefits and Welfare Service suspects that such a fraud may have occurred, the matter will be investigated as appropriate and this may lead to criminal proceedings being instigated.
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天主教香港教區 THE CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF HONG KONG
天主教教育事務處
CATHOLIC EDUCATION OFFICE
香港堅道二至八號C 座二樓
電話： 2881 6163 圖文傳真： 2881 5960
電郵：email@example.com
網址： www.catholic.edu.hk
To: All Parish Priests
Dear Reverend Father,
2/F, Block C, 2-8 Caine Road, Hong Kong
Tel：2881 6163 Fax：2881 5960
Email：firstname.lastname@example.org
Website：www.catholic.edu.hk
19 th September 2020
Education Day (27 th September 2020)
"Come, Lord Jesus!"
Every year the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong designates the fourth Sunday of September as Education Day in order to reaffirm and enhance the importance of education, both for individuals and for society at large.
The theme of the Education Day this year is " Come, Lord Jesus!" Our Lord Jesus once commanded, "Behold, I am coming soon. I bring with me the recompense I will give to each according to his deeds."(Rv 22:12) We all are followers of Jesus Christ. Therefore, regardless of the impacts of our ever-changing society, we should adhere to His teachings faithfully.
Let us review the current state of our society while contemplating upon God's word in the Bible. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit will guide and strengthen our convictions, help us fulfil our roles faithfully with gratitude, goodwill and courage in this secular world, where good and evil coexist, and unceasingly hope for the glorious coming of the Kingdom of Christ Our Lord, which is full of love, truth, justice, and peace.
I sincerely hope that you will help convey the message to your parishioners during the Sunday Masses to be celebrated on that day. For this purpose, I have attached herewith some materials for your reference.
According to the Chancery Notice dated 7.9.2020, in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the special collection for the promotion of Catholic education, to be taken up during Mass on this occasion, is to be postponed until further notice by the Chancery.
I wish to take this opportunity to thank you again for your support and guidance to our schools. May God bless you.
Respectfully yours in Christ,
1
Education Day 2020
(Sunday, September 27, 2020)
"Come, Lord Jesus!"
Crises and Difficulties
Since the middle of last year, Hong Kong has witnessed repeated incidents of social protests causing social unrest. Political conflicts arising from the Amendment Draft of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, the National Security Law of HKSAR and the postponement of the Legislative Council Election scheduled for September 2020, have triggered off civil strife between the police and mostly young people, giving rise to many ugly scenes of violence. Society at large, countless social groupings and even families have been severely torn apart owing to political dissent. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the world since the beginning of this year, with over 5,000 confirmed cases and more than 103 deaths in Hong Kong. Schools have been closed for many months. Restaurants, etc. have been intermittently suspended, businesses have stagnated, employees have become unemployed or under-employed, and people's livelihood has been hard hit. Students cannot learn in the usual manner and all normal activities of our society have been seriously impaired. In recent months, major powers in the international political arena have been contending for their dominance in such areas as science and technology, medical care, trade, finance, military capabilities and diplomacy. As an international financial centre and a technologically advanced city, Hong Kong will inevitably be caught up in many of such vortexes. Moreover, the recent implementation of the territory-wide anti-epidemic test has triggered some heated discussions on innovative devices or practices made possible by technological advances, such as the Health Code and the Social Credit System. It is deeply felt that consensus is hard to find and the people of Hong Kong have a long way to go before hopes of social reconciliation materialize.
In the past six months, school teachers have been very busy coping with new teaching modes and rearranging scheduled activities, whereas students have been adapting to the unconventional learning modes. Classroom teaching has to be carried out in a virtual classroom where faces of teachers and students only appear on the screen. Teachers may not be able to immediately perceive students' mastery of what is being taught, while students may not have grasped it thoroughly. Both teachers and students have to adapt to the new way of how assignments are to be submitted and marked. Students may worry that they will not be able to catch up with their school work. They may feel annoyed by being stuck at home all day. They may even worry about their parents' employment which might be adversely affected by the epidemic, and extra expenses at the start of the new school term might cause their families greater financial hardship.
What is lamentable is that our society has been overwhelmed with divergent messages from the media. The so-called "facts" as reported in the press may have occasionally been distorted, obscured and misleading, overstated and fawning, blurred and misfocused, which are most unfortunate. They make people feel helpless, leading eventually to delusion of authenticity, muddling up of information and disinformation, confounding one's ability to tell right from wrong, thus causing injustice in society. What worries Christians most is whether in the future a highly technologically advanced civilized society will, in the name of protecting public and private interests or consolidating governance, be keen to monitor or even to manipulate thoughts and behaviors of its people. Such a society might be, knowingly or unknowingly, on the verge of trampling on the free-will and the dignity of mankind, and desecrating God's sacred portrait imprinted on the human soul, which displays all the good and beauty in its capacity, and its desire for truth and love, as well as for wisdom edified by reasoning.
These personal, family, and social rifts and crises have frustrated and disappointed many people. But there are people in society who adhere to their principles and will not lose hope! The Church, a group of humble, meek and mild Christians, is forever looking forward to Christ, who died but has resurrected―――for when He comes again, it will be the ultimate salvation of humanity. This modest small group imitates the believers of the early Church, holding onto a joyful hope and shouting amidst the difficulties:
"Come! Lord Jesus!"
Outpouring of Grace
History tells us that the Apostles and Christians of the first generation were oppressed by the Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem. This has given impetus for the spread of Christ's gospel and resulted in the establishment of communities of believers in Judah, Samaria, Caesarea, Damascus, Cyprus, Antioch and other distant areas. It demonstrates that abundant grace gushes out from adversities.
The early Christians were also persecuted for refusing to declare that Caesar, their ruler and Emperor of the Roman Empire, was a god. They firmly believed that Lord Jesus Christ, who was put to death and has resurrected, is the Son of the only eternal God. They led a life that was full of holiness, benevolence, peace and justice. They refused to enter the Colosseum to watch criminals and slaves fighting to death and they unconditionally released their slaves out of love. The Church Fathers at that time criticized the Romans for their decadent life style in pursuit of luxury and pleasure, which made those in power feel rather threatened. As a result, Christians were brutally persecuted and killed for the first 300 years or so. They were barred from participation in political life or holding official positions. They were banned from public assemblies and had to meet in catacombs, where they hid and lived in long darkness.
But these early Christians firmly believed in the promise of Lord Jesus Christ to come again! They still cherished hope in the face of adversity, anticipating that He would be "coming in a cloud with power and great glory" (Lk 21:27), and recalled His instructions: "Remember! I'm coming soon...... I will repay everyone according to their behaviour" (Rv. 22:12). Whenever they met, they greeted one another saying, "Come, Lord Jesus!", so as to echo and to intensify the urgent cry for strength in hardship, to encourage each other to remain steadfast in their faith, while longing for justice and peace. The Christian faith was finally granted legal recognition by the Roman Empire in 313 A.D., and has spread all over the world to this day.
"Come! Lord Jesus!"
Strengthening the Virtue of Hope
When people are in good times, especially in an affluent society where advanced economic and technological developments have submerged people in virtual realities that progressively advocate automation and full control over everything via big data, people will easily yield to temptations of all kinds and tend to "become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness" while hunting for power, wealth and interests. People will also incline to focus solely on secular worries and "anxieties of daily life," (Luke 21:34) suffocating their pursuit of humanistic values and realization of truth, goodness and beauty in the human nature. Similarly, in good times, Christians may ignore the Christian way of life and even become indifferent to God. "…… In those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, …… They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be at the coming of the Son of Man." (Mt 24:38-39) There is no longing for or even the awareness for the coming of Christ at any time, let alone "staying awake and pray". This is likened to children who, incapable of self-control, indulge themselves in online videos or games on the night of a weekend when their parents are out at social functions. How would they possibly want their parents to come home very soon and push them to study?
God puts us through difficulties and crises in order to rekindle our desire for noble values so that we will seek the ultimate meaning of life and strengthen our faith, "knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint…" (Rm 5:3-5) Only in the face of severe adversities will man be determined to pursue virtuous principles, and Christians may suddenly realize that deep in their souls they are really longing for the "new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." The ever-changing world with its excessive noise and absurdity makes us truly yearn for the return of Christ the Prince of Peace. Just as most students, who are taken aback upon realizing that the ineffectiveness of their learning is threatening their academic future, after the long absence of companionship in a group learning environment coupled with slackened external supervision. Only then would they begin to desire for an early return to normal school life in a place most conducive to learning while in the company of teachers and friends.
Adversity may be a veiled blessing in disguise and we should be grateful for it.
"Come! Lord Jesus!"
Repent and Be Alert
Since we long for the Prince of Peace and the new heavens and earth to appear in real life, we should not just dream or talk about it, but should repent and lead a righteous life. In the Gospel (the 26th Sunday of the Ordinary Period) Jesus told a parable of the two sons (Mt. 21:28-32). A son said, "Yes, sir" to his father's instructions, but did nothing. The other son said, "I will not" but later obeyed the orders and carried out his father's will. Jesus used this to accuse the chief priests and the elders of the people for failing to follow the teachings of John the Baptist and repent in time, so that tax collectors and prostitutes entered the kingdom of God before them.
Integrity entails the consistency of words and deeds. Verifying one's words with one's deeds is the fundamental of really knowing a person. We teach our students and children such morals and expect the same of interpersonal or international relationships. The same is true for the GodMan relationship and communication. If our longing is no better than lip service without repentance and correspondingly appropriate behavior, how can we call upon Our Lord Jesus to come soon, let alone to "have the strength …… to stand before the Son of Man" when He returns? (Lk 21:36)
Immediately after telling the parable of the two sons, Jesus told the parables of the wicked husbandmen and of the wedding feast. It clearly shows that everyone must have sincerity and good deeds, that is, tenants should pay with their produce on time, whereas guests should wear a formal dress to the wedding banquet, so as to be worthy of the return of Christ and the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Bible repeatedly reminds us to be honest and sincere in repentance, to understand that suffering is often caused by man's own sins and to plead for God's forgiveness and help just as the author of the Psalm (Ps. 25:4-9). We must trust in God's righteousness to reward the good and to punish the evil, and should praise God for His mercy to convert the wicked (Ezk 18:25-28). We should not "grasp" what we think we deserve, but imitate Christ's mind and heart to "empty" and "humble" oneself before the Lord (Ph 2:6-11). We should also "be of the same love", "do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, be humble", "each looking out not for his own interests, but everyone for those of others." (Ph 2:1-5).
Let us contemplate, starting with our daily personal (as students) and community life, and sincerely repent for our shortcomings as we long for the new heavens and new earth, and cry out "Come, Lord Jesus!"
- For not cherishing grace bestowed and for our omissions in community affairs; (Students: late submission or no submission of, or copying others' homework assignments)
- For treating lightly others' goodwill and efforts; (Students: ignoring the advice of parents and teachers)
- For criticizing or complaining maliciously about people or things; (Students: resenting schoolmates)
- For inflicting physical or psychological harm on others in words and deeds; (Students: speaking ill of others)
- For being stubborn, arrogant and failing to respect different viewpoints; (Students: quarrelling with others)
- For ignoring others' dignity in pursuit of power or fortune; (Students: ganging up and bullying classmates)
- For the lukewarm attitude adopted when testifying to truth, justice, love, and peace when necessary; (Students: muddling along in life and in one's studies)
- For the uninterested and indifferent attitude towards the coming of the Kingdom of God; (Students: living aimlessly)
- For… May we reflect deeply, repent sincerely and be converted whole-heartedly.
"Come! Lord Jesus!"
Steadfast Faith
Some Christian philosophers describe despair as a process of soul searching. In the Old Testament, Job faced a series of misfortunes and sickness. When he debated with friends and dialogued with God, he completely turned every inch of his soul over. Finally, he revived in the same heart and soul a much deeper faith. When Christians are on the brink of desperation, they must humbly acknowledge the omnipotence and infinite wisdom of God and entrust themselves to His just and benevolent care.
This is likened to an incident that happened more than six years ago to a veteran media person who holds the conviction of "With Truth in Heart, With a Pen in Hand; To be Free is to be Selfless and Fearless." He was then a former chief editor of a newspaper known for its objectivity and impartiality. He was brutally attacked and severely wounded, not for any known cause related to personal grievances. He and his family still firmly believe that everything is in the hands of the Lord and that everything happens with the Lord's will. While still in their agony they encouraged everyone concerned to remain faithful to their posts and fulfill their personal duties, using the Bible quotes of "…… all things work together for good ……" (Rm 8:28 English Standard Version).
"……we …… boast of …… your endurance and faith in all your persecutions and the afflictions you endure." (2 Th 1:4) "Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen." (Heb 11:1) We worry about the future changes in society, whether the glittering of the past will fade or even disappear. Yet Christians firmly believe that just as Jesus can bring Lazarus back to life, even if the present suffering is likened to darkness in the tomb, it can be perceived as the pain before the birth of a new life. We will still wait patiently with anticipation. (Jn 16:21)
"Come! Lord Jesus!"
What to Do as the Lord Is Coming Soon
The political situation of our society will be affected by changes in the domestic, foreign or international power struggles. The impacts of the epidemic will also fluctuate. Thus the social and political situation is complex and ever-changing. But we firmly believe that the new heavens and earth full of love, faith, justice, and peace of Christ the King will one day come (Ps 85:11). At this moment, we will not wait passively, but will wait for the Lord with unwavering faith.
Waiting is the most important task for Christians at this moment! In the time of the Old Testament, the Chosen People experienced long years of wandering and waiting to be nurtured unto a nation with a strong faith in God. This is an important part of His redemption plan. The Chosen People must come to know more of their God for He is not only "to mark our sins", but also to give "kindness and full redemption." (Ps 130:3,7).
If the coming of someone or something is meaningful to us, we will naturally prepare for it properly. How does the Bible teach us to wait for the Lord? God is not only interested in the moment He comes when we must be like wise virgins, awake, carrying a lamp with oil prepared, and opening the door to greet Him. The Lord pays even more attention to what we have been doing when He is yet to come. It is for us to be the faithful and prudent servant taking good care of the household entrusted by the master, and distribute to them their food at the proper time. When the master arrives, he will put the servant in charge of all his property. (Mt 24:45-47)
Therefore, we must be faithful to the role entrusted by the Lord to everyone. We need to be honest and earnestly fulfill our personal and social responsibilities with integrity. Meanwhile, to fulfil our professional obligations, we should strictly abide by the professional codes of different industries, whether they are of civil servants, media and news, medical or legal fields, teachers, social work, accounting and finance, culture and art, information technology, engineering and other sectors…... It is high time that Christians studied the principles and contents of the Church's Social Teachings which is a treasure accumulated over the recent centuries. When applying its principles to social ethics, its prophetic teachings and admonitions for the secular world should be heeded. Its spirit serves as a good navigating guide and reference for social participation.
As Catholic teachers and principals in the education sector, we promote our core values and principles by endeavouring to advocate and to speak the truth; to uphold justice in our relationships with God and men; to perform acts of charity for the poor and the weak; to respect, protect and treasure life; to safeguard the status and functions of the family, and to nurture harmonious coexistence between man and nature. Moreover, in accordance with the Code for the Education Profession of Hong Kong, we need to fulfil our obligations to the education profession, students, colleagues, employers, parents and the public. For those who are students, we should focus on our studies, study hard, and at the same time grasp fully and comprehensively all that has been happening locally and globally, and reflect upon their impacts on us.
The Lord is the Master of human history. Although we live in a constantly changing world, we are grateful for the people and things in Hong Kong in the past few decades. We should cherish and give witness to the life-long struggle of our past generations, which has forged the spiritual and material civilization of our Hong Kong society, shaping its outlook and instilling in it all the essential characteristics of a cosmopolitan city. Meanwhile, we all are to be responsible for and earnestly look forward to the future of our society. Our students should make good use of the gifts God has given everyone, including our priceless lives, precious time, learning opportunities as well as caring family members and mentors. They should equip themselves well so that each will become an instrument of the Lord, and contribute to building a civilized society filled with justice and love in accordance with God's will, thus helping write a new page in the history of Hong Kong.
In addition, we must also listen to people in great despair, with whom we come into contact, especially those who are in depression, with worries or resentment, so as to understand and empathize with their trauma, to exchange views and feelings with them, and to broaden each other's horizons as well. We should accompany them as much as possible, and share with them our own transformational experiences in tough times, so as to bring about hope to the traumatized. We should form with other Christian believers such communities that are "always alert with steadfast hope" to counsel and encourage one another―― "putting on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet that is hope for salvation; …… admonish the idle, cheer the fainthearted, support the weak, be patient with all. See that no one returns evil for evil …… Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks ……" (1Th 5:8,14-18)
"Come! Lord Jesus!"
How to Do as the Lord Is Coming Soon
Because we have full trust in God who is rich in justice, we will still have joy in our hearts even in yet greater darkness and more difficult situations. "I await the day of distress that will come upon the people who attack us. For though the fig tree blossom not nor fruit be on the vines, Though the yield of the olive fail and the terraces produce no nourishment, Though the flocks disappear from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, Yet will I rejoice in the LORD and exult in my saving God, GOD, my Lord, is my strength ……" (Hab 3:17-19)
"Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer" (Rm 12:12) because "…… all things work for good for those who love God ……" (Rm 8:28)
May we stand firm in our faith and wait for the Lord, with courage, joy, patience, kindness, and compassion, to reveal the beauty of our hearts as a portrait of God, and to recognize the Christ in others, to ignite hope together, and to wait for the Light.
Let us be full of gratitude and anticipation, and shout to the Lord in our hearts with all the brothers and sisters,
"Come! Lord Jesus!"
Education Day
27 th September 2020 "Come, Lord Jesus!"
Prayer of the Faithful (for reference only)
1. Let us pray for the Church. May the Lord enlighten the Church with Truth, so that in the midst of social injustice, persecutions and hardships, she can uphold the teachings of Holy Scripture and her Social Teachings, hope constantly, promote justice, practise charity, make peace and give witness to our faith. For this, we pray to the Lord.
2. Let us pray for all in authority, including local government officials, education policy-makers. May the Lord grant them true wisdom, broad minds, big and humble hearts so that they may respect and appreciate educational beliefs and ethos of different school sponsors, fostering effective collaboration between the government and various school sponsoring bodies. For this, we pray to the Lord.
3. Let us pray for all Catholic schools. May the Lord bless that school life there may reveal the Way, the Truth and the Life of Jesus, nurture spiritual growth, preach the gospel, help students find meaning in life and follow Christ, develop their potential, and live a respectful life with dignity and integrity. For this, we pray to the Lord.
4. Let us pray for all educators. May the Holy Spirit grant them wisdom, initiatives and motivations, love and endurance, hope and confidence as they walk along with their students in the midst of confused values, distorted truth, anxieties, chaos and frustrations. For this, we pray to the Lord.
5. Let us pray for all families. May the Lord be with every family, so that its members will treat one another with love, patience, understanding, forbearance, forgiveness and self-sacrifice. May the Lord especially bless the parents, so that they can bring up their children by setting good examples and teaching them to seek throughout life the truth as revealed by Christ. For this, we pray to the Lord.
6. Let us pray for our students. May the Lord protect and enlighten them, so that guided by the Gospel spirit they will grow in wisdom and be able to resist every temptation, to choose what is good, to renounce all vices, to love and cherish life, to constantly enrich and equip themselves so as to serve others. For this, we pray to the Lord.
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Asia Pacific Fraud Journal
Volume 6, Issue 2 (July-December) 2021
E-ISSN: 2502-695X, ISSN: 2502-8731
Asia Pacific Fraud Journal now has been accredited "SINTA 3" by Ministry of Research and Technology of The Republic of Indonesia (No SK. 85/M/KPT/2020).
Availaeble online at: http://apfjournal.or.id/index.php/apf
The Implementation of Fraud Risk Assessment and Anti-Fraud Strategy in Government Institution XYZ
Teguh Wibowo & Agustinus Nicholas L. Tobing Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Indonesia, Indonesia
ARTICLE INFORMATION
ABTRACT
Received November 30. 2021
Article History:
Revised December 10, 2021
Accepted December 31, 2021
DOI:
10.21532/apfjournal.v6i2.232
Government Institution XYZ is one of the government institutions trying to build bureaucratic reform and minimize fraud risk. This study attempted to conduct a fraud risk assessment to identify, analyze, evaluate, and determine appropriate anti-fraud strategies to various fraud risk scenarios that may occur in Government Institution XYZ. The research was conducted qualitatively with a case study approach. The data were collected through document analysis, questionnaires, interviews, and Focused Group Discussion (FGD). Based on the FRA results, researchers identified thirteen fraud risk scenarios that organization needs to anticipate. Considering the organization's risk appetite, there are two very high-level risk scenarios, four high-level risk scenarios, four medium-level risk scenarios, and three low-level risk scenarios among all of these risk scenarios. Several anti-fraud strategies need to be implemented to reduce fraud risk, including preventive, detective, and responsive strategies by optimizing existing and other relevant anti-fraud strategies.
Keyword: Public Sector, Fraud Risk, Fraud Risk Assessment, AntiFraud Strategy
1. INTRODUCTION
Government's Long-Term Plan for 20052025, which uses bureaucratic reform as a strategy to increase the nation's competitiveness. Bureaucratic reform is based on increasing the professionalism of the state apparatus to support good governance.
As part of efforts to prevent corruption, the Government of Indonesia strives to build a bureaucratic system free from corrupt practices through bureaucratic reform. This matter is a part of the
In line with the bureaucratic reform program, Government Institution XYZ has attempted to implement various programs to reduce fraud risks in the organization. In the 2019 Annual Report, Government Institution XYZ stated that during 20152018, the organization had imposed 168 disciplinary penalties on employees who violated the disciplinary provisions of the State Civil Apparatus.
Corresponding author :
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Fraud is the leading risk that needs to be managed in the public sector (Asare, 2009). Therefore, management in the public sector is responsible for implementing systems and processes to prevent and detect fraud. Fraud significantly affects public trust in government institutions and impacts reputation (Uslaner, 2002; US GAO, 2015). According to IIA (2006), internal auditors in the public sector have a crucial role in detecting and preventing fraud, inappropriate actions or abuse, and abuse of power and resources entrusted to government officials.
The fraud case at Government Institution XYZ is stimulating to study. Based on the organization's 2020-2025
Indonesia Chapter
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE)
Strategic Plan, Government Institution XYZ strives to reduce fraud cases and is committed to bureaucratic reform at all levels of the organization. The organization is also applying the Three Lines Model concept to build an effective internal control system. On the other hand, Government Institution XYZ has a strategic authority that other institutions do not own. Several business processes at Government Institution XYZ involve various parties with particular interests, so inherent fraud risk arises.
This research attempted to apply FRA to the business process at Government Institution XYZ. Assessment needs to be performed to identify fraud schemes and scenarios, assess the possibilities and impacts, evaluate the effectiveness of internal controls, assess the residual risk level, and formulate an anti-fraud strategy to reduce residual risk. The research was conducted using a qualitative method with a case study approach to producing in-depth information. The research process included various Government Institution XYZ parties with experience dealing with fraud cases, management directly related to the primary business process, and other parties who play a vital role in implementing the organization's anti-fraud strategy. These study results are expected to be input for Government
One way to anticipate and minimize fraud in line with the COSO Fraud Risk Management Guide (2016) is by conducting Fraud Risk Assessment (FRA). FRA assists organizations in prioritizing significant fraud risks (Bell, 2010). Through FRA, the organization will recognize the fraud risk that may occur, the effectiveness of internal controls designed and implemented to prevent and detect fraud risk and formulate the organization's most relevant anti-fraud strategy (IIA, AICPA, & ACFE, 2008). In line with that statement, Government Institution XYZ has included FRA as one of the activities organization must perform in organizational risk management. However, it has not yet included concrete and detailed steps that must be taken.
Institution XYZ to achieve more effective fraud risk management.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESIS
According to IIA (2016), fraud is an illegal act characterized by deception, concealment, or denial of trust (violation). The IIA, AICPA, and ACFE (2008) defined fraud as any intentional act or omission designed to deceive others, resulting in the victim suffering a loss and the perpetrator achieving again. In a broad sense, fraud encompasses all crime types that seek to profit through deception as the primary modus operandi (Wells, 2017). ACFE (2016) developed a fraud tree that classifies fraud into three major schemes: corruption, asset misappropriation, and financial statement fraud. Cressey (1953) identified three sources of fraud, i.e., pressure, opportunity, and rationalization.
Fraud
Fraud Risk Assessment (FRA)
The FRA must consider fraud schemes that can occur in guiding an effective antifraud program (Singleton & Singleton, 2010). According to COSO (2016), applying a specific and focused FRA distinctly
FRA is a means to assist management in identifying and assessing the organization's fraud risk. FRA focuses on identifying fraud schemes and assessing the effectiveness of internal controls in preventing or detecting them early (IIA, AICPA, & ACFE, 2008). The scope of an FRA can be immense depending on the company's size, complexity, and industry. FRA can be completed within the organization's capacity, business processes, or specific transactions (Vona, 2008). The FRA considers various modes of fraud and misconduct, and management override vulnerabilities and potential schemes that can thwart control activities and necessitate additional mitigation. In implementing FRA, organizations need to consider possible fraud scenarios and financial and non-financial consequences (Grove & Clouse, 2020).
from the fraud risk management process provides more significant confidence that the assessment focuses on intentional fraud.
Anti-Fraud Strategy
Prevention, detection, response, and deterrence are the four main components of an effective anti-fraud strategy (IIA, AICPA, & ACFE, 2008; Singleton & Singleton, 2010; CIMA, 2012; Albrecht, 2012; US GAO, 2015). The existence of prevention, detection and appropriate response to fraud will result in effective deterrents. According to Rational Choice Theory, by increasing the possibility of detecting fraud, the organization will prevent fraud because it triggers doubt and fear effect to the potential fraudster (Becker, 1974).
The IIA's Three Lines Model
The Three Lines Model is an update of the Three Lines of Defense (IIA, 2020). This model helps organizations identify the best structures and processes to help achieve objectives and facilitate strong governance and risk management. As in the Three Lines of Defense model, the Three Lines Model concept encourages management as the first line to be responsible for achieving organizational goals. The first line plays a direct role in the risk management and control processes in line with the organization's primary business activities and supporting activities. The second line plays a role in providing support related to organizational risk management and compliance. Internal audit acts as a third line providing independent and objective assurance and consulting services regarding the adequacy and effectiveness of governance, internal control, and risk management.
Previous Research and Research Novelty Research on FRA has frequently been conducted in the private sector but rarely done in the public sector. The public sector is a sector that is highly vulnerable to corruption issues (Asare, 2009). Rehman & Hakim (2020), investigated the FRA's role in implementing Good Corporate Governance (GCG) in public companies in Oman. The results showed that the implementation of FRA assisted the company's GCG achievement. Rubasundram (2015), studied the role of management support on FRA quality. The results indicated that management support significantly influenced the FRA quality. Based on research by Wang (2015), Noviyanti&Winata (2015), and Julian et al. (2021), the FRA quality is primarily determined by the support of high-ranking officials in the company to management support. According to the findings of Nassir, Sanusi, & Ghani (2015), the FRA quality conducted by the auditor is influenced by the brainstorming process and the auditor's expertise.
Furqan & Tobing (2017), conducted specific research on the FRA implementation to a business process, in which they implemented FRA to a company's procurement business process. The study succeeded in identifying seventeen fraud risk scenarios that companies need to anticipate. In the public sector, Kamal & Tohom (2019), researched the fraud possibility level in goods and services procurement and successfully identified 66 fraud risks that government institutions should anticipate. Alfatah & Tobing (2019), conducted an FRA at the Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) and succeeded
Organizations must implement an effective internal control system to reduce the fraud risk (IIA, 2016). Barra's research (2010), results confirmed that improving internal control can reduce the impact of fraud risk. It is consistent with the research results of Siregar & Tenoyo (2015), who revealed that poor internal control and lack of ethical values impact the emergence of fraud. The results of Eryanto's research (2020), show at least three significant factors that make anti-fraud programs ineffective in Indonesia, namely culture, politics, and lack of ethical leadership. The results of Ali's research (2019) show that effective management of civil servants is the main pillar to realize good governance
in identifying 25 tax audit and collection fraud scenarios.
Previous research on FRA was primarily conducted in the private sector. Additionally, the business processes as the object of the FRA were those related to the procurement or purchase of goods/ services. In contrast to previous research, this study was conducted at Government Institution XYZ, a public sector organization with a specific function. The business process in Government Institution XYZ differs significantly from that of the private sector because it must be conducted in several bureaucratic processes. Considering that the object of this research had never implemented FRA, this research included the relevant FRA design for the object of study and its application to effective business processes for the organization.
3. METHODS
This research used content analysis. In content analysis, researchers must first formulate research objectives and actions that must be taken based on these objectives (Bungin, 2011). Furthermore, researchers must identify the object of research that will be the subject of analysis. The data obtained from the study are then classified to determine the extent to which the data
This research employed a qualitative research method. Qualitative research provides information about a particular subject and context, explains the occurrence of a cause and effect and relationship, assesses the effectiveness, and aids the development of specific theories or strategies (Wahyuni, 2019). The approach used in this research was a case study. Case study research requires a systematic and organized mechanism for collecting and processing data on a topic and focusing on certain boundaries, events, or phenomena (Stake, 2000). This study applied various instruments to meet these requirements, including document analysis, questionnaires, interviews, and Focused Group Discussion (FGD).
is related to the research objectives. The data contents are then identified, and the frequency of occurrence is analyzed to reach certain conclusions. This research scope was limited to one of the central business processes of Government Institution XYZ at the Service Office to focus the discussion on a specific problem.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Document Analysis Results
Based on the document analysis results, researchers identified several fraud schemes and scenarios that could occur in the organization's business process. According to the document analysis results, the fraud schemes that organizations should anticipate are receiving prohibited gratuities, abuse of authority, conflict of interest, extortion, asset theft, and information theft. The researchers identified thirteen fraud scenarios related to the primary business process from these fraud schemes. Furthermore, the document analysis results also revealed various forms of internal control and anti-fraud strategies that the organization had been designed and implemented. Based on the document analysis results, the researchers then explored more information through the distribution of questionnaires, interviews, and FGDs.
Questionnaire Results
Researchers developed an online questionnaire form to support data collection and distributed it to prospective respondents in August-September 2021. From the distributed questionnaires, researchers were able to collect data from 125 respondents. Of the various fraud schemes listed in the questionnaire, the fraud risk with the most significant occurrence probability, according to respondents, was receiving gratuities. Based on the consecutive respondents, the subsequent risk scheme with a relatively high occurrence probability was the abuse of authority, conflict of interest practices, and requests for money (extortion).
Interview Results
There were two respondents in interview I, whereas, in interview II, there were twelve respondents. Based on the interview, the researchers obtained the following results:
The interviews in this study were conducted in two stages, interview I and interview II, using a semi-structured indepth interview technique. Interview I was utilized to validate document analysis results, explore information, and gather input for a questionnaire. Interview II was used to clarify various possible fraud scenarios and the effectiveness of internal controls, describe vulnerable areas to fraud and the fraud causes and formulate relevant anti-fraud strategies.
a. The organization had never conducted an FRA but had identified vulnerable areas and potential fraud scenarios.
c. Among all business processes at Government Institution XYZ, the informants believed that the business process in this research was the highest possible fraud risk.
b. The most common fraud risk scheme encountered by Government Institution XYZ employees was receiving gratuities. The following fraud scheme was frequently encountered and was related to the abuse of authority.
d. The dominant factors that contributed to fraud were opportunity and rationalization.
f. To increase the effectiveness of the organization's internal control system, the organization needs to improve coordination and collaboration between all the control lines.
e. The organization still needs to improve the effectiveness of anti-fraud strategies.
FGD Results
The FGD was held on October 25, 2021, and was attended by parties who play an essential role in implementing the organization's anti-fraud strategy, including management, Internal Compliance
Unit, Gratuity Control Unit, anticorruption counselors, and risk manager. The number of FGD participants was eight respondents at the Government Institution XYZ head office. The FGD process began with the researchers' explanation of the FRA, including its definition, objective, process, implementation to Government Institution XYZ, and anti-fraud strategy proposed for the organization. Further, discussions were held with the following results:
b. The list of fraud risk schemes and scenarios presented by the researchers had reflected all the risks that could occur in the main business process. Based on organization risk management guidance, theorganization has a lowrisk appetite and tolerance for fraud.
a. Government Institution XYZ had not implemented FRA comprehensively on the organization's core business processes.
c. Various fraud risk schemes and scenarios that researchers had identified need to be evaluated periodically to align with the dynamics of the organization, the development of the internal control system, and the quality of risk management.
e. For several new anti-fraud strategies proposed by researchers, including conflict of interest regulation, know your customer program, combined assurance, and publication of disciplinary penalties related to fraud cases, FGD participants thought that it was relevant to do so. However, its implementation needs to be supported by well-developed tools and policies. Therefore, it is effective in mitigating the fraud risk.
d. The anti-fraud strategy proposed by the researchers was consistent with the organizational integrity framework and the bureaucratic reform program, especially in strengthening supervision areas.
DISCUSSION FRA Implementation
a. Forming the FRA Team According to the IIA, AICPA, and ACFE (2008), the FRA process must be completed by a team comprised of various elements and levels of management. It is due to the possibility of the fraud risk occurring at multiple levels and business processes. In conducting the FRA, the researchers involved different key informants. The general criterion used by researchers in determining key informants was at least three years of work experience at Government Institution XYZ. Meanwhile, the specific criteria used were having experience handling fraud cases in the organization or at least understanding business processes, SOPs, internal controls, organizational risk management, and parties directly involved in anti-fraud strategies developed by the organization. All informants had represented management, second-line, and third-line elements in the organization's internal control system.
Government Institution XYZ did not have specific guidelines for fraud risk management and FRA implementation. In developing the FRA design, this study adapted the FRA guidelines published by ACFE (2020) and considered general risk management guidelines applicable to the organization (2019). According to the IIA, AICPA, & ACFE (2008), the FRA process includes several stages starting by forming an FRA team, identifying the inherent fraud risk, assessing the possibility and impact of the occurrence of a default fraud risk scenario, assessing the level of inherent fraud risk, examining the effectiveness of internal controls, assessing the level of residual fraud risk, and determining the appropriate responses.
b. Identifying Inherent Fraud Risk
Schemes and Scenarios Government Institution XYZ needs to anticipate several inherent fraud risks in the organization's leading business process. Based on the identification of inherent fraud risk, in total, there are thirteen fraud risk scenarios related to the organization's primary business process. The dominance of the fraud risk scheme is abuse of authority, receiving gratuities/ bribes, extortion, and conflicts of interest. The parties involved in the fraud scenario are primarily employees who are directly involved in the business process.
c. Determining Risk Assessment Criteria Risk assessment was performed by considering the possibility of risk occurrence and the resulting impact. Several guidelines regarding FRA did not contain exact provisions on setting criteria for the possibility of fraud risk. However, the determination of these criteria can be done either qualitatively or quantitatively. In developing criteria for the opportunity and impact of risk occurrence, the researchers adapted the consideration factors mentioned by ACFE (2020), and adjusted them to the organization's risk appetite. In this research, there are several criteria to assess the possibility of risk: (1) Previous fraud incidents; (2) The number of public complaints related to the risk scenario; (3) The element of subjectivity in the stages of the business process related to the fraud scenario; (4) The number of parties that may be involved in the fraud scenario; (5) The complexity of the fraud risk scenario; (6) Resources needed to uncover fraud scenarios; and (7) The results of the fraud survey. Meanwhile, to measure the impact, this study uses the criteria of financial loss, reputation, and the sanctions imposed.
d. Measurement of Inherent Fraud Risk Possibility, Impact, and Vulnerability Based on the criteria for the probability and impact of the risk occurrence determined, the probability and impact of each fraud risk scenario were assessed. Next, the researchers mapped the level of vulnerability to inherent fraud risk in each risk scenario. The results of assessing the level of vulnerability to inherent fraud risk are presented in Figure 1.
Source: Data Processed
Based on Figure 1, twelve identified fraud scenarios have an inherent fraud risk level that is higher than the organization's risk appetite. Government Institution XYZ has designed and implemented internal controls to reduce the risk level to the desired level based on these conditions. The following descriptions discuss the effectiveness of internal control.
e. Evaluation of Internal Control Effectiveness
Internal control effectiveness was evaluated to determine two issues: (1) whether each fraud scenario has an adequate internal control design; and (2) whether the internal control has been implemented as designed. In assessing the effectiveness of the internal controls, the researchers analyzed the code of ethics and organizational discipline regulations, reports on audit results, reports on the results of Internal Compliance Unit monitoring, and explored more information through questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The results of the evaluation of the effectiveness of internal control yielded three conclusion types: (1) ineffective, (2) less effective, and (3)
Deterrence effective. Internal control is classified as ineffective if no internal control design or internal control design exists but has never been implemented. Internal control is less effective if internal control design exists but has not been able to prevent and detect fraud risk promptly or prevent and detect fraud risk but is not implemented consistently by the organization. Last, internal control is effective if the design and implementation of internal control have been able to promptly prevent and detect fraud risk.
The residual fraud risk level was assessed by highlighting the inherent fraud risk level and the internal control effectiveness. The process of assessing the residual fraud risk level was done by adapting the risk management guidelines applied by the organization. According to these guidelines, residual fraud risk is classified by the level and magnitude of the risk in a risk map. The results of the residual fraud risk assessment are presented in Figure 2.
f. Assessment of Residual Fraud Risk and Determination of Appropriate Response
Source: Data Processed
In line with the organization's risk management guidelines, the organization's risk appetite was at very low and low levels. Based on the fraud risk map above, ten risk scenarios were still above the organization's risk appetite, while three were within the risk appetite range. Furthermore, risk scenarios that exceeded the organization's risk appetite must be responded to with additional mitigation in an anti-fraud strategy.
Fraud-Cause Analysis
Fraud-cause analysis was conducted by referring to the Fraud Triangle theory. The dominant factors of opportunity and rationalization were identified in the receiving gratification case. The opportunity factor could be seen from the possibility of direct interaction between Government Institution XYZ employees and service users outside the office without adequate supervision. The opportunity factor was deemed dominant in several fraud types in the form of abuse of authority and conflicts of interest. The opportunity factor emerged as a result of gaps in the internal control system, lack of supervision from superiors, limited scope of monitoring Internal Compliance Unit, and limited intensity of audits conducted by the Inspectorate General. The rationalization factor could be perceived from the assumption that gratification might be received because it was a voluntary gift and does not affect the quality of services provided.
Anti-Fraud Strategy Design
Organizations must use the concept of Rational Choice Theory to increase the possibility of detecting all fraud scenario forms early. Through the appropriate combination of preventive, detective, and responsive, it is expected to become deterrents for potential parties to commit fraud (ACFE, 2008; CIMA, 2012; Albrecht, 2012). The formulation of this anti-fraud strategy included the most crucial issues that need to be re-emphasized, added to, or improved in quality based on the results of document analysis and interviews with various informants.
Based on the FRA results, the organization already had a fraud risk map that needed prioritized handling. Meanwhile, based on the analysis of the causes of fraud, the factors causing fraud in the Fraud Triangle that dominated fraud cases were opportunity and rationalization. In formulating an antifraud strategy, the researchers classified anti-fraud strategies from a preventive, detective, and responsive perspective by referring to the Rational Choice Theory and the organization's integrity framework. An overview of the anti-fraud strategy framework is presented in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Anti-Fraud Strategy Design
Preventive
Responsive
Detective
Result of Fraud
Cause Analysis
-
Rational choice theory
-
Organizational integrity
framework
Deterrence
FRA Results
Source: Data Processed
Fraud Prevention Strategy
The researchers' interview results with several informants indicated that the issue that needs to be prioritized in fraud prevention efforts is tone at the top. Tone at the top plays a vital role in creating an ideal work environment, including FRA implementation. In the context of internal audit, the tone at the top could influence the professional skepticism of internal auditors. On the other hand, one of the factors contributing to the auditor's failure to achieve optimal results in detecting fraud was the lack of professional skepticism (Juliana et al., 2021; Noviyanti and Winata, 2015; Kabuye et al., 2015). According to ACFE, organizational leaders can create and maintain a proper ethical climate in an organization by completing four steps: (1) communicating the expectations of leaders to employees; (2) being an example in leading the organization (lead by example); (3) providing a secure mechanism for reporting violations; and (4) awarding of Integrity.
a. Tone at the Top
b. Fraud Awareness Program
and fraud awareness positively impacts fraud prevention in the Indonesian government sector.
Based on the results of document analysis, questionnaires, and interviews, the organization has attempted to raise employee fraud awareness through various means, including socializing fraud-vulnerable areas and implementing a whistleblowing system. However, in terms of fraud-vulnerable areas, the organization has not conducted regular updates and socialization.
Poor internal control and non-compliance with ethical values can threaten the organization. It encourages organizations to increase fraud awareness among employees (Siregar & Tenoyo, 2015). According to Yuniarti (2017), and Ariyanto & Bone (2020), increasing internal control
In addition to regular socialization regarding the fraud risks, fraud awareness also needs to be implemented through the publication of code of ethics sanctions and disciplinary penalties that the organization has imposed on fraudsters. This publication is intended to show that the organization has a solid commitment to crack down on fraud and serve as an effective deterrent for employees. As stated by Button et al. (2012), the concept of deterrence consists of two forms, including individual deterrence and general deterrence. Individual deterrence is applied through the sanction imposition to provide a deterrent effect to the fraudster. In contrast, general deterrence is achieved through the sanction publication to signal employees not to consider or engage in fraud.
c. Conflict of Interest Management
Government Institution XYZ does not have a formal arrangement regarding the types and activities classified as conflicts of interest and control. According to some informants, several practices in the service office are classified as conflicts of interest. This information is in line with the questionnaire results, which shows that as many as 12.80% of respondents think that employees of Government Institution XYZ have close relationships that exceed the limits of professional attitudes with service users. For this reason, Government Institution XYZ should have a formal guideline for managing conflicts of interest. To have binding power, the guidelines for managing conflicts of interest need to be formalized in a regulation set by the organization's highest official.
d. Enhancement of Gratuity Control Program
e. Know Your Customer Program Based on document analysis and interviews with several informants, the characteristics of service user agencies were indicated to influence the occurrence of fraud cases at Government Institution XYZ. Several cases of Government Institution XYZ employees receiving gratuities and abusing their authority were linked to the service users with specific characteristics. Therefore,
As part of the gratuity control program, Government Institution XYZ has "Unit Pengendalian Gratifikasi (UPG)" or Gratuity Control Unit up to the Service Office level. The questionnaire results showed that 7.20% of employees considered that the role of UPG was not or less effective. The results of interviews with UPG managers showed that UPG officers in service offices often did not know how to follow up technically when receiving reports of gratuities receipts. Another thing that shows the ineffectiveness of the UPG is the small number of reports on receiving gratuities to the UPG. In dealing with these conditions, Government Institution XYZ needs to increase the gratuity control program effecitiveness.
Government Institution XYZ must map the characteristics of government agencies that use services.
Government Institution XYZ can formulate a more appropriate service strategy and protect employees by knowing customer characteristics. Organization can, for example, (1) strengthen the commitment of the Government Institution XYZ leadership and the heads of relevant agencies regarding efforts to improve the integrity of employees in each agency; (2) minimize the occurrence of direct contact with customers, especially on services performed outside the office; and (3) provide assistance from supervisors or second/third lines in a service that involves direct contact with the agency.
Fraud Detection Strategy
The assurance for the business process is completed by management, Internal Compliance Unit, and the Inspectorate General. Organization must improve coordination in the assurance process to create an effective combination of assessments. The organization needs to determine the area that is the object of assurance for management, the Internal Compliance Unit, and the Inspectorate General and conduct periodic evaluations of the assurance results. Management can concentrate on quality assurance and the improvement of business processes. Internal Compliance Unit monitors the effectiveness of internal controls and the possibility of red flags appearing. The Inspectorate General examines the sample work units in assessing the effectiveness of internal control and risk management and provides assurance on information technology governance. The Inspectorate General can conduct analytical data periodically.
a. Combined Assurance
b. Red Flag Monitoring
Government Institution XYZ must map out various conditions that can become red flags for fraud as part of the fraud detection. Furthermore, the organization
can design red flag monitoring activities and develop appropriate responses if the red flag is detected.
c. Whistleblowing System and Protection of Whistleblowers
The public complaint system managed by Government Institution XYZ also faced hindrances related to the issue of protecting whistleblowers. Based on the questionnaires distributed by the researchers, 28.80% of respondents doubted whether the employee protection system was functioning correctly. These data are also derived from the evaluation of entity-level internal control completed by Government Institution XYZ work units, which showed that employees were afraid to convey negative information through existing complaint channels.
In line with the FRA results, several frauds risk schemes and scenarios are relatively arduous to prevent and/or detect using an internal control system. It occurred in fraud schemes and scenarios that work outside the normal system, including illegal gratuity, economic extortion, fraud, and conflict of interest. Concerning this scenario, the organization cannot rely on the internal control system or the assurance process typically conducted by management, Internal Compliance Unit, or the Inspectorate General. One of the mechanisms that Government Institution XYZ can use to mitigate these risks is to optimize the Whistleblowing System.
Government Institution XYZ must integrate various complaint channels managed by the organization to optimize the role of the whistleblowing system. Intensive coordination to collect information quickly among officers in each complaint channel is also critical. Additionally, organization must also affirm their commitment to protect whistleblowers and promote methods of anonymous reporting. Socialization on submitting complaints also needs to be done to reduce the intensity of unclear, vague reports or not accompanied by adequate preliminary evidence.
Fraud Response Strategy
A prompt response to an act of fraud can minimize the losses and serve as a deterrent for potential fraudsters. Management, the Internal Compliance Unit, and the Inspectorate General are responsible for responding to fraud. Management is responsible for following up on information about suspected fraud committed by their subordinates. The process of disclosing fraud by the direct supervisor may experience hindrances due to limited competence and information, so the Internal Compliance Unit is frequently assisted by collecting materials and information. In relatively complex cases, the Inspectorate General responds to fraud actions by investigating audits. The assistance process by Internal Compliance Unit and the Inspectorate General is not only in fraud disclosure activities. Still, it is also included in the examination process in the context of imposing disciplinary penalties. In line with efforts to raise fraud awareness, the disciplinary penalties that the organization has imposed on fraudsters need to be published to employees to demonstrate the organization's commitment to discipline enforcement.
Relationship Pattern According to the Three-Lines Model
Government Institution XYZ and the Inspectorate General need to intensify and improve inter-line relations based on these conditions. Given that the organization's internal control and risk management systems were still not performing
The Three Lines Model specifies the existence of a coordinating and collaborative relationship between each line. In the context of Government Institution XYZ, the results of interviews with many informants indicated a condition of the relationship between lines that was not running optimally. Each line had an assurance function within the assurance framework, but combined assurance had not yet been implemented. It caused redundant assessment practices among the three.
optimally, the Inspectorate General, as the third line, needs to provide more consulting services through intensive socialization of internal control and risk management to management. On the other hand, in the consultation process, the Inspectorate General also needs to improve the quality of assurance carried out by management and monitor internal control conducted by the Internal Compliance Unit. It can be accomplished through training on assurance and monitoring techniques and ensuring that management and the Internal Compliance Unit can design an assurance plan that is more effective and has an impact on continuous improvement.
5. CONCLUSION
3) The dominant factors that caused fraud risk in organization based on the fraud triangle theory were opportunity and rationalization. 4) The hindrance faced by the organization in implementing the FRA was that the organization did not yet have a comprehensive guideline for the FRA process. On the other hand, the organization did not have a detailed roadmap to implement an anti-fraud strategy. Based on the FRA results, the fraud risk associated
Based on data collection and analysis conducted by researchers, the results of this study are as follows: 1) FRA is relevant to be applied to Government Institution XYZ. Through FRA, organization can obtain a comprehensive fraud risk profile because it includes information on fraud schemes and scenarios, the inherent fraud risk level, the effectiveness of internal controls designed to overcome fraud, and the residual fraud risk level encountered by the organization. Furthermore, the organization is aware of the fraud risk schemes and scenarios that need to be prioritized for handling and can develop relevant anti-fraud strategies. 2) Based on the FRA implementation to the primary business process in Government Institution XYZ, the researchers succeeded in identifying thirteen fraud risk scenarios that might occur. Based on the organization's risk appetite, ten risk scenarios must be prioritized to mitigate.
with a corruption scheme was a risk that dominated Government Institution X. It is consistent with Asare (2009), who stated that public sector organizations are vulnerable to corruption issues. Previous research on fraud risk in the government sector, for example, Kamal &Tohom (2019) and Alfatah&Tobing (2019), also identified corruption as a risky scheme that organizations need to mitigate. The risk of corruption had an impact on the occurrence of state losses and affected public trust. Therefore, it affected the reputation of the organization. According to the analysis of the fraud causes, the factors causing fraud that dominated fraud cases at Government Institution XYZ were opportunity and rationalization. Referring to ACFE (2008), CIMA (2012), and Albrecht (2012), efforts to develop an anti-fraud strategy must include a preventive, detective, and responsive perspective so that it becomes deterrents for potential parties to commit fraud. Based on the research results, the following details of the anti-fraud strategy design must be completed by the organization: a) Fraud preventions contain: (1) tone at the top; (2) fraud awareness program; (3) conflict of interest management; (4) the enhancement of the Gratuity Control Unit; and (5) know your customer program. b) Fraud detections include: (1) assessment by management; (2) monitoring the effectiveness of internal controls and red flags by Internal Compliance Unit; (3) audit by the Inspectorate General; and (4) the increase of the whistleblowing system effectiveness and protection for whistleblowers. c) Responses to fraud comprise: (1) followup on public complaints; (2) investigation; (3) imposition of disciplinary punishment; and (4) publication of disciplinary penalties. d) Following the three pillars of the anti-fraud strategy, the organization also needs to improve the quality of coordination, communication, and collaboration according to the Three Lines Model concept. These study results indicated several fraud risk schemes and scenarios related to the primary business
process of Government Institution XYZ. On the other hand, Government Institution XYZ is dedicated to reforming the bureaucracy. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that the anti-fraud strategy is implemented effectively. In the short term, organization needs to have a roadmap for implementing an anti-fraud strategy. As part of the anti-fraud strategy roadmap, organization needs comprehensive FRA implementation guidelines to ensure that FRA is applied periodically with consistent parameters. Additionally, the organization also needs to conduct periodic evaluations of the effectiveness of implementing the anti-fraud strategy. In the long term, organization needs to continuously improve the quality of their risk management and internal control systems. Organization needs to continue developing service automation through information technology to minimize direct interaction between employees and service users. For further research, the researchers suggest that the FRA process should cover not only the internal perspective of the organization but also involve external parties as service users. Furthermore, specific research also needs to evaluate the maturity of the organization's antifraud strategy and the effectiveness of the Internal Compliance Unit's performance in its position as the second line in the organization's internal control system. All risk schemes and scenarios identified in this study only included an internal organization perspective. This research has limitations because it can only publish non-confidential data and information. Because of the data and information confidentiality, many data and information cannot be described in detail in this study.
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Newsletters
Spring 2011
Newsletter Spring 2011
Hispanic Studies, Illinois Wesleyan University
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Hispanic Studies
Department of Hispanic Studies Newsletter Spring 2011
Editor's Note: Hola! This newsletter aims to keep faculty, students and alumni up to date of our activities and achievements. We would like to encourage you to contact us with any news that you would like to share. Please email us at email@example.com or visit us at www.iwu.edu/hispanic, don't forget to list what year you graduated! Saludos, Christina Isabelli
This year the department celebrated its 10 th anniversary at Homecoming. Graduates from several classes joined with faculty and friends of the department. For pictures of the event visit: http://estudioshispanicos.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/el-departamento-de-hispanic-studiescelebra-su-10%C2%BA-aniversario.
To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month our students were encouraged to attend the Immigration Reform Forum. The keynote speaker was Marti Jones, executive director of the Immigration Project, a non-for-profit that offers immigration legal services throughout downstate Illinois. Jones also joined students on a discussion forum at Hansen Center. The Spanish and Latino Student Association and the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs sponsored the event.
Other co-curricular events included the participation of our faculty in the International Film Series. Prof. Carmela Ferradáns presented "The Secret in their Eyes" (2009, Argentina) and Prof. Alejandro Enriquez presented "Machuca" (2005, Chile). We were also visited by four alumni (Matthew Brown '03, Zaya Fusco '05, Craig Knoche '02, and Brianna Welch '07) at the Crystal Ball Coffeehouse for Foreign Languages who talked about their career choices and how studying a second language has enriched their careers and lives, we are proud of you!
back row: Christina Isabelli, Mauricio Parra, Arturo García, César Valverde, Carolyn Nadeau, Gayle Sauer front row: Allison Weiss, Carmela Ferradáns, Cecilia Sánchez, Alejandro Enriquez
Current Student Activities:
* Our Hispanic Studies Outstanding Senior award this year went to Kari Grace, Kristen Hosack, and Jason Roeschley.
* Special recognition goes to the following seniors for presenting their original research at this year's John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference: Jennifer Fitton "The Availability and Effectiveness of Health Information and Materials in Spanish in Bloomington-Normal, Il"; Jaclyn Morrison "Language Choice of High School Students in Central Illinois"; Kathleen Zeman "Spanish Language Representation in Illinois Media"; Elizabeth White "Violence in Religious Imagery: Representations of the Virgin Mary in Alfonso X's Las Cantigas de Santa María"; Kristen Gattuso '12 "Bilingual Education in BloomingtonNormal: The Here & Now and After"; Jason Roeschley "Lexical and Morphological Variations of Verbal Forms in the Spanish of Bilingual Youth in Bloomington-Normal, IL"; Jenna Rowland "Managing Hispanic Clientele: A Case Study of Language Policy at a Company in Bloomington, IL"; and Colin Schofield '12 "Meeting Students' Needs: A Qualitative Analysis of School Counseling Services."
* Jason Roeschley '11 was the recipient of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant award in Mexico. This is the third Hispanic Studies student in the last three years to receive this opportunity. Lauren Ostrowski '05 is currently in Spain and Rachel Slough '07
Faculty/Staff Activities:
* Prof. Carolyn Nadeau was named the Byron S. Tucci Professor of Spanish and also will be directing IWU's Barcelona program in the spring of 2012.
* Prof. Alejandro Enriquez presented his paper "Fanático Destructor or Incansable Constructor: Fray Diego de Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán as an Act of Conquest" at the 2010 XXIX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association in Toronto, Canada. In the fall, Prof. Enriquez successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled "Theaters of Rule, Theaters of
completed her Fulbright in Chile in 2010. Congratulations!
* Kirsten Frederickson '12 carried out an internship at Western Avenue Community Center and learned in detail the type of Hispanic outreach WACC provides the Bloomington-Normal community. She presented her findings in a poster at this year's JWPC.
* Kari Grace '11 and Kristen Hosack '11 were the recipients of a Sigma Delta Pi, National Collegiate Hispanic Honorary Society, summer scholarship in Spain. The award includes the cost of registration, tuition, room, and meals for four to six weeks. Congratulations!
* Kari Grace '11 was awarded the Lincoln Laureate, an award that annually recognizes one student at each of the fouryear, degree-granting institutions in Illinois for overall excellence in both curricular and extra-curricular programs.
* Messifa Ankou '11 has been accepted into Kent State University's graduate program in translation.
* In the fall, students in Span 408 participated in the I Congreso de la Literatura Medieval Española. The program and a special video presentation by Emmy Grace '11 on the presence of the devil in medieval Spanish literature can be found at http://estudioshispanicos.wordpress.com/ category/literatura/
Resistance: Franciscan Discourses of Spiritual Conquest in Colonial Yucatán, 1541–1688" at the University of Minnesota. In the spring, he organized and chaired a panel entitled "Colonial Anxiety in Early Spanish American Writing" at The Society of Early Americanists' Seventh Biennial Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Faculty/Staff Activities (cont.):
* Prof. César Valverde's article "Modelos masculinos y violencia en Sanctuary y Crónica de una muerte anunciada" is forthcoming in the journal Káñina. He also wrote "The Latin American Novel," "Carmen Naranjo," "Manuel Puig" and "Mariano Azuela" for the forthcoming World Literature in Spanish: An Encyclopedia.
* Prof. Carolyn Nadeau has published two articles "Early Modern Spanish Cookbooks: The Curious Case of Diego Granado," in Food and Language. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2009, ed. Richard Hosking (Totnes, England: Prospect Books, 2010): 237-46; and "Ensaladas calientes y carnero verde: imágenes de la vianda en la poesía satírico-burlesca de Francisco de Quevedo," in La Perinola 13 (2009): 313-26. She continues work on her next book, Feeding Between the Lines: Discourses of Food in Early Modern Spanish Literature.
* In May Prof. Mauricio Parra will attend the III Coloquio Nacional de Historia de la Literatura Colombiana at the University of Antioquia, Colombia. He will read a paper entitled "La ciudad y sus fantasmas: espacios urbanos y las borraduras de la historia en la narrativa de Mario Mendoza". This conference is a gathering of some of the bestknown specialists in his field of studies. Moreover, he will attend sessions to collect actualized information and class materials for the course that he will teach on contemporary Colombian Literature.
* Prof. César Valverde presented "Masculinity, Violence and Redemption in Sanctuary and Chronicle of a Death Foretold" at the II Modern Languages Conference, Universidad de Costa Rica. During his off time from IWU he was invited to teach a course in the masters in literature program at the UCR titled "Love and Death in the American Novel" and is directing two masters theses titled "Masculinity and Parental Relationships in I Never Sang for my Father" and "Masculinity and Sexual Deviance in Ian McEwan's Short Stories."
* In August 2011 Prof. Christina Isabelli will present her research titled "Observing Census Enumeration of Illinois SpanishSpeaking Households in the 2010 Census" at the US Census Bureau in Washington, DC. In July 2010 she was invited to participate in the Middlebury College Round Table (Vermont) and presented "El desarrollo lingüístico de estudiantes universitarios durante una estancia en el extranjero: una ruptura de las expectativas tradicionales." Prof. Isabelli will be teaching again this summer in the Middlebury College Language School graduate program.
* In July Prof. Mauricio Parra will travel to California to present a paper entitled "The Characterization of Women in Gabriel García Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude" at the Colombian Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The presentation on this Nobel Prize Winner is part of his ongoing research and the materials gathered at this meeting will be used in the courses he teaches on Latin American Literature (Span 480 and 490). While in Los Angeles he will continue his work on a project he started last year with a group of poets on a special edition of El Buho y el Cuervo, a poetry journal published by the Association of American Poets of California. He is the guest editor for this special edition dedicated to the issue of how cotemporary Latin American poets living in exile use poetry to build communities. He is planning to finish this edition during his sabbatical in the spring of 2112.
* On November 4th 2010 the Latin American band, Frontera, one of whose members includes Cecilia Sánchez, Instructor of Spanish, presented at Barnes and Noble to fundraise for the YWCA in Bloomington. A second presentation was for the Global Health Gala at the IWU Memorial Center on April 3rd, 2011. The band provided a musical background for an event that was very well attended.
Faculty/Staff Activities (cont.):
* Prof. Christina Isabelli directed the IWU London program in the fall of 2010.
* We warmly welcome the arrival of Prof. César Valverde's daughter, Maya, who was born on April 10 th in Costa Rica.
* Prof. Alejandro Enriquez has accepted a tenure track position as Assistant Professor at Illinois State University. Alejandro is excited about his new job, but is also saddened to leave IWU.
* On November 20, 2010, our LRC and Spanish Language Coordinator Allison Weiss, soprano, and Nancy Pounds, pianist, performed twelve Argentine lullabies as part of The New Music Café series organized by the IWU School of Music. The lullabies, composed between 1919 and 1993, represented a wide variety of styles and perspectives on maternity, childhood, and creole identities in urban and rural Argentina. The works of several Latin
American artists accompanied the English translations of the songs, which were projected on the stage next to the performers. The slides from the concert can be viewed at http://bit.ly/gHB7TP.
* The Department of Hispanic Studies welcomes our new Visiting Associate Prof. James Courtad. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001 with a PhD in Hispanic Literature. After graduation, he taught for eight years at Central Michigan University, and most recently at Bradley University. He specializes in Peninsular literature and culture, particularly from the 18 th to 20 th centuries. His research interests include the realist novel, travel literature, food representation in literature and women writers of Puerto Rico. Prof. Courtad resides in Normal with his wife Carrie Anna, a professor of Special Education at Illinois State University, and their two children.
Hispanic Studies Alumni: Keep the e-mails coming; we love to hear from you!
Grand Rapids since 20% of the ER patients there are Spanish-speaking.
* Brett Cullen '08 was selected for the US Department of Energy's Scholars Program in Washington, DC.
* John Hennessy '00 has been teaching ESL in Chicago for over nine years and travels often to Spain and Latin America.
* Lindsay Carlson '10 is a Spanish teacher at a Colorado K-12 charter school dedicated to giving high poverty students a chance to succeed. Lindsay wrote to the department saying, "It's basically my dream job!"
* Deanna Deschler '04 graduated from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and in June starts an emergency medicine residency in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This year she had the opportunity to participate in a cleft palate repair trip to Trinidad and went to Ecuador for a onemonth medical Spanish elective, where she worked in an ER in a rural community. She is looking forward to using her Spanish in
* Lauren Jensen '05 is a public services librarian at Monmouth College.
* Jill Holm-Denoma '01 is a clinical Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Denver.
* Since leaving IWU Clarissa Kastner '06 has held many different jobs, but her favorites have been teaching English to immigrants in the US, community organizing with the immigrant population in Bloomington, IL, and teaching English to grade school students. She is applying to the Ethnic Studies program at the University of California in Berkeley.
Hispanic Studies Alumni (cont.):
* Molly May '06 is head girls' volleyball coach for Lakes High School in Lake Forest, IL. Molly teaches Spanish.
adventures of her year. http://julieinvera.blogspot.com
* Amanda Weier '08 is currently teaching Spanish 1 in Chicago Public Schools through Teach for America.
* Leila (Setork) Azarbad '01 received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia and is currently an Assistant Professor/Psychologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Starting in September, she will join the Psychology Department of North Central College as their newest faculty member.
* Ryan Melleske '00 is a lawyer in the firm Aria & Muñóz in Costa Rica. This firm was named Central America Law Firm of the Year. Ryan returned to campus last October and spoke both to classes and during an alumni panel for prospective lawyers at the IWU Hart Career Center.
* Julie Sternstein '10 is currently working in Vera, Almeria with CIEE Teach Abroad in Spain for the academic year 2010-2011. She is teaching English to students aged 6 to12. Check out her blog with amazing photos and
* Kent Wolf '98 is a literary agent at Global Literary management in New York. Their website explains that "Over the last ten years Kent has handled the domestic and international licensing of thousands of titles with sales to publishers in the US, UK, Europe, and Asia (Random House UK, Bertelsmann in Germany, etc.), book clubs (Book-of-the-Month Club, Quality Paperback Book Club), audio publishers (Random House Audio, Books-on-Tape, Recorded Books, etc.), and magazines and newspapers (excerpts sold to The New Yorker, Harper's, Playboy, The New York Times Magazine, and The Washington Post, among others)."
A special message from Margaret Kocher '09
(currently an English teacher in the JET Program living in Akita, Japan)
A few English teachers and I in Akita prefecture have started a relief group/grassroots organization called VolunteerAkita to get fruit to shelters housing earthquake/tsunami victims. We began to feel restless and static concerning relief for those only a few hours away from us. We wanted to help but a lot of the support groups were coming from Tokyo area down south (which is pretty far)...so we started our own group!! One of our teachers, Paul, made a donation run out to a few shelters in Miyagi and noticed that there was a good amount of fruit in the area stores but not enough money to get it to the shelters. Our goal is to raise enough money to supply fruit for three shelters.
With support from larger NGOs already in Japan, we created an amazing website to accept outside donations. We receive the donations, buy fruit from local suppliers, also helping the economy in the north, and drive it to Kesennuma, about 100 miles north of Sendai City in Miyagi Prefecture.
I know that people want to help but are hesitant to donate to large organizations like Red Cross. I hope that our actions will inspire current IWU students and Alumni to donate and help in the future.
Thank you so much! Margaret Kocher - Yurihonjo, Akita Prefecture, Japan If you would like to contact me, please email firstname.lastname@example.org Here is our website, now with an operating donation page for foreign funds. http://volunteerakita.wordpress.com/
SNAPSHOTS
2010-2011 Sigma Delta Pi initiates
back: Nancy Vasquez (honorary member), Prof. Nadeau, Lorin Biosca, Jason Roeschley, Lindsey
Iseler, Katy Buscio, Prof. Valverde, Prof. Parra
middle: Mustafa Alavi, Kari Grace, Jaclyn Morrison, Emmy Grace, Cecilia Sánchez
front: Mary Tackett, Stephanie Krausen, Prof. Isabelli
MORE SNAPSHOTS
Our graduating seniors, Hispanic Studies faculty/staff and President Wilson.
Alumna Profile: Jean Janecki (1989)
Dr. Jean Janecki (Modern Languages) is finishing her fifth year as Assistant Professor of Spanish at University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. She completed her BA in 1989, and later went on to receive her MA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Her research includes modern Spanish poetry and painting, with special focus on Surrealism. She also enjoys Hispanic film and is active on campus presenting movies in Spanish for different occasions. Her publications include "Inmigrantes hispanoamericanos en el cine español: una visión doble" and "Teaching With Technology: New Approaches For Spanish Language, Literature and Culture Classes."
Professor Janecki is currently also the Director of the Language Resource Center and investigates instructional technology to use in teaching languages. (Her favorite tool is a "wiki" which she uses in all her classes.) She has presented her research in several regional, national and international conferences. Always involved in outside activities, she is the Spanish Club advisor, chair of the technology committee, and Hispanic Heritage Month organizer.
She also loves to travel, especially to Argentina and Spain, where she has lived before and now takes groups of students for short-term programs.
Her love of travel and the Hispanic culture developed greatly during her Junior Year Abroad and keeps on growing. She is grateful for the wonderful year in Madrid and encourages all students, regardless of major to see the world. You won't regret it!
LUIS LEAL FUND
Prof. Parra has established the Luis Leal fund that funds IWU students' research in Hispanic Studies at IWU and abroad. The financial support of this fund comes directly from the sales of Mitos y leyendas de México, a collection of 20 popular legends recreated by the author, Luis Leal, and edited by Prof. Parra. The book, which includes original illustrations by acclaimed Mexican painter Álvaro Ángeles Suman, has been published in a bilingual edition. All proceeds will be used to fund the scholarship. Order a book (or two!) and be part of supporting future students' research. To receive a copy, please fill out this form. For more information visit mitosyleyendas.weebly.com
ORDER & PAYMENT
| SHIPPING AND HANDLING FEES | |
|---|---|
| FEE FOR ADDITIONAL BOOKS | Quantity x $1.25 |
| | TOTAL |
*Donations do not include Shipping and Handling fees. Please include $2.50 for the first book and $1.25 for each additional book.
SHIP TO
First Name
Maiden
Name
Home
Address
City
Home
Phone
Last Name
Institution
State
Work Phone
Cell Phone
E-mail Address
Make checks payable to Illinois Wesleyan University - Luis Leal Fund
Send this completed form and your payment to
Luis Leal Fund * Hispanic Studies Department * Illinois Wesleyan University P.O. Box 2900 * Bloomington * IL * 61702-2900
Zip Code
|
SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER
1001 East 52nd Street Kansas City, MO 64110
Phone: 816-523-5115
Fax: 816-333-0082
www.sfx-kc.org
P AS TO R AL S T AF F
Pastor
Fr. Stephen Yavorsky, S.J., 816-381-9162 or email@example.com Parochial Vicar
Fr. Bob Hagan, S.J., 816-501-3288 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Operations and Project Manager
Ann Sheridan, 816-381-9165 or email@example.com
Pastoral Associate, Faith Formation
Mariann McCormally, 816-381-9163 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Pastoral Associate, Justice & Life
Sue Robb, 816-381-9167 or email@example.com
Pastoral Associate, Liturgy & Music
Pat Woodrum, 816-381-9164 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Facilities
R E Jackson, 816-381-9166 or email@example.com
Administrative Assistant
Peggy Beaven Calia, 816-381-9161 or firstname.lastname@example.org
P AS TO R AL C O U N C IL
Teresa Cott - Chair, 816-868-8587 or email@example.com
Mary Adams Steve Bruns
Kevin Collison
Edwin Locke Joan McMahon
Christine Rankin John Veal Katie Wiehl
FI N AN C E C O U N C IL
Kaler Bole - Chair , firstname.lastname@example.org
Jane Coakley
Brian Lappin Dorna Edgar Swan Brian Sullivan
The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph is committed to combating sexual abuse in the Church. If you are a victim of sexual abuse, or if you observe or suspect sexual abuse:
1. Call the Missouri Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-392-3738 (if the victim is currently under the age of 18), and
2. Contact your local law enforcement agency or call 911, and
3. After reporting to these civil and law enforcement authorities, report suspected sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult to the Diocesan Ombudsman, Jenifer Valenti, at 816-812-2500 or email@example.com, if the abuse involves a priest, deacon, employee or volunteer of the Diocese of Kansas City -St. Joseph.
The Diocese has a sincere commitment to providing care and healing resources to victims of sexual abuse and their families. Please contact Victim Advocate Kathleen Chastain at 816-392-0011 or firstname.lastname@example.org for more information.
M AS S S C H E D U LE
Tuesday through Friday
7:00am and 12:00pm
Saturday
4:00pm
Sunday
8:00am and 10:30am (6:00pm University Student Liturgy during Fall & Spring semesters)
Sunday School (ages 2, 3 & 4) during 10:30am Sunday Liturgy
Children's Liturgy of the Word during 10:30am Sunday Liturgy
Mariann McCormally 816-381-9163
S AC R AM E N T O F R E C O N C I L I A T I O N
Saturday
Thursday
3:00-3:45pm (or by appointment)
EUCH AR I S T I C AD O R AT I O N
12:30pm to 2:00pm
S AC R AM E N T A L P R E P AR A T I O N
Infant Baptism, First Eucharist, First Reconciliation,
Confirmation, Adult Catechumenate (RCIA)
Mariann McCormally 816-381-9163
Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Eucharist to Homebound
or Hospitalized
Fr. Stephen Yavorsky, S.J. 816-381-9162
Fr. Bob Hagan, S.J.
816-501-3288
Marriage
Fr. Bob Hagan, S.J.
816-501-3288
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OTHER AC T I VI T I E S
Centering Prayer Group
3rd Monday Monthly
Choir Practice Pat Woodrum Community Garden Peg Hornsby
Cub Scouts
Steve Livingston
Food Pantry
Justice & Life
Steve Bruns
Ignatian Spirituality
Mary Anne Morgenegg
SFX-Adult Faith Formation
Karen Stigers
SFX-Sister Parish
Jim Bell
SFX-Sustainability
Cindy Schmidt
SFX-VIS Social Concerns
Sodality of Our Lady
Marie Dupree Johnson
816-333-7928
————————————————————————————
B UL LE TIN DE ADL INE Monday at 12:00noon NOTE: For holiday bulletins, submit at least 5 days earlier.
Wednesday, 7:30–9:00pm 816-381-9164
765-748-4135 or email@example.com
Every other Saturday, 10–11:30am
816-444-6721
By Appointment
816-381-9174
3rd Sunday Monthly
816-804-6097 or firstname.lastname@example.org
816-381-9168
1st Tuesday Monthly 913-262-8994
Monthly
913-449-7505
Monthly
816-914-9498
Monthly
14TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Our Mission
St. Francis Xavier Parish is a Roman Catholic, Jesuit community of faith called together by God to experience Jesus Christ in His Word, in the sacraments of the Church, and in each other. We, as the body of Christ, joined in Baptism and inspired by the grace of the Holy Spirit, enrich our faith through prayer and worship, spiritual formation, intellectual rigor, diversity of membership, hospitality and fellowship, attention to family life, and concern for social justice. Guided by the spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola, we strive to use our many gifts for the greater glory of God.
Parish News
Our Lady of Mount Carmel/Prayer for Peace Rosary
Greeters Needed
Help us to warmly greet our parishioners and guests prior to weekend masses. For more information and to sign up please contact Joan McMahon at email@example.com or call her at 913.484.1712.
Parish Hall Update
As many of you know our long (6+ years) of not having a parish meeting place is about to be behind us. We hope to move into and open the new hall sometime late this summer or early fall. Currently our fund-raising efforts have netted SFX $41,870. Still needed are several critical items to be ordered and paid for such as kitchen equipment and some appliances.
We will need approximately $15,000 more to get the hall completely furnished. If you have the financial flexibility for a special check for the renovation we would greatly appreciate your help. Thank you from your SFX Stewardship Fundraising Committee and the Parish Finance Council.
Faith Formation
Strong Blessings on Fiona Rose Doerksen (daughter of Jacob Doerksen and Lisa Meinen) who is baptized on Sunday. May she – and all our children – grow up to be women and men for others.
Baptisms after Mass? An Explanation from Mariann
You may have noticed that we sometimes baptize a baby or toddler after one of the weekend Masses. We do usually baptize babies during the Saturday 4:00 or Sunday 8:00 and 10:30 liturgies once-a-month, but sometimes our scheduled baptism date doesn't fit with out-of-town family members' travel schedules. Other times the families ask for a baptism outside of Mass because some family members or friends are not Catholic. And when a child is toddler age, it usually works better if the baptism is outside of Mass, rather than during the liturgy. What a blessing that Father Steve and Father Bob are able to accommodate the wishes and needs of our young families! Please keep all our babies, toddlers, children and teens – and their parents! – in your prayers.
Monday, July 16, 2018
7:00 pm SFX Romero Room and Church
Please enter by the Chapel Entrance Door. The doors to the Church will NOT be unlocked.
We will begin in the Romero Room to view to a short (12 minute) video and then move into the main church to pray the rosary on the Feast of our Lady of Mount Carmel. In a special way we will pray for peace in our world. July 16 is the anniversary of the detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945 – the Trinity Nuclear Test in central New Mexico. The world was forever changed that day. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death." For more information, contact Gail Fein (firstname.lastname@example.org 913-961-3201).
James Martin SJ "Building a Bridge – How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion and Sensitivity," Book Groups
THANKS to all those who have offered to host the book groups. The books have arrived and will be distributed later this summer. Group sign-ups will happen in mid-late August. The book groups will run September 16-October 13. For more information contact Mariann McCormally (email@example.com 816-381-9163).
Go to youtube.com "James Martin Building a Bridge" (ht ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_LgIcqe6rY ) to learn more about the book.
Contemporary Spirituality Speaker Series
"Christianity as Planetary Faith: Engaging Teilhard's Vision" Sister Ilia Delio, OSF
Friday, July 20, 2018 7:00-9:00 pm
Saturday, July 21, 2018 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Bishop Miege High School (5041 Reinhardt Drive, Roeland Park, KS 66205)
Registration: $80 2-day conference, includes lunch; $25 Friday; $65 Saturday, includes lunch).
For more information or to register go to ht ps:// contemporaryspirituality.eventbrite.com or contact Mike Matteuzzi (913-253-2510).
Middle School Youth Group SUMMER EVENTS
Sunday, July 29, 6:00-8:00 pm – Summer Sunday Gathering Saturday-Sunday, August 25-26, 8:00 pm – 8:00 am – Lock-In Bring a friend! You don't have to be a parishioner (or Catholic!) to participate. Contact Dan Shaver firstname.lastname@example.org for details and to register.
Justice & Life
SFX Parish Food Pantry
**Just a reminder, that if you would like to make a monetary donation to the food pantry, you must make the check out to "SFX Social Ministries" with "food pantry" in the memo line. If you are going to donate during the Sunday collection, please put your donation in a separate envelope with "SFX Social Ministries" written on the outside of the envelope.
Thank you for your continued generosity with food and cash donations to the food pantry!**
Neighborhood Justice Center
This legal clinic is a not-for-profit corporation that operates out of our parish offices bringing legal services to the urban core poor. Many thanks to our volunteer attorneys:
Mike Kelly, Abe Kuhl, John Wilcox, Jim Wyrsch, Stephen Mayer, Don Quinn, Matt Quinn, Pat Bradshaw (paralegal) and Tom Bradshaw.
If you would like to join our volunteers, whether you are a retired attorney or still active, please contact Tom Bradshaw (email: email@example.com).
Giving the Basics
Giving the Basics is a local nonprofit that is dedicated to strengthening communities by providing products for human dignity, directly to locations of need, for distribution to people who would otherwise go without. The SFX food pantry is extremely grateful for the personal hygiene items provided to us through Giving the Basics. If you are interested in making a donation to Giving the Basics, please visit www.givingthebasics.org.
Update on our Community Garden:
Please feel free to join us in the garden. We meet at the garden at 10:00am on Saturday mornings. Once it gets hot, we will switch to 9:00am.
We also water on Wednesdays at 5:00pm. If you would like to be added to our email list or if you have any questions please feel free to email Peg Hornsby at firstname.lastname@example.org or call her at 765-748-4135.
General Announcements
Jesuit Volunteer Corps
The Jesuit Volunteer Corps is looking for volunteers in our city! JVC places young professionals at partner organizations to serve within poor communities across the country to create a more just and hopeful world. If you are interested or would like more information, visit their website at jesuitvolunteers.org/howtoapply or email email@example.com.
Looking For Inspiration? Another Opportunity To Come and See
Join fellow parishioners who have completed the Spiritual Exer- cises as they share their experiences of walking with Christ.
The Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life of St. Ignatius Loyola are based on the conversion experience of St. Ignatius Loyola.
Romero Room, St. Francis Xavier Parish, 1001 East 52 Street 7:00 PM to 8:15 PM, Thursday, July 19, 2018
i
Applications for the Exercises are now being accepted. If you are wondering if this is the right time for you to live this experience, or, if you want to hear about other ways to expand your prayer life, spend an hour or so with us. Check out our other programs on our website: ignat ancenterkc.org . For more information, please contact Jim Caccamo, ISC-KC, 816-365-2328 or jcaccamo@ignat ancenterkc.org .
Rachel's Vineyard
Are you or a loved one suffering from abortion? Find hope and allow God to heal your heart by attending a Rachel's Vineyard retreat. The second of the three 2018 Kansas City retreats will be on July 20-22. For more information or to register, please call Teresa O'Donnell at (816) 679-4973 or email firstname.lastname@example.org or visit www.rachelsvineyardkc.org.
Little Sisters of the Poor Volunteer Opportunity
Little Sisters of the Poor, a home for the elderly poor in South Kansas City, is in need of volunteer drivers to take our residents and sisters to appointments and outings.
Most of these are during the day, Monday thru Friday, with an occasional need in the evening (such as when they need extra drivers to go to Starlight or a movie).
If this is something you would be interested in doing, or for more information, please contact Alice Grego at email@example.com .
Here are the specifics/requirements:
- Needs to have a valid driver's license (CDL not required)
- Must submit to a criminal background check – this is a legal requirement
- The driver will use the home's vehicles
Thanks, and God bless!
The Inaugural Bishop Johnston's Summer Golf Classic Monday, July 16, 2016
4 Man Scramble, 7:30am Continental Breakfast, 9:00am Shotgun Start, Entry fee $375 per player, $1500 per foursome
Includes continental breakfast, 18 holes of golf with cart, driving range and warm up balls, lunch on the course, beverages, complimentary gift bag, appetizers & awards (following the round). Flight Prizes & Contest Holes (longest drive, closest to the pin, hole-in-one). For more information or to register: www.brightfuturefund.org.
Tournament contact Ken Kremer, Director of Development, firstname.lastname@example.org.
Follow Fr. Steve on Twitter!!
To follow him, go to:
www.twitter.com/StephenYavorsky
Liturgical Ministers
Mass Readings
July 9 – July 15
Monday: Hos 2:16, 17b-18, 21-22/Matt 9:18-26
Tuesday: Hos 8:4-7, 11-13/Matt 9:32-38
Wednesday: Hos 10:1-3, 7-8, 12/Matt 10:1-7
Thursday: Hos 11:1-4, 8e-9/Matt 10:7-15
Friday: Hos 14:2-10/]/Matt 10:16-23
Saturday: Isa 6:1-8/Matt 10:24-33
Sunday: Amos 7:12-15/Eph 1:3-14 or 1:3-10/Mark 6:7-13
One Sentence Sermon
We don't change God's message. His message changes us.
"Remember: you can now give to SFX online."
Calendar
Mass Intentions
"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."
― C.S. Lewis
Sunday Funny
Seen on a Bumper Sticker
How's my walk with God?
Call 1-800-CHURCH ME
Like our new Facebook page! You can find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SFX.KC
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THE MICROELEMENTS CONTENT IN THE ERODED CARBONATIC CHERNOZEM FROM CENTRAL AREA OF MOLDOVA
Tamara LEAH 1
e-mail: email@example.com
Abstract
The chernozems carbonatic eroded on the territory of the Republic of Moldova occupy the area of 294 thousand ha (44.2% of the total area). These soils are most vulnerable to erosion processes in all chernozem subtypes. Loss of macro- and micro-nutrients on agricultural land is significant and has become an important issue for agricultural production. The results of Mn, Co, Zn, Cu, Ni determination (atomic absorption spectrophotometer) in the arable layer of eroded chernozem revealed that water erosion influences their distribution in soils. The average content in the non eroded carbonatic chernozem is: Mn - 654, Cu - 32, Co - 14, Zn - 38, Ni - 40 mg/kg. With increases of erosion degree, the total content of Cu, Zn, Co and Mn decreases in the range of 3-35%, the Ni content increases, from 6% to 78% compared to the non eroded soil. The losses of microelements in the heavily eroded carbonatic chernozem were: Cu 35%, Zn - 31%, Mn - 27% compared to non eroded soil. The Mn, Zn, Co and Ni content in the eroded carbonatic chernozem is higher than the average quantity for carbonatic chernozems, and the Cu content is lower.
Key words: carbonatic chernozem, content, erosion, microelements
Chernozems carbonatic are widespread in the Republic of Moldova and occupy 654 thousand hectares in the steppe zone. These soils are distributed on the youngest floodplain terraces of the Dniester, Prut and small rivers, which are moving far to the north. Chernozems carbonatic are the youngest pedogeologically soils. According to the granulometric composition, they are mainly heavy loamy and loamy. The soils are characterized by the presence of carbonates from the surface layer, an alkaline reaction throughout the profile, an increased calcareous potential, a relatively insignificant humus content with a fairly large thickness of the humus horizon. These properties allow to distinguish them at the independent subtype level (Крупеников, 1979).
Chernozems carbonatic eroded on the territory of Moldova, occupy 294 thousand hectares or 44.2% of the total area. They are most vulnerable to erosion processes from all subtypes of chernozems. The loss of nutrient macro- and microelements on agricultural land is significant and has become an important problem for agricultural production.
soil microelements have not been studied or studied in partial. In this paper, we present the results of determining the total content and chemical forms of microelements (Mn, Cu, Zn, Co, Ni) in eroded carbonatic chernozems in dependence on the erosion degree.
MATERIAL AND METHOD
The research object were chernozems carbonatic of different erosion degrees, as well as diluvial layered carbonate soils. The study soils are located on the slope with length 1200 m, steepness of 8-10°. Eroded carbonate chernozems are a very peculiar group of soils, characterized by genetic features, many specific physical and chemical properties, agronomic and agrochemical characteristics. Unlike other subtypes, carbonate chernozems have an alkaline reaction in the vertical profile. Carbonates content of these soils reflects the conditions of nitrogen, phosphorous and trace elements mobility (Кабата - Пендиас & Пендиас, 1989; Атлас Почв Молдавии, 1988).
Research has been carried out both to study the content of trace elements accessible to plants (in agrochemistry) and to determine the general biogeochemical content. Other chemical forms of
Determination of trace elements from soil samples was performed by atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The total content was determined by the classical method of decomposition with hydrofluoric acid in combination with sulfuric acid. Various conventional extracts were used to determine the chemical forms with the soil compounds (Содержание, 1979).
1 "Nicolae Dimo" Institute of Soil Science, Agrochemistry and Soil Protection, Chisinau, Moldova
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Carbonate chernozems of the DanubePontiac region represent an original group of soils within a single chernozem type of soil formation. Genetically, they are heterogeneous, but the parent rocks on which these soils form are always in a certain, usually significant, extent initially enriched in carbonates. All carbonate chernozems are characterized by a number of common features, mainly negative in agronomic terms: alkaline reaction from the surface, excess of carbonates, increased calcareous potential, low mobility of some microelements (Кирилюк, 2006).
Carbonate chernozems are lighter than other representatives types of the same granulometric composition are highly exposed to water erosion.
Carbonates content are the main diagnostic feature of this chernozem type. The arable layer of soil contains 1.2-6.9% of carbonates (CaCO3). The content of CaCO3 increases sharply at a depth of 60-100 cm. At the depth of 70-80 cm, soils contain more than 10% of carbonates. In the transition from one to the other degree of erosion, an increase in the CaCO3 content occurs, from 1.2% in chernozem carbonate non-eroded (0-10 cm layer) to 7.0% in heavily eroded chernozem (figure 1).
Physico-chemical properties. A somewhat lower content of humus in carbonate chernozems is a consequence of the presence of CaCO3 from the surface. Nevertheless, their humus profile is not specific, is typically black earth and reflects the features of the modern bioclimatic environment.
Information on the qualitative composition of humus in the carbonate chernozems is not numerous (Leah, 2010). The humus content with depth decreases very smoothly: in the arable layer of non-eroded carbonate chernozem its content is 3.84%, at a depth of 40-50 cm - 2.45%, at a meter depth - 0.90%. Consequently, the soil belongs to the powerful category. The amount of humus in the plow horizon of soils decreases, respectively, to the degree of erosion: 3.2% -2.7% -1.8% (table 1).
Table 1 Physico-chemical properties of eroded carbonate chernozem and diluvial soil
*OD-ha - optical density of humic acids
| Horizon | Depth, cm | Humus % | *ОD- ha | pHH2O | CaCO3, % | Ca2+ | Mg2+ | ∑Ca2+ + Mg2+ | Ca2+ Mg2+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | | | mg-equ./100 g of soil | | | |
| Chernozem carbonate - non eroded | | | | | | | | | |
| Аp. | 0-10 | 3.84 | 47 | 7.8 | 1.18 | 22.8 | 3.2 | 26.0 | 7.1 |
| | 10-20 | 3.19 | 41 | 7.8 | 1.67 | 19.3 | 3.0 | 22.3 | 6.4 |
| Chernozem carbonate - weakly eroded | | | | | | | | | |
| Аp | 0-10 | 3.17 | 22 | 7.8 | 2.73 | 37.2 | 2.6 | 39.8 | 14.3 |
| | 10-20 | 3.10 | 15 | 7.8 | 2.90 | 27.9 | 2.1 | 30.0 | 13.3 |
| Chernozem carbonate - moderately eroded | | | | | | | | | |
| АВp | 0-10 | 2.70 | 18 | 7.9 | 4.53 | 45.6 | 2.3 | 47.9 | 19.8 |
| | 10-20 | 2.65 | 15 | 7.9 | 4.73 | 50.7 | 2.7 | 53.4 | 18.8 |
| Chernozem carbonate - heavily eroded | | | | | | | | | |
| Вp | 0-10 | 1.85 | 3 | 7.9 | 6.93 | 69.1 | 3.5 | 72.6 | 19.7 |
| | 10-20 | 1.75 | 1 | 7.9 | 7.00 | 77.9 | 3.6 | 81.5 | 21.6 |
| Diluvial carbonate soil | | | | | | | | | |
| Ih | 0-12 | 3.41 | 49 | 7.0 | 2.00 | 24.0 | 1.8 | 25.8 | 13.3 |
| IIh | 12-25 | 3.34 | 42 | 6.9 | 2.20 | 21.2 | 1.5 | 22.7 | 14.1 |
With the increase of erosion degree, the content of exchangeable bases rise. Exchange Ca in non-eroded chernozem is 22.8 mg-equ./100 g of soil, and 69.1 mg-equ./100 g - in strongly eroded soil. The ratio of Ca and Mg in soils increasing, from 7 to 20, which indicates the availability of these elements for plants. The water pH varies insignificantly - 7.8-7.9.
Trace elements. Chernozems of Moldova has long represented the most important object for comprehensive research; they are attracting special
attention at present due to soil degradation and anthropogenic pressure.
Copper. The average content of Cu in the chernozems of Moldova is 34.6 mg/kg (Лях, 1991). In the upper soil horizons of catena, the total content of Cu was: 22.7 - 20.8 - 18.1 - 14.7 15.5 mg/kg in dependence of erosion degree. Weakly-eroded carbonate chernozem loses as a result of erosion - 8.4% of total Cu, moderately eroded - 20.7%; heavily eroded - 35.2% in comparison with non-eroded soil. The mobile forms of Cu were up to 10% and range from 1.65 to 1.0 mg/kg, from non eroded to heavily eroded soil. Unavailable forms of Cu were 90%. The chemical forms associated with carbonates were 17-20% in the 0-20 cm soil layer. About 0.4% of Cu was associated with organic matter. Copper compounds in the composition of primary minerals increase with depth ( table 2 ).
Table 2 Content and chemical forms of Cu in carbonatic chernozems, mg/kg, 0-20 cm
| Carbonate chernozem | Cu total | mobile forms | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | carbo- nates | organic matter | Fe-Mn oxides | |
| | | | | | | clay |
| Non eroded | 22.7 | 1.75 | 3.8 | 0.42 | 10.6 | 2.7 |
| Weakly eroded | 20.8 | 1.54 | 3.7 | 0.25 | 10.2 | 2.5 |
| Moderately eroded | 18.1 | 1.32 | 3.3 | 0.23 | 9.2 | 2.4 |
| Heavily eroded | 14.7 | 1.00 | 3.0 | 0.21 | 8.3 | 3.2 |
Zinc. The average content of Zn in soils of Moldova consist 48.0 mg/kg (Лях, 1991). Carbonate chernozems are characterized by a high content of Zn total - up to 76.4 mg/kg of soil. With increasing of erosion degree, its content decreases and amounts in the 0-20 cm layer of weakly eroded chernozem was 63.2 mg/kg, moderately - 60.6, heavily - 52.7 mg/kg (table 3). With profile depth, Zn decrease occurs, in the carbonate horizons of all soils is in the range of 42-48 mg/kg from the global content. The chemical forms associated with Fe and Mn oxides reach 89-76% of the total content in the plow layer. With profile depth in all eroded soils, the compounds of Zn with oxides increase.
Nickel. The total content of Ni in study soils increases, from 48.9 mg/kg in non-eroded to 83.5 mg/kg - in heavily eroded carbonate chernozem. With depth, its content decreases in the underlying horizons of soils. Compounds Ni in composition of oxides of Fe and Mn make up the largest part: from 43 mg/kg (88%) in non-eroded to 29 mg/kg (35%) in heavily eroded chernozem (table 4). Acidsoluble, exchangeable and organic compound of Ni decrease with increasing of erosion degree (Лях, 2003, 2005a). The second place in the adsorption of Ni after oxides occupies the primary minerals. These compounds increase with profile depth in all soils of the catena with eroded varieties.
Table 3
Content and chemical forms of Zn in carbonatic chernozems, mg/kg, 0-20 cm
Table 4
| Carbonate chernozem | Zn total | mobile forms | Chemical forms of Zn compounds with | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | carbo- nates | organic matter | Fe-Mn oxides | minerals | |
| | | | | | | clay | primary |
| Non eroded | 76.4 | 2.45 | 3.2 | 0.60 | 40.0 | 23.4 | 12.4 |
| Weakly eroded | 63.2 | 1.34 | 3.0 | 0.55 | 45.0 | 21.0 | 23.6 |
| Moderately eroded | 60.6 | 1.32 | 2.4 | 0.50 | 50.0 | 16.6 | 29.7 |
| Heavily eroded | 52.7 | 1.30 | 1.7 | 0.45 | 56.0 | 10.5 | 51.2 |
| Diluvial soil | 41.4 | 3.85 | 5.5 | 0.10 | 22.0 | 20.0 | 13.5 |
Content and chemical forms of Ni in carbonatic chernozems, mg/kg, 0-20 cm
| Carbonate chernozem | Ni total | mobile forms | Chemical forms of Ni compounds with | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | carbo- nates | organic matter | Fe-Mn oxides | minerals | |
| | | | | | | clay | primary |
| Non eroded | 48.9 | 3.30 | 3.3 | 0.53 | 43.0 | 1.7 | 10.9 |
| Weakly eroded | 51.9 | 3.10 | 3.0 | 0.50 | 36.0 | 8.4 | 18.9 |
| Moderately eroded | 77.6 | 3.00 | 2.5 | 0.45 | 35.5 | 35.1 | 48.6 |
| Heavily eroded | 83.5 | 3.00 | 2.5 | 0.42 | 29.0 | 48.5 | 55.0 |
Cobalt. The average Co content in soils of Moldova is 15.0 mg/kg (Leah, 2005b). Carbonate chernozems non eroded are characterized by a high content of Co - up to 21.0 mg/kg. With an increase
of erosion degree, its content decreases and consist Oxides of Fe and Mn bind the largest part of the Co: from non eroded soil to highly eroded, they reach 62-75% of the total content in the arable horizon 0-20 cm. With increases of profile depth of the eroded soils, these compounds increase several. In the upper horizon of non-eroded chernozem, Co compounds with clay minerals account 14.3% of the total content.
19.5-17.3 mg/kg in the 0-20 cm soil layer.
Solubility and availability of Co in eroded carbonate chernozems increase in the horizons of calcium-saturated (horizon C) - 2.26-4.36%.
Between the concentration of mobile forms of microelements in soils and their content in plants there is a close relationship (г=0.65-0.95).
Primary minerals retain almost the same content of Co as clay minerals. The accessible and mobile forms of Co in the 0-20 cm layer of soils consist 0.18-0.35 mg/kg (table 5).
Under the influence of erosion, heavy metal compounds undergo a partial or complete change, and takes place their transformation. The study of the compounds transformation in soils provides additional information on the nature of the compounds formed in the soil.
Table 5 Content and chemical forms of Co in carbonatic chernozems, mg/kg, 0-20 cm
| Carbonate chernozem | Co total | mobile forms | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | carbo- nates | organic matter | Fe-Mn oxides | |
| | | | | | | clay |
| Non eroded | 21.0 | 0.18 | 2.4 | 0.10 | 13.0 | 3.0 |
| Weakly eroded | 19.5 | 0.25 | 2.3 | 0.10 | 14.0 | 2.0 |
| Moderately eroded | 18.0 | 0.30 | 2.1 | 0.10 | 15.0 | 1.5 |
| Heavily eroded | 17.3 | 0.35 | 2.0 | 0.10 | 17.0 | 1.0 |
| Diluvial soil | 19.7 | 0.40 | 3.3 | 0.10 | 19.0 | 9.0 |
CONCLUSIONS
REFERENCES
- In the distribution of microelements in soils in terms of erosion, their mobility changes, which can serve as a diagnostic criterion for determining the type of pollution (anthropogenic or natural).
- Accumulation of microelements in plants on eroded carbonate chernozems can decrease as a result of antagonism of elements and the functioning of biochemical barriers.
- Carbonates in the soil contribute to fixing trace elements by reducing the content of their exchange forms and increasing the sorption capacity of FeMn oxides.
- The studied features of the transformation of trace element compounds in eroded carbonate chernozems can be used to estimate the environmental impact of erosion and anthropogenic factors on the soils productive capacity.
- The established mechanisms of interaction of microelements with soil components can serve to develop effective methods of restoring soil fertility.
- The revealed patterns of translocation of microelements to plants can be applied for the purpose of normalizing their content in the soils of Moldova.
- Erosion is a factor that increases the carbonate content of chernozems in the plow horizon, which in turn weakens the anti-resistance of soils to anthropogenic influences.
Leah T., 2005a – Distribuţia nichelului în catena cu cernoziomuri carbonatice. Ecological Chemistry. Chişinău, 484-489.
Leah T., 2005b – Formele chimice ale cobaltului în cernoziomurile carbonatice erodate din Republica Moldova. Soil resource use, environment protection and rural development in the western part of Romania. Vol.II. Bucharest, 11-19.
Leah T., 2010 – Humus and trace elements as an indicator of eroded material from carbonatic chernozems. Agriculture and Environment. Scientific paper. Series A. Vol. LIII. Agronomy. Buharest, 22 -28.
Атлас Почв Молдавии, 1988 - Отв. ред. И.А. Крупеников, Кишинёв, Штиинца, 83-88.
- .
Кабата - Пендиас А., Х. Пендиас, 1989 Микроэлементы в почвах и растениях Москва, Мир, 1989.
Кирилюк В. П., 2006 - Микроэлементы в компонентах биосферы Молдовы. Chişinău, Pontos, 156 c.
Крупеников И. А., 1979 - Карбонатные черноземы. Кишинев, Штиинца, 108 с.
Лях Т. Г., 1991 - Соединения меди и цинка в эродированном карбонатном черноземе. Сб.: Антропогенная эволюция, оценка и методы изучения почв и почвенного покрова. Кишинев, c. 107-118.
Лях Т. Г., 2003 - Формы соединений кобальта и никеля в эродированных карбонатных черноземах Молдовы. Сб. докладов Международной научно-практической конференции «Модели и технологии оптимизации земледелия», Kурск, с.152-155.
Содержание и формы микроэлементов в почвах 1979. Под ред. Н. Г. Зырина. Изд. МГУ, 285 c.
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FULL CASE STUDY REPORT
Title of case
River Dialogue: Testing innovative public participation methods – citizens´ jury and focus groups in Estonia
Subtitle
New approaches to increase public participation in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive; the results of testing two specific participatory methods of citizens' involvement - focus groups and citizens' juries in Estonia, river Emajõgi region.
Description
In IWRM the major challenge is to successfully integrate the natural and social sciences, and to develop methods to improve stakeholder and public participation. It is important to explore new directions and instruments for participation in order to involve all groups concerned. EU funded research project River Dialogue (www.riverdialogue.org) tried to identify the best approaches to increase public participation in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive, through testing two specific participatory methods of citizens' involvement - focus groups and citizens' juries.
A Focus group is a planned discussion among a small group of people on a specific topic. Obtained information is asked on social interaction, and the group setting allows individuals to use the ideas of others as cues to more fully elicit their own views.
9 focus groups on water management issues with all major stakeholder groups in the Emajõgi river basin were conducted in the year 2004.
A Citizen's Jury is a randomly selected panel of citizens, which meets for 3-5 days to carefully examine an issue of public significance through discussions, examinations of information, and questioning of witnesses. The members of the jury are given the chance to hear views and receive information from a variety of expert witnesses. Finally, the jury presents their recommendations to the problem issue. A Citizen's Jury in Emajõgi River region was organized on the topic of water transportation, based on the results of the focus groups and several discussions with environmental authorities of the region.
Lessons learned
- There is a lot of hesitation and uncertainties among the local people and the politicians about new public participation methods.
- The selection of the proper method is of key importance, in order to achieve the high commitment of stakeholders and to achieve the best results. Focus groups and citizens´ juries have been proved to be suitable methods to use in different socioeconomic, cultural and political backgrounds, in order to achieve higher public participation in water management planning.
- Important aspect of a Citizen's Jury is that it promotes political dialogue aimed at mutual understanding, which does not mean that people will agree, but rather that they will be motivated to resolve conflicts by argument rather than other means. The way people reached the recommendations has to be considered at least of similar importance as the recommendations themselves. The feeling that someone is so much interested in the opinions of citizens', came as a surprise to a number of participants.
- The citizens' jury proved very well that people, when thinking together in a pleasant constructive atmosphere, prevent conflicts and, by way of compromises, reach solutions. And these people do not all have to be experts.
Importance of case for IWRM
The case describes how local people, who are not specialists, can take part in discussions and decision making process of complex environmental issues.
The case shows that new innovative approaches are necessary to be used to implement EU WFD under the IWRM principles.
Tools used
A2.2 Implementation and Enforcement
C3.2 Stakeholder Analysis
C8.2 Raising Public Awareness
Keywords
Innovative public participation methods: focus groups, citizen jury; implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive,
MAIN TEXT
1 Problems
Last decade has been for decision makers an intensive period for exploring new directions and instruments aimed to increase public participation in environmental matters on the global scale. A rapid growth of interest in public participation has been seen in a wide range of sectors – air and water protection, biodiversity, etc. Public participation has also gained wide recognition as a key principle for modern environmental resource management. In water management according to the Dublin Statement (second principle): "Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach. … Decisions are taken at the lowest appropriate level, with full public consultation and involvement of users in the planning and implementation of water projects" (The Dublin Statements, 1992).
Raising of public awareness and close involvement of it into decision making would result in less costly and more effective water protection because people would understand the relationships between their activities and the impacts of it on water bodies and the stakeholders would feel a sense of ownership to the objectives that they've contributed to when developing it. The decisions would also be of better quality since the interests of various stakeholders would be balanced as much as possible and local knowledge of problems together with local experience would be reflected in decisions.
However, experience shows that for participation to be effective it has to have real impacts on the ground. Without concrete results obvious to stakeholders at the local level maintaining active involvement becomes more difficult.
Especially difficult was/is to start public participation in post- soviet countries, where there is no long history of deliberative democracy. In these countries public involvement is often declared in speeches and policy documents but the real meaning of this concept has not been fully realized by the governmental officials, but often also by the public itself. The major problem is that among water managers there is not enough knowledge about practical and effective approaches to public participation and empowerment, and about tools that enable the public to make informed decisions in water management. There is also little awareness about different methods and channels how to involve various stakeholder groups and this is especially true when talking about new EU member countries/new democracies. In order to develop new methods of participation, which take into account the needs and characteristics of different stakeholder groups the three-way communication between policy- and decisionmakers, stakeholders and public, and scientists, cannot be overestimated. The quality of public participation must therefore be increased and communication strategies must be refined.
In order to respond to these new challenges River Dialogue project was started with participation of Linköping University (Sweden), Free University Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and NGO Peipsi Center for Transboundary Cooperation (Estonia). The project was implemented in 2003-2004 and was aiming to identify the best approaches to increase public participation in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive. The project also aimed to support the discussion between the scientists, decision-makers involved in managing European waters, and the public in understanding the challenges of water use and protection.
The project was implemented in three regions of Europe: in two "old" EU member countries – Sweden and the Netherlands; and one new EU member country –Estonia. Selected river basin case studies - the Motala Stroem in Sweden, the Emajõgi River in Estonia, and IJsselmeer basin in the Netherlands - represent diversity of cultural and socio-economic contexts in Europe in which the proposed approach can be implemented.
2 Decisions and Actions Taken
The River Dialogue pilot project was prepared by Linköping University, Free University Amsterdam and Peipsi Center for Transboundary Cooperation in order to study and test new innovative public participation methods in environmental decision-making. The pilot project was implemented in 2003-2004 with the funding form European Union 5 th Framework Programme.
The project objectives were:
a) To study whether/and with what kind of tools it is possible that the citizens take counsel together about what policies and environmental decisions ought to be taken in their watershed.
b) To identify the best approaches to increasing public empowerment and involving the public in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive and river basin management plans
c) To carry out focus groups and citizen juries in three European river basins: the Motala Stroem in Sweden, IJsselmeer - in the Netherlands and the Emajõgi River in Estonia.
d) To develop guidelines for the organization of citizens' juries and other forms of participation as part of the development and implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive.
Focus Group
A Focus group is still a rather unknown research tool within environmental management as it is more used in market and social science research.
Focus Groups can be widely defined as groups that have been designed to obtain perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive, non-threatening environment. Focus Groups can be suitable method for getting a brief understanding of an area not previously covered.
Focus group is a planned discussion among a group of six to eight people on a specific topic, which lasts one to one and a half hours. In a relaxed atmosphere and with the guidance of a moderator a group share their ideas and perceptions. The group members influence each other by responding to the ideas and comments of others. For the participants this methodology offers an excellent possibility to learn from the experience of the other group members. The advantage of the focus group over the in-depth interview is the fact that it is possible to obtain information more quickly because there are fewer meetings to plan and, more importantly, group work enables people to use the ideas of others to express their own opinion more clearly. Another advantages of focus groups over one-on-one interviews is that information obtained is asked on social interaction, and the group setting allows individuals to use the ideas of others as cues to more fully elicit their own views.
In summer 2003, Peipsi CTC conducted 9 focus groups on water management issues with the all major stakeholder group in the Emajõgi river basin, Estonia. Our interviews with environmental organizations, schoolchildren, owners of the recreation homes, fishermen, farmers, officials from local authorities, water recreation groups, NGOs and with people from the water tourism companies concentrated on understanding and possible influence of different stakeholders on water management issues.
Focus Groups were gathered mostly using the existing networks of interest groups. Peipsi CTC research team also used the meetings of fishermen, NGO representatives, farmers and schoolchildren as the Focus Groups' discussion sites. People's initial reaction, when they were invited to participate in the Focus Groups, was rather positive as they appreciated the interest in their opinion on the water management as well as because of the fascinating format of focus groups.
The topics discussed in the focus groups dealt how the participants understand water management, what the situation in the River Emajõgi area was like and which environmental problems there were. We also asked people to comment on some articles about water and express their opinion of the availability of information on water problems. Likewise, we investigated how we ourselves could influence water management and what should be changed in the present management of water resources. Finally, we also researched what the impact of the EU could be on the Emajõgi basin and more generally, on water management in Estonia as well.
The focus groups showed that the most important issues for local inhabitants are: poorly developed infrastructure, unclean river banks and poorly regulated water-transportation. In many focus groups, the conflict of interest between environmentalists and tourism and water transportation companies emerged.
Focus groups proved to be an effective approach that could be used on the water management planning stage to collect opinions of stakeholders about major issues in a river basin. Focus groups also helped to increase an awareness of water issues among participants and secondly participants had an opportunity to voice their opinions.
Citizens´ Jury
A Citizens´ Jury is a randomly selected panel of citizens, which meets for a couple of days for the careful examination of an issue of public significance in the locality.
The idea behind Citizens´ juries is that given enough time and information, ordinary people can make decisions about complex policy issues
The idea of a citizens' jury is to get a small group of citizens together and present them with a certain question. They hear evidence, question witnesses (presenters about the topic from different angels/interest points) and then discuss the issues raised amongst themselves and make an informed judgment (recommendations). The citizens' jury allows the participants to learn in depth about one or a number of issues relevant for the public. The important aspect of this public participation method is that it promotes political dialogue aimed at mutual understanding, which does not mean that people will agree, but rather that they will be motivated to resolve conflicts by argument rather than other means.
In Estonia citizens' jury was organized on a topic "Water transport on River Emajõgi in the Alam-Pedja Nature Reserve. What would be the compromise between the interests of environmentalists, entrepreneurs and local inhabitants?" .The topic was formed based on the results of the focus groups and several discussions with environmental authorities of the regions.
The citizens´ jury took place for two days, in November 2003, with participation of 14 randomly selected people from the river region. Before the Jury, one pre-meeting also took place.
Important methodological aspect in organizing a citizen jury is random selection of participants rather than voluntary involvement. In River Emajõgi case we sent out 700 questionnaires and invitations to the citizen jury to randomly picked addresses. The feedback was 6%, which was not too high, and this might be caused by the fact that the tradition of public participation in Estonia is quite new and people might feel estranged when receiving an invitation to the citizens' jury, as they do not know what it is all about. Citizens' jury is also quite demanding for the participants in the sense that participation requires preparation, the event tends to last several days, and demands intensive concentration.
In Estonia, the citizens´ jury took place for 2 days. Participants listened to the presentations of witnesses from different sectors and stakeholder groups, involved on the issues regarding the development of water transportation on the River Emajõgi – from River Port, public authority, environmental NGOs, local businessman. The idea is to give the overview of the problem form very many different and even conflicting interest and organizations. After each presentation people had chance to give questions and give their own concerns and arguments about the topic.
At the end of the witnesses session, local people worked in groups, to compile their recommendations on water transportation issue. The results showed that the inhabitants of Puhja and Rannu rural municipalities are in favor of developing water transport on the River Emajõgi, but they also consider it extremely important to consider the natural environment and the interests of local people. All together one page of recommendations was prepared by the citizens.
The Jury evaluation showed that the way people reached the recommendations has to be considered at least of similar importance as the recommendations themselves. The feeling that someone is so much interested in the opinions of citizens', came as a surprise to a number of participants – it also evidences the fact that the ideas and methods of public participation are not yet wide-spread in Estonia. Several witnesses mentioned that this was the first time for them to listen to the opinions of local people, regarding the issues of water transport, and that they were surprised to see the extent of people's awareness. Both the witnesses as well as the jurors stressed that the great advantage of the event was the fact that the Peipsi CTC assembled the specialists from various fields in one room. The citizens' jury proved very well that people, when thinking together in a pleasant constructive atmosphere, prevent conflicts and, by way of compromises, reach solutions. And these people do not all have to be experts.
3. Outcomes
Use of focus groups and citizens´ juries in water management planning was first this kind attempt in Estonia. Obviously, at first there was a lot of hesitation and uncertainties among the local people and the politicians about these new public participation methods. This shows that participatory principles and practices are not yet wide-spread, at least at local level, in Estonia. However, the River Dialogue project results make us to believe that these methods can be successfully used in environmental management. In the following paragraphs I am going to analyze the main successes and problems encountered in organizing focus groups and citizens´ juries; as well as their cost-effectiveness and the sustainability of these methods.
Focus groups outcome
The tangible results and more general outcomes could be drawn from experience of focus groups. In practical terms, after each of nine focus groups a report was prepared summarizing the main concerns of this specific group on water management issues in the Emajõgi river basin. As the result one summary report was prepared, bringing together concerns from different stakeholder groups. This report was taken into account when preparing Lake Peipsi water management plan. Report was send to all relevant institutions: Ministry of Environment and it county departments, local authorities, NGOs, river authorities and river port etc. The results of the focus groups were also used in order to prepare for the citizens´ jury. However, it is also very important to note, that the River Dialogue project experience showed that more or less all groups experienced that the focus group contributed to increasing their awareness of water and water management, simply by discussing the topic. Those groups, which were more affected by water related issues and had a relatively good knowledge of the topic (environmental organizations, local authority specialists) viewed the focus groups more as a forum where they had the opportunity of discussing and voicing their opinions. Additionally, for several groups, the focus groups seemed to be a way of acknowledging the problem of water management and at the same time to recognise possibilities to work in the field of water management.
Focus groups proved to be an effective approach that could be used especially on the water management planning stage to collect opinions of stakeholders about major issues in a river basin. Nine focus groups in Emajõgi basin helped us to collect public input in to developing solutions of water management problems.
Citizens´ Jury outcome
As with focus groups, the citizens´ jury results and outcomes of the process could be seen at different levels.
- In the course of the organization process, we received a great deal of positive feedback from environmental authorities, officials of the Ministry of the Environment and even from the entrepreneurs dealing with water transport on the Emajõgi River who were very much interested to learn more about this method and the whole process, as well to receive the report of the Jury and the recommendations by the citizens.
- After the event the report of the citizens´ jury with the recommendations was sent to relevant ministries, environmental authorities, rural municipality governments, NGOs and the enterprises dealing with the development of the River Emajõgi. . Citizens´ jury report was also taken into account when preparing Lake Peipsi water management plan and was also taken into consideration in River Emajõgi regional planning.
- Very important outcome of citizens´ jury is connected with increased environmental knowledge mainly by the jurors/citizens but also by the witnesses/presenters who represented different professions and sectors
- As very positive follow-up to the citizens' jury, intense communication continued both with the jurors as well as the witnesses. On their own initiative, the citizens' organized a Christmas party roundtable, inviting the jurors and the organizers. River Emajõgi shores cleaning campaign is also planned by the citizens.
However, there were also some negative aspects and disadvantages connected with this public participation method. First of all, the citizen's jury is that it is quite expensive method and it is quite time- demanding process as the preparation of the jury started four month before the event. Therefore the cost-effectiveness of the method should be taken into consideration while planning the research. It is wise to use Citizens´ jury method only when dealing with complex issues, where are several conflicting interest and stakes. For smaller problems this method is too resource (man power, finances, knowledge) demanding.
Additionally, in the beginning of the process we had a lot of hesitation and uncertainties in because earlier, citizens' juries had not been organized in Estonia according to this methodology and there was no certainty as to how the Estonian audience would accept this. In addition, local people and the politicians are not yet too accustomed to the principles of public participation.
To summarize it should be stressed that participation does not just happen. On the contrary, it must be actively encouraged and river basin authorities must be prepared to devote time to careful planning and to invest meaningful financial and human resources. The process could be quite time consuming and expensive in the short-term, but it will save money in the longterm.
4. Lessons learned and replicability
Focus groups' and citizens' juries' effectiveness as a participatory method
To begin with, we can say without hesitation that the River Dialogue project showed that the focus groups and citizens' juries is a good methods for enhancing public participation in water management. However the effect of the focus groups and citizens' juries, in increasing public involvement, depends also largely on the motivation of the participants. Therefore, a one time approach - taking part in focus group or citizens' jury discussion cannot fully change their attitude towards the issue at stake. Information dissemination and direct involvement has to be continued also after some bigger events such as citizens´ jury. Obviously, there is a tendency that the groups having a natural interest in water issues thus tend to get more involved in water management and they are more interested to make an effort and take part in the focus groups' type of activities.
The focus group and citizens ' juries are definitely a good source of information on groups' opinion of the water management issues. Focus groups and citizens' juries as methods for public participation enhancement can be especially emancipative for societies in transition from the command ruling to the democratic state of the art. Therefore, it can be highly recommended to use focus group method in post soviet societies.
Focus groups and citizens' juries can also be viewed as the as information channels and awareness-building tools. Via sharing experiences and points of views the participants expand their understanding of an issue at stake. Awareness on the water management problems is the basis for recognising the need to act for improving the current situation. In terms of increasing the awareness of water amongst the ordinary public, communicating more information about water related issues has to be highlighted as important.
Recommendations for conducting focus groups
Focus groups demand detailed planning from the beginning and a flexible time schedule during the process. River Dialogue focus groups showed that these are very time consuming activities. Careful planning and the recruitment process, as well as processing and interpreting gathered information, take time.
The focus groups recruitment phase, as well as the information gathering process itself is quite time consuming process. In the recruitment phase the first contact and the explanation of the rationale of the focus groups plays a great role in feeling inclined to participate. It must be noted that participation in the process demands also great interest as well as time investment from the participants. Therefore, the clarification and good reasoning work raises the willingness to participate.
It could be helpful to try to find the members of the focus groups from already existing networks. In that way, the leaders of the network or interest group can be used as the contact persons. Focus group participants, with a homogeneous background, are more inclined to share their opinions with each other. Therefore, it is understandable that discussions in a preexisting network are more lively and open. This also contributes to stimulate an informal atmosphere for discussion. From negative side, homogenous groups, consisting of participants with more or less shared views and interests with regards to water related issues, obviously contribute to the opinions being similar. Therefore the diversity of the information is also lower. Also, the learning effect in a pre-existing group discussion is minimal.
Recommendations on using a Citizens' Jury
The Citizens' jury is definitely a more direct method for public participation in water management than the focus group is. In a Citizens' jury, the members of the jury are set forth with a situation where they have to come up with informed policy-decisions themselves. However, River Dialogue experiences show that participants have a surprisingly large capability to master relatively complex issues and a fresh perspective on the issues at hand.
Important aspect of a Citizen's Jury is that it promotes political dialogue aimed at mutual understanding, which does not mean that people will agree, but rather that they will be motivated to resolve conflicts by argument rather than other means. The way people reached the recommendations has to be considered at least of similar importance as the recommendations themselves. The feeling that someone is so much interested in the opinions of citizens' came as a surprise to a number of participants. The citizens' jury proved very well that people, when thinking together in a pleasant constructive atmosphere, prevent conflicts and, by way of compromises, reach solutions. And these people do not all have to be experts. This case describes how local people, who are not specialists, can take part in discussions and decision-making process of complex environmental issues, after good presentations and possibility for give questions to experts.
Citizens´ juries could be used in different societies and in a variety of problems. Conducting a Citizens' Jury will be probably more welcome in the countries where the participatory methods have not been introduced yet and the public has not had the chance to influence the policy decisions to a larger extent. Though, participatory methods of citizens' juries are most effective in the sense of empowerment of the jury members in the societies where the deliberative democracy is still to be introduced. Its deliberative effect on the participants is most evident among the participants that have never had a chance to voice their opinion in an official seminar on certain issues. Nevertheless, the application of the citizens´ juries outcomes might meet reluctant responses of representative democracy in newly democratised societies as well as where the democracy and its mechanisms are well established. The effect of the participatory methods is lower in the countries where there is an abundance of such kind of attempts.
As a summary it should be stressed that new innovative public participation methods should be tested and taken into wider use. The selection of the proper method is of key importance, in order to achieve the high commitment of stakeholders and to achieve the best results. Focus groups and citizens´ juries have been proved to be suitable methods to use in different socioeconomic, cultural and political backgrounds, in order to achieve higher public participation in water management planning. Water governance without citizens (informed!) input and responsible members of the public LACKS legitimacy
5. Contacts, references, organisations and people
Author:
Ms. Margit Säre
Peipsi Center for Transboundary Cooperation, Aleksandri 9, 51004 Tartu, Estonia
Tel: +372 50 88409; +372 7302302
email@example.com www.ctc.ee,
www.riverdialogue.org
References and websites
Project official website: www. riverdialogue.org
Publications:
- Focus Groups and Citizens' Juries: River Dialogue Experiences in Enhancing Public Participation in Water Management. Tartu 2004 (available at www.riverdialogue.org)
- Report of Citizens' jury: "Water transport on River Emajõgi in the Alam-Pedja Nature Reserve: what would be the compromise between the interests of environmentalists, entrepreneurs and local inhabitants?" (available at www.riverdialogu.org)
- Morgan, D (1997) - Focus Groups as Qualitative Research, Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Organisations and people
Prof. Geoffrey Gooch, PhD., River Dialogue Project Manager
Linköping University, Department of Management and Economics www.eki.liu.se
Phone: + 46 13 282546
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.org
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Institute for Environmental Studies www.vu.nl
Phone: + 31 20 444 9559
Fax: + 31 20 444 9553
Contact: Dr. Dave Huitema
E-mail: email@example.com
|
LMP91000
Sensor AFE System: Configurable AFE Potentiostat for Low-Power Chemical Sensing Applications
General Description
Features
The LMP91000 is a programmable Analog Front End (AFE) for use in micro-power electrochemical sensing applications. It provides a complete signal path solution between a sensor and a microcontroller that generates an output voltage proportional to the cell current. The LMP91000's programmability enables it to support multiple electrochemical sensors such as 3-lead toxic gas sensors and 2-lead galvanic cell sensors with a single design as opposed to the multiple discrete solutions. The LMP91000 supports gas sensitivities over a range of 0.5 nA/ppm to 9500 nA/ppm. It also allows for an easy conversion of current ranges from 5µA to 750µA full scale.
The LMP91000's adjustable cell bias and transimpedance amplifier (TIA) gain are programmable through the the I 2 C interface. The I 2 C interface can also be used for sensor diagnostics. An integrated temperature sensor can be read by the user through the VOUT pin and used to provide additional signal correction in the µC or monitored to verify temperature conditions at the sensor.
The LMP91000 is optimized for micro-power applications and operates over a voltage range of 2.7V to 5.25V. The total current consumption can be less than 10μA. Further power savings are possible by switching off the TIA amplifier and shorting the reference electrode to the working electrode with an internal switch.
Typical Values, T A = 25°C
■ Supply voltage
2.7 V to 5.25 V
■ Supply current (average over time)
<10 µA
■ Cell conditioning current up to
10 mA
■ Reference electrode bias current (85°C)
900pA (max)
■ Output drive current
750µA
■ Complete potentiostat circuit to interface to most chemical cells
■ Programmable cell bias voltage
■ Low bias voltage drift
■ Programmable TIA gain
2.75kΩ to 350kΩ
■ Sink and source capability
■ I 2 C compatible digital interface
■ Ambient operating temperature
-40°C to 85°C
■ Package
14 pin LLP
■ Supported by Webench Sensor AFE Designer
Applications
■ Chemical species identification
■ Electrochemical blood glucose meter
■ Amperometric applications
Typical Application
Ordering Information
| Part Number | Package Marking | Transport Media |
|---|---|---|
| LMP91000SD | L91000 | 1k Units Tape and Reel |
| LMP91000SDE | | 250 Units Tape and Reel |
| LMP91000SDX | | 4.5k Units Tape and Reel |
Connection Diagram
Pin Descriptions
Absolute Maximum Ratings (Note 1)
For soldering specifications:
If Military/Aerospace specified devices are required, please contact the Texas Instruments Sales Office/ Distributors for availability and specifications.
see product folder at www.national.com and www.national.com/ms/MS/MS-SOLDERING.pdf
Operating Ratings (Note 1)
ESD Tolerance (Note 2)
Human Body Model
2kV
Charge-Device Model
1kV
Machine Model
200V
Voltage between any two pins
6.0V
Current through VDD or VSS
50mA
Current sunk and sourced by CE pin
10mA
Current out of other pins(Note 3)
5mA
Storage Temperature Range
-65°C to 150°C
Junction Temperature (Note 4)
150°C
Supply Voltage V S =(VDD - AGND)
2.7V to 5.25V
Temperature Range (Note 4)
-40°C to 85°C
Package Thermal Resistance (Note 4)
14-Pin LLP (θ )
JA
44 °C/W
Electrical Characteristics (Note 5)
Unless otherwise specified, all limits guaranteed for T A = 25°C, V S =(VDD – AGND), V S =3.3V and AGND = DGND =0V, VREF= 2.5V, Internal Zero= 20% VREF. Boldface limits apply at the temperature extremes.
3
| WE Voltage Offset referred to RE | BIAS polarity (Note 12) | 0% VREF Internal Zero=20% VREF | -550 | | 550 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | 0% VREF Internal Zero=50% VREF | | | |
| | | 0% VREF Internal Zero=67% VREF | | | |
| | | ±1% VREF | -575 | | 575 |
| | | ±2% VREF | -610 | | 610 |
| | | ±4% VREF | -750 | | 750 |
| | | ±6% VREF | -840 | | 840 |
| | | ±8% VREF | -930 | | 930 |
| | | ±10% VREF | -1090 | | 1090 |
| | | ±12% VREF | -1235 | | 1235 |
| | | ±14% VREF | -1430 | | 1430 |
| | | ±16% VREF | -1510 | | 1510 |
| | | ±18% VREF | -1575 | | 1575 |
| | | ±20% VREF | -1650 | | 1650 |
| | | ±22% VREF | -1700 | | 1700 |
| | | ±24% VREF | -1750 | | 1750 |
| WE Voltage Offset Drift referred to RE from -40°C to 85°C (Note 8) | BIAS polarity (Note 12) | 0% VREF Internal Zero=20% VREF | -4 | | 4 |
| | | 0% VREF Internal Zero=50% VREF | | | |
| | | 0% VREF Internal Zero=67% VREF | | | |
| | | ±1% VREF | -4 | | 4 |
| | | ±2% VREF | -4 | | 4 |
| | | ±4% VREF | -5 | | 5 |
| | | ±6% VREF | -5 | | 5 |
| | | ±8% VREF | -5 | | 5 |
| | | ±10% VREF | -6 | | 6 |
| | | ±12% VREF | -6 | | 6 |
| | | ±14% VREF | -7 | | 7 |
| | | ±16% VREF | -7 | | 7 |
| | | ±18% VREF | -8 | | 8 |
| | | ±20% VREF | -8 | | 8 |
| | | ±22% VREF | -8 | | 8 |
| | | ±24% VREF | -8 | | 8 |
| Transimpedance gain accuracy | | | | 5 | |
| Linearity | | | | ±0.05 | |
| | 7 programmable gain resistors | | | 2.75 3.5 7 14 35 120 350 | |
I 2 C Interface (Note 5)
Unless otherwise specified, all limits guaranteed for at T A = 25°C, V S =(VDD – AGND), 2.7V <V S < 5.25V and AGND = DGND =0V, VREF= 2.5V. Boldface limits apply at the temperature extremes
| Parameter | Conditions | Min (Note 7) | Typ (Note 6) | Max (Note 7) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Input High Voltage | | 0.7*VDD | | |
| Input Low Voltage | | | | 0.3*VDD |
| Output Low Voltage | I =3mA OUT | | | 0.4 |
| Hysteresis (Note 14) | | 0.1*VDD | | |
Timing Characteristics (Note 5)
Unless otherwise specified, all limits guaranteed for T A = 25°C, V S =(VDD – AGND), V S =3.3V and AGND = DGND =0V, VREF= 2.5V, Internal Zero= 20% VREF. Boldface limits apply at the temperature extremes. Refer to timing diagram in Figure 1.
| Parameter | Conditions | Min | Typ | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clock Frequency | | 10 | | 100 |
| Clock Low Time | | 4.7 | | |
| Clock High Time | | 4.0 | | |
| Data valid | After this period, the first clock pulse is generated | 4.0 | | |
| Set-up time for a repeated START condition | | 4.7 | | |
| Data hold time(Note 13) | | 0 | | |
| Data Setup time | | 250 | | |
| SDA fall time (Note 14) | IL ≤ 3mA; CL ≤ 400pF | | | 250 |
| Set-up time for STOP condition | | 4.0 | | |
| Parameter | Conditions | Min | Typ | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus free time between a STOP and START condition | | 4.7 | | |
| Data valid time | | | | 3.45 |
| Data valid acknowledge time | | | | 3.45 |
| Pulse width of spikes that must be suppressed by the input filter(Note 14) | | | | 50 |
| SCL and SDA Timeout | | 25 | | 100 |
| I2C Interface Enabling | | 600 | | |
| I2C Interface Disabling | | 600 | | |
| time between consecutive I2C interface enabling and disabling | | 600 | | |
Note 1: "Absolute Maximum Ratings" indicate limits beyond which damage to the device may occur, including inoperability and degradation of device reliability and/or performance. Functional operation of the device and/or non-degradation at the Absolute Maximum Ratings or other conditions beyond those indicated in the Operating Ratings is not implied. Operating Ratings indicate conditions at which the device is functional and the device should not be operated beyond such conditions.
Note 2: Human Body Model, applicable std. MIL-STD-883, Method 3015.7. Machine Model, applicable std. JESD22-A115-A (ESD MM std. of JEDEC) FieldInduced Charge-Device Model, applicable std. JESD22-C101-C (ESD FICDM std. of JEDEC).
Note 3: All non-power pins of this device are protected against ESD by snapback devices. Voltage at such pins will rise beyond absmax if current is forced into pin.
Note 4: The maximum power dissipation is a function of T J(MAX) , θ JA , and the ambient temperature, T A . The maximum allowable power dissipation at any ambient temperature is P DMAX = (T J(MAX) - T A )/ θ JA All numbers apply for packages soldered directly onto a PC board.
Note 5: Electrical Table values apply only for factory testing conditions at the temperature indicated. Factory testing conditions result in very limited self-heating of the device such that T J = T A . No guarantee of parametric performance is indicated in the electrical tables under conditions of internal self-heating where T J > T A . Absolute Maximum Ratings indicate junction temperature limits beyond which the device may be permanently degraded, either mechanically or electrically.
Note 6: Typical values represent the most likely parametric norm as determined at the time of characterization. Actual typical values may vary over time and will also depend on the application and configuration. The typical values are not tested and are not guaranteed on shipped production material.
Note 7: Limits are 100% production tested at 25°C. Limits over the operating temperature range are guaranteed through correlations using statistical quality control (SQC) method.
Note 8: Offset voltage temperature drift is determined by dividing the change in VOS at the temperature extremes by the total temperature change.
Starting from the measured voltage offset at temperature T1 (V (T1)), the voltage offset at temperature T2 (V
(T2)) is calculated according the following formula: V
OS_RW
OS_RW
OS_RW
(T2)=V
OS_RW
(T1)+ABS(T2–T1)* TcV
OS_RW.
Note 9: At such currents no accuracy of the output voltage can be expected.
Note 10: This parameter includes both A1 and TIA's noise contribution.
Note 11: In case of external reference connected, the noise of the reference has to be added.
Note 12: For negative bias polarity the Internal Zero is set at 67% VREF.
Note 13: LMP91000 provides an internal 300ns minimum hold time to bridge the undefined region of the falling edge of SCL.
Note 14: This parameter is guaranteed by design or characterization.
Timing Diagram
30132541
FIGURE 1. I 2 C Interface Timing Diagram
Typical Performance Characteristics
2.7V <V S < 5.25V and AGND = DGND =0V, VREF= 2.5V.
30132563
30132564
AC PSRR vs. Frequency
30132560
Unless otherwise specified, T = 25°C, V
A S =(VDD – AGND),
30132562
30132566
30132569
7
Supply current vs. temperature (Deep Sleep Mode)
1.0
30132591
30132587
30132586
8
Supply current vs. VDD (Deep Sleep Mode)
30132597
Supply current vs. VDD (Standby Mode)
30132592
30132593
Supply current vs. temperature (Temp Measurement TIA ON)
30132588
Supply current vs. temperature (Temp Measurement TIA OFF)
13.0
30132589
30132590
Supply current vs. VDD (Temp Measurement TIA ON)
16.0
30132594
30132595
Supply current vs. VDD (2-lead ground referred amperometric Mode)
5.5
30132596
30132598
0.1Hz to 10Hz noise, 600mV bias
301325100
30132599
30132568
Function Description
GENERAL
The LMP91000 is a programmable AFE for use in micropower chemical sensing applications. The LMP91000 is designed for 3-lead single gas sensors and for 2-lead galvanic cell sensors. This device provides all of the functionality for detecting changes in gas concentration based on a delta current at the working electrode. The LMP91000 generates an output voltage proportional to the cell current. Transimpedance gain is user programmable through an I 2 C compatible interface from 2.75kΩ to 350kΩ making it easy to convert current ranges from 5µA to 750µA full scale. Optimized for micro-power applications, the LMP91000 AFE works over a voltage range of
2.7V to 5.25 V. The cell voltage is user selectable using the on board programmability. In addition, it is possible to connect an external transimpedance gain resistor. A temperature sensor is embedded and it can be power cycled through the interface. The output of this temperature sensor can be read by the user through the VOUT pin. It is also possible to have both temperature output and output of the TIA at the same time; the pin C2 is internally connected to the output of the transimpedance (TIA), while the temperature is available at the VOUT pin. Depending on the configuration, total current consumption for the device can be less than 10µA. For power savings, the transimpedance amplifier can be turned off and instead a load impedance equivalent to the TIA's inputs impedance is switched in.
POTENTIOSTAT CIRCUITRY
Control amplifier
The core of the LMP91000 is a potentiostat circuit. It consists of a differential input amplifier used to compare the potential between the working and reference electrodes to a required working bias potential (set by the Variable Bias circuitry). The error signal is amplified and applied to the counter electrode (through the Control Amplifier - A1). Any changes in the impedance between the working and reference electrodes will cause a change in the voltage applied to the counter electrode, in order to maintain the constant voltage between working and reference electrodes. A Transimpedance Amplifier connected to the working electrode, is used to provide an output voltage that is proportional to the cell current. The working electrode is held at virtual ground (Internal ground) by the transimpedance amplifier. The potentiostat will compare the reference voltage to the desired bias potential and adjust the voltage at the counter electrode to maintain the proper working-to-reference voltage.
Transimpedance amplifier
The transimpedance amplifier (TIA in Figure 2) has 7 programmable internal gain resistors. This accommodates the full scale ranges of most existing sensors. Moreover an external gain resistor can be connected to the LMP91000 between C1 and C2 pins. The gain is set through the I 2 C interface.
The control amplifier (A1 op amp in Figure 2) has two tasks: a) providing initial charge to the sensor, b) providing a bias voltage to the sensor. A1 has the capability to drive up to 10mA into the sensor in order to to provide a fast initial conditioning. A1 is able to sink and source current according to the connected gas sensor (reducing or oxidizing gas sensor). It can be powered down to reduce system power consumption. However powering down A1 is not recommended, as it may take a long time for the sensor to recover from this situation.
Variable Bias
The Variable Bias block circuitry (Figure 2) provides the amount of bias voltage required by a biased gas sensor between its reference and working electrodes. The bias voltage can be programmed to be 1% to 24% (14 steps in total) of the supply, or of the external reference voltage. The 14 steps can be programmed through the I 2 C interface. The polarity of the bias can be also programmed.
Internal zero
The internal Zero is the voltage at the non-inverting pin of the TIA. The internal zero can be programmed to be either 67%, 50% or 20%, of the supply, or the external reference voltage. This provides both sufficient headroom for the counter electrode of the sensor to swing, in case of sudden changes in the gas concentration, and best use of the ADC's full scale input range.
The Internal zero is provided through an internal voltage divider (Vref divider box in Figure 2). The divider is programmed through the I 2 C interface.
Temperature sensor
The embedded temperature sensor can be switched off during gas concentration measurement to save power. The temperature measurement is triggered through the I 2 C interface. The temperature output is available at the VOUT pin until the configuration bit is reset. The output signal of the temperature sensor is a voltage, referred to the ground of the LMP91000 (AGND).
Temperature Sensor Transfer Table
| Temperature (°C) | Output Voltage (mV) | Temperature (°C) |
|---|---|---|
| -40 | 1875 | 23 |
| -39 | 1867 | 24 |
| -38 | 1860 | 25 |
| -37 | 1852 | 26 |
| -36 | 1844 | 27 |
| -35 | 1836 | 28 |
| -34 | 1828 | 29 |
| -33 | 1821 | 30 |
| -32 | 1813 | 31 |
| -31 | 1805 | 32 |
| -30 | 1797 | 33 |
| -29 | 1789 | 34 |
| -28 | 1782 | 35 |
| -27 | 1774 | 36 |
| -26 | 1766 | 37 |
| -25 | 1758 | 38 |
| -24 | 1750 | 39 |
| -23 | 1742 | 40 |
| -22 | 1734 | 41 |
| -21 | 1727 | 42 |
| -20 | 1719 | 43 |
| -19 | 1711 | 44 |
| -18 | 1703 | 45 |
| -17 | 1695 | 46 |
| -16 | 1687 | 47 |
| -15 | 1679 | 48 |
| -14 | 1671 | 49 |
| -13 | 1663 | 50 |
| -12 | 1656 | 51 |
| -11 | 1648 | 52 |
| -10 | 1640 | 53 |
| -9 | 1632 | 54 |
| -8 | 1624 | 55 |
| -7 | 1616 | 56 |
| -6 | 1608 | 57 |
| -5 | 1600 | 58 |
| -4 | 1592 | 59 |
| -3 | 1584 | 60 |
| -2 | 1576 | 61 | 1063 |
|---|---|---|---|
| -1 | 1568 | 62 | 1054 |
| 0 | 1560 | 63 | 1046 |
| 1 | 1552 | 64 | 1038 |
| 2 | 1544 | 65 | 1029 |
| 3 | 1536 | 66 | 1021 |
| 4 | 1528 | 67 | 1012 |
| 5 | 1520 | 68 | 1004 |
| 6 | 1512 | 69 | 996 |
| 7 | 1504 | 70 | 987 |
| 8 | 1496 | 71 | 979 |
| 9 | 1488 | 72 | 971 |
| 10 | 1480 | 73 | 962 |
| 11 | 1472 | 74 | 954 |
| 12 | 1464 | 75 | 945 |
| 13 | 1456 | 76 | 937 |
| 14 | 1448 | 77 | 929 |
| 15 | 1440 | 78 | 920 |
| 16 | 1432 | 79 | 912 |
| 17 | 1424 | 80 | 903 |
| 18 | 1415 | 81 | 895 |
| 19 | 1407 | 82 | 886 |
| 20 | 1399 | 83 | 878 |
| 21 | 1391 | 84 | 870 |
| 22 | 1383 | 85 | 861 |
Although the temperature sensor is very linear, its response does have a slight downward parabolic shape. This shape is very accurately reflected in the temperature sensor Transfer Table. For a linear approximation, a line can easily be calculated over the desired temperature range from the Table using the two-point equation:
V-V
1
=((V
2
–V
1 )/(T
2
–T
1
))*(T-T
1
)
Where V is in mV, T is in °C, T 1 and V 1 are the coordinates of the lowest temperature, T 2 and V 2 are the coordinates of the highest temperature.
For example, if we want to determine the equation of a line over a temperature range of 20°C to 50°C, we would proceed as follows:
V-1399mV=((1154mV - 1399mV)/(50°C -20°C))*(T-20°C)
V-1399mV= -8.16mV/°C*(T-20°C)
V=(-8.16mV/°C)*T+1562.2mV
Using this method of linear approximation, the transfer function can be approximated for one or more temperature ranges of interest.
I 2 C INTERFACE
The I 2 C compatible interface operates in Standard mode (100kHz). Pull-up resistors or current sources are required on the SCL and SDA pins to pull them high when they are not being driven low. A logic zero is transmitted by driving the output low. A logic high is transmitted by releasing the output and allowing it to be pulled-up externally. The appropriate pull-up resistor values will depend upon the total bus capacitance and operating speed. The LMP91000 comes with a 7 bit bus fixed address: 1001 000.
WRITE AND READ OPERATION
In order to start any read or write operation with the LMP91000, MENB needs to be set low during the whole communication. Then the master generates a start condition by driving SDA from high to low while SCL is high. The start condition is always followed by a 7-bit slave address and a Read/ Write bit. After these 8 bits have been transmitted by the master, SDA is released by the master and the LMP91000 either ACKs or NACKs the address. If the slave address matches, the LMP91000 ACKs the master. If the address doesn't match, the LMP91000 NACKs the master. For a write operation, the master follows the ACK by sending the 8-bit register address pointer. Then the LMP91000 ACKs the transfer by driving SDA low. Next, the master sends the 8-bit data to the LMP91000. Then the LMP91000 ACKs the transfer by driving
SDA low. At this point the master should generate a stop condition and optionally set the MENB at logic high level (refer to Figure 3).
A read operation requires the LMP91000 address pointer to be set first, also in this case the master needs setting at low logic level the MENB, then the master needs to write to the device and set the address pointer before reading from the desired register. This type of read requires a start, the slave address, a write bit, the address pointer, a Repeated Start (if appropriate), the slave address, and a read bit (refer to Figure 3). Following this sequence, the LMP91000 sends out the 8-bit data of the register.
When just one LMP91000 is present on the I 2 C bus the MENB can be tied to ground (low logic level).
(a) Register write transaction
30132572
(b) Pointer set transaction
(c) Register read transaction
FIGURE 3. READ and WRITE transaction
TIMEOUT FEATURE
The timeout is a safety feature to avoid bus lockup situation. If SCL is stuck low for a time exceeding t_timeout, the LMP91000 will automatically reset its I 2 C interface. Also, in the case the LMP91000 hangs the SDA for a time exceeding
REGISTERS
The registers are used to configure the LMP91000.
If writing to a reserved bit, user must write only 0. Readback value is unspecified and should be discarded.
Register map
| Address | Name | Power on default | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0x00 | STATUS | 0x00 | Read only |
| 0x01 | LOCK | 0x01 | R/W |
| 0x02 through 0x09 | RESERVED | | |
| 0x10 | TIACN | 0x03 | R/W |
| 0x11 | REFCN | 0x20 | R/W |
| 0x12 | MODECN | 0x00 | R/W |
| 0x13 through 0xFF | RESERVED | | |
STATUS -- Status Register (address 0x00)
The status bit is an indication of the LMP91000's power-on status. If its readback is "0", the LMP91000 is not ready to accept other I 2 C commands.
| [7:1] | RESERVED |
|---|---|
| 0 | STATUS |
LOCK -- Protection Register (address 0x01)
The lock bit enables and disables the writing of the TIACN and the REFCN registers. In order to change the content of the TIACN and the REFCN registers the lock bit needs to be set to "0".
| Bit | Name |
|---|---|
| [7:1] | RESERVED |
| 0 | LOCK |
t_timeout, the LMP91000's I 2 C interface will be reset so that the SDA line will be released. Since the SDA is an open-drain with an external resistor pull-up, this also avoids high power consumption when LMP91000 is driving the bus and the SCL is stopped.
TIACN -- TIA Control Register (address 0x10)
The parameters in the TIA control register allow the configuration of the transimpedance gain (R TIA ) and the load resistance (R Load ).
| Bit | Name |
|---|---|
| [7:5] | RESERVED |
| [4:2] | TIA_GAIN |
| [1:0] | RLOAD |
REFCN -- Reference Control Register (address 0x11)
The parameters in the Reference control register allow the configuration of the Internal zero, Bias and Reference source. When the Reference source is external, the reference is provided by a reference voltage connected to the VREF pin. In this condition the Internal Zero and the Bias voltage are defined as a percentage of VREF voltage instead of the supply voltage.
| Bit | Name |
|---|---|
| 7 | REF_SOURCE |
| [6:5] | INT_Z |
| 4 | BIAS_SIGN |
MODECN -- Mode Control Register (address 0x12)
The Parameters in the Mode register allow the configuration of the Operation Mode of the LMP91000.
| Bit | Name |
|---|---|
| 7 | FET_SHORT |
| [6:3] | RESERVED |
When the LMP91000 is in Temperature measurement (TIA ON) mode, the output of the temperature sensor is present at the VOUT pin, while the output of the potentiostat circuit is available at pin C2.
GAS SENSOR INTERFACE
The LMP91000 supports both 3-lead and 2-lead gas sensors. Most of the toxic gas sensors are amperometric cells with 3 leads (Counter, Worker and Reference). These leads should be connected to the LMP91000 in the potentiostat topology. The 2-lead gas sensor (known as galvanic cell) should be connected as simple buffer either referred to the ground of the system or referred to a reference voltage. The LMP91000 support both connections for 2-lead gas sensor.
3-lead Amperometric Cell In Potentiostat Configuration
Most of the amperometric cell have 3 leads (Counter, Reference and Working electrodes). The interface of the 3-lead gas sensor to the LMP91000 is straightforward, the leads of the gas sensor need to be connected to the namesake pins of the LMP91000.
The LMP91000 is then configured in 3-lead amperometric cell mode; in this configuration the Control Amplifier (A1) is ON and provides the internal zero voltage and bias in case of biased gas sensor. The transimpedance amplifier (TIA) is ON, it converts the current generated by the gas sensor in a voltage, according to the transimpedance gain:
Gain=R
TIA
If different gains are required, an external resistor can be connected between the pins C1 and C2. In this case the internal feedback resistor should be programmed to "external". The R Load together with the output capacitance of the gas sensor acts as a low pass filter.
30132583
FIGURE 4. 3-Lead Amperometric Cell
2-lead Galvanic Cell In Ground Referred Configuration
When the LMP91000 is interfaced to a galvanic cell (for instance to an Oxygen gas sensor) referred to the ground of the system, an external resistor needs to be placed in parallel to the gas sensor; the negative electrode of the gas sensor is connected to the ground of the system and the positive electrode to the Vref pin of the LMP91000, the working pin of the LMP91000 is connected to the ground.
The LMP91000 is then configured in 2-lead galvanic cell mode and the Vref bypass feature needs to be enabled. In this configuration the Control Amplifier (A1) is turned off, and the output of the gas sensor is amplified by the Transimpedance Amplifier (TIA) which is configured as a simple non-inverting amplifier.
The gain of this non inverting amplifier is set according the following formula
Gain= 1+(R
TIA
/R
Load
)
If different gains are required, an external resistor can be connected between the pins C1 and C2. In this case the internal feedback resistor should be programmed to "external".
2-lead Galvanic Cell In Potentiostat Configuration
When the LMP91000 is interfaced to a galvanic cell (for instance to an Oxygen gas sensor) referred to a reference, the Counter and the Reference pin of the LMP91000 are shorted together and connected to negative electrode of the galvanic cell. The positive electrode of the galvanic cell is then connected to the Working pin of the LMP91000.
The LMP91000 is then configured in 3-lead amperometric cell mode (as for amperometric cell). In this configuration the
Control Amplifier (A1) is ON and provides the internal zero voltage. The transimpedance amplifier (TIA) is also ON, it converts the current generated by the gas sensor in a voltage, according to the transimpedance gain:
Gain= R TIA
If different gains are required, an external resistor can be connected between the pins C1 and C2. In this case the internal feedback resistor should be programmed to "external".
18
30132584
FIGURE 6. 2-Lead Galvanic Cell In Potentiostat Configuration
Application Information
SCL) are shared, while the MENB of each LMP91000 is connected to a dedicate GPIO port of the μcontroller.
CONNECTION OF MORE THAN ONE LMP91000 TO THE I 2 C BUS
The LMP91000 comes out with a unique and fixed I 2 C slave address. It is still possible to connect more than one LMP91000 to an I 2 C bus and select each device using the MENB pin. The MENB simply enables/disables the I 2 C communication of the LMP91000. When the MENB is at logic level low all the I 2 C communication is enabled, it is disabled when MENB is at high logic level.
The μcontroller starts communication asserting one out of N MENB signals where N is the total number of LMP91000s connected to the I 2 C bus. Only the enabled device will acknowledge the I 2 C commands. After finishing communicating with this particular LMP91000, the microcontroller de-asserts the corresponding MENB and repeats the procedure for other LMP91000s. Figure 7 shows the typical connection when more than one LMP91000 is connected to the I 2 C bus.
In a system based on a μcontroller and more than one LMP91000 connected to the I 2 C bus, the I 2 C lines (SDA and
30132581
FIGURE 7. More than one LMP91000 on I 2 C bus
SMART GAS SENSOR ANALOG FRONT END
The LMP91000 together with an external EEPROM represents the core of a SMART GAS SENSOR AFE. In the EEPROM it is possible to store the information related to the GAS sensor type, calibration and LMP91000's configuration (content of registers 10h, 11h, 12h). At startup the microcontroller reads the EEPROM's content and configures the LMP91000. A typical smart gas sensor AFE is shown in Figure 8. The connection of MENB to the hardware address pin A0 of the EEPROM allows the microcontroller to select the LMP91000 and its corresponding EEPROM when more than one smart gas sensor AFE is present on the I 2 C bus. Note: only EEPROM I 2 C addresses with A0=0 should be used in this configuration.
SMART GAS SENSOR AFES ON I 2 C BUS
The connection of Smart gas sensor AFEs on the I 2 C bus is the natural extension of the previous concepts. Also in this case the microcontroller starts communication asserting 1 out of N MENB signals where N is the total number of smart gas sensor AFE connected to the I 2 C bus. Only one of the devices (either LMP91000 or its corresponding EEPROM) in the smart gas sensor AFE enabled will acknowledge the I 2 C commands. When the communication with this particular module ends, the microcontroller de-asserts the corresponding MENB and repeats the procedure for other modules. Figure 9 shows the typical connection when several smart gas sensor AFEs are connected to the I 2 C bus.
POWER CONSUMPTION
The LMP91000 is intended for use in portable devices, so the power consumption is as low as possible in order to guarantee a long battery life. The total power consumption for the LMP91000 is below 10µA @ 3.3v average over time, (this excludes any current drawn from any pin). A typical usage of the LMP91000 is in a portable gas detector and its power consumption is summarized in the Power Consumption Scenario table. This has the following assumptions:
-Deep Sleep mode is not used
-The system is used about 8 hours a day, and 16 hours a day it is in Standby mode.
-Temperature Measurement is done about once per minute
-Power On only happens a few times over life, so its power consumption can be ignored
This results in an average power consumption of approximately 7.95 µA. This can potentially be further reduced, by using the Standby mode between gas measurements. It may even be possible, depending on the sensor used, to go into deep sleep for some time between measurements, further reducing the average power consumption.
Power Consumption Scenario
| | Deep Sleep | StandBy | 3-Lead Amperometric Cell | Temperature Measurement TIA OFF | Temperature Measurement TIA ON |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current consumption (µA) typical value | 0.6 | 6.5 | 10 | 11.4 | 14.9 |
| Time ON (%) | 0 | 60 | 39 | 0 | 1 |
| Average (µA) | 0 | 3.9 | 3.9 | 0 | 0.15 |
| Notes | | | | | |
| A1 | OFF | ON | ON | ON | ON |
| TIA | OFF | OFF | ON | OFF | ON |
| TEMP SENSOR | OFF | OFF | OFF | ON | ON |
| I2C interface | ON | ON | ON | ON | ON |
SENSOR TEST PROCEDURE
The LMP91000 has all the hardware and programmability features to implement some test procedures. The purpose of the test procedure is to:
and finally the bias is set again at 0mV since this is the normal operation condition for this sensor.
a) test proper function of the sensor (status of health)
b) test proper connection of the sensor to the LMP91000
The test procedure is very easy. The variable bias block is user programmable through the digital interface. A step voltage can be applied by the end user to the positive input of A1. As a consequence a transient current will start flowing into the sensor (to charge its internal capacitance) and it will be detected by the TIA. If the current transient is not detected, either a sensor fault or a connection problem is present. The slope and the aspect of the transient response can also be used to detect sensor aging (for example, a cell that is drying and no longer efficiently conducts the current). After it is verified that the sensor is working properly, the LMP91000 needs to be reset to its original configuration. It is not required to observe the full transient in order to contain the testing time. All the needed information are included in the transient slopes (both edges). Figure 10 shows an example of the test procedure, a Carbon Monoxide sensor is connected to the LMP91000, two pulses are then sequentially applied to the bias voltage:
first step: from 0mV to 40mV
second step : from 40mV to -40mV
Physical Dimensions inches (millimeters) unless otherwise noted
Notes
Notes
IMPORTANT NOTICE
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A complete guide to insurance billing and coding, Insurance Handbook for the Medical Office, 13th Edition covers all the plans that are most commonly encountered in clinics and physicians' offices. Its emphasis on the role of the medical insurance specialist includes areas such as diagnostic coding, procedural coding, Medicare, HIPAA, and bill collection strategies. Learning to fill in the claim form accurately is made easier by the use of icons for different types of payers, lists of key abbreviations, and numerous practice exercises. This edition provides the latest on hot topics such as ICD-10, healthcare reform, the new CMS-1500 form, and electronic claims. Trusted for more than 30 years, this proven reference from Marilyn Fordney prepares you to succeed as a medical insurance professional in any outpatient setting. Emphasis on the business of running a medical office highlights the importance of the medical insurance specialist in filing clean claims, solving problems, and collecting overdue payments.Key terms and key abbreviations are defined and emphasized, reinforcing your understanding of new concepts and terminology.Detailed tables, boxes, and illustrations call out key points and main ideas.Unique! Color-coded icons clarify information, rules, and regulations for different payers.An Evolve companion website enhances learning with performance checklists, selfassessment quizzes, and the Student Software Challenge featuring cases for different payer types and an interactive CMS-1500 form to fill in.A workbook contains learning tips, practice exercises for key terms and abbreviations, review questions, study outlines, performance objectives, a chapter with practice tests, and critical thinking activities for hands-on experience with real-world cases. Available separately. Updated coverage of key health insurance topics includes HIPAA compliance, the HITECH Act, health reform of 2010, electronic health records, electronic claims, ICD-10, NUCC standards, Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) Incentive Program, Meaningful Use, and CPT 2013.Updated ICD-10 coding information prepares you for the October 2014 ICD-10 implementation date.Updated content on claim forms includes block-by-block explanations and examples for the new CMS-1500 Claim Form.Updated guidelines for the filing and Page 5/8
submission of electronic claims include sample screenshots and prepare you for the future of the medical office.
ERISA and Health Insurance Subrogation In All 50 States is the most complete and thorough treatise covering the complex subject of ERISA and health insurance subrogation ever published. NEW TO THE FIFTH EDITION! • Updated To Include All The Newest Case Law! • Updated To Include Medicaid Subrogation and Preemption of FEHBA ! • New Plan Language Recommendations! • Complete Health Insurance Subrogation Laws In All 50 States • Covers The Application of ERISA In Every Federal Circuit The Fifth Edition of ERISA and Health Insurance Subrogation In All 50 States has been completely revised, edited, and reorganized. This was partly to reflect the new direction recent case decisions have taken regarding health insurance subrogation as well as the crystallization of formerly uncertain and nebulous areas of the law which have now received some clarity. An entirely new chapter entitled, "What Constitutes Other Appropriate Equitable Relief?" has been added and replaces the old Chapter 9, which merely dealt with Knudson and Sereboff. The new edition introduces new state court decisions addressing the issue of causation and whether and when a subrogated Plan seeking reimbursement must prove that the medical benefits it seeks to recover were causally related to the original negligence of the tortfeasor. An entirely new section was added concerning the subrogation and reimbursement rights of Medicare Advantage Plans, a statutorily-authorized Plan which provides the same benefits an individual is entitled to recover under Medicare. This includes recent case law which detrimentally affects the rights of such Plans to subrogate. Also added to the new edition is additional law and explanation regarding Medicaid subrogation, including the differentiation between "cost avoidance" and "pay and chase" when it comes to procedures for paying Medicaid claims. Significant improvements have been made to suggested Plan language which maximizes a Plan's subrogation and reimbursement rights. The suggested language stems from recent decisions and developments in ERISA and health insurance subrogation from around the country since the last edition. The new edition has been completely reworked both in substance and organization. Recent case law has necessitated consolidation of several portions of the book and elimination or editing of others. A new section entitled "Liability of Plaintiff's Counsel" has been added, which provides a clearer exposition on the laws applicable and remedies available when plaintiff's attorneys and Plan beneficiaries settle their thirdparty cases and fail to reimburse the Plan. Also new to the book are recently-passed anti-subrogation measures such as Louisiana's Senate Bill 169, § 1881, which states that no health insurer shall seek reimbursement from automobile Med Pay coverage without first obtaining the written consent of the insured. The new edition also goes into much greater detail on the procedures for and law underlying the practice of removal of cases from state court to federal court, and the possibility of remand back to state court. This includes the Federal Courts Jurisdiction and Venue Clarification Act of 2011, effective Jan. 6, 2012, which amended federal removal, venue, and citizenship determination statutes in very significant ways. The new edition also delves into, for the first time, the role which the federal Anti-Injunction Act plays when beneficiaries sue in state court to enforce the terms of an ERISA Plan, while the Plan files suit in federal court seeking an injunction against the state court action. New case law and discussion on preemption of FEHBA subrogation and reimbursement claims have been added to Chapter 10 in the wake of new decisions regarding same.
Gain real-world practice in insurance billing and coding! Corresponding to the chapters in Fordney's Medical Insurance, 15th Edition, this workbook provides realistic, hands-on exercises that help you apply concepts and develop critical thinking skills. Study tools include chapter overviews, key terms, chapter review exercises, and case study assignments. Additionally, this workbook helps you develop a better Page 6/8
understanding of the differences among the insurance programs when completing and electronically transmitting the 837 P or the CMS-1500 paper claim. Key terms and abbreviations lists at the beginning of each chapter provide a quick reference to the health insurance terminology you need to know. Performance objectives make learning easy by highlighting what you need to accomplish in each chapter.? Study outlines focus review by listing key points for each chapter. Self-study exercises - including matching, true/false, multiple-choice, mix and match, and fill-in-the-blank questions - help you practice important concepts. Critical Thinking Assignments in the form of short, real-world vignettes prepare you for working in a real medical office and allow you to apply theory learned from the textbook. NEW! Expanded coverage of inpatient insurance billing, including ICD-10 coding and CMS provides you with the foundation and skills needed to work in the physician office, outpatient, and inpatient setting.?? NEW! Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) billing chapter provides you with the foundation and skills needed to work in this outpatient setting.? NEW! Updated information on general compliance issues, HIPAA, Affordable Care Act and coding reflects changes to the main text.
The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.
Navigating Health Insurance examines health insurance from the perspective of the consumer. Students are introduced to basic health insurance principles and terminology as well as types of insurance such as Medicaid, Medicare, Medigap, Exchanges, and others.The impacts of the ACA on health insurance are explored as well as essential services and coverage decisions, long term care, workers compensation, administration/paper work, filing claims and more.Students will also be challenged to consider market and social justice philosophies, for example the impact on health insurance and access to health care services, international comparisons, and advantages and disadvantages of the U.S. system.
Health Insurance is a Family Matter is the third of a series of six reports on the problems of uninsurance in the United Sates and addresses the impact on the family of not having health insurance. The book demonstrates that having one or more uninsured members in a family can have adverse consequences for everyone in the household and that the financial, physical, and emotional well--being of all members of a family may be adversely affected if any family member lacks coverage. It concludes with the finding that uninsured children have worse access to and use fewer health care services than children with insurance, including important preventive services that can have beneficial Page 7/8
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NINETY-SIXTH SESSION
Judgment No. 2306
The Administrative Tribunal,
Considering the complaint filed by Mr R. W. H. against the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 7 December 2002, the Organization's reply of 30 June 2003 and the complainant's e-mail message of 14 October 2003 informing the Registrar that he would not file a rejoinder;
Considering Article II, paragraph 5, of the Statute of the Tribunal;
Having examined the written submissions and decided not to order hearings, for which neither party has applied;
Considering that the facts of the case and the pleadings may be summed up as follows:
A. The complainant was born in 1956 and has Canadian nationality. From April 1999 he was employed by the World Food Programme (WFP), which is an autonomous joint subsidiary programme of the United Nations and the FAO, as a consultant, for a period of three months. On 20 July 1999 he began a one-year fixed-term contract, at grade P.4, as Logistics Officer/Base Manager at the Lokichokio duty station in Kenya. In July 2000 his contract was extended until 18 January 2001.
In August 2000 the complainant's immediate supervisor informed the Chief of the Staff Relations and Servicing Branch (HRS) of three incidents concerning the complainant. Firstly, he reported that labour relations with casual workers at the Lokichokio base had deteriorated to such an extent that he had been obliged to intervene on several occasions between January and June; secondly, he stated that the complainant had failed to implement a recommendation concerning the issuing of passenger identification cards; and thirdly, he considered that the complainant had exposed him to a serious security risk by disclosing his imminent arrival at Lokichokio in an email communication.
By an e-mail message of 22 August the Chief of HRS informed the complainant that these three incidents were being investigated and invited him to submit comments. The complainant replied at length in a series of e-mail messages sent on 27 August. He refuted his supervisor's allegations and complained that his integrity and character had been "irreparably damaged" by them. The complainant's response was examined by a review group comprising four senior officials.
By a memorandum of 11 September 2000 the Director of the Human Resources Division (HR) notified the complainant of the Programme's intent to terminate his contract with effect from 22 September. She stated that the first incident reported by the complainant's supervisor brought into question his ability to manage staff, whilst the second showed that he did not follow instructions; "these lapses demonstrate[d] a less than optimum exercise of judgment on [his] part as Base Manager". In the event, the complainant's contract was not terminated until 27 October, due to administrative difficulties in arranging for his repatriation.
On 24 November 2000 the complainant lodged an appeal with the Executive Director of the Programme, against the decision to terminate his contract, contending that he had been given no prior indication that his performance was unsatisfactory, that the investigation into his supervisor's allegations had not complied with the applicable procedure and that the notice of termination had not specified appropriate reasons. He asked to be reinstated in his post until the expiry of his contract, with all references to dismissal for unsatisfactory performance being deleted from his personnel records, and to be granted per diem payments for the period from 3 to 27 October, during which his repatriation had been delayed. In reply, the Executive Director agreed that his salary and a daily subsistence allowance should be paid up until 27 October 2000, in view of the postponement of his repatriation, but rejected the remainder of his request as unfounded.
The complainant filed an appeal with the FAO Appeals Committee on 4 April 2001. The Committee considered that the termination procedure had been flawed and that the contested decision should therefore be set aside. It recommended that all reference to the complainant's dismissal be removed from his record and that he be paid an amount equivalent to the salary and allowances he would have received up to the end of his fixed-term contract. The Committee also recommended an award of 4,000 United States dollars in costs.
The Director-General decided to accept these recommendations and informed the complainant accordingly by a letter of 16 August 2002. That is the impugned decision.
B. The complainant considers that the impugned decision does not provide sufficient compensation for the professional and moral injuries he has suffered. He submits that the proposed compensation is "completely unacceptable" as compensation for wrongful termination, and deplores the fact that it "does not send any message of serious violation of [statutory procedures] to [the Organization] or the general staff members as a whole". He also asserts that, as a result of the impugned decision, he was denied the opportunity of obtaining an indefinite appointment, since these new contracts were in the process of being introduced by the Programme at the time of his termination.
He claims professional and moral damages in an amount equal to his salary and benefits from the revised date of his termination (27 October 2000) until the date of the impugned decision (16 August 2002). He also asks the Tribunal to order the defendant to establish an "office of the Ombudsman or similar staff entity to protect the [...] rights and welfare of [...] staff members".
C. The Organization, which emphasises that the offer of compensation as stated in the impugned decision still stands, replies that the complainant's claims for additional damages are unfounded. It argues that, given the nature of his appointment and the fact that it was clearly unlikely to be renewed, there is no legal basis for paying him material damages in respect of the period after 18 January 2001, when his contract was due to expire. Nor does it see any justification for an award of moral damages, in view of the circumstances surrounding his termination and the professional shortcomings on which it was based.
The Organization contends that the complainant's claim for the creation of an office of Ombudsman is irreceivable, firstly because it was not raised before the Appeals Committee, and secondly because it lies outside the jurisdiction of the Tribunal.
CONSIDERATIONS
1. The complainant commenced work with the WFP as a consultant for Albania on 13 April 1999. On 25 June of that year he was offered a one-year fixed-term contract as Logistics Officer/Base Manager stationed in Lokichokio, Kenya, which he accepted. His contract took effect on 20 July 1999 and was renewed on 19 July 2000 for a period of six months, with an expiry date of 18 January 2001.
2. By a memorandum of 11 September the complainant was notified, in circumstances which will be detailed later, that his contract would be terminated on 22 September and that arrangements would be made for his repatriation on that day. As it happened, he could not be repatriated at that stage with the result that, ultimately, the effective date of his termination was 27 October 2000.
3. The complainant lodged an appeal with the FAO Appeals Committee on 4 April 2001. In his appeal, he sought damages equivalent to his salary and allowances from the date of his termination until the date of the Appeals Committee's report without prejudice to "the right to request further additional financial compensation as a result of defamation of character and integrity, mental anguish and distress and actual financial costs incurred up to that date".
4. The Appeals Committee reported to the Director-General of the FAO on 29 April 2002. The Committee was of the view that the process leading to the complainant's early termination was "unreasonably brief" and that, in that process, the WFP had "failed to observe a duty of fairness". Moreover, the Committee expressed the view that "the reasons indicated for terminating [his] fixed-term contract [...] were not sufficiently substantiated". In conclusion, it recommended that the decision to terminate the complainant's contract be set aside, that any reference thereto be removed from his employment record, that he be paid an amount equivalent to the salary and allowances to which
he would have been entitled until the end of his contract and 4,000 United States dollars in costs.
5. On 16 August 2002 the Director-General informed the complainant that he had decided to accept the Committee's recommendations. It should be noted, at this stage, that it is stated in the FAO's reply that the Director-General is still prepared to implement those recommendations.
6. The complainant brings the present proceedings with respect to the Director-General's decision to implement the recommendations of the Appeals Committee which, he contends, are inadequate to compensate him for the damage he has suffered. In lieu, he seeks professional and moral damages equivalent to salary and benefits from 27 October 2000 when his termination took effect until the date of the Director-General's decision, namely, 16 August 2002. Additionally, he seeks the "[c]reation of an Office of the Ombudsman or similar staff authority to protect the [...] rights and welfare of the staff members [of the WFP]".
7. The FAO contends that the complainant is not entitled to damages beyond those recommended by the Appeals Committee, whether by way of compensation for early termination or for moral injury. Additionally, it argues that his claim for the creation of an office of Ombudsman is irreceivable.
8. So far as concerns the claim for the creation of an office of Ombudsman, the complaint is clearly irreceivable. In this regard, it is sufficient to note that this claim was made for the first time in the complaint to the Tribunal and, accordingly, no decision could have been made on that issue prior to the filing of the complaint. More importantly, the claim does not concern the non-observance of the complainant's terms of appointment or of the provisions of the Staff Regulations of the FAO, they being the only matters upon which this Tribunal is competent to adjudicate.
9. The FAO does not contend that the complaint is irreceivable insofar as the complainant seeks material damages. As already mentioned, the complainant sought damages equivalent to his salary and allowances from the date of the termination of his contract up to the date of the Committee's report, without prejudice to his right to seek further damages thereafter. The Director-General's decision to implement the recommendations of the Appeals Committee is, thus, properly to be seen as embodying a final decision not to compensate the complainant beyond the payment of salary and allowances up to the date on which his contract would have expired in the normal course. To the extent that the complainant maintains the claim he made before the Appeals Committee, the complaint is receivable. However, to the extent that the claim goes beyond what was then in issue, the complaint is irreceivable, since the Director-General's decision cannot be regarded as a decision, whether final or not, on that part of the claim made for the first time before the Tribunal.
10. As a general rule, damages for breach of contract, including wrongful termination of a contract of employment, are confined to the amount necessary to put the injured party in the position he or she would have enjoyed if the contract had been performed. Thus, ordinarily, an employee is entitled, in the case of wrongful termination, to salary and entitlements only up to the date on which the contract would normally have expired.
11. Of course, in some circumstances, material damage may extend beyond the salary and allowances that would otherwise have been paid during the course of the contract. Thus, for example, an employee may be entitled to additional compensation if it is shown that he or she lost a valuable chance of having the contract renewed or extended.
12. The complainant contends that early termination of his contract deprived him of the opportunity to obtain an indefinite appointment, that being an appointment of a kind which was, at the relevant time, being introduced by the Programme to replace certain staff contracts. This argument cannot succeed. The complainant was employed under a fixed-term contract for the limited period of 12 months. That contract was extended, but only for a further limited period of six months.
13. It is not disputed that, as found by the Appeals Committee, "the relationship between the [complainant] and his supervisor was of a very antagonistic nature". Quite apart from that difficulty, the situation in Lokichokio was volatile as a result, according to the complainant, of the "violent nature of the local community". In what was obviously a difficult and dangerous situation, the complainant's performance had been rated as "marginal" in his probationary performance appraisal report, it being said in that report that he "fail[ed] to meet some major job requirements". Although the procedures attending the performance appraisal report may be open to some criticism, a matter on which it is unnecessary to make any finding, the above matters make it impossible to assume in the complainant's favour that his contract as Base Manager at Lokichokio would have been renewed when its term
expired. And there is nothing to support an inference that, at that stage, he would have been offered further employment with the WFP.
14. It follows that the complainant is entitled by way of material damages to an amount equivalent to the salary and allowances he would have received from the effective date of termination until the date on which his contract would normally have expired, but not beyond the latter date.
15. The Appeals Committee found that "the [complainant's] dignity had been harmed by the administrative procedure leading to termination and that some redress for the material and moral injury he suffered [was] warranted", a finding that is not disputed in these proceedings. Notwithstanding that finding, the Committee only recommended payment of an amount equivalent to salary and allowances until the end of the complainant's fixed-term contract. As already explained, he was entitled to that amount for material damage. Thus, the effect of the recommendation of the Appeals Committee was to deny the complainant compensation for moral injury notwithstanding its finding that his dignity had been harmed. That was an error of law and, as the DirectorGeneral's decision was based on the recommendations of the Appeals Committee, it necessarily involves the same error of law. Accordingly, to the extent that that decision is a decision not to pay the complainant damages beyond the amount recommended by the Appeals Committee, it must be set aside.
16. The question of the complainant's entitlement to moral damages necessitates consideration of the circumstances surrounding the early termination of his contract and the steps by which he sought review of that decision. The events leading to the termination began on 22 August 2000 with an e-mail from the Chief of the Staff Relations and Servicing Branch informing him that his immediate supervisor had reported three incidents which might involve "the imposition of disciplinary measures". The incidents concerned labour problems with casual employees at the local airstrip, failure to implement security recommendations with respect to passenger identification cards and the sending of an e-mail which, it was said, "could have had the result of placing [his supervisor's] life in danger". He was asked to respond by 28 August 2000.
17. The complainant responded to the allegations, which he characterised as "vague", on 27 August 2000. He enquired as to the progress of the investigation on 3 September and, at the same time, expressed concerns about future appraisals by his immediate supervisor. He claims to have been informed by telephone, on 8 September, that the first two allegations had been found to be substantiated, but not the third. He also claims to have been told that he had a choice of resigning or having his contract terminated. On 13 September he was informed that it had been decided that he would not continue in his role as Base Manager, because of worsening labour relations and the nonimplementation of security recommendations relating to identity cards. He was further informed that, as there was no other post to which he could immediately be reassigned, his contract would be terminated.
18. At this point, it is convenient to note the unchallenged finding of the Appeals Committee that there was antagonism between the complainant and his supervisor and its statement that the latter "did not handle the case objectively and fairly". In this regard, the Committee noted that the complainant had not been given an opportunity to comment on the probationary performance appraisal made shortly before his supervisor reported the incidents leading to the early termination of his contract. Additionally, it expressed doubt as to whether, given the complainant's unfamiliarity with the relevant rules and regulations and the remoteness of his duty station, he appreciated the possible consequences of the request to comment on the allegations made against him. Further, it doubted whether sufficient time had been granted to him to reply to those allegations. In addition to the matters noted by the Appeals Committee, it is clear that the complainant was neither informed of the possibility of early termination of his contract nor given an opportunity to put an argument against that course in the event that the allegations were found to be substantiated.
19. On 15 September 2000 the complainant sought intervention by the Executive Director of the WFP and received in reply an e-mail from the Director of the Human Resources Division detailing the administrative steps leading to the termination of his appointment. In that reply, it was stated that the original allegations had been made by his supervisor, that his supervisor's report had been endorsed by the Regional Manager and "reviewed by the Regional Director [...] and by HR", and that his response to the allegations had then been reviewed by "the Regional Director, the Director [of the Transport and Logistics Division] and HR". Of the latter review, the Appeals Committee noted that it had been conducted "by a group of officers having [an] interest in the matter" and that the Programme's submissions "contained some confidential and prejudicial documents [referring] to the [complainant] but which were apparently not copied to him". In that context, the Appeals Committee stated:
"[...] an administrative process leading to a decision as important as termination before expiry of a fixed-term appointment should guarantee due process and transparency. In this connection, [the Programme] should have asked the [complainant] to come to Headquarters in order to ensure a thorough enquiry and verification of the case."
20. For the sake of completeness, it is necessary to mention only that the complainant filed an appeal with the Executive Director of the WFP. The appeal was allowed to the extent necessary to make his termination date coincide with the date of his repatriation, but otherwise rejected as unfounded.
21. Given the unsatisfactory nature of the administrative processes which led to the early termination of the complainant's contract and, in particular, the lack of due process, the want of transparency and the "unreasonably brief" nature of those processes, as found by the Appeals Committee, the complainant should be awarded moral damages in the amount of 5,000 United States dollars.
DECISION
For the above reasons,
1. To the extent that the decision of the Director-General of 16 August 2002 embodies a decision not to pay the complainant any sum beyond that recommended by the Appeals Committee, that decision is set aside.
2. The FAO shall pay the complainant moral damages in the amount of 5,000 United States dollars in addition to implementing the recommendations of the Appeals Committee.
3. All other claims are dismissed.
In witness of this judgment, adopted on 13 November 2003, Mr Michel Gentot, President of the Tribunal, Mr James K. Hugessen, Vice-President, and Ms Mary G. Gaudron, Judge, sign below, as do I, Catherine Comtet, Registrar.
Delivered in public in Geneva on 4 February 2004.
Michel Gentot
James K. Hugessen
Mary G. Gaudron
Catherine Comtet
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The monthly meeting was held at St Chads Primary School, on Monday 11 th October at 7.30pm.
Present
Chair McDonald; Parish Councillors Bell, Briscoe, Fogarty, B Higham, P Higham, Evans, Yates, and the Clerk.
Apologies Councillors Auwerx, Newall (attended via zoom due to self-isolating), Partington, and Wood
The meeting opened at 7.32pm.
Visitors Borough Councillor Christine Turner and 1 member of the public
The meeting was suspended at 7.33pm to allow Borough Councillor Turner to address the Council.
Councillor Turner introduced herself to the Parish Council and advised that she was attending the meeting to establish if there are any issues she can assist with at Chorley Borough Council. The following issues were raised with Councillor Turner:
Cllr B Higham advised that Union Street has recently been sprayed for weeds, however the footpath at the top of Union Street leading to Carwood Lane was missed on this occasion.
Cllr Bell advised that the weeds along the edges of the zigzag path are still in need of spraying as these obstruct the pathway which is a school route for many children.
Cllr Briscoe advised that the Red Commercial Waste Bins opposite the Top Lock Public house are kept on the Public Highway and are an eyesore in the area. The bins are the responsibility of the Canal & Rivers Trust and are used by the boats that are moored up in this area.
The Parish Council are looking at the installation of 2 CCTV cameras – 1 to be located near the Polo (Co-Op on Chorley Old Road) and 1 near Union Street Play Area. There is no feedback from the ICT Service lead at CBC.
The Canal Basin Project – It was agreed in September 2020 that the Parish Council would be provided with a licence/lease to utilise some parts of the old Canal Basin, namely the Community Garden Area, and a proposed area for a Canal Barge shaped planter (with seating). The matter is currently with CBC Legal who advise they are in the process of arranging the lease with LCC. This has now been ongoing for over a year.
Councillor Turner thanked the Parish Council for raising these issues and advised that she would do her best to follow up on them. The Clerk advised she will email Councillor Turner with more information on the issues tabled.
Chair ..............................................................................
Date.................................................
The meeting was reconvened at 7.36pm.
1. Minutes
*21/10/01 The minutes of the previous meeting were approved, with minor amendments.
2. Changes in Declarations of Interest
NA
3. Defibrillator checks
All OK. Cllr Fogarty will advise on the defib at St Chads
4. Planning Matters
New
19 Cross Keys Drive Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7TF
Erection of boundary fence and access gate (maximum height 1.82m) to rear boundary of property (retrospective).
Reference 21/01179/FULHH | Alternative Reference PP-10181430
Application Validated Mon 04 Oct 2021 | Status Awaiting decision
When the Carwood estate was proposed to be built, the Parish Council campaigned to ensure that the existing boundary hedge along Carwood Lane should remain so as to mitigate the effect of the new houses on the existing residents of Carwood Lane.
Planning Application 9/92/370 – dated 06/05/1992
The original decision notice from 1992 – please see below:
Clause 16 states: Except as is provided for in the approved plans the hedgerow adjacent to Carwood Lane shall not, in any part, be uprooted or otherwise removed and no access, pedestrian or vehicular, shall be formed to Carwood Lane
The Parish Council therefore object to the planning application as it does not adhere to the Clause of planning consent as outlined above.
8 Spinney Close Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7PW
Erection of a single storey rear extension
Reference 21/01150/FULHH | Alternative Reference PP-10230394
Application Validated Mon 27 Sep 2021 | Status Awaiting decision
The Parish Council wish to ensure that due consideration is provided to the neighbours of the property. That all materials used are in keeping with the established dwelling and area, and that property boundaries are not encroached upon in any way.
Crosses Farm Shaw Brow Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7HG
Proposed extension to existing office following the demolition of existing link building.
Reference 21/01133/FUL | Alternative Reference PP-10177023
Application Validated Mon 20 Sep 2021 | Status Awaiting decision
The Parish Council wish to ensure that due consideration is provided to the neighbours of the property. That all materials used are in keeping with the established dwelling and area, and that property boundaries are not encroached upon in any way.
Chair ..............................................................................
Date.................................................
14 Burghfield Drive Buckshaw Village Chorley PR7 7FN
Application for works to protected trees - Chorley BC TPO 3 (Whittle-le-Woods) 2007: G1 - 1No. Sycamore and 6No. Birch - reduce branches growing towards house by 1 metre; T1 Oak - 20% Crown thin; and G2 - 15No. Birch - thin group by removing selected branches. Ref. No: 21/01138/TPO | Received: Mon 20 Sep 2021 | Validated: Tue 28 Sep 2021 | Status: Awaiting decision
Passed to Tree Warden
17 Wardle Court Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7DQ
Application for work to a protected tree - Chorley BC TPO 7 (Whittle-le-Woods) 1996: Oak (T4)
- Prune overhanging branches back to boundary. Open for comment icon
Ref. No: 21/01107/TPO | Received: Mon 13 Sep 2021 | Validated: Thu 16 Sep 2021 | Status: Awaiting decision
Passed to Tree Warden
15 Lady Crosse Drive Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7DR
Application for a certificate of lawfulness for a proposed single storey rear extension (following demolition of existing conservatory)
Ref. No: 21/01027/CLPUD | Received: Tue 24 Aug 2021 | Validated: Tue 24 Aug 2021 | Status:
Awaiting decision
No comment required
125 Preston Road Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7PJ
Detached Garage/Office & Bike Store (including room in the roof)
Ref. No: 21/01034/FULHH | Received: Tue 24 Aug 2021 | Validated: Mon 13 Sep 2021 | Status: Awaiting decision
The erection of this building in the front garden does not sit well with the area. It does seem to be outside of the building line (if there is one). There have been several additions to this property over the years and this addition would be out of character with the area.
2 Lord Street Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7NF
Section 73 application for the variation of conditions no.1 (approved plans) and no.2 (facing materials) attached to planning permission ref. 18/00688/FULHH (Raising of roof height, porch to front elevation and new roof to existing garage) to amend position and scale of outbuilding, including alterations to proposed roof
Ref. No: 21/01008/FUL | Received: Wed 18 Aug 2021 | Validated: Wed 18 Aug 2021 | Status: Awaiting decision
The Parish Council wish to ensure that due consideration is provided to the neighbours of the property. That all materials used are in keeping with the established dwelling and area, and that property boundaries are not encroached upon in any way.
Granted
34 Delph Way Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7TG
Single storey extension with roof terrace to rear of property
Ref. No: 21/00913/FULHH | Received: Fri 23 Jul 2021 | Validated: Fri 23 Jul 2021 | Status: Granted
191 Town Lane Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 8AG
Extend and alter existing bungalow to create first floor accommodation
Ref. No: 21/00891/FULHH | Received: Tue 20 Jul 2021 | Validated: Tue 20 Jul 2021 | Status: Granted
Chair ..............................................................................
Date.................................................
Cheeky Monkeys Factory Lane Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7YA
Minor non material amendment to planning permission 20/00483/FUL (Erection of 6no. detached houses with associated infrastructure following demolition of existing buildings) to alter the elevational treatment details to all dwellings and to add a single storey rear element to the dwelling at plot 1 and to widen the associated garage
Ref. No: 21/00489/MNMA | Received: Tue 20 Apr 2021 | Validated: Tue 20 Apr 2021 | Status: Granted
145 Town Lane Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 8AG
Part two storey, part single storey side extension
Ref. No: 21/00238/FULHH | Received: Sat 27 Feb 2021 | Validated: Mon 01 Mar 2021 | Status: Granted
Refused
Royle Shaw Hill Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7PP
Permission in principle application for the erection of a detached house and garage Ref. No: 21/00852/PIP | Received: Mon 12 Jul 2021 | Validated: Wed 14 Jul 2021 | Status: Objections
5. Matters Arising
Village Hall Insurance Claim
The Insurance Claim raised in May 2021 has been refused by the Insurance Company. The Clerk with Cllr P Higham will challenge the decision; however, the floor remains in need of urgent repair.
Cllr Higham proposes that a temporary fix be carried out, whilst the claim is disputed at a cost of approx. £5,000. The existing floorboards would be re-laid and then sanded to provide a usable floor until the floor can be replaced.
The resolution to provide a maximum of £5,000 to fix the floor was proposed by Chair McDonald and seconded by Cllr Evans. Cllr Newall requested that a budget be assigned to the cost. It was unanimously agreed to use CIL monies.
The Clerk will continue to follow up with the insurance company.
Quote for the Nature Trail Tree works -
Estimate for 5 days with tracked chipper is £3950.
Due to public access to the area and overall condition of trees require work we would need to spend minimum of 5 days in the land to carry out the works.
This should cover all the work required along the path and if we complete the works sooner than 5 days, we would carry out further works on Ash tree with dieback on Hill top lane. All green waste would be chipped on land and logs would be stacked for wildlife habitat piles for bio security and wildlife purposes.
Unanimously agreed for the work to go ahead.
CIL Funding for Goals for the Whittle-Le-Woods Playing Field (£1900 max. funding agreed in April 2021)
Chair ..............................................................................
Date.................................................
Order received for the set of goals for £865.60+vat to be delivered to the playing field C/O Ian
Curwen.
Unanimous decision for the funding to be provided
Community Orchard. A member of the public is keen to set up a Community Group to care for the Orchard and would like the Parish Council to fund an information Board for the Orchard showing the types of trees and different fruits available.
Cllr Bell advised that he had tried to make contact with the Member of Public but hadn't managed too so far.
The idea of the Information Board was welcomed and will be included as a part of the Whittle Walk project.
Chair McDonald also advised that she has learnt that a large 'Bug hotel' is to be installed in the Community Garden courtesy of Manor Road Primary School.
Cllr Bell also advised that he was been made aware of Beech die back that is now causing problems with trees. There are Beech Trees along the A6 and these may need to be removed in the near future.
Flooding – Telemetry quote received for 3 years - £378+vat Unanimously agreed.
Parking at Whittle-Le-Woods Primary School during drop off and collection times. The issue of the number of vehicles parked on single yellow lines and on the footpath, restricting access to pedestrians has been raised by a member of the public. Clerk has reported to LCC via website. The Clerk advised that the issue has also been raised with PCSO Cath Flett who advised that parking around the school has not been an issue for some time, but they would keep an eye on the situation.
Parish and Town Council Conference Invitation for Sat 13th Nov 2021, information provided to Parish Council.
Neighbourhood Area Meeting. There is no current update on the last meeting. Whittle-LeWoods Parish Council are being invited to both the meetings for the Eastern Parishes and the Northern Parishes as both areas closely align with Whittle-Le-Woods.
Chorley Liaison Meeting. The next meeting is to be held on Wednesday 20 th October. Cllr Evans and the Clerk will attend the meeting.
The Clerk is to email Councillor Turner regarding the CCTV provision for Whittle-Le-Woods.
Cllr Partington has made a request to purchase Christmas lights for the cottages on Water House Green – (1000 LED 12m/39ft Cluster Christmas Tree Lights for Indoor & Outdoor Use) 7 x £30.97 = £216.79
It was requested to move this item to the next agenda as there is a lack of understanding as to why 7 more sets of lights are required. The original sets were purchased in 2019.
Chair ..............................................................................
Date.................................................
6. Clerks Update
Whittle-Le-Woods Skip Day – Skip Day – 13 th or 20 th November. Staff provided by CBC. Collection services for vulnerable residents or bulky items. The Clerk has been advised that the cost of the Skips and Staff will be £360. This cost maybe negated through funding via CBC. The Clerk is requested to arrange the Skip Day for the 13 th November. The event will be posted on the Website, on Facebook, and on Notice Boards.
Parking on Chorley Old Road – around the Co-op and Mill Lane PCSO recommends using flower planters outside the Co-op to discourage parking directly outside. Emails sent to PCSO Cath Flett and copied to LC Cllr Mark Clifford. Parking on Mill Lane Junction reported online CO/211006090905.
PCSO Cath Flett has looked into the parking issues and has requested that the owner of the camper van move the vehicle away from the junction of Mill Lane. She suggested that a shortterm solution to vehicles parking directly outside the Co-op would be to place rectangular planters along the edge of the pavement which would discourage parking in this area. The Parish Council agreed that this is a good idea and would indeed discourage parking outside the store. The Clerk is requested to seek authorisation from LCC, and the Co-op for the planters and seek quotes for their installation. The planters would need to be rectangular (to avoid taking up too much space on the footpath) and heavy, to ensure they could not easily be moved.
Newsletter – articles on:
Flood Action Group / Whittle Walks Project / Queens Platinum Jubilee Event / Duck Race / Local Scout & Brownies groups / Hockey Club / Football Club.
Cllr B Higham advised that the Seniors Christmas Lunch would not be going ahead this year due to the ongoing uncertainty with the Pandemic, and the reopening of the main Hall.
Lucas Green Lucas Lane Whittle-Le-Woods Chorley PR6 7DA - Ref. No: 21/00900/FUL The issues regarding the installing of passing places along Lucas Lane need to be escalated as this would have an extremely detrimental effect on Lucas Lane. The Clerk has sent an email to LC Councillor Kim Snape
Christmas 2021
Tree booked for installation on Saturday 27 th November. The tree lights installation is booked to follow the installation of the tree, prior to the light switch on.
Chorley Silver Band has been booked to play on the evening of the 5
th
December.
The Clerk is having some difficulty in securing a Tipi for the event. Chair McDonald advised she would try making some calls. Cllr Newall suggested that a marquee could be purchased if necessary, or Chorley Market may lend out their stall covers for charity events. Cllr Newall has contact details for Chorley Market.
The Clerk advised that it was proving difficult to find the right type of Street Vendors for the event, also licences would be required from CBC and if there needs to be a road closure, this would need to be authorised by LCC. Chair McDonald advised that the vendors she had in mind will not be available. Cllr B Higham suggested that the event should be kept simple and the Parish Council should stick to proving mulled wine only. This was unanimously agreed. Paul Kay should be approached for the use of the PA system for the event.
Chair ..............................................................................
Date.................................................
Queens Platinum Jubilee 2022
The Clerk advised that the formal UK schedule has been issued by Bruno Peake, there is a preference for Beacons
The Clerk asked if the suggested site visit by Lite-alt, should go ahead. It was agreed and Cllr Briscoe advised that he would also meet with the supplier.
It was noted that if the St Chads Football Field were to be used for the beacon, then permission would be required from the Head Teacher Mr Riley.
Update from David Hull, September maintenance:
1. Cut the grass on Cow Well x3
2. Weeded Triangle
3. Cleared around notice board on the A6
4. Strimmed Canal trail cleared up the footpath and litter picked
5. Strimmed around the bench on Copthurst lane
7. Accounts
Outgoings for approval this meeting
| Ref dd bacs bacs dd | JV 21/22-043 21/22-044 21/22-045 21/22-046 | Payee Easy Websites Employee 1 Employee 2 LLC Pension | Detail Monthly payment October Salary October Salary Pension payment October | Total -£27.60 -£651.05 -£432.54 -£359.19 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| bacs bacs bacs bacs | 21/22-047 21/22-048 21/22-049 21/22-050 | Aquasition HMRC BHIB Ltd PKF Littlejohn | 3 year data hosting and SIM bunble PAYE Tax Q2 Insurance 2021 External Audit Fee | -£453.60 -£1,011.63 -£2,543.22 -£360.00 |
| bacs | 21/22-051 | MH Goals | Goals for Whittle Wanderers (CIL) | -£1,038.72 |
Payments to be authorised via email to Clerk by 2 Bank Account Signatories
Chair ..............................................................................
Date.................................................
8. Any Other Business
Venue for next meeting – agreed to return to St Chads school for the next meeting.
9. Confidential Items
Clerks Leave Requested 25/10/21 to 29/10/21
The meeting closed at 20.48pm. The next Parish Council Meeting will be held on Monday 11 th October at 7.30pm at St Chads School.
Payments & Receipts
Budget Tracking
| 2021 / 22 Summary of Monthly Bank Accounts, and Monthly Budget Monitoring | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Categories | 21/22 Budget | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Totals | Spend against Budget |
| Admin Payment | £7,510.00 | -£137.70 | -£103.00 | -£272.36 | -£423.00 | -£23.00 | -£311.05 | -£2,866.22 | | | | | | -£4,136.33 | £3,373.67 |
| Admin Receipt | £0.00 | £54,280.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | £54,280.00 | £54,280.00 |
| Staffing Payment | £26,843.66 | -£2,115.68 | -£1,442.78 | -£8,198.30 | -£2,448.39 | -£1,442.78 | -£1,442.78 | -£2,454.41 | | | | | | -£19,545.12 | £7,298.54 |
| War Mem Payment | £2,000.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | £0.00 | £5,040.00 |
| Loan Payment | £5,040.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | -£2,519.98 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | -£2,519.98 | £9,840.02 |
| Maint Payment | £12,360.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | -£888.00 | £0.00 | -£50.00 | -£1,502.00 | -£378.00 | | | | | | -£2,818.00 | £9,542.00 |
| Grants Payment | £2,387.49 | -£465.50 | -£399.00 | -£706.48 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | -£1,570.98 | £816.51 |
| Project/Misc. Payment | £19,600.00 | -£340.00 | -£59.26 | -£2,077.99 | £0.00 | £0.00 | -£5,448.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | -£7,925.25 | £11,674.75 |
| Flooding Payment | £2,500.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | £0.00 | £2,500.00 |
| Christmas Payment | £3,500.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | £0.00 | £3,500.00 |
| Interest Receipt | | £1.22 | £1.38 | £1.83 | £2.09 | £1.92 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | £8.44 | £8.44 |
| VAT Payment | £0.00 | -£4.60 | -£17.48 | -£420.37 | -£84.60 | -£4.60 | -£1,139.39 | -£313.32 | | | | | | -£1,984.36 | -£1,984.36 |
| VAT Receipt | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | £0.00 | £0.00 |
| Total Receipt | £0.00 | £54,281.22 | £1.38 | £1.83 | £2.09 | £1.84 | £1.92 | £1.75 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £54,288.44 | £54,288.44 |
| Total Payments | £81,741.15 | -£3,063.48 | -£2,021.52 | -£12,863.42 | -£5,475.97 | -£1,520.38 | -£9,843.22 | -£6,877.55 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | -£40,500.02 | £45,601.13 |
| CIL Payment | | | | -£299.92 | | | | -£865.60 | | | | | | -£1,165.52 | -£1,165.52 |
| CIL Receipt (Bal C/O) | £82,610.77 | £54,385.37 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £54,385.37 | £81,445.25 |
| Categories | 21/22 Budget | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Totals | against Budget |
| Summary of bank accounts | | | | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar |
| 41346412 - Balance at end of previous month | | | | £594.38 | £530.90 | £509.38 | £897.82 | £421.85 | £901.47 | £515.03 | | | | | |
| 41346420 - Balance at end of previous month | | | | £132,975.23 | £238,641.82 | £236,643.20 | £224,645.03 | £219,647.12 | £217,650.88 | £205,650.88 | | | | | |
| Total bank account balance | | | | £133,569.61 | £239,172.72 | £237,152.58 | £225,542.85 | £220,068.97 | £218,552.35 | £206,165.91 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 |
| Precept / CIL Amount to deposit account | | | | £108,665.37 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | | |
| CIL Payments | | | | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | | | | | | | |
| Payments this month | | | | -£3,063.48 | -£2,021.52 | -£12,863.42 | -£5,475.97 | -£1,520.38 | -£9,843.22 | | | | | | |
| Receipts this month | | | | £1.22 | £1.38 | £1.83 | £2.09 | £1.84 | | | | | | | |
| Unpresented Payments | | | | £0.00 | £0.00 | £1,251.86 | £0.00 | £0.00 | -£2,543.22 | | | | | | |
| Unpresented Receipts | | | | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £1.92 | | | | | | | |
| Balance at month end | | | | £239,172.72 | £237,152.58 | £225,542.85 | £220,068.97 | £218,552.35 | £206,165.91 | £206,165.91 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 |
|
DOI: 10.5897/JGMR11.027
Full Length Research
Rehabilitation of artisanal gold mining land in West Lombok, Indonesia: Characterization of overburden and the surrounding soils
B. Siswanto 1 , B. D. Krisnayani 2 , W. H. Utomo 1 *, C. W. N. Anderson 3
1 International Centre for Degraded and mine Land Management, Brawijaya University, Malang, Indonesia. 2 Mataram University, Mataram, Indonesia.
3 Institute of Natural Resources, Massey University Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Accepted 29 December, 2011
This study was carried out to characterize the overburden materials and soil properties of artisanal mining at Sekotong, West Lombok, Indonesia to suggest an appropriate rehabilitation technology. The results of the study showed that the properties of overburden materials from Sekotong artisanal mining has a relative neutral acidity (pH about 6.4), however, with time together with the formation of sulfate compounds, such as Cu-sulfate, the pH decrease to more acid condition. The overburden materials have a low water holding capacity, low in N, P and K, but rich in Ca, Mg. Landform of the area varies from undulating to hilly with land slope of 30 to 45%, and the soil have a shallow effective depth with sandy clay loam to clay loam.
Key words: Artisanal mining, gold, overburden, rehabilitation, reclamation, Indonesia.
INTRODUCTION
Artisanal mining is defined as an informal and unregulated system of small-scale mining and in the context of gold mining; it is also termed as artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). ASGM is practiced in the developing nations of Africa, Asia and South and Central America. Artisanal operations are often illegal and/or poorly regulated. Miners may have no title to the land they are working and therefore, there is no incentive for sustainable land management. Indonesia is regarded as a major location for ASGM activities. However, few monitoring or new-technology demonstration projects appear to have been conducted in Indonesia: CASM (Communities and Small Scale Mining) does not appear to be active in the country. A report entitled „Small-scale Mining in Indonesia‟ was published by the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development project of the International Institute for Environment and Development in 2001 (Aspinal, 2001). The report shows the number of
*Corresponding author. E-mail: email@example.com. Tel: +64341553623.
locations of illegal small-scale mining to 713 throughout Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, with majority of them ASGM.
Different from modern mining, the aartisanal mining employ very simple technologies both in the mining and processing of the metal ore. In addition, usually there is no planning for rehabilitation after the closure of the mining activities. Environmental destruction is the most visible outcome of artisanal mining. Problems include acid mine drainage, deforestation, soil erosion, river silting and the pollution of soil and water with toxic compounds. Degradation on mined land include landscape changes, physical, chemicals and biological properties of soils, microclimate, flora and fauna changes.
The mining industry produces a large amount of waste rock and overburden material, ranging from tens to hundreds of million tons that damage environmental conditions (Izquierdo et al., 2005). In this instance, overburden and waste rock are removed from the site in order to access and extract the ore (Misra and Dwivedi, 2004). Waste rock is defined as the material that is removed from above or adjacent to the ore. This material
contains both non-mineralized and low-grade mineralized rock that is usually piled up close to the mine. Potentially these materials can impact surface and ground water quality, due to the nature and level of mineralization of the waste rock, prevailing climatic conditions, and the buffering capacity of the waste rock pile.
Despite the negativity, artisanal mining plays an essential role in developing societies. Small mines can be a major source of revenue for rural communities, and can provide income for investment. Artisanal miners can exploit a mineral deposit considered uneconomic by modern industry. Every $1 generated through artisanal mining generates about $ 3 in non-mining jobs. In Indonesia, artisanal mining is very useful as a means of livelihood for poor people and had proven played as a safety net in time of economic distress, especially during economic crisis which occurred in 1998 which prolonged for about 10 years (Limbong et al., 2002). In the words of Sir Mark Moody Stewart, the President of the Geological Society of London during a November 2003 conference on sustainable mining in London, "Artisanal mining should be encouraged; however, the associated poor health, safety and environmental conditions must be improved."
To improve the environmental condition of artisanal mining, the rehabilitation of the land post mine operation is absolutely important. The most appropriate technologies which can be suggested for this purpose is re-vegetation. However, due to improper mining technology and overburden materials, land condition post artisanal mining is usually so degraded that any plant species hardly could grow.
Generally, mine wastes are coarse and open textured, and therefore, it is subject to erosion due to unstable materials. Overburden materials are usually characterized by a high rock fragment content (35 to >70 %), low clay content, low moisture retention capacity, and high bulk density (Maiti, 2007). Overburden will often have very poor water holding capacity that will lead to surface drought. In Sekotong, West of Lombok, the condition becomes worst and the soil in which artisanal mining is done has a very shallow lithic contact of 5 to 10 cm with steep land slope.
Chemically Most overburden material is low in nutrients, pH, but elevated in metal concentrations (Maiti, 2007). In mining sites, the total sulfur level (often present as pyritic mineral) causes acidity in overburden (Hosner, 1988). The presence of aluminum (Al) and/or iron (Fe) sulfates as well as, hydroxysulfates release more hydrogen ions and cause the substrates to become strongly acidic (Seone and Leiros, 1997). In addition to the acidity issue, overburden material is often characterized by high salinity, which is derived from the parent rock characterized by the presence of soluble salts in water or soil (Shaw, 2005), which can cause a decrease in the relative growth rate and water uptake in shoots and roots (Misra and Dwivedi, 2004; Shaw, 2005; Nathawar et al., 2007).
Furthermore, saline conditions affects nitrogen (N) metabolism such as N uptake. These conditions can also significantly decrease dry matter production; the concentration of potassium (K+), calcium (Ca 2+ ) in leaves; and increase the sodium (Na + ) and chloride (Cl ) content in leaves (Nathawar et al., 2007).
Looking at those conditions, using overburden as a growth medium requires a high degree of improvement and maintenance. Basically, an improvement of fertility status of overburden material is done by developing a pool of organic and inorganic nutrients in the raw material (Hosner, 1988), and there are two major strategies that can be used; (1) based on man-modified succession processes (using time, the natural accumulation of nutrients, N fixation, fertilizer); (2) accumulating organic matter and nutrients from other resources (using topsoil, sewage sludge, green manures, etc). However, overburden has different characteristics in different areas, due to the type of material being mined and the geology of the associated strata. Types of overburden minerals can range from weathered sub soils or deeper unweathered overburdens and varies a lot in physical and chemical properties. Since any technology is usually only work well in specific conditions, a specific technology should be developed suitable for these environmental conditions.
The work described here was aimed to study the properties of soil and overburden in artisanal mining in Sekotong, West Lombok, Indonesia. The data is necessary to develop rehabilitation technique suitable for this location.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Study location
The study was carried at Sekotong sub district, West Lombok, Indonesia (Figure 1). It is estimated that the area have gold reserve of about 1.4 millions ounces. Actually, the mining activity had been closed in 2006, although still illegal, the mining activity was reopened in 2009
Sample collection
About 500 g for overburden materials collected from 10 active artisanal mining pits at Pelanggan and Mencanggah village. The samples were mixtures, and about 500 g sub-sample was then air dried in a drying cabinet with the temperature at 60°C for 96 h. The air dried samples were ground manually to pass through a 2 mm sieve, and then prepared for laboratory analysis. A soil profile was observed adjacent to the location of overburden sampling, and then soil sample from each horizon was collected for laboratory analysis.
Laboratory analysis
To analyse particle size distribution of waste rocks, about 2 kg waste rock was collected and then sieved through a series of sieve with diameter of 8.0, 4.0 and 2.0 mm diameter. For waste rock having diameter more than 8.0 mm was measured individually by a
rule. The result was presented as percent weight. Soil particle size analysis was performed by the pipette method (Soil Survey Laboratory Staff, 1992). Soil pH was measured in 1: 2.5 ratio soil solutions (with de-ionized water) with a pH meter (Jenway, 3305).
The Walkley and Black wet oxidation method was used to determine organic C content (Soil Survey Laboratory Staff, 1992). Total N content, NH4 + N and NO3 N were measured by the Kjeldhal method (Bremner and Mulvaney, 1982). The cation exchange capacity (CEC) was extracted with 1M NH4Oac (buffered at pH 7.0), and exchangeable base concentrations were measured using AAS (Shimatzu).
The heavy metals iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), cadmium (Cd), and arsenic (As) were extracted by 0.1 N HCl (Jones, 1984) and the concentration of these metals in the substrate was measured with AAS (Shimatzu).
RESULTS
Landform, geology, and soil
The area of artisanal mining at Sekotong has an undulating to hilly landform with slopes varies from 30 to 45%. The soil developed from volcano stone rich in some minerals such as Calcite, Dasite, and Silicates.
Based on field soil observation (Figure 2) and the result
A: Light brown (7.5 YR 6/4)
0 – 6 cm: moist, sandy clay loam on gravels (1-2 cm) 10%, medium to moderate granular structure, friable, slightly sticky and slightly plastic; very slightly acid; many fine and medium roots; many fine, medium and coarse pores; gradually boundary
B: Brown (7.5 YR 5/5)
6-19 cm: moist; sandy clay on hard feeling with gravels (1 – 2 cm) > 35 % and stone; medium weak angular block structure; friable, sticky and plastic, neutral acid, few fine roots, many fine and medium pores; clear and smooth boundary.
BC: Brown (7.5 YR 5/5)
19-30 cm: moist, sandy clay loam; gravels (1-2 cm) 10% stone >35 % medium to moderate sub-angular blocky structure, friable, slightly sticky and slightly plastic; very slightly acid; many fine and medium roots; many fine, medium and coarse pores; gradually boundary C : rock
> 30 cm
A: very dark brown (10 YR 3/2)
0-9 cm: moist; sandy clay loam on hard feeling with gravels (1-2 cm) 10%, medium to moderate granular structure, friable, slightly sticky and slightly plastic; very slightly acid; many fine and medium roots; many fine, medium and coarse pores; gradually boundary
B: Dark brown (10 YR 3/3)
9-24 cm: moist; sandy clay on hard feeling with gravels (1 – 2 cm) > 35 % and stone; medium weak angular blocky structure; friable, sticky and plastic, neutral acid, few fine roots, many fine and medium pores; clear and smooth boundary.
BC: Dark yellowish brown (10 YR 4/4)
24-32 cm: moist, sandy clay loam; gravels (1-2 cm) 10% stone > 35%; medium to moderate sub-angular blocky structure, friable, slightly sticky and slightly plastic; very slightly acid; many fine and medium roots; many fine, medium and coarse pores; gradually boundary
C: rock
> 32 cm
Figure 2. Detail profile description of Mencangah (above) and Pelanggan (below).
of the laboratory analysis (Table 1) the soil in artisanal mining area of Sekotong, West Lombok, is classified as yellowish brown Mediterranean and greyish brown Mediterranean (Central Soil Research, 1991) or Lithic Dystropept (Soil Survey Staff, 1992). The soils have an effective depth of 5 to 15 cm, although in some location, especially that of in cavity area, the effective depth could be as deep as 30cm. The soil is slightly acid with pH of 6.4. The soil has low of organic matter, low in nitrogen and phosphorus, but high in potassium content. The cation exchange capacity (CEC) of Mecanggah soil is relatively lower as compared to that of Pelanggan soil.
Soil texture varies from sandy clay loam to clay loam; the clay content increases with depth, but again decreases in the C horizon. The soils have a slightly friable to hard consistency and soil structure of blocky to sub-angular blocky. Gravel is dominant in B horizon with gravel content varying from 15 to 30%.
Overburden
Field observation showed that the overburden materials of Mecanggah site quite different with that of Pelanggan site (Figure 3). At Mecanggah site the overburden materials are dominated by volcanic rocks, but the overburden materials at Pelanggan are dominated by calcite materials. With time, the colour of overburden
Table 1. Some physical and chemical properties of soil at Sekotong artisanal mining area.
1) M: Mecanggah; P; Pelanggan.
from Pellanggan site changes from white colour to blue colour. This indicates that there was a Cupric-sulphate formation
Particle size distribution of the overburden artisanal mining at Sekotong is presented in Figure 4. The overburden from Mecanggah is dominated by large particles with diameter of more than 40 mm. The overburden from Pelanggan, on the other hand, is dominated by small particles, with diameter of less than 40 mm. The result in Figure 3 also shows that there is only a little change in particle size distribution of overburden materials with time. This phenomenon indicates that, under climatic conditions of Sekotong, the materials of overburden are relatively resistant to weathering. The overburden materials have an acid reaction with pH of around 4.6 (Table 2). The CEC is very low (2.32 cmol kg -1 for Mecanggah‟s overburden and 1.98 cmol kg -1 for Pelanggan‟s overburden). The low CEC of these materials is reasonable because the materials dominated by the coarse fraction (Figure 3). The overburden has relatively high S, but low in nitrogen N content. Except Cu, the other heavy metals were not detected on both Pelanggan and Mecanggah overburden materials.
Table 2. The properties of overburden materials from Sekotong artisanal mining.
ud) undetected.
DISCUSSION
Mine land rehabilitation technologies can be grouped into two broad groups, that is, (i) off site technology, which is usually done by removal of the contaminated materials for treatments, (ii) and on site technology, which treats the contaminated materials without excavation of the contaminated materials. Off site technology, especially for over burden materials will be very expensive. In addition , off site technology actually does not resolve the problems. It only shifts the problem to another location, and there is an environmental risk during transportation of the materials. Therefore, on site treatment is favourable. Due to its cost effective and low environmental impact, phytoremediation, the use of plant for remediation or rehabilitation of degraded land is now becoming more important. However, both the soil and overburden of artisanal gold mining at Sekotong have a very low plant nutrient availability (Tables 1 and 2). In addition, the overburden materials have significant of
copper (Cu) metals (Table 2), and with time, these materials going to be acid.
In contrast, the overburden also demonstrates its potential as a source of soil nutrients, but these are contained in the primary minerals. Therefore, pretreatment of overburden and waste rocks is very important to ensure the success of phytoremediation.
One of them promotes the weathering of these materials. Altering the water regime status and adding organic and inorganic amendments may as well accelerate the weathering processes. Weathering will break down the primary minerals, and release cations, which will contribute to the nutrient status of the overburden and thus support re-vegetation processes.
The disturbance of soil will change the abundance and diversity of the mycorrhizal fungal population; even diminish the population of some soil microbe (Prasetyo et al., 2010). On the other hand, the occurrence of soil microorganism is one of the success keys for phytoremediation. It has been widely known that mycorrhizal fungi are capable of improving soil properties, and increasing plant access to relatively immobile mineral nutrients (Gaur and Adholeya, 2004). In addition it is believed that mycorrhizal fungi are also able to bind heavy metals into roots thus restricting their translocation into shoot tissues, and hence minimize toxicity effect to plants (Gaur and Adholeya, 2004). Therefore, inoculation of soil microbe, such as mycorrhizal fungi is very important. The use of local indigenous species is the most appropriate inoculant.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The work was funded by the Indonesian Department of National Education under the scheme of "Research for International Collaboration". Thanks to the Massey University for providing the facilities during finishing the manuscript.
REFERENCES
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Central Soil Research (1991). Soil Maps of Indonesia. Central for Soil Research Bogor, Indonesia.
Gaur A, Adholeya A (2004). Prospect of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in phytoremediation of heavy metal contaminated soils. Curr. Sci., 86: 528.
Gregorich EG, Turchenek LW, Carte MR, Angers DA (2002). Soil and Environmental Science Dictionary. USA: CRC Press LLC.
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Prasetyo B, Krisnayani BD, Utomo WH, Anderson CWN (2010). Rehabilitation of artisanal gold mining land in West Lombok, Indonesia. 2. Arbuscular mycorrhiza status of tailings and surrounding soils. J. Agric. Sci., 2: 202-209.
Seoane S, Leiros MC (1997). Weathering processes under various moisture conditions in a lignite mine spoil from As Pontes (N.W.Spain). Water, Air Soil Pollut., 96: 347-366.
Shaw RJ (2005). Soil salinity-electrical conductivity and chloride. In Peverill, K.I., Sparrow, L.A. and Reuter DJ (Eds.), Soil Analysis; an interpretation manual. Australia: CSIRO. pp. 129-146.
Soil Survey Laboratory Staff (1992). Soil Survey Laboratory Methods Manual, Soil Survey Investigation Report No. 42, Version 2.0, USDA.
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Short Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians
Chapter 6
Verse 1 Ἀδελφοί, ἐὰν καὶ προληµφθῇ ἄνθρωπος ἔν τινι παραπτώµατι, ὑµεῖς οἱ πνευµατικοὶ καταρτίζετε τὸν τοιοῦτον ἐν πνεύµατι πραΰτητος, σκοπῶν σεαυτὸν µὴ καὶ σὺ πειρασθῇς.
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.
προληµφθῇ/| verb subjunctive aorist passive 3rd person singular from prolamba,nw Detect, overtake, surprise be caught (unawares) entrapped
καταρτίζετε verb imperative present active 2nd person plural from katarti,zw put in order, restore; repair. Consider katartismo.n Eph 4:12 "equiping" the saints.
σκοπῶν verb participle present active nominative masculine singular from skope,w notice, keep one's eyes on, consider.
Ἀδελφοί, ἐὰν καὶ προληµφθῇ ἄνθρωπος ἔν τινι "to be caught unawares". This word is used in Jn 8:4 concerning a woman "caught" in adultery. This seems to refer to a sin that was committed unwittingly or unknowingly; not a deliberate sin.
παραπτώµατι. Caring spiritually for one another within the fellowship. The "transgression" is probably referring to a moral deviation: para,ptwma meaning "false step, transgression, sin" . Such a person can be "caught, overtaken, entrapped" in some sin. In chapter 5 the focus of attention is moral and ethical living under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The works of the flesh (5:19-21) are to be avoided, but some may become caught up sin.
ὑµεῖς οἱ πνευµατικοὶ. Probably those who are more ready to be led by the Spirit; walk by the Spirit and live by the Spirit (5:16,18,25). Is this what is meant by being "spiritual"?
καταρτίζετε τὸν τοιοῦτον ἐν πνεύµατι πραΰτητος,( The use of katarti,zw points to a repair, mending of something that is broken. It is a medical term in secular Greek for setting a fracture. Also of fishermen repairing their nets (Mark 1:19). The noun katartismo,j is used in Eph 4:12 for the "equipment of the saints"; or the repair of the saints.
Paul speaks to the whole Church body in respect to this pastoral work, not just the leaders. The pastoral work will be to "restore", or repair the spiritual life of the one who has been overtaken in some transgression. This provides us with an interesting insight into the nature of NT pastoral care. Note how this work must not be done with an air of pride or "I am more spiritual and superior than you" attitude. It must with an attitude of "gentleness".
σκοπῶν σεαυτὸν µὴ καὶ σὺ πειρασθῇςÅ The warning here is to take care that the person doing the counselling is not drawn into the "transgression" of the person who has been "caught".
Verse 2 Ἀλλήλων τὰ βάρη βαστάζετε καὶ οὕτως ἀναπληρώσετε τὸν νόµον τοῦ Χριστοῦ.
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
βάρη noun accusative neuter plural common from βάρος weight, burden
Ἀλλήλων τὰ βάρη βαστάζετε Paul has the whole Church in mind here being engaged in pastoral work. No one is allowed to say about a brother trapped in a transgression that, "It is none of my business". This maybe the NT answer to "Am I my brother's keeper" (Gen 4:9).
καὶ οὕτως ἀναπληρώσετε τὸν νόµον τοῦ Χριστοῦ. For the Galatians who want to fulfil some Law, this is the way to accomplish such a goal. It is all about "You shall love your neighbough as yourself".
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Verse 3 εἰ γὰρ δοκεῖ τις εἶναί τι µηδὲν ὤν, φρεναπατᾷ ἑαυτόν
For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
φρεναπατᾷ/| verb indicative present active 3rd person singular from frenapata,w deceive to cause someone to have misleading or erroneous views concerning the truth - 'to mislead,
εἰ γὰρ δοκεῖ τις εἶναί τι µηδὲν ὤν, φρεναπατᾷ ἑαυτόν. Some suggest that this is a traditional maxim found in the Greco-Roman world and is here used by Paul. This negative statement may be written as a warning lest someone seeks to correct another with a spirit of pride and arrogance. He has already said that any counselling should be done evn pneu,mati prau<thtoj.
Verse 4 τὸ δὲ ἔργον ἑαυτοῦ δοκιµαζέτω ἕκαστος, καὶ τότε εἰς ἑαυτὸν µόνον τὸ καύχηµα ἕξει καὶ οὐκ εἰς τὸν ἕτερον·
But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbour.
τὸ δὲ ἔργον ἑαυτοῦ δοκιµαζέτω ἕκαστος If "work" is taken as the fruit of the Spirit ("faith without works is dead") then Paul is urging that each person who seeks to counsel another must take stock of his or her own spiritual life - e`autou/ dokimaze,tw . This seems to echo the words of Jesus when He spoke of a person wanting to take a "speck" from the eye of another, but who has forgotten that he has a "beam" in his own eye (Matt 7:35).
καὶ τότε εἰς ἑαυτὸν µόνον τὸ καύχηµα ἕξει The person who is willing to consider the state of their own spiritual life and finds that he has not been "caught" up in a transgression will have cause to be pleased (boast, be proud, rejoice) if he does not find any sin.
καὶ οὐκ εἰς τὸν ἕτερον\ Such a person will then be prevented from rejoicing in the spiritual fall of another Christian.
Verse 5 ἕκαστος γὰρ τὸ ἴδιον φορτίον βαστάσει.
For each will have to bear his own load.
φορτίον , noun accusative neuter singular common from forti,on burden, load; Matt 11:30
ἕκαστος γὰρ τὸ ἴδιον φορτίον βαστάσει. Whereas it might be more attractive to try to bear the burdens of another Christian who has been caught up in a transgression, it is vitally important that each person looks to their own heart and life. Each of us has to "bear our own loads". The theme seems to stress the teaching of Jesus from Matt 7:3-5).
Verse 6 Κοινωνείτω δὲ ὁ κατηχούµενος τὸν λόγον τῷ κατηχοῦντι ἐν πᾶσιν ἀγαθοῖς.
Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.
ὁ κατηχούµενος verb participle present passive nominative masculine singular from kathce,w teach, instruct Ac 18:25; Ro 2:18; 1 Cor 14:19; to inform by word of mouth; passive to be orally informed: catechize.
Κοινωνείτω δὲ ὁ κατηχούµενος The one who is catechised ( κατηχούµενος). Stott suggests that this might refer to a catechetical school where new converts were being prepared for baptism. The principle here is that the pupil / student should help to support the teacher. The pastor should be supported materially ἐν πᾶσιν ἀγαθοῖς by the congregation (see 1 Cor 9:14). This must be considered as genuine "fellowship" Κοινωνείτω, or "partnership" between pastor and congregation.
Verse 7 Μὴ πλανᾶσθε, θεὸς οὐ µυκτηρίζεται. ὃ γὰρ ἐὰν σπείρῃ ἄνθρωπος, τοῦτο καὶ θερίσει·
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.
µυκτηρίζεταιÅ verb indicative present passive 3rd person singular from mukthri,zw treat with contempt, mock.
θερίσει· verb indicative future active 3rd person singular from qeri,zw reap, harvest
Μὴ πλανᾶσθε( Å The Galatians were in danger of being "deceived" - πλανᾶσθε - in doctrine by the Judaisers, and also being "deceived" by those who encourage a misuse of freedom through the practice of sin.
θεὸς οὐ µυκτηρίζεται It would be dangerous to play fast and loose with sin, and so be guilty of showing "contempt for God". He refuses to allow people to mock Him.
ὃ γὰρ ἐὰν σπείρῃ ἄνθρωπος, τοῦτο καὶ θερίσει\ Paul teaches the seriousness and necessity of sanctification. Eternal life through justification in Christ alone can only be "reaped" through a person "sowing" to sanctification. The following verse will explain this, o[ti.........
Verse 8 ὅτι ὁ σπείρων εἰς τὴν σάρκα ἑαυτοῦ ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς θερίσει φθοράν, ὁ δὲ σπείρων εἰς τὸ πνεῦµα ἐκ τοῦ πνεύµατος θερίσει ζωὴν αἰώνιον.
For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
φθοράν( noun accusative feminine singular common from fqora, ruin, destruction, dissolution, corruption
ὅτι ὁ σπείρων εἰς τὴν σάρκα ἑαυτοῦ/ This is the person who continues to practice known sin - thinking that he will be saved by grace anyway.
ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς θερίσει φθοράνThe end result will be that he will reap nothing but "corruption, destruction and ruin". He will lose his hope of eternal salvation.
ὁ δὲ σπείρων εἰς τὸ πνεῦµα On the other hand this is the person who walks, lives and is led by the Holy Spirit (5:16-18) seeking holiness.
ζωὴν αἰώνιον Here, the end result will be that this person will gain eternal life.
Note: Paul's does not teach here that salvation is through holiness. He is, however combating antinomianism; the person who sins carelessly on the basis that God will forgive and that salvation is assured whatever he does. We cannot be saved through sanctification and neither can we be saved without it. Sanctification - "sowing to the Spirit" - is the proof of our justification in Christ.
Verse 9 τὸ δὲ καλὸν ποιοῦντες µὴ ἐγκακῶµεν, καιρῷ γὰρ ἰδίῳ θερίσοµεν µὴ ἐκλυόµενοι
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
ἐγκακῶµεν( verb subjunctive present active 1st person plural from evgkake,w become weary, tired, lose heart, despair.
evkluo,menoiÅ verb participle present passive nominative masculine plural from evklu,w become weary or slack, give out Lose courage Hb 12:3
τὸ δὲ καλὸν ποιοῦντες µὴ ἐγκακῶµεν( Because of this teaching on sanctification, we must not give up our pursuit of holiness τὸ δὲ καλὸν ποιοῦντες. Working at sanctification can be difficult and at times there is the temptation to become "weary" or a desire to "give up". The Christian must not give up because of the final end result; the final reaping.
καιρῷ γὰρ ἰδίῳ θερίσοµεν µὴ ἐκλυόµενοι. What is this that we will "reap"? It is "eternal life" as written in verse 8. Sanctification will not earn us eternal life, but it will give evidence that we have been fully justified, and it is this latter that will bring us eternal life.
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Verse 10 Ἄρα οὖν ὡς καιρὸν ἔχοµεν, ἐργαζώµεθα τὸ ἀγαθὸν πρὸς πάντας, µάλιστα δὲ πρὸς τοὺς οἰκείους τῆς πίστεως.
So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
µάλιστα especially, above all, particularly, (very) greatly
Ἄρα οὖν ὡς καιρὸν ἔχοµεν Whilst time permits; or, as we have opportunity.
ἐργαζώµεθα τὸ ἀγαθὸν πρὸς πάντας Practice holy living towards all people; show good works to everyone.
µάλιστα δὲ πρὸς τοὺς οἰκείους τῆς πίστεωςÅ Whilst universal kindness should characterise the Christian, showing good works in respect of other Christians must be of special (ma,lista) importance. Note the reference to Christians as οἰκείους τῆς πίστεως "those of the household of faith". οἰκείους is used also in Eph 2:19 for the oivkei/oi tou/ qeou/. The two must synonymous.
Verse 11 ἴδετε πηλίκοις ὑµῖν γράµµασιν ἔγραψα τῇ ἐµῇ χειρί.Å
See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.
πηλίκοις adjective interrogative dative neuter plural no degree from phli,koj how large; how great
ἴδετε πηλίκοις ὑµῖν γράµµασιν ἔγραψα τῇ ἐµῇ χειρί.Å,Å Paul draws this letter to a conclusion (11-18). It is most probable that the AV translation is incorrect - Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand. Paul's common use of ἔγραψα is never used for a whole Letter. He uses evpistolh (Rom 16:22). Here he is referring to letters of the Greek alphabet. The ESV rendering is to be preferred.
J.B. Phillips translates, " Note how heavily I have pressed upon the pen in writing this". He says that this paraphrase is in according to centuries-old Eastern usage. It could be rendered, "Notice how heavily I underline these words to you" (Stott). Paul wants to emphasise strongly his teaching on this matter.
Verse 12 Ὅσοι θέλουσιν εὐπροσωπῆσαι ἐν σαρκί, οὗτοι ἀναγκάζουσιν ὑµᾶς περιτέµνεσθαι, µόνον ἵνα τῷ σταυρῷ τοῦ Χριστοῦ µὴ διώκωνται.
It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.
εὐπροσωπῆσαι verb infinitive aorist active from εὐπροσωπέω make a good showing particularly with regard to outward appearances - 'to wish to show off 'those who force you to be circumcised are those who wish to make a good showing in external matters' (literally '... in the flesh').
ἀναγκάζουσιν verb indicative present active 3rd person plural from ἀναγκάζω force, compel urge strongly Mt 14:22.
Ὅσοι θέλουσιν εὐπροσωπῆσαι ἐν σαρκί, The Judaisers were concentrating on externals such as circumcision. Why? Because it was something to see, something to "show", something that would be evident. Whereas, true circumcision is of the heart (Rom 2:29). Christianity is a heart religion.
οὗτοι ἀναγκάζουσιν ὑµᾶς περιτέµνεσθαι The Judaisers were "commanding" circumcision; not suggesting or inviting circumcision. For them it was an absolute necessity for salvation, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved." (Acts 12:1).
µόνον ἵνα τῷ σταυρῷ τοῦ Χριστοῦ µὴ διώκωνται. The Judaisers where not being persecuted by the Jews because of their insistence on circumcision. No persecution for them due to the Gospel of the cross of Christ. They could hide under circumcision.
Verse 13 οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ περιτεµνόµενοι αὐτοὶ νόµον φυλάσσουσιν ἀλλὰ θέλουσιν ὑµᾶς περιτέµνεσθαι, ἵνα ἐν τῇ ὑµετέρᾳ σαρκὶ καυχήσωνται.
For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.
οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ περιτεµνόµενοι αὐτοὶ νόµον φυλάσσουσιν The problem with the Judaisers, who thought they were obeying the Law through circumcision, in reality were, like former Israelites, not keeping the whole Law. They were breaking the moral Law like everyone else.
ἀλλὰ θέλουσιν ὑµᾶς περιτέµνεσθαι, ἵνα ἐν τῇ ὑµετέρᾳ σαρκὶ καυχήσωνται. The reality was, the Judaishers were only interested in being able to have something in which to "boast" if they could persuade the Galatians to be circumcised. They were not really interested in their spiritual welfare.
Verse 14 Ἐµοὶ δὲ µὴ γένοιτο καυχᾶσθαι εἰ µὴ ἐν τῷ σταυρῷ τοῦ κυρίου ἡµῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, δι᾽ οὗ ἐµοὶ κόσµος ἐσταύρωται κἀγὼ κόσµῳ.
But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which 1 the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
γένοιτο verb optative aorist middle 3rd person singular from γίνοµαι To become
ἐσταύρωται verb indicative perfect passive 3rd person singular from σταυρόω nail to the cross, crucify—
Ἐµοὶ δὲ µὴ γένοιτο καυχᾶσθαι εἰ µὴ ἐν τῷ σταυρῷ τοῦ κυρίου ἡµῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ Paul picks up the last word in the previous verse, "boast". If the Judaisers, through commanding circumcision, are protecting themselves from being persecuted because of the cross of Jesus, Paul on the other hand, has an ambition to "boast" in the cross of Jesus. He will not run from the dangers associated with preaching the cross; on the contrary, he is proud of the cross.
The cross of Jesus was most central to Paul. To the Corinthians he wrote, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 2:2). To the Romans he wrote, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel...." (Rom 1:16).
δι᾽ οὗ ἐµοὶ κόσµος ἐσταύρωται κἀγὼ κόσµῳ. Paul's double statement - the world to me and I to the world - is perhaps the same as the words he wrote to the Philippians when he said, "whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ" (Phil 3:7-8). The cross of Christ was all that Paul needed; he could lose the world because he had Christ and Him crucified.
Verse 15 οὔτε γὰρ περιτοµή τί ἐστιν οὔτε ἀκροβυστία ἀλλὰ καινὴ κτίσις.
For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
οὔτε γὰρ περιτοµή τί ἐστιν οὔτε ἀκροβυστία It is wrong for the Judaisers to boast because they are circumcised, and it is equally wrong for someone to boast that they have not been circumcised. This is because the fact of being circumcised or even not circumcised does not carry any weight with God in terms of merit or worth.
ἀλλὰ καινὴ κτίσις. What carries weight with God is this "new creation", this new birth. Circumcision is an outward external act, and not being circumcised is also an outward external act (the absence of circumcision) - both can be regarded as works of the flesh. One has the mark and the other does not; both are works that people can rely upon.
This "new creation" is an inward, spiritual act of God on the heart. It is not external; it is not works; it is not obedience of the Law. This and this alone is what God requires.
Verse 16 καὶ ὅσοι τῷ κανόνι τούτῳ στοιχήσουσιν, εἰρήνη ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς καὶ ἔλεος καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν Ἰσραὴλ τοῦ θεοῦ.
And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.
κανόνι noun dative masculine singular common from κανών rule, standard Phil 3:16; sphere of action, province, limits 2 Cor 10:13, 15f.
στοιχήσουσιν, verb indicative future active 3rd person plural from στοιχέω hold to, agree with, follow Gal 5:25 Phil 3:16.
καὶ ὅσοι τῷ κανόνι τούτῳ στοιχήσουσιν, Paul is not suggesting, by the use of κανόνι that a new law has been given. He is applying this "rule" to his doctrine of justification through faith in Christ alone without circumcision.
εἰρήνη ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς καὶ ἔλεος . Paul is drawing his letter to a close. Just as he began his letter with a blessing, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" so he ends with a similar prayer for the Galatians. Notice how "peace" is repeated, but "grace" comes "mercy" in vs 16.
καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν Ἰσραὴλ τοῦ θεοῦ. This word Ἰσραὴλ is probably used because of the Judaisers who want to point the Galatians back to the Old Testament. Paul wants it known that there is only one Church in both Old and New Testament ages; only one "Israel of God" in both periods of history. Indeed, he has already said that those who are of faith are the "sons of Abraham" (Gal 3:7).
Verse 17 Τοῦ λοιποῦ κόπους µοι µηδεὶς παρεχέτω· ἐγὼ γὰρ τὰ στίγµατα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐν τῷ σώµατί µου βαστάζω.
From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
κόπους noun accusative masculine plural common from κόπος trouble, difficulty Mk 14:6;
παρεχέτω verb imperative present active 3rd person singular from παρέχω grant, show show oneself to be something
στίγµατα noun accusative neuter plural common from στίγµα mark, brand
Τοῦ λοιποῦ κόπους µοι µηδεὶς παρεχέτω Paul urge to be left alone by those troublesome Judaisers. They had troubled the Galatian Churches and also the Philippian Church.
ἐγὼ γὰρ τὰ στίγµατα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐν τῷ σώµατί µου βαστάζω. In the Greek speaking world a στίγµα was the mark of a pointed instrument, a tattoo-mark, or a brand. The latter also refers to the branding of a slave. Paul's use of this term might indicate a kind of spiritual branding by which he was enslaved to Christ. Due to being Christ's slave Paul had undergone many forms of persecution which included beatings and lashes (2 Cor 11:2325). Could the marks left by these beatings be Paul's parallel to circumcision, by which he points to these scars in his flesh - the στίγµα - as the only physical marks in the flesh that are worth having?
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Verse 18 Ἡ χάρις τοῦ κυρίου ἡµῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ µετὰ τοῦ πνεύµατος ὑµῶν, ἀδελφοί ἀµήν.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.
Ἡ χάρις τοῦ κυρίου ἡµῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ Whereas "grace" was omitted in verse 18 it is included within this final benediction. On a level with Ephesians, the Galatian letter can also be called a letter of "grace". Paul mentions "grace" seven times: 1:3, 6, 15, 2:9, 21, 5:4, 6:18. This significantly points to Paul's argument that salvation is by the grace of God as also is the continued Christian life.
µετὰ τοῦ πνεύµατος ὑµῶν, ἀδελφοί· Why does Paul say µετὰ τοῦ πνεύµατος ὑµῶν ? Christianity is of the heart; true circumcision is of the heart (Rom 2:29); the "new creation" is in the heart. All this is important for Paul as he labours to argue against the Judaisers' insistence of external religion.
ἀµήν. transliterated from the Hebrew amen; usually translated into Greek by γένοιτο (let it be so, truly); (1) liturgically, used as a particle of strong affirmation and assent at the
end of a doxology this is indeed true (RO 11.36) or a prayer of thanksgiving that is the way it should be (1C 14.16); (2) used with λέγω to emphasize that what is being said is a solemn declaration of what is true (JN 1.51); (3) figuratively and substantively ὁ ᾽Α the Amen, used by Christ of himself as the one speaking what is true (RV 3.14) ἀµήν.
Richard Lee. February 2014
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MAINFREIGHT LIMITED
Mainfreight Lane | off Saleyards Road | Otahuhu 1062 | New Zealand
Tel +64 9 259 5500 | Fax +64 9 270 7400
PO Box 14-038 | Panmure | Auckland 1741 | New Zealand
MAINFREIGHT LIMITED
Financial result for the twelve months ended 31 March 2014 (Unaudited)
Commentary
Mainfreight is pleased to announce a record full year net profit after tax and abnormal items for the year ended 31 March 2014 of $89.64 million; an increase of 36.0% over the previous year.
Sales revenue also increased; up 2.1% to $1.92 billion (excluding foreign exchange effects the increase is 4.8%).
EBITDA was also at a record level of $149.19 million. This exceeded the prior year's result by 8.5% (excluding foreign exchange effects the increase is 11.7%).
Excluding foreign exchange effects, all geographical segments other than Europe improved on their prior year's EBITDA result.
Europe completed the year slightly behind the prior year, by 5.6%. However second half performance from the region showed EBITDA performance exceed the same comparative period by 17.9%. This profit improvement has continued into the new financial year, and is providing us with confidence of a turnaround.
Abnormal gains total $12.15 million and predominantly relate to the settlement of the dispute with the vendor of our 2011 European acquisition.
During the year we responded to issues in a number of our divisions that required us to fine-tune our activities.
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Remedial activities included:
* Removing parcel-freight from our Australian Transport business, where these volumes were negatively impacting gross margins, cost structures and the efficiency of our network,
* In Europe, we closed an unprofitable operation in Belgium, rationalising our network coverage in order to improve margin,
* In the USA, the Mainfreight Domestic operations have focused on everyday LTL freight, sacrificing revenue streams from transactional freight to build long-term customer relationships and to assist the implementation of dedicated road linehaul between significant branch locations.
Early evidence of the success of these initiatives is apparent in improved results in the later part of the financial year.
Divisional Performance (figures in local currencies)
New Zealand (NZ$)
All of our New Zealand divisions, once again, performed satisfactorily. Our investment into high quality facilities and an intensive network has played a role in improving our returns.
Total revenues for the New Zealand group of businesses increased 6.6% to $505.19 million. EBITDA improved 12.4% to NZ$67.38 million.
Our New Zealand Transport division was challenged by a number of issues relating to linehaul services, in particular the reduced availability of rail and ferry services during our peak volume period October through to December. Despite these constraints, we were able to move 200,000 consignments more than we did in the prior year.
High levels of service and a focus on FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), hardware and building-related industries contributed to the increase in volume. Our development of additional services for the FMCG sector, including movement of perishable, chilled and frozen food, will provide substantial growth for the future.
The Logistics division is also exposed to the same sectors which has required further investment in specialised facilities. A strong performance from our Logistics team produced an improved net profit over the year prior.
The Air & Ocean division increased revenues across all modes of international freight and, encouragingly, continued to lift our market share of the Asian inbound trade lanes to New Zealand.
Our commitment to increase our regional presence throughout New Zealand has resulted in our Air & Ocean team becoming more active in New Zealand's rural sector.
We continue to invest in high quality operations for our New Zealand network:
* Our Christchurch redevelopment is progressing well with completion due May 2015,
* Land has been acquired and development has commenced for a new Hamilton facility, and
* Construction is under way for a new temperature-controlled warehouse in Auckland to facilitate the requirements of new FMCG customers.
Australia (AU$)
Despite the need to address issues relating to difficult parcel freight in our Australian Transport operations halfway through the financial year, our Australian business has continued to grow in stature and is becoming a significant contributor to the Group's profitability and capability.
Australian revenues increased 5.8% over the previous year to AU$458.47 million. EBITDA improved 15.5% to AU$35.19 million.
Our Domestic operations (Transport and Logistics/Warehousing) have increased their market share in what is a reasonably tough and competitive environment. Our focus on delivering high quality freight services is a contributing factor.
Our quality has improved from prior years, however we have some way to go to satisfy our own internal measures and the expectations of our customers.
Over time small parcel consignments had infiltrated our normal freight profile. This reached a tipping point halfway through the last financial year, when inefficiencies placed unacceptable pressure on our network and margins. As a consequence, we removed parcel traffic from our network, in consultation with our customers. The value of the consequential lost sales approximated AU$12 million annualised. Gross margins and operational efficiencies have both seen improvement as a result.
Chemcouriers is now well established in Australia and is working alongside Mainfreight to provide better hazardous goods transport solutions for our customers.
Our Logistics operations continue to find financial improvement through customer gains. Such is the level of success, new facilities have been built in Sydney and Brisbane to assist this growth.
The Air & Ocean operations maintained a good level of sales growth and profitability despite declining ocean freight rates from Asia. Market share has increased, particularly as we focus on developing our Perishable air freight capabilities. Our investment in perishable handling facilities across Melbourne, Sydney and now Brisbane has given us a considerable advantage over our competitors.
We now expect further improved financial returns in Australia notwithstanding the cost commitments we have incurred with the investment in new facilities to secure this business's potential growth.
The Americas (US$)
Improvement in performance across all three divisions (CaroTrans and Mainfreight Domestic and Air & Ocean), sees sales revenues ahead of the prior year by 1.7% to US$363.57 million. EBITDA improved by 11.4% to US$18.85 million.
CaroTrans (our independent wholesale business) adopted a back to basics approach focusing on better freight utilisation of containers, improved linehaul negotiation with shipping and air lines, and growth of imports to the USA, which all assisted to produce a strong result.
In both Export and Import trades, CaroTrans' growth outpaced that of the US market. Groupage services from China, Korea and France were launched during the year, as were new services into the Caribbean after a long absence.
Western Europe is now a priority for CaroTrans to extend its borders to, and increase our ability to drive more growth into and from the European markets.
The Mainfreight Domestic business has achieved a less than satisfactory performance in the past twelve months, however improvements were seen in the last quarter, and have continued into the new financial year. We expect this momentum to increase further as initiatives that were put in place to drive growth begin to deliver.
Additional fixed road linehaul between major cities has been committed to and will assist the sales campaigns for more LTL freight volume.
The opening of a branch in McAllen, Texas will enhance our service profile for transborder freight between Mexico and the USA.
Customer interest in 3PL warehousing services has been steadily growing. Developing credible third party warehousing operations similar to those we have elsewhere in the world is now a priority. Purpose-built facilities will be committed to in the next twelve months.
The Mainfreight Air & Ocean division has had good growth and we expect this to continue as we link the USA with our developing world-wide network of air and sea freight activity. We would expect the trade lanes to and from Europe and Asia to be a high priority.
Our expectations for the USA are for a far greater level of growth and profit contribution over the near term as market opportunities available to us are exploited.
Europe (Euro €)
Full year sales revenues improved slightly, by 2.4% to €250.72 million, EBITDA fell short of the year prior at €8.92 million, despite lifting significantly during the second half of the year.
The improvement seen in the last six months of the year provides confidence for the future. Gradual economic recovery in the Euro region will assist in some part, however more important is our own improvement.
Progress was made in "right-sizing" our Belgian business, where the Antwerp Forwarding operations were merged with our branch in Genk. This will assist our utilisation and network efficiencies. While we have yet to find profitability in our Belgian Forwarding business, we are certainly better placed now than previously.
Our pan-European Forwarding and Logistics/Warehousing units are benefiting from renewed opportunities in the marketplace providing steady revenue growth. A number of customer gains in the food sector has bolstered confidence.
Tender opportunities are many, where we are regularly achieving "last round" status, reflecting our ability to compete and offer a point of difference to much larger competitors.
Our Air & Ocean business has extended its network with a third branch in France (Lyon) and the opening of a branch at Frankfurt Airport, as our first foray into Germany.
We are cautiously optimistic that the worst of our European business's disappointing performance is now behind us, and is well-positioned to provide more growth and profitability into the future.
Asia (US$)
Sales revenues from our Asia division improved by 26.1% to US$37.70 million, and EBITDA was up 35.3% to US$3.52 million.
All branches throughout Asia improved their financial performance during the year. Trade lane growth was also strong, particularly to and from the USA.
Operationally, we have been able to continue the expansion of the network by opening Thailand as our twelfth branch for the Asia region. We expect to further intensify our Asian network in the coming financial year, opening a second branch in each of Thailand and Taiwan, and establishing an air freight operation in Beijing. The Singapore branch will move their operations to an "on airport" site at Changi Airport to further our development of the air freight product for the region.
As with our United States business, strengthening European trade lanes into and out of Asia is of the utmost importance.
The Asian region continues to be an important part of our global supply chain offering. Now that our Chinese operations are well-established, extending our Southeast Asian network remains a priority. Opportunities to establish branches in Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and India continue to be researched.
Group Operating Cash Flows
Operating cash flows were NZ$120.37 million up from NZ$83.17 million, largely a reflection of increased operating profitability, working capital stability and the abnormal gain of $12.15 million.
During the year net capital expenditure totalled NZ$78.66 million. Property development accounted for NZ$55.76 million of this. Land and Buildings sold during the period totalled NZ$15.0 million. Facilities in Palmerston North and Hamilton remain for sale.
Land investments decisions are continuing to be made on an as required basis.
Current owned facilities with a limited future due to size and/or design, will be sold and leased back with funds being invested in land designated for future development.
Dividend
The Directors have approved a final dividend of 19.0 cents per share fully imputed at the 28% company tax rate, with the books closing on 11 July 2014; payment will be made on 18 July 2014. This takes the full dividend for the year to 32.0 cents per share; an 18.5% increase year on year.
Funding
Subsequent to year end, Group funding facilities underwent a thorough review, and a decision was taken to broaden our banking relationships from two to four lenders.
The awarding of replacement contracts was completed during May 2014, and includes an increase in debt facilities to approximately NZ$450 million (an increase of approximately NZ$60 million). The new facilities result in an overall reduced cost.
Fraud
The discovery of fraud (within a New Zealand subsidiary, Daily Freight) during the year, has now been through the Courts and has resulted in the conviction of the perpetrator.
A significant part of this complicated fraud was undertaken outside the Company's purview and control. Detailed investigations have been undertaken and our internal controls have been appropriately reinforced.
Restitution to all affected parties has been made, and has been offset by recoveries received. At no time was Mainfreight's financial performance materially impacted.
Outlook
The financial result achieved for the 2013/14 year has been satisfactory. Trading for the first two months of the current financial year has seen further improvement on the year prior.
The aches and pains of establishing our footprint in Europe through our 2011 acquisition are behind us, and the potential for growth can clearly be seen in Australia, Asia and the Americas.
We are focused on developing all our off-shore operations into significant profit and revenue contributors for our Group.
In New Zealand, our network intensity and investment into world-class facilities is providing ongoing growth in a region where we already hold a significant market share; a compelling blueprint as we build our network in other regions of the world.
Our presence in Australia mirrors that of New Zealand; our capital investment in better facilities for our people and our customers for world-class supply chain services is well under way. We expect sales revenues and profitability from Australia to eclipse those of New Zealand in the not too distant future.
We are now well established and seeing improved financial returns from Asia, Europe and the Americas. Our sales teams in all three continents are developing significant relationships with many multi-national customers, and at times beating larger, more dominant competitors with our more flexible, high quality service and logistics offering.
It is just a matter of time – not if, but when – we are able to convince more of these customers to experience the Mainfreight level of service across our complete network.
Many shareholders will be focused on our financial expectations for the year ahead. We are confident of bettering our financial performance again. More importantly, we will maintain the momentum we have, growing Mainfreight into a substantially bigger and better business.
Mainfreight will release its financial results for the first half of the 2015 financial year to the market on 11 November 2014.
For further information, please contact Don Braid, Group Managing Director, telephone +64 9 259 5503, +64 274 961 637 or email email@example.com.
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6TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST JULY 4, 2021
WELCOME
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HYMN: "Before You, Lord, We Bow" (LSB #966)
Before You, Lord, we bow, Our God who reigns above And rules the world below, Boundless in pow'r and love. Our thanks we bring In joy and praise, Our hearts we raise To You, our King!
The nation You have blest May well Your love declare, From foes and fears at rest, Protected by Your care. For this bright day, For this fair land Gifts of Your hand Our thanks we pay.
May ev'ry mountain height, Each vale and forest green, Shine in Your Word's pure light, And its rich fruits be seen! May ev'ry tongue Be tuned to praise And join to raise A grateful song.
Earth, hear your Maker's voice; Your great Redeemer own; Believe, obey, rejoice, And worship Him alone. Cast down your pride, Your sin deplore, And bow before The Crucified.
And when in pow'r He comes, Oh, may our native land From all its rending tombs Send forth a glorious band, A countless throng, With joy to sing To heav'n's high King Salvation's song! (Public Domain)
INVOCATION
CONFESSION OF SIN: (Spoken together)
Heavenly Father, You are holy. Perfect and pure, without any sin. As such You cannot abide sinners in Your presence. We however are sinful and unclean. Even the best of our works are as nothing but filthy rags in Your sight. In Your mercy, forgive us, for the sake of what Your Son Jesus has done for us. Restore us to that perfection which You desire from us, and which only You can give. Amen.
ASSURANCE OF GRACE: (From 1 Peter 2:4,5)
Pastor: As you come to Jesus,
People: The living stone - rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to Him -
Pastor: You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood,
People: Offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Amen.
HYMN: "The Day of Resurrection" (LSB #478)
The day of resurrection! Earth, tell it out abroad, The passover of gladness, The passover of God. From death to life eternal, From sin's dominion free, Our Christ has brought us over With hymns of victory.
All praise to God the Father, All praise to God the Son, All praise to God the Spirit, Eternal Three in One! Let all the ransomed number Fall down before the throne And honor, pow'r, and glory Ascribe to God alone!
(Public Domain)
OLD TESTAMENT READING: Lamentations 3:22-33
22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him." 25 The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; 26 it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. 27 It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. 28 Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him. 29 Let him bury his face in the dust— there may yet be hope. 30 Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace. 31 For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. 32 Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. 33 For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.
EPISTLE READING: 2 Corinthians 8:1-14
1 And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. 2 Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. 3 For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, 4 they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints. 5 And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God's will. 6 So we urged Titus, since he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of grace on your part. 7 But just as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us —see that you also excel in this grace of giving. 8 I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. 9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. 10 And here is my advice about what is best for you in this matter: Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. 11 Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. 12 For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have. 13 Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. 14 At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality.
RESPONSE: (From Psalm 121)
Pastor: I lift up my eyes to the hills - where does my help come from?
People: My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
Pastor: He will not let your foot slip-he who watches over you will not slumber;
People: Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
Pastor: The Lord watches over you - the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
People: The Lord will keep you from all harm - he will watch over your life;
Pastor: The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
SONG: "I Am the God that Healeth Thee" (Don Moen)
I am the God that healeth thee,
I sent My word and healed your disease,
I am the Lord your healer.
I am the Lord your healer.
You are the God that healeth me,
You sent Your word and healed my disease.
You are the Lord my healer.
You are the Lord my healer.
(C. 1986 Integrity Music. Used by permission. CCLI #522460)
SONG: "Blessed Be the Name of the Lord" (Don Moen)
Blessed be the name of the Lord, He is worthy to be praised and adored; So we lift up holy hands in one accord, singing, "Blessed be the name, blessed be the name, blessed be the name of the Lord." (Repeat) (C. 1986 Integrity's Hosanna! Music. Used by permission. CCLI #522460)
SERMON: Mark 5:24-34 "Help!"
OFFERING
REFLECTION ON GOD'S WORD: (From 1 Timothy 1)
Pastor: I urge, then, first of all that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone -
People: For kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.
Pastor: This is good, and pleases God our Savior,
People: Who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
PRAYER FOR THE NATION: (Spoken together. Based on a prayer of Martin Luther)
Heavenly Father, we gather this holy day as Your redeemed people in Christ. As we celebrate the independence of our nation and our freedom as its citizens, we ask that You bless all our government leaders on the local, state, and federal levels. Guide their hearts to Your praise and glory, and to the welfare of the land. Enlighten all who are in authority and move them to do what is right. Preserve Your people, Your judgement, Your righteousness, and all administration of justice in this nation and throughout the world, so good order will prevail. May peace abound in the world, and not be troubled by rebellion or treason. May proper discipline and respect not be disregarded, or violated by unfaithfulness or any other evil. Amen.
HYMN: "God Bless Our Native Land" (LSB #965)
God bless our native land; Firm may she ever stand Through storm and night. When the wild tempests rave, Ruler of wind and wave, Do Thou our country save By Thy great might.
So shall our prayers arise To God above the skies; On Him we wait. Thou who art ever nigh, Guarding with watchful eye, To Thee aloud we cry: God save the state. (Public Domain)
SPECIAL PRAYERS
THE LORD'S PRAYER
People: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation; But deliver us from evil; For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
WORDS OF INSTITUTION
SONG: “Come into the King’s Chambers” (Daniel Gardner)
O Come into the King's chambers and worship before His throne.
O come into the King's chambers, and His glory shall be shown.
O come into His holy presence and magnify His name.
O come into the King’s chambers; you will never be the same. (Repeat)
(C. 1981 Integrity's Hosanna! Music. Used by permission. CCLI #522460)
IN THE SACRAMENT OF HOLY COMMUNION WE BELIEVE our Lord Jesus Christ comes to us with His body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of sins (Matt 26:26-28). In it we are united with him and with the whole Church. Baptized and confirmed Christians who believe, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that Christ's body and blood are present in the bread and wine of the Sacrament, who acknowledge their sin, set aside any refusal to forgive (Matt 6:15), are sorry, repent (Mark 1:15) and look to Christ alone for forgiveness and strength to live the new life, are welcome to eat and drink at the Lord's table in remembrance of Him. (1 Cor 11:2525) You may register for Communion as the Friendship Folder is passed to you in the pew. If you have any questions, please speak to the Pastor or a Lay Minister before communing.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER
(Instrumental music)
BENEDICTION
HYMN: “Have No Fear, Little Flock” (LSB #735)
Have no fear, little flock; Have no fear, little flock, For the Father has chosen To give you the Kingdom; Have no fear, little flock.
Have good cheer, little flock Have good cheer, little flock, For the Father will keep you In His love forever; Have good cheer, little flock!
Praise the Lord high above; Praise the Lord high above, For He stoops down to heal you, Uplift and restore you; Praise the Lord high above!
(Text/tune C. Used by permission LSBHymnLicense.net#100014389)
Brothers and Sisters of Holy Emmanuel,
I want to start off by saying a tremendous "thank you" for all of the support, words of encouragement, and prayers that I have received these last two weeks as I have been discerning between two Calls- to continue serving at Holy Emmanuel, or to serve at Family of Christ in Ham Lake.
Discerning between Calls is not an easy decision to make. Greg and I spent many days praying about where God was leading and where we felt my God-given gifts would be best used to serve in His Kingdom. After two weeks of prayerful consideration, I decided to accept the Call to serve at Family of Christ in Ham Lake.
I know that is not the news that many were hoping for, but I thank you for your understanding and prayers as Greg and I move forward with this new Calling from God and the direction he has for us in a new place.
Holy Emmanuel has been my Church home for almost 5 years now. There have been many seasons of joy and hard work that I will treasure and remember as huge milestones in my ministry and development as an individual! Thank you for allowing me the privilege of serving and working with you and for all of the love that you have shared with me. Holy Emmanuel will always hold a special place in my heart. I love you all and wish you the very best.
Peace in Christ,
Brittany Nagel
Start saving your items for the 2021
HOLY EMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH 201 EAST 104TH STREET Thursday September 10th Friday September 11th Saturday September 12th.
is coming to Holy Emmanuel / Open Arms parking lot on or about July 15th. Stands open every day, weather permitting, around 10:00am to 6:00pm, or while supplies last.
Please do not bring items to church until the last week of August Thank you!
Sweet Corn
Wednesday Evenings 5:30 Food & Fellowship 6:30 Study & Kid's Time Watch future Email, bulletins and the Announcer for more information
Sunday Morning at 10:45 in the Fellowship Hall
LOOKING AHEAD IN OUR SUNDAY BIBLE CLASS: "The End and Revelation!"
6TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST JULY 4, 2021
Mark 5:24-34 "Help!"
24 ....A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. 30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?" 31 "You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?'" 32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."
1. What was Jesus born into the world for?
2. What does Jesus’ resurrection mean for us in daily life?
3. Why should we never lose hope in the face of problems?
4. When might we start to believe Jesus doesn’t want to help us?
5. How do we usually want Jesus to help us with our problems?
6. Why do we thank Jesus when a new medicine helps us?
7. How is Jesus helping us when he lets our problems remain?
8. What’s the best way Jesus can help us with our problems?
9. Why does Jesus invite us to come to him in our time of need?
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MEETING MINUTES
SOUTHERN NEVADA REGIONAL PLANNING COALITION TECHNICAL COMMITTEE September 3, 2015
In attendance: Nancy Amundsen, Vice-Chair, Clark County
Marc Jordan, Alternate, City of North Las Vegas
Stephanie Garcia-Vause, City of Henderson
Linda Perri, Clark County School District
Lewis Wallenmeyer, Clark County Department of Air Quality
Orlando Sanchez, City of Las Vegas
Raymond Hess, Alternate, Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada Andy Belanger, Las Vegas Valley Water District
Absent:
Brok Armantrout, Chair, City of Boulder City
Agenda Item 1. Call to Order; notice of agenda conformance with Nevada Open Meeting Law requirements
The meeting of the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition Technical Committee was called to order by Nancy Amundsen, Vice Chair, Clark County, at 4:00 p.m., on Thursday, September 3, 2015, in the Clark County Commission Chambers, Clark County Government Center, 500 S. Grand Central Parkway, Las Vegas, Nevada. The agenda was duly posted in compliance with the Nevada Open Meeting Law requirements.
Agenda Item 2. Public Comment
No public comment was made.
Agenda Item 3. Approval of the Agenda for the September 3, 2015 meeting
A motion was made by Stephanie Garcia-Vause to approve the agenda for September 3, 2015. The motion was approved unanimously.
Agenda Item 4. Approval of the Minutes of the May 7, 2015 meeting
A motion was made by Stephanie Garcia-Vause to approve the minutes from the May 7, 2015 meeting. The motion was approved unanimously.
Agenda Item 5. Consent Items: a. 2015 Long-Term Population Forecast
A motion was made by Stephanie Garcia-Vause to approve the consent item. The motion was approved unanimously.
Agenda Item 6. Receive a report from Clark County Regarding Mobile Food Vendors
Jennifer Ammerman with Clark County Comprehensive Planning discussed the issues they have been having with mobile food vendors. They have received complaints regarding mobile food vendors who have been operating out of a trailer, as they are pulling onto a site and remaining there for long periods of time. While the mobile food vendors are on site they are setting up canopies, tables and chairs, as well as playing music. Thus, in most cases the mobile food vendors are making it more of a long term stay, rather than being truly mobile. The issue is Clark County does not review the site nor see where they are putting the trailer; they could be interfering with parking laws, site circulation, and in some cases site visibility. Clark County has reviewed their code and found that they only have two areas where they could possibly fit these uses in: 1) mobile food vendors, which include traditional catering trucks, and 2) food carts, which include hotdog carts. These new long-term uses don't fit into either category and Clark County would like clear direction from the members as to how to regulate these. She said she met with staff from the Southern Nevada Health District and learned some of their terms and regulations, such as their allowed time limit. Clark County does not have a regulation in place as to how long the food vendors can stay, therefore code enforcement cannot enforce a mobile food vendor to leave after thirty minutes or an hour. She admitted any timing regulation would be difficult to enforce. Clark County staff discussed this issue with the Board of County Commissioners in May. During that meeting Commissioner Giunchigliani suggested that this topic be brought to the Business License Working Group as well as the SNRPC Board.
Nancy Amundsen with Clark County mentioned the issues the Board of County Commissioners were concerned about with regard to mobile food vendors. The issues include the inconsistency across the valley for both business license regulations and zoning codes. Thus, at the Board of County Commissioners meeting in May, Commissioner Giunchigliani requested this item to be sent to the SNRPC to be reviewed by each jurisdiction to possibly look at this item regionally.
Orlando Sanchez with the City of Las Vegas mentioned that they had already gone through this process two years ago, as they had also received numerous complaints regarding mobile food vendors. Mayor Goodman and the City Council met with numerous communities and as a result they created regulations to resolve those issues. He recommended that Jennifer Ammerman contact Karen Duddlesten of the City of Las Vegas's Business License Department to review those regulations.
Jennifer Ammerman stated that she had met with other jurisdictions and reviewed their regulations, including the discussion regarding distance separation from restaurants and the pilot program for downtown Las Vegas. She mentioned that she noticed some jurisdictions assign these issues to the Business License Department rather than the Planning Department.
Marc Jordan with the City of North Las Vegas mentioned that their City was also tasked with reviewing their business licenses and zoning ordinances in regard to mobile food vending. They reviewed the current zoning practices within each jurisdiction and received a copy of the City of Las Vegas' regulations. As a result, they have drafted new ordinances and came to the conclusion to move most everything over to the Business License Department. They have held off on completing that change due to this item being heard by SNRPC.
Nancy Amundsen asked if the City of Henderson has had any issues regarding mobile food vendors. Stephanie Garcia-Vause stated that they do not have any issues regarding mobile food vendors and that Henderson does not have a high demand for this.
Lewis Wallenmeyer with the Clark County Department of Air Quality mentioned they have received complaints regarding the dust around the areas where the mobile food vendors are parked as more vehicles (customers) are parking around them; therefore, he asked that the members look into that issue as they develop regulations.
A motion was made by Orlando Sanchez to accept the report and forward to the Coalition Board. The motion was approved unanimously.
Agenda Item 7. Receive a final report on the Regional Schools Multimodal Transportation Access Study
Dan Anderson with CH2M represented the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada for this item. He said the goal of this study was to expand on the goal of safe routes to school for children. There are a number of factors that would be involved in order to achieve that goal, which include education, encouragement, enforcement, and engineering; he mentioned that their primary focus was on the engineering aspect of that study. The engineering aspect included finding a way to design roadways, trails and parks so they are conducive to pedestrians and encourage walking and biking. They expanded that element and looked into finding ways to manage transportation around the schools so that the movement of cars, buses, and children walking and biking all happen smoothly and safely. He noted the need to develop a set of policies so that new developments and developers would have some guidelines on how to lay out their developments, and how we should layout our road network and our schools so that we develop a network that is safe and encouraging for everyone to walk and bike. In order to accomplish that a working group that was formed which included representatives from the Clark County School District, RTC, engineers and planners from the cities and the county, and NDOT. He explained the effort that the working group put into this plan in regards to coming up with language that everyone could embrace and ultimately adopt into the cities' and the county's comprehensive plans. In addition, the plan is to be a guide for the Clark County School District and the development of their new schools, as well as a guide for improvements to their existing schools. One of the highlights of the plan includes general land use policies. He mentioned one of the big obstacles to walking and biking to school are development walls. In addition to creating openings in the walls, he mentioned we also need to create better road access to schools, preferably around the whole school so that cars, buses, and bikes aren't all converging at the same place and time. The plans and policies would help create better road access and create segregation between the different modes of transportation. The plan also addresses wider ideas on how to encourage more walking and biking, which includes having trails with shade, amenities, and creating wider sidewalks and bike lanes. He stated that the implementation strategy will be discussed as part of the following agenda item.
Linda Perri with the Clark County School District thanked the RTC, Dan, the working group and her staff for their hard work on creating the Regional Schools Multimodal Transportation Access Study. She expressed how important it is for the region to have this type of framework to work from as we do not have one right now. She stated she believes if every entity utilized this guide it would help immensely, especially since our community is growing again.
Nancy Amundsen with Clark County stated that the County Board has also discussed the idea of creating access through development walls around schools and she believes that this study is perfect for our community.
A motion was made by Linda Perri to accept the report and forward to the Coalition Board. The motion was approved unanimously.
Agenda Item 8. Receive a presentation of the Regional Schools Policy Guide
Tracy Murphy with the Clark County School District noted the reason they have created the Regional Schools Multimodal Transportation Access Study and the Regional Schools Policy Guide was due to the SNRPC Regional Plan. When the SNRPC Regional Plan was adopted it was SNRPC's priority to convene an inter-jurisdictional planning committee to improve the identification of school sites. In 2013, the convened schools working group brought together a scope of work which turned into the Schools Policy Guide and presented it to the SNRPC Board. Subsequently, the working group received funds from the RTC for the UPWP Multimodal Access Study, which Dan Anderson just presented. Those funds helped fill a huge hole in their scope of work in terms of addressing access, road networks, and all the factors that go into transportation while siting schools and access for transportation. In addition to the Access Study, Southern Nevada Strong came along which also had a lot of goals and school related recommendations. The schools working group at that point was to look at the Access Study and Southern Nevada Strong, and figure out, based on the resolution the SNRPC Board passed a couple years prior, how the changing conditions worked together. She stated they believed because both
Southern Nevada Strong and the Access Study addressed school related factors, they would be able to create an easy guide for planners in the valley and rural neighborhoods to use.
Linda Perri with the Clark County School District mentioned that they did meet with the RTC and they would like to integrate the EPA standards with the UPWP Multimodal Access Study and the Regional Schools Policy Guide in hopes of creating one whole packet. Once they have all combined all three policies into one packet they will distribute to the different jurisdictions allowing them to all use the same policy guide throughout each jurisdiction.
Nancy Amundsen with Clark County thanked everyone for creating the Regional School Policy Guide as we have been in need of a guide that every jurisdiction can use.
A motion was made by Linda Perri to accept the report and forward to the Coalition Board. The motion was approved unanimously.
Agenda item 9. Receive a progress report from the Regional Open Space and Trails Workgroup
Johanna Murphy with the City of North Las Vegas gave an update in regards to how many downloads there have been on the Neon to Nature app since March, and that number has grown to 4,178. She mentioned many people helped promote the app including the Department of Aviation which put it on their website, Senator Reid who put the app in one of his newsletters, and SEVEN magazine which mentioned the app in one of their issues. She mentioned they will continue to create new ways to promote the app as well as refresh their messaging to post on social media sites. They will especially be promoting in October at the Get Outdoors Nevada Day event.
Mauricia Baca with Outside Las Vegas Foundation discussed the great event they have planned for Get Outdoors Nevada Day. They have had great participation from all the Regional Open Space and Trails Workgoup members on their planning committee including the Girl and Boy Scouts, Bass Pro, REI, and Clark County School District which will help distribute flyers. The sponsors for this event include SNRPC, Clark County, Barrick Gold, Forever Resorts, REI, NV Energy, Bass Pro, Republic Services, Land Rover Las Vegas, Southern Nevada Agency Partnership, Southern Nevada Health District, Trike Las Vegas, Pugsley Simpson Coulter Architects, SH Architecture, and Las Vegas Ski & Snowboard Resort. She mentioned events which will include Trike Las Vegas setting up demos alongside the Southern Nevada Mountain Biking Association; Bass Pro Shop will have a "catch and release" pool; and the Boy Scouts will have a rope bridge and a climbing wall. The day will start off with ALS doing a 5K event and there will also be some yoga on site. She discussed the sixty exhibitors who will also be there which include non-profit organizations as well as four food trucks. There will also be big canopies onsite provided by Land Rover Las Vegas, so there will be plenty of shade. She noted the great partnership they have had and they are also looking forward to the event next year which is being held in the City of Las Vegas.
A motion was made by Orlando Sanchez to accept the report and forward to the Coalition Board. The motion was approved unanimously.
Agenda item 10. Receive a progress report on Southern Nevada Strong
Raymond Hess with the Regional Transportation Commission provided an update on Southern Nevada Strong. He stated the Southern Nevada Strong Regional Plan has gone through all of the ratifications and been adopted by all the jurisdictions. He stated RTC is an implementing agency, however they need many partners in order to move forward with the objectives in the plan. He reiterated some of the plan's concepts which included working together to plan, build and invest in complete communities throughout Southern Nevada, to provide access to quality education, affordable housing, employment opportunities, and viable transportation choices. These concepts and objectives will benefit our community and allow us to have a diversified economy, with a range of job opportunities, quality education, a strong workforce, multi-modal well-connected transportation options, housing options for all budgets, strong social services, quality healthcare, and safe, desirable neighborhoods. He stated they are reaching out and doing a lot of one-on-one meetings with the thirteen regional partners and community groups to understand and connect community priorities with action. He also noted the RTC has a contract with JA Barrett Company to help with the strategic implementation for the short term, to help identify some resources that can used by the regional partners, help build consensus and keep the process moving along. He discussed their approach to Southern Nevada Strong which involved looking at other successful regional models for regional planning. They looked closely at Envision Utah and their approach, which included empowering their local jurisdictions and empowering the community at large to find out the things that are important to them. He stated they believe this is a productive approach for Southern Nevada Strong; they want to empower those who are motivated to accomplish what is set forth in the plan. They hope to establish Southern Nevada Strong as a collaborative, efficient, and effective leader; to engage, educate, and move Southern Nevadans to action; and to increase alignment and availability of resources and provide practical tools, trainings, and technical expertise.
He discussed some recent accomplishments which included Clark County earning a $500,000 EPA Brownfield Grant for Maryland Pkwy. The City of Henderson also did some wonderful work related to their comprehensive plan update and this is an example of how the Southern Nevada Strong plan can be integrated into comprehensive plans. RTC is also updating their Regional Transportation Plan which is the transportation version of a comprehensive plan, and they will also be integrating Southern Nevada Strong into their plan. RTC has also launched the environmental process to identify what type of enhanced transit will go along Maryland Pkwy, whether that is bus or transit, light rail or modern street car. North Las Vegas also received a $485,000 HUD Choice Community Grant. Over the next ninety days the SNS website will be updated; they will add some functionality to the website so that regional partners can upload information to it, which was a recommendation by the SNRPC. They have also been working very closely with the Environmental Protection Agency, as they have reached out to Southern Nevada Strong with several technical assistance grants; they are trying to capitalize on those as much as possible thus at the end of the month there will be a food recovery workshop. They are also lining up some transit-oriented development workshops and technical trainings; some are sponsored by the Department of Transportation and by the National Transit Institute. They will also be reconvening the consortium committee, which is why they have had one-on-one meetings with some of the Regional Partners to determine who they would like to be their representative on the consortium committee. Some of the other questions they are asking the Regional Partners as they meet with them include: what are you currently working on that aligns with the Southern Nevada Strong Regional Plan, what kind of assistance is needed to implement parts of the Regional Plan, who would you like to designate as point of contact, who would you like to be on the consortium committee and are there any other possible champions in the community that you've worked with in other capacities that you think would align well with what we are trying to achieve with Southern Nevada Strong.
Nancy Amundsen noted the County is working on a total rewrite of their land use categories as well as the way they do their land use plans, and that all started with Southern Nevada Strong.
A motion was made by Stephanie Garcia-Vause to accept the report and forward to the Coalition Board. The motion was approved unanimously.
Agenda item 11. Set the Coalition Board Agenda for the September 22, 2015 meeting
The following items will be sent to Coalition Board for the September 22, 2015 meeting:
- Agenda item 7 – Receive a report on the Regional Schools Multimodal Transportation Access Study
- Agenda item 6 – Discussion on Mobile Food Vendors
- Agenda item 8 – Receive a presentation of the Regional Schools Policy Guide
- Agenda item 10 – Receive a progress report on Southern Nevada Strong
- Agenda item 9 – Receive a progress report from Regional Open Space & Trails Workgroup
- Discuss the Board meeting schedule for the remainder of 2015
Agenda item 12. Set the next date and location for a regular meeting of the SNRPC Technical Committee
The next SNRPC Technical Committee is tentatively scheduled for Thursday, November 5, 2015, at 4:00 p.m., in the Clark County Commission Chambers.
Agenda item 13. Public Comment
No public comment was made.
Agenda item 14. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 4:41 p.m.
|
MEMBER COUNTRY: Netherlands
| Activity | Contact Name | Address | Telephone | Fax | Email | web site |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| National SCAR Committee | | | | | | |
| Netherlands Polar Committee | ms. L.H.W. Noor MSc. | Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, Dep. Earth and Life Sciences, PO Box 93510, 2509 AM The Hague, the Netherlands | +31-70- 3440820 | +31-70-3819033 | email@example.com | www.nwo.nl |
| SCAR Delegates | | | | | | |
| 1) Delegate 2) Alternate Delegate | dr. C.P.D. Brussaard | Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), P.O.Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands | 0222-36 93 00 | 0222-31 96 74 | firstname.lastname@example.org | www.nioz.nl |
| | mr. T.F. de Bruin, MSc | Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), P.O.Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands | +31 222 369 479 | +31 222 319 674 | email@example.com | www.nioz.nl |
| Standing Scientific Groups | | | | | | |
| Life Sciences 1) 2) 3) 4) | | | | | | |
| Geosciences 1) 2) 3) 4) | | | | | | |
| Physical Sciences | | | | | | |
| 1) | prof.dr.ir. H.J.W. de Baar | Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), P.O.Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands | +31 222 369 456 | +31 222 319 674 | firstname.lastname@example.org | www.nioz.nl |
| 2) | prof.dr. M.R. van den Broeke | Utrecht University, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (IMAU), P.O.Box 80005, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands | +31 30 253 3169 | +31 30 254 3163 | email@example.com | www.uu.nl/imau |
National Report to SCAR for year: 2012
| Activity | Contact Name | Address | Telephone | Fax | Email | web site |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific Research Program | | | | | | |
| ACE 1) 2) 3) 4) | | | | | | |
| AGCS 1) 2) 3) 4) | | | | | | |
| EBA 1) 2) 3) 4) | | | | | | |
| ICESTAR 1) 2) 3) 4) | | | | | | |
| SALE 1) 2) 3) 4) AAA (2010-) 1) 2) 3) 4) | | | | | | |
2
Activity
Contact Name
Address
Telephone
Fax
Email web site
| 1) 2) 3) 4) insert others as needed | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EXPERT GROUPS | | | | | | |
| 1) SCAR-SCOR Oceanography Expert Group | mr. T.F. de Bruin, MSc | Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), P.O.Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands | +31 222 369 479 | +31 222 319 674 | firstname.lastname@example.org | www.nioz.nl |
| 2) Joint Expert Group on Human Biology and Medicine | ms. L.H.W. Noor MSc. | Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, Dep. Earth and Life Sciences, PO Box 93510, 2509 AM The Hague, the Netherlands | +31-70- 3440820 | +31-70-3819033 | email@example.com | www.nwo.nl |
| SCADM | | | | | | |
| 1) | mr. T.F. de Bruin, MSc | Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), P.O.Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands | +31 222 369 479 | +31 222 319 674 | firstname.lastname@example.org | www.nioz.nl |
| SCAGI | | | | | | |
| 1) | mr. T.F. de Bruin, MSc | Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), P.O.Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands | +31 222 369 479 | +31 222 319 674 | email@example.com | www.nioz.nl |
| NATIONAL ANTARCTIC DATA CENTRE | | | | | | |
| Netherlands Antarctic Data Inventory (NADI) | mr. T.F. de Bruin, MSc | Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), PO Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg (Texel), The Netherlands | +31 222 369 479 | +31 222 319 674 | firstname.lastname@example.org | www.nioz.nl |
| SCAR DATABASE | | | | | | |
| insert name of database for which your country has responsibility | none | | | | | |
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC HIGHLIGHTS*:
1. Annunciation
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has set up a Dutch mobile research facility at the British research station Rothera on the Antarctic Peninsula. With this laboratory the Netherlands has become a fully fledged research partner within international polar research.The Dirck Gerritsz Laboratory was finalized in 2012. It is made up of four independent laboratory units each of which is housed in a sea container:
The temperature in this container will be kept between 15 °C and 20 °C. It is a dry lab and therefore suitable for the use of a wide range of analytical instruments. Besides the standard equipment the lab also contains a laminar flow cabinet.
This lab has a mass spectrometer that can quantify climate gases in the atmosphere. There is also a culturing cabinet with plasma lamps that provide the daylight spectrum.
2. Hope
3. Love
4. Faith
This lab is for carrying out analytical work that demands a high degree of accuracy. It has therefore been equipped with special filters in the air-processing system to ensure that the air entering the container is dust free. The lab is intended for work under clean conditions, free of contamination from metals, so that analyses on uncontaminated samples can be carried out later. In addition to the standard fittings this lab has two laminar flow cabinets.
This wet lab has an incubation unit to study effects on the composition of Antarctic algal species. This unit allows the researchers to vary the pCO2 (partial pressure of carbon dioxide), pH (degree of acidity), temperature, salt level and turbidity, for example. Water samples will also be processed in the lab.
The names are taken from five ships (the fifth ship was called Loyalty) that set sail from Rotterdam in 1598 in search of a trade route via South America to Asia. The ship Annunciation commanded by Dirck Gerritszoon Pomp was blown southwards when sailing close to the southern tip of South America. Gerritsz then saw the snow-capped mountainous landscape which looked 'like the country of Norway'. He possibly saw the South Shetland islands, and so was the first to set eyes on Antarctica. The entire research facility therefore bears the name Dirck Gerritsz Laboratory.
The first research team started working in the lab in November 2012. Research projects that started in the lab in 2012 or in January 2013 are:
2) Seasonality of iron and other trace metals in relation to the rapidly changing ice/water cycle and plankton dynamics of the West Antarctic Peninsula of Professor De Baar, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ);
1) Structuring of marine pelagic microbial communities by glacial meltwater in Ryder Bay, Antarctica of Professor Buma, University of Groningen;
3) Antarctic phytoplankton in a changing world and its consequences for the lower pelagic food web (Antphirco) from Dr. Brussaard, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ);
A fifth project starts as well at Rothera during season 2012-2013 but is not specifally bound to the Dirck Gerritsz Laboratory:
4) Temporal dynamics of the climate gas dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and related compounds in a changing Antarctic sea-ice environment from Dr. Stefels, University of Groningen;
5) Freshwater fluxes and climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula: a combined observational and modelling approach from Dr Tijm-Reijmer, Utrecht University
Other Antarctic research conducted in the Netherlands Polar Programme during 2012:
6) Reducing the Uncertainties in the Mass Balance of Antarctica (RUMBA) of professor Van den Broeke, Utrecht Universiy;
7) Viral impact on microbes in coastal waters of the Antarctic Peninsula and its ecological implications (VIRANT) of Dr Brussaard, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ);
8) Reconstructing the evolution and dynamics of the Antarctic cryosphere from Ocean Drilling; a dinoflagellate perspective of professor Brinkhuis, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ);
9) Separating GIA and ice mass change signals in Antarctica using satellite data of Dr Gunter, Delft University of Technology
10) Modelling the Antarctic firn layer for improved estimates of remotely-sensed ice mass changes of professor Van den Broeke, Utrecht Universiy;
11) iWS: a new generation of automatic weather stations for use on glaciers and ice sheets of professor Van den Broeke, Utrecht Universiy
www.nwo.nl/npp
For more information about the Netherlands Polar Programme please visit:
NO BIOPROSPECTING ACTIVITIES PLANNED
5
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AUCKLAND/WAIKATO FISH & GAME
Minutes of a Meeting of Council held on Zoom on Saturday 13 th November 2021 commencing at 10:00am.
PRESENT:
Chairman: N. Juby
Councillors: E. Williamson, D. Cocks, P. Shaw, C. Sherrard, G. Annan, G. Ralph, D. du Preez,
G. Dickey, M. Barker, T. Clark, B. Barnes
Staff:
B. Wilson, J. Dyer, D. Klee, A. Daniel, C. Robertson, M. Davis
1. APOLOGIES:
There were no apologies.
2. POSSIBLE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST ARISING FROM MEETING AGENDA:
None declared.
3. APPOINTMENT OF CHAIRMAN:
Mr Wilson assumed the Chair and called for nominations for the position of Chairman.
Councillor Annan was nominated by Councillor Sherrard and seconded by Councillor Shaw.
Councillor Juby was nominated by Councillor Barnes and seconded by Councillor du Preez.
A secret ballot was held, and Mr Wilson declared Councillor Juby as Chairman and vacated the Chair.
4. GENERAL EXPLANATION OF VARIOUS LAWS AFFECTING COUNCILLORS /COUNCIL:
In accordance with Standing Orders Mr Wilson briefed the Councillors on the relevant sections of:
* Local Authorities (Members' Interests) Act 1968 – regarding the corrupt use of official information and bribery of officials.
1
* Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 – regarding the access of the public to official information.
* Secret Commission Act 1910 – Councillors acting for the Council cannot take secret commissions.
5. APPOINTMENT OF THE TWO VICE CHAIRMAN:
The Chairman called for nominations for the two Vice Chairmen.
Councillor Cocks was nominated by Councillor Williamson and seconded by Councillor Sherrard.
Councillor Annan was nominated by Councillor Shaw and seconded by Councillor Sherrard.
The Chairman asked if there were any further nominations, there being none Councillors Cocks and Annan were declared Vice Chairmen.
6. APPOINTMENT OF COUNCIL'S NOMINEE FOR NZF&G COUNCIL:
The Chairman called for nominations for the position of Auckland/Waikato representative on the NZF&GC.
Councillor Williamson was nominated by Councillor Cocks and seconded by Councillor Sherrard.
Councillor Barnes was nominated by Councillor Ralph and seconded by Councillor Annan.
Both candidates gave a brief synopsis of their aspirations for the role.
A secret ballot was held, and Councillor Barnes was declared Auckland/Waikato's representative to the NZF&GC.
7. APPOINTMENT OF TRUSTEE ON LAND & WATER HABITAT TRUST:
Councillor Sherrard was nominated by Councillor Annan and seconded by Councillor Shaw.
Councillor Williams was nominated by Councillor Cocks and seconded by Councillor Sherrard.
Both candidates gave a brief synopsis of their aspirations for the role.
A secret ballot was held, and Councillors Sherrard was declared a trustee on the Land & Water Habitat Trust.
8. MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING OF 14 th August 2021:
Nigel Juby noted that he had left the meeting only briefly and had returned for the discussion on the NZ Council.
It was moved;
Annan/Cocks – CARRIED
that the minutes of the previous meeting of 16 th October 2021 as amended be accepted as true and correct records.
9. MATTERS ARISING FROM PREVIOUS MINUTES:
Nil
10. COUNCIL CORRESPONDENCE:
The following letters were tabled:
* Letter from the Auckland/Waikato Chairman to the Regional Chairs regarding the Structure Review Project.
* Letter in reply from Ray Grubb, Chair of the Implementation Committee for the Structure Review Project.
Considerable discussion ensued with Councillors expressing concerns that they were being asked to make decisions without adequate understanding of the operational and financial implications of the proposed changes, including the liabilities of the Northland Council. Concern was also expressed at the lack of consultation with licence holders.
The Chairman considered it crucial that Council retained control over those waters where Auckland/Waikato licence holders hunted and fished. For example, the majority of anglers fishing the Whakapapa River came from the northern urban centres. Furthermore, Council had been successful in obtaining external funding to manage these fisheries and these income resources could be jeopardized by any boundary changes.
Councillor Williamson emphasised that Northland licence holders would effectively be disenfranchised as they would represent less than 20% of total licence holders in any amalgamation of Northland and Auckland/Waikato regions.
Councillor Cocks agreed and noted that there was no guarantee that the high level of financial support received by Northland from the NZ Council would continue.
The Chairman asked Councillors whether he should meet with the Northland Chair later in the month.
It was moved;
Sherrard/Cocks – CARRIED
That Council supports the Chairman meeting with the Chair of the Northland Fish & Game Council.
Councillor Ralph express his view that the relationship of Council with licence holders could always be improved, and he recommended the report "A Sense of Belonging" prepared by the previous Chief Executive, Doug Emmett, on this issue.
It was moved;
Barnes/Cocks – CARRIED
That Mr Wilson is asked to prepare a report on the financial and operational implications of potential amalgamations and boundary changes for the February meeting of Council.
11. CHIEF EXECUTIVE'S BI-MONTHLY REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS:
Mr Wilson gave a brief update on Council's application for comprehensive maintenance consents for its wetlands. He noted that the process had been delayed due to the NES – Freshwater and that Council lacked a good understanding of the values of the vegetation and habitats of the wetlands. He recommended that they contract an ecologist to carry out such a survey.
Councillor Cocks noted that a vegetation survey had been carried out for the consent application for the Cocks and Williamson Wetlands.
It was moved;
Williamson/Barker – CARRIED
That a wetland ecologist be employed on a temporary contract to survey Council's properties.
Funding for this project to come from restricted reserves.
Councillor Barnes asked if staff could reconsider trout stocking the north Auckland lakes, especially Lake Ototoa.
Dr Daniel replied that there were issues with stocking Ototoa including:
* Perch were still present in large numbers.
* Access to the lake for the Eastern fish tanker was poor.
* The Auckland City Council was about to commence an extensive netting programme in the lake to reduce the fish population.
Mr Wilson noted that Ototoa had been stocked for some years with 2yr rainbow trout after perch had become established, but angler usage remained low.
It was agreed that Council should budget for an additional 1,000 2yr rainbow trout in 2022/23. The actual locations for the release of these fish to be determined at a later date. Dr Daniel to liaise with Councillor Barnes regarding obtaining external funding for this project.
The Chairman expressed his appreciation for the efforts of Mr Klee in obtaining just over $140,000 from the Game Bird habitat Trust for wetland restoration projects.
In a reply to a question Mr Klee gave feedback on the WRC proposed annual work programme for the Piako and 3 zones. The WRC report indicated that only small portions of the Waipa system lend themselves to the type of interventions currently being done. He remains concerned about the potential effects of drainage activities on lakes and wetlands and has requested further information on how the WRC are measuring drain invert levels which is a requirement under these consents. In general, it is difficult to determine whether these consents are being appropriately implemented.
Councillor Williamson expressed his concern that the current management regime for Lake Waikare of keeping levels high and thus reducing flows downstream to the Whangamarino Wetland may be reducing sediment outflows, but it was also locking more nitrogen in the lake.
Mr Klee agreed that the lake was being held at or near its maximum permitted level to reduce outflows. But that multiple studies had shown that the impact of inflows from the Te Onetea Stream on water quality in the lake was minimal. He also noted that for much of the summer, the Waikato River was running lower than Waikare and thus it was only during flood events that river water could flow into Waikare via the Te Onetea Stream.
Councillor Clark requested an update on the Waikato District Council's consent to discharge treated wastewater from Te Kauwhata to Lake Waikere. Mr Klee replied that the district council had not been compliant for some years, and he was disappointed at the lack of enforcement action by the Waikato Regional Council on this issue. He noted that both himself and Councillor Williamson were on the advisory committee for the Te Kauwhata WWTP consents.
Mr Wilson introduced his financial report emphasizing that fish licence sales continued to be down some 28% due to the Auckland and Waikato lockdowns. He also informed that the Auditor had recently expressed his opinion that a donation from the WWW Foundation should be transferred from the LWHT to a restricted reserve held by Council. It was moved;
That the Chief Executive's bimonthly report be accepted.
12. GAMEBIRD MANAGEMENT:
The Chairman thanked Mr Klee for his comprehensive report.
Councillor Barnes shared his observations on the killing of ducklings on Lake Pupuke by black beaked gulls.
Mr Klee invited Councillors to contact him if they had questions or required more details on the report. Discussion ensued about the potential of sexed based limits. Mr Klee agreed that given the sex imbalance in our juvenile population favouring drakes and lower survival rates of hens, it is entirely sensible to try and move harvest pressure to focus more on drakes. Currently harvest rates for both sexes are similar so there does not appear to be any harvest selectivity occurring.
Councillors discussed the need to consider changes to the regulations for the 2022 game season regarding season length and bag limits in response to the current low duck population. Options to consider should include different limits for drakes and hens. Mr Klee noted that drakes outnumbered hens 56% to 44% for juveniles and given their lower survival rates, this imbalance grows as a cohort ages. However, efforts in the Eastern region to have different limits for hens and drakes had reported enforcement issues due to grey/mallard hybridisation. Hunters also had problems distinguishing between mallard hens and grey ducks and mallards in eclipse plumage.
Mr. Klee reiterated that the harvest dynamics that exist in this region means that reducing the number of ducks shot would mean very restrictive regulations which would likely have negative consequences on hunter satisfaction and potentially participation. Therefore, changing harvest regulations need to consider both biological and social factors.
Councillor Dicky agreed that hunter buy-in was essential and that a publicity campaign would be required. However, it was noted that previous publicity on "go for green" had not been successful.
It was moved;
Williamson/Cocks – CARRIED
That staff prepare a report giving the options for potential changes to the season length and limits for 2022 season.
It was agreed that a special meeting of Council would be held by Zoom in December to consider the report.
Councillor Barker cautioned that regulation changes alone would not significantly boost the duck population, and that the Council should also look at ways of increasing duckling survival. Mr Klee agreed that duckling survival is the most influential variable governing population growth or decline, and that decreasing harvest may not necessarily increase the subsequent seasons population depending on other factors such as breeding success. He noted that hen survival is the second most important variable and that we do currently harvest a relatively high proportion of juvenile hens. It was agreed that staff be asked to prepare a report on boosting the regions duck population. Mr. Wilson emphasised that this report for the available until mid-2022 due to staff commitment
13. LEGALITY OF COMMERCIAL UPLAND GAMEBIRD PRESERVES:
Ms. Davis report was tabled. The Chairman thanked Ms. Davies for her report which clearly shows the actions of the Minister of Conservation on this issue were within her responsibilities.
14. 2022 MEETING SCHEDULE:
Councilors considered the recommendations of Carmel Veitch (CFO-NZC) regarding the proposed NZ Council meetings and had no disagreements with the proposed dates.
Councilors then discussed the proposed 2022 meeting schedule for the Auckland Waikato Council.
It was moved;
Annan/Shaw – CARRIED
that the meeting schedule for 2022 be approved with the addition of a field trip in conjunction with the February meeting.
Mr. Wilson recommended that the field trip visit the Lake Waikare/Whangamarino system including Council's weir on the Whangamarino River given that this was an area where much of Council's efforts and expenditure was occurring.
Councillor Sherrard suggested that the Huntly Gun Club would be a suitable venue for the February meeting.
15. OSH UPDATE:
It was moved;
that the OSH Report for November 2021 be accepted.
16. GENERAL BUSINESS:
Cocks/Dickey – CARRIED
Councillor Cocks recommended that Council considers establishing a policy regarding COVID vaccination for volunteers working on Council's wetlands. He emphasized that many of the volunteers were in the highly vulnerable age group.
Mr. Wilson agreed to write to pondholders with the strong recommendation that they:
* are fully vaccinated.
* use the QR codes, which will be placed at the entrance to each wetland.
* or take appropriate measures such as social distancing.
It was moved;
Cocks/Annan – CARRIED
That COVID-19 Guidelines be prepared for Council's properties.
Councillor Dickey recommended that the Auckland/Waikato Councillors consider having their own Facebook page to increase engagement with licence holders.
Mr. Wilson agreed that Fish & Game's social media presence was very poor and noted that the website was currently being replaced and updated by the NZ Council.
Mr. Klee informed that an Auckland/Waikato page had recently been established by Ms. Simmonds.
It was moved;
Cocks/Barnes – CARRIED
That Mr Dickey be asked to liaise with Ms. Simmonds in regard to the Auckland/Waikato Facebook page.
Councillor Ralph informed that he has surplus pheasant eggs (or one-day chicks) that were available for local breeders. Mr Dyer replied that he knew of someone who could be interested.
There being no further business the meeting concluded at 1:28am.
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Medicalization of Nervous and Emotional Problems
Rakesh K Chadda* and Swati Kedia Gupta**
Professor*, PhD Scholar** Department of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110029
ABSTRACT
Medicalization is the process of defining non-medical problems in medical terms, usually with the implication that a medical intervention is needed. It has been criticized for re-labeling "normal" human experiences as pathological or medical conditions. Some of the driving engines of medicalization include growth of pharmaceutical industry, advertising, managed care, and biotechnology. In the last few decades, serious concerns have also been raised about medicalization of mental health issues. Diagnosis such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sexual disorders are discussed in context of medicalization. Also, role of various stakeholders in dealing with medicalization are discussed.
Keywords: Medicalization, mental health, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), medical marketing, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Introduction
A google search for the term "medicalization" yielded more than 4,50,000 hits. Medicalization is the process by which some aspects of human life, which were not pathological before, begin to be considered as medical problems (1). It has also been defined as "applying a diagnostic label to various unpleasant or undesirable feelings or behaviors that are not distinctly abnormal but fall within a gray area, not readily distinguishable from the range of experiences that are often inescapable
Correspondence : Dr. Rakesh K. Chadda, Professor of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi-110029. Email: drrakeshchadda@ gmail.com.
aspects of the fate of being human" (2).
From a sociological perspective, medicalization comes close to the "iatrogenic concept" (3), a Greek word that means, "Originating from physician or treatment". One of the examples of social iatrogenesis is lowering of tolerance levels for psychological discomfort or sadness that has brought a steady increase in diagnosis of depression (4).
In 2007, Conrad proposed three aspects of medicalization, "Conceptual medicalization" refers to use of medical lexicon to define non-medical entities, for example, natural drooping of breasts after pregnancy diagnosed as mammary ptosis. "Institutional medicalization" refers to physician taking on management roles without having any such experience. And finally, "Interactional medicalization"that occurs when the physician redefines a social problem as a medical one, for example, homosexuality as an illness (5).
Medicalization saw a steady rise after the 1970s. Routine human conditions like unhappiness, bone thinning, stomach aches and boredom were being redefined as disease. Depression in its milder forms, osteoporosis, irritable
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bowel syndrome and attention deficit disorder started getting disease labels. Conrad, in 2005, suggested that increase in managerial powers of physicians, role of social activist groups in promoting medical definition of social problems and rise of pharmaceutical industries were important contributors in this rise disease labels (6).
Bio-medicalization was also seen as an important transformation in the field. Clarke and her colleagues defined biomedicalization as, "the increasingly complex, multi-sited, multidirectional processes of medicalization that today are being reconstituted through the emergent social forms and practices of a highly and increasingly technoscientific biomedicine" (7). They further postulated that bio-medicalization brought about dramatic changes in organization as well as practice of contemporary medicine.
The three engines of medicalization are often considered to be consumers, technology, and managed care. For lay public or consumers, health has become a commodity and they are increasingly using medical technology in order to understand their health. Second, technology drives medicalization
through development of newer diagnostic tools, which can "discover" illnesses in individuals. Finally, managed care with its provision for reimbursement for some illnesses and treatment, also influenced the movement. For example, considering depression as a medical diagnosis legitimatized use of pills rather than psychotherapy as the former was being covered in managed care (8).
One of the strongest critique of modern medicine or medicalization comes from Illich, who argued that pain, suffering and death are inevitable part of human race and all cultures have always aimed at helping individuals cope with these. He further postulated that modern medicine has destroyed these cultural and individual capacities by attempting to defeat these three (9). AmratyaSen also observed that more a society spends on healthcare, the more sick their members become (10).
Medical Marketing and Medicalization
With advent in managed care, corporatized medicine and rise of biotechnology, medical markets are becoming increasingly important in the healthcare systems. Medical markets develop when medical products, services or treatments are promoted to consumers
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to improve their health, appearance or general well-being. However, medical markets often differ from traditional, competitive marketplace as they involve asymmetry of information, uncertainity in diagnosis, lack of bargaining power and free choice about buying (11,12).
The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) Modernization Act (1997) loosened the restriction placed on the kind of information pharmaceutical industries could share with prescription, especially regarding "off-label" use of drugs, which further facilitated the process of medicalization (13). The use of advertising has become commonplace and has contributed significantly to increased commodification of services and goods (14). Viagra (sildenafil) to treat male erectile dysfunction and Paxil (paroxetine) to treat social anxiety disorders have made significant contributions in the medicalization of the two diagnosis. GlaxoSmithKline, while marketing paroxetine in the late 1990s, distributed pamphlets suggesting that one in eight Americans had social anxiety disorder, marketing shyness as a disorder that needed attention.
Another aspect of marketing that has promoted medicalization have been the establishment of private markets, which emerge when an available medical intervention finds consumers willing to pay from their pockets. Some of these interventions can be seen as medical enhancement rather than treatment for diseases, but have shaped how these conditions are looked upon. For example, surgery for breast enhancement, use of human growth hormones for idiopathic shortness and in-vitro fertilization for infertility.
Medicalization: Boon or Bane
As with everything, medicalization has a good as well as a dark side. According to Conrad and Schneider, the benefits of medicalization included, "…the creation of humanitarian and nonpunitive sanctions; the extension of the sick role to some deviants; a reduction of individual responsibility, blame, and possibly stigma for deviance; an optimistic therapeutic ideology; care and treatment rendered by a prestigious medical profession; and the availability of a more flexible and often more efficient means of social control [than criminalization]"(15).
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However, the concept also suffers from various disadvantages like construing non-medical problems as medical problems and viewing normal human variations as pathological. Further, the process of medicalization undermines human beings as subjects, for example, treating criminal behaviour as a part of psychiatric disorder indicates seeing ourselves as subjects under mercy of forces beyond our own self. Also, since the focus shifts to reducing suffering of the individuals, less attention is given to change social conditions that produced those behaviors in the first place (16).
Medicalization in Psychiatry
In nineteenth century, several developments acted as engines that drove medicalization of psychiatry, for example, introduction of medical terminology, process of delineating boundaries between health and pathology, shift of care from family to physician and from community to institution and the changing medically sanctioned nosological status (17).
Over the years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) saw a rapidly increasing number of diagnostic categories (from 106 in DSM-I in 1952 to 357 in DSM-IV in
1994). The increase occurred in the context of making psychiatric diagnosis more reliable. DSM-III encouraged labelling of psychological conditions and conditions such as social phobia and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were included as disorders. DSM-IV further expanded the list to include impotence, premature ejaculation, jet lag, caffeine intoxication, personality problems, and adult attention deficit as mental illnesses. Moreover, from DSM-I to DSM-IV, there was a significant change in perspective; with the later editions including only broad, observable behaviours to make a diagnosis, while excluding any mention of social etiology and a shift away from Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Similar patterns were observed in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Related Problems (ICD) classifications. This, combined with introduction of newer medications to treat disorders, led everyday emotional suffering and behaviors to be labelled as mental disorders (18).
An important development in this period was beginning of the movement known as "post-psychiatry", which criticized the monolithic, biological explanations of mental illness. The movement, following the legacy of
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Friedrich Nietzche, proposed that mental illnesses could be approached from a number of different perspectives and that one analytic frame would not be able to explain the complexity of mental illnesses (19, 20).
Gradually, as the trend towards medicalization increases, more and more people are diagnosed as having a psychiatric illness and needing psychotropic medication. This advent is most alarming in children. A series in the New York Times documented increase in prescription of multiple drugs to children as young as three years for behaviors such as temper tantrums, excitability and disruptiveness (21).
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Medicalization
The dispute over treatment, causes and existence of ADHD has continued for decades. A report by National Institute of Mental Health claimed that ADHD is one of the commonest mental disorders in children and adolescents (22). Earlier believed to be remitted by adolescence, it is now believed to affect even adults.
This increase in the diagnosis of ADHD has paralleled the increase in the prescription of stimulant drugs (23). Many authors claim that behaviors
diagnosed as ADHD are often similar to those displayed by children when they are bored or frustrated. Therefore, the observable deviant behaviour is often a reflection of disciplinary styles in schools and families. For example, epidemiological studies have shown less prevalence of ADHD in Europe where more "traditional authoritarian" style is followed in school as compared to USA where the trend is to follow "medical authoritarianism" (24). Thus, increasing use of ADHD diagnosis and pharmacological ways of treating the same tend to reflect a displacement strategy for the difficult task of improving family and social life.
PTSD and Medicalization
The 1800s saw the beginning of traumarelated nervous disorders, when the soldiers displayed signs of mental shutdown after trauma experience and were diagnosed as having "exhaustion". The condition was first medicalized in 1876 and termed the "soldier's heart" (25). There was little consensus about the etiology and treatment of the condition amongst the clinicians, who found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate cases. Initially believed to be caused due
24
to psychological weakness in soldiers, it was later realized that disorder still existed even if adequate screening was done during selection of soldiers before wars. Both the world-wars saw huge casualties and the disorder was given various names such as "shell shock", "combat fatigue" etc. By the end of world-war II and Vietnamese war, it was realized that the condition is a real one and severe trauma is the main cause behind it. Thus, in DSM-III, the diagnosis of PTSD was created (26).
Quite a few remain sceptical about the medicalization of trauma and argue that PTSD is a label and a social construct applied to distress for socio-political reasons. It has also been argued that the diagnosis emerged just as an attempt to overcome social crisis of Vietnam and has been influenced by financial incentives (27).
Many others note that in western times, the conflation of distress with trauma has taken a naturalistic feel and trauma has become part of every day's description of life's problems. In an editorial, Andreason noted that unlike other diagnosis, PTSD was one that people liked to have (28). Originally, conceived to be applicable to those who experienced extreme
trauma, medicalization has resulted in it being associated with vast number of experiences ranging from accidents, mugging, verbal sexual harassment, etc. Thus, the diagnosis is criticized for being used in context of other traumas throughout the world (29).
Sexuality and Medicalization
Sexual life and conduct have been under medical scrutiny for the past two centuries when many aspects that were previously seen as "bad" came to be reframed as "sick"(15). Various treatment strategies like pharmacological, surgical and psychotherapeutic interventions have been developed to deal with sexual issues. Numerous aetiologies have been proposed to understand gender roles, partner preference, paraphilic deviations and sexual drive.
As with other categories, sexual issues have undergone radical changes from DSM I to current nomenclature. DSM I and II saw that sexual deviations like homosexuality, pedophilia, sexual sadism, etc were classified under personality disorders. The nomenclature changed in DSM III with the deviations being classified in category of "psychosexual dysfunctions". The expansion continued in DSM IV with
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a category comprising of 27 disorders and titled, "sexual and gender identity disorders". Until DSM II, only deviant sexual behaviors were included within psychopathology; however, from DSM III onwards, even disorders of "normal sexuality" emerged. For example, deficiency of sexuality or "low desire" was also considered pathological.
However, sexual medicalization has sparked substantial critiques and the main debatable issues have been pharmaceutical disease mongering following the success of Viagra, rise of surgeries such as "vaginal rejuvenation" or sex-change therapies, proliferation of pharmaceutical contraceptives and hormonal treatments and various reproductive options (30–32).
Managing Medicalization
Medicalization needs to be managed at different levels. The Health Policy Makers can be prompted to renovate the way diseases are defined, which is free of commercial conflict of interest. At the level of consumers, activist groups can prompt for judicious use of medicines. The government can issue a policy statement regarding medicalization and over-medicalization. The government should also undertake
progammes through which citizens can be made aware of the dangers and side-effects of medication. There is a need to challenge the over-diagnosis and over-consumption of medicines and for people to change their lifestyles. Moreover, the medical fraternity should not overlook the personal coping skills of the individuals (33–35).
The mindful thinking of psychiatric physicians should focus on the biological aspects of mental illness. Diagnosis should be made as per the standard diagnostic criteria. Research efforts should be directed further at improving the reliability and validity of diagnosis and classification.
Mental health professionals need to review the definition of the different psychiatric disorders as a disease and decide whether they have sufficient robustness and explanatory power to apply to the diverse uses to which it is now being put. Society confers on doctors the power to award disease status and the social advantages attached to the sick role. Current practice, which labels people as being mentally ill when they are not, calls this public duty of doctors into question.
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Conclusion
The concept of medicalization has been present since decades; however, it has seen a steady increase since the 1970s. Mental health issues and medicalization have been one of the most debatable issues as often the boundaries between normal and abnormal are blurred. Some of the diagnosis, which have received particular attention are ADHD that includes both children and adults, PTSD, sexual disorders and social anxiety disorders. Therefore, it is imperative that steps are taken at all levels to counter the effects of medicalization especially in the field of mental health.
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Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings
Agency and AI in Consulting Pathways to Prioritize Agency-Enhancing Automations
CENGIZ CEMALOGLU, ReD Associates JASMINE CHIA, Oxford University JOSHUA TAM, IBM
Amidst the advances of AI and automation, this paper provides a framework for ethnographic methods and insights to enhance human agency at work. Through analyzing data collected from ethnographic immersions in three different consulting firms (a professional services firm, a management consultancy, and a boutique insights agency), human-agent decisions are isolated in case studies and the pathways of unlocking the potential of automation to enhance the agency of individuals rather than constraining it are highlighted. Through drawing a distinction between thinking agency and executional agency present in the work of a consultant, this paper argues that automations that preserve thinking agency while maximizing productivity and accuracy are the solutions that should be adopted. Through vetting workflows sourced from ethnographic immersions with the established criteria, a framework for consultancies – and more broadly businesses – to better employ AI and automation is laid out and substantiated by an account of how anthropological approaches can be brought in to assist the process of prioritization among contextual automation processes.
PART 1: SETTING UP THE STAGE
Mergers and Automation
The merger was a complex one. Two pharmaceutical companies were coming together – each with varying overseas footprints, each having molded their companies to face different regulatory environments. As their disparate US-based businesses were brought under a large parent company, they hired a management consultancy to capture the "synergies." In other words, the consultants were hired to figure out a way to take as many costs as possible out of the merged company through removing duplicated resources and processes. Naturally, the first place to start was in the organization itself – deciding which employees to keep and which ones to let go of.
In the highly precarious process of a merger and an organizational restructuring, one thing was made evident – the corporation gave its very own employees very little agency in deciding their own futures. Yet, the executives of the same corporation chose to vest in consultants the power to advise on who gets to keep their job. In the business world of today, decision-making power is often concentrated at the top, and is distributed horizontally to other stakeholders – partners at consultancies or managing directors at banks. The consulting industry in 2017 generated $63.2 billion (Shumsky 2018) from American institutions alone. Yet, the decision-making power so often delegated to the consultants is so rarely delegated downwards – to employees themselves. Therefore, under the boundaries of modern capitalism, the agency of the employee is often intimately intertwined with the work of a "consultant." The consultant's own agency – or their lack thereof – has more than significant downstream effects that ultimately reach the many thousands of employees in the businesses they consult for.
In the case of the pharmaceutical merger, the timeline for the restructuring was tight and it was a large, complicated organization that had a multi-country structure with similar business units in every country. Instead of thinking through a model change that might have driven a more optimal way of working - centralizing some core functions in the US business, moving to a shared services model for transactional roles, or changing their sales force structure - the consulting firm, with Excel as its only tool, took shortcuts to get to the reduction targets that the executives wanted. They fired managers who earned above a certain amount or directors who managed fewer than a certain number of people. Ultimately, the cuts were deep, but did not change the overly complex company structure – it only reduced the number of people at each given level.
Gaps began to appear a few months later, as it became evident that too many managers had been let go of, and ultimately the company's stock began to fall later that year as the firm began to experience severe shortages since their production lines had been disrupted.
Unfortunate stories like these are rumored to be becoming less and less frequent as consulting firms promise to become more technologically sophisticated. In the case of organizational restructuring, new AI tools like Anaplan or Orgbuilder allow consultants to run far more complicated models in envisioning the way a business might be structured in the future – creating opportunities for deep model changes like agile transformations. However, consultants increasingly find themselves less able to control all aspects of the data analysis, reducing their sense of agency. (Beck and Libert 2018) In an ideal universe, as the repetative analytical elements of a consultant's labor begins to get increasingly automated, consultants could find new avenues to contribute – focusing on taking employee input into account, working with the employees themselves to improve their working lives, and other more human-facing functions. Yet, the way in which AI and automation is currently situated to impact the consulting industry is far removed from the optimistic aspirations of what AI will enable consultants to focus on. (Frank et al. 2017) Without prioritizing what types of AI can have the highest positive impact on consulting projects and instituting a set of expandable boundaries on what should and should not be automated, the impact is likely to be much more irreversible than consultants and technologists may have thought.
This paper explores how agency, agency of the consultants and indirectly the institutions and individuals they consult for, are affected by increasing adoption of AI and automation in the world of consulting. The paper differentiates two distinct forms of agency at play and structures the existing and potential effects of AI and automation on what we call "thinking agency" and "executional agency." Thinking agency is defined as the ability to freely ideate, while executional agency is defined as the ability to execute on or implement the agent's thoughts and ideas. The paper argues that the problemata in consulting is that oftentimes thinking agency is limited by executional agency, where unsophisticated tools of analysis impose artificial constraints on the answer set for a consultant's ideas, limiting and automating the possibilities of their recommendations and their ramifications. Stripping thinking agency, often also means stripping executional agency – not only indicating a lack of meaning and agency for the consultant, but an even more intensified lack of agency for the employees whose lives are being impacted.
As the financialization of the global economy accelerates rapidly, with corporations continuing to be bought out by private equity firms that then hire consultants to run these companies, it becomes increasingly apparent that AI and automation can easily remove even more human decision making out of the process, and out of the lives of the many employees whose lives palpably change with acquisitions, reorganizations, and strategy shifts. (Libert and Beck 2017) It is our conviction that perhaps one of the few ways to forego such risks is to enable the adoption of technologies that retain, if not increase, the thinking agency of the consultants to ensure that the already very limited agency working professionals have left in their hands, isn't further limited.
Literature Review
Agency is a tricky, powerful concept. In the face of society's totalizing regime of selfdiscipline, Foucault saw agency as the ability to subvert the "micro-physics" of the disciplinary regime. Power, in Foucault's conception, is not exerted by a single individual or group of people but rather produced and exercised by society as a whole. According to Foucault, "each society has its regime of truth, its "general politics" of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true." (Foucault 1980, 109-133)
Therefore, agency is not exercised independent of disciplinary power, but within the context of existing structures and constraints of power. The freedom of choice and ability to act independently produces incremental effects on the broader system of self-discipline, creating "localized episodes inscribed in history by the effects that it produces on the entire network in which it is caught up" rather than through "the law of all or nothing...not acquired one and for all by a new control of the apparatuses nor by a new functioning or a destruction of the institutions."(Foucault 1995, 27)
Therefore, agency in the face of this regime of truth is not simply a matter of finding a superseding "absolute truth" (as truth is a socially produced power) but a matter of constantly "detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time." Within the regime, power can be contested through evasion, subversion of contestation. Yet, agency, the belief of having agency, and the aspiration to attain it are also the "truths" of the Western societal canon, reified by the Bible all the way to self-improvement books of our modern days.
On the other hand, De Certeau, influenced by the likes of Bentham and Foucault, equally saw subjects bound up in broader systems that produced specific forms of practice to exercise agency in the face of domination. For De Certeau, there are two forms of practice: strategies and tactics. Strategies are employed by subjects with "will and power" due to their status in society giving them the ability to objectify others. "A strategy assumes a place that can be circumscribed as a proper (propre) and thus serve as a basis for generating relations with an exterior distinct from it (competitors, adversaries, "clienteles," "targets," or "objects of research)." (de Certeau 1984, xix)
In contrast, those who do not possess the "will and power" to employ strategies to shape external relations instead begin to assume a mode of practice that is tactical rather than strategic. Tactical agents express their agency through commonplace activities like reading or – in the case of workers – taking breaks at work, which re-signify and disrupt the order of activities dictated by the strategic practices of those in power. Therefore, there are infinite possibilities for contesting social order in the micro-physics of conflict taking place between the strategic and tactical practices of everyday life.
This is particularly relevant when thinking of agency within the corporation as workers remain deeply bound by the power structures beyond themselves and are consensually bound to mechanisms of self-discipline and self-surveillance that structure their agency. Within that, there is the constant opportunity to resist with a tactical mode of practice - to find ways to detach power from regimes of truth, and to temporarily invert power relations at continually arising points of conflicts. Therefore, when we discuss agency - the ability to make free choices - and losing agency - the perception of losing that capacity for making free choices and acting independently - we do so within the context of broader disciplinary forces that both constrain and create opportunities for resistance.
Taking into account the relevant literature, the phenomenon of "agency" for the purposes of this paper is then defined as:
"the perception of a certain capacity for individuals or collectives of individuals to make free choices and to act independently within the existing societal structures and constraints of power."
First of all, agency is defined as a perception – as individuals and communities believe themselves to be agents as long as they are perceptive of their own agency. Additionally, the data collected through ethnographic methods and structured interviews can only verify or reject the perception of a certain capacity rather than the existence of lack thereof the capacity itself.
Agency is a capacity – it does not have to be enacted upon to exist, one merely needs to possess the potential, the capacity to enact upon it. That very capacity then in return enables the individual to feel the agency – an agency without the capacity is not agency, it is merely a wish or a will to have agency.
Agency can be possessed by individuals and collectives alike – individuals can have their own agency, yet collectives of individuals, or collectives of collectives may have their own as well. Countries, governments, institutions or businesses are a good example of this – where the collective agency of individuals is different than the agency of the community, the collective itself.
Agency is entirely about free choice and independence – it is about possessing the capacity to enact one's own choices – with or without regard to others' will. One can include others' choices and depend on their acts, yet that choice of inclusion needs to be freely and independently made, at least perceived to be done so.
Lastly, it takes place within the existing societal structures and constraints of power, as it is a concept produced, protected, lost and reproduced in part as a part of and in part as an opposition to the existing societal structures and power constraints. Agency, ultimately, is enabled and allowed to exist as an oppositional force precisely due to the very structures and constraints containing the possibility for the emergence of oppositional forces within themselves.
To pursue a consistent analysis of the interlinkage between agency and automation – a precise definition of what is meant by agency is necessary, only through a unified definition, the conversations and experiences of interlocutors can be best analyzed.
What is then to "lose agency?" The process of losing agency is to lose the perception of that capacity to make free choices and to act independently. What is important to delineate here is that it is not about losing the capacity itself – it is about losing the perception of that capacity. One may still have the capacity to act freely, yet if one has lost the feeling and the belief that one even has such a capacity – for all intents and purposes, agency has indeed been lost.
Methodology
An interdisciplinary research project such as the one at hand necessitated a methodological approach that was, in nature, flexible. (Powers 2017) We borrowed methods, literature and modes of thinking from social sciences – predominantly anthropology – and philosophy and overlaid it with the modes of thinking and theories in computer science in an attempt towards illustrating the complex interlinkage between agency and technology.
The main source of data collection has been participant observation in three different consulting institutions – all of which have a presence in North America and Western Europe – authors delineate the difference between these three institutions by calling them a "a professional services firm," "a management consultancy," and "a boutique insights agency."
Due to the sensitive nature of the ethnographies conducted, all the names of the institutions as well as all of the respondents have been anonymized. Immersions in the consultancies each lasted between two weeks to six months. Unstructured interviews and observational techniques were employed all throughout through spending extensive amount of time with more than 10 respondents in each of the three ecosystems. A conversational and reflective tone has been employed throughout the writing and structuring of the arguments to ensure the accessibility of the content both for academic and non-academic audiences.
The data has been mainly collected to substantiate our definition of "having agency" and "losing agency" as well as producing a thorough look at what it means to gain and lose agency. The collection of data on how consultants collect, analyze, and disseminate data has necessitated a level of meta-reflexivity – not only a level of reflexivity on our role as researchers studying professionals making decisions in professional environments, but also our role as consultants/researchers who also collect, analyze, and disseminate data in their past or present day-to-day lives. Reflecting on the nature of consulting, as current or exconsultants, added a subjective layer upon the attempted objectivity of the research inquiry, which then nuanced and further substantiated argumentation.
Sprinkled throughout ethnographic narratives and the more analytical workflow analysis, readers will find evidence of this meta-reflexivity about the nature of consulting – and the present tensions between agency and lack thereof.
PART 2: ETHNOGAPHIC IMMERSIONS IN CONSULTING
Boutique Insights Agency
Insight Co. is a small insights consultancy – merging user interviews with design thinking methods. With approximately 100 employees spread across six offices, the young firm's growth has been relatively stable over the past few years. One of the HR representatives describes the employees of the firm as "quirky and intellectual – with a refined taste and a broad interest in the world."
Besides lunchtime conversations, movie outings, and all-black uniform clothing, the way in which that refined taste and an interest in the world manifests itself during the day to day of the work experience is mainly through PowerPoint itself. One of the associates, Lena, says "More than 60% of the time, I am on PowerPoint creating slides. I came to love it, but of course I cannot help to still resent it a little bit."
When employees across different levels arrive to Insights Co. they receive a thorough design and PowerPoint skills education through workshops, online courses, and peer education. "It starts with small questions – asking one another how to do relatively simple things – like how do you make a text visible on a photo? That's a tough nut." adds Lena.
With a young workforce, Insights Co. immediately comes across as artistically inclined. The employees are wearing boxy shirts, designer glasses with retro aesthetics and talk about cinema, contemporary art, and new yoga classes in town during their free time between PowerPoint slides they are meant to produce.
During an early Thursday afternoon conversation at Insights Co., Steven, 34, one of the older employees at the firm who has been with Insights Co. for more than 5 years says "there is joy in aligning things in a PowerPoint presentation, in building slides that look like what I imagine them to look like, in translating my ideas into great visuals."
An overwhelming majority of Steven's day to day at Insights Co. involves PowerPoint – that is where he writes his sales pitches, that is where he communicates the insights researchers find about the world, that is where he proposes new initiatives or design principles to abide by for the variety of decision-makers at their client sites. "I even have dreams about PowerPoint sometimes. It is such a big part of my life – in fact, I think of it as the most concrete thing that my job enables me to create – a solid deck," he adds.
Overhearing the conversation with Steven, Anne adds "but PowerPoint is tedious, time consuming and complete waste of time – I'd rather spend time coming up with ideas rather than spending the time worrying over little details on a presentation."
Anna, 28, comes from a background in Psychology – where she focused her studies and research on sources of motivation in the workplace and outside. While shadowing Anna at work, it becomes apparent that even when she is building a PowerPoint presentation – a task not at the very top of her priorities, she is still "coming up with new ideas" through thinking of new design ideas and sharing it with her colleagues.
Towards the very end of the research engagement at Insights Co., Elena appeared in the picture – a recent hire at Insights Co. who has a lot of opinions about PowerPoint from previous experiences. She says that a big majority of her time spent in front of PowerPoint is solely consistent of making small decisions about design, grammar, and content layout – "decisions that matter but also don't matter at the same time."
She adds, "I would appreciate if PowerPoint gave me multiple suggestions for a decision I need to make – this way I could choose between them, and if I don't like any of them, then I could go ahead and build my own thing."
Elena says that when it is about very small decisions like "which line should go where, what color the box should be, what picture should I use to illustrate that idea" she would benefit from a set of automated suggestions. "A robot can do that, why do I need to spend time on it?" she asks. She points out a new button that PowerPoint had introduced in her Mac version of the software, "Insights." – "it is funny isn't it, what I do is insights, what PowerPoint does is also insights."
She explains and shows that "Insights" suggest automated design and layout suggestions to her slides – it enables her to quickly build slides that she frequently uses but aren't embedded in the template itself.
Anna comes over when Elena is displaying what the Insights button can accomplish and cracks a brief laugh. She joins the little demonstration and comments: "I guess we will be displaced by AI sometime soon too."
"No way," Steven says, "all those robots cannot think like us – most importantly, they cannot think outside of the box like us."
Thinking agency is the freedom and the ability to think, to ideate – to come up with an idea independently and freely – discussing the idea, receiving feedback on it, and deciding to keep it as an idea or to bring it further to execution – like sharing with colleagues, clients, or taking active steps to build things out of this seemingly simple idea. What Anna is saying is that she would like to enact her thinking agency more frequently.
What the fascinating interchange between Steven, Elena and Anna discursively points towards – along with many other conversations at Insights Co. and beyond that due to the limited scope of this paper, we have to exclude from depicting and discussing – is a distinction between thinking agency and executional agency.
Executional agency, in contrast, is to build, and to create things – to execute things in the way an agent-being wants them to be executed. It is the freedom to build things the way one wants to build them. It usually directly follows the thinking agency, and occasionally coexists alongside it.
Our conversations throughout Insights Co. seemed to point towards an implicit agreement across most employees – that it is acceptable for executional agency to be partially reduced by AI, but when it comes to the thinking agency, no compromises are willing to be made. Instead of replacing the thinking agency, technology that provides speed, inspiration, and optionality to assist with executional agency makes one feel that one can still think, create and be the decision maker. That is exactly what Excel and PowerPoint do and did throughout history – they automated bore tasks that employees had to do manually for decades, and now they facilitate what we need to create – and assist consultants in creating mental models of how things should look like.
What Elena is pointing towards is that she doesn't mind if she receives some help when it comes to her executional agency but would not want her thinking agency to be influenced or interfered with in some way or another.
In the hierarchy of agencies individuals imagine possessing at work, thinking seems to come above the executional – and it the automation of the thinking that creates a loss of agency and consequently meaning at work, yet the loss of executional agency does not – necessarily. Our ethnographic immersion points to the fact that this is the careful line that automation will need to trace to ensure that its power is fully utilized, and its unintended consequences are not experienced widely.
Management Consultancy
With offices around the globe and a well-established reputation – Management Co. is one of the largest consultancies in the world. The institutionalization of the brand that is built around running large-scale "transformations" – massive exercises that span portfolio rationalization, cost reduction, new go-to-market and growth strategies, as well as
organizational restructuring initiatives – became apparent already from the first day of our study.
"The business is evolving," commented George, a manager at the company, "nowadays, we sell bigger cases with multiple partners working on the same account - it's an entirely new business model from the one-off projects we used to sell."
A key part of a transformation business is organizational restructuring – changing the way a company organizes its people. Especially when the transformation is a turnaround taking the company from below margin performance to profitability with the help of organizational restructuring is where Management Co. finds the most "efficiencies" (i.e. the most money that can be saved for the company in the shortest amount of time) and the biggest amount of business opportunities. Many consultants at Management Co. describe this line of work as their "most emotional work," both for the Management Co. consultants and the executives alike. Another manager, Aaron tells us: "Organizational work is hard, and a lot can go wrong with it. It doesn't feel good to do it, but at least when we do it, we know that we're doing a much better job than what our clients would do if they were to do it by themselves."
However, a consultant's ability to be thoughtful about "org work," as it is colloquially termed, is limited by the data available to the consultant and the limitations on how that data can be processed. "In most companies, a company's annual operating budget plan is directionally aligned with but not connected to a company's HR database," Aaron explains. This is a critical data limitation –because consultants make decisions on who stays and who goes based on the HR data with the aim of hitting reduction targets based out of the operating budget. When consultants walked us through a sample project they worked on, it became apparent that when the linkage between decisions made against the HR data on the spend baseline is unclear, consultants had to constantly engage in guesswork in determining how to get to their client's required end results. As a result, consultants at Management Co. tend to "overdeliver" on the savings from the organization, which practically means firing more people than needed to hit reduction targets in the budget, to stay on the "safe-side" in terms of delivering on their proposed savings. "We would rather cut a few more heads than have our clients not hit their EPS (earnings per share) targets," says George. "If they don't hit their EPS targets, then they're answerable to the street - and coming in below investor expectations could really send a company into a downward spiral."
A senior manager, Luke, who has been with the firm for over ten years recalls a particular instance during one of our conversations. Management Co. was working on a project at a $10B company with the aim of hitting a particular EPS target through cost reduction in the organization. They had worked with this company before and had completed a large organizational restructuring project for the company just a year prior to this project. However, the company's revenues were still in decline, and they needed to cut more costs to keep profit margins constant.
The company built their annual budget on a "prior-year plus" methodology where they simply took the actual spend from the year before and assumed a certain percentage increase in spend across the organization. However, as a result, the budget for personnel spend had absolutely no connection with the bottom-up build of the organization – "salary by person view presented huge difficulties in terms of executional agency for both the clients and the consultants." In the previous round of organizational restructuring, Management Co. had avoided dealing with the data complexity by only using the bottom-up HR data to inform decision-making and
had massively over-delivered on savings from the organization. "It was touted as a huge win for the client," recalls Luke.
As Management Co. set to work on this second phase of the restructuring, however, they attempted to solve the problem they had faced in the first phase by introducing a new AI tool that enabled Integrated Business Planning (IBP). The team took the various existing master data structures and fed them into the tool, which output the data in standardized formats. More importantly, the tool provided a platform with user interfaces for the finance, HR, sourcing and commercial functions that meant the budget-planning could be done using the same bottoms-up methodology across all functions. Management Co. consultants introduced this at the beginning of the company's budget planning cycle, so by the time the restructuring had to be in full swing, the datasets were ready to use.
What emerged from this exercise was a surprising insight on the organization: that the "prior-year plus" methodology of budgeting had hidden the fact that most of the personnel spend budgeted in the annual operating budget of the company was from open positions, roles that had been left vacant by recent exits. Luke explained, "this became evident as the consultants were able to link the budget costs back to the specific personnel roles that were driving them, only to find out that these roles weren't actually filled by existing employees in the organization." What had happened was, unbeknownst to the executives at the company, the company had been facing a huge loss of talent as their revenues had declined, and the last round of restructuring had actually left the company vastly under-resourced in terms of delivering on their products. As talented employees began to feel stretched, they began to burn out and leave the company. Because executives hadn't responded to the exodus, employees felt like they didn't care, and abandoned the firm even in higher numbers.
"This insight completely turned around our project, and instead of a cost-cutting exercise the project became an exercise in finding talent and building a leadership structure that could support talent development in the company's near future," Luke adds. People were promoted to positions that were befitting of the responsibilities they had begun to take on in the lean organization, and more aggressive bonuses were put in place to provide incentives for employees to stay on.
"Once the problem was pinpointed, executives hastened to conduct town halls and leadership forums to hear how their employees were feeling and to institute better policies and processes for employee feedback to reach to the top," Luke recalled.
Changing the way data was made available to the consultants completely changed the process and the outcome of their work – it enabled them to enable the employees themselves. Data showed how massively crucial it was to address the growing feeling of powerlessness among the employees to voice their concerns about the rapidly thinning organization.
Results like these are common Luke says, as managers in the organizational restructuring group of the Management Co. increasingly utilize new AI tools – like Alteryx, Anaplan, and Orgbuilder. These tools have been welcomed across the industry by the consultants, and the clients alike – for more precise, and more consistent results.
Foucault had said that "agency is the ability to overthrow the micro-physics of the disciplinary regime that power exercises on the body through "localized episodes inscribed in history by the effects that it induces on the entire network in which it is caught up" not "the law of all or nothing…not acquired one and for all by a new control of the apparatuses nor by a new functioning or a destruction of the institutions." (Foucault 1995, 27) In line with his definition, in this particular case AI was simply perceived to lead to an incremental discovery which allowed consultants to drive the organization towards
broader change – it enhanced both the thinking agency and the executional agency. No consultant we talked to at Management Co. mentioned any concern about their agency being lost or diminished. "The AI makes sure that we implement change in the most effective way, it is helping us not replacing us," a consultant, Jessica, reflects. Luke adds "sometimes we have consultants who complain that they feel that the change they bring isn't necessarily positive, in this case the AI helped us bring the most positive outcome for both employees and the corporation."
When reading between the lines consultants at Management Co. mostly focused on efficiency instead – "AI helps us be faster" a consultant mentioned, "it allows us to focus on what actually matters" another one added. "With more time in our hands, we can focus on making sure that the change we suggest is implemented correctly," adds Luke. Another consultant who worked on the case suggested that the case "was a favorite of mine – it merged cutting edge AI with a focus on people and speedily delivering the best possible outcome for everyone involved."
Afterall, the automation at Management Co. illustrates the perceived joys of being effective, efficient, and innovative during a consulting project. A project which can pose to be a perfect metaphor for a corporate structure populated by employees with little agency – co-existing within a Foucauldian panopticon of self-surveillance, self-discipline and normalization of a certain standard of being. A standard of being that is often mediated by consultants who come in from the top and institute top-down policies with inputs from executives, (and now algorithms) which often serve to re-instate the processes of administration, social sorting and simulation. Yet, when done efficiently – in the minds of the consultants at Management Co., efficiency transforms into effectivity – a justification of the labor involved, facilitated by AI, automation, and a host of other technologized interventions. Ultimately, the series of conversations at Management Co. illustrate that perhaps an increased usage of AI can indeed serve to highlight and enable resistance to existing infrastructures of power when mediated through the discourse of efficiency, and consequently to make consultants a force for driving this resistance and finding more meaning in their labor.
Professional Services Firm
Technology Co. is a large professional services firm that seeks to build out and ensure client success through delivery and implementation of technology infrastructure. With more than 100,000 employees across the world, Technology Co. delivers a variety of services across various industries such as building or redefining enterprise software in order to cut overhead costs in businesses, increase employee engagement and productivity in a business, and reduce instability and variance in any given workstreams.
One of the main business lines that Technology Co. offers where many of its best technology consultants work is in implementing AI/Automation services to different clients across different industries and practices. In order to effectively define how technology can improve business processes, a downstream modelling effort is executed to bring these services to different firms.
During our immersions and interviews with Technology Co. consultants, a representative case stood out – a Public Health Client that was looking to completely innovate its best practices and methods on understanding how to predict and prevent adverse events with blood transfusions and vaccinations in the American population.
Jack, a consultant familiar with the project explained "naturally, one of the first things to do was to do a deep dive into existing technologies – with an unprecedented amount of research being done on oncology and genomics with AI – this would only seem natural."
In order to implement AI and automation into predicting how vaccinations and transfusions cause adverse events, one of the main responsibilities was having the Product Owner, Evan (who has a data science background), discuss the direction and strategy of the product. This entailed client management, strategic decision making, and scoping the realistic load of work that was contained. He reflects: "the core principles of design thinking which include a focus on user outcomes, multidisciplinary teams and restless reinvention were considered."
In theory, the project was to undertake a simple task of modeling that had shown promise in similar datasets and fields. In reality, there were many different workstreams and personnel that not only utilized automation to increase thinking agency and throughput, but developed automation in a thoughtful yet exacting manner that sought to increase agency for its end users. Similar to Insights Co., thinking agency is opened up by increasing technological processes into a workstream, which promotes and inspires unprecedented growth and creative devices that would have otherwise been undiscovered.
Even reflected that, in many ways the Product Owner position was a balancing act of technical and qualitative information. He felt that the he can design and craft narratives to tell a story in a uniquely humanistic way: the direction cannot be altered by AI simply because there is very little work that AI and automation can take on in the job description of a Product Owner. However, Evan also noted that the tools that automation has increased throughput in have helped him organize and collect his thoughts where necessary: "When I'm working as a Product Owner, there are very few moments where I'm not talking to someone about prioritizing features and targeting correct users. In the moments that I have a chance to catch my breath, I'm really glad that there are tools such as PowerPoint or Trello to save me from manually loading in and recording notes, recordings, or thoughts. And I think it's amazing that while these programs serve as platforms for me to work on, they are using limitless amounts of automation and AI under the hood that helps me categorize my original ideas into concrete and written conclusions."
Consultants at Technology Co. explain that in order to have an effective product, there must be subject matter experts and social scientists under the product owner who serve as the main point of contacts on user engagement and stakeholder analysis. These subject matter experts, Jenn and Jordan, were often the main drivers in research of current vs future work, as well as how technology will change a doctor's motivation behind using given software. In a given workflow, subject matter experts sculpt a project into a more refined state. But, according to Evan how these subject matter experts extract information has changed dramatically over the past couple years as a result of automation.
Normally, subject matter experts extracted information from various sources across journals, papers, media, and the internet. Yet the way they engage with platforms like Google, NCBI, or Nature is drastically different from how a product owner may engage with the same sources. For example, Jenn explains that a subject matter expertise may ask a question along the realms of "For a given type of Blood Transfusion, what is the expected duration of the effects before a treatment is in place?" in order to understand how long of a timespan doctors, and by extension the program, should be wary of when designing features. A product owner, on the other hand, may ask the same question as "For a given transfusion, how do doctors assess severity and potential adverse reactions?"
A product owner can guide how a project may steer, but the subject matter experts bring in relevant and contextual information that technologists and AI enthusiasts may not understand from the get-go. In many ways, information extraction is improved from AI and automation in finding relevant and concise sources for specific questions. In the plethora of data available in academia and in business, finding the correct information is a task in and of itself: only when enhanced AI is connected with the right personnel can information be correctly identified and efficiently stored. In other words, increased accuracy and rigor enabled thinking agency to be increased by allowing subject matter experts to grab and engage with content that would otherwise be lost in the vast amounts of information available. "When we know that the algorithm is making no mistakes – then subject matter experts can do a better job at fulfilling their responsibilities," says Jordan. "If the AI can add rigor to our analyses and do it in without errors – that's already more than enough," adds Jenn.
Once the ideation and design around how these predictions, platforms, and workstreams are defined, developers and data scientists begin to lay the groundwork of executing the vision. In many regards, working directly with technology is conducive towards automation and AI. For this particular project, Eric, Aaron, and Brian, three men with old-fashioned glasses and firm handshakes led this aspect of the project. Discussing their precise positions within the project with them illustrated a couple important points of discussion. First, data mining and data exploration are a blend of thinking and executional agency: how developers decide what to visualize or what kind of results to query cannot be simply "inputted into automation with an expected output." These results must be carefully crafted in order to achieve results that will help the end user. Secondly, as Aaron noted, "many people expect that technology is going to replace workers in every form of work because of popular media- the truth of the matter is that technology is meant to help us, not hinder us, in designing and creating different forms of work." We will explore this later in the discussion, but through our preliminary analyses, we have noticed that this sentiment prevails throughout multiple firms and workstreams. Accuracy comes forth yet again – as a more technology-savvy consultant, Brian articulates that for error-free outputs, there needs to be error-free inputs first and embarks on a long-winded monologue to communicate a previously articulated worry about biases and errors in AI technologies (Osoba and Wesler 2017). He says: "Automation can only help us extract the correct information we need to work only when we, as developers, create the right kind of contextual information. Automation can only hinder us when we incorrectly identify the most salient pieces of information that can help us."
In many ways, the modeling and conclusion portion of massive automation projects seem the priviest to automation. Because of the high experience barrier that comes with statistical modeling, one of the many challenges for companies across the world has been designing intuitive and interactive code bases that are flexible in nature, yet intuitive enough for novices in statistics to understand. As a result, technology companies like Technology Co. are creating "libraries," or code bases, that convert thousands of lines of code into digestible chunks that requires only peripheral information to implement. Models such as LASSO or AlexNet (statistical models used to identify and classify different kinds of information), which have taken decades of research to implement and design, can now be coded up in less than 10 lines of code. Eric, who has led the modeling efforts from the development side, notes something about this new wave of code simplification however:
"We don't need to always build [models] from the ground up every time we want to test a model. In many ways, automating model building allows us to test an unprecedented amount of crazy and outlandish models that would otherwise have been either too resource-intensive or too absurd to reasonably test. And in many ways, we're discovering now that these outlier models that would have otherwise been completely relegated have provided promising, yet slightly unintuitive, results. The journey in automation isn't how can we eliminate work- it's all about how much possible work can we accomplish with new tools at our aide."
Technology Co. and its employees are illustrative of how executional and thinking agency can be deeply intertwined – in their union, agency in implementing automation is inspired by ways to increase the accuracy and the quality of their work. This same inspiration motivates end users of these services to feel that while AI and automation have been thought of as detractors to human labor, when implemented in a prioritized and effective way they are meant to augment thinking and creative processes that are otherwise deprioritized and crushed under the tedious work that defines an average workday in the current definition of work within Technology Co.
PART 3: PINPOINTING AGENCY-ENHANCING AUTOMATIONS
Four Common Processes and 33 Steps in Between
The relation between agency and automation manifests itself in a variety of ways under the different conditions outlined in the ethnographic immersions. Agency doesn't only interact with automation differently – it is understood differently by the various actors in the process. In Technology Co., agency takes on a temporal element as Evan is empowered by time-saving tools, at Management Co. agency is understood as a deeply relational concept involving both the consultant and the employee. At Insights Co., Ann finds agency in constructing ideas, unlocking a creativity that isn't quite as important for Evan or Management Co.'s Jess.
Amidst these variegated perceptions of agency, its meanings and its effects, how can we find common ground upon which to build a productive typology for enhancing agency – in our original, broad conception – by using automation?
Across the three firms, ethnographic immersions were supplemented with unstructured interviews with provide us a starting point with which to begin this inquiry. From these interviews, we have identified "33 common processes" that take place across each firm and have clustered these processes into four overall categories or 'phases' that a typical consulting project goes through.
In doing so, we attempt to construct a typology for 'agency-enhancing automations' – a way to prioritize automations which we should look to embrace and automations we should approach with particular sensitivity. The goal is for institutions of various types – whether they are more similar to Insights Co., Management Co., or Technology Co., or operate outside of the field of consulting entirely – to understand the breadth of processes that take place at an individual level and how one can begin to narrow down which processes should be automated and which shouldn't.
To that end, a set of steps taken in an average project at Insights Co., Management Co. and Technology Co. have been listed below:
Table 1: Longlist of workflows across three consultancies
| Insights Co. | Management Co. | Technology Co. |
|---|---|---|
| preparing a questionnaire | writing an interview guide | setting objectives |
| choosing the appropriate pictures for a presentation | conducting belief audits | producing project plans |
| choosing the color palette of a deck | requesting data | setting success criteria |
| writing weekly touchpoint emails | cleaning data | setting quantifiable metrics for business and data success criteria |
| agreeing on an overall value proposition | analyzing data | assessing personnel, resources, and data |
| deciding on how to visualize ideas | choosing relevant data cuts to present | creating calendar and timeline for deployment |
| running a mock interview | looking for themes across relevant data cuts | shaping data according to regulatory compliance |
| conducting qualitative interviews | compiling quote banks | deciding key visualizations for client presentation |
| running a workshop | looking for themes across relevant quotes | generating hypotheses on different modeling techniques, business propositions, and data characterization |
| deciding on the format of a workshop | shelling out a deck with an overall story | responding to task orders and proposals |
| writing appropriate headlines for each slide | selecting key themes that encapsulate story |
|---|---|
| deciding when to start analysis | selecting icons to accompany key themes |
| clustering observations | looking through research database for similar / relevant material to the case |
| writing out an insights story | conducting expert interviews |
| developing a 100-slide deck | scheduling time with multiple partners to review content |
| booking flight tickets | scheduling time with case team managers to review content |
| booking hotel reservations | reviewing project budget |
| calling research participants to check-in prior to an engagement | parsing out partner feedback to relevant analysts / associates to turn comments |
| deriving a method to test findings | compiling slides from different analysts / associates into one deck |
| choosing a partner to implement suggestions | making formatting consistent across different slides |
| choosing which client to communicate x with | scheduling steercos |
|---|---|
| proofreading written documents | qualitatively communicating client / partner feedback across the team |
| filming an instance during research | refining data cuts / answering additional questions from clients / partners |
| photographing an instance during research | removing extraneous slides from the deck for the final presentation |
| writing down a quote during research | sending out pre-read to clients |
| asking the right follow-up question during research | preparing talking points for each slide for the presentation |
| choosing the appropriate people to join the team | presenting to steerco |
| evaluating team members | giving feedback to team members / case leadership / firm leadership about the case |
When observed across consultancies – the tasks and workflows can be clustered into four categories – 1) gathering information, 2) analyzing information, 3) communicating conclusions, and 4) project logistics. The phases of an average project in the world of consulting would look like the following:
Set-up and gathering information – is the totality of the project set-up, getting the right data and workflows in place. This phase sets up the team for success or failure from the very beginning and includes a variety of logistical tasks that generally require executional agency as well as some thinking agency in key moments like "team meetings."
Analyzing information and deriving conclusions – is when the data gathered is being analyzed qualitatively or quantitatively to come up with a set of conclusions to be communicated with the client. There are ongoing meetings throughout the process to communicate initial findings and conclusions – this is a phase with many workflows where thinking agency and executional agency are intertwined.
Project logistics – these are the set of internal facing tasks that necessitate a healthy flow of a project and are almost entirely logistical, like booking hotels, filing expenses, printing decks, and giving feedback to each other during and after the end of a project.
Communicating and action on conclusions – this is the final deliverable package, handoff generation process – where consultants communicate initial and final findings – the tasks tend to include creating presentations, pitches, agreeing on collaboration methods for going forward etc. – executional agency in creating the conclusions, based on the thinking agency involved in ideating them.
Establishing a Set of Criteria
Upon conducting three ethnographic immersions across different types of consultancies, consulting anthropological and data scientific literature – we propose three criteria to evaluate each proposed automation and AI in the world of consulting to prioritize between different automation and AI technologies at different points of an average project.
A. Thinking or Executional – does automating workflow X decrease thinking or executional agency?
B. Productivity-Enhancing – does automating workflow X enhance productivity?
C. Accuracy-Enhancing – does automating workflow X enhance accuracy?
We argue that a workflow should be automated, if the following three conditions hold true:
1. Automating workflow X may lead to decreasing executional agency, but not thinking agency – ethnographic immersions, unstructured interviews, and industry research point towards the automation of executional agency contributing very little to the sense of losing agency, while automating thinking agency to be a major contributor to the sense of losing agency. Automations that retain thinking agency and only automate executional agency should be prioritized.
2. Automating workflow X enhances productivity – technical literature already establishes the role of automation as a productivity-enhancing mechanism, yet ethnographic immersions showcase that when automation enhances productivity – the individuals mentally convince themselves that they are able to better focus on tasks that actually matter, and it frees up more time to focus on things that cannot be/will not be automated.
3. Automating workflow X enhances accuracy – technical literature in machine learning and AI, as well as ethnographic immersions also suggest automation's role in ensuring consistency and a sense of accuracy – ethnographic immersions showcase that one of the biggest perceived shortcomings of manual processes are a lack of consistency, quality, and accuracy. Whether it being minor mistakes in Excel or typos on a PowerPoint or more major decisions.
Therefore, workflows in consulting that needs to be prioritized for automation are the ones that 1) involves mostly executional agency, 2) automating it enhances productivity, and 3) automating it enhances accuracy.
For example, as we walk through the 33 steps at Management Co., slightly less than half of these steps can be automated: these include more straightforward steps that could be more accurately and productively done by a machine e.g. scheduling time with partners / clients / team, selecting icons to accompany key themes, formatting consistently across the deck. However, the set of criteria defined above also helps define some less straightforward steps that can and should be automated: looking for themes across relevant quotes or looking for themes across the various data cuts. For example, a python script applied to all the words in all the interviews to identify themes on the basis of word count can highlight new and interesting insights that may not be available to the consultant, whose perceptions of the interviews are deeply formed by their own experiences with the interviewees, and the interviewee's tone of voice or emphasis. Taking a more creative approach that abstracts from that may not only enhance accuracy, but also give the consultant more leverage or 'thinking agency' to draw out something interesting about the story instead of just regurgitating key data points.
Here lies the specific point about executional agency – on first brush, executional agency may seem more limited than it actually is. For example, a task requiring 'synthesis' – that is, identifying themes across data – is often taken to be one requiring thinking agency, a strong capacity to critically analyze and conclude a specific story from a set of given data points. However, the rise of automation and new technologies is changing what can be 'executed', and that should condition how organizations think about using technology. By looking at concrete data points within the 33 processes we outline, we find that there are always higher levels at which to apply thinking agency – in the example above, moving from applying thinking agency to 'synthesis' to applying thinking agency to identifying nuances within the data.
A set of additional more nuanced criteria can be introduced to further nuance the prioritization of which automations to pursue and which automations to de-prioritize, however the main three clusters that seem to matter for the individuals' own descriptions of their own workflows and agencies – these three stand out – they ensure that the productivity and accuracy enhancing aims of automation and AI are fulfilled while the agency and the connected lack of purpose and meaning aren't lost from one's labor.
Discussion and Implications
In this analysis, we have taken on three different instances of how AI and automation have increased the throughput and quality of workstreams in designing presentations (Insights Co.), uncovering and inspiring transparency in work that has otherwise been mired in bureaucracy (Management Co.), and in the assessment and creation of the tools that use AI and automation (Technology Co.).
In order to understand the implication of agency and AI, we refer back to the original definition of agency defined in this paper:
"the perception of a certain capacity for individuals to make free choices and to tact independently within the existing societal structures and constraints of power."
Popular culture depicts AI and automation as technologies that will overpower human agency. While AI enthusiasts are excited at the pace of growth in technology such as selfdriving cars, cryptocurrency, and tumor detection in cancer, they are quick to note how AI is "narrow" in nature, and how this will most likely not change in the future. We quickly delve into Narrow AI below.
Narrow AI is the ability for AI and automation to do a task repeatedly with either a defined logic that is manually written by humans, or by an algorithm that is designed by a human. Very rarely are there instances of an AI algorithm that can accomplish multiple tasks without serious revamping or a serious rehaul. Steve Wozniak sums up the current challenge in AI and automation as:
"Could a computer make a cup of coffee? You could come into my house and you'd be able to make a cup of coffee…you'd have to ask a couple questions, but you could get there. But the steps to get there is built up over a lifetime of knowledge and information… when is a computer going to get to that level?... what a human being is so far above anything we've ever done." (Wozniak 2010)
The work that has been accomplished at all three of the consulting firms investigated in automation is not to create decisions and strategies behind business processes - rather, it is to aid in contextualizing relationships between entities and predict outcomes as a result of data collected by humans with the aid of other automated tasks. New technologies change the 'executional' potential of AI and automation, increasing the depth of AI within its narrowness, but human knowledge is required to broaden that scope and elevate insights taken from the data. Agency is best exemplified in the scoping and ideation of work that is done and having a form of automation/AI that can replace this, or at least create the perception of replacement, is unlikely in the near future. In short, automation is an incredibly nuanced definition that often is much narrower in scope, capabilities, and scale and that remains highly dependent on humanistic elements such as context, assumptions, and subject expertise, where agency truly shines.
We are now at a crossroads – we have heavily emphasized how thinking agency is increased, but rarely inspired a conversation around executional agency, which revolves around building out different forms of presentations, visualizations, and analyses that are now created as a result of an increase in thinking agency. The most susceptible form of agency, as present by Technology Co. and Insights Co., is executional agency. But the beauty of executional agency is that this definition – that is, the creation and execution of events the way an agent would like it to be executed – fits the very scope that automation and AI can currently be created for. By repositioning the resource allocation of our work from the creation of a PowerPoint deck, stubbornly attempting to fit a re-org framework into a company that had problems elsewhere, or form the laborious tasks of recreating models from the ground up with little room for experimentation and hypothesis testing, the balance of executional agency getting limited by automation and AI and thinking agency can best be thought of in terms of value proposition created for the clients consultants serve.
If the mission of a consultant's work is to create the largest value proposition for the clients, consulting firms are brought in not to create and design slides with a focus on stylistic content – it is to provide value in a way of providing external perspectives, connecting and managing resources available to the client, and achieving a mission. How that mission can be achieved has often been in the way of creating one-framework-fits-all, with the time spent in that framework on creating the underlying tedious details that create tenuous connections to the framework. With the trade off in executional agency in return for thinking agency, however, consultants are now able to provide a newfound value for their clients in way of hypothesis space expansion and experimentation. We, as the researchers, all current or ex-consultants have sought different forms of direction and patterns in our work using similar automated software in the pursuit of this value creation that all stem from the increase of thinking agency.
In many ways, big data and automation have created human agencies in pockets of emotional and cognitive functions that were otherwise unidentified both in the workplace and in personal life. As Wozniak has described, simple and mundane decisions that are subconscious to us accumulate over a lifetime, creating a wholly unique decision process and autonomy. However, as defined in the discussion, automation possesses an incredibly nuanced definition that often is much narrower in scope, capabilities, and scalability which is highly dependent on context, assumptions, and subject expertise. As a result, human agency – both thinking and executional – can be argued to increase simply by the virtue of setting up, intuiting, and working on the foundation of various autonomous tasks, and understanding/strategizing collaborative and cognitive tasks that are otherwise unavailable within AI and automation processes.
In these three firms, we have demonstrated that human agency and the perceived loss of free will and decision making can be counteracted by understanding the realities of automation. Without a proper scope defined by humans, automation will not lead to productive or efficient results. Without the proper data mining and infrastructure, automation will be susceptible to high variance and outliers. These results will, counterintuitively, decrease trust in automation, which may then further reduce human agency by lumbering decision making in the highly tedious and transactional tasks at hand.
Cengiz Cemaloglu is a consultant at ReD Associates. He holds a BA in Anthropology and Government from Harvard University.
Jasmine Chia is pursuing her MPhil in International Relations at Oxford University. She was previously an associate at Boston Consulting Group. She holds a BA in Government and Religion from Harvard University.
Joshua Tam is a cognitive consultant at IBM. He holds a BSE in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton University.
NOTES
The opinions and positions represented in this paper are not the official positions of authors' employers, and solely represent the authors' own opinions. The authors thank all of the interlocutors and institutions involved in opening up their doors for the research inquiry.
REFERENCES CITED
Beck, Megan and Libert, Barry. "Management Consulting's AI-Powered Existential Crisis." MIT Sloan Management Review, 14 September 2018.
de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life (University of California Press: Berkeley, CA, 1984), xix Foucault, Michel. "Truth and Power" in Power / Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972 1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980): 109 - 133.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage Books: New York, 1995), 27. Frank, Malcolm, et al. What to Do When Machines Do Everything: How to Get Ahead in a World of AI, Algorithms, Bots, and Big Data. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017.
Libert, Barry, and Beck, Megan. "AI May Soon Replace Even the Most Elite Consultants." Harvard Business Review, July 24, 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/07/ai-may-soon-replace-even-the-most-eliteconsultants.
Osoba, Osonde, and Wesler, William. An Intelligence in Our Image: the Risks of Bias and Errors in Artificial Intelligence. RAND Corporation, 2017.
Powers, Thomas M. Philosophy and Computing: Essays in Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, Logic, and Ethics. Springer, 2017.
Shumsky, Tatyana. "U.S. Consulting Fees Climb to $63.2 Billion in 2017 on Tax, Digital Transformation." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, June 6, 2018. https://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2018/06/06/u-s-consulting-fees-climb-to-63-2-billion-in-2017-on-taxdigital-transformation/.
Wozniak, Steve. "VIDEO: Wozniak: Could a Computer Make a Cup of Coffee?" Fast Company, March 3, 2010. https://www.fastcompany.com/video/wozniak-could-a-computer-make-a-cup-ofcoffee/YxmYfVQ5.
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NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATION STATISTICS
Statistical Analysis Report
December 2000
MONITORING SCHOOL QUALITY: An Indicators Report
NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATION STATISTICS
Statistical Analysis Report
December 2000
MONITORING SCHOOL QUALITY: An Indicators Report
Daniel P. Mayer John E. Mullens Mary T. Moore Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
John Ralph, Project Officer National Center for Education Statistics
U.S. Department of Education
Richard W. Riley Secretary
Office of Educational Research and Improvement
C. Kent McGuire
Assistant Secretary
National Center for Education Statistics
Gary W. Phillips
Acting Commissioner
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data related to education in the United States and other nations. It fulfills a congressional mandate to collect, collate, analyze, and report full and complete statistics on the condition of education in the United States; conduct and publish reports and specialized analyses of the meaning and significance of such statistics; assist state and local education agencies in improving their statistical systems; and review and report on education activities in foreign countries.
NCES activities are designed to address high priority education data needs; provide consistent, reliable, complete, and accurate indicators of education status and trends; and report timely, useful, and high quality data to the U.S. Department of Education, the Congress, the states, other education policymakers, practitioners, data users, and the general public.
We strive to make our products available in a variety of formats and in language that is appropriate to a variety of audiences. You, as our customer, are the best judge of our success in communicating information effectively. If you have any comments or suggestions about this or any other NCES product or report, we would like to hear from you. Please direct your comments to:
National Center for Education Statistics Office of Educational Research and Improvement U.S. Department of Education 1990 K Street, NW Washington, DC 20006-5574
December 2000
The NCES World Wide Web Home Page is: http://nces.ed.gov The NCES World Wide Web Electronic Catalog is: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/index.asp
Suggested Citation
U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. Monitoring School Quality: An Indicators Report, NCES 2001–030 by Daniel P. Mayer, John E. Mullens, and Mary T. Moore. John Ralph, Project Officer. Washington, DC: 2000.
For ordering information on this report, write:
U.S. Department of Education ED Pubs 8242-B Sandy Court Jessup, MD 20794–1398
or call toll free 1–887–4ED–Pubs.
Content Contact: John Ralph (202) 502–7441
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work could not have been accomplished without the guidance, consultation, and support of many people. John Ralph, the project officer from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), U.S. Department of Education asked thoughtful, penetrating questions and provided valuable advice and guidance from the study's conception to its fruition. Also at NCES, Marty Orland, while Associate Commissioner, played a key role in conceptualizing the project to which Val Plisko, now Associate Commissioner for Early Childhood, International and Crosscutting Studies, added her insightful perspective.
Several people contributed to the conception and the final product. NCES reviewers Marilyn McMillen, Shelley Burns, John Wirt and Ellen Bradburn provided detailed, discerning, and important comments. External advisors and reviewers provided us with helpful comments that helped sharpen the report's focus. For that we wish to thank Paul Barton, Educational Testing Service; Joyce Benjamin, Oregon Department of Education; Lorraine McDonnell, University of California, Santa Barbara; Jack Jennings, Center on Education Policy; Richard Murnane, Harvard University Graduate School of Education; and Meredith Phillips, UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research.
At Mathematica Policy Research, David Myers provided critical suggestions concerning the study's direction and Paul Decker, author of the first indicator study in this series, contributed his unique perspective. Julia Kim was an early source of much background research that laid the groundwork for the completed report. Heather Hesketh and Emily Pas helped collect data and produce the tables for the report, Daryl Hall and Anne Kelleher helped edit it, and Felita Buckner and Alfreda Holmes helped produce the report. To each person, we extend our gratitude and appreciation.
CONTENTS
FIGURES
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report explores why some schools may be better than others at helping students learn. It responds to a recommendation from the congressionally mandated Special Study Panel on Education Indicators for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for reports that identify and discuss indicators of the health of the nation's educational system (U.S. Department of Education 1991). This report is designed for policymakers, researchers, and others interested in assessing the strength of our schools. While it is relevant for those interested in standards or accountability, it is not about test scores and is not a guide for education reform movements.
More specifically, the report's primary goals are to
1. Review the literature on school quality to help policymakers and researchers understand what is known about the characteristics of schools that are most likely related to student learning,
2. Identify where national indicator data are currently available and reliable, and
3. Assess the current status of our schools by examining and critiquing these national indicator data.
SCHOOL CHARACTERISTICS RELATED TO STUDENT LEARNING
The research described in this report indicates that school quality affects student learning through the training and talent of the teaching force, what goes on in the classrooms, and the overall culture and atmosphere of the school. Within these three areas, this report identifies 13 indicators of school quality that recent research suggests are related to student learning and reviews the national data showing the current status of our schools. These indicators, and the quality of the data describing each, are summarized in Figure ES.1. The figure illustrates that these school quality factors can affect student learning both directly and indirectly. For example, school context characteristics like school leadership can have an impact on teachers and what they are able to accomplish in the classroom, and this in turn may influence student learning. In addition, various teacher-level attributes can affect the quality of the classroom and in turn student learning. Traits at each of these levels can also directly affect student learning.
Teachers
Substantial research suggests that school quality is enhanced when teachers have high academic skills, teach in the field in which they are trained, have more than a few years of experience, and participate in high-quality induction and professional development programs. Students learn more from teachers with strong academic skills and classroom teaching experience than they do from teachers with weak academic skills and less experience. Teachers are less effective in terms of student outcomes when they teach cours-
i
Figure ES.1—
School quality indicators and their relationship to student learning
School Context
• School Leadership
• Goals
• Professional Community
• Discipline
• Academic Environment
Classrooms
• Course Content
• Pedagogy
• Technology
• Class Size
Teachers
• Teacher Academic Skills
• Teaching Assignment
• Teacher Experience
• Professional Development
STUDENT LEARNING
es they were not trained to teach. Teachers are thought to be more effective when they have participated in quality professional development activities, but there is no statistical evidence to evaluate this relationship.
Classrooms
To understand the effectiveness of classrooms, research suggests that it is necessary to understand the content of the curriculum; the pedagogy, materials, and equipment used. Students appear to benefit when course content is focused and has a high level of intellectual rigor and cognitive challenge. Younger students, especially disadvantaged and minority students, appear to learn better in smaller classes. Nationally representative data on the process of schooling, now becoming available for the first time, will further our understanding of the role of these factors in determining school quality.
School Context
How schools approach educational leadership and school goals, develop a professional community, and establish a climate that minimizes discipline problems and encourages academic excellence clearly affects school quality and student learning. For three reasons, however, the effect of school-level characteristics is more difficult to ascertain than the effect of teachers and classrooms. First, even though they are integral to a school, these characteristics are difficult to define and measure. Second, their effect on student learning is likely to be exerted indirectly through teachers and classrooms, compounding the measurement problem. And last, with some exceptions, reliable school-representative information about these indicators of quality is minimal. These difficulties should not overshadow the importance of collecting such data to learn more about how these characteristics operate and affect student learning through teachers and classrooms. The preponderance of national, regional, and local efforts to develop quality schools heightens the benefits that would be derived from additional refined and reliable schoolrepresentative measures of school characteristics.
AVAILABILITY AND QUALITY OF INDICATOR DATA
The quality of existing data on these three types of indicators varies (Table ES.1). Where the dimension being measured is straightforward, or if it has been measured for an extended period of time, the data are high quality. Where there is little information about a particular important facet of an indicator, the data quality is moderated in some aspect. And where the indicator is more complex than the data, the quality is poor. For a few indicators, concrete statistical evidence of an association with learning is thin, even though experts agree that these indicators should enhance student learning.
The indicators of teacher assignment, teacher experience, and class size each represent straightforward concepts and are easy to measure, and the data on these indicators are high quality. In addition, data on teacher experience and class size have been collected over several decades, further ensuring their quality. Data on teacher academic skills are also high quality, albeit less straightforward. While the academic skills of teachers are only one aspect of teaching ability, standardized tests that measure the academic skills of future teachers are quite advanced and have consistently shown links to student learning.
Data on indicators of professional development, course content, technology, discipline, and academic organization are moderate in quality. National data-collection efforts pertaining to these indicators are relatively new, and these dimensions of schools are more complex than the data currently collected. Consequently, data on professional development are limited and provide little insight into important principles of successful professional development programs. National data on indicators of course content and academic environment are based primarily on course titles and are consequently too vague to be high quality. Current data on technology primarily measure the availability of hardware and access to the Internet and provide too little information on the instructional role of technology in the classroom. Nationally representative data on school discipline incidents and on school discipline policies are well defined, but administrators may underreport their discipline problems. In addition, there are limited data documenting a link to student learning, the implementation of discipline policies, and their perceived fairness.
Only poor-quality data are available on teachers' pedagogy, school leadership, school goals, and professional community. These indicators are complex and therefore more difficult to measure, and historically they have not been prominent in national datacollection efforts. It is difficult to isolate and measure critical elements of pedagogy because the teaching process consists of a complex set of interactions between students,
Table ES.1— Quality of national school quality indicator data
High Quality
Moderate Quality
Poor Quality
Teacher Assignment
Professional Development
Pedagogy
Teacher Experience
Technology
Goals
Teacher Academic Skills
Course Content
School Leadership
Class Size
Discipline
Professional Community
Academic Environment
the teacher, and the curriculum. Measuring human actions, incentives, and opinions to estimate the effects of school-level attributes such as leadership, goals, and professional community is an equally complex task.
As a group, the teacher-focused measures of school quality are less complex and have been collected for some time. School-level attributes of quality are nearly the opposite. We have more reliable information on indicators with high-quality data, while indicators with lower-quality data provide an incentive and direction for improved national data collection. Nine indicators have high- or moderate-quality data and describe the current status of school quality.
CURRENT STATUS OF SCHOOL QUALITY
The Academic Skills of Teachers
Students learn more from teachers with strong academic skills (Ballou 1996; Ehrenberg and Brewer 1994; 1995; Ferguson 1991; Ferguson and Ladd 1996; Mosteller and Moynihan 1972), but graduates whose college entrance examination scores are in the top quartile are half as likely as those in the bottom quartile to prepare to teach (9 versus 18 percent) (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000). Teachers in the top quartile are more than twice as likely than teachers in the bottom quartile to teach in private schools (26 versus 10 percent) and are less than one-third as likely as teachers in the bottom quartile to teach in high-poverty schools (10 versus 31 percent). Furthermore, graduates in the top quartile who teach are twice as likely as those in the bottom quartile to leave the profession within less than four years (32 versus 16 percent) (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000).
Teaching Assignment
Middle and high school students learn more from teachers who hold a bachelor's or master's degree in the subject they are teaching (Darling-Hammond 2000; Goldhaber and Brewer 1997; Monk and King 1994), but out-of-field teaching occurs with regularity (Bobbitt and McMillen 1994; Henke et al. 1997; Ingersoll 1999; Lewis et al. 1999).
Teacher Experience
Studies suggest that students learn more from experienced teachers than they do from less experienced teachers (Darling-Hammond 2000; Murnane and Phillips 1981; Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 1998). As of 1998, the highest-poverty schools and schools with the highest concentrations of minority students had nearly double the proportion of inexperienced teachers (those with three or fewer years of experience) than schools with the lowest poverty (20 versus 11 percent) and lowest concentration of minority students (21 versus 10 percent).
Professional Development
Experts agree that high-quality professional development should enhance student learning (Choy and Ross 1998; Mullens et al. 1996; U.S. Department of Education 1999a), but data permitting an analysis of the relationship are not yet available. In 1998, 99 percent of the nation's public school teachers had participated in some type of professional development program within the past 12 months (U.S. Department of
Education 1999). However, most teachers participated in these activities from only one to eight hours, or for no more than one day. Teachers with three or fewer years of experience were more likely (Lewis et al. 1999) to have reported participating in an induction program in 1998–99 than in 1993–94 (65 versus 59 percent).
Course Content
Research shows that as students take higher-level academic courses they learn more (Raizen and Jones 1985; Sebring 1987). From 1982 to 1998, there was an increase in the percentage of students enrolling in higher-level mathematics and science courses (Wirt et al. 2000). High school graduates in 1998 were more likely than their 1982 counterparts to take more advanced mathematics courses, such as algebra II, trigonometry, precalculus, and calculus. In science, the trend is similar. High school graduates in 1998 were more likely to take chemistry II or physics II and physics I and chemistry I (Wirt et al. 2000). Despite these encouraging signs, the experience is not reflected equally among racial/ethnic and income groups. In 1998, white and Asian/Pacific Islander high school graduates were usually more likely than black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native students to complete advanced academic-level mathematics and the highest-level science courses (Wirt et al. 2000). Students from low-income families were less likely to be enrolled in a college preparatory track through which they would be more likely to take such courses (U.S. Department of Education 1995).
Technology
Research suggests that student learning is enhanced by computers when the computer is used to teach discrete skills (President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology Panel on Educational Technology 1997). Computer availability and usage is increasing in the schools (Anderson and Ronnkvist 1999). In 1999, there was an average of 6 students for each computer, up from a 125 to 1 ratio in 1983 (Coley, Cradler, and Engel 1997; U.S. Department of Education 2000b). Internet access existed at 95 percent of public schools in 1999, up from 35 percent in 1994 (U.S. Department of Education 2000b). Internet access will most likely be used most if the computers are in instructional rooms. Over half (63 percent) of all instructional rooms (classrooms, computer or other labs, and library media centers) had access to the Internet in 1999, up from 3 percent five years before (U.S. Department of Education 2000b). For schools with high concentrations of poverty (more than 70 percent eligible for free or reduced-price lunch), 39 percent of all instructional rooms had Internet access compared with 62 to 74 percent for schools with lower concentrations of poverty (U.S. Department of Education 2000b).
Class Size
Researchers have found that greater gains in student achievement occur in classes with 13 to 20 students compared with larger classes, especially for disadvantaged and minority students (Krueger 1998; Mosteller, Light, and Sachs 1996; Robinson and Wittebols 1986). In 1998, the average public elementary school class had 23 students (Lewis et al. 1999). Large-scale efforts to reduce class size may result in negative consequences if, as was the case recently in California, large numbers of unqualified teachers are hired because there are not enough qualified teachers available to staff the smaller classes (Bohrnstedt and Stecher 1999).
v
Discipline
Researchers have found that a positive disciplinary climate is directly linked to student learning (Barton, Coley, and Wenglinsky 1998; Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990). Research also suggests that the most effective policies to reduce the incidence of offenses in a school vary according to the targeted behavior. To reduce serious incidents, including drug offenses only a policy of severe punishment seems to be effective (Barton, Coley, and Wenglinsky 1998). Serious violent crime incidents, occurred in 10 percent of all public schools in 1996–97 (Kaufman et al. 1999). The level of schoolrelated criminal behavior has changed little between 1976 and 1997, and no differences in victimization rates were found between white and black high school seniors in 1997 (Wirt et al. 1999). However, the percentage of middle and high school students who fear attack or other bodily harm while at school has been on the rise. In each year, a larger proportion of black and Hispanic students than white students feared attacks at school, and the percentage of black students who feared for their safety nearly doubled from 1989 through 1995 (Kaufman et al. 1999).
Academic Organization
Students learn more in schools that emphasize high academic expectations (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990), and academic expectations have been on the rise (Wirt et al. 1998). The percentage of public school districts with graduation requirements that meet or exceed the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) recommendations (four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of science, three years of social studies, and a half year of computer science) increased from 12 to 20 percent between 1987–88 and 1993–94 (Wirt et al. 1998). A common criticism of the NCEE recommendations is that they only specify the number of courses to be taken, not their rigor. But there is evidence that increasing numbers of students have been enrolling in more difficult courses. From 1982 to 1998, there was an increase in the percentage of students enrolling in higher-level mathematics and science courses (Wirt et al. 2000).
SUMMARY
School quality needs to be defined, assessed, and monitored if we are to ensure the existence of quality schools (U.S. Department of Education 1991). This report highlights 13 indicators of school quality that recent research suggests may be related to student learning and identifies where and why more precise measures are needed. These indicators fall into three categories: the characteristics of teachers, the characteristics of classrooms, and the characteristics of schools as organizations. Research suggests that students learn more from teachers with high academic skills and teachers who teach subjects related to their undergraduate or graduate studies than they do from teachers with low academic skills and teachers who teach subjects unrelated to their training. In addition, students, on average, learn more from teachers with three or more years of teaching experience than they do from teachers with less experience. Though the research is less conclusive regarding professional development, experts agree that participation in high-quality professional development should lead to better teaching. At the level of the classroom, research suggests that students benefit from a focused and rigorous curriculum, time spent using computers, and being in smaller classes. We still need to learn more about the relationship between pedagogy and student learning. At the school
level, a school's goals, leadership, faculty, discipline policy, and academic environment are all indicators of school quality. Student learning, however, is thought to occur primarily as a result of students' interaction with teachers, other students, and the curriculum, and the link between learning and these factors is not firmly established for all of these indicators.
Better measures are needed to accurately monitor the status of school quality, especially for indicators of pedagogy, leadership, goals, and professional community. Furthermore, certain important facets of professional development, course content, technology, academic environment, and discipline are missing. Finally, even when quality data are available, they lose their value if they are not appropriately defined and kept up to date. Moreover, even though experts would agree that certain indicators should enhance student learning, there is not always concrete statistical evidence to support their supposition; improving the data collected on the dimensions of schools thought to be associated with school quality should help us better understand the relationship of these indicators to student learning.
The findings documented in this report, like all research, are time sensitive and part of an iterative process. The status of schools as identified by indicators with quality data is changing rapidly and will need to be continually updated. As research on school effectiveness proceeds, indicators with only poor-quality data will need to be improved to understand the complete picture of school quality as recommended by the Special Study Panel on Education Indicators for the National Center for Education Statistics.
I. INDICATORS OF SCHOOL QUALITY
The nation's economic and social health depends on the quality of its schools. If students are not taught the values and social skills necessary to become good citizens and do not learn the academic skills necessary to be economically productive, then the schools have not succeeded in their mission. To ensure the existence of quality schools, school quality needs to be defined, assessed, and monitored (U.S. Department of Education 1991). This is one reason the congressionally mandated Special Study Panel on Education Indicators for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) called for indicator data to be regularly presented to the public "by interpretive reports that place data and analyses within the context of accessible written essays" (U.S. Department of Education 1991, p. 9). The panel called for these reports to focus on six issue areas: (1) school quality, (2) learner outcomes, (3) readiness for school, (4) societal support for learning, (5) education and economic productivity, and (6) equity (U.S. Department of Education 1991, p. 9). This report aims to help fulfill the panel's request in the first issue area, school quality. 1
The report's three primary goals are:
1. Review the literature on school quality to help policymakers and researchers understand what is known about the characteristics of schools that are most likely related to student learning,
2. Identify where national indicator data are currently available and reliable, and
3. Assess the current status of our schools by examining and critiquing these national indicator data.
Student learning is, in part, a function of various characteristics of the schools and the process of schooling. Examining the characteristics of schools that are related to learning illuminates some of the reasons why students are, or are not, learning at optimum levels. In its 1991 report "Education Counts: An Indicator System to Monitor the Nation's Educational Health" (U.S. Department of Education 1991), the NCES panel called for reports that discuss indicators of the health of the nation's education system. Although it is less common to use indicators to measure the quality of schools than to gauge the health of the economy, there are compelling reasons to do so. For example, inflation, unemployment, growth rates, imports and exports, and wage growth are indicators that are looked at both separately and together to gauge the economy's strength. Unemployment might be low while inflation may be high. Each indicator reveals some important information about the economy and none alone tells the whole story. Similarly, school quality is simultaneously related to several characteristics of schools. It is a function of the training and talent of the teaching force, what goes on in the classrooms (including the size of the classes, the topics covered in them, and the pedagogical approaches used in them), and the overall culture and atmosphere within a school.
1 This is the second interpretive report produced by NCES. The first report focused on education and the economy (Decker, Rice, and Moore 1997).
1
Defining school quality is the first step toward measuring and monitoring it. Both social and academic dimensions might be considered. The social includes the attitudes, ambitions, and mental well-being of students, while the academic dimension pertains to student learning. Both are important, but this report responds to the current national concern about academic quality by focusing solely on the school characteristics that have been shown to improve student learning.
Even though this report is concerned with what factors of schools are related to learning, this is not a report about test scores and the standards and accountability movement. This report is, however, still relevant to those interested in standards and accountability. It recognizes that some schools facing the same set of standards and accountability measures as other schools will do better in meeting them. This report tries to identify why this is the case. As the Action Statement from the 1999 National Education Summit noted, "Raising standards and developing tests may have been the easiest part of the journey; the more daunting task is ensuring that all students reach these standards"(1999 National Education Summit 1999). Because some schools do perform better than others, this report looks at the components that have been found to be linked to student learning and that may influence whether schools are successful in helping their students meet state and local standards.
Although most of the indicator data presented and critiqued in the report are national in scope, the report is intended to be useful to state and local policymakers and researchers. The data review will provide those interested in state and local data with an idea of what comparable data are needed to monitor state and local systems.
A. THE SCHOOL QUALITY LITERATURE
When thinking about what researchers have learned about school quality, it is useful to go back to the debate started by the "Equality of Educational Opportunity"report (Coleman et al. 1966), better known as the Coleman Report. This large national study sent shock waves through the education community when it concluded that measurable characteristics of teachers and schools are not significantly related to student achievement. Protracted debate has surrounded these findings, and numerous subsequent studies both support and refute the Coleman finding. The most comprehensive support, and the most widely cited, is Hanushek's (1986) review of the findings from 38 quantitative studies of the determinants of student achievement. These studies assessed the impact of the teacher/pupil ratio, teacher education, teacher experience, teacher salary, expenditures per pupil, administrative inputs, and facilities. Hanushek concludes that among these studies, "There appears to be no strong or systematic relationship between school expenditures and student performance" (Hanushek 1986, p. 1,162).
Many researchers do not accept Hanushek's conclusions. For example, Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald (Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald 1994) claim that his findings rest on inappropriate statistical methods and poor data. They conducted two separate studies to support their claim. In the first study, they reanalyzed studies Hanushek used and found a "positive relationship between dollars spent on education and output" that "is large enough to be of practical importance" (Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald 1994, p. 5). 2
2 The authors report that some of the studies used by Hanushek were excluded because they did not provide enough information to use in their analysis. The excluded studies were those that reported nonsignificant resource effects and did not report the sign of the coefficient.
To address the data quality limitations that they argue exist in Hanushek's work, Greenwald, Hedges, and Laine (1996) replicated the 1994 analysis using a more refined set of studies. The findings from this study bolster those from their earlier work.
Although Hanushek and Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald come to different conclusions, even Hanushek agrees that the data show that "teachers and schools differ dramatically in their effectiveness" (1986, p. 1,159). In more than 30 years of research and study on schooling and the educational process since the Coleman Report, a conclusive understanding of the definitive features of quality schools has yet to be found. However, it is apparent that no single factor guarantees school quality. As this report makes evident, school quality depends on multiple, interdependent elements. Furthermore, as discussed throughout this report, research also suggests that one of the main reasons some studies have failed to detect why schools differ in their effectiveness is because they use poor measures of school quality, and/or they entirely exclude certain elements essential to quality. This report identifies where more precise measures are needed and which phenomena have not been adequately addressed.
B. USING MORE PRECISE MEASURES
The need for more precise measures is evident when considering teacher qualifications. Numerous studies examine the relationship between teacher qualifications and student learning, but usually they measure whether teachers are certified, whether they have master's degrees, and how long they have taught. When teacher qualifications are measured in these ways, the evidence that they make a difference in school quality is inconsistent. This may be because these measures lack specificity. For example, knowing whether a teacher is certified or whether a teacher has a master's degree does not reveal anything about whether a teacher is well educated in the subject he or she is teaching. Many teachers with master's degrees are assigned to teach courses for which they have had no training. In addition, with the exception of brand new teachers, knowing how many years a teacher has taught tells us little about the teacher's skills. On average, researchers have not found a discernible difference between teachers with 5, 10, 15, or 20 years of experience. As will be discussed in the next chapter, recent research suggests that more precise measures of teacher training, experience, and skills are stronger predictors of student learning and school quality.
C. USING NEW MEASURES
Different aspects of the schooling process that may also be related to quality have traditionally been understudied in national data-collection efforts. For example, differences in student performance may well have to do with content coverage and instructional practice (how teachers deliver the content), but until very recently, data on classroom practices were in short supply in part because policymakers and researchers emphasized an input-output model when studying schools and because these attributes of the schooling process are harder to measure than traditional input indicators. As of the mid-1980s, reports began to highlight the importance of delving deeper into what schools actually do (see, for example, McKnight et al. 1987; Powell, Farrar, and Cohen 1985; U.S. Department of Education 1983). The late 1980s marked the first time that researchers and policy makers began to push for routine data collection on the schooling process (Murnane and Raizen 1988; Porter 1991; Shavelson et al. 1987; U.S.
Figure 1.1—
School quality indicators and their relationship to student learning
School Context
• School Leadership
• Goals
• Professional Community
• Discipline
• Academic Environment
Classrooms
• Course Content
• Pedagogy
• Technology
• Class Size
Teachers
• Teacher Academic Skills
• Teaching Assignment
• Teacher Experience
• Professional Development
STUDENT LEARNING
Department of Education 1988) and national data are just now becoming available (see, for example, Hawkins, Stancavage, and Dossey 1998; Henke, Chen, and Goldman 1999).
D. IDENTIFYING INDICATORS OF SCHOOL QUALITY
This report highlights 13 indicators of school quality that recent research suggests are related to student learning and identifies where and why more precise measures are needed. These indicators are presented in Figure 1.1 and are categorized as the characteristics of teachers, the characteristics of classrooms, and the characteristics of schools as organizations. The figure illustrates that these school quality factors can affect student learning both directly and indirectly. For example, school context characteristics like school leadership can have an impact on teachers and what they are able to accomplish in the classroom, and this in turn may influence student learning. In addition, various teacher-level attributes can affect the quality of the classroom and in turn student learning. Traits at each of these levels can also directly affect student learning.
The report discusses each of these levels (school, teacher, classroom) in a separate chapter. The indicators in the chapter on teachers include the academic skills of teachers, teaching assignments, teacher experience, and exposure to professional development opportunities. Regarding classrooms, the indicators include content coverage, pedagogy, technology, and class size. The chapter on school organization addresses how a school's goals, leadership, faculty, discipline policy, and academic environment are indicators of school quality.
Each chapter begins with a review of the literature highlighting the particular aspects that have been found to be associated with student learning and merit tracking. After identifying why a particular aspect qualifies as an indicator, relevant data pertaining to the status of that indicator are presented. In cases where inadequate data exist, the report discusses why the data are limited and makes recommendations for improving these data.
II. TEACHERS
In the summer of 1998 when about half the prospective Massachusetts teachers failed the state's new licensing exam, a discussion about the implications ensued in the national media (Sandham 1998; Sterling 1998). What was this test measuring? Why did so many teachers fail? Are the prospective teachers who failed unqualified to teach? What does this say about the profession as a whole? Who should be allowed to teach in the public schools?
Some researchers suggest that school quality might be inseparable from teacher quality, implying that education reformers in Massachusetts and other states may need to use tough licensing exams or other teacher-related reforms to make meaningful changes in the schools. According to Hanushek (1992), "The estimated difference in annual achievement growth between having a good and having a bad teacher can be more than one grade-level equivalent in test performance" (p. 107). Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain recently concluded in one study that teacher quality is the most important determinant of school quality:
The issue of whether or not there is significant variation in the quality of schools has lingered, quite inappropriately, since the original Coleman Report. This analysis identifies large differences in the quality of schools in a way that rules out the possibility that they are driven by nonschool factors ... we conclude that the most significant [source of achievement variation] is ... teacher quality ... (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 1998, p. 32)
And yet, even though these researchers found that teacher quality is important, their data sets did not contain enough information to allow them to explain what exactly makes one teacher more or less effective than another (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 1998). Other studies, as will be discussed below, suggest that to ensure excellence, teachers should:
* Have high academic skills,
* Be required to teach in the field in which they received their training,
* Have more than a few years of experience (to be most effective), and
* Participate in high-quality induction and professional development programs.
A. INDICATOR 1: THE ACADEMIC SKILLS OF TEACHERS
Many studies show that students learn more from teachers with strong academic skills than they do from teachers with weak academic skills (Ballou 1996; Ehrenberg and Brewer 1994; 1995; Ferguson 1991; Ferguson and Ladd 1996; Mosteller and Moynihan 1972). Because measures of teachers' academic skills are not routinely collected, the number of studies that look at this relationship is limited, and each uses a slightly different measurement method. The findings, however, are so consistent that there is broad agreement that teachers' academic skills are linked to student learning (Hanushek 1996; Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald 1994). This is not to say that academic skills perfectly predict how well a person will teach. Some educators argue that teacher quality has less
to do with how well teachers perform on standardized tests than with how they perform in the classroom (Darling-Hammond 1998). In fact, classroom observation is the traditional way of assessing teacher quality. Obviously, several other traits not measured on standardized tests (such as interpersonal skills, public speaking skills, and enthusiasm for working with children) influence whether someone will be an effective teacher, but to date the only way these traits are systematically assessed is through formal classroom observation. Because these data are hard to quantify, most studies that have examined the link between teacher skills and student learning limit their definition of teacher skills to academic skills. We now will look at the findings from three of the most recent studies in this area.
Ehrenberg and Brewer (1994) investigated whether the quality of a teacher's undergraduate institution is related to student learning. Controlling for student and teacher background characteristics such as race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, they found that the higher the quality of the institution a teacher attended, as measured by admission selectivity, the more students learned over the course of two years. 3 To the extent that the quality of a teacher's undergraduate institution is correlated with the academic skills of the teacher, this finding suggests that the more able teachers have students with higher scores.
Ferguson (1998) and Ferguson and Ladd (1996) used a more direct measure of the academic skills of teachers—their scores on standardized tests. These studies used statespecific data sets and, after controlling for several community and teacher characteristics such as race/ethnicity, found that higher teacher test scores are positively correlated with higher student test scores. Ferguson used Texas district-level data (from about 900 school districts) to measure the relationship between the average basic literacy skills of the teachers in a district and student learning gains over two years on mathematics tests. Ferguson reported that a one standard deviation change in the literacy skills of teachers would be associated with a 0.16 standard deviation increase in high school students' learning and a 0.18 standard deviation increase in elementary school students' learning. 4,5
3 The data come from the High School and Beyond (HS&B) study's 1984 supplementary teacher and administrative survey. This survey contains information about the undergraduate institutions teachers attended. The authors then linked these institutions to an admissions selectivity scale presented in Barron's (1984) and ranked the teachers' undergraduate institutions on a six-point scale ranging from most selective to least selective.
4 When reviewing the research literature, this report will include an estimate, whenever possible, of how much of a boost in student learning or achievement is associated with a change in a particular component of school quality. These "effect size" estimates are presented as a fraction of a standard deviation so that they can be compared across studies. For example, if two different studies both find an effect size of 0.25, then it can be concluded that the size, or magnitude, of the effect on student learning is similar across studies. In education (and the behavioral sciences as a whole), when studies find effects, they tend to be modest in size, in the range of 0.10 or 0.20 of a standard deviation (Lipsey and Wilson 1993). As useful as effect size estimates are, there are unfortunately numerous important studies pertaining to school quality that do not provide enough information to allow for effect size estimates to be constructed. The relevance of all studies used in this report will be made clear in the chapters that follow, whether effect size estimates are presented or not.
5 How can the magnitude of an effect size in standard deviation units be interpreted? If student test scores are normally distributed across a population and the average student scores better than 50 percent of that population, an effect size of 0.10 would boost the average student's score to be better than 54 percent of the population. An effect size of 0.25 would boost it to be better than 60 percent of the population, and an effect size of 0.50 would boost it to be better than 69 percent of the population.
In Alabama, Ferguson and Ladd had test scores from the teachers of almost 30,000 fourth-grade students in 690 schools. The scores were from the ACT exams the teachers took when they applied for college. Over the course of one year, Ferguson and Ladd found that a one standard deviation difference in a school's distribution of teacher ACT scores was associated with a 0.10 of a standard deviation change in the distribution of that school's fourth-grade reading test scores.
What cumulative impact will raising the overall academic caliber of teachers have on student learning from grade 1 through grade 12? Unfortunately, this is currently unknown. Even though the effect sizes reported in these two studies are modest, they show impacts only over a one- and two-year period. Do students who are annually taught by higher-caliber teachers receive persistent advantages (beyond two years) compared with their counterparts in lower-caliber teachers' classrooms? Are these gains of the same magnitude year after year? If there are annual gains, the effect sizes presented above may greatly underestimate the benefit students would receive throughout their schooling from being taught by more academically able teachers.
Given that students learn more from teachers with strong academic skills than they do from teachers with weak academic skills, it would be useful to monitor the academic strength of the teaching force. How do the academic skills of teachers compare with other professionals? Is the academic talent of teachers distributed evenly among different types of schools?
Several studies show that over the past three decades, teachers with low academic skills have been entering the profession in much higher numbers than teachers with high academic skills (Ballou 1996; Gitomer, Latham, and Ziomek 1999; Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000; Henke, Geis, and Giambattista 1996; Murnane et al. 1991; Vance and Schlechty 1982). 6
Murnane et al. (1991) found that entering teacher IQ scores declined from the 1960s through the 1980s. In 1967, graduates with IQ scores of 100 and 130 were equally likely to become teachers, but by 1980, the ratio was 4 to 1. 7 In other words, in 1967, for every four graduates with an IQ of 100 who entered the teaching profession, there were four graduates with an IQ of 130 who entered the profession. In 1980, for every four graduates with an IQ of 100 who entered the profession, there was only one graduate with an IQ of 130. Vance and Schlechty found that in the 1970s teaching attracted and retained a disproportionately high share of college graduates with low SAT scores and failed to attract and retain those with high SAT scores (Vance and Schlechty 1982). 8
Evidence suggests that these trends have persisted into the 1990s. Ballou (1996) found that the higher the quality of the undergraduate institution attended, as measured by
6 Two studies (Bruschi and Coley 1999; Rollefson and Smith 1997) using one data source, the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), found that in 1992, the teachers in the U.S. schools had literacy skills similar to those of professionals in several other occupations for which a bachelor's degree is a prerequisite. These professionals included physicians, engineers, postsecondary teachers, writers, and artists. The NALS data differ from the data used in these other studies in that they pertain to (Bruschi and Coley 1999; Rollefson and Smith 1997) literacy skills, as opposed to a more general set of academic skills, and to the skills of existing teachers, not the skills of new entrants.
7 This study used the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience. These surveys contain nationally representative information on individual characteristics, education, employment, and teaching status.
8 This study used the National Longitudinal Study of 1972 high school seniors.
the Barron's admissions selectivity scale, the less likely a student is to prepare to become a teacher and enter the teaching profession. Ballou used the Surveys of Recent College Graduates to sort students by the selectivity of their undergraduate institutions (the ratings range from selective to below average) and then examined the rate at which students at these different types of institutions took the courses necessary to become certified teachers, applied for a teaching job, and actually became teachers. Figure 2.1 shows that the less selective the college, the more likely that students at that college will prepare for and enter the teaching profession. 9 Ballou concluded, "Thus, certification, application, and employment levels all rise monotonically as college quality declines" (1996, p. 103).
Ballou's study was not the only study to use 1990s data to suggest that the teaching profession attracts those with lower academic skills. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) found that this was true for most of the prospective teachers taking the Praxis II exam between 1994 and 1997 (Gitomer, Latham, and Ziomek 1999). When comparing the average SAT scores for teacher candidates passing the Praxis II exam with the average SAT score for all college graduates, ETS concluded that elementary education candidates, the largest single group of prospective teachers, have much lower math and verbal scores. The pattern in other content areas for teacher candidates was less consistent. The average math SAT score for those passing the Praxis II exam and seeking licensure in physical education, special education, art and music, social studies, English, or foreign language was lower than the average math score for all college graduates. Those seeking to teach science and math, however, had higher average math
9 This figure includes pooled data from the six administrations of the Surveys of Recent College Graduates that occurred between 1976 and 1991.
scores. The average verbal SAT scores were more encouraging. The scores of mathematics, social studies, foreign language, science, and English candidates who passed the Praxis II exam were as high or higher than the average verbal SAT score for all college graduates. Physical education, special education, and art and music teachers scored below the average.
A limitation of this analysis is that it provides data only on candidates, not actual teachers. As Ballou's data in Figure 2.1 show, there are large drop-offs in the pipeline. For example, while 20 percent of students from average colleges became certified to teach, 17 percent applied for teaching jobs, and 8 percent actually became employed as teachers. Given such large drop-offs in the pipeline, we cannot just assume that those who pass the Praxis examination have the same characteristics as those who actually end up teaching.
Recent studies, using data from the 1993 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, provide a more comprehensive picture of the pipeline from preparation to employment (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000; Henke, Geis, and Giambattista 1996). These studies found that the college entrance examination scores of the 1992–93 college graduates in the teaching pipeline (defined by NCES as students who had prepared to teach, who were teaching, or who were considering teaching) were lower than those students who were not in the pipeline."At each step toward a long-term career in teaching, those who were more inclined to teach scored less well than those less inclined to teach" (1996, p. 21). For example, as shown in Figure 2.2, by 1997 the 1992–93 college graduates in this study with the highest college entrance examination scores were consistently less likely than their peers with lower scores to prepare to teach, and when they did teach, they were less likely to teach students from disadvantaged backgrounds:
* Graduates whose college entrance examination scores were in the top quartile were half as likely as those in the bottom quartile to prepare to teach (9 versus 18 percent).
* Teachers in the top quartile were more than twice as likely as teachers in the bottom quartile to teach in private schools (26 versus 10 percent).
* Teachers in the top quartile were at least one-third as likely as teachers in the bottom quartile to teach in high-poverty schools (10 versus 31 percent).
* Graduates in the top quartile who did teach were twice as likely as those in the bottom quartile to leave the profession within less than four years (32 versus 16 percent) (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000).
These studies show a consistent trend and suggest that there is a need to monitor closely the supply and distribution of teacher academic skills. Unfortunately, the national data on teacher academic skills currently available are limited by their lack of specificity, timeliness, generalizability, and ability to link to student performance. The Survey of Recent College Graduates ascertains the academic quality of the undergraduate institution a person attended, but it does not reveal whether the person was in the top or bottom of the academic distribution at that institution. The National Adult Literacy Study and the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study provide information about how teachers' academic skills compare with those of other professionals, but neither study allows for a link to student performance. While some currently available data give a more direct measure of an individual teacher's academic ability and can be linked to student test scores (Ferguson 1998; Ferguson and Ladd 1996), the data are not collected routinely and are limited to a few states. Better nationally representative data are needed to gauge several aspects: how the academic caliber of teachers compares with that of other professionals; how the existing teaching talent is distributed throughout the country; and how teachers' academic skills have a cumulative impact on student academic performance.
B. INDICATOR 2: TEACHER ASSIGNMENT
Many teachers are currently teaching courses they were not trained to teach, and this appears to affect student achievement adversely (Darling-Hammond 2000; Goldhaber and Brewer 1997; Monk and King 1994). Though several studies show mixed results concerning the relationship between teacher degree and student test scores, most of these studies simply assess whether a teacher has a master's degree (for a review of the results from these studies see Greenwald, Hedges, and Laine 1996; Hanushek 1989) and do not identify the subject in which the degree was received or the type of training a teacher received.
Goldhaber and Brewer (1997), Darling-Hammond (2000), and Monk and King (1994) found that subject matter preparation is related to student achievement even after controlling for relevant teacher and student background and contextual variables such as race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Goldhaber and Brewer (1997) confirmed this significant relationship in mathematics and science but found no effect in English and history. 10 Teachers with bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics are associated with higher student mathematics test scores. Teachers with bachelor's degrees in science
10 This study uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 to look at the relationship between teacher characteristics and student achievement scores of 10th grade students.
are associated with higher student science scores. The effect size in both instances is about 0.10 of a standard deviation. 11
Monk and King (1994) looked at the relationship between the preparation of mathematics and science teachers and student learning. Using nationally representative data, 12 they measured preparation by counting the number of graduate and undergraduate courses teachers took in their field. Monk and King found that, in some instances, high school students' mathematics and science test scores are associated with the subjectmatter preparation of their teachers. (They did not examine English or history test scores.) The results for mathematics, however, are stronger and larger when they include the cumulative mathematics preparation of all the mathematics teachers that students had in both their sophomore and junior years in high school. The students who scored below the median on a pretest appeared to reap the most benefits. Cumulative effects were not found in science.
Darling-Hammond (2000) conducted a state-level analysis examining the relationship between teacher preparation and 4th and 8th grade student achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress math and reading exams.After controlling for the percentage of students in poverty, the percentage who have limited English proficiency, average class size, and the percentage of teachers with master's degrees, she found that "the proportion of well-qualified teachers (those holding state certification and the equivalent of a major in the field taught) is by far the most important determinant of student achievement" (p. 27).
Given the apparent benefits students receive from being taught by well-qualified teachers, it is worth assessing the extent to which students are taught by teachers who are teaching without the proper qualifications. A frequently cited measure of whether a teacher is unqualified is one that determines whether a teacher is teaching out-of-field or teaching subjects that he or she was not trained to teach (Ingersoll 1999). Because this occurs mainly in the secondary and not the elementary grades (Bobbitt and McMillen 1994; Henke et al. 1997), this discussion focuses on the secondary level. There are two steps to defining out-of-field teaching: defining field of expertise and determining the number of courses taught by those without the proper qualifications or training. Some believe a secondary teacher's field is defined by the teacher's undergraduate or graduate major or minor. If she majored or minored in mathematics, her field is mathematics. Others argue that field should be defined as the subject in which the teacher is state certified, independent of her major or minor. Still others think that a teacher's field should be defined by the combination of major and minor and certification. A math teacher, for example, would have to have both majored in mathematics and been certified to teach in mathematics. Several reports present data pertaining to each of these definitions (Bobbitt and McMillen 1994; Henke et al. 1997; Ingersoll 1999), but there is some consensus that having an undergraduate or graduate major or minor is a minimal requirement (Ingersoll 1999), and that definition is used in the following discussion.
11 The effect size estimates presented here differ slightly from those presented in the paper cited because the estimates in the paper were incorrect (personal communication with Goldhaber, March 1999). Both sets of estimates were calculated using the coefficients presented in Table 3 of the paper. However, the estimates in their paper were calculated using the coefficients in columns one and two for mathematics and three and four for science. Because columns one and three present misspecified models, the effect sizes should have been calculated using column two for mathematics and column four for science.
12 The Longitudinal Study of American Youth.
After defining in-field and out-of-field, researchers can estimate by field the extent of out-of-field teaching. There are three ways to measure and report out-of-field teaching. First, researchers have commonly reported these numbers at the teacher level (Bobbitt and McMillen 1994; Henke et al. 1997; Ingersoll 1999; Lewis et al. 1999). They report, for example, the percentage of teachers teaching mathematics who do not have the proper training ("the percent of teachers teaching math out-of-field"). However, because most teachers who teach out-of-field do not teach all of their courses out-offield, this approach either underestimates or overestimates the problem. Researchers have used two imperfect teacher-level definitions of out-of-field teaching, neither of which can accurately account for the fact that teachers are often only partially out-offield: the "any-mismatch" approach and the "main-assignment" approach (Bobbitt and McMillen 1994; Henke et al. 1997; Ingersoll 1999). The "any-mismatch" approach labels teachers as out-of-field if they are teaching at least one course that does not match their field (however field is defined). The "main-assignment" approach labels teachers as outof-field only if most of the courses they teach do not match their field. For example, a teacher who is certified in social studies and teaches four of her five courses in social studies and one of her five courses in math would be considered teaching out-of-field in math when using the first approach ("any-mismatch") but not the second approach ("main-assignment"). Consequently, the "main-assignment" approach underestimates the magnitude of the "out-of-field" phenomenon (Bobbitt and McMillen 1994; Lewis et al. 1999) because it counts this teacher as teaching in-field even though she is teaching math out-of-field. Conversely, the "any-mismatch" approach overestimates the magnitude of the problem because it counts this teacher as an out-of-field math teacher even though she is teaching only one math course (not her entire course load) out-of-field. Precisely because teachers usually do not teach all of their courses out-of-field, it is not optimal to assess the percentage of teachers teaching out-of-field in a given subject.
The other two approaches come closer to assessing the true magnitude of the out-offield phenomenon. It is more informative to assess what percentage of courses in given subjects are taught by out-of-field teachers and, because not all classes have the same numbers of students, the percentage of students in given subjects taught by out-of-field teachers. These two measures identify for policy makers the extent of the qualified teacher shortfall and will pinpoint the percentage of students affected by the problem.
The percentage-of-courses measure has not been used in prior analyses of national data. The percentage-of-student measure has been generated (Bobbitt and McMillen 1994; Ingersoll 1999), but unfortunately it has not been generated using the most recently available data (the 1993–94 Schools and Staffing Survey and the 1999 Teacher Quality Survey) . The most recently available student-level analyses provides data from the 1990–91 school year (Bobbitt and McMillen 1994; Ingersoll 1999). This analysis shows that 14 percent of social studies students, 23 percent of English/language arts students, 18 percent of science students, and 30 percent of mathematics students in public secondary schools (grades 7 through 12) were taught by teachers who did not major or minor in these fields (Bobbitt and McMillen 1994).
Unlike some of the other indicators discussed in this report (such as indicators of pedagogy and school leadership discussed in subsequent chapters), measuring out-of-field teaching is relatively straightforward. Even though there are various ways to define "qualified," the types of survey questions needed to assess training and certification are known. And even though there are various ways to count how many courses are taught by unqualified teachers, there are meaningful measures that can be constructed. As new
data become available from the 2000–01 Schools and Staffing Survey and the 2000 Teacher Quality Survey, student and course-level estimates will be the most meaningful and precise estimates of the extent of in-field and out-of-field teaching.
C. INDICATOR 3: TEACHER EXPERIENCE
Studies suggest that students learn more from experienced teachers than they do from less experienced teachers. Murnane and Phillips (1981) reported that in a large city in the Midwest, after controlling for other student and teacher characteristics such as race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, children taught by a teacher with five years of experience make three to four months' more progress in reading skills during a school year than do children taught by a first-year teacher. A more recent study conducted by Rivkin, Hanushek and Kain (1998) found that 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students in more experienced teachers' classrooms in Texas over the course of one year gained about 0.10 of a standard deviation in reading and math compared with their peers in classrooms where teachers had less than two years of experience. The benefits of experience, however, appear to level off after 5 years, and there are no noticeable differences, for example, in the effectiveness of a teacher with 5 years of experience versus a teacher with 10 years of experience (Darling-Hammond 2000). However, teachers with 5 or 10 years of experience are more effective than new teachers.
Though it is impossible to limit the teaching force only to experienced teachers, the effects of new teachers may be diffused and reduced if new teachers are evenly distributed among the schools, and proper assistance is given to new teachers.
As of 1998, teachers with three or fewer years of experience were not spread evenly among different types of schools. Figure 2.3 shows that the highest-poverty schools
and schools with the highest concentrations of minority students (those in the top quartile) have a higher proportion of inexperienced teachers than schools with lower levels of poverty and lower numbers of minority students (those in the three other quartiles). The highest-poverty schools and schools with the highest concentrations of minority students had nearly double the proportion of inexperienced teachers as schools with the lowest poverty (20 versus 11 percent) and lowest concentration of minority students (21 versus 10 percent). One likely cause for this overrepresentation of inexperienced teachers is that teacher attrition disproportionately affects highpoverty schools (Henke et al. 1997).
D. INDICATOR 4: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The quality of the teaching force may depend on the opportunities for development presented to those already teaching because entering teachers make up a minority of the teaching corps. Even though experts would likely agree that professional development should enhance student learning, there is no concrete statistical evidence of an association. This lack of statistical evidence may be because the quality of the data pertaining to professional development needs to be improved to understand more about its relationship with student learning.
In the 1980s and 1990s, large numbers of teachers left the profession within the first few years of entering it. For example, between the 1993–94 and 1994–95 school years, the most recent years in which national attrition data exist, 17 percent of teachers with three or fewer years of experience left the profession. Nine percent left after teaching for less than one year. And, as noted above, a disproportionately high share left highpoverty schools.
Further studies using both state and national data have shown that the most academically able teachers are the most likely to leave the profession in the first few years (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000; Heyns 1988; Murnane and Olsen 1990; Vance and Schlechty 1982). This compounds the problem identified above that the most academically talented may be the least likely to enter the profession in the first place (Ballou 1996; Haney, Madaus, and Kreitzer 1987; Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000; Heyns 1988; Murnane and Olsen 1990; Vance and Schlechty 1982). In addition, as discussed in the school chapter below, high teacher attrition may negatively affect a school's professional community and student learning.
In several administrations of the Schools and Staffing Survey (1988–89, 1991–92, 1994–95), teachers who reported "dissatisfaction with teaching as a career" as one of the three main reasons for leaving teaching were asked what specifically they were dissatisfied with. Among the top concerns cited in each survey were "inadequate support from administration,""poor student motivation to learn," and "student discipline problems" (Whitener et al. 1997).
To keep young teachers committed to the profession and to help them learn the trade, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (1996) recommends that schools institute induction programs. The commission suggests that these programs should be modeled on the residency programs used in medicine and should include the pairing of beginning teachers with skilled mentors. Formal induction programs appear to be on the rise. For example, teachers with three or fewer years of experience were more likely to have reported participating in an induction program in 1998–99 than in
1993–94 (65 versus 59 percent) (Lewis et al. 1999). Little is known about the form these programs take, whether they will help novice teachers teach better, or whether they will stem attrition.
Veteran teachers also have professional development needs. Several reports have asserted that teachers will perform better if they are given opportunities to sharpen their skills and keep abreast of advances in their field (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000; National Commission on Teaching and America's Future 1996), though a comprehensive assessment of the availability of such learning opportunities and their impact on teachers and students has yet to be done (Mullens et al. 1996; Smylie 1996).
Nevertheless, several reform initiatives have noted that "professional development" (PD) should play a central role in improving the schools (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future 1996; National Education Goals Panel 1995; National Foundation for the Improvement of Education 1996). The National Education Goals Panel endorsed high-quality professional development in 1994 by setting the following goal: "the nation's teaching force will have access to programs for the continued improvement of their professional skills and the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to instruct and prepare all American students for the next century" (National Education Goals Panel 1995, p. 93).
Part of the reason for this support is that a high percentage of the teaching force consists of teachers who received their initial training more than 20 years ago. In 1998, 64 percent of public school teachers had 10 or more years of experience, and 39 percent had 20 or more (Lewis et al. 1999). In other words, without formal PD initiatives, a substantial number of teachers might be uninformed about key advances that have occurred in the field of education since they received their initial training. PD advocates believe that the overall quality of the nation's teachers depends on teachers being given the opportunity to learn about new theories of teaching and learning, changes in the student population, and how to use new technologies (such as computers and the Internet) in their classrooms (Choy and Ross 1998; National Education Goals Panel 1995; National Foundation for the Improvement of Education 1996).
There is broad consensus about the elements that constitute an effective professional development program (CPRE Policy Brief 1995; National Commission on Teaching and America's Future 1996; National Foundation for the Improvement of Education 1996; U.S. Department of Education 1999a). The National Education Goals Panel cited several of these elements in its list of "principles of high quality professional development programs" (Goals 2000 1999, p. 2). Successful programs:
* Focus on individual, collegial, and organizational improvement,
* Promote continuous inquiry and improvement embedded in the daily life of schools,
* Are planned collaboratively by those who will participate in and facilitate that development,
* Require substantial time and other resources, and
* Are driven by a coherent long-term plan.
In addition to these five principles, research by Cohen and Hill (2000) suggests that professional development activities that are tightly linked to well-defined instructional goals result in improved teaching. To date, the degree to which PD activities across the
country embrace these principles is unknown. Current data tell us mostly about the prevalence of PD, but not much about its structure and quality.
What is known is that PD is ubiquitous in public schools. In 1998, 99 percent of the nation's public school teachers had participated within the previous 12 months in at least one of the eight PD activities listed in Figure 2.4. NCES concluded that these patterns indicated that teachers were engaged in professional development activities consistent with guidelines stipulated in recent education reforms (Lewis et al. 1999). However, as Figure 2.5 illustrates, the majority of teachers participated in these activities from one to eight hours, or for no more than one day. Thus, most teachers are not engaged in PD on particular topics for substantial amounts of time.
Beyond topic coverage and time spent within topic areas, national surveys reveal little about the caliber of PD activities. Additional data are needed to assess whether any of these teachers, even those who are participating in PD activities that last longer than eight hours, are engaged in activities that are part of a larger process of staff renewal and enhancement consistent with the broadly accepted principles listed above.
E. SUMMARY
If, as Hanushek (1992) has suggested, teacher quality can translate into a difference in annual student achievement growth of more than one grade level, then teacher quality may be among the most important issues to consider when thinking about school quality.Numerous studies examine the relationship between teacher qualifications and student learning, but teacher qualifications are most commonly measured in these studies by looking at whether teachers are certified and whether they have master's degrees.These measures of teacher qualifications do not appear to be related to school quality, perhaps because they lack specificity. Current research using more precise measures suggests that teacher quality with respect to student outcomes might be improved if teachers'academic skills are improved,if more teachers teach in the field in which they received their training, and possibly if teachers participate in high-quality professional development activities related to content.
National data show that poor children receive less than their fair share of high-quality teachers. The academic skills of incoming teachers are relatively weak compared with the average college student; many teachers,especially math teachers,are teaching subjects they were not trained in; and many teachers do not experience sustained professional development experiences to help them grow and learn on the job. And quality among the current teaching corps is not evenly distributed throughout the nation. High-poverty schools and high-minority schools have a disproportionately high share of inexperienced teachers relative to low-poverty and low-minority schools; and high-poverty schools have a disproportionately high share of academically weak teachers relative to low-poverty schools.
III. CLASSROOMS
Within the classroom, the curriculum is the cornerstone of the academic experience. According to researchers who worked on the Second International Mathematics Study, the curriculum has three levels (McKnight et al. 1987):
* The intended curriculum, which is defined by officials at the state and local levels;
* The implemented curriculum, which is how teachers translate the intended curriculum into practice; and
* The attained curriculum, which is what students learn as represented by their scores on standardized tests.
The intended curriculum consists of the topics that teachers are expected to teach. Curriculum topics are often prescribed by content standards set by states and local school districts; those standards are frequently influenced by national organizations such as the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics and the National Academy of Sciences. The intended curriculum is represented most directly by the curriculum materials provided to teachers: curriculum guides, textbooks, videos, computer software, and other curriculum-related items. Because the intended curriculum is, at best, a set of goals for what teachers and students address in the classroom, the intended curriculum has limited value to those interested in knowing how those goals are implemented and how they relate to student learning.
The implemented curriculum includes that part of the intended curriculum that is actually taught, the instructional practices and tools employed, and the conditions under which those things happen. It has direct implications for how course content is covered, how much time is available for other topics, and, ultimately, how much and how well students might learn. Aspects of the implemented curriculum that might reflect school quality include not only the content of the implemented curriculum (the curriculum topics actually addressed in the classroom), but also the pedagogy (or instructional practices), the materials and equipment (such as technology), and the conditions under which the curriculum is implemented (such as the number of students in the class). Furthermore, each must be related to student learning.
The attained curriculum is the final product of that part of the intended curriculum that was implemented. These three linked levels of curriculum become a classroom inputoutput model where the intended curriculum represents the inputs, the attained curriculum equals the outputs, and the implemented curriculum is the black box of the classroom and what happens inside it. In this model, the implemented curriculum has the greatest potential variation and is projected to be the only direct effect on student learning.
Inadequate data, however, make it difficult to measure the impact of the implemented curriculum on student learning. Before the mid-1980s, nationally representative studies (such as High School and Beyond and the National Assessment of Educational Progress) limited their data collection to elements of the intended curriculum and other inputs, such as per-pupil spending, course titles, and teacher salaries. Then several reports highlighted the importance of determining what happens in classrooms by studying elements of the implemented curriculum, such as curricular content, instructional strategies, and organization (McKnight et al. 1987; Powell, Farrar, and Cohen
III. Classrooms
1985; U.S. Department of Education 1983). Therefore, in the late 1980s, researchers and policymakers began for the first time to push for the regular collection of data that provide information on the schooling process (Murnane and Raizen 1988; Shavelson et al. 1987; U.S. Department of Education 1988).
Policymakers and researchers believe that four elements of the implemented curriculum hold the most promise for gaining insight into the relationship between classrooms and student learning: course content, instructional practices or style, classroom technology, and class size. The remainder of this chapter discusses findings from research and issues related to collecting data on these aspects of classrooms.
A. INDICATOR 5: COURSE CONTENT
Concerns about content in both the intended and implemented curriculum and how a lack of focus in the U.S. curriculum affects student achievement have appeared in influential studies since the early 1980s. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) concluded:
Secondary school curricula have been homogenized, diluted, and diffused to the point that they no longer have a central purpose. In effect, we have a cafeteria-style curriculum in which the appetizers and desserts can easily be mistaken for the main courses. Students have migrated from vocational and college preparatory programs to "general track" courses in large numbers. The proportion of students taking a general program of study has increased from 12 percent in 1964 to 42 percent in 1979. This curricular smorgasbord, combined with extensive student choice, explains a great deal about where we find ourselves today (U.S. Department of Education 1983, p. 18).
The NCEE recommended that the curriculum be brought under control by requiring high school students to take the "Five New Basics:" four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of science, three years of social studies, and a half year of computer science. While these recommendations were advanced for the times, they were stated only in terms of numbers of courses, not about particular courses or the rigor or topics within a course. The authors of The Shopping Mall High School seemed to note this distinction: "High schools seem unlikely to make marked improvement, especially for the many students and teachers now drifting around ... until there is a much clearer sense of what is most important to teach and learn, and why, and how it can best be done" (Powell, Farrar, and Cohen 1985, p. 306).
Does a lack of content focus result in poor performance? "Yes," according to an analysis of results from the Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS) in the early 1980s. An analysis of the curriculum guides from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) countries in the early 1990s also provides some useful data, though links to achievement are not clear-cut. In both studies, U.S. 8th and 12th graders scored low on international comparisons in math and science. 13 In 1987, McKnight et al. directed the blame at a diffuse curriculum:
13 Research scientists suggest there are clear limitations in using SIMS and TIMSS data to make international comparisons in that neither study design adequately controlled for substantial differences in student selectivity, curriculum emphasis, and the proportion of low-income students in the test-taking populations (Rotberg 1998).
The culprit that seems to be central to the problems of school mathematics is the curriculum ... Content is spread throughout the curriculum in a way that leads to very few topics being intensely pursued. Goals and expectations for learning are diffuse and unfocused. Content and goals linger from year to year so that curricula are driven and shaped by still-unmastered mathematics content begun years before [p. 9].
A decade later, TIMSS researchers used data from multiple sources to reinvestigate course content and the intended curriculum. Comparing a random sample of U.S. state curriculum guides for grades 1 through 12 with curriculum guides in nearly 50 other countries, they identified the broad stretch of the U.S. science and mathematics intended curriculum. 14 The data confirmed the curriculum guides' lack of focus in U.S. math-
14 TIMSS looked at the intended curriculum by analyzing the topics included in a random sample of 22 mathematics and 18 science standards documents from state and national curriculum associations. To compare the United States with other countries, the researchers created a composite score that represented the topics covered in the different guides reviewed. Creating this composite was necessary because the United States does not have a national curriculum. The composite therefore represents "the aggregate policies, intentions, and goals of the many educational subsystems making up the U.S. federation of guiding educational visions in the sciences and mathematics" (Schmidt, McKnight, and Raizen 1997, p. 13).
ematics and science curriculum: U.S. teachers in grades 1 through 12 intended to cover more topics than teachers in other countries. Figure 3.1 shows that in mathematics:
* The United States ranked above the 75th percentile among 36 countries in topic coverage for grades one through eight.
* The United States dropped below the 75th percentile for grades 9 through 12.
* Germany and Japan, by comparison, ranked at or below the median in at least eight grade levels and ranked near or below the 25th percentile in at least six grade levels.
Figure 3.2 shows the following about science:
* The United States scored above the median in grades one through nine and above the 75th percentile in grades one and two among 35 countries.
* The United States scored at or below the median in three grade levels (10 through 12), while Germany scored at or below the median in six grade levels and Japan in 10 grade levels.
This is a critical finding. Standards documents serve as official education policy both in this country and abroad; they signal educators about what they are expected to do in their classrooms. These findings echoed the SIMS concerns from a decade earlier:
These curricula [in the United States] express an intention to do something of everything and, on average, less of any one thing ... While the relationship between curricular focus and achievement may remain conjectural, the conventional wisdom (e.g., about time on task) suggests that lower achievement results are likely and that the United States is likely to suffer in cross-national comparisons (Schmidt, McKnight, and Raizen 1997, p. 51).
Compounding the lack of focus in the intended U.S. curriculum, the implemented curriculum varies tremendously from classroom to classroom in this country. For example, SIMS researchers found that 13-year-olds in the United States received very uneven exposure to a range of curriculum topics relative to the other countries (McKnight et al. 1987). This might be explained by the fact that during the time of the SIMS data collection, more than 82 percent of the U.S. students in this age group were in schools offering two or more differently titled mathematics classes (Schmidt et al. 1999). In contrast, many of the countries that scored high on the SIMS mathematics tests (France, Hong Kong, and Japan) offered the same mathematics course to all students.
Student enrollment patterns show the percentage of high school graduates who studied each subject. Figures 3.3 and 3.4 reveal trends in the mathematics and science enrollment patterns of high school students. From 1982 to 1998, there was an increase in the percentage of students enrolling in higher-level mathematics and science courses (Wirt et al. 2000). High school graduates in 1998 were more likely than their 1982 counterparts to have taken the most advanced mathematics courses, such as trigonometry, precalculus, and calculus. For example, 5 and 6 percent of 1982 high school graduates took these types of advanced academic-level II and III courses, respectively (as defined in Wirt et al. 2000), and in 1998, the percentage of students taking these courses rose to 15 and 12, respectively. Furthermore, in the middle academic level, a larger percentage of high school graduates took level II courses (such as algebra II) as their highest-level mathematics course in 1998 than in 1982 (increasing from 18 to 28 percent), and a
lower percentage took level I courses (such as algebra I and plane geometry) as their highest-level mathematics course (decreasing from 31 to 20 percent) (Wirt et al. 2000).
In science, the trend is similar. For example, 5 percent of high school graduates completed chemistry II or physics II in 1982, but 7 percent completed these courses in 1998. Furthermore, during the same period, the percentage of graduates who completed physics I increased from 18 to 34, and the percentage of graduates who completed chemistry I increased from 7 to 19 (Wirt et al. 2000).
Despite these encouraging signs, the experience is not reflected equally among racial/ethnic and income groups. In 1998, white and Asian/Pacific Islander high school graduates were usually more likely than black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native graduates to complete advanced academic-level mathematics and the highestlevel science courses (Wirt et al. 2000). For example, while 45 percent of white and 56 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander high school graduates took at least one advanced mathematics course in 1998, 30 percent of blacks, 26 percent of Hispanics, and 27 percent of American Indian/Alaskan Natives took courses at this level (Wirt et al. 2000). Finally, students from low-income families were less likely to be enrolled in a college preparatory track through which they would be more likely to take such courses (U.S. Department of Education 1995).
All of the available data have limitations, however. The TIMSS approach of examining standards documents reveals the intended curriculum: what states, districts, and schools are asking teachers to cover in their classrooms, not what actually gets covered. NCEE standards that rely only on course titles, with no guidance on the topics that should be taught or mastered within those courses, do not directly address the SIMS/TIMSS concerns that topic coverage is not uniform across classrooms and that the U.S. curriculum
lacks focus. The NCES data on enrollment patterns attempt to address the issue at a lower, more revealing level, but they are also limited because they depend heavily on course titles that may incorrectly assume identical course content, 15 and they are not applicable to primary grades. 16
Recognizing these limitations to curriculum reform, policymakers began to call for more detailed education "standards" in the 1990s, and many state and local governments and national curriculum associations have responded. At around the same time, researchers began to call for curriculum indicators that focus more closely on elements within the curriculum (Murnane and Raizen 1988; Porter 1991; Shavelson et al. 1987; U.S. Department of Education 1988). In response, studies have been launched to ascertain how to develop more precise curriculum content indicators that measure the intellectual rigor and cognitive demand of the implemented curriculum (Burkam, Lee, and Smerdon 1997; Burstein et al. 1995; Porter et al. 1993). Similarly, NCES has recognized the need for data that are more specific. National surveys (such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988) now ask teachers if they cover various topics. Neither of these surveys addresses content coverage to the same depth as SIMS or TIMSS, but they have started to collect information on the implemented curriculum that goes far beyond the surface views of intended curriculum provided by course credits and titles.
B. INDICATOR 6: PEDAGOGY
The implemented curriculum as represented by instructional delivery or pedagogy is an increasing focus of researchers' attention because it illuminates the black box between educational inputs and student outcomes (Mayer 1999b). This is a relatively new research area. When earlier research failed to identify a consistent relationship between resources and student achievement, researchers began to investigate variation in how those resources (teachers, classrooms, materials) were combined. Striving to understand why identical inputs result in varied student outcomes, this new line of research on pedagogy assumes that teachers have different effectiveness because of how they approach the curriculum, select instructional actions for themselves and their students, and employ their resources.
National data on instructional practices can provide information about how quality classrooms deliver student learning, the prevalence and effectiveness of competing pedagogical approaches, and trends in instructional approaches over time. Such information can be used to gauge the degree to which the various techniques recommended by state and local governments and national curriculum associations have been implemented and whether those techniques actually do improve student learning.
At present, there is little agreement about the relative effectiveness of two prevalent types of pedagogical approaches, and improved national instructional practices data
15 Do all algebra I classes cover the same material for the same duration? In fact, findings from SIMS and TIMSS suggest they do not. And to what extent have course titles, but not substance, changed to better "meet" external standards?
16 Course titles are virtually useless as indicators of the curriculum in the primary grades because students at this level do not have electives and the course titles are generally no more specific than "reading,""mathematics,""science," and "social studies."
25
might help inform this debate. Proponents of traditional instruction, such as drill and practice activities in which students work toward skill mastery, suggest that this approach provides teacher-directed control and structure of classroom activities. Summarizing the findings from numerous studies, Brophy and Good (1986) cite elements of this approach as "essential":
Finally, it should be stressed that there are no shortcuts to successful attainment of higher-level learning objectives. Such success will not be achieved with relative ease through discovery learning by the student. Instead, it will require considerable instruction from the teachers, as well as thorough mastery of basic knowledge and skills which must be integrated and applied in the process of higher level performance. Development of basic knowledge and skills to the necessary levels of automatic and errorless performance will require a great deal of drill and practice. Thus, drill and practice activities should not be slighted as low level. They appear to be just as essential to complex and creative intellectual performance as they are to the performance of a virtuoso violinist. (p. 367)
Advocates of constructivism, on the other hand, assume that "learning occurs as students actively assimilate new information and experiences and construct their own meanings" (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics 1991, p. 2). Because teachers must help students construct their own meaning, passive activities such as lectures and seatwork are considered significantly inferior teaching approaches. According to this line of research, the most effective instructional approach is one that places less emphasis on memorization of facts and mastery of routine skills and greater focus on application, reasoning, and conceptual understanding. A pedagogic approach emphasizing group work and class discussion, for example, is considered essential because it engages the students while offering the teachers a view of the students' thought processes (Case and Bereiter 1984; Cobb and Steffe 1983; Davis 1984; Hiebert and Wearne 1993; Lampert 1986; Lesh and Landau 1983; Schoenfeld 1987).
There are very few national data on the relationship between pedagogy and learning that might illuminate this debate on which approach is more effective perhaps in part because the push for routine collection of classroom instructional process data began only in the late 1980s (see, for example, Murnane and Raizen 1988; Porter 1991; Shavelson et al. 1987; U.S. Department of Education 1988). In 1994–95, NCES collected instructional process data from a sample of K-12 teachers and published the data in 1997 in a new "instructional methods" category in its list of annually released vital statistics (Smith et al. 1997). NCES data show, for example, that at least once a week 98 percent of teachers provide whole group instruction, 86 percent of teachers work with small groups of students, 73 percent use manipulatives or models to demonstrate a concept, and 40 percent use portfolios to assess their students' work in English/language arts (Henke, Chen, and Goldman 1999). These data also provide a way to judge the extent to which various pedagogical approaches are used in classrooms and how these trends compare with the teaching approaches recommended by the research or by various curriculum standards documents.
In another NCES effort to understand pedagogy and to experiment with how best to collect such data, TIMSS researchers supplemented written teacher surveys with a video survey of eighth-grade mathematics teachers in action in the United States, Germany, and Japan (Stigler et al. 1999). The video survey, like classroom observations, promises
specificity and objectivity (in that the data are not self-reported by teachers) and has the promise of being available for systematic scrutiny by a wider research audience.
While these approaches all show promise for collecting informative data on pedagogy, they each have limitations (Mayer 1999a). Some survey data have been found to be unreliable. Perhaps because the teaching process consists of complex interactions between students and teachers that a survey cannot accurately depict, teachers may provide biased responses to a survey because they feel that they should respond to the questions in an "acceptable" or "socially desirable" way, and teachers may unknowingly provide misleading responses to survey questions (Henke, Chen, and Goldman 1999; Mayer 1999a; Mayer 1999b). On the other hand, case-study data may be valid, but they are expensive and do not provide a portrait beyond the few classrooms studied (Burstein et al. 1995). And video data collection has validity threats, including observer effects, sampling concerns (determining the appropriate number of individual teacher observations and accounting for differences in content and practice at different times during the school year), and confidentiality questions (Stigler et al. 1999).
Despite these current limitations, there remains intense interest in better understanding how variation in teachers' methods of classroom instruction translates into variation in student learning. Recognizing the importance of the information yet the weakness of the data, researchers have begun to design surveys that will gather more precise information about instructional practices (Burstein et al. 1995; 1998; Mayer 1999b; Mullens and Gayler 1999). Continued collection and analysis of pedagogy data, especially experimental design data linked with student outcomes, will improve our knowledge of what pedagogy works, when it works best and why, and how best to measure it.
C. INDICATOR 7: TECHNOLOGY
Education Secretary Richard Riley's statement that "over the last decade, the use of technology in American life has exploded" (U.S. Department of Education 1996, p. 1) characterizes the inevitable: Computers and the Internet play a role in classrooms. And though the explosion has yet to reverberate within schools to the same degree it has in other sectors of American society, technology and computers are rapidly appearing in schools and redefining the perception of a quality school. Computers and Internet access are used in a variety of ways in schools, and each use may have an independent impact on student learning. Very little research on the effect of technology on learning looks at the uses and effect of Internet access; most examines the instructional power of the computer to teach discrete skills. Numerous studies conducted in the elementary and secondary grades have concluded that student learning is enhanced by computers when the computer is used to teach discrete skills in the style referred to as "drill and practice." Four separate meta-analyses support this conclusion, and so far none refutes it (President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology 1997). The magnitude of the effect is considerable, ranging in these four studies from 0.25 to 0.40 standard deviations. The benefits appeared to be strongest for students of lower socioeconomic status, low achievers, and those with certain learning problems (President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology 1997).
In the past decade, education reformers have seized on research about how students learn (see Indicator 6: Pedagogy, above) and on research about what skills are demanded in today's economy (for example, Murnane and Levy 1996b) to conclude that students need
to be taught differently. Research on the application of computers for developing higher-order thinking skills problem-solving, group work, and hands-on learning activities, however, is less extensive and less conclusive. Two studies show positive effects (Glennan and Melmed 1996; Wenglinsky 1998), while a third concludes it is not known whether computers can be used for this type of teaching in a cost-effective manner with any "degree of certainty that would be desirable from a public policy viewpoint" (President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology 1997). It may be that these studies are less conclusive because teachers are less adept at teaching in this new way. This suggests that the challenge of using computers to develop higher-order thinking skills may be closely tied to the challenge of improving professional development for teachers.
Because computer technology is expensive, researchers and administrators want to assess its availability, equity, use, and effect on student learning. Recognizing both the growing use of technology in schools and the limited amount of applicable research and data collection, President Clinton's Panel on Educational Technology identified a "pressing need for large-scale, federally sponsored research and evaluation" on school technology (President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology 1997, p. 51). 17 Secretary Riley echoed that concern when speaking to the 1999 National Conference on Educational Technology.
Thus, large-scale data collection on technology in the classroom should address four issues: the availability of quality computers and Internet access, whether computers and access are equitably distributed among schools and students within schools, how the technology is used, and how it affects student learning.
To what extent are computers and Internet access available to students? On the surface at least, there is little doubt that computer technology is becoming increasingly available in schools. In 1999, there was an average of 6 students for each computer from a 125 to 1 ratio in 1983 (Coley, Cradler, and Engel 1997; U.S. Department of Education 2000b). If that pace of improvement continues, achieving the optimum 5 to 1 student-to-computer ratio suggested by the U.S. Department of Education (U.S. Department of Education 1996) seems likely. This overall average student-to-computer ratio, however, hides two facts: the distribution of computers per student is skewed, and many computers included in that count may be old and have limited usefulness. In 1994, for example, 4 percent of the nation's schools had at least one computer for every 4 students, while 46 percent of the schools had one computer per 16.5 students, and 10 percent of the schools had one computer per 28.5 students (Glennan and Melmed 1996). A 1998 national probability sample of 655 elementary and secondary schools revealed that "over half of the computers are out of date.... And in elementary schools almost two-thirds are of limited capacity" (Anderson and Ronnkvist 1999, p. 5). 18 This is potentially problematic because older computers do not have the capacity to link to the Internet or run cur-
17 Almost all data inventorying the computer hardware in the nation's schools come from two private companies: Quality Education Data (QED) and Market Data Retrieval (MDR). QED data have been used in several major reports (see, for example, Coley, Cradler, and Engel 1997; Glennan and Melmed 1996; President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology 1997; U.S. Department of Education 1996). These companies survey schools to assess their equipment inventories and future buying plans. They attempt to get data from every school because their main objective is to create marketing lists and reports for technology companies. Because schools are under no obligation to complete the surveys, many schools choose not to, and therefore the inventory data present a conservative picture—a limitation that is generally overlooked due to heightened policy interest in these areas.
rent multimedia applications such as CD-ROM reference and encyclopedia programs. They can be used to perform drill and practice sessions and to develop keyboard skills.
The Internet is thought to provide a variety of rich learning opportunities, and therefore schools have been rapidly connecting to it. Internet access existed at 35 percent of public schools in 1994, but soared to 95 percent by 1999 (U.S. Department of Education 2000b). In 1999, in 37 percent of schools, however, access to the Internet existed at only one location thus making regular instructional use difficult in these schools (U.S. Department of Education 2000b). 19
Is there an equitable distribution of computers and Internet access among schools with high and low concentrations of poverty? A recent study (Anderson and Ronnkvist 1999) found that schools with high concentrations of poor or minority students have fewer computers and are less likely to have Internet access. While nationally representative data suggest this gap is narrowing, they also show that "large gaps ... in the quality of the computer equipment available" still exist (Anderson and Ronnkvist 1999, p. 16). The gap also exists regarding Internet access. For schools with more than 70 percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, 39 percent of all instructional rooms had Internet access compared with 62 to 74 percent for schools with lower concentrations of poverty (U.S. Department of Education 2000b).
In addition to understanding the availability of technology in schools, researchers are interested in the frequency and type of computer use by students in school (Becker, Ravitz, and Wong 1999). Data from the 1998 National Survey on Teaching, Learning, and Computing indicate that many students are "searching for information and producing written and visual products that reflect their cognitive and creative effort" (Becker, Ravitz, and Wong 1999, p. 13). Word processing is the most common computer use across grade levels: 66 percent of elementary teachers and 45 percent of high school teachers report that students use computers for word processing in their classes. Two other uses of computers are prominent as well. Fifty-four percent of elementary teachers report that students use CD-ROM reference software, and 34 percent of high school teachers report that students use the World Wide Web in class.
Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress depicted in Figure 3.5 suggest that computer use in schools has been on the rise (Smith et al. 1997). As shown in Figure 3.6, students report spending more time using computers to "learn things" and to "write stories" than to "play games" (U.S. Department of Education 1997). The data on computer use are limited for three reasons. First, there is only general information about the types of computer use and no information on the level of cognitive demand required by students when using a computer. Thus, it is impossible using any single source to distinguish whether students are playing games, learning to use the Internet, or learning the core curriculum through specialized software at school or home. Second, the data fail to identify the length of time students spend on computers, which makes it difficult to assess the impact of that technology on student learning. Finally, the data sometimes fail to distinguish between home and school usage, making it difficult to attribute changes to improvements in school quality.
18 The authors suggest that elementary schools may have fewer modern machines because middle and high schools tend to "pass on their replaced computers to the elementary schools" (p. 5).
19 Internet access in private schools lags. About one-quarter of private schools and 5 percent of their instructional rooms had Internet access in 1995, increasing to 67 percent and 25 percent, respectively, by 1998 (U.S. Department of Education 2000a).
Currently, the available national information on classroom technology is skewed: We have ample data on the availability of computers and some information about their distribution among schools and students, but we know little about how computers or the Internet are used. The country would benefit from more and better information on the
Figure 3.7— Relationship between class size and academic performance
Class Size
Instructional Behavior
Academic Performance
Student Engagement
}
NOTE: This is a modification of a figure presented by the U.S. Department of Education (1998) in "Class Size and Students at Risk: What is Known?" U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students.
instructional role that computers play in classrooms and their effectiveness in achieving student learning. 20
D. INDICATOR 8: CLASS SIZE
How teachers implement the course content, instructional pedagogy, and technology use in the classroom may all be influenced by the number of students in the class. Manipulating class size as a way to improve student learning is now at the forefront of the education policy debate because some evidence suggests that students may achieve more in smaller classes, particularly primary-grade students who are minorities or who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds (Grissmer, Flanagan, and Williamson 1998; Krueger 1998; Mosteller 1995; Mosteller, Light, and Sachs 1996; U.S. Department of Education 1998). Why does class size matter, and how might it affect student learning? With fewer students, teachers may be able to employ a different pedagogical approach and implement the curriculum in a more effective manner. Figure 3.7 presents a model proposed by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement for how class size may affect student achievement. In the model, class size influences instructional behavior, and both class size and instructional behavior have an impact on student engagement. Higher levels of student engagement lead to higher achievement and vice versa, creating a cycle that leads to greater learning and productivity (Finn 1998).
The number of studies examining the relationship between class size and teaching quality are limited, and a better understanding is needed of the effects of class size on instructional practice and the quality of the classroom environment. From the limited research available, there is evidence that teachers in smaller classrooms deal with fewer disciplinary problems, spend more time on instruction and enrichment activities, and offer more opportunities for student participation (Achilles 1996; Finn 1998; Shapson et al. 1980; U.S. Department of Education 1998). Teachers also express greater satisfaction and report better morale when working with smaller classes (Shapson et al. 1980; U.S. Department of Education 1998).
Do smaller classes also lead to greater learning? Hundreds of studies focus on the relationship between class size and student achievement, and several researchers have compiled and analyzed these studies. Most of these meta-analyses have concluded that smaller classes do raise student test scores. Glass and Smith (1979) concluded that stu-
20 It should be noted, however, that new data on the instructional role of computers is being made available in an NCES report (Smerdon and Cronen 2000) that was released as this report went to press.
dents in classes of 20 or fewer students perform better academically than students in larger classes. Robinson and Wittebols (1986) sharpened the focus by contending that small classes show stronger benefits for disadvantaged and minority students in kindergarten (Finn 1998; Robinson and Wittebols 1986; U.S. Department of Education 1998). Slavin (1989) used a different set of studies that looked at class-size reductions over a year or more and that compared regular-sized classes with those that were at least 30 percent smaller and had 20 students or less and also found that small classes increased student learning. He estimated the median effect size of attending a small class rather than a large class has a 0.13 standard deviation increase in student test scores; this effect did not seem to follow students when they returned to regular-sized classrooms (Finn 1998; Slavin 1989; U.S. Department of Education 1998).
Others disagree. Their views are represented in this summary statement by Hanushek:
Extensive statistical investigation of the relationship between class size and student performance shows as many positive as negative estimates. With close to 300 separate estimates of the effect of class size, there is no reason to expect performance improvements from lowering class sizes. (Hanushek 1998, p. iii)
However, in a reanalysis of Hanushek's (1989) synthesis of education production function studies, Hedges et al. (1994) concluded that class size made a difference in student learning. In addition, in a subsequent study that examined a larger and, according to the authors, more comprehensive group of studies, Greenwald et al. (1996) again found a positive, statistically significant relationship between small classes and student performance.
These findings are supported by a recent and widely cited study on class size, a randomized experiment conducted by the state of Tennessee (Krueger 1998; Mosteller 1995; Sanders and Rivers 1996). Because randomized studies are considered to be among the most valid study designs and because they are so rare in the field of education research, the results from this study have received a tremendous amount of attention from researchers, policymakers, and the general public. 21 The first phase of the study, called Project STAR (Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio), compared the achievement of elementary students in small classes with those in regular-sized classes with and without a full-time teacher's aide. 22 By the end of first grade after two years of intervention, students attending smaller classes benefited by approximately 0.25 of a standard deviation. The effect sizes for the Stanford Achievement Test were 0.23 for reading and 0.27 for math. 23 This means that an average student achieving at the 50th percentile rank would see a 10 percentage point boost in achievement (Mosteller 1995). These effect sizes show the advantage of small classes over regular-sized classes in standard deviation units.
21 In an experimental study, the researchers are able to allocate each student to a control or treatment group, typically through random assignment whereby each student has an equal chance of being in either group. This produces two statistically equivalent groups, allowing researchers to attribute any differences in outcomes to the intervention. In an observational study, the researchers have no control over how people choose from among various options, a phenomenon called self-selection. When self-selection occurs, it is not possible to determine whether groups differ in outcomes because of the intervention or because of other characteristics that come about as a result of self-selection. Experimental studies are therefore thought to be superior to observational studies for understanding causation.
22 Over four years, about 80 schools and 11,600 students participated in Project STAR. A small class had 13 to 17 students per teacher and a regular class had 22 to 26 students. Students and teachers were assigned to each type of class at random, and researchers made sure that a school with at least one small class also had a regular-sized class with or without an aide in an attempt to rule out the effects of school characteristics when analyzing results.
When analyzed by race/ethnicity, the results showed that black students experienced a greater boost in achievement than white students in the early years. The effect size for black students was double the effect size for white students when standardized achievement test results were averaged over the first two years (Mosteller 1995). Further examination of the Tennessee data confirmed the finding that black and disadvantaged students benefited disproportionately in the early grades (Achilles 1996; Finn 1998; Grissmer, Flanagan, and Williamson 1998; Hanushek 1998; Krueger 1998; Mosteller 1995; Mosteller, Light, and Sachs 1996; U.S. Department of Education 1998). This finding also coincides with a recent analysis of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress that shows the trend toward smaller classes may have contributed to the decrease in the achievement gap between nine-year-old blacks and whites (Grissmer, Flanagan, and Williamson 1998). However, in which grade Tennessee students experienced the greatest gains and how long those gains have persisted continue to be debated (Achilles 1996; Hanushek 1998; Krueger 1998; Mosteller 1995).
What is the optimal class size in the primary grades, or the threshold at which gains in student achievement are realized? Glass and Smith (1979) and Slavin (1989) have suggested that the threshold lies somewhere between 15 and 20 students; the Tennessee study compared classes of 13 to 17 students with classes of 22 to 26 students. How do these class size numbers compare with classrooms across the country? In 1994, more than 47 percent of elementary classes in the United States had 25 or more students (Education Week 1998), and in 1998 the average public elementary school class consisted of 23 students (Lewis et al. 1999). Thus, the majority of elementary classrooms is far from being in the 13- to 20-student range that these researchers identify as desirable.
Yet, while these studies suggest there may be a link between class size and student achievement, such as depicted in Figure 3.7, less is known about how that link might function and under what conditions. Murnane and Levy (1996a) found that reducing class size in Texas classrooms made a difference in student learning only where there was a school or district effort to change teaching practices and where teachers actually changed their instructional methods. And even when class size reduction is shown to be effective in raising student achievement, the additional teachers required to reduce class size will be costly (Finn 1998; Odden 1990; U.S. Department of Education 1998).
Furthermore, large-scale efforts to reduce class size (with or without professional development on appropriate instructional techniques for smaller groups) may also set in motion unintended negative consequences. For example, two years after California's initiative for smaller classes in kindergarten through third grade greatly increased the demand for a limited supply of qualified teachers, more than 12 percent of California K-3 classroom teachers do not meet minimum qualifications compared with less than 1 percent before the initiative (Bohrnstedt and Stecher 1999). In addition, those underqualified teachers are more likely to teach minority and disadvantaged students. In fact, third-grade students in the bottom quartile of reading achievement in California are five times as likely to have an underqualified teacher as students in the top quartile (Shields et al. 1999). These studies suggest that lowering class size by itself may not
23 Effect sizes were calculated by subtracting the average achievement score for regular classes from the mean score for small classes in standard deviation units. The average achievement score for regular classes was obtained by taking the average of the mean score for regular classes with aides and without aides (Finn 1998). The Stanford Achievement Test is a standardized achievement test that was administered to all students in the study at the end of each school year
enhance student learning if instructional practices remain unchanged or if unqualified teachers are used to reduce class size.
What do we know about national estimates of class size? Nationally representative data show that the pupil-teacher ratio across all public elementary and secondary schools was 27 pupils to 1 teacher in 1955 and 17 to 1 in 1991 (see Figure 3.8). Pupil-teacher ratios, however, are an imprecise indicator of class size because they do not account for frequently intense teaching resources targeted toward Title I, special education, or bilingual services in some schools. When schools use those resources to attain low ratios for those targeted populations, they mask much higher ratios for the remaining classes. This is especially true for poor and urban districts because they enroll higher numbers of students needing specialized instruction (Finn 1998; Hanushek 1998).
The better indicator of class size is the average number of students in regular classrooms. Unfortunately, national class size estimates (distinct from pupil-teacher ratios) date back only to the late 1980s. The average class size in public elementary and secondary schools was similar in the 1987–88, 1990–91, and 1993–94 school years (Smith et al. 1997). In 1993–94, the average public elementary class consisted of 24.1 students, while the average secondary class consisted of 23.6 students. As of 1998, the average class size for public school general elementary classrooms was down to 23 (Lewis et al. 1999). 24 Class-size data for secondary schools in 1998 are not available.
These data and the studies describing the effects and potential consequences of reducing class size highlight the need for more data and for analyses that examine the effects of class size on instructional practice and student learning that can result in more pre-
24 General elementary classrooms are classrooms that are self-contained for most of the day and in which one teacher is responsible for instructing in all core subjects, including reading/language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science (but not necessarily art, music, and physical education). General elementary classrooms are distinct from departmentalized settings in which a teacher's main teaching assignment is in one particular subject area.
cise estimates of optimal size. Barriers to gaining a complete understanding of how class size is related to student achievement are a lack of consistent and appropriate data on class size, a lack of agreement on what methodology works best in analyzing the existing literature, and a lack of resources needed to conduct well-designed, random experiments. Despite these barriers, the preponderance of research suggests that reductions in class size have the potential to help all students in the primary grades.
E. SUMMARY
Influential studies over the past two decades cite a lack of focus in the intended school curriculum as a problem that may be related to the poor academic performance of U.S. students relative to students in other nations. Although a review of high school course titles between 1982 and 1994 suggests that this problem might be abating, reliance on course titles only touches the surface of the intended curriculum.
Nationally representative data that describe the implemented curriculum and the process of schooling are just becoming available. These data will help researchers study the instructional practices of teachers, the implemented curriculum, and the role that computers play in delivering the curriculum. As these data become available, new insights might arise concerning the role of curriculum in determining school quality. For example, these data might help determine whether differences in curriculum coverage help explain why small classes appear to benefit children in the primary grades and could help determine exactly what teachers do differently in small classes.
35
IV. SCHOOLS
This chapter builds on the previous discussions of teachers and classrooms by identifying school-level characteristics that contribute to a school's overall effectiveness. Education researchers, teachers, administrators, and parents all know that schools distinctly matter in the educational lives of children, that school effectiveness varies from institution to institution, and that much of what we know about the effectiveness of a school derives from an aggregate understanding of how that school fares on the important teacher and classroom indicators discussed in the preceding chapters. Beyond that, however, researchers have also begun to develop a literature on school-level characteristics that appear to play key roles in adding value to a school's quality.
How schools approach these aspects establishes the context for effective instruction and quality learning and may distinguish truly high-quality schools. Given this, school reform advocates and researchers have been striving to identify and replicate effective school-level approaches that lead to a quality education for all students (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin 1999; Lee and Smith 1996; Marks, Doane, and Secada 1996; Phillips 1997). This school reform experimentation and research directed toward understanding the definitive attributes of effective schools blends new ideas about school organization and teaching with an improved understanding of educational processes. Results have been applied in comprehensive research-based school improvement models such as High Schools That Work, the Coalition of Essential Schools, and Accelerated Schools. Such research and experimental applications have sustained and focused the discussion on promising aspects of effective schools.
We used a two-step process to identify the most critical school-level characteristics. First, we researched the literature to identify the characteristics of schools that recent and current studies suggest are related to effective schools. Second, we examined how those attributes are measured or might be measured to assess their relationship with student learning. To be included in this list, characteristics had to occur at the school level, have a plausible relationship to student learning, and, where possible, be measured at the school level. Five school characteristics meet these criteria:
* School leadership that provides direction, guidance, and support,
* School goals that are clearly identified, communicated, and enacted,
* A school faculty that collectively takes responsibility for student learning,
* School discipline that establishes an orderly atmosphere conducive to learning,and
* School academic organization and climate that challenges and supports students toward high achievement.
In discussing these indicators, the chapter examines how to identify, measure, and understand the priorities that schools place within and between these five characteristics as they strive to best educate their students.
This discussion has structural and data limitations. First, quality schools are not simply a collection of discrete attributes that can be cut and pasted into operation. Instead, researchers and educators suggest quality schools are well-managed, amalgamated systems in which each action or policy directly links with and integrally affects all other
parts (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990). Delineating the school-level influences into discrete chunks to determine the individual contribution of each to student learning may not adequately reflect that interconnected reality. For the sake of clarity in this analysis, however, we deconstruct the parts and examine them separately. Indeed, most school effects studies examining variation in student learning associated with structural or organizational conditions follow the same process (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990). They simultaneously acknowledge the integrity of the school as an integrated system and look within that system at individual school characteristics. While this is an effective analytic method for examining complex relationships, we must not forget the very real connectedness of the parts.
Second, as described in the preceding chapters, student learning is thought to occur primarily as a result of students' interaction with teachers, other students, and the curriculum. It may not be a direct or primary result of any school-level attribute or system. Bryk et al. (1993) agree with this by theorizing that most attributes of a school (measured at that level) are related only indirectly to student learning. School-level systems may have an indirect effect on student learning by establishing high expectations for educational experiences and by setting the context within which quality interactions can occur.
Third, even if certain school attributes indirectly influence student learning, identifying how they operate and collecting data to measure their statistical relationships with student learning is a complex task that may inhibit our understanding of their effects. Some teacher and classroom attributes identified in the previous chapters, such as teacher academic ability and class size, are easier to measure and quantify. Quantifying human incentives, motivations, opinions, and actions to estimate the effects of schoollevel attributes such as leadership, professional community, and organizational philosophies is not yet, and may never be, an exact science. So the validity of the findings is heavily dependent on measurement, specification, and interpretation issues that might easily cloud the results and inhibit rather than extend our understanding (Chubb and Moe 1990; Willms and Echols 1992). This is why most of the research on school-level attributes has been through case-study research and why very little analysis of national data reliably relates school-level characteristics to learning outcomes.
Finally, as will become apparent by the paucity of figures in this chapter, our understanding of school quality is hampered by a lack of school-representative and reliable national data on these five attributes. The data that are available may suggest the general status of an indicator, but sometimes they lack the reliability and specificity necessary to understand confidently what really matters about the indicator. Available data on school goals, for example, provide information on the relative importance of seven general goal statements, but no information on the issues that, research suggests, differentiate effective schools: how goals are identified, communicated, implemented, and institutionalized (Purkey and Smith 1983). Some of the available data on school discipline incidents and academic environment are an exception.
Despite these analytic and measurement challenges, school-level characteristics are thought to be important elements of quality schools. For each of the five school-level characteristics identified, this chapter describes the relevant research indicating why that characteristic is thought to be important, suggests how that indicator might be measured, presents, where available, nationally representative data that describe the current state or prevalence of that school characteristic, and identifies, where necessary, the type of nationally representative data necessary to better identify quality schools.
A. INDICATOR 9: SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
Schools need a competent individual or group of individuals who can provide direction, guidance, and support in the school's journey toward achieving its goals (Newmann and Wehlage 1995). Leadership provides a unifying focus, the impetus to work toward school goals, and a locus for decision making along the way. In quality schools, an individual or group of individuals takes responsibility to provide school leadership, assemble a faculty with the skills to achieve school goals, provide direct support for those teachers, and make teaching and learning a main preoccupation around which everything else revolves. A school without a leader is a collection of independent classrooms with individual goals and unconnected beliefs about what is important and how to achieve it. Pervasive and sustained student learning is more likely to occur in schools with leadership (Deal and Peterson 1998; Fullan 1998; Levine and Lezotte 1990). Some researchers, however, question whether school leaders make a measurable difference in fostering school quality. Hanushek et al. (1998), for example, suggest that constraints on school leaders, especially central office regulations on school organization and hiring in public schools, virtually eliminate any opportunity for school leaders to leverage change and improve school quality.
There is scant meaningful national data that illuminate these aspects of school leadership and support or refute either view. Most of our understanding about school leadership comes from case studies that can only suggest what might be true in a broader application. Those studies suggest critical issues of leadership: where it is located, how it is exercised, how it differs between public and private schools, and its relationship to student learning.
Theoreticians have used case studies to investigate where school leadership is located. Recent work has used a "power continuum" (King et al. 1996). At one extreme, power is consolidated in the principal, district personnel, or a small group of teachers. At the other extreme, decision making is shared and participants have equal access and voice. In the middle are schools where power is dispersed in small groups and communication is neither highly valued nor implemented (balkanized schools) and schools where teachers have high levels of individual autonomy but act on disparate goals (laissez-faire schools). If nationally representative data were available, classifying schools into these categories (or something similar) and relating the categories to student learning might meaningfully distinguish among leadership styles and highlight variation in student learning related to those styles. 25
In addition to identifying where leadership is located, researchers suggest it is important to determine how it is exercised. What do school leaders actually do, and how are those actions related to student learning? Is it possible to identify those leadership actions that are consistently related to higher levels of student achievement? Two recent studies investigated behaviors common to principals of schools with high student achievement. Controlling for relevant principal and school background characteristics such as race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status, Louis et al. (1996) found that leaders in
25 Does leadership style affect the ability of a school to reach its goals? King et al. (1996) say their data cited above suggest that schools were more likely to support high-level learning when the power was shared among the participants. The "broad participation, reciprocity, and collective focus on important issues characteristic of shared power" (p. 255) best facilitated reaching the goals of improved teaching and learning within the schools in their study.
schools with high student achievement "worked effectively to stimulate professional discussion and to create the networks of conversation that tied faculty together around common issues of instruction and teaching" (p. 194). In that process, they say, principals "delegated authority, developed collaborative decision-making processes, and stepped back from being the central problem solver" (p. 193) regardless of the formal definition of their role. These findings are congruent with results from other research (Leithwood, Jantzi, and Fernandez 1995; Louis, Kruse, and Associates 1995; Murphy 1994).
Work by Newmann and Wehlage (1995) took a similar approach, summarizing the characteristics of leaders in schools with high-achieving students. Such leaders, they say:
* Gave "central attention to building a schoolwide, collective focus on student learning of high intellectual quality,"
* Placed "issues of teaching and learning at the center of dialogue among the entire school community,"
* Gave concrete expression to "the norms and values"that comprise a school's vision,
* Created "time for reflective inquiry and opportunities for substantive staff development,"
* Saw themselves "at the center rather than at the top of their schools' organization,"
* "Shared power with staff and often with parents," and
* "Applied important political ... and entrepreneurial ... skills to relationships beyond the school." (pp. 291–292)
Is leadership style and process different in public and private schools? Available national teacher opinion data on leadership suggest striking differences. "Public school teachers were consistently less likely than their peers in private schools to agree"that the principals in their schools took the following actions (Henke et al. 1997, p. 82):
* Communicated expectations to staff,
* Was supportive and encouraging,
* Recognized staff for a job well done, and
* Talked with them about instructional practices.
Other national data suggest that such differences between leadership in public and private schools are likely to relate to structural variations in public and private school governance systems. Without the school district administration common to public systems, according to these analyses, private school principals are likely to shoulder more responsibilities (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993), 26 while in a public school the bureaucratic hierarchy dilutes the principal's leadership role (Chubb and Moe 1990). 27
Information on the locus and exercise of school leadership that moves beyond opinion data would better position the education community to detect and understand mean-
26 Catholic school principals act as the chief administrative officer in a position equivalent to an administrative combination of a public school principal and superintendent with responsibility for financial management, development and fund-raising, faculty selection and supervision, public and alumni relations, discipline, and instruction. They manage operations and personnel, build personal relations, and provide spiritual leadership (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993).
27 Public school principals are "systematically denied much of what it takes to lead" and function more as lower-level managers than as leaders. The structure of the job within the public hierarchy promotes bureaucratic behavior and playing by the rules and may be especially enticing to individuals inclined toward those traits (Chubb and Moe 1990, p. 56).
ingful differences in leadership styles between principals in high- and low-quality schools and how those differences relate to variation in student learning. To understand the place of school leadership in developing quality schools, the education community would benefit from information on the placement of leadership (is it always in the school and is it always synonymous with the school principal?), how leadership is exercised (what do school leaders actually do in the process of leading?), and how specific leadership styles relate to student learning.
B. INDICATOR 10: GOALS
Whether called shared vision, shared beliefs, shared values, or common goals, a clear sense of purpose with participant buy-in is a key ingredient in any successful social organization, including schools (Purkey and Smith 1983). The process is neither simple nor clear-cut, however. Identifying school goals and achieving consensus among school administration, parents, staff, and community and then implementing and institutionalizing those goals can be an involved and difficult process. While the process may vary, researchers agree that successful schools begin by clearly identifying and communicating ambitious goals, then implementing and institutionalizing those goals with broad consensus from essential stakeholders (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990; Newmann and Wehlage 1995).
Researchers suggest that every step of the goals process is critical. After identifying appropriate goals, how those goals are articulated, perceived, and internalized by the school community may be independent factors. Whatever their intent or philosophical underpinning, the goals most likely to be achieved are those that are integral to every school activity (planning, teaching, assessing, decision making) and directly represented in the daily functioning of the school, from the mundane to the essential (graduation requirements, scheduling, advising, dress codes, faculty meeting agendas) (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990). Successful schools are those in which goals become part of the school fabric and all activities are aimed at achieving them. To be successful in practice, any structural features in place, such as block scheduling, interdisciplinary time, shared academic experiences, and projects that extend over several days or weeks, must be implemented to directly promote or support the school goals (Marks, Doane, and Secada 1996).
What do nationally representative data tell us about these questions about school goals? We know how public and private school principals responded to a list of seven general goal statements and how their responses have changed between 1990 and 1993 (Henke et al. 1996). 28 This information may be appropriate for knowing what the goals are and for tracking broad changes over time, but it lacks specific details on the issues that researchers suggest would help distinguish among effective schools. For that purpose,
28 A majority of public school principals identified basic literacy, academic excellence, personal growth, and good work habits/self-discipline as a first, second, or third most-important school goal by more than twice as many as selected human relations skills, occupational or vocational skills, and specific moral values. Compared with principals polled in 1990–91, principals polled in 1993–94 were more likely (Henke et al. 1996) to indicate that academic excellence, occupational/vocational skills, and human relations skills were important goals and less likely (Henke et al. 1996) to indicate personal growth as an important goal (Henke et al. 1996). Specific moral values are an important school goal to a higher proportion of private school principals than public school principals (Fiore, Curtin, and Hammer 1997).
we need to know how school goals are identified, communicated, implemented, and institutionalized. The magnitude of this undertaking should not be underestimated. To understand the relationship between school goals and school quality, we would need rich contextual data from a nationally representative sample of schools on a wider range of more specific goals, on whether the school community agrees on and supports the goals, on whether the goals are implemented and represented in the daily functioning of the school, on how the goals change over time and in response to personnel shifts, and whether they relate to student achievement. This additional information would make it possible to assess schools' status relative to goals and perhaps to predict their success in establishing a positive context within which student learning can occur. Collecting this type of information, however, would be complex and costly.
C. INDICATOR 11: PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY
Adults working collectively within a school can have a positive effect on student learning and school quality beyond their central and direct contribution as individual teachers. Research suggests that quality schools are likely to have a stable, professional community of experienced teachers with shared norms, values, and goals; a common focus on student learning; a willingness to collaborate; and an openness to reflection and new ideas, all directed toward high student achievement (Louis, Kruse, and Marks 1996). This suggests that teachers working together as a community of adults with individual and joint commitments to a set of common goals within the broader context of the school can have a powerful effect beyond their individual contributions (Louis, Kruse, and Marks 1996) and that this community effect may be related to improved student learning (Lee and Smith 1996). Students are the primary beneficiaries when a school community is cohesively focused and vigorously working toward common goals, but teachers also benefit. Teachers derive personal energy, fulfill their professional responsibilities, sustain quality performance, refresh their energy to be fully engaged with students, and stay focused on the central tasks of education. As the professional community works together to establish common goals and accomplish meaningful change toward those goals, the whole school is enriched (Louis, Kruse, and Marks 1996).
Additional research suggests that schools with an experienced and stable faculty may be more able to establish a professional community (Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin 1998). High teacher turnover may negate the instructional continuity necessary for long-term learning gains, especially in mathematics. High School and Beyond data show that in schools with a high incidence of staffing problems,"students' behaviors are less oriented toward academics and sophomore achievement is lower" (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993, p. 223). Specifically, in schools with low faculty turnover, students "exhibit higher achievement in all curricular areas at both sophomore year and senior year." In schools where principals report higher staff absenteeism and lack of staff commitment and motivation, at-risk students may also face a greater likelihood of dropping out (Bryk and Thum 1989). None of the research determined, however, whether high faculty turnover is a cause of low-student achievement, an indicator of other more serious school problems that negatively affect both student learning and faculty retention, or both.
Is there less professional community at high-poverty schools? National data confirm that high-poverty schools have more inexperienced teachers, less-qualified teachers, and higher turnover. Rollefson and Broughman (1995 as cited in Henke, Chen, and Geis
2000) say that first-time teachers are overrepresented in high-minority schools. 29 Other information provided by 34 states indicates that while 38 percent of all teachers work in high-poverty settings, 64 percent of all unqualified teachers 30 work in high-poverty settings (U.S. Department of Education 1999b). Teacher turnover data from the Schools and Staffing Survey and the Teacher Followup Survey confirm these differences: Highpoverty schools reported more difficulty hiring qualified teachers, were more likely to use long-term substitutes, were more likely to use pay incentives to obtain qualified teachers, and, when those efforts failed, were more likely to hire less than fully qualified teachers (Henke et al. 1997, p. 111).
While there currently exists reasonable national data on experience levels, turnover, and qualifications, additional school-representative national teacher data could provide information about other aspects of professional community: faculty agreement around school goals, the frequency and meaningfulness of teacher-to-teacher dialogue and collaboration, and faculty efforts to improve the teaching and learning conditions in the school. If these are related to student achievement as the research suggests, then analyses of expanded national data sets may be able to confirm expected links with student learning.
D. INDICATOR 12: DISCIPLINE
Researcher have found that a positive disciplinary climate is directly linked to high achievement (Barton, Coley, and Wenglinsky 1998; Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990). An orderly school atmosphere conducive to learning could be an example of a "necessary, but not sufficient" characteristic of quality schools. Quality schools with high levels of student learning may have an accompanying high level of orderliness and discipline throughout the school as students are actively engaged in educationally productive activities. And yet an orderly school by itself is neither directly responsible for the student learning that might occur nor sufficient to ensure that learning will happen. Combined with other strong attributes of schools, teachers, and classrooms, however, a disciplined climate may be a necessary precondition that permits and perhaps enables good teaching and learning (Purkey and Smith 1983).
The issues that school discipline policies are designed to address are well known and range from the disconcerting to the dangerous. They include student disrespect for teachers, absenteeism, tardiness, use of alcohol and controlled substances, fighting, and possession of firearms. Less understood, however, is how discipline policy affects student behavior and how the resulting student behavior affects school quality and student learning.
Are some school policies more effective than others at controlling negative behaviors? Little information is available. Barton, Coley, and Weglinsky (1998), using the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the National Education Longitudinal Study data, suggest that the most effective policies to reduce the incidence of offenses in a school vary according to the targeted behavior. To reduce serious incidents including drug offenses, only a policy of severe punishment seems to be effective. "The more severe the punishment the lower the prevalence of the offenses" (p. 3).
29 Nationally, one-fifth of all teachers work in high-minority schools, but one-third of all new teachers got their first job in a high-minority school (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000).
30 "Unqualified teachers" means teachers who do not meet state certification and licensure requirements and who have received an exemption from those requirements.
Whether the link between discipline and student learning is direct or indirect, it has an effect on school quality and student learning. Evidence comes from High School and Beyond and the National Educational Longitudinal Study. Bryk, Lee, and Holland (1993) indicate that a positive disciplinary climate is directly linked to high achievement in both the sophomore and senior years, controlling for influential student background characteristics such as race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. 31 Chubb and Moe (1990) identified an indirect relationship that operates on student achievement through student perception of disciplinary fairness or effectiveness. Students in schools with greater average gains in student achievement view the discipline in their schools as:
Fairer and more effective than the students in the schools at the bottom of the distribution view the discipline in theirs.... The important observation is that teaching in high-performance schools apparently takes place in a more disciplined atmosphere requiring less effort by teachers to maintain order. How this discipline is maintained—whether it benefits from the team-like organization of successful schools or relies on tough sanctions—is not clear. But what is clear is that the classes of high performance schools are subject to fewer intrusions and disruptions of all kinds ... the product is more class time for the educational activities deemed by teachers to be most appropriate (p. 98–99).
Violence in the school and immediate neighborhood may also reduce the likelihood of graduating from high school (Grogger 1997). Controlling for several background characteristics such as race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, students in schools with substantial violence had lower math scores by 0.20 of a standard deviation and are 5.7 percentage points less likely to graduate than students in schools with minimal violence. Indeed, some student offenses are likely to affect student achievement negatively in every subject area. Barton, Coley, and Wenglinsky (1998) found that both serious and nonserious offenses (student tardiness, fighting, suspensions, and arrests) are negatively related to achievement gains between 8th and 12th grades in mathematics, reading, social studies, and science.
Serious violent crime incidents were reported in 10 percent of all public schools in 1996–97 (Kaufman et al. 1999). The level of school-related criminal behavior has changed little between 1976 and 1997, and no differences in victimization rates were found between white and black high school seniors in 1997 (Wirt et al. 1999). Figure 4.1 shows, however, that the percentage of middle and high school students who fear attack or other bodily harm while at school has been on the rise. In each year, a larger proportion of black and Hispanic students than white students feared attacks at school, and the percentage of black students who feared for their safety nearly doubled from 1989 through 1995 (Kaufman et al. 1999).
Current national data present a comprehensive picture of discipline incidents and identify the prevalence of various school policies related to safety and discipline, but they are
31 Bryk, Lee, and Holland (1993) use the High School and Beyond data set to identify an approach that seems to pay off in a measurably low incidence of disruptive behavior and low rates of student disengagement, at least in the Catholic schools studied. The approach common to those Catholic schools combines a formal philosophy statement with unplanned daily encounters between faculty and students. It is during these otherwise routine encounters, they say, that Catholic school faculty take the opportunity to instill in students a sense of personal responsibility and commitment to appropriate behavior. Learning is facilitated, they say, when Catholic school students honor and respond to the commitments that parents, teachers, and others have made to giving them an opportunity to learn.
limited in their usefulness because the data do not include information that research suggests is relevant in determining the success of discipline policies, such as how the policy is implemented and its perceived fairness among the school community (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990).
E. INDICATOR 13: ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT
One of the most frequently cited attributes of schools with high levels of student learning and consistent positive student growth is that schools emphasize (and students take advantage of) a challenging and appropriate curriculum (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990). Unless students are productively engaged in appropriately challenging academic study, a school's orderly atmosphere will have little effect on student learning. Knowing what school-level policies and schoolwide actions encourage students into recommended course-taking patterns and toward academic success is useful information for schools searching for greater success. To understand these issues, research suggests that we must know whether and how student performance is related to the school's course offerings (academic versus vocational) and the students' responses to those course offerings and the extent to which the school encourages students into particular enrollment patterns and holds high expectations for their success (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993; Chubb and Moe 1990).
National information on the influence of coursetaking and the academic environment on achievement primarily derives from the High School and Beyond and the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988. Results have been widely reported in several analyses. Chubb and Moe (1990) use the High School and Beyond longitudinal data to suggest that "academic program participation has a strong, independent effect on
achievement gains.... All things being equal, academic programs promote academic achievement" (p. 131). Bryk, Lee, and Holland (1993), using the same data, concur. Controlling for student characteristics, they find that student achievement is greater in schools where, among other factors, students take a higher number of math courses.
Does this suggest that a school can raise its student achievement levels merely by offering students a narrow, highly academic program with limited course selection? Not entirely. Bryk, Lee, and Holland (1993) suggest that taking more math and science courses and enrolling in honors programs are strongly related to achievement in all content areas in part because "more able students generally take advanced courses in all academic areas" (pp. 205–207).
If course offerings contribute to achievement gains, it will be useful to understand the mechanism through which that occurs and the expected magnitude. Chubb and Moe (1990) suggest gains are related to the academic environment in the following way. The percentage of students enrolled in the academic track is an "indicator of the programmatic orientation of the school [that] gauges the emphasis that the school places on academic work [and] captures how aggressively schools track students into academic programs and how extensively academic work contributes to the school's general climate" (p. 131). The effect on student achievement is not insignificant. Controlling for student characteristics such as socioeconomic status, they estimate that differences in tracking policies across effective and ineffective schools amount to 0.13 of a standard deviation difference in achievement each year over the final two years of high school, equal to approximately 30 percent of the total influence of school organization on achievement. 32
More recent research into the academic environment and its effects on student achievement has tried to distinguish between differences in learning resulting from two currently prevailing characterizations of school organization and climate: academic press and communitarian organization. Schools emphasizing academic press typically implement strong achievement-related school goals that are manifested in shared high expectations for student achievement. Communitarian schools, on the other hand, have communal or shared forms of organization and are usually engaged in reorganizing instruction, altering authority, personalizing relationships within the school, and developing a sense of community. Research on the relative effects of each has been inconclusive so far. Some researchers found that academic press was linked to achievement (Phillips 1997; Shouse 1996), while others found no difference (Lee and Smith 1995).
It is perhaps easier to measure academic press than the more multidimensional concept of communitarianism. Communitarianism is especially prone to the data concerns identified at the beginning of this chapter because it represents an organizational ethos, not a set of policies. Thus, measuring it requires overcoming the difficulties associated
32 Chubb and Moe suggest that the effect on student achievement that may result from academic tracking could depend on how researchers specify their statistical models. For two reasons, they say, it is inappropriate to use academic program participation as a factor to assess the effects of school organization. First, since enrolling in an academic program is partly a function of the ability and background of the student, it is not appropriate to assign those effects only to the school. Second, as an estimate of the probability that any given student is academically tracked, the measure also operates as a student-level proxy that gauges the influence of course work on individual gains in achievement. Instead, Chubb and Moe suggest the appropriate model should include the individual effect of student academic coursetaking (by creating a dichotomous variable measured at the student level) and the school-level effect on student learning (derived from the school's influence on the students' choice of study programs).
with creating numerical representations of human incentives, motivations, interactions, and opinions. In addition, currently available data of this sort come from only a small and perhaps unrepresentative sample of teachers within schools.
Academic press is more tangible and can be represented by student course offerings and requirements. For example, Figure 4.2 shows how academic expectations have changed over time. The figure shows that the percentage of public school districts with graduation requirements that meet or exceed the National Commission on Excellence in Education recommendations (four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of science, three years of social studies, and a half a year of computer science) increased from 12 to 20 percent between 1987–88 and 1993–94, and that districts were more likely to meet or exceed those recommendations for English than for mathematics or science (Wirt et al. 1998). In addition, students appear to have responded to these policy changes. The percentage of graduates completing the NCEE requirements in English, science, mathematics, and social studies tripled between 1982 and 1994 (Center on Education Policy and American Youth Policy Forum 2000). A common criticism of the NCEE recommendations is that they specify only the number of courses to be taken, not their rigor. But, as noted in the previous chapter, there is evidence that students have been enrolling in larger numbers in more difficult courses. From 1982 to 1998, there was an increase in the percentage of students enrolling in higher-level mathematics and science courses such as algebra II, trigonometry, precalculus, calculus, physics I, chemistry I, chemistry II, or physics II (Wirt et al. 2000).
For the reasons detailed in Chapter III, course titles provide only a rough approximation of content (Porter et al. 1993; Shouse 1996). But given the estimated effect size on student achievement resulting from academic organization, we need to continue the
push for better identifying organizational nuances that might unlock our understanding of how organizational philosophies encourage students to excel and promote student learning.
F. SUMMARY
How schools approach educational leadership and school goals, develop a professional community, and establish a climate that minimizes discipline problems and encourages academic excellence clearly affect school quality and student learning. For three reasons, however, the effect of school-level characteristics are more difficult to ascertain than those of teachers and classrooms described in the previous two chapters. First, even though they are integral to a school, these characteristics are difficult to define and measure. Second, their effect on student learning is likely to be exerted indirectly through teachers and classrooms, compounding the measurement problem. And last, with some exceptions, reliable school-representative information about these indicators of quality is minimal. These difficulties should not overshadow the importance of collecting such data to learn more about how these characteristics operate and affect student learning through teachers and classrooms. The preponderance of national, regional, and local efforts to develop quality schools heightens the benefits that would be derived from additional and more refined and reliable school-representative measures of school characteristics.
V.CONCLUSION
Thirteen indicators of school quality that recent research suggests are related to improving student learning are the focus of this report. These indicators of quality cover three areas of schools: the characteristics of teachers, classrooms, and schools as organizations. Many of the indicators in this report are supported by evidence that a statistical association exists between the indicator and student learning. But in several instances, even though experts would agree that certain indicators should enhance student learning, there is not always concrete statistical evidence of an association (examples include professional development, school leadership, school goals, and a school's professional community). Statistical evidence may be lacking because the indicator data need to be improved.
This chapter has four purposes: (1) to synthesize the report's findings regarding the caliber of the data on the indicators related to teachers, classrooms, and schools; (2) to explain why some indicators are higher caliber than others; (3) to highlight which indicators need improving; and (4) to summarize the major findings regarding the current status of school quality on each dimension of schooling for which data are adequate.
A. QUALITY OF THE DATA
To assess the status of the data on each indicator of quality, we searched the national data to determine which data best represented each indicator and then interpreted the status of the 13 dimensions of schools using these data. Interpreting the data on measures of some indicators (such as teacher assignment) was relatively straightforward; interpreting data for other indicators (such as leadership) was less so. The quality of the data depends on one of at least two factors: (1) the complexity of the characteristics being measured and (2) whether the dimension of schooling has been studied using national data for an extended period of time.
The quality of data on these indicators varies in predictable ways. Where the dimension being measured is straightforward (teaching assignment, teacher experience, and class size) or has been measured for an extended period of time (the standardized tests used to gauge teacher academic skills), the data are high quality. Where little information exists about a particularly important facet of an indicator (professional development, course content, technology, discipline, and academic environment), the quality of the data is somewhat compromised. And where an indicator is more complex than are measures of a phenomenon (pedagogy, leadership, goals, and professional community), data quality is poor. Data quality designations for each of the 13 indicators are listed in Table 5.1.
The indicators of teacher assignment, teacher experience, and class size each represent straightforward concepts and are easy to measure, and the data are high quality. In addition, data on teacher experience and class size have been collected for several decades, further ensuring the quality of the data. Data on teacher academic skills are also high quality but less straightforward. While the academic skills of teachers constitute only one aspect of teaching ability, standardized tests that measure the academic skills of future teachers are quite advanced and have consistently shown links to student learning.
Data on indicators of professional development, course content, technology, discipline, and academic environment are of moderate quality. The national data-collection efforts of these specific measures are relatively new compared with the efforts to collect data on high-quality indicators, and the indicators are more complex than the data currently collected. Consequently, data on professional development are limited in key respects and provide little insight into important principles of successful programs (for example, current data tell us mostly about the prevalence of professional development, but not much about its structure and quality). National data on indicators of course content and academic environment are based primarily on course titles, and consequently their usefulness is hampered by their being too vague. Similarly, current data on technology primarily measure the availability of hardware and access to the Internet and provide too little information on the instructional role of technology in the classroom. Nationally representative data on school discipline incidents and on school discipline policies are well defined and of good quality, but there are limited data documenting this relationship to student learning, the implementation of discipline policies, and their perceived fairness.
Only poor-quality data are available on pedagogy, leadership, school goals, and professional community. These indicators are complex to measure and historically have not been prominent parts of national data-collection efforts. The teaching process consists of a complex set of interactions between students, the teacher, and the curriculum, making it hard to isolate and measure critical elements of pedagogy. Measuring human actions, incentives, and opinions to estimate the effects of school-level attributes such as leadership, goals, and professional community is an equally complex task.
As a group, the teacher-focused measures of school quality are less complex and have been collected for some time. School-level attributes of quality are nearly the opposite. Indicators with lower-quality data provide an incentive and direction for improved national data collection.
But even the high-quality measures are sometimes compromised by not being used or defined properly and by not being kept up to date. How a measure is used or defined can alter our perception of school quality. As discussed in the teacher and classrooms chapters, teacher assignment and class size can each be defined in substantively different ways, and the different definitions provide different pictures of the magnitude of the out-of-field teaching problem and the average size of classrooms.
Furthermore, the value of measures depreciates if the data are old. Some of the highquality measures are not collected frequently. A national measure of out-of-field teaching using the "any-mismatch" approach is obtained every four years. Other high-
Table 5.1— Quality of national school quality indicator data
High Quality
Moderate Quality
Poor Quality
Teacher Assignment
Professional Development
Pedagogy
Teacher Experience
Technology
Goals
Teacher Academic Skills
Course Content
School Leadership
Class Size
Discipline
Professional Community
Academic Environment
quality measures are not collected routinely. There are no regularly scheduled efforts to use standardized tests to measure the academic skills of prospective teachers or to monitor the course-taking patterns of students.
To monitor the status of school quality accurately, better measures are needed, especially for indicators of pedagogy, leadership, goals, and professional community. Furthermore, certain important facets of professional development, course content, technology, academic environment, and discipline are missing. Finally, even when quality data are available, they lose their value if they are not appropriately defined and kept up to date. Moreover, even though experts would agree that certain indicators should enhance student learning, there is not always concrete statistical evidence to support their supposition; improving the data collected on the dimensions of schools thought to be associated with school quality should help us better understand the relationship of these indicators to student learning.
B. THE STATUS OF SCHOOL QUALITY
Teacher indicators show that the teaching profession attracts those with low academic skills who have been entering the profession in much higher numbers than teachers with high academic skills (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000). Inexperienced teachers and those with low academic skills are more likely to teach in high-poverty schools and schools with high concentrations of minority students (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000). Although new-teacher induction programs are on the rise, continuing teachers rarely participate in staff renewal and enhancement activities for more than one day each year (Choy and Ross 1998). The classroom indicators show more positive trends. Students are taking more rigorous academic courses in high school, and more computers are available and used more frequently (Smith et al. 1997; Wirt et al. 2000). However, minority high school graduates were usually less likely than Asian/Pacific Islander or non-Hispanic white students to enroll in these classes (Wirt et al. 2000). In addition, students in high-poverty schools have less classroom access to the Internet (U.S. Department of Education 2000b). Although the average public elementary school class in 1998 had 23 students, the strongest gains in student achievement seem to occur in classes with 13 to 20 students, especially for disadvantaged and minority students (Krueger 1998; Mosteller, Light, and Sachs 1996; Robinson and Wittebols 1986). School indicators show that schools have been raising their academic expectations and that an increased number of students are enrolling in algebra I, geometry, algebra II, biology, chemistry, and physics (Smith et al. 1997). However, serious violent crime incidents occurred in 10 percent of all public schools in 1996–97, and the percentage of middle and high school students who fear attack or other bodily harm while at school has been on the rise (Kaufman et al. 1999).
The findings documented in this report, like all research, are time sensitive and part of an iterative process. The status of schools as identified by indicators with quality data is changing rapidly and will need to be continually updated. As research on school effectiveness proceeds, indicators with only poor-quality data will need to be improved to understand the complete picture of school quality as called for by the Special Study Panel on Education Indicators for the National Center for Education Statistics.
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Chapter 14:
GESTURE BASED INTERACTION
Introduction
Gestures and gesture recognition are terms increasingly encountered in discussions of human-computer interaction. For many (if not most) people the term includes character recognition, the recognition of proof readers symbols, shorthand, and all of the types of interaction described in the previous chapter, Marking Interfaces. In fact every physical action involves a gesture of some sort in order to be articulated. Furthermore, the nature of that gesture is generally an important component in establishing the quality of feel to the action. Nevertheless, what we want to isolate for discussion in this chapter are interactions where the gesture is what is articulated and recognized, rather than a consequence of expressing something through a transducer. Thus we use the definition of gesture articulated by Kurtenbach and Hulteen (1990):
"A gesture is a motion of the body that contains information. Waving goodbye is a gesture. Pressing a key on a keyboard is not a gesture because the motion of a finger on its way to hitting a key is neither observed nor significant. All that matters is which key was pressed".
And, of course, this is true regardless of the gesture that was used to push the key. It could have been pushed lovingly or in anger. Either could be easily sensed by an observer. But both are irrelevant to the computer, which only cares about what key was pushed when.
The type of communication that we are discussing here is far richer in many ways than what we have been dealing with. Consequently, it is not hard to understand why this use of gesture requires a different class of input devices then we have seen thus far. For the most part, gestures, as we discuss them, involve a far higher number of degrees of freedom than we have been looking at. Trying to do gesture recognition by using a mouse or some other "single point" device for gestural interaction restricts the user to the gestural
The primary author of this chapter is Mark Billinghurst.
vocabulary of a fruit fly ! You may still be able to communicate, but your gestural repertoire will be seriously constrained.
The first step in considering gesture based interaction with computers is to understand the role of gesture in human to human communication. In the next section we review the psychology and anthropology literature to categorize the types of gestures that are commonly made and their attributes. In the remainder of the chapter we use these categories to discuss gesture based interfaces, from symbolic gesture systems to multimodal conversational interfaces. We end with a discussion of future research directions, in particular reactive environments where the user's entire surroundings is able to understand their voice and gestural commands and respond accordingly.
Gestures in the Everyday World
If we remove ourselves from the world of computers and consider human-human interaction for a moment we quickly realize that we utilize a broad range of gesture in communication. The gestures that are used vary greatly among contexts and cultures (Morris, Collet, Marsh & O'Shaughnessy 1980) yet are intimately related to communication. This is shown by the fact that people gesticulate just as much when talking on the phone and can't see each other as in face to face conversation (Rime 1982).
Gestures can exist in isolation or involve external objects. Free of any object, we wave, beckon, fend off, and to a greater or lesser degree (depending on training) make use of more formal sign languages. With respect to objects, we have a broad range of gestures that are almost universal, including pointing at objects, touching or moving objects, changing object shape, activating objects such as controls, or handing objects to others. This suggests that gestures can be classified according to their function. Cadoz (1994) uses function to group gestures into three types:
* semiotic: those used to communicate meaningful information.
* ergotic: those used to manipulate the physical world and create artifacts
* epistemic: those used to learn from the environment through tactile or haptic exploration
Within these categories there may be further classifications applied to gestures. Mulder (1996) provides a summary of several different classifications, especially with respect to semiotic gestures.
In this chapter we are primarily interested in how gestures can be used to communicate with a computer so we will be mostly concerned with empty handed semiotic gestures. These can further be categorized according to their functionality. Rime and Schiaratura (1991) propose the following gesture taxonomy:
* Symbolic gestures: These are gestures that, within each culture, have come to have a single meaning. An Emblem such as the "OK" gesture is one such example, however American Sign Language gestures also fall into this category.
* Deictic gestures: These are the types of gestures most generally seen in HCI and are the gestures of pointing, or otherwise directing the listeners attention to specific events or objects in the environment. They are the gestures made when someone says "Put that there".
* Iconic gestures: As the name suggests, these gestures are used to convey information about the size, shape or orientation of the object of discourse. They are the gestures made when someone says "The plane flew like this", while moving their hand through the air like the flight path of the aircraft.
* Pantomimic gestures: These are the gestures typically used in showing the use of movement of some invisible tool or object in the speaker's hand. When a speaker says "I turned the steering wheel hard to the left", while mimicking the action of turning a wheel with both hands, they are making a pantomimic gesture.
To this taxonomy McNeill (1992) adds types of gestures which relate to the process of communication; beat gestures and cohesives. Beat or baton gestures are so named because the hand moves up and down with the rhythm of speech and looks like it is beating time. Cohesives, on the other hand, are variations of iconic, pantomimic or deictic gestures that are used to tie together temporally separated but thematically related portions of discourse.
Gesture is also intimately related to speech, both in it's reliance on the speech channel for interpretation, and for its own speech like-qualities. Only the first class of gestures, symbolic, can be interpreted alone without further contextual information. Either this context has to be provided sequentially by another gesture or action, or by speech input in concert with the gesture. So these gesture types can also be categorized according to their relationship with speech:
* Gestures that evoke the speech referent: Symbolic, Deictic
* Gestures that depict the speech referent: Iconic, Pantomimic
* Gestures that relate to conversational process: Beat, Cohesive
The need for a speech channel for understanding varies according to the type of gesture. Thus gesture types can be ordered according to their speech/gesture dependency. This is described in Kendon's Continuum (Kendon 1988):
```
Gesticulation -> Language-Like -> Pantomimes -> Emblems -> Sign Language (Beat, Cohesive) (Iconic) (Pantomimic) (Deictic) (Symbolic)
```
Progressing from left to right the necessity of accompanying speech to understand the gesture declines, the gestures become more language-like, and idiosyncratic gestures are replaced by socially regulated signs. For example sign languages share enough of the syntactic and semantic features of speech that they don't require an additional speech channel for interpretation. However iconic gestures cannot be understood without accompanying speech.
In contrast to this rich gestural taxonomy, current interaction with computers is almost entirely free of gestures. The dominant paradigm is direct manipulation, however we may wonder how direct are direct manipulation systems when they are so restricted in the ways that they engage our everyday skills. This deficiency is made obvious when we consider how proficient humans are at using gestures in the everyday world and then consider how few of these gestures can be used in human-computer interaction and how long it takes to learn the input gestures that computers can understand. Even the most advanced gestural interfaces typically only implement symbolic or deictic gesture recognition. However this need not be the case. In the remainder of the chapter we move along Kendon's Continuum from right to left reviewing computer interfaces from each of three categories; gesture only interfaces, gesture and speech interfaces, conversational interfaces.
As we shall see from this review, one of the compelling reasons for using gesture at the interface is because of it's relationship to the concepts of chunking and phrasing. In chapter seven we described how the most intuitive interfaces match the phrase structure of the human-computer dialogue with the cognitive chunks the human should be learning. Unintuitive interfaces require simple conceptual actions to be broken up into compound tasks; for example a Move action that requires separate Cut and Paste commands. In contrast, gesture based interfaces allow the use of natural gestural phrases that chunk the input dialog into units meaningful to the application. This is especially the case when voice input is combined with gesture, allowing the user to exactly match their input modalities to the cognitive chunks of the task. For example, saying the command "move the ball like this" while showing the path of the ball with an iconic gesture specifies both a command and its relevant parameters in a single cognitive chunk.
Gesture Only Interfaces
The gestural equivalent of direct manipulation interfaces are those which use gesture alone. These can range from interfaces that recognize a few symbolic gestures to those that implement fully fledged sign language interpretation. Similarly interfaces may recognize static hand poses, or dynamic hand motion, or a combination of both. In all cases each gesture has an unambiguous semantic meaning associated with it that can be used in the interface. In this section we will first briefly review the technology used to capture gesture input, then describe examples from symbolic and sign language recognition. Finally we summarize the lessons learned from these interfaces and provide some recommendations for designing gesture only applications.
Tracking Technologies
Gesture-only interfaces with a syntax of many gestures typically require precise hand pose tracking. A common technique is to instrument the hand with a glove which is equipped with a number of sensors which provide information about hand position, orientation, and flex of the fingers. The first commercially available hand tracker, the Dataglove, is described in Zimmerman, Lanier, Blanchard, Bryson and Harvill (1987), and illustrated in the video by Zacharey, G. (1987). This uses thin fiber optic cables running down the back of each hand, each with a small crack in it. Light is shone down the cable so when the fingers are bent light leaks out through the cracks. Measuring light loss gives an accurate reading of hand pose. The Dataglove could measure each joint bend to an accuracy of 5 to 10 degrees (Wise et. al. 1990), but not the sideways movement of the fingers (finger abduction). However, the CyberGlove developed by Kramer (Kramer 89) uses strain gauges placed between the fingers to measure abduction as well as more accurate bend sensing (Figure 1). Since the development of the Dataglove and Cyberglove many other glove based input devices have appeared as described by Sturman and Zeltzer (1994).
The CyberGlove captures the position and movement of the fingers and wrist. It has up to 22 sensors, including three bend sensors (including the distal joints) on each finger, four abduction sensors, plus sensors measuring thumb crossover, palm arch, wrist flexion and wrist abduction. (Photo: Virtual Technologies, Inc.)
Once hand pose data has been captured by the gloves, gestures can be recognized using a number of different techniques. Neural network approaches or statistical template matching is commonly used to identify static hand poses, often achieving accuracy rates of better than 95% (Väänänen and Böhm 1993). Time dependent neural networks may also be used for dynamic gesture recognition [REF], although a more common approach is to use Hidden Markov Models. With this technique Kobayashi is able to achieve an accuracy of XX% (Kobayashi et. al. 1997), similar results have been reported by XXXX and XXXX. Hidden Markov Models may also be used to interactively segment out glove input into individual gestures for recognition and perform online learning of new gestures (Lee 1996). In these cases gestures are typically recognized using pre-trained templates, however gloves can also be used to identify natural or untrained gestures. Wexelblat uses a top down and bottom up approach to recognize natural gestural features such as finger curvature and hand orientation, and temporal integration to produce frames describing complete gestures (Wexelblat 1995). These frames can then be passed to higher level functions for further interpretation.
Although instrumented gloves provide very accurate results they are expensive and encumbering. Computer vision techniques can also be used for gesture recognition overcoming some of these limitations. A good review of vision based gesture recognition is provided by Palovic et. al. (1995). In general, vision based systems are more natural to use that glove interfaces, and are capable of excellent hand and body tracking, but do not provide the same accuracy in pose determination. However for many applications this may not be important. Sturman and Zeltzer point out the following limitations for image based visual tracking of the hands (Sturman and Zeltzer 1994):
* The 30- or 60- frame-per-second conventional video technology is insufficient to capture rapid hand motion.
* The resolution of video cameras is too low to both resolve the fingers easily and cover the field of view encompassed by broad hand motions.
* Fingers are difficult to track as they occlude each other and are occluded by the hand.
There are two different approaches to vision based gesture recognition; model based techniques which try to create a three-dimensional model of the users hand and use this for recognition, and image based techniques which calculate recognition features directly from the hand image. Rehg and Kanade (1994) describe a vision-based approach that uses stereo camera to create a cylindrical model of the hand. They use finger tips and joint links as features to align the cylindrical components of the model. Etoh, Tomono and Kishino (1991) report similar work, while Lee and Kunii use kinematic constraints to improve the model matching and recognize 16 gestures with XX% accuracy (1993). Image based methods typically segment flesh tones from the background images to find hands and then try and extract features such as fingertips, hand edges, or gross hand geometry for use in gesture recognition. Using only a coarse description of hand shape and a hidden markov model, Starner and Pentland are able to recognize 42 American Sign Language gestures with 99% accuracy (1995). In contrast, Martin and Crowley calculate the principle components of gestural images and use these to search the gesture space to match the target gestures (1997).
Natural Gesture Only Interfaces
At the simplest level, effective gesture interfaces can be developed which respond to natural gestures, especially dynamic hand motion. An early example is the Theremin, an electronic musical instrument from the 1920's. This responds to hand position using two proximity sensors, one vertical, the other horizontal. Proximity to the vertical sensor controls the music pitch, to the horizontal one, loudness. What is amazing is that music can be made with orthogonal control of the two prime dimensions, using a control system that provides no fixed reference points, such as frets or mechanical feedback. The hands work in extremely subtle ways to articulate steps in what is actually a continuous control space [REF]. The Theremin is successful because there is a direct mapping of hand motion to continuous feedback, enabling the user to quickly build a mental model of how to use the device.
The figure shows Dr. Robert Moog playing the Theremin. This electronic musical instrument generates a violin-like tone whose pitch is determined by the proximity of the performer's right hand to the vertical antenna, and the loudness is controlled by the proximity of the left hand to the horizontal antenna. Hence, a musical performance requires control over great subtlety of nuance over gesture on the part of the artist, with no mechanical aids (such as frets) as a guide. It is an extreme example of the human's potential to articulate controlled gestures. (Photo: Big Briar, Inc.)
Myron Krueger's Videoplace is another system with responds to natural user gesture (Krueger 1991). Developed in the late 1970's and early 80's, Videoplace uses real time image processing of live video of the user. Background subtraction and edge detection are used to create a silhouette of the user and relevant features identified. The feature recognition is sufficiently fine to distinguish between hands and fingers, whether fingers are extended or closed, and even which fingers. With this capability, the system has been programmed to perform a number of interactions, many of which closely echo our use of gesture in the everyday world.
Videoplace is a stunning piece of work, displaying an extremely high degree of virtuosity and creativity. The key to its success is the recognition of dynamic natural gestures, meaning users require no training. Figure 3 shows a kind of "finger painting" while Figure 4 shows how one can select from a menu (in this case the alphabet, thereby enabling text entry) by pointing at items with the index finger. Finally, Figure 5 shows an object being manipulated by simultaneously using the index finger and thumb from both hands.
Here the index finger is recognized and when extended, becomes a drawing tool. Shaping the hand in a fist, so that the finger is no longer extended lets the hand be moved without inking.
Here, text is entered by pointing at the character desired. Note that the alphabet is simply a menu, and the example demonstrates how extending the index finger can be used as a generalized selection tool.
Here the index fingers and thumbs of the two hands are recognized and are used to control the shape of the object being defined.
An interesting issue that arises with the system is that of segmentation. Since the system is driven by the gesture of the hand, how in the previous figure, for example, does the user specify that the current form of the curve is to be fixed? If this is not done, the curve will "stick" to the fingers and distort when the hand goes to perform some other task. The solution generally used is to utilize a temporal cue: if the hands hold the shape in place for a certain time, a beep is heard indicating that it has been fixed. The hands can now go and do something else. The interaction is much like having to hold something in place until the glue dries (but where the glue is relatively fast drying).
Symbolic Gesture Recognition
VideoPlace and the Theremin both respond to natural free form gestures, however interfaces with a wider range of commands may require a symbolic gesture interface. In this case certain commands are associated with pretrained gesture shapes. Symbolic gesture interfaces are often used in immersive virtual environment where the user cannot see the real world to traditional input devices. In this setting there are typically a set of pretrained gestures used for navigation through the virtual environment and interaction with virtual objects. For example in the Rubber Rocks virtual environment, users could pick up virtual rocks by making a fist gesture, and throw and release rocks with a flat hand gesture (Codella, 1992). The GIVEN virtual environment (Gesture-driven Interactions in Virtual Environments), uses a neural network to recognize up to twenty static and dynamic gestures (Vaananen and Bohm, 1993). These include pointing gestures for flying, fist gestures for grabbing and other whole hand gesture for releasing objects or returning back to the starting point in the virtual environment.
As Baudel and Beaudouin-Lafon (1993) point out there are a number of advantages in using symbolic gestures for interaction, including:
* Natural Interaction: Gestures are a natural form of interaction and easy to use.
* Terse and Powerful: A single gesture can be used to specify both a command and its parameters.
* Direct Interaction: The hand as input device eliminates the need for intermediate transducers.
However the are problems with using symbolic gesture only interfaces. Users may become tired making free-space gestures and gesture interfaces are not self-revealing, forcing the user to know beforehand the set of gestures that the system understands. Naturally, it becomes more difficult to remember the gestural command set as the number of gesture increase. There is also a segmentation problem, in that tracking systems typically capture all of the user's hand motions so any gestural commands must be segmented from this continuous stream before being recognized. This causes a related problem in that the gestures chosen may also duplicate those that are very natural and used in everyday life. For example, the pointing gesture using the index finger is often used to fly through the virtual space. However since this gesture is also performed during other natural behaviors (such as scratching one's chin), resulting in unintended flights.
CASE STUDY Charade:
Charade (Baudel & Beaudouin-Lafon, 1993), is an excellent example of an effective gesture only interface. Charade uses dynamic hand gestures to control a computer-aided presentation. As shown in Figure 6, the user stands in front of a projection screen wearing a DataGlove connected to a Macintosh computer. When they point their hand towards the projection screen they can issue one-handed gestural commands controlling the Hypercard presentation shown on the screen, such as advancing to the next slide. There are a total of 16 commands that can be recognized. Charade recognizes 70-80% of first time user's gestures correctly and has an accuracy of 90-98% for trained users.
To ensure accurate gesture recognition and an intuitive interface a number of constraints are applied. A region in front of the projection screen is defined as the active zone and gestures are ignored if they were performed out of this area. This enables users to mix gesture commands with normal conversational gestures. Gestures are also defined by a set start posture, end posture and dynamic motion between the start and end postures. These constraints enable gesture recognition to be performed using the following steps:
* Detection of intention – gestures were only interpreted when they were made within the active zone
* Gesture Classification – gestures were classified according to their start position and dynamic motion.
* Gesture Segmentation – static start and end postures aided in the separation of command gestures from normal user gestures.
In addition, the start positions differ from all the end positions and the gesture commands do not differ solely by their end position. This enables users to string together multiple commands in a single hand motion and for users to complete a command by either using an end posture or moving their hand out of the active zone.
In developing Charade, Baudel and Beaudouin-Lafon arrived at four guidelines that are generally applicable to symbolic gestural interfaces:
* Use Hand Tension: In Charade the start positions all involved tensing the hand into static postures. This makes explicit the user's intention to issue a command. Tension also emphasizes the structure of the human-computer dialogue. Conversely end positions should not be tensed.
* Provide Fast, Incremental and Reversible Actions: This is one of the basic principles of direction manipulation interfaces adapted for gestural input. Speed is essential so that user does not get tired forming gestures, reversibility is important to enable the user to undo any action, and incremental actions are vital for the system to provide continuous feedback to improve the users confidence in the interface.
* Favor Ease of Learning: In symbolic gestural interfaces a compromise must be made between natural gestures that are immediately learned by the user and complex gestures that give more control. In Charade, the most common interface actions are mapped to the most natural gestures, ensuring ease of learning.
* Use Hand Gesture for Appropriate Tasks: It is important to chose carefully the tasks that gesture input is going to be used for. While gesture input is natural for some navigation and direct manipulation tasks, it is inappropriate for tasks that require precise interaction or manipulation. These tasks typically require some form of physical contact.
Sign Language Recognition
A obvious application for gesture interfaces is in the interpretation of formal sign language. In contrast with other gestures, sign language does not rely on other input modalities for interpretation and can be used to completely express syntactic and semantic information. Perhaps the most interesting use of sign language interfaces is in sign to speech translation. Starner and Pentland's work [SUMMARISE THEIR WORK]
While this work is useful for discrete letter or word recognition, sign language interfaces can also be used for lower level continuous speech production. GloveTalk (Fels and Hinton 1993) and GloveTalk II (Fels and Hinton 1995) are systems that translate hand gestures into word, vowel and consonant sounds. In the original GloveTalk, features from a glove and magnetic hand tracker are used as input into five neural networks that control speech production. Hand shape determined the root word with its ending specified with the direction of hand movement. The speed of movement and amount of displacement also fixed the rate of speech and syllable stress. Glove-Talk II extended this by allowing production of individual speech formants. Three neural networks are used to allow gestures to continuously control 10 parameters of a parallel formant speech synthesizer. In this way the users hand gestures control an artificial vocal tract the produces speech in real time, and they have an unlimited vocabulary as well as control over formant pitch and volume. However, significant training is needed to learn the gestures required by the system; one user was able to speak intelligibly after 100 hours of practice. This is much less than previous attempts at gesture to speech interfaces.
Designing Gesture Only interfaces
In this section we have described three types of gesture only interfaces; those which interpret natural gesture, symbolic input, or those which understand formal sign languages. These can be distinguished by the amount of training required, and the expressiveness and usability of the interface. Although natural interfaces such as those developed by Kruger are easy to use, and don't need training, they only provide a limited command vocabulary. In contrast Fels' interface can produce any word in the English language, but requires many hours of training before it is usable. This suggests that in developing gesture based interfaces designers must carefully consider the command vocabulary required and use this to select the type of gestural input most appropriate.
Sturman and Zeltzer provide an iterative design method for whole hand gestural interfaces (Sturman, Zeltzer 1993). This enables a developer to evaluate the appropriateness of using whole hand input for an interface and then design an efficient interface by matching task characteristics to hand action capabilities and device attributes. The design method is broken into several stages, (Figure 7). The first of these, Appropriateness for Application, involves determining the appropriateness of an application for whole hand input by considering the following series of questions about the application in the areas of naturalness, adaptability and coordination:
Naturalness:
Are the following characteristics useful for controlling the application tasks?
* Existing hand signs
* Pre-acquired sensorimotor skills
* Absence of an intermediary device
* Task control maps well to hand actions (position and motion of hand).
Adaptability:
Are diverse modes of control used in the tasks? Is it important to be able to switch between modes of control rapidly, and smoothly?
Coordination:
Do the tasks require the coordination of many degrees of freedom?
The more positive answers to these questions the more suitable gesture input is for the application. Once gesture input is determined to be appropriate it is necessary to develop a Taxonomy which describes how gestures will be used in the interface. The taxonomy categorizes possible hand actions and the interpretation of hand actions by the application, and helps discriminate between the different input styles. The enables the designer to select the gesture input most suitable for the application. For example, if there are many desired input modes than perhaps symbolic recognition is most appropriate, which if only a few natural gestures may suffice.
Next, the application is broken down into task primitives that can be quantified in ways that relate to specific hand actions. Table X.X shows a list of task characteristics and related hand action capabilities. The task characteristics describe the task primitive to be performed while the hand action capabilities describe the control available from the hand. Sturman (1992) gives a complete description of these measures. As the application is broken down into task primitives, the developer can use these measures to select potential hand actions for each primitive. In many cases the developer may need to carry out experimental trials to quantify the hand action capabilities.
The final step in the design method is choosing a particular gesture input device that matches the task characteristics and hand actions. Potential devices should evaluated according to a set of measure such as those given in Table 1. These measures enable an easy comparison to the task characteristics and hand action capabilities. Once the input device has been chosen and a prototype developed an iterative design process can begin which leads to the best gestural input method for the target application.
Using this design method Sturman and Zeltzer evaluate the use of whole hand input for three different interface activities, controlling the walking rate of a virtual robot, orienting a virtual object and moving a virtual robot along a path. In each case hand input with a DataGlove was compared to input using a dial box. The design method predicted that walking control using the DataGlove would be better than the dial box, there would be no difference between input modalities for the orientation task, and that the glove input would prove worse than the dial box for path following. User studies verified these predictions, showing the validity of the design method for gestural interface design.
Table 1: the Relationship between Task Characteristics, Hand Action and Device Capabilities.
| | Task Characteristics | | Hand Action Capabilities | Device Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Degrees of Freedom | | Degrees of Freedom | | |
| Task Constraints - Degrees of freedom - Physical constraints - Temporal constraints - External forces | | Hand Constraints - range of motion - coupling - spatial interference - strength | | |
| Coordination | | Coordination | | |
| Resolution - spatial - temporal | | Resolution - spatial - temporal | | |
| Speed | | Speed | | |
| Repeatability | | Repeatability | | |
| Steadiness | | Steadiness | | |
| Endurance | | Endurance | | |
| Expressiveness | | Expressiveness | | |
| Modality | | Adaptability | | |
| Task Analogy - comparison to existing methods - similarity to other tasks | | Familiarity - similarity to existing skills - similarity to everyday motions | | |
Speech with Gesture
Perhaps use of gesture is most powerful when combined with other input modalities, especially voice. Allowing combined voice and gestural input has several tangible advantages. The first is purely practical; ease of expression. As Martin (1989 ) points out, typical computer interaction modalities are characterized by an ease versus expressiveness trade-off. Ease corresponds to the efficiency with which commands can be remembered, and expressiveness the size of the command vocabulary. Common interaction devices range from the mouse that maximizes ease, to the keyboard that maximizes expressiveness. Multimodal input overcomes this trade-off; combined speech and gestural commands are easy to execute whilst retaining a large command vocabulary.
Voice and gesture complement each other and when used together, creating an interface more powerful that either modality alone. Cohen (Cohen et. al. 1989, Cohen 1992) shows how natural language interaction is suited for descriptive techniques, while gestural interaction is ideal for direct manipulation of objects. For example, unlike gestural or mouse input, voice is not tied to a spatial metaphor [11]. This means that voice can interact with objects regardless of degree of visual exposure, particularly valuable in a virtual environment where objects may be hidden inside each other or occluded by other objects. Some tasks are inherently graphical, others are verbal and yet others require both vocal and gestural input to be completed [10]. So allowing both types of input maximizes the usefulness of an interface by broadening the range of tasks that can be done in an intuitive manner. Cohen points out many complimentary attributes of direct manipulation and natural language interfaces as summarized in Table 2[ref].
Table 2: Complimentary Characteristics of Direct Manipulation and Natural Language Interfaces
| | Direct Manipulation | Natural Language |
|---|---|---|
| Strengths | 1. Intuitive 2. Consistent Look and Feel 3. Options Apparent 4. Fail Safe 5. "Direct Engagement" with object a. Point, act b. Feedback | 1. Intuitive 2. Description, e.g., a. Quantification b. Negation c. Temporal d. Motivation/Cause 3. Context 4. Anaphora 5. Asynchronous |
| Weaknesses | 1. Description 2. Anaphora 3. Operation on sets 4. Delayed actions difficult | 1. Coverage is opaque 2. Overkill for short or frequent queries 3. Difficulty of establishing and navigating context; Spatial specification cumbersome 4. Anaphora problematic 5. Error prone (ambiguity, vagueness, incomplete) |
For many types of applications, users prefer using combined voice and gestural communication to either modality alone. For example, Oviatt and Olsen (199X) evaluated speech and pen-based multimodal input in a verbal task and a numerical task. In the verbal task 56% of the users preferred combined pen/voice input, while 89% preferred it in the numerical task to using either modality alone. These results agree with those of Hauptman and MacAvinney [9] who used a simulated speech and free hand gesture recognizer in a typical graphics task. Three different modes were tested - gesture only, voice only, and gesture and voice recognition. Users overwhelmingly preferred combined voice and gestural recognition due to the greater expressiveness possible. When combined input was possible, subjects used speech and gesture together 71% of the time as opposed to voice only (13%) or gesture only (16%).
Combining speech, and gesture improves recognition accuracy and produces faster task completion time compared to speech only interfaces. Using a multimodal speech and penbased interface, Oviatt (1996) evaluated user performance on map tasks performed using only speech, only pen, or combined speech and pen input. She found that multimodal input produced a 36% reduction in task errors and 23% fewer spoken words resulting in a 10% faster completion times compared to the speech only interface. Similarly, Martin (1989) finds that people using speech input for CAD programs were able to remain visually focused on the screen while using speech commands, causing a 108% improvement in productivity over purely keyboard entry. This was due to the additional response channel provided by the speech input as well as speech being a more efficient response channel than typed input.
There are also psychological reasons for integrating speech and gesture recognition. Experiments in cognitive psychology have shown that a person's ability to perform multiple tasks is affected by whether these tasks use the same or different sensory modes, for example visuo/spatial or verbal modes. According to the multiple resource theory of attention [6,7] the brain modularizes the processing of different types of information - when different tasks tap different resources much of the processing can go on in parallel. Such is the case with speech and visuo/spatial modalities. So by adding speech input to the interface users should be able to perform gestural tasks at the same time as giving verbal commands with little cognitive interference. Experimental evidence supports this theory.
Treisman and Davis [8] found that the ability to concentrate on more than one task at a time was expanded when the tasks were presented in separate perceptual channels and people responded to them across different response channels. This is in part due to the spatial and verbal information being stored separately within human memory [9].
Simple Multimodal Interfaces
One of the first interfaces to support combined speech and gesture recognition was the Media Room constructed by Negroponte's Architecture Machine Group (Bolt 1984). Designed by Richard Bolt, the Media Room allowed the user to sit inside the computer interface and interact with the computer through voice, gesture and gaze. It consisted of a large room, one wall of which was a back projection panel. The user sat in the center of the room in a chair wearing a magnetic position sensing devices on their wrist to measure pointing gestures (Figure 8).
Within the Media Room the user could use speech, gesture, eye movements or a combination of all three to add, delete and move graphical objects shown on the wall projection panel. The computer interpreted the user's intentions by speech and gesture recognition and by taking the current graphical situation into account. For example, one application allowed users to manage color-coded ships against a map of the Caribbean. By pointing at a spot above Haiti and saying "Create a large blue tanker there (pointing)", a blue tanker would appear above Haiti. An existing object could be moved by saying "Put that (pointing at object) there (pointing at destination)", colored ("Make that red"), or named ("call that (pointing to object) the Flying Cloud".)
By integrating speech and gesture recognition with contextual understanding, Bolt (Bolt 1984) discovered that neither had to be perfect provided they converged on the users intended meaning. This is because the computer responds to users commands by using speech and gesture recognition and taking the current context into account. For example, if a user says "Create a blue square there (pointing at a screen location)", and the speech recognizer fails to recognize "Create", the sentence can still be correctly understood by considering the graphical context. If there are no blue squares present then the missed word could only be "Create" and the system responds correctly. Coupling voice and gesture recognition in this way means that pronouns and adverbs can be used in speech instead of proper names and complicated object descriptions, considerably reducing the complexity of the recognition task. The user could say "Put that there", instead of "Move the blue freighter to the northeast of Haiti".
A similar approach is used in the Boeing "Talk and Draw" project [20], an AWACS workstation that allows users to direct military air operations. However in this case mouse commands are processed first to create a graphical context and then the speech input is parsed from within that context and combined with the graphical input. In this way, if the speech recognizer produces incomplete input, knowledge of the graphical context can be used to prompt the user for the relevant command. "Talk and Draw" also kept a history of referents so that if a use selected an aircraft with a mouse click, they could then ask the question "What is it's heading?".
Neal and Shapiro's CUBRICON multimodal command and control application allowed keyboard, mouse or voice interaction with a map display [Neal et. al. 89]. In contrast to "Talk and Draw", CUBRICON used gestural information to disambiguate speech input, as well as vice versa. This was possible because the user's input was interpreted using an Augmented Transition Network grammar of natural language and gestural components. ATN's are commonly used for natural language parsing. In this case they enhanced a traditional ATN with gestural primitives to integrate the multimodal input into a single representation. Figure 9 shows a sample ATN.
[INSERT SAMPLE ATN HERE]
Figure 9: Multimodal ATN
In the ATNs, each noun phrase can consist of zero or more words along with zero or more pointing references, thus the final representation contains information as to where gestures occurred relative to the speech input. Knowledge sources such as the discourse and user models or domain specific knowledge bases are then used to interpret the ATN and find the referent of the combined multimodal input. CUBRICON also used the ATN representation for multi-media output generation.
The most intuitive multimodal interfaces take advantage of the natural strengths and weaknesses of each input modality. For example, "Talk and Draw" exploits the parallel nature of speech and gesture and enables operators to give spoken commands at the same time as specifying the context with gestures. This was further shown by Weiner and Ganapathy [18] who integrated an isolated word recognizer into a three dimensional CAD package. Speech was used for invoking menu commands, whose magnitude was determined by gesture. This was based on three basic assumptions about gesture and speech:
* Gesture recognition is not as efficient as speech
* Hand gesturing and speech complement each other
* A spoken vocabulary has a more standard interpretation than gesture
They found that adding speech recognition markedly improved the interface, especially because of the sensible partitioning of the voice and gesture semantics. Voice was used for navigating the command menus and gestures for determining the graphics information, meaning the user never had to remove their hands from the modeling surface to issue a command.
Marsh, et. al. add to these recommendations by summarizing several years experience of developing multimodal interfaces (Marsh 1994). They were the primary developers of the NAUTILUS and Eucalyptus command and control map interfaces. Comparing graphical interactions to natural language they found that graphical interactions have the following limitations;
* little relationship between operations,
* commands must be entered sequentially,
* the user must follow an arbitrary order of operations.
* previous operations cannot be referred to,
As a result there are a set of discourse and dialogues properties that should be supported in a multimodal interfaces to significantly enhance their functionality. These are reference, deixis and ellipsis, focus of attention and context maintenance, presupposition, and conversational implicature [SHOULD WE EXPLAIN THESE FURTHER ?]. In their work they outline several multimodal interfaces with these features.
Multimodal Integration
A key aspect of multimodal interfaces is input integration. In order to respond to the user's voice and gestural commands the interface needs to integrate the speech and gesture input into a single semantic representation that can be used to generate the appropriate system commands and responses. The general approach is to time stamp the raw input data from each modality, parse it into an intermediate level common semantic form and then use temporal or contextual information to merge related inputs into a single representation. For example, if a user said "Move the boat there", while pointing at a particular location, the speech and gesture input could be represented by the frames shown in Figure 10. Frames are simple slot structures that contain related knowledge in attribute value pairs.
| Modality | Speech |
|---|---|
| Content | MOVE |
| From | <boat_location> |
| To | |
| Modality |
|---|
| Content |
| From |
| To |
| Time |
"Move the boat there"
Pointing at Destination
Figure 10: Intermediate Representation of Speech and Gestural Command
If the time at which the pointing gesture is executed, T2, close to the time of the speech command, T1, then it is trivial to merge the two frames into a final multimodal frame shown in Figure 11. Integration is achieved by considering the empty slots in each of the input frames, and which of them must be filled to resolve the spoken command.
Figure 11: Final Multimodal Frame
| Content |
|---|
| From |
| To |
| Time |
A slightly more sophisticated approach is that described by Nigay and Coutaz [Nigay 95]. Their system, MATIS (Multimodal Airline Travel Information System), allows users to retrieve travel information using speech, keyboard and mouse, or a combination of these input modalities. They address the problem of fusion of information from different input modalities and present a generic fusion engine that can be embedded in a multi-agent multimodal architecture. Their fusion engine attempts three types of data fusion in order:
* Microtemporal. Input information produced at the same time is merged together.
* Macrotemporal. Sequential input information is merged together.
* Contextual. Input information related by contextual features is merged without regard to temporal constraints.
As Johnston et. al. (1997) point out many multimodal interfaces are speech-driven, so that gestural interpretation is delayed until required to interpret speech expressions. They propose a method for multimodal integration that overcomes this limitation. The basic approach is a unification operation using strongly typed feature structures. The feature structures are semantic representations of the user's speech and gestural input. For a given input several structures will be generated with their associated probabilities. Each of these structures has several associated types which limit the ways in which they can be combined with other structures. Unification refers to the operation of combining two or more consistent structures into a single result. In this case consistency is determined by the types of the structures.
Cohen et. al. (1994) describe an implementation of this technique in their QuickSet interface. This uses pen and voice input for military command and control. For example, if the user says "Barbed wire", the feature structure shown in Figure 12 will be generated. The type of each structure is shown at the bottom left of the structures. While they are speaking, if they make a line gesture with their pen the structures shown in figure X.X might be generated. All the possible interpretations are generated so in this case point and line type structures are produced.
Figure 13b: Line Type Structure
The integration is now guided by tagging of the speech and gesture input as either complete or partial, and examination of the time stamps associated with the multimodal input. In this case the spoken phrase is incomplete and requires a line type structure to fill in the location slot. Thus it become easy to find the correct structure from the gesture input and produce the final integrated result shown in Figure 14. For a given time frame all of the possible gesture and speech input structures are integrated using type consistency and the probability for each result found my multiplying the probability of the component structures together. The integration result with the highest probability is the one selected.
The use of typed feature structures has a number of advantages. In contrast to other approaches, this method will work with any gestural input. It also supports partiality, integrating incomplete input structures as shown above. It is impossible to generate results with incompatible types so the input modes can compensate for errors in speech or gesture recognition. For example, users may produce variable gesture input producing a wide range of possible recognition results. However these will almost always be integrated correctly because only those results with the types required by the speech structures will be considered.
Until now the integration methods we have reviewed use time stamping of the user's input at a key guide for integration. However this need not be the case. Vo and Waibel (1997) describe a method for semantic rather than temporal integration. Although temporal integration is easy to implement it forces the user to interact with the interface according to the time constraints assumed by the integration module. For example, gestures may always need to be made before, or within a certain time of the corresponding speech. Similarly, input objects may be combined together purely because they occurred at the same time, rather than having any semantic relationship. Vo and Waibel propose a semantic approach to multimodal understanding that has some similarities to the development of speech grammars for speech recognition applications.
They use a connectionist network to find the most probable multimodal integration result given multiple input streams. Each of these input streams consists of a set of tokens produced by the corresponding speech or gesture recognizer. The input nodes in the network correspond to occurrences of tokens or sets of tokens in the input stream, while the output is the most probable multimodal phrase. The connections between the nodes have weights that correspond to the probabilities of their token given the rest of the tokens in the set. Although this has some similarities to traditional neural networks the weights in the network are automatically generated from a multimodal grammar based input model, eliminating the need to train the network. To support this Vo and Waibel have also developed a visual tool for specifying multimodal input in a grammatical form.
CASE STUDY: Iconic Integration
Although the dominant gestures used in the multimodal systems already discussed are deictic, they need not be so. Bolt and Herranz [1992] have demonstrated a system that combined speech with two handed gestural input, allowing the user to manipulate graphics with semi-iconic gestures. By considering hand rotations their relative positioning the user could intuitively position and orient objects in the virtual world. If the user says "rotate the block like this", while rotating their hands, the block will rotate the same amount as their hands do. Gaze detection was also used to select the intended object.
An even more compelling example is provided by Koons et. al. (1994). [PUT KOONS WORK HERE – ONE TO TWO PARAGRAPHS]
Designing Multimodal Interfaces
Grasso et. al. (1998) describe a theory of perceptual structure that can be used to predict performance in multimodal interfaces. This is based on work of Garner (1974) who showed that human performance could be affected by the underlying structure in an input stimulus. Human perception involves a number of processes each with distinct costs. If a person recognized structure in their perceptual stimulus Garner found that some of these costs could be reduced, resulting in an improvement in performance. He defined structural dimensions as either integral or separable; dimensions of a structure are separable if they can be understood in isolation, otherwise they are integral. For example, the multimodal phrase "Put that there" while pointing is integral, while the drawing with a mouse and then speaking a command to change modes is separable.
Grasso et. al. found that the speed, accuracy, and acceptance of multimodal interfaces increase when the modalities match the perceptual structure of the input. This was explored in the context of a multimodal biomedical data collection interface in which histopathologic observations could be entered using a combination of speech and gesture input. Observations consisted of an organ, site, qualifier and morphology, such as lung alveolus marked inflammation. Some of these combinations of terms, such as site/qualifier, were assumed to be separable, while others, such as qualifier/morphology, were integral. Subjects used either speech only input, mouse only input, or a combination of modalities to interact with the interface. When using multimodal input they used different combinations of mouse and gesture to input each of the observation terms. Grasso et. al. found that when the input modality matched the perceptual modality users improved task time by 22.5%, speech errors were reduced by 36% and user acceptance increased 6.7%. That is, the speed of multimodal interfaces will increase when the attributes of the task are perceived as separable, while the speed of unimodal interfaces will increase when the attributes of the task are perceived as separable.
These results suggest that matching the input modalities to the perceptual structure of the interface task can produce considerable performance benefits. [PUT MORE HERE]
Another factor that should be taken into account is that with multimodal interfaces users may also switch modalities during a task. Oviatt and Olsen identify three factors that influence the user to switch from voice to pen-based gestural input (Oviatt and Olsen 1996):
* Task Content: Users are more likely to use pen input for digits and speech for text input.
* Presentation Format: Some interfaces such as those using form based entry have a higher percentage of written input, compared to unconstrained interfaces.
* Contrastive Functionality: When speakers change conversational functionality they often switch modalities, such as changing between original input and correction, or data and command input.
Similar results are expected for multimodal interfaces that use speech and hand gestures.
[COMPLETE TO HERE – THE FOLLOWING IS NOTES
Lessons Learnt:
importance of context need for multiple representations need for common data representation need to separate data analysis from interpretation
As we have seen from these examples, powerful effects can be achieved by combining speech and gesture recognition with simple context recognition. These results show that:
* Speech and gesture complement each other
* Speech should be used for non-graphical command and control tasks
* Combined voice and gestural input are preferred over either modality alone.
* Gestures should be used for visuo/spatial input, including deictic and iconic.
* A large vocabulary is not required and recognition will be improved if it is kept small.
* Contextual knowledge resolves ambiguous input and increases recognition accuracy
Conversational Systems
Until this point we have described interfaces in which gesture is used to convey content. However in human conversation gesture is also very much involved in moderating the process of conversation, these are typically beat gestures and cohesives (McNeill REF). For example, a speaker will gaze at listener to indicate they can take the turn, a person will pause in mid gesture as they collect their thoughts, or a speaker will make unconscious beat gestures in time with the rhythm of their speech. In this section we discuss gesture in the context of conversational interfaces. These are the gestures which occur at the lower end of the Kendon Continuum.
The notion of the conversational interface was introduced nearly thirty years ago by Nicholas Negroponte [1]. He imagined a machine that humans could interact with the same way they do with each other on a daily basis; using voice, gaze, gesture and body language However conversational interfaces go beyond integrating speech and gesture at the desktop. As Richard Bolt points out "conversation is speaking back and forth, pointing out this or that - a lively dialogue that involves glancing about and following the other person's glances as well as using gestures to describe, indicate and emphasize. Whether the topic is trivial or weighty, conversation means a strong sense of another's presence in a setting we both share." [Bolt 1992] Conversational interfaces are by definition interfaces that allow this type of relationship to exist between human and computer. Speech enabled interfaces are not necessarily conversational interfaces, because speech recognition is not conversational understanding. Similarly gestural input alone is not sufficient. Rather conversation interfaces require multimodal input and output controlled by an intelligent system that is a conversational expert.
An important distinction between conversational and multimodal interfaces is the way in which the speech and gestural input is understood. In human conversation conversants actively collaborate together to achieve mutual understanding in a process known as "grounding" [Clark and Brennan 90]. In order to achieve this the audio/visual contributions to conversation contain both propositional and interactional information. The propositional information consists of the conversational content, while the interactional information consists of cues that affect the conversational process. The gestural and multimodal interfaces described earlier try to achieve propositional understanding of the user's input. The Media Room couldn't detect sarcasm in the user's voice or care if they were shouting or whispering at the computer. What distinguishes conversational interfaces from other multimodal interfaces is their attempt to understand interactional cues. These include speech cues such as the presence or absence of speech, explicit words ("O.K.", "What did you say?"), pauses, paraverbals ("huh?", "Uh-huh!"), and prosodics or intonation (pitch contour, syllable duration, relative energy levels). They also include visual cues such as presence or absence of a conversant, facial or body gestures and eye contact and gaze direction.
The Motivation for Conversational Interfaces
As can be imagined developing a computer that can understand the nuances of human conversation is a hugely challenging task. However, there are a number of strong motivations for undertaking this task:
Intuitiveness. Conversation is an intrinsically human skill that is learned over years of development and is practiced daily. Conversational interfaces provide an intuitive paradigm for interaction, since the user is not required to learn new skills.
Redundancy and Modality Switching: Embodied conversational interfaces support redundancy and complementarity between input modes. This allows the user and system to increase reliability by conveying information in more than one modality, and to increase expressiveness by using each modality for the type of expression it is most suited to.
The Social Nature of the Interaction. Whether or not computers look human, people attribute to them human-like properties such as friendliness, or cooperativeness [21]. An embodied conversational interface can take advantage of this and prompt the user to naturally engage the computer in human-like conversation. If the interface is welldesigned to reply to such conversation, the interaction may be improved
Increase in Bandwidth: Combining conversational cues at an interface allows an increase in input and output bandwidth. The bandwidth limitations of current direct manipulation interfaces are made apparent by considering the interface model that the computer has of the user; a one eyed, one handed, deaf person!
These motivations are from an interface perspective, however there are also strong reasons for developing conversational agents from a communications perspective. Anthropologists, psychologists and linguists have developed many theories of communication, from a psycho-linguistic rather than computational perspective. Developing computation models of reasoning work in the Artificial Intelligence community contributed significantly to psychological theories of cognition. In much the same way, developing a computational model of conversation will benefit the linguistic community by giving them a computation approach for testing their theories.
Interface Requirements
In attempting to develop a conversational interface there are a number of interface requirements. These can be divided into two groups; requirements on the interface of the conversational system, and requirements on the underlying architecture.
Considering human face to face conversation it is obvious that a conversational system must be able to recognize and respond to verbal and non-verbal input and be able to generate verbal and non-verbal output. This necessitates some form of graphical representation, both to display non-verbal cues as well as to act as a point of reference for the many spatial cues that occur in conversation. Without an embodied interface it is impossible to look your computer in the eye to tell it to take the turn in the conversation !
In terms of underlying architectural requirements, Thorisson reviews the behavioral and psychological literature to arrive at the following (Thorison 1996):
* Incremental Interpretation: Conversational understanding is not done "batch style", but occurs continuously as new input is received.
* Multiple Data Types: Conversational interfaces must understand and generate multiple input data types such as gesture, gaze, speech and prosody, and also internal representations such as spatial and relational.
* Seamlessness: Different data types are inserted seamlessly into the conversation, as are the cues that cause conversational mechanisms such as turn taking.
* Temporal Variability: Conversational input, out and understanding occurs over a variety of time scales ranging from less than a second in the case of recognizing intonation to many minutes for discourse understanding.
* Multi-Layered Input Analysis and Response Generation: In order to understand input on a variety of time scales and generate matching output, conversation require multiple layers the work at different time scales.
* High Level Understanding: Conversation involves more than understanding at the word or sentence level. Participants also take into account the conversational context and high level cues from the on-going discourse.
Perhaps the most important requirement is that ability to map input and output behaviors to conversational function. Unlike the previous multimodal interfaces, in a conversational interface it is not enough just to map behaviors directly to commands. Instead, the emphasis must be on mapping behaviors to the higher level discourse functions they are attempting to convey. Typical conversational discourse functions include conversation invitation, turn taking, providing feedback, contrast and emphasis, and breaking away [10][14]. Just as in face to face conversation each of these functions can be realized in different ways. For example, a person could indicate they wanted to take turn in a conversation by interrupting the current speaker and starting to speak, or a more polite person could indicate the same with a glance and eye contact. This mapping between behavior and discourse function occurs both on the input side in interpreting a person's behavior and on the output side in deciding which behaviors to use to represent a particular discourse function. Input events in different modalities may be mapped onto the same discourse function, while in different conversational states the same function may lead to different conversational behaviors, based on conversational state and the availability of input and output modalities.
Example Interfaces
The first attempts at conversational systems focused on one or more aspects of human face to face conversation, rather than attempting to built entire conversational systems. Researchers such as Ball et. al. (Ball 1997) and Beskow et. al. (Beskow 1997) develop embodied conversational which reacted to speech input only. These agents typically integrated spoken language input, a conversational dialogue manager, reactive 3D animation, and recorded speech output. Although they ignored the human's gestures the graphical characters displayed many gestures to convey conversational cues. For example, Ball's character was the parrot shown inFigure 15. It is able to display conversational understanding using gross "wing gestures" (such as cupping a wing to one ear when the parrot has not understood a user's request) and facial displays (scrunched brows as the parrot finds an answer to a question). Similarly other researchers have used human-like avatars to convey more natural conversational gestures. Noma & Badler have created a virtual human weatherman, based on the Jack human figure animation system [19]. While discussing the climate the weatherman displays presentation pre-recorded gestures culled from books on public speaking. However in these systems there was little attempt to interpret the users input in terms of conversational function or generate conversational output behavior based on the desired discourse function.
The value of building embodied agents that reacted to user gestures was shown by the ALIVE interface developed by Pattie Maes (Maes et. al. 1995). ALIVE is a gesture and fullbody recognition interface that allows users to interact with autonomous agents in a virtual environment. The users stand in front of a large screen projection panel on which is displayed a virtual environment. Video cameras capture their image, so they also see themselves within the virtual world in a so-called "Magic Mirror" approach to virtual reality. Computer vision techniques were also used to recognize the users body position and simple gestures such as pointing, and petting.
By varying gesture and body position the user can interact with the intelligent agents in the virtual world in a believable manner. For example, one of the environments contains a Hamster who responds to the user petting it or offering it virtual food. The agents in the world respond according to their own internal states and past history - if hungry the Hamster will respond readily to food, but after a while it will become "full" and move away disinterested. The contextual states of the agents are also used to guide the image processing system doing the gesture recognition. If the Hamster is hungry then the image processor will focus on the users hands to see if they are reaching for the virtual food. Using contextual cues means that the gesture employed by the user can have rich meaning which varies on the previous history, the agents internal state and the current situation.
Although the agents in ALIVE did not respond to voice commands users found the interface very intuitive because they could use simple gestures which were natural for the given domain. Faced with embodied agents, users immediately adopted the implicit protocol of inter-human gestural communication and had no difficulty in interacting with them. They were also tolerant of imperfections in the gesture recognition, attributing mistakes or lag time to the agent trying to make up its mind or some other human-like quality. For many users, the presence of intelligent reactive agents made the virtual environment more compelling and the interactions more interesting than traditional virtual reality.
Thorisson provides a good example of an early fully integrated conversational multimodal interface with both voice and gestural understanding (Thorisson 1996). In his work the main emphasis was the development of an architecture that could support fluid face-to-face dialog between a human and graphical agent. He found that a multi-layer multimodal architecture could exhibit conversational behavior at a number of different levels and time scales, from low-level non verbal reactive behaviors to high level content based reflective behaviors. The agent, Gandalf, was used to command a graphical model of the solar system in an educational application. The agent and solar system model were shown on different displays, enabling the agent to gaze and gesture toward the user or the task space. This required the agent to have understanding of real-world spatial locations. Unlike previous systems Gandalf recognized both verbal and non-verbal cues and could interact with people using voice, gesture and facial expression. Thus Gandalf could react to and generate both proposition information and interactional information.
Thorisson identified a number of issues in developing conversational interfaces, including the need for effective low-level behaviors, and accurate functional analysis. In user studies he found that low-level non-verbal behaviors such as gaze, gesture and eye blinking made the agent more believable than higher level emotional expressions. With good low-level behaviors users would talk to the agent directly rather than focus on the task space. Functional analysis is the problem of identifying the function of a gesture, or other non-verbal input. If the user makes a pointing gesture are they pointing, showing an iconic representation of an object or neither? Thorisson does not provide a general solution to this problem, but emphasizes the need for a combined top-down and bottom-up approach. In general these interfaces show that conversational interfaces should have a multi-layered architecture that uses both a top-down and bottom up approach for multimodal understanding.
Although the work of Thorisson provides a good first example of how discourse and non-verbal function might be paired in a conversational interface, there were a number of limitations. The interface required the user to wear instrumented gloves, an eye tracker and a body tracker, encumbering them and preventing natural gestural input. More importantly Gandalf had limited ability to recognize and generate propositional information, such as providing correct intonation for speech emphasis on speech output, or a co-occurring gesture with speech. [MORE HERE ABOUT GANDALF USE STUDIES]
In contrast, "Animated Conversation" (Cassell et. al. 1994) was a system that automatically generated context-appropriate gestures, facial movements and intonational patterns. In this case the domain was conversation between two artificial agents and the emphasis was on the production of non-verbal propositional behaviors that emphasized and reinforced the content of speech. [MORE ABOUT ANIMATED CONVERSATIONS]
Since there was no interaction with a real user, the interactional information was very limited. [MORE HERE]
CASE STUDY: REA
Cassell's work on Rea is an attempt to develop an agent with both propositional and interactional understanding and generation, which can interact with the user in real time (Cassell et al. 1999). As such it combines elements of the Gandalf and the Animated Conversations projects into a single interface and moves towards overcoming the limitations of each. Rea is a computer generated humanoid that has a fully articulated graphical body, can sense the user passively through cameras and audio input, and is capable of speech with intonation, facial display, and gestural output. The system currently consists of a large projection screen on which Rea is displayed and which the user stands in front of. Two cameras mounted on top of the projection screen track the user's head and hand positions in space using the STIVE vision software (Pentland Ref). Users wear a microphone for capturing speech input. A single SGI Octane computer runs the graphics and conversation engine of Rea, while several other computers manage the speech recognition and generation and image processing (Figure 19).
Figure 19: User Interacting with Rea
Rea's domain of expertise is real estate and she acts as a real estate agent showing users the features of various models of houses that appear on-screen behind it. The following is a excerpt from a sample interaction:
Lee approaches the projection screen. Rea is currently turned side on and is idly gazing about. As the user moves within range of the cameras, Rea turns to face him and says "Hello, my name is Rea, what's your name?"
"Lee"
"Hello Lee would you like to see a house?" Rea says with rising intonation at the end of the question.
"That would be great"
A picture of a house appears on-screen behind Rea.
"This is a nice Victorian on a large lot" Rea says gesturing towards the house. "It has two bedrooms and a large kitchen with.."
"Wait, tell me about the bedrooms" Lee says interrupting Rea by looking at Rea and gesturing with his hands while speaking.
"The master bedroom is furnished with a four poster bed, while the smaller room could be used for a children's bedroom or guest room. Do you want to see the master bedroom?".
"Sure, show me the master bedroom". Lee says, overlapping with Rea.
"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that, can you please repeat what you said", Rea says.
And the house tour continues…
As can be seen from this example, Rea is able to conduct a mixed initiative conversation, describing the features of the house while also responding to the users' verbal and non-verbal input. When the user makes cues typically associated with turn taking behavior such as gesturing, Rea allows herself to be interrupted, and then takes the turn again when she is able. She is able to initiate conversational repair when she misunderstands what the user says, and can generate combined voice and gestural output. In order to carry on natural conversation of this sort, Rea uses a conversational model that supports multimodal input and output as constituents of conversational functions. That is, input and output is interpreted and generated based on the discourse functions it serves.
A key aspect of the REA is the mapping of users gestural and verbal input to conversational functions. This mapping depends on both the current state of the conversation and the user's input. For turn taking, for example, the specifics are summarized in Table 3. If Rea has the turn and is speaking and the user begins to gesture, this is interpreted as the user wanting turn function, or if the user is speaking and s/he pauses for less than half a second this is interpreted as the wanting feedback function.
Table 3. Functional interpretation of turn taking input
| | State | | User Input | | Input Function |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rea speaking | | Gesture | | Wanting turn | |
| | | Speech | | Taking turn | |
| User speaking | | Pause of <500 msec. | | Wanting feedback | |
| | | Imperative phrase | | Giving turn | |
| | | Interrogative phrase | | Giving turn | |
| | | Declarative phrase & pause >500 msec. & no gesture | | Giving turn | |
| | | Declarative phrase & long gesture or pause | | Holding turn | |
Thus, user gesture or speech may convey different interactional information; it may be interpreted as taking turn, giving turn, or holding turn depending on the conversational state and what is conveyed by the other modalities.
A similar approach is taken for the realization of Rea's desired conversational functions as output behaviors. Rea generates speech, gesture and facial expressions based on the current conversational state and the conversational function she is trying to convey, as shown in Table 4. For example, when the user first approaches Rea ("User Present" state), she signals her openness to engage in conversation by looking at the user, smiling, and/or tossing her head, and when the user is speaking and Rea wants the turn she looks at the user and utters a paraverbal ("umm").
Table 4. Output Functions
| | State | | Conversational Function | Output Behaviors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| User Present | | Open interaction | | |
| | | Attend | | |
| | | End of interaction | | |
| | | Greet | | |
| Rea Speaking | | Give turn | | |
| | | Signoff | | |
| User Speaking | | Give feedback | | |
| | | Want turn. | | |
| | | Take turn. | | |
By modeling behavioral categories as discourse functions we have developed a natural and principled way of combining multiple modalities, in both input and output. Thus when REA decides to take the turn, for example, she can choose any of several behaviors based on what is appropriate at the moment.
To facilitate this conversational mapping the underlying architecture of Rea is extremely modular, enabling each of the conversational functions to be carried out by a different component. Figure 20 shows the internal architecture of Rea. The three points that differentiate Rea from other embodied conversational agents are mirrored in the organization of the system architecture:
* Input is accepted from as many modalities as there are input devices. However all the different modalities are integrated into a single semantic representation that is passed from module to module.
* The semantic representation has slots for interactional and propositional information so that the regulatory and content-oriented contribution of every conversational act can be maintained throughout the system.
* The categorization of behaviors in terms of their conversational functions is mirrored by the organization of the architecture which centralizes decisions made in terms of functions (the understanding, response planner, and generation modules), and moves to the periphery decisions made in terms of behaviors (the input manager and action scheduler).
Haptic Input
18 May 2018
Buxton
Input
Manager
Action
Schedule
Gesture
iti
Input
Devices
Speec
h
Body position
Gaze
di
ti
Keyboard
Mouse
User ID
Motion
Output
Devices
Animation
R
d
i
Speech
S
h
i
Devices.
Reactio
Module
Understandin
module
Generatio
Module
Respons
Planner
... d i
Figure 20: The Rea Software Architecture
LESSONS LEARNED FROM CONVERSATIONAL SYSTEMS [PUT MORE HERE]
Future Research Directions
[INTRO STUFF]
In the previous section we discussed conversational interfaces based around embodied agents. However many of the same underlying technologies can be used to enable users to interact with the environment as a whole. Naturally science fiction writers have foreseen this decades ago and in movies such as "Star Trek" it is common for characters to shout commands into space and have a computer automatically interpret them. On a more sinister level Arthur C. Clark's computer HAL in "2001" is an omnipresent entity forever watching and listening to the crew of the space ship [BLAH] through it's many camera and microphones. Embedding vision and audio sensors into physical space in this way enables the creation of reactive environments that automatically respond to user's speech and gesture.
Bolt incorporated gaze detection to further increase the intimacy of the interface.[12] Now the computer was able to respond to implicit cues as well as the explicit cues of speech and gesture. Experiments by Argyle[13] and others[14] have shown the gaze patterns used differ markedly according the goal of the observer. So even rudimentary gaze recognition adds power to the interface. As an example of this Bolt used the Media Room to design an interface called "Gaze-Orchestrated Dynamic Windows". [15] This involved showing up to thirty different moving images at once on the wall display, complete with a cacophony of their soundtracks all combined into one. Gaze detection was then used to change the relative size of each of the moving images. If the users gaze was fixed on a particular channel all the soundtracks to the other channels were turned off. If they continued watching, the image would zoom to fill the wall display. The net effect is that the computer filters out all but the information of immediate interest to the user, just as humans do when engaged in conversation. Gaze tracking was done by shining infrared light into the users eye and using an infrared video camera to look for reflections.
Conclusions
NOTES – TO BE INSERTED
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??????[19] VIEW reference what is the reference?
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To add:
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003). Hearing Gesture: How our Hands Help us Think. Cambridge MA: Belknap Press.
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Also consider:
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See following review:
Pavlovic, V., Sharma, R., Huang, T. (1997). Visual Interpretation of Hand Gestures for HumanComputer Interaction: A Review. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 19(7), 677-695.
CSCW stuff around notion of "Reference Space" (in contrast to person space or task space), including:
Kirk, David S. (2006). Turn it This Way: Remote Gesturing in Video-Mediated Communication. PhD Thesis. University of Nottingham.
Kirk, David S, Crabtree, Andy, & Rodden, Tom (2005). Ways of the Hand. Proceedings of the
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Kirk, David S., Rodden, Tom & Fraser Danaë Stanton (2007). Turn it This Way: Grounding Collaborative Action with Remote Gestures. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'07),1039-1048.
Tuddenham, Philip (2007). Distributed Tabletops: Territoriality and Orientation in Distributed Collaboration. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI '07 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2237-2242.
Tuddenham, Philip & Robinson, Peter (2009). Territorial Coordination and Workspace Awareness in Remote Tabletop Collaboration. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'09), 2139-2148.
Gesture Books:
Davidson, C. (Ed.)(2001). Gesture in Medieval Drama and Art. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval institute Publications, Western Michigan University.
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003). Hearing Gesture: How our Hands Help us Think. Cambridge MA: Belknap Press
Gritten, A. & King, E. (Eds.)(2011). New Perspectives on Music and Gesture. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MacKenzie, C.L. & Iberall, T. (1994). The Grasping Hand. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal About Thought. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
McNeill, D. (2005). Gesture & Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morris, D. (1994). Body Talk: The Meaning of Human Gestures. New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks.
Morris, D. Collett, P., Marsh, P. & O'Shaughnessy, M. (1979). Gestures. New York: Stein and Day.
Wilson, F.W. (1998). The Hand: How its use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture. New York: Pantheon Books.
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BEFORE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
COMMISSIONERS:
Jon Leibowitz, Chairman J. Thomas Rosch Edith Ramirez Julie Brill Maureen K. Ohlhausen
)
)
In the Matter of
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WATSON PHARMACEUTICALS INC., a corporation;)
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ACTAVIS INC.,
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a corporation;
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ACTAVIS PHARMA HOLDING 4 EHF., a private limited liability company;
)
)
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and
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ACTAVIS S.Á.R.L. a limited liability corporate entity.
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)
)
Docket No. C-4373
ORDER TO MAINTAIN ASSETS
The Federal Trade Commission ("Commission"), having initiated an investigation of the proposed acquisition by Respondent Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. ("Watson"), of Respondents Actavis Inc., Actavis Pharma Holding 4 ehf., and Actavis S.á.r.l. (collectively, "Actavis"), and Respondents having been furnished thereafter with a copy of a draft of Complaint that the Bureau of Competition proposed to present to the Commission for its consideration and which, if issued by the Commission, would charge Respondents with violations of Section 7 of the Clayton Act, as amended, 15 U.S.C. § 18, and Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, as amended, 15 U.S.C. § 45; and
Respondents, their attorneys, and counsel for the Commission having thereafter executed an Agreement Containing Consent Orders ("Consent Agreement"), containing an admission by Respondents of all the jurisdictional facts set forth in the aforesaid draft of Complaint, a statement that the signing of said Consent Agreement is for settlement purposes only and does
not constitute an admission by Respondents that the law has been violated as alleged in such Complaint, or that the facts as alleged in such Complaint, other than jurisdictional facts, are true, and waivers and other provisions as required by the Commission's Rules; and
The Commission having thereafter considered the matter and having determined to accept the executed Consent Agreement and to place such Consent Agreement on the public record for a period of thirty (30) days for the receipt and consideration of public comments, now in further conformity with the procedure described in Commission Rule 2.34, 16 C.F.R. § 2.34, the Commission hereby issues its Complaint, makes the following jurisdictional findings and issues this Order to Maintain Assets:
1. Respondent Watson is a corporation organized, existing and doing business under and by virtue of the laws of the State of Nevada, with its headquarters address located at Morris Corporate Center III, 400 Interpace Parkway, Parsippany, New Jersey 07054.
2. Respondent Actavis includes three entities. Actavis Inc. is a corporation organized, existing and doing business under and by virtue of the laws of the State of Delaware, with its headquarters address located at 60 Columbia Road, Building B, Morristown, New Jersey 07960. Actavis Pharma Holding 4 ehf. is a private limited liability company organized, existing and doing business under and by virtue of the laws of the Republic of Iceland, with its headquarters address located at Reykjavikurvegi 76-78, 220 Hafnarfirdi, Iceland. Actavis S.á.r.l. is a limited liability corporate entity organized, existing and doing business under and by virtue of the laws of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, with its headquarters address located at 6c, Rue Gabriel Lippmann, L 5365 Munsbach, Luxembourg. The ultimate parent entity of Respondent Actavis is Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, an individual.
3. The Commission has jurisdiction of the subject matter of this proceeding and of the Respondents, and the proceeding is in the public interest.
ORDER
I.
IT IS ORDERED that, as used in this Order to Maintain Assets, the following definitions and the definitions used in the Consent Agreement and the proposed Decision and Order (and when made final and effective, the Decision and Order), which are incorporated herein by reference and made a part hereof, shall apply:
A. "Watson" means Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc., its directors, officers, employees, agents, representatives, successors, and assigns; and its joint ventures, subsidiaries, divisions,
groups and affiliates in each case controlled by Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (including, but not limited to, Watson S.á.r.l., Watson Laboratories, Inc. (a Florida Corporation) and Watson Laboratories, Inc. (a Nevada Corporation)) and the respective directors, officers, employees, agents, representatives, successors, and assigns of each. After the Acquisition, Watson shall include Actavis.
B. "Actavis" means (i) Actavis Inc., (ii) Actavis Pharma Holding 4 ehf. and (iii) Actavis S.á.r.l., their directors, officers, employees, agents, representatives, successors, and assigns; and their joint ventures, subsidiaries, divisions, groups and affiliates in each case controlled by each of the following: (i) Actavis Inc., (ii) Actavis Pharma Holding 4 ehf. and (iii) Actavis S.á.r.l., (including, but not limited to, Actavis South Atlantic LLC, Actavis Pharma Mfg Pvt Ltd, and Actavis Elizabeth LLC) and the respective directors, officers, employees, agents, representatives, successors, and assigns of each.
C. "Respondents" means Watson and Actavis, individually and collectively.
D. "Commission" means the Federal Trade Commission.
E. "Decision and Order" means the:
1. Proposed Decision and Order contained in the Consent Agreement in this matter until the issuance of a final and effective Decision and Order by the Commission; and
2. Final Decision and Order issued by the Commission following the issuance and service of a final Decision and Order by the Commission in this matter.
F. "Divestiture Product Business(es)" means the business of Respondents within the Geographic Territory specified in the Decision and Order related to each of the Generic Products (Group One) Products and the Generic Products (Group Two) Products, including the research, Development, manufacture, distribution, marketing, and sale of each such Divestiture Product and the assets related to such business, including, without limitation, the Generic Products (Group One) Assets and the Generic Products (Group Two) Assets.
G. "Interim Monitor" means any monitor appointed pursuant to Paragraph III of this Order to Maintain Assets or Paragraph V of the Decision and Order.
H. "Orders" means the Decision and Order and this Order to Maintain Assets.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that from the date this Order to Maintain Assets becomes final and effective:
A. Until Respondents fully transfer and deliver each of the respective Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets to an Acquirer, Respondents shall take such actions as are necessary to maintain the full economic viability, marketability and competitiveness of each of the related Divestiture Product Businesses, to minimize any risk of loss of competitive potential for such Divestiture Product Businesses, and to prevent the destruction, removal, wasting, deterioration, or impairment of such Divestiture Product Businesses except for ordinary wear and tear. Respondents shall not sell, transfer, encumber or otherwise impair such Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets (other than in the manner prescribed in the Decision and Order) nor take any action that lessens the full economic viability, marketability or competitiveness of the related Divestiture Product Businesses.
B. Until Respondents fully transfer and deliver each of the respective Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets to an Acquirer, Respondents shall maintain the operations of the related Divestiture Product Businesses in the regular and ordinary course of business and in accordance with past practice (including regular repair and maintenance of the assets of such business) and/or as may be necessary to preserve the marketability, viability, and competitiveness of such Divestiture Product Businesses and shall use their best efforts to preserve the existing relationships with the following: suppliers; vendors and distributors; the High Volume Accounts; customers; Agencies; employees; and others having business relations with each of the respective Divestiture Product Businesses. Respondents' responsibilities shall include, but are not limited to, the following:
1. providing each of the respective Divestiture Product Businesses with sufficient working capital to operate at least at current rates of operation, to meet all capital calls with respect to such business and to carry on, at least at their scheduled pace, all capital projects, business plans and promotional activities for such Divestiture Product Business;
2. continuing, at least at their scheduled pace, any additional expenditures for each of the respective Divestiture Product Businesses authorized prior to the date the Consent Agreement was signed by Respondents including, but not limited to, all research, Development, manufacturing, distribution, marketing and sales expenditures;
3. providing such resources as may be necessary to respond to competition against each of the Divestiture Products and/or to prevent any diminution in sales of each of the Divestiture Products during and after the Acquisition process and prior to the complete
transfer and delivery of the related Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets to an Acquirer;
4. providing such resources as may be necessary to maintain the competitive strength and positioning of each of the Divestiture Products at the related High Volume Accounts;
5. making available for use by each of the respective Divestiture Product Businesses funds sufficient to perform all routine maintenance and all other maintenance as may be necessary to, and all replacements of, the assets related to such business, including without limitation, the Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets;
6. providing each of the respective Divestiture Product Businesses with such funds as are necessary to maintain the full economic viability, marketability and competitiveness of such Divestiture Product Business; and
7. providing such support services to each of the respective Divestiture Product Businesses as were being provided to such business by Respondents as of the date the Consent Agreement was signed by Respondents.
C. Until Respondents fully transfer and deliver the Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets to an Acquirer, Respondents shall maintain a work force at least as equivalent in size, training, and expertise to what has been associated with the Divestiture Products for the relevant Divestiture Product's last fiscal year.
D. Until the Closing Date for the Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets, Respondents shall provide all the related Divestiture Product Core Employees with reasonable financial incentives to continue in their positions and to research, Develop, and manufacture the relevant Divestiture Products consistent with past practices and as may be necessary to preserve the marketability, viability and competitiveness of such Divestiture Products pending divestiture. Such incentives shall include a continuation of all employee benefits offered by Respondents until the Closing Date for the divestiture of the Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets has occurred, including regularly scheduled raises, bonuses, vesting of pension benefits (as permitted by Law), and additional incentives as may be necessary to prevent any diminution of the relevant Divestiture Product's competitiveness.
E. Respondents shall:
1. for each Divestiture Product, for a period of six (6) months from the Closing Date or until the hiring of twenty (20) Divestiture Product Core Employees by the relevant Acquirer, whichever occurs earlier, provide the relevant Acquirer with the opportunity to enter into employment contracts with the Divestiture Product Core Employees related to the Divestiture Products and assets acquired by such Acquirer. Each of these periods is hereinafter referred to as the "Divestiture Product Core Employee Access Period(s)";
2. not later than the earlier of the following dates: (i) ten (10) days after notice by staff of the Commission to Respondents to provide the Product Employee Information; or (ii) ten (10) days after written request by an Acquirer, provide such Acquirer or Proposed Acquirer(s) with the Product Employee Information related to the Divestiture Product Core Employees. Failure by Respondents to provide the Product Employee Information for any Divestiture Product Core Employee within the time provided herein shall extend the Divestiture Product Core Employee Access Period(s) with respect to that employee in an amount equal to the delay;
3. during the Divestiture Product Employee Access Period, not interfere with the hiring or employing by the Acquirer of Divestiture Product Core Employees, and shall remove any impediments within the control of Respondents that may deter these employees from accepting employment with such Acquirer, including, but not limited to, any noncompete provisions of employment or other contracts with Respondents that would affect the ability or incentive of those individuals to be employed by such Acquirer. In addition, Respondents shall not make any counteroffer to a Divestiture Product Core Employee who receives a written offer of employment from the Acquirer;
provided, however, that, subject to the conditions of continued employment prescribed in this Order, this Paragraph II.E.3. shall not prohibit Respondents from continuing to employ any Divestiture Product Core Employee under the terms of such employee's employment with Respondents prior to the date of the written offer of employment from the Acquirer to such employee.
F. Pending divestiture of the Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets, Respondents shall:
1. not use, directly or indirectly, any such Confidential Business Information related to the research, Development, manufacturing, marketing, or sale of the Divestiture Products other than as necessary to comply with the following:
a. the requirements of this Order;
b. Respondents' obligations to the Acquirer of the particular Divestiture Product under the terms of any Remedial Agreement related to such Divestiture Product; or
c. applicable Law;
2. not disclose or convey any such Confidential Business Information, directly or indirectly, to any Person except the Acquirer or other Persons specifically authorized by such Acquirer to receive such information;
3. not provide, disclose or otherwise make available, directly or indirectly, any such Confidential Business Information related to the marketing or sales of the Divestiture
Products to the employees associated with business related to those Retained Products that contain the same active pharmaceutical ingredient as the Divestiture Products; and
4. institute procedures and requirements to ensure that the above-described employees:
a. do not provide, disclose or otherwise make available, directly or indirectly, any Confidential Business Information in contravention of this Order to Maintain Assets; and
b. do not solicit, access or use any Confidential Business Information that they are prohibited from receiving for any reason or purpose;
provided, however, that the restrictions contained in this Order to Maintain Assets regarding the Respondents' use, conveyance, provision, or disclosure of "Confidential Business Information" shall not apply to the following: (i) information that subsequently falls within the public domain through no violation of this Order or breach of confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement with respect to such information by the Respondents; (ii) information that is required by Law or rules of an applicable stock exchange to be publicly disclosed; (iii) information specifically excluded from the Divestiture Product Assets; and (iv) all intellectual property licensed on a non-exclusive basis to the particular Acquirer.
G. Not later than thirty (30) days from the earlier of the Closing Date or the date that this Order to Maintain Assets becomes final and effective, Respondents shall provide to all of Respondents' employees and other personnel who may have access to Confidential Business Information related to the Divestiture Products notification of the restrictions on the use of such information by Respondents' personnel. Respondents shall give such notification by e-mail with return receipt requested or similar transmission, and keep a file of such receipts for one (1) year after the Closing Date. Respondents shall provide a copy of such notification to the Acquirer. Respondents shall maintain complete records of all such agreements at Respondents' registered office within the United States and shall provide an officer's certification to the Commission stating that such acknowledgment program has been implemented and is being complied with. Respondents shall provide the Acquirer with copies of all certifications, notifications and reminders sent to Respondents' personnel.
H. Respondents shall monitor the implementation by its employees and other personnel of all applicable restrictions, and take corrective actions for the failure of such employees and personnel to comply with such restrictions or to furnish the written agreements and acknowledgments required by this Order to Maintain Assets. Respondents shall provide the Acquirer with copies of all certifications, notifications and reminders sent to Respondents' employees and other personnel.
I. Respondents shall adhere to and abide by the Remedial Agreements (which agreements shall not limit or contradict, or be construed to limit or contradict, the terms of the Orders, it being understood that nothing in the Orders shall be construed to reduce any obligations of Respondents to the Acquirer under such agreement(s)), which are incorporated by reference into this Order to Maintain Assets and made a part hereof.
J. The purpose of this Order to Maintain Assets is to maintain the full economic viability, marketability and competitiveness of the Divestiture Product Businesses within the Geographic Territory through their full transfer and delivery to an Acquirer, to minimize any risk of loss of competitive potential for the Divestiture Product Businesses within the Geographic Territory, and to prevent the destruction, removal, wasting, deterioration, or impairment of any of the Generic Products (Group One) Assets and Generic Products (Group Two) Assets except for ordinary wear and tear.
III.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that:
A. At any time after Respondents sign the Consent Agreement in this matter, the Commission may appoint a monitor ("Interim Monitor") to assure that Respondents expeditiously comply with all of their obligations and perform all of their responsibilities as required by the Orders and the Remedial Agreements.
B. The Commission shall select the Interim Monitor, subject to the consent of Respondents, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld. If Respondent Watson has not opposed, in writing, including the reasons for opposing, the selection of a proposed Interim Monitor within ten (10) days after notice by the staff of the Commission to Respondent Watson of the identity of any proposed Interim Monitor, Respondents shall be deemed to have consented to the selection of the proposed Interim Monitor.
C. Not later than ten (10) days after the appointment of the Interim Monitor, Respondents shall execute an agreement that, subject to the prior approval of the Commission, confers on the Interim Monitor all the rights and powers necessary to permit the Interim Monitor to monitor Respondents' compliance with the relevant requirements of the Orders in a manner consistent with the purposes of the Orders.
D. If an Interim Monitor is appointed, Respondents shall consent to the following terms and conditions regarding the powers, duties, authorities, and responsibilities of the Interim Monitor:
1. The Interim Monitor shall have the power and authority to monitor Respondents' compliance with the divestiture and asset maintenance obligations and related requirements of the Orders, and shall exercise such power and authority and carry out the duties and responsibilities of the Interim Monitor in a manner consistent with the purposes of the Orders and in consultation with the Commission.
2. The Interim Monitor shall act in a fiduciary capacity for the benefit of the Commission.
3. The Interim Monitor shall serve until the date of completion by the Respondents of the divestiture of all Divestiture Product Assets and the transfer and delivery of the related Product Manufacturing Technology in a manner that fully satisfies the requirements of this Order and until the earliest of:
a. with respect to each Divestiture Product, the date the Acquirer of such Divestiture Product (or that Acquirer's Manufacturing Designee(s)) is approved by the FDA to manufacture such Divestiture Product and able to manufacture such Divestiture Product in commercial quantities, in a manner consistent with cGMP, independently of the Respondents;
b. with respect to each Divestiture Product, the date the Acquirer of that Divestiture Product notifies the Commission and the Respondents of its intention to abandon its efforts to manufacture such Divestiture Product; or
c. with respect to each Divestiture Product, the date of written notification from staff of the Commission that the Interim Monitor, in consultation with staff of the Commission, has determined that the relevant Acquirer has abandoned its efforts to manufacture such Divestiture Product;
provided, however, that, with respect to each Divestiture Product, the Interim Monitor's service shall not exceed five (5) years from the Order Date;
provided, further, that the Commission may extend or modify this period as may be necessary or appropriate to accomplish the purposes of the Orders.
4. Subject to any demonstrated legally recognized privilege, the Interim Monitor shall have full and complete access to Respondents' personnel, books, documents, records kept in the ordinary course of business, facilities and technical information, and such other relevant information as the Interim Monitor may reasonably request, related to Respondents' compliance with its obligations under the Order, including, but not limited to, its obligations related to the relevant assets. Respondents shall cooperate with any reasonable request of the Interim Monitor and shall take no action to interfere with or impede the Interim Monitor's ability to monitor Respondents' compliance with the Order.
5. The Interim Monitor shall serve, without bond or other security, at the expense of Respondents, on such reasonable and customary terms and conditions as the Commission may set. The Interim Monitor shall have authority to employ, at the expense of Respondents, such consultants, accountants, attorneys and other representatives and assistants as are reasonably necessary to carry out the Interim Monitor's duties and responsibilities.
6. Respondents shall indemnify the Interim Monitor and hold the Interim Monitor harmless against any losses, claims, damages, liabilities, or expenses arising out of, or in connection with, the performance of the Interim Monitor's duties, including all reasonable fees of counsel and other reasonable expenses incurred in connection with the preparations for, or defense of, any claim, whether or not resulting in any liability, except to the extent that such losses, claims, damages, liabilities, or expenses result from gross negligence, willful or wanton acts, or bad faith by the Interim Monitor.
7. Respondents shall report to the Interim Monitor in accordance with the requirements of the Orders and as otherwise provided in any agreement approved by the Commission. The Interim Monitor shall evaluate the reports submitted to the Interim Monitor by Respondents, and any reports submitted by the Acquirer with respect to the performance of Respondents' obligations under the Orders or the Remedial Agreement(s). Within thirty (30) days from the date the Interim Monitor receives these reports, the Interim Monitor shall report in writing to the Commission concerning performance by Respondents of their obligations under the Orders;
provided, however, beginning ninety (90) days after Respondents have filed their final report pursuant to Paragraph X.B. of the Decision and Order, and ninety (90) days thereafter, the Interim Monitor shall report in writing to the Commission concerning progress by the Acquirer toward obtaining FDA approval to manufacture each Divestiture Product and obtaining the ability to manufacture each Divestiture Product in commercial quantities, in a manner consistent with cGMP, independently of Respondents.
8. Respondents may require the Interim Monitor and each of the Interim Monitor's consultants, accountants, attorneys and other representatives and assistants to sign a customary confidentiality agreement; provided, however, that such agreement shall not restrict the Interim Monitor from providing any information to the Commission.
E. The Commission may, among other things, require the Interim Monitor and each of the Interim Monitor's consultants, accountants, attorneys and other representatives and assistants to sign an appropriate confidentiality agreement related to Commission materials and information received in connection with the performance of the Interim Monitor's duties.
F. If the Commission determines that the Interim Monitor has ceased to act or failed to act diligently, the Commission may appoint a substitute Interim Monitor in the same manner as provided in this Paragraph.
G. The Commission may on its own initiative, or at the request of the Interim Monitor, issue such additional orders or directions as may be necessary or appropriate to assure compliance with the requirements of the Orders.
H. The Interim Monitor appointed pursuant to this Order to Maintain Assets may be the same person appointed as a Divestiture Trustee pursuant to the relevant provisions of the Decision and Order.
IV.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that within thirty (30) days after the date this Order to Maintain Assets is issued to become final and effective, and every sixty (60) days thereafter until Respondents have fully complied with the following: Paragraphs II.A , II.B., II.C., II.D., II.E., II.F.1. - II.F.3, II.G., II.J., II.K.1. - II.K.4, II.L., III.A., III.B. and IV.A. of the related Decision and Order, Respondents shall submit to the Commission a verified written report setting forth in detail the manner and form in which they intend to comply, are complying, and have complied with the Orders. Respondents shall submit at the same time a copy of their report concerning compliance with the Orders to the Interim Monitor, if any Interim Monitor has been appointed. Respondents shall include in their reports, among other things that are required from time to time, a detailed description of their efforts to comply with the relevant paragraphs of the Orders, including:
A. a detailed description of all substantive contacts, negotiations, or recommendations related to (i) the divestiture and transfer of all relevant assets and rights, (ii) transitional services being provided by the Respondents to the relevant Acquirer, and (iii) the agreement(s) to Contract Manufacture; and
B. a detailed description the timing for the completion of such obligations.
provided, however, that, after the Decision and Order in this matter becomes final and effective, the reports due under this Order to Maintain Assets may be consolidated with, and submitted to the Commission at the same time as, the reports required to be submitted by Respondent pursuant to Paragraph X of the Decision and Order.
V.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Respondents shall notify the Commission at least thirty (30) days prior to:
A. any proposed dissolution of a Respondent;
B. any proposed acquisition, merger or consolidation of a Respondent; or
C. any other change in a Respondent including, but not limited to, assignment and the creation or dissolution of subsidiaries, if such change might affect compliance obligations arising out of the Orders.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that, for purposes of determining or securing compliance with this Order, and subject to any legally recognized privilege, and upon written request and upon five (5) days notice to any Respondent made to its principal United States offices, registered office of its United States subsidiary, or its headquarters address, such Respondent shall, without restraint or interference, permit any duly authorized representative of the Commission:
A. access, during business office hours of such Respondent and in the presence of counsel, to all facilities and access to inspect and copy all books, ledgers, accounts, correspondence, memoranda and all other records and documents in the possession or under the control of such Respondent related to compliance with this Order, which copying services shall be provided by such Respondent at the request of the authorized representative(s) of the Commission and at the expense of such Respondent; and
B. to interview officers, directors, or employees of such Respondent, who may have counsel present, regarding such matters.
VII.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this Order to Maintain Assets shall terminate on the earlier of:
A. Three (3) days after the Commission withdraws its acceptance of the Consent Agreement pursuant to the provisions of Commission Rule 2.34, 16 C.F.R. § 2.34; or
B. The later of:
1. The day after the divestiture of all of the Divestiture Product Assets, as required by and described in the Decision and Order, has been completed and the Interim Monitor, in consultation with Commission staff and the Acquirer(s), notifies the Commission that all assignments, conveyances, deliveries, grants, licenses, transactions, transfers and other transitions related to such divestitures are complete, or the Commission otherwise directs that this Order to Maintain Assets is terminated; or
2. the day after the day the related Decision and Order becomes final and effective.
By the Commission.
Donald S. Clark
ISSUED: October 15, 2012
Secretary
SEAL
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SimpliciTI-compatible UART Driver
Design Note DN117
By Jim Noxon and Kristoffer Flores
Keywords
* SimpliciTI
* RS-232
* UART driver
* SmartRF®04EB
* CCMSP-EM430F2618
* SmartRF®05EB
* MSP430FG4618 Experimenter Board
1 Introduction
This design note introduces a UART driver that is compatible with the SimpliciTI TM low-power wireless networking protocol. This note describes the driver implementation, the process of adding the driver into an existing SimpliciTI project, and the basic driver API function calls.
The supplied UART driver can facilitate interfacing a SimpliciTI device with other UART-capable devices, for example, a PC via RS-232. Using a UART with an RS232 transceiver allows for live in-system
* CC1110Fx
* CC2510Fx
* CC1111Fx
* CC2511Fx
* CC2431
* CC2430
* CC2530
data transfer from a SimpliciTI device to a PC or PC control of the SimpliciTI device for end applications or for development and debugging purposes. The driver package includes an example project based on the 'Simple Peer-to-Peer' SimpliciTI example to demonstrate the UART operation. The example program sends messages to a PC via the RS-232 port on the SmartRF®04, SmartRF®05, and MSP430FG4618/F2013 Experimenter Boards. The sample code in this design note can be downloaded from http//:www.ti.com/lit/zip/SWRA306.
Table of Contents
2 Abbreviations
UART
Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
DMA
Direct Memory Access
ISR
Interrupt Service Routine
SoC
System On Chip
EM
Evaluation Module
TX
Transmit
RX
Receive
3 UART Driver Description
3.1 Compatibility
The driver has been tested on the following SimpliciTI development platforms:
- SmartRF®04 board with CC1110EM, CC2510EM, and CC2430EM
- SmartRF®05 board with CC2530EM
- SmartRF®05 board with CCMSP-EM430F2618 daughter board and CC2520EM
- MSP430FG4618/F2013 Experimenter Board with CC1101EM
Code modifications may be necessary to ensure proper compilation and UART operation when using MSP430s, microcontrollers, or development platforms other than those listed above. The driver can be used in both IAR and Code Composer Essentials (CCE).
3.2 Driver Implementation
The supplied UART driver uses first-in first-out (FIFO) ring buffers for transmit (TX) and receive (RX) data. To send data, the user calls an API function that writes the data to the end of the TX FIFO. To receive data, the user calls a function that reads data from the top of the RX FIFO.
The actual transmission and reception of data bytes over the UART is driven by interrupts. If there is data in the TX FIFO, the UART TX interrupt service routine (ISR) moves the data byte by byte to the UART TX byte register for transmission until the FIFO is empty. The UART RX ISR moves each received byte from the RX byte register to the RX FIFO as long as there is room in the buffer.
The alternative to an interrupt-based UART is one that is supported by the Direct Memory Access (DMA) controller to move data to and from the UART TX/RX byte registers. An interrupt-based solution was chosen for the following reasons:
1. A UART with DMA support would require two DMA channels, one for transmit and one for receive. An ISR-driven solution keeps DMA resources free to use with other peripherals.
2. While UART using DMA could operate as a background process with very little overhead, some of the functions provided with the supplied driver, for example, the function to check the amount of unread data in the RX FIFO, have more practical implementations in an ISR-based UART.
3.2.1 Flow control on MSP430s
Flow control prevents overflow conditions via signalling on the RTS and CTS UART pins. If the RX FIFO is full, the RTS pin will output a high logic level as a signal that the device is not ready to receive data. On the transmit side, the UART will wait for the CTS pin (driven by the target device's RTS pin) to go to a low logic level before transmitting data.
The 8051-based SoCs have a built-in flow control mechanism managed by hardware while the MSP430s do not. To provide flow control capability to MSP430-based systems, a flow control mechanism managed by software is enabled when using an MSP430 and flow control is turned on. The implementation maps two I/O pins as the RTS/CTS signals and toggles the lines manually in software. Since this handshaking mechanism is software-based, the latency involved in toggling the RTS and CTS lines can lead to lost data when using high baud rates.
3.3 User Options and Interface
Design Note DN117
The UART driver is designed for minimal complexity for the user. Using #define statements in a preinclude file, the user can specify which UART on the CPU to use, the baud rate, flow control mode, parity mode, and number of stop bits. The user can also specify the size of the transmit and receive FIFO buffers. However, this driver does not allow the above settings to be changed during runtime. Section 4 explains the driver installation and project setup procedures.
The driver API provides seven function calls for the UART. These are high-level functions for sending and receiving messages to and from the buffers, checking for free space in the transmit buffer, and checking how much unread data is in the receive buffer. Section 6 describes the API functions in detail.
4 Installing the Driver into an Existing SimpliciTI Project
Installing the UART driver into a project consists of three main steps: extracting the files into the project directories, configuring the UART, and setting up the project to use the UART.
4.1 Extracting the Files into the Project Directories
The first step in installing the UART driver is to extract the zip file contents into the SimpliciTI directory. If the extraction process preserves the directory structure, the file contents should extract into the recommended folders; however, the table below lists the files and their recommended destinations:
options.h
4.2 Configuring the UART
The options.h preinclude file contains #define statements that determine the following UART settings:
- Transmit and receive FIFO buffers size
- For MSP430s, the letter and module number of the USCI module to use
- For 8051-based SoCs, the number and location of the USART module to use
- Baud rate
- Number of stop bits
- Flow control mode
- Parity mode
The 8051-based SoCs use a consistent pin mapping such that a given USART (number and location) maps to the same I/O pins regardless of the SoC. The driver has built-in pin mappings for the different USART configurations. For the MSP430s, it is necessary to define the pins used by the chosen USCI module because the pin mapping for the same module may differ among different MSP430s. Since the MSP430 does not have hardwarehandshaking, the pins to use for CTS and RTS must also be defined in options.h.
When using an 8051-based SoC EM on a SmartRF®04 (CC1110/1, CC2510/1, CC2430/1) or SmartRF®05 board (CC2530/1), specifying USART port number 0 at location 1 will map the UART to the on-board RS-232 transceiver.
The comments in options.h identify the pin mappings for USCI_A0 for the CCMSPEM430F2618 SmartRF®05 board and for the MSP430FG4618 Experimenter Board. Using the mapping will route the UART to the on-board RS-232 transceivers. On the CCMSPEM430F2618 SmartRF®05 board, it is possible to enable hardware-handshaking because pins 2.6 and 2.7 on the MSP430 connect to the RTS and CTS pins of the RS-232 transceiver. On the Experimenter Board, hardware-handshaking cannot be enabled because the RTS and CTS pins on the RS-232 connector are open.
4.3 Setting Up the Project
4.3.1 In IAR (for 8051-based SoC or MSP430)
The following steps set up an existing SimpliciTI project to use the UART driver:
1. With the workspace and project open in IAR, add uart.c and uart_intfc.c to the project:
b. Browse for uart.c and uart_intfc.c in the file browser that appears, highlight the files, and press Open.
a. Navigate to <ProjectAdd Files…>.
c. Both uart.c and uart_intfc.c should now appear in the project files list. Drag and drop the files to the desired folder in the project or leave them in the default location.
2. Set options.h as a preinclude file for the project:
b. Under Category, select C/C++ Compiler, then choose the Preprocessor tab.
a. Navigate to <ProjectOptions>
c. Under Preinclude File, enter the location or browse for the options.h file.
3. In the main C file of the project, include uart_intfc.h and add a line of code to call uart_intfc_init() after the call to BSP_Init() (as shown in Figure 2). Rebuild the project. The project should compile with no errors. The other UART API functions can be called after SMPL_Init() has been called.
Figure 2. No build errors after successful driver install and initialization in IAR
4.3.2 In Code Composer Essentials (for MSP430)
The following steps set up an existing SimpliciTI project to use the UART driver:
1. With a workspace and project open in CCE, link uart.c and uart_intfc.c to the project:
b. Browse for uart.c and uart_intfc.c in the file browser that appears, highlight the files, and press Open.
a. Navigate to <ProjectLink Files to Active Project...>
c. Both uart.c and uart_intf.c should now appear in the project files list. Drag and drop the files to the desired folder in the project or leave them in the default location.
2. Configure options.h as a preinclude file
b. On the left menu in the window that appears, select C/C++ Build.
a. Navigate to <ProjectProperties>
c. Under Configuration SettingsTool Settings, select the Runtime Model Options.
d. Specify options.h as a preinclude file by entering the file location or browsing for the file (Figure 3).
3. In the main project C file, include uart_intfc.h and add a line of code to call uart_intfc_init() after the call to BSP_Init()(see Figure 4). Rebuild the project. The project should compile with no errors. The other UART API functions can be called after SMPL_Init() has been called.
Figure 4. No build errors after successful driver install and initialization in CCE
5 Example – Simple Peer-to-Peer with HyperTerminal
The file main_LinkToWithUART.c is a modified version of the Simple Peer-to-Peer example provided with SimpliciTI. The code provides a simple demonstration of the UART interface and is intended to be used with one of development platforms with an RS-232 interface (i.e. SmartRF®04 board, SmartRF®05 board, or MSP430FG4618 Experimenter Board with their compatible SoCs or radios). The example program communicates to a PC HyperTerminal via RS-232 to deliver status messages and to receive input from the PC.
The original LinkTo program waits for a button press on the development platform to initiate a link; the modified version waits for a carriage return in the HyperTerminal window. Pressing keys other than the carriage return key during this time will cause LED 1 to toggle. The rest of the program operates as the original, with the modification that the device sends status messages to the PC HyperTerminal as shown in Figure 5.
To run the example, follow the instructions below:
1. Open the Simple Peer-to-Peer LinkTo project for the device and platform to be used.
3. Replace the code in main_LinkTo.c with the code in main_LinkToWithUART.c OR add (link in CCE) main_LinkToWithUART.c to the project and exclude main_LinkTo.c from the build. Rebuild the project.
2. Per the instructions in Section 4, extract the UART driver files, configure the UART in options.h; and set up the project. The default Simple Peer-to-Peer project should compile with the minor changes to main_LinkTo.c as shown in Figure 2 and Figure 4.
4. Open a HyperTerminal and configure the terminal to match the UART settings specified in options.h
5. With a serial cable connected to the development board, run the example program.
6 Basic API Function Calls
This section gives a description of each of the 7 UART API functions. For more details, see the code and comments in uart_intfc.h and uart_intfc.c.
6.1 uart_intfc_init()
6.1.1 Description
The uart_intfc_init() function prepares the UART by configuring the CPU registers (per the definitions in options.h) and initializing the UART buffers. uart_intfc_init() must be called before attempting to use any other API functions.
6.1.2 Prototype
void uart_intfc_init(void)
6.2 tx_peek()
6.2.1 Description
The tx_peek() function returns the number of unused bytes in the transmit FIFO.
6.2.2 Prototype
int tx_peek( void )
6.2.3 Return
integer
Data Type
Description
Number of bytes of free space in UART transmit FIFO
6.3 tx_send()
6.3.1 Description
The tx_send() function pushes a message to the end of the transmit FIFO if there is enough room for the entire message. If there is inadequate free space in the FIFO, nothing is appended to the FIFO. The transmit FIFO is set to 50 bytes by default, but can be resized in the options.h file.
6.3.2 Prototype
bool tx_send(const void* data, size_t len)
6.3.3 Parameter Details
len
6.3.4 Return
Boolean Value
Description
6.4 tx_send_wait()
6.4.1 Description
The tx_send_wait() function pushes a message to the end of the transmit FIFO, but unlike tx_send(), the message length can exceed the size of the FIFO. For messages longer than the available space in the FIFO, tx_send_wait() pushes the message into the FIFO in pieces, filling the buffer with the data as space becomes available due to completed transmissions. The function is a blocking task in that it does not terminate until the entire message has been delivered to the FIFO.
6.4.2 Prototype
bool tx_send_wait(const void* data, size_t len)
6.4.3 Parameter Details
6.4.4 Return
| Boolean Value | Description |
|---|---|
| true (1) | Data successfully pushed onto buffer |
6.5 rx_peek()
6.5.1 Description
The rx_peek() function returns the number of bytes of unread received data in the receive FIFO. It is recommended to call rx_peek()to determine if there is unread data in the receive FIFO before calling rx_receive().
6.5.2 Prototype
int rx_peek()
6.5.3 Return
| Data Type | Description |
|---|---|
| integer | Number of unread bytes available in the UART receive FIFO |
6.6 rx_receive()
6.6.1 Description
The rx_receive() function pulls unread data out of the UART receive FIFO to a specified location until the specified maximum number of bytes has been read or the receive FIFO has been emptied. The function returns the actual number of bytes read.
6.6.2 Prototype
int rx_receive(void *data, int max_len)
6.6.3 Parameter Details
max_len
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| (void *) data | Location to which buffer data should be read |
6.6.4 Return
6.7 uart_busy()
6.7.1 Description
The uart_busy() function indicates whether there is any impending actions required by the UART, either there is still data in the transmit FIFO or there is unread data in the receive FIFO.
6.7.2 Prototype
bool uart_busy( void )
6.7.3 Return
| Boolean Value | Description |
|---|---|
| true (1) | UART is in use; UART transmit and/or receive buffers have data |
7 General Information
7.1 Document History
| Revision | Date | Description/Changes |
|---|---|---|
| SWRA306 | 2009.09.22 | Initial release. |
Design Note DN117
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Network Parameters Impact on Dynamic Transmission Power Control in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks
Muhammad Imran Khan IRIT, University of Toulouse III, France
Abstract
In vehicular ad hoc networks, the dynamic change in transmission power is very effective to increase the throughput of the wireless vehicular network and decrease the delay of the message communication between vehicular nodes on the highway. Whenever an event occurs on the highway, the reliability of the communication in the vehicular network becomes so vital so that event created messages should reach to all the moving network nodes. It becomes necessary that there should be no interference from outside of the network and all the neighbor nodes should lie in the transmission range of the reference vehicular node. Transmission range is directly proportional to the transmission power the moving node. If the transmission power will be high, the interference increases that can cause higher delay in message reception at receiver end, hence the performance of the network decreased. In this paper, it is analyzed that how transmission power can be controlled by considering other different parameter of the network such as; density, distance between moving nodes, different types of messages dissemination with their priority, selection of an antenna also affects on the transmission power. The dynamic control of transmission power in VANET serves also for the optimization of the resources where it needs, can be decreased and increased depending on the circumstances of the network. Different applications and events of different types also cause changes in transmission power to enhance the reachability. The analysis in this paper is comprised of density, distance with single hop and multi hop message broadcasting based dynamic transmission power control as well as antenna selection and applications based. Some summarized tables are produced according to the respective parameters of the vehicular network. At the end some valuable observations are made and discussed in detail. This paper concludes with a grand summary of all the protocols discussed in it.
Keywords
VANET, Transmission Range, Transmission Power, DSRC, Density, Single Hop, Multi Hop, Applications, Omni and Directional Antennas, Reliability, Scalability, Delay, Throughput, Connectivity
1. Introduction
Vehicular ad hoc networks are particular type of mobile ad hoc networks but with different dynamics of topology; such as speed of vehicle, geographic dynamics, dimensions of its vehicular node etc. Vehicular ad hoc networks constitutes of moving vehicular node on the road, as like on the highways, urban areas or rural areas etc. The communication between moving vehicular nodes plays an important role in intelligent transportation system. Communication is possible between vehicles within each other's transmission range, and with fixed gateways along the road for vehicular to infrastructure communication. The ability of vehicles to communicate directly with each other via wireless links and form ad hoc networks that produce the exciting applications. In particular, these networks have important applications in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Many of these applications require re- liable and efficient dissemination of traffic and road information via ad hoc network technology. This is, however, a difficult task due to the highly dynamic nature of these networks which results in their frequent fragmentation into disconnected clusters that merge and disintegrate dynamically. Efficient utilization of bandwidth of the radio resources deployed on the vehicular nodes could perform an important role to overcome the issues of reliable dissemination of information in the network.
In vehicular communication, message dissemination occurs between vehicle-to- vehicle (V2V) and also vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I). ITS aims to provide drivers with safer, more efficient and more comfortable journeys. It could provide drivers with timely traffic congestion and road conditions information so that drivers can avoid congested or dangerous areas that could cause the hazards or delays etc. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication is also referred as Inter Vehicle Communication (IVC) that needs no infrastructure for communication between vehicles and each vehicular node is equipped with a wireless radio by which it can send and receive its own messages and forward messages for the other vehicles. Message dissemination in V2V is broadcasted in single-hop and multi-hop fashions. Broadcasting tech- nique is classified into four categories [1]; 1) simple flooding, 2) probability based, 3) area based and 4) neighbor knowledge based. The equipment used for vehicular com- munication is called on board unit (OBU) that consists of different components as such, wireless radio link, processing unit for the messages etc. Vehicular communi- cation helps to reduce the number of accidents and possible deaths by propagating messages prior to such accidents. Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) has been regarded as the most promising technology applied by worldwide develop- ment for V2V communication [2] [3]. In 5.9 GHz band US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has allocated 75 MHz spectrum band for DSRC. As most emer- gency messages are life critical, and should be delivered to other vehicles as fast and reliable as possible [4], the traditional broadcasting scheme without ACK mecha- nism is not suitable for emergency message delivery in IVC. Second, without an effective broadcast control in the network layer, multiple redundant messages may be exchanged among nodes, which could cause broadcast storm problem [5] and significantly degrade the network resource utilization.
Vehicles on the road encounter different traffic conditions, such as during traffic jams, accidents, traffic lights, peak rush hours, late night etc., results in dynamic changes because their different mobility behavior. In rural highways and during late night hours, vehicles move with high speed due to low density on the road and hence sparse ad hoc network is created where connectivity between vehicular node is a challenging task. The communication link between V2V communication remains active only for a short period of time. To make the communication reliable, the connectivity should last for long time between vehicular nodes. By increasing the transmission range for sparse ad hoc networks it could be achieved as the farthest node could access the channel to communication with other vehicles. It signify that tuning the transmission power in VANET is so much important to regulate some issue regarding the connectivity and timely message propagation from vehicle to vehicle. Some of work to adjust the transmission power has been done considering different goals to achieve is explained such as; Impact of transmission power on the performance of UDP packets transmission is presented in [6], Dynamic adaptation of transmission power with contention window size to transfer the packets with their priority selection has been proposed in [7]. To enhance the connectivity and the duration of the path lifetime between source vehicular node to destination is proposed by S.Y.Wang in [8]. Similarly in [9][10][11], authors proposed the dynamic adaptation rate control of transmission power in VANET for delay con- strained applications and to access the channel to send timely the information to the destination. Neighboring vehicular density largely affect the Quality of Service (QoS) of the network if we consider the fixed transmission power. By adapting the dynamic transmission power according
to the needs of the vehicular network that has a dynamic topology as well, so many problems described could be overcome.
In vehicular ad hoc networks, the dynamic change in transmission power is very effective to increase the throughput of the network and decrease the delay of the communication. Whenever an event occurs, the reliability of the communication from vehicular node to other vehicular nodes becomes so vital so that event messages should reach to these nodes. More importantly, the connectivity between the moving nodes comes first to achieve the reliability in the network. There is a direct relation between the connectivity and the transmission power, less transmission power means that connectivity between the moving nodes is weak and vice versa. This paper analyzes that how transmission power can be controlled by considering different parameter of the network such as; density, distance between moving nodes, information message priority etc. Optimization of the network could also be met by the dynamic control of transmission power in VANET; where it needs, transmission power can be decreased and increased depending on the circumstances of the network. Transmission range theoretically in DSRC standard is 1000 meter and the data rate can change from 6 Mbps to 27 Mbps. Transmission power versus transmission range is also calibrated in [12]. In the summarized tables some symbols are used to describe the behavior of the parameters of the network. Plus sign '++' shows the increasing and minus sign '−−' show the decreasing or degrading behavior, '±' describes the dynamic changing (increasing and decreasing) behaviors, the equal sign '==' indicates that there is no change; neither increasing nor decreasing.
This paper is organized as section 2 describes different parameters impact on dynamic transmission power control, then section 3 gives details on the density and distance based transmission power control. Section 4 describes the message broadcasting based and section 5 details the antenna based analysis of transmission power control. Section 6 describes the application and event based dynamic control of transmission power of vehicular node on the highway. Section 7 gives the observations and discussion in detail and conclusion with perspective is given at end in section 8.
2. Vehicular Network Parameters Affects on DTxPC
Some of the parameters such as, density, distance, broadcasting type, antenna type etc. are discussed here and their impact on dynamic transmission power control. In other words, we can say that how the change in transmission power could be affected in the vehicular network considering different situations on the highway either in broadcasting, event occurring situation or any network condition changes etc. A brief discussion is carried on in below paragraphs.
Density is one of the parameter that affect the transmission of the packets. Due to high number of vehicular nodes, the transmission medium becomes congested and probability of higher number of collisions increases that could decrease the performance of the vehicular network. So many papers [6] [7] [8] [13] [14] etc. have been published that change the transmission power of the network according to the density of the network. The dynamic change in transmission power is carried out by an algorithm throughout the network as the number of vehicular nodes in the network increases and decreases time by time on the course of the highway. Density of the network can be classified into two groups; one is simply by counting the number of vehicular nodes and the other is number of clusters of vehicular nodes that constitutes the network. Dynamic transmission power control (DTxPC) could be affected by the density of the network in both ways; by considering simply number of vehicular nodes and also by clusters of vehicular nodes connected to the network. Distance is also an important factor that affects the transmission range of the vehicular ad hoc networks. If the nodes as far away from each other, the transmission link between the nodes will be weak due to reception of lower power transmission signals. The closer the nodes will be, the stronger the signal strength will be between them. Distance also affects the density of the network, the more the distance between the nodes, less will be the density and vice versa. Some authors worked [13] [11] etc. on how the performance of the network could be optimized by considering the distance between the nodes. Transmission power control can be changed dynamically considering the distance could be called distance based dynamic transmission power control.
Dynamically change in the transmission power of a vehicular node in a vehicular network can enhance the reliability of any application driven for the safety purpose or simply for the communication in the network. It can be happened for V2V or V2I network communication. Whenever some event happen in the network, the vehicular node could change their transmission power according to the impact of the event to communicate its information to maximum or desired length of the highway or to maximum or desired the number of moving vehicles. So dynamic transmission power control (DTxPC) could be event-driven and also an application based. In communication system, different messages have different priorities e.g. voice and video messages do not have the same priority. VANET communication messages could be of different type as like; emergency message, accident messages, warning message, etc. so these all have different priorities. The transmission power control could not be same all the time to communicate those VANET messages. During the course of communication between vehicular nodes, dynamic change in transmission power according to the messages priority [14] [15] etc. become vital for the efficient utilization of resources.
Different type of antennas are used in VANET for the wireless access between moving nodes in IVC and also in V2I network. Different antennas are deployed considering different applications in VANET. The most important need of vehicular network is to transmit the safety message to save the lives of the passengers. The authors used different type of antennas [10] [13] [9] etc. in vehicular ad hoc network communication. Omni-directional antennas are used for the coverage of 360 degree area and directional antennas are used to cover the particular direction on the highway. Dynamic transmission power control can also classified on the basis of an antenna selection. These antennas are used for broadcast wire- less communication between V2V and V2I. The message transmission in vehicular network could be single hop broadcast and also multi hop broadcast. Single hop broadcast communication occurs in the neighboring vehicular nodes which are in the transmission range of a particular reference vehicular node. Multi hop broad- cast communication travel from one transmission zone to several other transmission zone until the destination is reached. According to the broadcast need and also de- pending on other parameters such as distance, transmission power of the reference vehicular node is changed dynamically during the course of communication. If the nodes are closer, for single hop broadcast communication less power is needed for the reliable transmission and vice versa. In multi hop broadcast communication, to reach the destination in a minimum time, transmission power of a vehicular node could be increased so that maximum distance could be covered in less time. For the rapid and reliable communication, dynamic transmission power control (DTxPC) of a vehicular node plays a crucial role [16] [17] [18] etc. in a single and multi hop broadcast communication.
In the below sections, the detail description is done explaining with the algorithms and protocols designed accordingly, and also their impact on delay and throughput constraints and other essential parameters of the vehicular network.
3. Density and Distance based DTxPC
Vehicular equipped with On Board Units (OBU) constitutes the wireless vehicular ad hoc networks on the highway. These moving nodes communicate with each other through OBUs that contains also antenna for message propagation. Density of the vehicular network depends on the number of the moving nodes. If moving nodes are greater in number then density will be higher and vice versa. The distance between these moving nodes has an inverse relationship with the density in a confined area of the highway. If the density is high, the distance among the nodes will be low and vice versa. The transmission power plays an important role for the best performance of the vehicular network. Generally the fixed transmit power and the QoS related parameters for prioritized messages do not enhance the performance for the dynamically changing topology of VANETs. In order to achieve better performance utilizing the local density information, dynamically changing transmission power with dynamic adaptation of contention window size in EDCA is needed in V2V communication. Vehicles estimate the node density by gathering the neighbors information within the current transmission range. The moving nodes make the connection among themselves for better and reliable communication and get connected in the transmission range of each other. As density of the network increase and decrease on the course of the highway, to get reliable communication and lesser delay, dynamic transmission power is necessary for the vehicular nodes based on the local traffic density information rather than high fixed transmission power. The table ( 1 ) summarizes some protocols and algorithms proposed in the literature and these are also discussed with their impact on dynamic transmission power control and range estimation. Moreover, delay and throughput and other parameters are also discussed accordingly.
The power control algorithm proposed in [9] is capable of the managing the topology of a vehicular ad hoc network by adjusting transmission power dynamically. It is based only on local information and no exchange of power-related signaling among nodes is required. It is scalable for a very low density up to a very high user density and this is achieved by controlling the transmission power, so that the number of neighbors of each node is always within a minimum and maximum threshold. This power control algorithm proposes a mechanism that adjusts the transmission power adaptively based on number of neighbors. First each vehicle starts with initial transmission power . It incrementally increases the transmission power as long as the number of neighbors is within a minimum threshold, or it reaches maximum transmission power value i.e. . The transmission power is decreased when the number of neighbors greater than maximum threshold. Otherwise transmission power remains the same if the number of neighbors is within minimum and maximum threshold.
The transmission range in protocol proposed by [16] remains fixed, it does not change dynamically but it incorporates the distance parameter for multi hop trans- mission of messages. Position based multi hop broadcast protocol (PMBP) is developed for emergency message dissemination in IVC. End-to-end delay for an emergency message reserving channel access by exchange of BRTS and BCTS packets from source to destination could be given by
the following equation; where is the time taken at the first hop which normally is longer than the following hops and denotes one-hop delay at intermediate hops and represents the time spent at last hop.
Where is the ratio of the expected total number of vehicles on the highway to the expected average number of vehicles within the transmission . When , all vehicles are within the transmission range of the source node, and the end-to-end delay can be obtained from .
Table 1: Density and Distance based DTxPC
Rawat et al. in [7] proposed an algorithm for joint adaptation of transmission power and contention window to improve the performance of vehicular ad hoc net- works by a cross-layer approach. To make the connection reliable for long time, the proposed algorithm adapts the transmission power dynamically rather than high and fixed transmission power; based on the estimated local traffic density informa- tion. The algorithm that they have developed use the transmission range that is calculated by the traffic flow theory and the prioritization of different types of messages according to their urgency and delay requirements. The transmission range is determined by ;
Where represents the length of road segment, represents the estimated vehicle density and is a traffic constant from traffic flow theory. Vehicles estimate the node density by gathering the neighbors information within the current transmission range. The new transmission range is then derived by using the traffic flow model as explained in Eq (2). Here transmission power is calculated by mapping on the basis of transmission range [12].
Path population on the highway depict the density of the vehicular network. In a protocol proposed by Wang [8], the path population of the highway is described in both direction of the highway separately; the first population can be represented as consists of all the paths whose source and destination vehicles move in the same direction and the second path population called , consists of all the paths whose source and destination vehicles move in the different directions on the highway. It uses vehicular mobility traces to investigate how wireless transmission range can effect the path lifetime in an IVC network in density population and also in density population.
Edge-Aware Epidemic Protocol (EAEP) proposed in [13] is for highly dynamic and intermittently connected VANET. The density of the network is considered as the cluster environment in this protocol. Vehicular traffic models can be classified into macroscopic and microscopic models. In macroscopic model traffic is treated as an incompressible fluid, characterized by average density (cars/km), average velocity (km/h) and average traffic flow . In microscopic model each car is treated individually and its motion in time and space is described using the so-called car- following models which incorporates the behavior of drivers in traffic through simple parameterized distance and velocity dependent interactions between adjacent cars. It used different range of transmission power for dissemination of messages by using RTS/CTS mechanism.
Xiaomin Ma et al. proposes distributive robust scheme in [19] for DSRC one-hop safety critical services. The proposed scheme enhances broadcast reliability using dynamic receiveroriented-repetitions (ROR) and mini-slot within DIFS in IEEE 802.11 for one hop emergency warning messages dissemination. When a vehicle sends out a first cycle of emergency packet, one or more nodes receive these packets and responsible to repeat the broadcast for their one hop neighbors. Exchange of beacon messages in the network results the update of node's location, mobility information of one hop neighboring nodes, moving direction, speed etc. Receiver node distinguishes the copies of broadcast packet from the newly generated packets through a 12-bit sequence number of the received packet in the MAC header of IEEE 802.11. The emergency message is reached to the last node in the transmission range of the sender vehicle. To estimate the time to reach the emergency message, an Assessing Delay (AD) is introduced as in the below equation (3); where, is maximum AD time duration allowed, and normally it is less than the message life time. R is the communication range of the sender, and d is the distance of the current node to the sender.
Vehicular nodes in this network model are displaced according to Poisson point process with density β (nodes per meter) in a fixed transmission range R, the total number of nodes in the transmission range of reference vehicular node are Ntr = 2βR.
Transmission power affects the UDP performance in vehicular ad hoc networks is studied by Khorashadi et al. [6]. It is a simulation based work where they observed the change in throughput as by changing the transmission power in a given traffic density. So at certain point, the throughput remains flatten instead of increase in transmission power. It is because of interference at high frequencies. They studied the effect of dynamic transmission power in various traffic density and road scenarios on the UDP throughput. Experimentally they have established the fact the traffic density is only important at lower transmission range to provide the required connectivity. At low transmission power with low traffic density, the connectivity could not be stable. They found that the throughput has no clear correlation with vehicle traffic density than the transmission power. Thus increasing the transmission power reduces number of hops resulting in improved throughput.
The authors showed that dynamically tuning transmission power based on vehicle positions could be used to maximize throughput and decrease the number of hops.
Jialiang Li et al. in [11] investigates the impact of transmission range on the end-to-end delay in 802.11p-based vehicular ad hoc networks. It develops a concise expression of the transmission delay in saturated networks and obtains the service rate of non-saturated networks. The network will be saturated if the arrival rate of packets λ is greater than service rate of packets µ and if λ < µ then network will be un-saturated. Density of the vehicles is considered to be homogeneous, so the number of vehicles in front is the same as the number of rear vehicles. K is the number of front vehicles within the communication range. To retransmit the message in a minimum time, the farthest vehicle is chosen e.g. K th vehicle from the sender. So gives the path length i.e. number of hops, where L is the source-destination distance that represents the number of intermediate vehicles. The per hop delay is the interval that a packet stays in each hop, including processing delay Dproc, queuing delay Dqueue and transmission delay Dtrans, so the end-to-end delay can be expressed as
Rex Chen et al. in [14] uses the Stop-and-Go traffic waves with different traffic densities to measure the packet reception rate in different transmission ranges. If the transmission range is high then the interference factor degrades the performance of the network and the reliability of the network decreases. Stop-and-Go movement is a phenomenon that arises from a combination of shockwave and rarefaction waves, occur especially during peak hours or when some incident occurs on the highway. Dynamic transmission range has been adapted in [14] based on the traffic stability measures that achieves high reliability by considering network coverage and packet reception rates. Coefficient of Variance (CV) parameter of spacing between vehicles is determined by using the local information of each vehicles. Coefficient of variance has a inverse proportion to the vehicular density on the road. Transmission Range Adjustment is done by considering the traffic stability i.e. when CV has a fixed value. The increase in transmission range is relative to CV to ensure a desirable coverage value for all nodes in the road network for specific traffic pattern.
Where n is the order of magnitude for increasing the coefficient of variance CV and is the average vehicle spacing over the entire traffic stream. When traffic becomes uniform i.e. CV = 0, TRadj is equal to .
Each vehicular node in Delay-Bounded Dynamic Interactive Power Control (DB-DIPC) algorithm proposed by C.Chigan et al. [10] adjusts its own transmission power in distributed way by exchanging the periodic Probe/data messages. In a message exchange duration defined as , each vehicle sends only one probe or data message. After each , vehicle evaluate its transmission power whether it is appropriate with other neighboring vehicles. It then decides how to adjust its own power and inform others with impropriate powers to adjust their transmission pow- ers by sending probe/data message. As the neighboring vehicles change the topology dynamically accordingly the node also enter into different stages of algorithm as probing stage to adjustment stage → stable stage → probing/adjustment stage• • • . Latency performance (best, intermediate and worst) of DB-DIPC algorithm for vehicular nodes distributed in a Poisson point process; is derived. Therefore, Delay = j. , and the expectation of the delay E(Delay) = E(j). . Expectation of delay can be expressed as E(j) = E(j)best + E(j)intermediate + E(j)worst . Where j is number of steps to reach neighbor.
In Reliability of Cluster-based Multichannel MAC Protocol [20]; the author describes to find the cluster size and hence the communication range that maintains a high network stability and reliability, increases the life time of a path and at the same time decreases the time delay for an emergency message to reach its intended distance. All vehicular nodes in a cluster have a same communication range R and carrier sense range CS, i.e. they use the same transmitting power Pt except the CH. Cluster head uses two levels of power, one level Pt is the same as other members dedicated to communicate with its cluster members. The other power level to reach a distance Dc to communicate with the neighboring cluster heads. Communication range R of cluster head is also responsible to determine the cluster size and it determines the stability of the network as well. The communication range R has to be selected on the basis of density of vehicles, status messages size and data rate such that all the cluster member could easily access the shared medium within CCI. If a vehicle has an emergency message, it will contend for the channel access using the minimum contention window specified for high priority class in IEEE 802.11p [21] to send this message for several times depending on the application. The emergency message will continue to propagate in the direction of interest for a maximum number of hops (M) depending on the application. Then the average time delay Tavg for the emergency message to reach its intended distance of M clusters is the sum of the time for the first cluster head to receive the message from its member, the time for the neighboring cluster heads to process and propagate the message and the time for the last cluster head to send the message to its members successfully.
Where, , time needed to transmit the status message whose length is of L bits with transmission rate of rd Mbps. Tp is the time needed by the cluster head to process and analyze the emergency message before it propagates.
Cross Layer Broadcast Protocol proposed in [17] for emergency message dissemination in which relay node selection delays will be higher as increase of node density because of retransmissions caused by collisions. That node is more preferable for relaying an emergency message that has longer distance from source, better channel conditions and smaller relative velocity. CLBP delivers the emergency message as fast as possible. Number of hopes determines the how swiftly, the message could reach its destination. is a metric to determine the number of hops, the message will be forwarded with few number of hops with a larger δd . Small relative speed is usually desirable in high speed vehicle networks to guarantee the channel between two moving vehicles.
4. Message Broadcasting based DTxPC
Message broadcasting in vehicular ad hoc networks is particularly of two types, single hop broadcasting and multi hop broadcasting. In single hop broadcasting, the message is directly transmitted from the source vehicular node to its neighboring moving nodes. In multi hop broadcast, the message is transmitted to the destination vehicular node in a relay fashion by introducing intermediate moving node. If the transmission range is high, then , number of hops from source to destination node is less and vice versa. On highway, in a different situations of the vehicular networks, like density changes, events happening, messages priority etc, dynamic transmission power of the nodes optimizes the resources and also increase the performance of the network. Dynamic Transmission Power Control (DTxPC) affects the number of hops to transmit the event and safety messages in the network. In the below table (2) DTxPC is analyzed in different protocols and algorithms proposed in the VANET literature and explain briefly their mechanism.
The algorithm proposed in [9], where neighbors send and receive messages when they are in the transmission range of a reference's vehicle with certain transmission power depending on their locations. Single hop messaging is occurred when they interact wirelessly with each other. The transmission power that dynamically changes based on the number of neighbors but single hop broadcast communication between the nodes persists either DTxP decreases or increases.
In a fixed transmission power, in Position Based Multi-hop Broadcast Protocol (PMBP) [16]; adopts a cross layer approach considering MAC and Network layers. The highlights of this scheme includes: 1) by a cross layer approach, the current re- laying node selects the neighboring node with the farthest distance from the source node in the message propagation direction as the next relaying node, which ensures emergency messages can be delivered to remote nodes with the least time latency; 2) At each hop, the emergency message is only broadcasted once, therefore, redundant broadcast messages are greatly reduced; 3) by adopting revised BRTS/BCTS handshake, there is no hidden terminal problem in PMBP, and it ensures every node could correctly receive the emergency message, which makes the scheme more reliable; and 4) the emergency message has the highest priority to access the channel, and it guarantees the emergency message be broadcasted as soon as possible. The author modifies and adds some fields in RTS packet e.g. position_ x, position_ y, em_info. (position_ x, position_ y) is the current relaying node' position to broadcast the emergency message. em_info constitutes of source node address init_ addr, the emergency sequence number em_seq and the source node position (init_x,init_y). A vehicular node with an emergency message broadcasts a BRTS packet first, then starts the BRTS retransmission timer, if it does not receive a BCTS packet in that time, it will rebroadcast the BRTS packet until the rebroadcast time reaches rmax . The retransmission timer of BRTS packet can be given as below as R represents the transmission range of a node and it is divided into a series of distance block denoted by dis_slot (actually its value should be the average length of vehicles);
Rawat et al. in [7] propose an algorithm that used collision rate and the number of back off times as metrics to dynamically adapt the CW size. The main objective is to provide highest priority messages quickest channel access with higher trans- mission power so that safety messages can be broadcasted in larger region in single hop fashion. The values for CWmin, CWmax, and AIFS parameters are set based on the urgency level of the messages. In case of highest priority packets, the CWs and AIFS are set to smallest values and accordingly the transmission power is set to the maximum value. For other priority messages, the CWs and AIFs are set based on the priority levels and transmission power is set based on the node density.
In Edge-Aware Epidemic Protocol (EAEP) [13], the author introduce two access mechanisms for packet transmission; the basic access mechanism which uses an exponential back off procedure, and the RTS/CTS access mechanism. RTS/CTS is built on top of the basic access mechanism and uses a four-way handshake between source and destination in order to reduce bandwidth loss due to the hidden node problem. EAEP uses the probability to broadcast the information between vehicle- to-vehicle in omnidirectional and directional way on the highway. In omnidirectional propagation, vehicular node waits for a random time to make the decision upon receiving a new message, whether to rebroadcast it or not. The waiting time taken is exponentially biased towards vehicles which are further away from the source node and this waiting time is chosen between the interval [0, Tmax ], where;
U indicates the urgency parameter and L and To are also protocol parameters.
In ROR [19] when the emergency message and beacon messages are ready to transmit in the sender transmission range R, then a preemptive priority is given to emergency messages by
setting up mini-slots, DIFS interval is devised into a number of mini slots as lm gives the length of mini-slot and wm represent number of mini-slots;
; where δ is the maximum propagation delay within the transmission range R, and is the time duration that a transceiver switches between the receiving mode and the transmitting mode. The emergency message is first sent if its time is due after a short waiting time tm , where The sender continues to send the emergency messages for a specific number of repe- titions (Nc) in a one-hop range until Tmax is expired. Otherwise, it switches to send the beacon message if the specific number of repetition are completed. The ROR scheme avoids the situation that results in possible continuous failures of message broadcast, and hence further enhances the broadcast reliability but it does not count the broadcast storm problem because of overhead of packets repetitions. One-hop One-cycle broadcasting of emergency message is during when the channel is sensed idle or just after the transmission of beacon message. The one-hop multi cycle emer- gency messages broadcast, multiple receiver-oriented repetitions are distributively performed through distance-based AD timer in each one-hop receivers.
Khorashadi et al. in [6] experimented that decrease in number of hops to trans- mit a message from a source to a destination is resulted by increasing the transmission range and hence the increase in throughput is observed.
Table 2: Message Broadcasting based DTxPC
But it saturates the throughput when increase in transmission power occurred beyond a certain limit. If a node can not find a route to its destination, it will buffer the message and will check every RETRANSMIT_DELAY to see if the route has been found. Otherwise, the message will be dropped when MESSAGE_TTL will be over. In GPSR [22] the position-based routing, perimeter routing mode where it searches for the alternate routes that may not be geographical closer to the destination because of the dynamics of geographical area. The position of the next hop should be always closer to the destination node than that of the current hop. In every BEACON_INTERVAL seconds, every vehicular node broadcast its location to all its one hop neighbors. INFO_TIMEOUT time limit is used to update the location by periodic beacons otherwise, if any node could not transmit the beacon message, it will be considered out of the network. When a vehicular node wants to send any message to the des- tination, it will first broadcast its location information to its next hop neighbors even if its in beaconing interval. Further, the intermediate nodes also do the same; broadcast the location of original sender to their next hop neighbors. In the BEACON_INTERVAL second, the node also broadcast its position information; so while sending some message, it repeats the location update process that could increase broadcast storm problem in the network hence performance of the network could be slow.
The protocol proposed by Jialiang Li et al. in [11] where message dissemination is held in multi hop broadcast mode in IEEE 802.11p MAC scheme. The end-to-end delay is the summation of the per-hop delay along the path that means from source to destination. Per-hop delay is the interval in which packet stays in each hop, in- cluding processing delay, queuing delay and transmission delay. The per-hop delay is the interval that a packet stays in each hop, including processing delay Dproc, queuing delay Dqueue and transmission delay Dtrans [11]. Traffic Model of Stop-and-Go traffic waves in IVC [14] constitutes of one-lane highway unidirectional and vehicles are distributed in a non-uniform congested way. The message dissemination between the vehicles is in single hop broadcast fashion in the defined transmission range R.
Delay-Bounded Dynamic Interactive Power Control (DB-DIPC) algorithm pro- posed by C.Chigan et al. in [10] facilitates 1-hop connectivity via dynamic neighbor discovery. DBDIPC interacts with the neighbors iteratively to adjust the network transmission power at runtime which consequently ensures that one hop neighbor connectivity to adapt the dynamics of vehicular network. DB-DIPC algorithm have basically three stages as probing stage, adjustment stage and stable stage and it repeats in a specific time period Tcycle whenever a node discover a neighbor. So that neighbors could know the actual power levels of each other. If necessary, then neighboring nodes run the algorithm to adjust theirs transmission power accordingly. Transmission power changes by a function of power step exponentially as step function is calculated in stable stage. In high transmissionpower it results high throughput.
Reliability of Cluster-based Multichannel MAC Protocol [20] uses the clusters on the highway to form the vehicular network. Cluster Head (CH) is responsible for the communication between other cluster heads, and it also broadcast the message to its cluster member. Any cluster member cannot by pass the cluster head to disseminate the information to any vehicular node which is the member of any other cluster. Firstly the author calculates the probability Ps of the messages received by cluster members from their cluster head and then it calculates the probability Pc of the status messages received by CH from its cluster members. Then Pcc probability is calculated for the message propagation from one cluster head to another cluster head. The throughput of the vehicular network constituting of clusters increases. Transmission range of the cluster head determines the size of the cluster. If the size is greater, reception probability of the message will also be higher.
An Efficient Angular Routing protocol is proposed by S.Misra et al. in [18] which finds the minimum possible path length between a source and a destination involving minimum nodes to broadcast control and data packets. Information regarding the angular position of the nodes is exploited in selecting the most suitable node for transmission considering the proper network connectivity among nodes with minimum power consumption. Minimizing the number of total nodes involved during transmission lowers the overall power consumption rate and improvement of the throughput. EAR used angle-based routing to forward the data; instead of broadcasting the Route Request (RREQ) in the entire coverage of the node, the RREQ is sent only to those nodes who lie in a specific angle from source to destination node. EAR algorithm [18] works in a way that RREQ is generated, and if the existing routes are available in the cache, then it is forwarded. It investigates all the nodes' local information and find the nearest node to source that could retransmit the packets to the destination. Then it calculates
the slope between that node and source node. By these two slopes' value, the angle is measured, then RREQ is forwarded to the destination between the area covered by that angle from the source.
Cross Layer Broadcast Protocol proposed in [17] for emergency message dissemination in a multi hop IVC network, aiming to improve the transmission reliability and minimize the message redundancy. For reliable transmissions of broadcast messages, broadcast request to send (BRTS) and broadcast clear to send (BCTS) frames are exchanged before sending of an emergency message. An appropriate relaying node is selected to forward the emergency message in the desired propagation direction. Before sending the emergency message, the nodes send the BRTS frame based on the CSMA/CA mechanism and wait for the response from any other node in its transmission range and starts the count for retransmission. When there is no BCTS response, the node contend for channel access to rebroadcast the BRTS immediately until a BCTS is successfully received. After successfully replying an ACK, the selected relay becomes the next relaying node and repeats the BRTS/BCTS handshake process.
Wenyang Guan et al. propose two adaptive message rate control algorithms for low priority safety messages in [15], in order to provide highly available channel for high priority emergency messages. First algorithm has two phases; In Fast Start Phase and Congestion Avoidance Phase, it uses threshold values to send the messages, if the messages count increases, congestion increases, periodic safety messages stops, and event safety messages dissemination continues. The second algorithm has only one phase called Fast Recovery Phase that is more aggressive in increasing message rate as compared to first algorithm it restarts from threshold Rthr as compared to first algorithm who restarts from Rmin. Vehicle wait for long time to increase the message rate when channel busy level approaches to the channel congestion threshold. Two algorithms provide a highly available low latency channel for event- driven safety applications (ESA) messages and for periodic safety application (PSA) messages.
5. Antenna based DTxPC
Dynamic Transmission Power Control depends on the antenna structure mounted on the vehicles moving on the highway. They are also the moving antennas as well. They serve for the radio range of the vehicular node for the wireless communication between V2V and V2I. Mostly two types of antenna are used, Omni directional antenna and Directional antenna. Omni Directional antenna transmit the signals in direction while Directional antenna transmit the signals in a given direction. More than one antennas are also deployed on the vehicular node as in [23] for different purposes. Less channel congestion leads to high throughput and lesser delay for the message communication among the nodes which lie in the transmission range of observed vehicle. Below table (3) provides the summary of the protocols and algorithms proposed in the literature how dynamic transmission power control is affected by selecting the proper antenna model for vehicular communication.
The algorithm proposed in [9] uses the MAC multi frame consisting of three UTRA-TDD frame. A UTRA-TDD frame consists of 15 time slots. To access the slot, it is required to detect either it is idle or engaged or collided. If the received power at the receiver end is greater than the receiver's sensitive power range, then the physical layer assumes that channel is busy, otherwise, the channel is assumed to be idle. The MAC layer assumes that time slot is idle if it receive an idle indication from the PHY layer.
If MAC layers receives a data block, and busy indication from PHY layer, then MAC layer considers that time slot as engaged. If MAC layer does not decode the data block while busy indication of the time slot, then that time slot at MAC layer will be considered collided. A directional antenna is used in PMBP [16] for a multi hop broadcast trans- mission to reach destination node. With a directional antenna a fix transmission power is set to transfer the emergency messages but with modified RTS/CTS packets based on IEEE 802.11e to support safety related applications. These packets are transmitted with a cross layer approach between
MAC and Network layer.
Rawat et al. in [7] proposed algorithm for better performance of VANET net- work that uses omni directional antenna for dynamic transmission power over the length of highway with certain threshold value of density. It proposes a cross layer approach from physical to MAC layer. Transmission power adopts to accordingly the priority of the messages sent over the network.
EAEP [13] disseminate information in omnidirectional and directional way on the highway. In omnidirectional propagation, vehicular node waits for a random time to make the decision upon receiving a new message, whether to rebroadcast it or not. When the waiting time expires, vehicular nodes counts the number of messages received from front Nf and backward Nb directions. Based on the difference of these counts, the node makes a probabilistic decision whether to rebroadcast or not? The net effect of this scheme is that only nodes close to the edge of cluster keep message alive. In the case of directional message propagation, if a message is propagating forward/backward, it is only kept alive by nodes near the head/tail of the cluster. In ROR [19] scheme, Omni directional antenna are used to transmit the messages on the channel in VANET. Every receiver end repeats the message transmission in a fixed transmission range R. The performance of the proposed scheme is measured on the highway vehicular networks by taking into account the impact of beacon message broadcast and fading channel conditions. Multiple repetitions of messages provide the redundancy of packet transmission in adverse DSRC environment which can enhance packet reception ratios but if it lasts for long time it may lead to continuous transmission failures because of collisions in the channel transmission. Omni directional antenna used for delay-aware transmission range control mechanism by Jialiang Li et al. in [11] so the transmission range coverage is larger than the road width on the highway. The successful transmission from source to destination node is the time period to transmit a data packet. In saturated network the number of contenders are high to access the channel as compared to the un- saturated network. Therefore, collision probability also changes and hence a bit gain of throughput can occur in un-saturated network.
In Stop-and-Go traffic wave by Rex Chen et al. in [14] defined the coverage of the network. Measuring of communication coverage of the vehicular network with n vehicles on the road with their particular locations, then the coverage of each vehicle i is defined in terms of the
Euclidean distance to the nearest upstream and downstream vehicles in the traffic stream. Transmission range of vehicle of i can be denoted as Ri ,
In Delay-Bounded Dynamic Interactive Power Control (DB-DIPC) algorithm pro- posed by C.Chigan et al. [10] , the message transmission is directional over certain directional antennas. The architecture of DB-DIPC is based on a Relative Position Based MAC Nucleus (RPBMACn) [23] which conceptually promises collision free wireless channel access, provided the transmission power is dynamically controlled within the directional 1-hop neighbors. So a directional antenna with a communication channel pair (Transmission and Reception) is dedicated for set of neighboring vehicles depending on their positions relative to the source vehicle. Since vehicles in different directions communicate using different antennas, the number of channel collisions is reduced.
Reliability of Cluster-based Multichannel MAC Protocol [20] proposes a net- work model that is built on one way multi lane highway where vehicles can only communicate with others which are moving in the same direction. Based on IEEE 802.11p, vehicles will alternate between control channel (CCH) and service channels (SCH) for every synchronization interval (SI ). The time the vehicle spends on CCH called control channel interval (CCI ) while time it spends on SCH called service channel interval (SCI ), such that SI = CCI + SCI . Every element in any cluster is reachable by cluster heads. The size of the cluster head is governed by the communication range of the cluster head who has the role of dividing the channel between its members so that all elements have an access channel to send their status messages. CH also determine the sub-channel frequencies for all its members. If there are N sub-channels, then probability to access the same sub-channel by two adjacent clusters is 1/N . Clustering reliability is the probability P = σ/CCI that a cluster member will transmit and receive the clustering information from its cluster head successfully. The carrier sense range CS = ρR, where 1 ≤ ρ ≤ 2, hence it will range from R to 2R.
6. Application, Event and Priority based DTxPC
Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC)[3] basically designed for two types of applications; one is safety applications and other is non-safety application. Vehicular ad hoc networks on the highway have both types of applications and moreover safety messages are divided into types, one is routine safety messages and other is event safety messages. Whenever any event occurs on the highway in VANET, it could either be happy or hazard moment and then nodes start to sending messages to other moving nodes to get well informed in the network. The messages that have high priority are processed first then based on priority table different messages are treated on their own turn. Fixed transmission power or range limit the scope of the message dissemination and hence the performance of the network is affected as compared to the dynamic changing in transmission power. Dynamic transmission power control could be on the basis of events happing on the course of the highway or any application initiation from any moving node. In the literature, different pro- tocols and algorithms are proposed that reveals the dynamic transmission power control enhances the performance of the network in terms of delay and throughput as well as connectivity and reliability of different applications. Summary of all these protocols and algorithms shown in table (4).
How the transmission power affects the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) perfor- mance in vehicular ad hoc networks is studied by Khorashadi et al. [6]. Decrease in number of hops to transmit a message from a source to a destination is resulted by increasing the transmission range and hence the increase in throughput is observed. The algorithm proposed in [9] describes the collision management when nodes are connected. Whenever an event occurs in the network, a mutual collision occurs when multiple reciprocally neighboring nodes transmit on the same time slot. It is treated as a simple collision when the users transmit on the same time slot and have a common reciprocal neighbor which is not involved in the collision. A reference node A assumes that a simple collision occurs in time slot i if it detects a busy channel during the time slot, but it can successfully capture one transmission.
PMBP adapts IEEE 802.11e to support safety related applications in IVC. Services are divided into five classes such that; Best effort, Video probe, Video, Voice and Safety. Different services have different priorities to access the channel based on the access categories (AC). The values of CW_MIN and CW_MAX are defined same as in IEEE 802.11b. After sensing the channel idle with the fix transmission power for AIFS interval, a node start its back off timer and then it computes the value of AIFS and contention window (CW). Higher the value of AC, the higher the priority of messages of that service. The value of the persistent factor set to 2.0 for all applications. The emergency messages have the highest priority to access the channel by adjusting AIFS, CW_MIN and CW_MAX.
Rawat et al. in [7] proposed an algorithm for joint adaptation of transmission power and contention window to improve the performance of vehicular ad hoc networks. It incorporates the contention based MAC protocol 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) to perform the timely propagation of high priority messages (e.g. emergency messages) in vehicleto-vehicle communication. EDCA has the service differentiation to provide QoS for different type of messages such as voice traffic, video traffic, best effort traffic and background traffic and each of these have different AC ( access category) value. Higher the AC value, higher the priority. So the priority of the packets is adjusted by two parameter ; 1) transmission power level in physical layer and 2) MAC channel access parameters such as minimum contention window (CWmin), maximum contention window (CWmax), and arbitration inter frame space (AIFS). It always assign the maximum transmission range for the vehicle that carries high priority messages.
Table 4: Application Event and Priority based DTxPC
For unicast-based applications such as email, ftp and http etc. a long lifetime path is preferable rather than short lifetime; so by the mechanism proposed by [8] we can compute the expected lifetime of a path. The percentage distribution shows that as wireless transmission increases, more paths have longer lifetime and vice versa. If a path is established between source and destination in N'th second, then in each subsequent second, it checks whether the path connectivity still remains or broken. If the path is broken in M'th second, it tries to find the shortest backup path between source and destination vehicles, if there is no backup found, then path life of this repairable unicast path could be determined as (M + 1) − N. The quality of service metrics for real-time applications in vehicular ad hoc networks, this approach investigates the connection duration, route lifetime, and route repair frequency in VANET on the highway. Receiver Oriented Repetitions (ROR) [19] represents a mechanism for emergency messages in VANET where the broadcast message is reached all the nodes in a vehicular network area. To broadcast an emergency message in a form of packet when it occurs, vehicle send to control channel of DSRC a busy signaling to suppress the transmission of beacon messages and possible hidden terminals, so that emergency message could pass through channel on priority without any wait and collision. One-hop One-cycle broadcasting of emergency message is during when the channel is sensed idle or just after the transmission of beacon message. The One-hop multi cycle emergency messages broadcast, multiple receiver-oriented repetitions are distributively performed through distance-based AD timer in each one-hop receivers.
How the transmission power affects the UDP performance in vehicular ad hoc networks is studied by Khorashadi et al. [6]. UDP packets are used mostly in streaming audio and video applications that's why their work is application oriented in VANETs. But the reliability is the question about data dissemination in vehicular networks. The author experimentally investigated the effect of transmission power on UDP throughput. The throughput increases as the transmission power increases because the less number of hops are needed to reach the destination node in the network. Higher the transmission range, lesser the number of hops and vice versa.
Rex Chen et al. in [14] uses the Stop-and-Go traffic waves with different traffic densities to measure the packet reception rate in different transmission ranges. Packet reception rate is measured in the MAC level and is defined as the probability of receiving a packet sent within transmission distance. Vehicle safety applications on the highway with single-hop periodic broadcast communication which include pre-crash sensing and cooperative adaptive cruise control applications are the main achievement by adjusting the transmission range.
Adaptive Rate Control Scheme of DSRC based VANETs [15] deals with event safety application (ESA) and periodic safety application (PSA) by proposing two algorithms by Wenyang Guan et al.. The priority of the ESA is higher than PSA and the message rate is also increased with maximum utilization of the channel. The author address the QoS control issue from the aspect of safety message rate control, with objectives of providing high availability low latency (HALL) channel for event- driven safety applications (ESA) messages and try to maximize channel utilization for periodic safety application (PSA) messages. The proposed scheme utilize the local channel busy time as the indicator of network congestion and adaptively adjust safety message rate in a distributed way.
7. Observations and Discussion
VANET comes with unique characteristics such as, unlimited transmission power, predictable trajectory and plenty of potential applications. But it has also many challenges that include rapidly changing topology subject to frequent fragmentation and congestions, lack of connectivity, redundancy and stringent application requirement in real time robust message delivery. VANET could overcome the problem of transmission power when there is low number of neighboring vehicles i.e. vehicular traffic density, but with higher density, limited transmission power is not enough for the timely message propagation from source to destination vehicular nodes. High transmission power cause the interference problem that results in packet loss and low throughput with increased delay constraint. However; with high transmission power the connectivity can long last but the reliability of message dissemination decreases. The decrease in transmission power for high vehicle density or high pen- etration ratio and increase in transmission power for lower vehicle density or penetration ratio is proposed by several researchers in [7][9][10]. Transmission range in DSRC standard is 1000 meter. Road safety applications for VANETs require strict QoS and DSRC provide timely and reliable communication to make safety applications successful. QoS control for DSRC based vehicle safety applications is still an emerging research field and it can be achieved through mechanisms such as power control, message rate control and enhancing reliability etc. The challenge in implementing applications is in understanding of the complex dynamics of highly mobile single and multi-hop ad hoc networks which is a characteristics of VANET. For real time safety applications end-to-end delay of message delivery is very critical aspect that has been addressed and needs more attention to progress in VANET. The IEEE 802.11p or Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment (WAVE) has been adopted as a main technology for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Its Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is based on the Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) of the IEEE 802.11 which has low performance and high collision rate especially when using a single channel. Therefore, many clustering based multi-channel MAC protocols have been proposed to limit channel contention, provide fair channel access within the cluster, increase the network capacity by the spatial reuse of network resources and control the network topology more effectively. Most of these protocols did not study the optimized cluster parameters such as average cluster size, communication range within the cluster and between cluster heads, and the life time of a path between highly mobile nodes. The table (5) shows the key features of each and every protocols and algorithm discussed and analyzed where ± sign indicates the dynamic transmission power and == indicates the fixed trans- mission power/range of vehicular nodes. In [11], the only focus is on the delay parameter in a multi hop way. But not considering the packet size limit, the above methodology do not provide the overhead of packets. Due to interference by the other vehicles that are out of transmission range could affect the reliability of the network. In saturated and non-saturated network conditions there is no clear way to find out the throughput of the network. Delay could be maximized by increasing the transmission range but on the cost of minimizing the throughput. But in [15] for adaptive message rate control maximize the channel utilization and hence in- crease the message reception rate i.e. throughput but on the cost of delay. Because delay can be increases as the number of vehicular nodes increase in the network and hence waiting time increases for unblocking the PSA message in MAC layer. It can risk to deliver the Emergency Safety Application (ESA) messages because they are queued when the congestion in channel occurs or message rate reaches its maximum threshold. As the threshold values are used for the density of vehicles and also for the collision in the channel, the protocol proposed in [7] does not seem to be scalable. Anyhow, the simulation results show the lower delays by prioritizing the different type of message and high throughput. With prioritization of messages in the system might not be able to satisfy the delay requirement of time sensitive high priority messages such as message related to an accident. In [8] The quality of ser- vice metrics for real-time applications in vehicular ad hoc networks, this approach investigates the connection duration, route lifetime, and route repair frequency in VANET on the highway. The simulations based approach for a rectangular highway uses the small transmission ranges from 100 to 150 m for a highway environment. This unicast approach does not clearly show the scalability of the network on the highway. If the path connection repairs itself several time during the whole life- time of the path, then delay and throughput constraints of the network could be affected adversely resulting in loss of information. The authors in [6] showed that dynamically tuning transmission power based on vehicle positions could be used to maximize throughput and decrease the number of hops. Hence, transmission range is inversely proportional to the number of hops. At higher transmission power causing interference that results in packets collisions, the important information could be lost that question the reliability of the network. But Caizzone et al in [9] shows that dynamically change in the transmission power, under low to high traffic densities; can control the number of vehicles under each vehicle's transmission range.
But proposed power control algorithm that is based only on local information and there is no exchange of power-related signaling among nodes. However, the design and dimensioning of efficient radio resource management policies should not only be based on system optimization aspects but also on traffic safety requirements. A potential drawback here is that the thresholds are static and do not reflect different vehicle traffic conditions and quality of road segments. Dynamic change in trans- mission power at run time without considering threshold values is proposed in [10]. In DB-DIPC the transmission power of the initiative node is verified iteratively and interactively by the neighbor nodes at run-time. The resulting transmission power for communications between immediate neighbors ensures that useful message signal is lower bounded and the associated interference effect is upper bounded; hence the transmission power converges into the optimal transmission zone enabling the small granularity of 1-hop neighbor connectivity promptly adapt VANET network dynamics at run time. DB-DIPC is a single hop that ensures the network connectivity but throughput of the network could be affected in a larger capacity of the network. As it considers its neighbor only to a 1-hop distance, the capacity and coverage problem of the network arises for the optimal resource utilization of the network.
Multiple repetitions in Receiver Oriented Reception [19] of messages provide the redundancy of packet transmission in adverse DSRC environment which can enhance packet reception ratios but if it lasts for long time it may lead to continuous transmission failures because of collisions in the channel transmission as the transmission power remains constant. As each and every node broadcast an emergency message to its one hop neighbors, the broadcast storm problem arises that affects network performance. Stop-and-Go Traffic Waves in IVC [14] considers only a specific traffic pattern while general traffic patterns on the highway have more than one lanes and because of their mobility dynamics, the communication pattern could be different than stop-and-go waves. Directional antenna with high transmission power and less density, reliability and coverage of the network increases as well as throughput. EAR algorithm [18] works in a way that RREQ is generated, and if the existing routes are available in the cache, then it is forwarded. RREQ contains IDs of source node and destination node. If it does not find any route , then it calculates by measuring the slope from source to destination. It investigates all the nodes' local information and find the nearest node to source that could retransmit the packets to the destination. When the node density is low, and the transmission range is also low, most probably there is less number of collisions. The message dissemination is also carried in the specific desired region rather than in 360◦ direction. There is an ambiguity if there will be more than one node found in the desired angle region then how EAR changes its behavior.
PMBP [16] and CLBP [17] are of multi hop broadcast protocols utilizing fixed transmission power to reach destination. They give the highest priority to the emergency safety messages. CLBP have less delay and less number of collisions as by introducing new BRTS/BCTS packets. In the position based multi hop broadcast protocol (PMBP), the farthest neighboring node waits the shortest time duration to reply the broadcast node and becomes the relaying node. The protocols proposed, choose the farthest neighboring node to forward the emergency message. However, due to the long communication distance, relative velocity, noise, etc., the farthest node usually has a bad channel condition and consequently achieves low transmission rate and suffers from high PER. High PER may cause MAC layer retransmissions and thus a long link delay for emergency messages. PMBP uses directional propagation with multi hop broadcasting that also increases the reliability. EAEP [13] is reliable, bandwidth efficient information dissemination based highly dynamic VANET protocol. It reduces control packet overhead by eliminating exchange of additional hello packets for message transfer between different clusters of vehicles and eases cluster maintenance. Dynamic changing transmission power in EAEP for cluster heads (CH) enhance the reliability and also control the packet overhead in the clusters. EAEP overcomes the simple flooding problem but it incurs high delay of data dissemination. In a very high density, the computation complexity can be increased. Selection of next forwarder during a random waiting time at instant of merging other cluster nodes can create the problem of packets overhead because of their identification by exchanging of beacon messages.
Table 5: Summarized DTxPC Table of Protocols
8. Conclusion & Perspective
This paper concludes that the dynamic change in transmission power is generally very effective to increase the throughput of the network and decrease the delay of the communication. Whenever an event occurs, the reliability of the communication from vehicular node to other vehicular nodes becomes so vital so that event messages should reach to these nodes. More importantly, the connectivity between the moving nodes comes in less and high transmission power is so vital for the reliable transfer of the messages among them. There is a direct relation between the connectivity and the transmission power depending on the density of the net- work, less transmission power means that connectivity between the moving nodes is weak and vice versa. In this paper, it is analyzed that how transmission power can be controlled by considering different parameter of the network such as; density, distance between moving nodes, message priority, antenna type and application or event initiation etc. Some summarized analysis tables are shown according to the respective parameters. The dynamic control of transmission power in VANET serves also for the optimization of the resources where it needs, can be decreased and increased depending on the circumstances of the network.
The author in this paper have found some valuable relations among different parameters of the vehicular ad hoc network. Density of the network has inverse relationship with distance on the defined highway area and distance among the moving nodes has also inverse relationship with delay constraint. It is concluded that lower transmission with lower density, there are less number of collisions to access the channel to transmit the messages. Transmission range is inversely proportional to the number of hops in the multi hop broadcast mode of the vehicular node. Broadcast storm problem decreases the reliability of the network but by using clusters, broadcast storm problem can be controlled. These parameters and their relations among themselves serve to formalize or derive the new aspects of the vehicular network particularly about the transmission power control.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the generous support of Prof. Zoubir Mammeri and his colleagues to accomplish this paper.
References
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[14] R. Chen, Hao Yang, Wen-Long Jin, and A. Regan. Dynamic transmission range in intervehicle communication with stop-and-go traffic. In Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), 2010 IEEE, pages 1166 –1171, june 2010.
[15] Wenyang Guan, Jianhua He, Lin Bai, and Zuoyin Tang. Adaptive Rate Control of Dedicated Short Range Communications Based Vehicle Networks for Road Safety Applications. In Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), 2011 IEEE 73rd, pages 1 –5, may 2011.
[16] Yuanguo Bi, Hai Zhao, and Xuemin Shen. A Directional Broadcast Protocol for Emergency Message Exchange in Inter-Vehicle Communications. In Communications, 2009. ICC '09. IEEE International Conference on, pages 1 –5, june 2009.
[17] Yuanguo Bi, L.X. Cai, Xuemin Shen, and Hai Zhao. A Cross Layer Broad- cast Protocol for Multihop Emergency Message Dissemination in Inter-Vehicle Communication. In Communications (ICC), 2010 IEEE International Conference on, pages 1 –5, may 2010.
[18] S. Misra, S.K. Dhurandher, M.S. Obaidat, M. Gupta, K. Diwakar, and P. Gupta. Optimizing Power Utilization in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks through Angular Routing: A Protocol and Its Performance Evaluation. In Global Telecommunications Conference, 2009. GLOBECOM 2009. IEEE, pages 1 –5, 30 2009-dec. 4 2009.
[19] Xiaomin Ma, Xiaoyan Yin, and K. Trivedi. A Robust Broadcast Scheme for VANET One-Hop Emergency Services. In Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Fall), 2011 IEEE, pages 1 –5, sept. 2011.
[20] Khalid Abdel Hafeez, Lian Zhao, Zaiyi Liao, and Bobby Ngok-Wah Ma. Reliability of cluster-based multichannel MAC protocols in VANETs. In Communications (ICC), 2012 IEEE International Conference on, pages 418 –423, June 2012.
[21] D. Jiang and L. Delgrossi. IEEE 802.11p: Towards an International Stan- dard for Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments. In Vehicular Technology Conference, 2008. VTC Spring 2008. IEEE, pages 2036–2040, 2008.
[22] Brad Karp and H. T. Kung. GPSR: greedy perimeter stateless routing for wireless networks. In Proceedings of the 6th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking, MobiCom '00, pages 243–254, 2000.
[23] Chunxiao Chigan, V. Oberoi, and Jialiang Li. RPB-MACn: A Relative Position Based Collisionfree MAC Nucleus for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks. In Global Telecommunications Conference, 2006. GLOBECOM '06. IEEE, pages 1 –6, 27 2006-dec. 1 2006.
Author
Muhammad Imran KHAN is a PhD. student at University of Toulouse, France. He has done his research work in IRIT ( Institut de Recherche en Informatique et Telecommunication). He has completed his master research degree in University of Toulouse in 2008. In 2006 he has completed his bachelor in elec- trical engineering in University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan. His current research work is in the field of wireless ad hoc networks particularly its application in vehicular ad hoc networks such as; inter vehicle communication, vehicle-to-vehicle communication and vehicle-toinfrastructure communication.
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KENTUCKY HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION
SPORTS NEWS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: SEPTEMBER 15, 2003
BOARD OF CONTROL MEETING THIS WEEK
The next regular meeting of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association Board of Control is scheduled for this Thursday and Friday, Sept. 18-19 at the KHSAA office. For a meeting agenda, contact the KHSAA.
SACRED HEART CAPTURES LVIT TITLE
Top-ranked Sacred Heart snapped As sumption's eight year hold on the Louisville Volleyball Invitational Tournament title with a 2-0 win over Notre Dame in Saturday's championship match. The Valkyries posted two wins in Friday's pool play and on Saturday defeated No.7 Presentation 25-14, 25-16 and No.3 Assumption 25-20, 25-22 prior to a 25-22, 25-15 win over Notre Dame.
STATE VOLLEYBALL POLL.
The Kentucky Volleyball Coaches Association released its first poll of the season last week. Listed below are the Top 15 teams in the state. The poll is also posted on the volleyball index page of the KHSAA website at www.khsaa.org/volleyball The next poll is scheduled to be released on Monday, September 22.
1. Sacred Heart; 2. Mercy; 3. Assumption; 4. Holy Cross (Louisville); 5. Notre Dame; 6. St. Henry; 7. Presentation; 8. Newport Central Catholic; 9. Butler; 10. Pleasure Ridge Park; 11. Apollo; 12. Ryle; 13. South Oldham; 14. Beechwood; 15. DuPont Manual.
The State Volleyball Tournament bracket was released last week and is also posted on the volleyball index page of the KHSAA website.
SOCCER POLLS
Following are soccer polls as of Monday, Sept. 15 as released by the Kentucky Soccer Coaches Association. These polls are posted on the soccer index page of the KHSAA website at www.khsaa.org/soccer.
Girls' Poll – As of Sept. 15
1. Sacred Heart 8-1; 2. Notre Dame 8-0-1; 3. Highlands 7-2; 4. Elizabethtown 7-2-1; 5. Henry Clay 4-4-1; 6. Oldham County 60-3; 7. South Oldham 3-3-2; 8. Holy Cross (Covington) 7-1; 9. Lexington Catholic 3-3-1; 10. Paul Dunbar 6-3-1; 11. Lafayette 4-7-2; 12. Ballard 7-2-1; 13. Greenwood 6-1; 14. DuPont Manual 4-1-1; 15. St. Henry 5-4-1; 16. Woodford County 6-2; 17. Assumption 2-5-2; 18. Anderson County 6-2; 19. Newport Central Catholic 4-3-1; 20. Bowling Green 8-2-1; 21. Owensboro 71; 22. George Rogers Clark 6-1-1; 23. Tates Creek 3-3; 24. Eastern 6-1-1; 25. Male 3-3-2.
Others receiving votes: Lexington Christian, Christian Academy-Louisville, Russell, Marshall County, Sayre.
Boys' Poll – As of Sept. 15
1. Trinity (Louis). 10-1; 2. St. Xavier 7-1-1; 3. Lexington Catholic 8-3; 4. Tates Creek 7-1-1; 5. Marshall County (9-1-1); 6. North Oldham 4-1-1; 7. DuPont Manual 8-2-1; 8. Rowan County 4-0-1; 9. Ashland Blazer 7-0; 10. Ballard 6-3; 11. Greenwood 8-1-1; 12. Bowling Green 6-1-1; 13. St. Henry 4-3; 14. Woodford County 5-1-3; 15. North Hardin 7-1; 16. Madison Central 6-1-1; 17. Lexington Christian 6-1-1; 18. Newport Central Catholic 5-3-1; 19. Paul Dunbar 4-3-2; 20. Franklin County 4-2-4; 21. Lafayette 4-2-4; 22. Bourbon County 6-1-2; 23. Hopkinsville 6-1; 24. Bishop Brossart 5-2; 25. Henderson County 4-0-2.
Others receiving votes: Scott, West Jessamine, South Oldham, Highlands, Harrison County, Daviess County, Owensboro Catholic, Scott County, Oldham County.
REGIONAL GOLF TOURNAMENTS
Regional golf tournaments are just two weeks away. Girls' Tournaments are scheduled for Monday, Sept. 29 and Boys' Tournaments are scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 30. Regional Tournament sites and managers have been released and are posted.
To view Girls' Regional Managers and Tournament sites: http://www.khsaa.org/golf/2003/girlsregionalmanagers.pdf
To view Boys' Regional Managers and Tournament sites:
http://www.khsaa.org/golf/2003/boysregionalmanagers.pdf
The Girls' State Golf Tournament is scheduled for Oct. 7-8 at Bellefonte Country Club in Ashland. Monday, Oct. 6 will serve as the practice round day. The Boys' State Golf Tournament is scheduled for Oct. 9-10 at Eagle Trace Golf Course in Morehead. Wednesday, Oct. 8 will serve as practice day for the boys' event. State Tournament first round tee times are tentatively set to be posted on the KHSAA website Friday, Oct. 3.
GOLF ALL-STATE RANKINGS
Following are the latest All-State rankings as compiled by the Kentucky Golf Association. Rankings are updated and posted throughout the season at www.khsaa.org/golf.
GIRLS' LEADERS - As of Sept. 12
Sponsored by Musselman-Baker-Geary Dunne
Top 10 Golfers ranked by total points receive All-State recognition; Top golfer by total points receives Ms. Golf recognition. 1. Laura Caniff, Russell 33; 2. Marci Turner, Monroe County 29; 3. Ashley Current, Christian Academy-Louisville 27; 4. Erin Wells, Jeffersontown 18.5 ; 5. Lauren Scholl, Pulaski County 16.5; 6. Taryn Durham, Glasgow 16; 7. Mallory Blackwelder, Woodford County 14; 8. Ashlee Rose, Lexington Christian 13.5; 9. Beth Cooper, Russell County 13.5; 10. Jessica Smith, Assumption 11
Tournaments
Christian Academy-Louisville, Gene Hillen Invitational, Notre Dame Invitational, Pulaski County Invitational, Sacred Heart Invitational, Montgomery County Invitational, Greenwood Invitational, Lady Scottie Invitational, Russell Independent, Union County Invitational.
BOYS' LEADERS - As of Sept. 11
Sponsored by Musselman-Baker-Geary Dunne
Top 10 Golfers ranked by total points receive All-State recognition; Top golfer by total points receives Mr. Golf recognition. 1. Jordan Blann, Bowling Green 15; 2. Andrew Davis, George Rogers Clark 14; 3. Matt Hunsaker, Henderson County 12.5; 4. Brandon Berry, Oldham County 12.25; 5. Matt Savage, St. Xavier 12; 6. Jessie Massie, Trinity (Louisville) 11.7; 7. Shawn Tipton, Powell County 11.5; 8. Joey Wright, Bath County 10.5; 9. Lee Chaney, Rowan County 10.17; t10. Ryan Britt, St. Xavier, Lee Rarden, Franklin County and Michael Haverfield, St. Xavier 10.
Tournaments
Franklin County Invitational, Rockcastle County, Meade County, Christian County, Pikeville, Hancock County, Estill County Invitational, Taylor County Invitational, George Rogers Clark Invitational (South Wind), Kentucky Invitational, George Rogers Clark Invitational (Sheltowee Train), Muhlenberg North Invitational, Madison Central Invitational, Montgomery County Invitational, Powell County Invitational.
CROSS COUNTRY MEETS SCHEDULE
Following is a listing of upcoming high school cross country meets scheduled as published by the Kentucky Track and Cross Country Coaches Association.
Sept. 20 – Trinity (Louisville) Invitational at E.P. Sawyer Park; Scott Classic; Muhlenberg South Run; Owensboro Invitational; Sacred Heart Valkyrie Classic at E.P. Sawyer Park; Central Hardin Harrier Run; Williamstown Invitational; Eagle Invitational at Sunny Brook Golf Course, Morehead; All Comers at Lincoln County
Sept. 23 – All Comers at Woodford County Park; All Comers at Berea; All Comers at Grant County; Area 8 Championships at G.E. Park, Somerset; All Comers at Clay County
For a complete season listing or results from a particular meet, check out the KTCCA website at www.ktccca.org.
CROSS COUNTRY RANKINGS
Following are the latest rankings as released by the Kentucky Track & Cross Country Coaches Association. To view full rankings, log on to their website at www.ktccca.org. As of Sept. 5
Girls' Class A Team (Top 5) – 1. St. Henry; 2. Bishop Brossart; 3. Hancock Co.; 4. St. Mary; 5. Danville.
Girls' Class A Individual (Top 5) – 1. Sarah Cole (Somerset); 2. Emily Fette (St. Henry); 3. Mary Kate Moore (Green Co.); 4. Robin Bivens (Hancock Co.); 5. Sara Gooch (Hancock Co.).
Boys' Class A Team (Top 5) – 1. Bishop Brossart; 2. Hancock Co.; 3. St. Henry; 4. Dayton; 5. Walton-Verona.
Boys' Class A Individual (Top 5) – 1. Joey Heil (Bishop Brossart); 2. Greg Robinson (St. Henry); 3. Reggie Berger (St. Henry); 4. Robert Halsell (Brown); 5. Alex Barker (Rose Hill).
Girls' Class AA Team (Top 5) – 1. Lloyd Memorial; 2. Highlands; 3. Ft. Campbell; 4. Russell; 5. Warren East.
Girls' Class AA Individual (Top 5) – 1. Carmen Mims (Mercy); 2. Heather Coutler (Warren East); 3. Kayla Hayes (Rockcastle Co.); 4. Sondra Nieporte (Lloyd Memorial); 5. Tomilo Williams (Russell).
Boys' Class AA Team (Top 5) – 1. Lloyd Memorial; 2. Warren East; 3. Highlands; 4. Paducah Tilghman; 5. Rowan Co.
Boys' Class AA Individual (Top 5) – 1. Jacob Fortney (Muhlenberg North); 2. Keith Knapp (Lloyd Memorial); 3. Ron Duncan (Fleming Co.); 4. Patrick Morgan (Boyle Co.); 5. Daniel Marner (South Oldham).
Girls' Class AAA Team (Top 5) – 1. Sacred Heart; 2. Greenwood; 3. Scott; 4. Pulaski County; 5. DuPont Manual.
Girls' Class AAA Individual (Top 5) – 1. Maddie Schuler (Sacred Heart); 2. Melissa Massey (DuPont Manual); 3. Leah Ryan (Sacred Heart); 4. Julie Yonts (Ballard); 5. Katherine Alcorn (Conner).
Boys' Class AAA Team (Top 5) – 1. St. Xavier; 2. Greenwood; 3. Trinity (Louisville); 4. Paul Dunbar; 5. Daviess Co.
Boys' Class AAA Individual (Top 5) – 1. Zach Wilder (Woodford Co.); 2. Michael Eaton (Greenwood); 3. Andrew McCann (Paul Dunbar); 4. Thad Schroeder (Paul Dunbar); 5. Mat Van Der Meer (Paul Dunbar).
FB WEEK #4 NOTES
(As taken from member school reports)
John Hardin held Elizabethtown to a minus 39 yards rushing while holding on for a 41-40 win over the Panthers. Jeff Morning hauled in a school-record nine receptions for 93 yards for the Bulldogs. Morning now has 20 on the year for 293 yards and two touchdowns. Elizabethtown tried to pass its way to a win as Chris Todd completed 32 of 42 attempts for 397 yards and six touchdowns.
Newport Central Catholic's Ben Kelly started the second half of the Breds' 10-0 win over Campbell County by returning the kickoff 89 yards for a touchdown. Kelly had four tackles, a fumble recovery and three pass break-ups on defense.
Prestonsburg's John Mark Stephens had a total of 23 tackles in a 52-34 win over Lawrence County. Twelve of his tackles came on first hits and 11 on assists.
Ty Littleton ran 18 times for 282 yards and 5 touchdowns in helping Fleming County to a 64-48 win over Nicholas County. Quarterback Presley Marshall was busy on offense and defense, completing 10 of 22 passes for 104 yards and a touchdown while running 12 times for 136 yards and a touchdown. On defense, Marshall had three interceptions and a touchdown.
Lamar Williams of Hazard had seven receptions for 137 yards and a touchdown in a 36-22 win over Pikeville. Williams also ran twice for 63 yards and a score. He also had two interceptions and recovered a fumble in the win. Quarterback Stephen Sizemore completed 13 of 19 passes for 208 yards and two touchdowns.
Damon Kinney of North Bullitt had two more interceptions last week, giving him five on the year and nine for his career. Jeremy Kessinger holds the record for season and career with 10 back in 1998 and 16 overall. Kinney returned one of his picks 64 yards for a touchdown in an 18-13 win over Bullitt Central.
Despite suffering an 18-14 loss to West Washington (IN), Danny Davies had 18 tackles and Adam Grafchik had 10 tackles and two sacks for Kentucky Country Day.
Kaelin Ammons of Franklin County completed 17 of 24 pases for 367 yards and four touchdowns in a 46-25 win over Casey County. Ammons also ran for 123 yards and a touchdown. Shane McDonald had seven receptions for 115 yards and two touchdowns while Bradley King caught four passes for 115 yards and two touchdowns.
Ludlow picked up another win with a 48-30 effort over Cincinnati Christian (OH). After snapping a 32-game losing streak last week with a 25-20 win over Eminence, the Panthers improved to 2-2 on the year. Jeff Helmer ran 18 times for 216 yards and three touchdowns.
Jon Lundy helped Harlan to a 26-6 win over Knox Central, completing six of nine passes for 161 yards and three touchdowns in his first varsity start and only second varsity game overall.
T.J. Kramer of Highlands ran 21 times for 125 yards and two touchdowns in helping the Bluebirds to a 35-24 win over Boone County. Kramer helped the Birds late in their come-from-behind win as 100 of his yards and both touchdowns came in the fourth quarter.
Tanner Siewart of Henderson County returned a kickoff 86 yards for a touchdown, converted on field goals of 32 and 39 yards, kicked three PATs, had eight receptions for 127 yards and booted two punts for an average of 51 yards-per-punt in a 33-7 win over Glasgow. Will Fidler completed 18 of 30 passes for 197 yards. Fidler's 18 completions equaled the school record he set a week ago with 18 completions. Just four games into his sophomore season, he has become the school's all-time leader in pass completions with 102. The old record was held by current assistant coach Duffer Duffy and Schile Cosby with 98.
Brent Barton had 12 tackles, five for a loss, for Bell County in a 55-6 win over Pulaski Southwestern. Barton also blocked a punt, forced a safety, caused a fumble and recovered a fumble. Bell County held Southwestern to a minus (-43) yards rushing on 40 attempts and just 13 yards passing in the contest.
HOW TO GET INFO/NOTES IN THE WEEKLY RELEASE
The KHSAA requests assistance from its member schools and media outlets to aid in the compilation and dissemination of notes of interest, coach's association polls and upcoming events in all sports. Information should be forwarded to the KHSAA, attention Butch Cope, by 1 p.m. (ET) on Monday of each week. You may e-mail (firstname.lastname@example.org) the information or fax it to the KHSAA at (859)293-5999. Information received will be reviewed and published at the discretion of the Association. The KHSAA strives to publicize all of its sports to the fullest extent and appreciates any and all assistance.
THE NEXT RELEASE WILL BE WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 24, 2003.
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400 BC
ON THE SACRED DISEASE
Hippocrates translated by Francis Adams
Hippocrates (460-377 BC) - A Greek physician commonly known as the Father of Medicine. Although little is known of his life, he is thought to have been a man of high character and moral standards. His medical ethics survive today as an oath administered to those entering medical practice. On the Sacred Disease (400 BC) - A treatise on the "Sacred Disease," a disease men thought to be divine because of its unknown origins. One of the writings which comprise the Hippocratic Collection.
3
ON THE SACRED DISEASE
It is thus with regard to the disease called Sacred: it appears to me to be nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause from the originates like other affections. Men regard its nature and cause as divine from ignorance and wonder, because it is not at all like to other diseases.
And this notion of its divinity is kept up by their inability to comprehend it, and the simplicity of the mode by which it is cured, for men are freed from it by purifications and incantations. But if it is reckoned divine because it is wonderful, instead of one there are many diseases which would be sacred; for, as I will show, there are others no less wonderful and prodigious, which nobody imagines to be sacred. The quotidian, tertian, and quartan fevers, seem to me no less sacred and divine in their origin than this disease, although they are not reckoned so wonderful. And I see men become mad and demented from no manifest cause, and at the same time doing many things out of place; and I have known many persons in sleep groaning and crying out, some in a state of suffocation, some jumping up and fleeing out of doors, and deprived of their reason until they awaken, and afterward becoming well and rational as before, although they be pale and weak; and this will happen not once but frequently. And there are many and various things of the like kind, which it would be tedious to state particularly. They who first referred this malady to the gods appear to me to have been just such persons as the conjurors, purificators, mountebanks, and charlatans now are, who give themselves out for being excessively religious, and as knowing more than other people. Such persons, then, using the divinity as a pretext and screen of their own inability to of their own inability to afford any assistance, have given out that the disease is sacred, adding suitable reasons for this opinion, they have instituted a mode of treatment which is safe for themselves, namely, by applying purifications and incantations, and enforcing abstinence from baths and many articles of food which are unwholesome to men in diseases. Of sea substances, the surmullet, the blacktail, the mullet, and the eel; for these are the fishes most to be guarded against. And of fleshes, those of the goat, the stag, the sow, and the dog: for these are the kinds of flesh which are aptest to disorder the bowels. Of fowls, the cock, the turtle, and the bustard, and such others as are reckoned to be particularly strong. And of potherbs, mint, garlic, and onions; for what is acrid does not agree with a weak person. And they forbid to have a black robe, because black is expressive of death; and to sleep on a goat's skin, or to wear it, and to put one foot upon another, or one hand upon another; for all these things are held to be hindrances to the cure. All these they enjoin with reference to its divinity, as if possessed of more knowledge, and announcing beforehand other causes so that if the person should recover, theirs would be the honor and credit; and if he should die, they would have a certain defense, as if the gods, and not they, were to blame, seeing they had administered nothing either to eat or drink as medicines, nor had overheated him with baths, so as to prove the cause of what had happened. But I am of opinion that (if this were true) none of the Libyans, who live in the interior, would be free from this disease, since they all sleep on goats' skins, and live upon goats' flesh; neither have they couch, robe, nor shoe that is not made of goat's skin, for they have no other herds but goats and oxen. But if these things, when administered in food, aggravate the disease, and if it be cured by abstinence from them, godhead is not the cause at all; nor will purifications be of any avail, but it is the food which is beneficial and prejudicial, and the influence of the divinity vanishes. Thus, they who try to cure these maladies in this way, appear to me neither to reckon them sacred nor divine. For when they are removed by such purifications, and this method of cure, what is to prevent them from being brought upon men and induced by other devices similar to these? So that the cause is no longer divine, but human. For whoever is able, by purifications conjurations, to drive away such an affection, will be able, by other practices, to excite it; and, according to this view, its divine nature is entirely done away with. By such sayings and doings, they profess to be possessed of superior knowledge, and deceive mankind by enjoining lustrations and purifications upon them, while their discourse turns upon the divinity and the godhead. And yet it would appear to me that their discourse savors not of piety, as they suppose, but rather of impiety, and as if there were no gods, and that what they hold to be holy and divine, were impious and unholy. This I will now explain. For, if they profess to know how to bring down the moon, darken the sun, induce storms and fine weather, and rains and droughts, and make the sea and land unproductive, and so forth, whether they arrogate this power as being derived from mysteries or any other knowledge or consideration, they appear to me to practice impiety, and either to fancy that there are no gods, or, if there are, that they have no ability to ward off any of the greatest evils. How, then, are they not enemies to the gods? For if a man by magical arts and sacrifices will bring down the moon, and darken the sun, and induce storms, or fine weather, I should not believe that there was anything divine, but human, in these things, provided the power of the divine were overpowered by human knowledge and subjected to it.
But perhaps it will be said, these things are not so, but, not withstanding, men being in want of the means of life, invent many and various things, and devise many contrivances for all other things, and for this disease, in every phase of the disease, assigning the cause to a god. Nor do they remember the same things once, but frequently. For, if they imitate a goat, or grind their teeth, or if their right side be convulsed, they say that the mother of the gods is the cause. But if they speak in a sharper and more intense tone, they resemble this state to a horse, and say that Poseidon is the cause. Or if any excrement be passed, which is often the case, owing to the violence of the disease, the appellation of Enodia is adhibited; or, if it be passed in smaller and denser masses, like bird's, it is said to be from Apollo Nomius. But if foam be emitted by the mouth, and the patient kick with his feet, Ares then gets the blame. But terrors which happen during the night, and fevers, and delirium, and jumpings out of bed, and frightful apparitions, and fleeing away,-all these they hold to be the plots of Hecate, and the invasions the and use purifications and incantations, and, as appears to me, make the divinity to be most wicked and most impious. For they purify those laboring under this disease, with the same sorts of blood and the other means that are used in the case of those who are stained with crimes, and of malefactors, or who have been enchanted by men, or who have done any wicked act; who ought to do the very reverse, namely, sacrifice and pray, and, bringing gifts to the temples, supplicate the gods. But now they do none of these things, but purify; and some of the purifications they conceal in the earth, and some they throw into the sea, and some they carry to the mountains where no one can touch or tread upon them.
But these they ought to take to the temples and present to the god, if a god be the cause of the disease. Neither truly do I count it a worthy opinion to hold that the body of man is polluted by god, the most impure by the most holy; for were it defiled, or did it suffer from any other thing, it would be like to be purified and sanctified rather than polluted by god. For it is the divinity which purifies and sanctifies the greatest of offenses and the most wicked, and which proves our protection from them. And we mark out the boundaries of the temples and the groves of the gods, so that no one may pass them unless he be pure, and when we enter them we are sprinkled with holy water, not as being polluted, but as laying aside any other pollution which we formerly had. And thus it appears to me to hold, with regard to purifications. But this disease seems to me to be no more divine than others; but it has its nature such as other diseases have, and a cause whence it originates, and its nature and cause are divine only just as much as all others are, and it is curable no less than the others, unless when, the from of time, it is confirmed, and has became stronger than the remedies applied. Its origin is hereditary, like that of other diseases. For if a phlegmatic person be born of a phlegmatic, and a bilious of a bilious, and a phthisical of a phthisical, and one having spleen disease, of another having disease of the spleen, what is to hinder it from happening that where the father and mother were subject to this disease, certain of their offspring should be so affected also? As the semen comes from all parts of the body, healthy particles will come from healthy parts, and unhealthy from unhealthy parts. And another great proof that it is in nothing more divine than other diseases is, that it occurs in those who are of a phlegmatic constitution, but does not attack the bilious. Yet, if it were more divine than the others, this disease ought to befall all alike, and make no distinction between the bilious and phlegmatic. But the brain is the cause of this affection, as it is of other very great diseases, and in what manner and from what cause it is formed, I will now plainly declare.
The brain of man, as in all other animals, is double, and a thin membrane divides it through the middle, and therefore the pain is not always in the same part of the head; for sometimes it is situated on either side, and sometimes the whole is affected; and veins run toward it from all parts of the body, many of which are small, but two are thick, the one from the liver, and the other from the spleen.
And it is thus with regard to the one from the liver: a portion of it runs downward through the parts on the side, near the kidneys and the psoas muscles, to the inner part of the thigh, and extends to the foot. It is called vena cava. The other runs upward by the right veins and the lungs, and divides into branches for the heart and the right arm. The remaining part of it rises upward across the clavicle to the right side of the neck, and is superficial so as to be seen; near the ear it is concealed, and there it divides; its thickest, largest, and most hollow part ends in the brain; another small vein goes to the right ear, another to the right eye, and another to the nostril. Such are the distributions of the hepatic vein. And a vein from the spleen is distributed on the left side, upward and downward, like that from the liver, but more slender and feeble. By these veins we draw in much breath, since they are the spiracles of our bodies inhaling air to themselves and distributing it to the rest of the body, and to the smaller veins, and they and afterwards exhale it. For the breath cannot be stationary, but it passes upward and downward, for if stopped and intercepted, the part where it is stopped becomes powerless. In proof of this, when, in sitting or lying, the small veins are compressed, so that the breath from the larger vein does not pass into them, the part is immediately seized with numbness; and it is so likewise with regard to the other veins. This malady, then, affects phlegmatic people, but not bilious. It begins to be formed while the foetus is still in utero. For the brain, like the other organs, is depurated and grows before birth. If, then, in this purgation it be properly and moderately depurated, and neither more nor less than what is proper be secreted from it, the head is thus in the most healthy condition. If the secretion (melting) the from the brain be greater than natural, the person, when he grows up, will have his head diseased, and full of noises, and will neither be able to endure the sun nor cold. Or, if the melting take place from any one part, either from the eye or ear, or if a vein has become slender, that part will be deranged in proportion to the melting. Or, should depuration not take place, but congestion accumulate in the brain, it necessarily becomes phlegmatic. And such children as have an eruption of ulcers on the head, on the ears, and along the rest of the body, with copious discharges of saliva and mucus,-these, in after life, enjoy best health; for in this way the phlegm which ought to have been purged off in the womb, is discharged and cleared away, and persons so purged, for the most part, are not subject to attacks of this disease. But such as have had their skin free from eruptions, and have had no discharge of saliva or mucus, nor have undergone the proper purgation in the womb, these persons run the risk of being seized with this disease. But should the defluxion make its way to the heart, the person is seized with palpitation and asthma, the chest becomes diseased, and some also have curvature of the spine. For when a defluxion of cold phlegm takes place on the lungs and heart, the blood is chilled, and the veins, being violently chilled, palpitate in the lungs and heart, and the heart palpitates, so that from this necessity asthma and orthopnoea supervene. For it does not receive the spirits as much breath as he needs until the defluxion of phlegm be mastered, and being heated is distributed to the veins, then it ceases from its palpitation and difficulty of breathing, and this takes place as soon as it obtains an abundant supply; and this will be more slowly, provided the defluxion be more abundant, or if it be less, more quickly.
And if the defluxions be more condensed, the epileptic attacks will be more frequent, but otherwise if it be rarer. Such are the symptoms when the defluxion is upon the lungs and heart; but if it be upon the bowels, the person is attacked with diarrhoea. And if, being shut out from all these outlets, its defluxion be determined to the veins I have formerly mentioned, the patient loses his speech, and chokes, and foam issues by the mouth, the teeth are fixed, the hands are contracted, the eyes distorted, he becomes insensible, and in some cases the bowels are evacuated. And these symptoms occur sometimes on the left side, sometimes on the right, and sometimes in both. The cause of everyone of these symptoms I will now explain. The man becomes speechless when the phlegm, suddenly descending into the veins, shuts out the air, and does not admit it either to the brain or to the vena cava, or to the ventricles, but interrupts the inspiration. For when a person draws in air by the mouth and nostrils, the breath goes first to the brain, then the greater part of it to the internal cavity, and part to the lungs, and part to the veins, and from them it is distributed to the other parts of the body along the veins; and whatever passes to the stomach cools, and does nothing more; and so also with regard to the lungs. But the air which enters the veins is of use (to the body) by entering the brain and its ventricles, and thus it imparts sensibility and motion to all the members, so that when the veins are excluded from the air by the phlegm and do not receive it, the man loses his speech and intellect, and the hands become powerless, and are contracted, the blood stopping and not being diffused, as it was wont; and the eyes are distorted owing to the veins being excluded from the air; and they palpitate; and froth from the lungs issues by the mouth. For when the breath does not find entrance to him, he foams and sputters like a dying person. And the bowels are evacuated in consequence of the violent suffocation; and the suffocation is produced when the liver and stomach ascend to the diaphragm, and the mouth of the stomach is shut up; this takes place when the breath does not enter by the mouth, as it is wont. The patient kicks with his feet when the air is shut up in the lungs and cannot find an outlet, owing to the phlegm; and rushing by the blood upward and downward, it occasions convulsions and pain, and therefore he kicks with his feet. All these symptoms he endures when the cold phlegm passes into the warm blood, for it congeals and stops the blood. And if the deflexion be copious and thick, it immediately proves fatal to him, for by its cold it prevails over the blood and congeals it; or, if it be less, it in the first place obtains the mastery, and stops the respiration; and then in the course of time, when it is diffused along the veins and mixed with much warm blood, it is thus overpowered, the veins receive the air, and the patient recovers his senses. Of little children who are seized with this disease, the greater part die, provided the defluxion be copious and humid, for the veins being slender cannot admit the phlegm, owing to its thickness and abundance; but the blood is cooled and congealed, and the child immediately dies. But if the phlegm be in small quantity, and make a defluxion into both the veins, or to those on either side, the children survive, but exhibit notable marks of the disorder; for either the mouth is drawn aside, or an eye, the neck, or a hand, wherever a vein being filled with phlegm loses its tone, and is attenuated, and the part of the body connected with this vein is necessarily rendered weaker and defective. But for the most it affords relief for a longer interval; for the child is no longer seized with these attacks, if once it has contracted this impress of the disease, in consequence of which the other veins are necessarily affected, and to a certain degree attenuated, so as just to admit the air, but no longer to permit the influx of phlegm. However, the parts are proportionally enfeebled whenever the veins are in an unhealthy state. When in striplings the defluxion is small and to the right side, they recover without leaving any marks of the disease, but there is danger of its becoming habitual, and even increasing if not treated by suitable remedies. Thus, or very nearly so, is the case when it attacks children. To persons of a more advanced age, it neither proves fatal, nor produces distortions. For their veins are capacious and are filled with hot blood; and therefore the phlegm can neither prevail nor cool the blood, so as to coagulate it, but it is quickly overpowered and mixed with the blood, and thus the veins receive the air, and sensibility remains; and, owing to their strength, the aforesaid symptoms are less likely to seize them. But when this disease attacks very old people, it therefore proves fatal, or induces paraplegia, because the veins are empty, and the blood scanty, thin, and watery. When, therefore, the defluxion is copious, and the season winter, it proves fatal; for it chokes up the exhalents, and coagulates the blood if the defluxion be to both sides; but if to either, it merely induces paraplegia. For the blood being thin, cold, and scanty, cannot prevail over the but being itself overpowered, it is coagulated, so that those parts in which the blood is corrupted, lose their strength. The flux is to the right rather than to the left because the veins there are more capacious and numerous than on the left side, for on the one side they spring from the liver, and on the other from the spleen. The defluxion and melting down take place most especially in the case of children in whom the head is heated either by the sun or by fire, or if the brain suddenly contract a rigor, and then the phlegm is excreted. For it is melted down by the heat and diffusion of the but it is excreted by the congealing and contracting of it, and thus a defluxion takes place.
And in some this is the cause of the disease, and in others, when the south wind quickly succeeds to northern breezes, it suddenly unbinds and relaxes the brain, which is contracted and weak, so that there is an inundation of phlegm, and thus the defluxion takes place. The defluxion also takes place in consequence of fear, from any hidden cause, if we are the at any person's calling aloud, or while crying, when one cannot quickly recover one's breath, such as often happens to children. When any of these things occur, the body immediately shivers, the person becoming speechless cannot draw his breath, but the breath (pneuma) stops, the brain is contracted, the blood stands still, and thus the excretion and defluxion of the phlegm take place. In children, these are the causes of the attack at first. But to old persons winter is most inimical. For when the head and brain have been heated at a great fire, and then the person is brought into cold and has a rigor, or when from cold he comes into warmth, and sits at the fire, he is apt to suffer in the same way, and thus he is seized in the manner described above. And there is much danger of the same thing occurring, if his head be exposed to the sun, but less so in summer, as the changes are not sudden. When a person has passed the twentieth year of his life, this disease is not apt to seize him, unless it has become habitual from childhood, or at least this is rarely or never the case. For the veins are filled with blood, and the brain consistent and firm, so that it does not run down into the veins, or if it do, it does not master the blood, which is copious and hot. But when it has gained strength from one's childhood, and become habitual, such a person usually suffers attacks, and is seized with them in changes of the winds, especially in south winds, and it is difficult of removal. For the brain becomes more humid than natural, and is inundated with phlegm, so that the defluxions become more frequent, and the
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phlegm can no longer be the nor the brain be dried up, but it becomes wet and humid. This you may ascertain in particular, from beasts of the flock which are seized with this disease, and more especially goats, for they are most frequently attacked with it. If you will cut open the head, you will find the brain humid, full of sweat, and having a bad smell. And in this way truly you may see that it is not a god that injures the body, but disease. And so it is with man. For when the disease has prevailed for a length of time, it is no longer curable, as the brain is corroded by the phlegm, and melted, and what is melted down becomes water, and surrounds the brain externally, and overflows it; wherefore they are more frequently and readily seized with the disease. And therefore the disease is protracted, because the influx is thin, owing to its quantity, and is immediately overpowered by the blood and heated all through. But such persons as are habituated to the disease know beforehand when they are about to be seized and flee from men; if their own house be at hand, they run home, but if not, to a deserted place, where as few persons as possible will see them falling, and they immediately cover themselves up. This they do from shame of the affection, and not from fear of the divinity, as many suppose. And little children at first fall down wherever they may happen to be, from inexperience. But when they have been often seized, and feel its approach beforehand, they flee to their mothers, or to any other person they are acquainted with, from terror and dread of the affection, for being still infants they do not know yet what it is to be ashamed. Therefore, they are attacked during changes of the winds, and especially south winds, then also with north winds, and afterwards also with the others.
These are the strongest winds, and the most opposed to one another, both as to direction and power. For, the north wind condenses the air, and separates from it whatever is muddy and nebulous, and renders it clearer and brighter, and so in like manner also, all the winds which arise from the sea and other waters; for they extract the humidity and nebulosity from all objects, and from men themselves, and therefore it (the north wind) is the most wholesome of the winds. But the effects of the south are the very reverse. For in the first place it begins by melting and diffusing the condensed air, and therefore it does not blow strong at first, but is gentle at the commencement, because it is not able at once to overcome the and compacted air, which yet in a while it dissolves. It produces the same effects upon the land, the sea, the fountains, the wells, and on every production which contains humidity, and this, there is in all things, some more, some less. For all these feel the effects of this wind, and from clear they become cloudy, from cold, hot; from dry, moist; and whatever ear then vessels are placed upon the ground, filled with wine or any other fluid, are affected with the south wind, and undergo a change. And the a change. And the sun, and the moon, it renders blunter appearance than they naturally are. When, then, it possesses such powers over things so great and strong, and the body is made to feel and undergo changes in the changes of the winds, it necessarily follows that the brain should be disolved and overpowered with moisture, and that the veins should become more relaxed by the south winds, and that by the north the healthiest portion of the brain should become contracted, while the most morbid and humid is secreted, and overflows externally, and that catarrhs should thus take place in the changes of these winds. Thus is this disease formed and prevails from those things which enter into and go out of the body, and it is not more difficult to understand or to cure than the others, neither is it more divine than other diseases. Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet, and what unsavory; some we discriminate by habit, and some we perceive by their utility. By this we distinguish objects of relish and disrelish, according to the seasons; and the same things do not always please us. And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us, some by night, and some by day, and dreams and untimely wanderings, and cares that are not suitable, and ignorance of present circumstances, desuetude, and unskilfulness. All these things we endure from the brain, when it is not healthy, but is more hot, more cold, more moist, or more dry than natural, or when it suffers any other preternatural and unusual affection. And we become mad from its humidity.
For when it is more moist than natural, it is necessarily put into motion, and the affection being moved, neither the sight nor hearing can be at rest, and the tongue speaks in accordance with the sight and hearing. As long as the brain is at rest, the man enjoys his reason, but the depravement of the brain arises from phlegm and bile, either of which you may recognize in this manner: Those who are mad from phlegm are quiet, and do not cry out nor make a noise; but those from bile are vociferous, malignant, and will not be quiet, but are always doing something improper. If the madness be constant, these are the causes thereof. But if terrors and fears assail, they are connected with derangement of the brain, and derangement is owing to its being heated.
And it is heated by bile when it is determined to the brain along the bloodvessels running from the trunk; and fear is present until it returns again to the veins and trunk, when it ceases. He is grieved and troubled when the brain is unseasonably cooled and contracted beyond its wont. This it suffers from phlegm, and from the same affection the patient becomes oblivious. He calls out and screams at night when the brain is suddenly heated. The bilious endure this. But the phlegmatic are not heated, except when much blood goes to the brain, and creates an ebullition. Much blood passes along the aforesaid veins. But when the man happens to see a frightful dream and is in fear as if awake, then his face is in a greater glow, and the eyes are red when the patient is in fear. And the understanding meditates doing some mischief, and thus it is affected in sleep. But if, when awakened, he returns to himself, and the blood is again distributed along the veins, it ceases. In these ways I am of the opinion that the brain exercises the greatest power in the man. This is the interpreter to us of those things which emanate from the air, when the brain happens to be in a sound state. But the air supplies sense to it.
And the eyes, the ears, the tongue and the feet, administer such things as the brain cogitates. For in as much as it is supplied with air, does it impart sense to the body. It is the brain which is the messenger to the understanding. For when the man draws the breath into himself, it passes first to the brain, and thus the air is distributed to the rest of the body, leaving in the brain its acme, and whatever has sense and understanding. For if it passed first to the body and last to the brain, then having left in the flesh and veins the judgment, when it reached the brain it would be hot, and not at all pure, but mixed with the humidity from flesh and blood, so as to be no longer pure.
Wherefore, I say, that it is the brain which interprets the understanding. But the diaphragm has obtained its name (frenes) from accident and usage, and not from reality or nature, for I know no power which it possesses, either as to sense or understanding, except that when the man is affected with unexpected joy or sorrow, it throbs and produces palpitations, owing to its thinness, and as having no belly to receive anything good or bad that may present themselves to it, but it is thrown into commotion by both these, from its natural weakness. It then perceives beforehand none of those things which occur in the body, but has received its name vaguely and without any proper reason, like the parts about the heart, which are called auricles, but which contribute nothing towards hearing. Some say that we think with the heart, and that this is the part which is grieved, and experiences care. But it is not so; only it contracts like the diaphragm, and still more so for the same causes. For veins from all parts of the body run to it, and it has valves, so as to as to perceive if any pain or pleasurable emotion befall the man. For when grieved the body necessarily shudders, and is contracted, and from excessive joy it is affected in like manner. Wherefore the heart and the diaphragm are particularly sensitive, they have nothing to do, however, with the operations of the understanding, but of all but of all these the brain is the cause.
Since, then, the brain, as being the primary seat of sense and of the spirits, perceives whatever occurs in the body, if any change more powerful than usual take place in the air, owing to the seasons, the brain becomes changed by the state of the air. For, on this account, the brain first perceives, because, I say, all the most acute, most powerful, and most deadly diseases, and those which are most difficult to be understood by the inexperienced, fall upon the brain. And the disease called the Sacred arises from causes as the others, namely, those things which enter and quit the body, such as cold, the sun, and the winds, which are ever changing and are never at rest. And these things are divine, so that there is no necessity for making a distinction, and holding this disease to be more divine than the others, but all are divine, and all human. And each has its own peculiar nature and power, and none is of an ambiguous nature, or irremediable.
And the most of them are curable by the same means as those by which any other thing is food to one, and injurious to another. Thus, then, the physician should understand and distinguish the season of each, so that at one time he may attend to the nourishment and increase, and at another to abstraction and diminution. And in this disease as in all others, he must strive not to feed the disease, but endeavor to wear it out by administering whatever is most opposed to each disease, and not that which favors and is allied to it. For by that which is allied to it, it gains vigor and increase, but it wears out and disappears under the use of that which is opposed to it. But whoever is acquainted with such a change in men, and can render a man humid and dry, hot and cold by regimen, could also cure this disease, if he recognizes the proper season for administering his remedies, without minding purifications, spells, and all other illiberal practices of a like kind.
THE END
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Policy:
First Aid Policy
Approval:
Board of Trustees
Date:
2 July 2020
© Cheltenham Bournside School | First Aid Policy | V3 February 2021
Contents
1. Aims
The aims of our First Aid Policy are to:
* ensure the health and safety of all staff, students and visitors
* provide a framework for responding to an incident and recording and reporting the outcomes.
* ensure that staff and governors are aware of their responsibilities with regards to health and safety
2. Legislation and guidance
This policy is based on advice from the Department for Education on first aid in schools and health and safety in schools, and the following legislation:
* The Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981, which state that employers must provide adequate and appropriate equipment and facilities to enable first aid to be administered to employees, and qualified first aid personnel
* The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, which require employers to carry out risk assessments, make arrangements to implement necessary measures, and arrange for appropriate information and training
* The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992, which require employers to make an assessment of the risks to the health and safety of their employees
* The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) 2013, which state that some accidents must be reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and set out the timeframe for this and how long records of such accidents must be kept
* The Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014, which require that suitable space is provided to cater for the medical and therapy needs of students.
* Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979, which set out rules on the retention of accident records
This policy complies with our funding agreement and articles of association.
3. Roles and responsibilities
The school's appointed person(s) are Admin Services personnel trained in First Aid (first aiders). They are responsible for:
3.1 Appointed person(s) and first aiders
* taking charge when someone is injured or becomes ill
* ensuring that an ambulance or other professional medical help is summoned when appropriate.
* ensuring there is an adequate supply of medical materials in first aid kits, and replenishing the contents of these kits
First aiders are trained and qualified to carry out the role (section 7) and are responsible for:
* acting as first responders to any incidents; they will assess the situation where there is an injured or ill person, and provide immediate and appropriate treatment
* filling in an accident report on the same day, or as soon as is reasonably practicable, after an incident (see the template in Appendix 2)
* sending students home to recover, where necessary
* keeping their contact details up to date.
Our school's trained first aid personnel are listed in Appendix 1. Their names will also be displayed prominently around the school.
3.2 The governing board
The governing board has ultimate responsibility for health and safety matters in the school, but delegates operational matters and day-to-day tasks to the headteacher and staff members.
3.3 The headteacher
The headteacher is responsible for the implementation of this policy, including:
* ensuring that an appropriate number of trained first aid personnel are present in the school at all times
* ensuring all staff are aware of first aid procedures
* ensuring that first aiders have an appropriate qualification, keep training up to date and remain competent to perform their role
* ensuring appropriate risk assessments are completed and appropriate measures are put in place
* ensuring that adequate space is available for catering to the medical needs of students
* undertaking, or ensuring that managers undertake, risk assessments as appropriate, and that appropriate measures are put in place
* reporting specified incidents to the HSE when necessary (see section 6).
3.4 Staff
School staff are responsible for:
* ensuring they follow first aid procedures
* completing accident reports (see Appendix 2) for all incidents they attend where a first aider is not first on the scene
* ensuring they know who the first aiders in school are
* informing the headteacher or their manager of any specific health conditions or first aid needs – a medical information form for staff can be obtained from Admin Services.
4. First aid procedures
* students must present themselves to first aid (before contacting a parent/carer) with a note from their teacher, unless in an emergency, or if the student is outside of lessons
4.1 Protocol for students requiring first aid treatment owing to illness during school hours:
* first aid personnel will assess the student's need and contact parent/carer/carers if necessary
* if the student does contact a parent/carer before visiting first aid and the parent/carer elects to take the student home, the absence is unauthorised
4.2 In-school procedures
In the event of an accident resulting in injury:
* the closest member of staff present will assess the seriousness of the injury and seek the assistance of a qualified first aider, if appropriate, who will provide the required first aid treatment
* the first aider will also decide whether the injured person should be moved or placed in a recovery position
* the first aider, if called, will assess the injury and decide if further assistance is needed from a colleague or the emergency services, and will remain on scene until help arrives
* if the first aider judges that a student is too unwell to remain in school, parent/carers will be contacted and asked to collect their child, and upon their arrival, the first aider will recommend next steps to the parent/carers
* if emergency services are called, the first aider will contact parent/carers immediately
* the first aider will complete an accident report form on the same day or as soon as is reasonably practical after an incident resulting in an injury.
4.3 Off-site procedures
When taking students off the school premises, staff will ensure they always have:
* a school mobile phone
* information about the specific medical needs of students
* a portable first aid kit
* parent/carers' contact details.
Risk assessments will be completed by the trip leader prior to any educational visit that necessitates taking students off school premises.
5. Controlled drugs
As set out in the supporting students with medical conditions policy:
* a student who has been prescribed a controlled drug may have it in their possession if they are competent to do so, but they must not pass it to another student to use
* controlled drugs will be easily accessible in an emergency
* all other controlled drugs are kept in a secure cupboard in the First Aid room and only named staff have access.
* first aiders will not administer controlled drugs unless responding to an emergency situation e.g. anaphylaxis
6. First aid equipment
A typical first aid kit in our school will include:
* a leaflet with general first aid advice
* eye pad bandages
* regular and large bandages
* triangular bandages
* safety pins
* adhesive tape
* disposable gloves
* plasters of assorted sizes
* antiseptic wipes
* scissors
* foil blanket
* sick bags
* burns dressings.
No medication is kept in first aid kits.
First aid kits are stored in:
* Staff room (for use on trips and visits).
* the medical room located near Reception
7. Record-keeping and reporting
7.1 First aid medical tracker
* An accident form will be completed by the first aider on the same day or as soon as possible after an incident resulting in an injury.
* A copy of the accident report form will also be added to the student's educational record by the first aider
* As much detail as possible should be supplied when reporting an accident, including all of the information included in the accident form in Appendix 2.
* Records held on the medical tracker will be retained by the school for a minimum of 3 years, in accordance with regulation 25 of the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1979, and then securely disposed of.
7.2 Reporting to the HSE
The first aider will keep a record of any accident which results in a reportable injury, disease, or dangerous occurrence as defined in the RIDDOR 2013 legislation (regulations 4, 5, 6, 7). The first aider will report these to the Health and Safety Executive as soon as is reasonably practicable and in any event within 10 days of the incident.
Reportable injuries, diseases or dangerous occurrences include:
* death
* specified injuries, which are:
o fractures, other than to fingers, thumbs and toes
o any injury likely to lead to permanent loss of sight or reduction in sight
o amputations
o any crush injury to the head or torso causing damage to the brain or internal organs
o any scalping requiring hospital treatment
o serious burns (including scalding)
o any loss of consciousness caused by head injury or asphyxia
o any other injury arising from working in an enclosed space which leads to hypothermia or heat-induced illness, or requires resuscitation or admittance to hospital for more than 24 hours
* injuries where an employee is away from work or unable to perform their normal work duties for more than 7 consecutive days (not including the day of the incident)
* near-miss events that do not result in an injury but could have done. Examples of nearmiss events relevant to schools include, but are not limited to:
* where an accident leads to someone being taken to hospital
o the collapse or failure of load-bearing parts of lifts and lifting equipment
o the accidental release or escape of any substance that may cause a serious injury or damage to health
o the accidental release of a biological agent likely to cause severe human illness
o an electrical short circuit or overload causing a fire or explosion.
Information on how to make a RIDDOR report (http://www.hse.gov.uk/riddor/report.htm).
8. Training
All first aiders must have completed a training course, and must hold a valid certificate of competence to show this. The school will keep a register of all trained first aiders, what training they have received and when this is valid until (see Appendix 3).
9. Review
This policy will be reviewed by a member of the senior leadership team to be appointed by the headteacher every 2 years. At every review, the policy will be approved by the full governing board.
10. Links with other policies
* Health and Safety Policy
This first aid policy is linked to the:
* Policy on Supporting Students with Medical Conditions.
Appendix 1: List of Appointed Person(s) for First Aid
| | Staff member’s name | | Role | Contact details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clare Willoughby | | Lead First Aid Practitioner, Admin Services | | |
| Sophie Bond | | Administrator and Receptionist, Admin Services | | |
| Nicky Fordyce | | Admin Services Manager | | |
Appendix 2: Accident Report Form
Name of injured person
Tutor Group
Date and time of incident
Location of incident
Incident details
Describe in detail what happened, how it happened and what injuries the person incurred
Action taken
Describe the steps taken in response to the incident, including any first aid treatment, and what happened to the injured person immediately afterwards.
Follow-up action required
Outline what steps the school will take to check on the injured person, and what it will do to reduce the risk of the incident happening again
Name of person attending the incident
Signature
Date
Appendix 3: First Aid Training Log
| Name/type of training | | Staff who attended | Date attended | Date for training |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | (individual staff | | to be updated |
| | | members or groups) | | (where applicable) |
| First Aid at work (RQF) Level 3 | Clare Willoughby | | 31.10.19 | |
| First Aid at work (RQF) Level 3 | Nicky Fordyce | | 01.04.19 | |
| First Aid at work (RQF) Level 3 | Sophie Bond | | 27.01.20 | |
| First Aid at work (RQF) Level 3 | Clare Johnson | | 27.01.20 | |
| First Aid at work (RQF) Level 3 | Bethany Hall | | 01.04.19 | |
|
The Current Issues on Foreign Workers in Japan
Masahiko Yamada
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
In the context of globalization, there has been an emphasis on obtaining highly-qualified foreign human resources in order to strengthen Japan's international competitiveness. At the same time, strings of dismissals, un-renewed contracts, and other issues impacting foreign workers, such as South Americans of Japanese descent who are increasingly settling in Japan have begun to draw public concerns on issues related to foreign workers in Japan. This paper gives a general overview of such themes as the employment situation of foreign workers in Japan, opinions of interest groups, public opinion, and government policy.
I. Current Conditions of Labor Market in Japan
1. Japan's Demographic Composition: A Declining Birthrate and an Aging Population
The decline of the birthrate in Japan is rapidly leading to fewer children and an aging populace, and in 2005, the country entered into a phase in which the population was falling. According to Population Projections for Japan, a projection released in December 2006 by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the decline of the birthrate and ageing of the population are expected to advance even further from this point, and are likely to progress into a full-fledged depopulating of society. Projections by the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training give the prediction that, if the worker participation ratio were to proceed at the same level as 2006, the 66.57 million people who were in the labor force at that time would dwindle to 55.84 million by the year 2030, an estimated decrease of 10.7 million people. It projected, however, that if the implementation of a variety of policy measures were to lead to groups such as young people, women, and the elderly participating in the labor market, the 2030 labor force would be an estimated 61.8 million people—or a decrease of 4.8 million compared to the year 2006—and the magnitude of the decline would be kept in check.
None of these projections changes the fact that the future will see a decline in the labor force population, and it is against such a backdrop that the pros and cons of accepting foreign workers into the labor market have become a major issue, one that is currently under debate in various sectors.
2. The Current Employment Situation
Owing to the influence of the Lehman crisis, the employment situation in Japan remains severe, with an overall unemployment rate of 4.9% in the first month of 2010. The number of unemployed workers in that month was at 3.23 million, and although employment levels have been maintained through the application of Japan's employment adjustment subsidy, as many as
1
1.73 million people are among the "hidden" unemployed.
Although Japan's recent employment situation has seen a slight pick-up after its worst period in July 2009 when the unemployment rate reached 5.6%, what can be said is that, judging from the conditions described above, the situation remains severe.
II. Basic Policy on Accepting Foreign Workers into the Labor Market
Decisions on the extent to which Japan will accept foreign workers are made under the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, based on an integrated consideration of its "effects on Japanese industry and public welfare."
The Employment Measures Act takes as its basic policy to "actively promote employing foreign nationals who are in specialized or technical fields in Japan." The policy on accepting unskilled laborers is that, "since, in addition to the concern that it would create a dual structure in the labor market, there is a need to improve conditions of employment, etc., and thereby to promote matching and the securement of human resources, rather than only widening the scope of acceptance for foreign workers and responding accordingly without careful consideration, it is essential to first achieve participation in the labor force by Japanese young people, women, the elderly, and the disabled." Further, as regards the future, the policy is that "in light of Europe's history of acceptance [of foreign workers] and in particular how immigration problems have developed in accordance with [their] settlement, rather than debating this issue from the economic perspective alone as a simple issue of industry labor needs, we must continuously examine this issue comprehensively and from a broad perspective, while reaching a public consensus on the influence that this would have not only on the labor market but on health care, social security, education, and the community, as well as the social order, as a wide-ranging issue that affects all aspects of the lives of the people."
III. The Current Status of Foreign Workers in Japan
1. General Overview
As of 2009, 100,309 foreign nationals were residing in Japan for the purpose of working in a specialized or technical field. Other foreign nationals residing in Japan included 253,361 people of Japanese descent, 96,897 part-time workers (with permission for activities outside the status of residence ), 112,251 people engaged in technical internship and other activities 2 and
1 From About Employment Adjustment Subsidies, etc.: Decisions on Payments and the Acceptance Status of Notices to Implement Suspended Operations, etc. (Published March 2, 2010, by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare).
2 Notification of the Status of Employment of Foreign Workers, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (at the end of October, 2009).
113,072 who were in the country illegally. 3
2. Workers in Specialized or Technical Fields
Looking at a breakdown of workers in specialized or technical fields, 38,555 people hold a Specialist in Humanities/International Services visa, and 17,633 hold an Engineer visa. 4
3. Foreign Nationals of Japanese Descent
The residence status of "Long-Term Resident" was newly established through a revision to the Immigration Act in 1989. Because these long-term residents are descendents of Japanese nationals, few limits are placed on their activities in Japan. Accordingly, after this status was created, many people came to Japan with the aim of working in the country's manufacturing industry, where, at that time, understaffing was a substantial problem. The number of foreign nationals of Japanese descent residing in the country increased, and although in 1991 the foreign residents with a residence status of long-term resident numbered 54,359 people, by 2006, 268,836 people were residing in Japan as long-term residents. In 2007 and 2008, their numbers decreased (to 258,498 people in 2008), though this is thought to be as a result of the rather poor economic conditions in Japan during that period. In 1998, there were 5,853 Brazilian and Peruvian permanent residents, and 140,243 in 2008, with the number of permanent residents increasing by approximately 130,000 people during this ten-year period. While at first, Latin Americans of Japanese descent came to Japan with the purpose of working outside their homelands on a temporary basis, now they are residing in the country for longer periods of time. 5
Looking at employment by industry, foreign nationals who are living in Japan with a residence status that is based in their standing as a person of Japanese descent are mainly employed by business enterprises that drive the manufacturing industry, with 109,371 foreign nationals of Japanese descent among their ranks. 6
4. Technical Interns
The Technical Internship Program was established in April of 1993 as a new mechanism with the goal of transferring technology to developing countries. This is a program in which foreign-born trainees, who enter the country under the residence status of "Trainee," receive training for a set period of time (usually 9-12 months), after which they are evaluated on the results of their training and other factors, and if they have progressed to a certain level and fulfilled other requirements, they continue to increase their skills and their technical proficiency, mainly
3 Statistics on Foreign Residents, Ministry of Justice (Published in 2009).
5 Statistics on Foreign Residents, Ministry of Justice (Published in 2009).
4 Notification of the Status of Employment of Foreign Workers, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (at the end of October, 2009).
6 Notification of the Status of Employment of Foreign Workers, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (at the end of October, 2009).
through on-the-job training within a working relationship. The total duration of stay for trainees and technical interns is three years or less. From the program's establishment until the end of 2008, the number of people who moved on from industrial training to the technical internship totaled over 250,000. This number is increasing every year, and in 2008, the 8,521 of trainees who progressed amounted to a 15.8% increase over the previous year. By nationality, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indonesian trainees made up a large number of those who went on to a technical internship. By type of work, many transferees worked in women's and children's clothing manufacturing, welding, and plastic molding.
The Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act was revised in July of 2009 in light of the Industrial Training and Technical Internship Programs, and the new residence status of "Technical Intern" was created. This revised Act is to come into force on July 1, 2010.
5. College and Pre-College Students
The number of foreign nationals who are college students 7 or pre-college students 8 staying in Japan is increasing every year. At the end of 1999, there were 64,646 college students, but at the end of 2008, they numbered 138,514. The number of pre-college students rose from 34,541 people at the end of 1999 to 41,313 by the end of 2008. 9
As for these college and pre-college students' homelands, other Asian countries—particularly China, South Korea, and North Korea—account for the majority (Table 1).
By getting permission for activities outside of their status of residence, college and pre-college students, can work: up to 28 hours a week for college students, up to four hours a day for pre-college students, and up to 8 hours a day during long vacations such as summer break for both, although it is prohibited for either to work at establishments such as "host clubs" or "hostess clubs."
The number of college students and pre-college students who obtained permission for activities outside their status of residence in 2008 was 133,513, a 12.1% increase from the previous year.
According to Notifications of the Status of Employment of Foreign Workers, among foreign nationals with the residence status of college student and pre-college student who work with permission for activities outside their status of residence, 48.6% were working in the hotel or food service industries, 22.5% were working in retail or wholesale, and 5.1% were working in manufacturing.
A survey by the Ministry of Justice's Immigration Bureau reveals that in 2008, 11,040 foreign college and pre-college students received permission to change their status of residence for
7 "College Student" is the residence status for foreign nationals who study at Japanese universities, junior colleges, graduate schools, and in specialized courses of study at advanced vocational schools.
9 Statistics on Registered Foreign Nationals, Immigration Bureau of Japan, Ministry of Justice.
8 "Pre-college Student" is the residence status for foreign nationals who study at Japanese high schools and in general or advanced courses of study at advanced vocational schools.
Table 1. Changes in Foreign College Students and Pre-College Students' Countries of Origin
Source: Ministry of Justice, Statistics on Foreign Residents 2009.
the purpose of employment, and of these, Chinese (69.3%) and South Korean (12.3%) nationals accounted for almost 80% of the total changes. By status of residence, the greatest number of people received permission to change their status to Specialist in Humanities/International Services at 7,863 people (71.2%), showing an increase of 559 people (7.7%) from 2007 and an increase of 4,446 people (130.1%) from 2004. An increase has thus been observed in the number of foreign college and pre-college students who are utilizing specialized knowledge in the humanities or sensibilities particular to foreign nationals in their job duties. Additionally, 2,414 foreign students (21.9%) received permission to change their status of residence to Engineer in 2008, and together with Specialist in Humanities/International Services, these two statuses of residence account for 93.1% of the total changes from the status of College Student and Pre-college Student.
6. Industries with Foreign Workers
From October of 2007, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, based on the Employment Countermeasures Act, made it obligatory for all employers to notify a public employment security office when a foreign worker (excluding Special Permanent Residents and persons with the status of Diplomat or Official) became employed with them or left his/her position.
As of the last day of October 2009, a total of 562,818 foreign workers were working in 95,294 places of employment (Table 2). By nationality, Chinese nationals (including people from
Table 2. The Number of Foreign Workers by Nationality and by Industry
As of the end of October, 2009
Unit: Number of people (Distribution rate %)
| Total | 562,818 | 218,900 | (38.9) | 22,077 | (3.9) | 54,923 | (9.8) | 63,755 | (11.3) | 42,001 | (7.5) | 74,080 | (13.2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Notes: 1. Industry classifications reflect the November, 2007 revision to the Japan Standard Industrial Classification.
2. The distribution rate is the percentage of foreign laborers in the relevant industry compared to the total number of foreign laborers of the same nationality (in all industries).
Hong Kong, etc.) were the most numerous at 249,325 people, making up 44.3% of the total number of foreign workers. They were followed by nationals of Brazil at 104,323 people (18.5%), and the Philippines, at 48,859 people (8.7%).
Among these establishments, 16,300 or 17.1% employed foreign workers on a temporary or contract basis, and the 162,525 foreign nationals working for them accounted for 28.9% of all foreign workers.
By industry (Figure 1), manufacturing had the highest number of both foreign workers and businesses employing foreign workers, accounting for 218,900 people (38.9%) and 31,466 establishments (33.0%). Next was the service industry (not otherwise classified) at 13.2%, the hotel and food service industries (11.3%), retail and wholesale (9.8%), and education and tutoring (7.5%). Additionally, among employers in the manufacturing industry, 5,270 establishments (16.7%) were employing 58,621 foreign workers (26.8%) on a temporary or contract basis.
7. Illegal Overstayers
As of January, 2010, 91,778 people were illegally overstaying their visas (Ministry of Justice estimate), and many of them are thought to be working illegally (Figure 2). Compared to May 1, 1993, when the number was at its highest ever with 298,646 people, this figure represents a decrease of 206,868 people (69.3%), and the number of overstayers continues to decrease every year.
By gender, at 46,324 men (50.5% distribution rate), and 45,454 women (49.5% distribution rate), 870 more men than women had overstayed their visas. Compared with the most recent investigation, these numbers represent a 12,087-person decrease for men (20.7%), and an 9,207-person decrease for women (16.8%).
By nationality or country of origin, South Korea had the most overstayers with 21,660 people, making up 23.6% of the total. Following South Korea were China, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand, although compared to January 1, 1993, the numbers of overstayers from all countries had decreased.
Additionally, in 2008, judging from the breakdown of deportation procedures that were put in motion for approximately 32,000 illegal workers, there were many immigrants from other Asian countries such as China, South Korea, and the Philippines; many of the men had been working as construction workers and builders, and many of the women had been working as "hostesses" in "hostess clubs."
As a measure to counter recently growing security concerns, the Action Plan for the Realization of a Society Resistant to Crime (December, 2003) set the goal of halving the number of illegal residents in the country within the next five years. This continued into the final year of the
government target in 2008, and as a result of the comprehensive measures on illegal residents that had been developed toward this goal, their numbers were reduced by 106,346 people in five years, representing a 48.5% reduction from the January 1, 2004 level.
IV. Policies on Foreign Workers
1. Employment Policy
The current employment policy on foreign workers being carried out by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare can be divided into four general parts, namely: (i) assessment of the employment situation of foreign workers, (ii) appropriate response to foreign job applicants, (iii) raising awareness on and provision of employment management assistance, etc. for employers, and (iv) promotion of appropriate employment.
Assessment of the employment situation of foreign workers is being carried out through the previously mentioned Notification of the Status of Employment of Foreign Workers. Appropriate response to foreign job applicants is being achieved by putting in place service corners for foreign nationals in 126 public employment security offices in regions with many foreign nationals and enhancing the service provided to foreign job applicants by making interpreters available. Particularly, foreign nationals of Japanese descent working at temporary and contract jobs with unstable employment faced unemployment in high numbers around the time of the Leman crisis. These foreign job seekers faced difficulty to find work again because they have not yet mastered the language, not used to employment practices in Japan and with insufficient job experience, and because of this, a variety of new measures are being taken by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare to support them. 10
Raising awareness on and provision of employment management assistance for employers is being carried out through the Guidelines to Assist Employers with Appropriate Handling Related to Improvements in Employment Management of Foreign Workers, formulated based on Article 9 of the Employment Countermeasures Act, and the guidance is provided to each industry through lectures held in June during "Month for Issues on employment of foreign workers" and through advisors on employment of foreign workers. Promotion of appropriate employment is being addressed through meetings by the Liaison Councils of the relevant Ministries and Agencies.
2. Social Security Policy
There is an international demand for equal application of social security for people of all nationalities. Accordingly, even if a person is a foreign worker in Japan, in principle, all employees are to enroll in health insurance and employee pension plans, and entrepreneurs are to enroll in National Health Insurance and the National Pension Plan. Those who fulfill certain qualifications can receive pension benefits even after returning to their countries.
Disability and survivors' benefits must be paid under the pension system, and it is not appropriate to exclude from this those foreign nationals whose period of residence in Japan is a short one. Additionally, when foreign nationals who were insured for a half of a year or more return to their countries, they are provided with a lump-sum payment when withdrawing from the pension plan. This withdrawal payment is in the amount of one half of the insurance payments made in, but in this exceptional system, three years' worth of payments has been established as the upper limit. Further, to prevent redundancy in the pension systems of different countries, Japan has concluded social security agreements which involve co-ordination of pension rights and under which the period of enrollment in the pension plan of a country counterparty to the agreement qualifies as participation in the pension plan of one's own country during the same period. Such agreements have been concluded with Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, South Korea, France, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, and the Czech Republic.
It is not thought to be necessary for foreign nationals to be subject to the new and independent medical insurance system, and efforts are being made to familiarize them with the current system.
10 (i) Detailed advice and support in the native languages of foreign nationals of Japanese descent, by increasing the number of translators and advisors who are available at "Hello Work," national employment security offices in areas where many of them live, (ii) Establishment of preparation courses for those who wish to find new jobs in Japan which include improving their Japanese communication skills (attended by approximately 6,300 people in fiscal year 2009), (iii) Implementation of repatriation-cost support for those who wish to return to their countries of origin (accepted by approximately 22,000 people in fiscal year 2009).
3. Education Policy
Although it is not mandatory for foreign nationals to attend school under Japan's system of compulsory education, children whose parents wish them to receive a formal education in the country are accommodated within the country's public schools for compulsory education. In this, so that non-Japanese children whose parents wish them to attend such schools do not miss out on this opportunity, local boards of education provide the guardians of school-aged children with information on school attendance, and after their children have begun to attend public elementary schools or junior high schools, such matters as free attendance and free textbooks are handled the same for their children as they are for Japanese children.
V. Domestic Debate on the Foreign Labor Issue
In recent years, the issue of foreign workers has been a topic of debate in many of the country's forums and organizations. Here we will introduce the major points of the ongoing dialogue.
1. The Council of Cities with High Concentrations of Foreign Residents
The influx of foreign nationals of Japanese descent into the country has been increasing since 1990, and although the numbers of those with permanent residence have dramatically increased in recent years, at the same time, various issues in areas such as education have arisen in the cities where many of them are living.
In response, 13 cities in which many foreign nationals of Japanese descent are living have established The Council of Cities with High Concentrations of Foreign Residents, which compile proposals on dealing with these issues. In 2001 the proposal-cum-declaration (the Hamamatsu Sengen) was issued by the Council, with proposals in several arenas. In education, the proposal called for enrichment of the leadership, in Japanese language and other areas, that was in place in public elementary and junior high schools, and of support systems for school attendance. In relation to Social Security, the call was for a review of the medical insurance system (through the conclusion of agreements on aggregating pensions and the establishment of a medical insurance system geared to foreign nationals), improvement in working conditions for foreign nationals (by promoting employers enrollment of their foreign employees in social insurance, by clarifying corporate liabilities, and, as a future theme, by introducing a licensing system for independent contractors), and others (such as improvements in the medical translations and information on treatments and medications being provided). The declaration further made other proposals in the area of procedures related to alien registration, the call for a review of the registration system among them.
Following Hamamatsu's declaration, almost every year sees new proposals, and recently in 2009, urgent proposals that integrated such issues as the creation of an Agency for Non-Japanese Residents, improvements in Japanese language education, and making school attendance mandatory for children, were adopted, and proposals were submitted to the govern2. Nippon Keidanren's Recommendations on Accepting Foreigners (April, 2004)
Nippon Keidanren (the Japan Business Federation), a representative group of Japan's employers, proposes "policies that, rather than continuing to accept foreign nationals in order to 'compensate' for the overall decline in the population, accept them with a view toward increasing the 'value-added creative strength' of each citizen, as comprehensive policies on acceptance of foreign nationals for the purpose of applying their strengths to that process." The recommendations touch on specific areas such as "facilitating acceptance in specialized and technical fields," "promoting improvement in the quality of international students and the job search within Japan," and "acceptance into fields in which there is expected to be a future labor shortage."
Additionally, to implement coherent policies that are integrated among national and local public entities, Nippon Keidanren has proposed the appointment of a Minister of State for Special Missions, a Basic Act on the Acceptance of Foreign Workers, an Agency for Foreign Residents, and a Foreign Workers Employment Act.
In the Toward Fostering and Ensuring Human Resources with Competitive Strength, published April 14, 2009, to the above-mentioned proposal were added proposals for "the creation of an appealing country in which foreign nationals will want to settle," "maintenance of a stance on acceptance that actually makes it possible for foreign nationals to settle in Japan," and the establishment of "clarified requirements for settling in the country and the stable functioning thereof."
3. JTUC-RENGO's View on the Issue of Foreign Workers (September, 2004)
The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (JTUC-RENGO), a representative group of Japan's trade unions, published JTUC-RENGO's View on the Issue of Foreign Workers in September of 2004. In this, JTUC-RENGO put forth the following basic views, in a proposal on points such as the immigration system, on-the-job training programs, and reining in illegal employment. "In order to promote lawful employment, in addition to actively accepting foreign workers who posses specialized knowledge or skills, the establishment of a new status of residence should come with the precondition of establishing an environment for domestic workers' employment in which people can work regardless of their age or gender." "In the case that foreign nationals are employed as workers, the 'same work, same pay' principle under which at least the same amount of compensation is paid as that which a Japanese national would receive for being engaged in the same work should apply regardless of nationality or job qualifications, and from the standpoint of a human rights issue, there cannot be any discrimination in this." "From the standpoint of the negative influence that accepting unskilled labor causes on the domestic employment situation and working conditions, this acceptance should not be carried out arbitrarily, but rather within the possible scope and without loosening the statuses of residence under the present immigration system."
In JTUC-RENGO's Priority Policies for FY2011 (draft), released March 4, 2010, regarding the acceptance of foreign nationals based on economic partnership agreements between two countries, JTUC-RENGO indicated that "[Japan should be careful that] these partnerships do not lead to overly easy acceptance of foreign workers. At the same time, in addition to aiming for the substantial application of employment laws to foreign workers, [the country should] intensify its exposure of the middlemen and employers who are in breach of the law."
4. The Basic Plan for Immigration Control (Fourth Edition), March 2010
The Minister of Justice prescribes a policy on immigration control once every five years, and in the newest plan that was formulated in March of 2010, stated that in the midst of the approaching era of full-scale depopulation, with a view to Japanese society maintaining its vitality, from the standpoint of sustained progress, and also in terms of drawing on Asia's vitality, what is being called for is a more active expansion of the acceptance of those foreign nationals that Japanese society requires. Additionally, the plan suggests that efforts should be made to strongly attract foreign nationals in the form of high-level human resources, international students, and others to vitalize Japan widely from overseas including other Asian countries, keeping firmly in mind the influence that accepting them has on Japan's industry, the lives of its people, and the public order.
Concretely the plan gives mention to consideration of the following topics: (i) introduction of a point-based priority system for high-level human resources, (ii) promotion for accepting foreign nationals in specialized and technical fields according to economic and social changes, (iii) review of entry permission related to the limitations on the standard number of working years for people who hold nationally-recognized professional qualifications in Japan such as dentists and nurses. In the caretaker field, the plan pushes for a study into the pros and cons of accepting foreign nationals who have graduated from Japanese universities and obtained set nationally-recognized professional qualifications such as that of certified care worker, in light of the fact that this is a field where the government aims at creating jobs intensively for domestic human resources.
Currently, regarding foreign nationals of Japanese descent, different cultural backgrounds, customs, and values, and lack of Japanese language skills have produced friction and discord within local communities, and since the latter half of 2008 in particular, against the backdrop of a rapidly worsening economic climate, many problems—such as employment, housing, childhood education—have become more urgent, and it has been decided that starting from now consideration should be given to a review of immigration and residence requirements.
5. The New Growth Strategy(Basic Policies), (December 30, 2009 Cabinet Decision)
In The New Growth Strategy (Basic Policies) compiled by the new administration, "(6) Employment/Human Resources Strategy" addresses the issue Japan is facing as, "there is a concern that the decline in the population of the labor force due to the low birthrate and an aging population will weaken the potential output of Japan's growth engine. In this, progress of the Countermeasures for the Falling Birthrate, which aims for a birthrate recovery, is indispensible; however, it will take at least 20 years for these measures to lead to an increase in the labor force's population. Accordingly, what Japan must focus on right now is encouraging participation in the labor market by people who possess the latent ability, such as youths, women, and the elderly, and promoting an employment/human resources strategy under which human resources are fostered, through occupational skills development by society as a whole and through other means."
In "(3) Asian Economic Strategy," "expansion of acceptance of international students and upgrading of domestic systems under which researchers and other human resources from overseas can work comfortably in occupational categories that necessitate specialization" is mentioned. The active support for international students and for work in specialized fields done by high-level human resources from abroad that is already in place will continue to be actively promoted following the same pattern.
VI. Economic Partnership Agreements
With the objective of strengthening Japan's partnerships in economic activities and based on its economic partnership agreements with the Philippines and Indonesia, Japan has been accepting foreign nationals from these countries as candidates to become nurses and care workers. This acceptance is not in response to a deficiency in the labor force in the nursing and health care field, but instead is based on the agreement Japan has with each of these two countries, and is being carried out as an exception within the official framework. In order to prevent any negative influence on the labor market, quotas have been established for the maximum number of people to be accepted, as have requirements such as equal compensation.
VII. The Vision for the Future
Japan has entered into a phase of population decline, and there is a fear that the labor force population will decline from this point.
According to the 2006 long-range population projections, Japan's population is expected to decrease from now on, and the country is projected to have a population of 95.15 million people in 2050. 11 Accordingly, under this decrease in the population, the question will become the way in which Japan should view the issues related to foreign workers in the medium to long term.
If the population decline is to be covered solely through acceptance of foreign nationals, it will be necessary to take in one million individuals annually, which would have a major influence on the very essence of the country. Accordingly, although a consensus will need to be reached with the people in regard to this issue, as a general feeling, there is a fair amount of negativity in the people's perspective on the acceptance of foreign workers. If policy efforts are
11 From projections on average mortality in Population Projections for Japan (December 2006 projection), by National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
neglected from the start, the domestic labor force population can be expected to decline. However, if it becomes easier for those such as young people, the elderly, and women to participate more in the labor market, there will not be any drastic declines for as long as the next ten years. Other propositions are employment support for foreign nationals who are currently residing in the country legally, such as foreign nationals of Japanese descent and other permanent residents, and encouraging international students, who are the seeds of high-level foreign human resources, to find employment domestically. If the government fails even in these measures, the acceptance of a substantial number of unskilled laborers is no alternative.
The current economic crisis has had a greater influence on foreign nationals employed in Japan than it has on Japanese people, but on the other hand, it has had the result of causing the country reach a deep realization of the social and economic costs that come with accepting foreign workers, and the necessity of the roles that the country's administration (central and local governments), its industry, and its people must fulfill. The issue of accepting foreign workers is an essential theme of the body politic, and one that must be debated and considered comprehensively and prudently, not only from the standpoint of labor policy, but also from perspectives such as social security, education, the social order, industrial competitiveness, and regional measures. With issues that require a popular consensus such as these, we should not draw any rushed conclusions. From this point what will be necessary is to give these issues our thorough consideration.
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56988
Matters To Be Discussed: The meeting will include the review, discussion, and evaluation of research grant applications in response to Development and Testing of a Coal Mine Safehouse, Program Announcement PA 04–038.
For More Information Contact: George Bokosh, Designated Federal Official, 626 Cochrans Mill Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15236, telephone (412) 386–6465.
The Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, has been delegated the authority to sign Federal Register notices pertaining to announcements of meetings and other committee management activities, for both CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Dated: September 21, 2006.
Alvin Hall,
Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[FR Doc. E6–15957 Filed 9–27–06; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4163–18–P
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
The Health Department Subcommittee of the Board of Scientific Counselors (BSC), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH)/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR): Teleconference Meeting.
In accordance with section 10(a)(2) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92–463), The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NCEH/ ATSDR announces the following subcommittee teleconference meeting:
Name: Health Department Subcommittee
(HDS).
Time and Date: 1 p.m.–2:30 p.m., October 16, 2006.
Place: Century Center, 1825 Century Boulevard, Atlanta, Georgia 30345.
Status: Open to the public, teleconference access limited only by availability of telephone ports.
Purpose: Under the charge of the Board of Scientific Counselors, NCEH/ATSDR the Health Department Subcommittee will provide the BSC, NCEH/ATSDR with advice and recommendations on local and state health department issues and concerns that pertain to the mandates and mission of NCEH/ATSDR.
Matters To Be Discussed:
The meeting agenda will include a followup on Workforce Recommendations; a selection of FY 2007/2008 Environmental Public Health Program Priorities; and the next steps for the Health Department
Subcommittee. Items are subject to change as priorities dictate.
Supplementary Information: This teleconference meeting is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. To participate during the Public Comment period (2–2:10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time), dial (877) 315–6535 and enter conference code 383520.
For More Information Contact: Individuals interested in attending the meeting, please contact Shirley D. Little, Committee Management Specialist, NCEH/ATSDR, 1600 Clifton Road, Mail Stop E–28, Atlanta, GA 30303; telephone (404) 498–0003, fax (404) 498–0059; E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.org.
The Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, has been delegated the authority to sign Federal Register notices pertaining to announcements of meetings and other committee management activities for both CDC and the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Dated: September 21, 2006.
Alvin Hall,
Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[FR Doc. E6–15949 Filed 9–27–06; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4163–18–P
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Food and Drug Administration
[Docket No. 2006N–0378]
Review of Agreements, Guidances, and Practices Specific to Assignment of Combination Products in Compliance With the Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act of 2002; Request for Comments
AGENCY: Food and Drug Administration, HHS.
ACTION: Notice.
SUMMARY: The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the act) requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review each agreement, guidance, or practice that is specific to the assignment of combination products to agency centers and to determine whether the agreement, guidance, or practice is consistent with the requirements of the act. In carrying out the review, the agency is to consult with stakeholders and directors of the agency centers, and then determine whether to continue in effect, modify, revise, or eliminate such an agreement, guidance, or practice. The agency has completed its initial review of relevant agreements, guidances, and practices, and has consulted with directors of the agency centers. This document provides the preliminary results of the agency's
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review and requests stakeholder comments to fulfill the act's requirement for stakeholder consultation prior to the agency's final determination whether to continue the agreements, guidance, or practices in effect, or to modify, revise, or eliminate them.
DATES: Submit written or electronic comments by November 27, 2006.
ADDRESSES: Submit written comments to the Division of Dockets Management (HFA–305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852. Submit electronic comments to http:// www.fda.gov/dockets/ecomments.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Suzanne O'Shea, Office of Combination Products (HFG–3), Food and Drug Administration, 15800 Crabbs Branch Way, suite 200, Rockville, MD 20855, 301–427–1934, FAX: 301–427–1935, email: email@example.com.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Background
In October 2002, the Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act (MDUFMA) added section 503(g)(4)(F) (21 U.S.C. 353(g)(4)(F)) to the act. This new provision requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (the Secretary), acting through the Office of Combination Products (OCP), to review each agreement, guidance, or practice of the Secretary that is specific to the assignment of combination products to agency centers and to determine whether the agreement, guidance, or practice is consistent with the requirements of section 503(g) of the act. In carrying out such a review, OCP is to consult with stakeholders and the directors of the agency centers. After such consultation, OCP is to determine whether to continue in effect, modify, revise, or eliminate such agreement, guidance, or practice, and publish in the Federal Register a notice of the availability of any modified or revised agreement, guidance, or practice.
This notice provides the preliminary results of OCP's review of agreements, guidances, and practices that were in effect at the time section 503(g)(4)(F) of the act was enacted for their consistency with the act's requirement for the prompt assignment of combination products to agency centers on the basis of the products' primary mode of action (PMOA). 1 The directors of relevant
1 Section 503(g)(1) of the act requires that combination products be assigned to an agency center for regulation and review on the basis of the product's PMOA. In addition, section 503(g)(4)(B) of the act directs OCP to ensure the prompt
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agency centers have been consulted in this review. The agency now seeks stakeholder comment with respect to the following issues: (1) Whether the agency has identified all agreements, guidances, and practices specific to the assignment of combination products that should have been included in this review; (2) whether the agency's conclusions regarding the consistency of the agreements, guidances, and practices with the act's requirement that combination products be assigned promptly based on their PMOA is accurate; and (3) whether the identified agreements, guidances, and practices should be continued in effect, modified, revised, or eliminated.
Upon receipt and review of stakeholder input, the agency will publish another Federal Register notice announcing its determinations and the availability of any modified or revised agreements, guidances, or practices.
II. Primary Mode of Action—The Principle Underlying the Assignment of Combination Products to Agency Centers
Section 503(g)(1) of the act requires that combination products be assigned to a lead agency center based upon the agency's determination of the product's PMOA. The agency published a final rule defining the PMOA of a combination product in the Federal Register of August 25, 2005 (70 FR 49848), after consulting with directors of the relevant agency centers and other agency officials, and obtaining stakeholder input through notice and comment rulemaking. As defined in the regulation, a combination product's PMOA is its single mode of action that provides the most important therapeutic action of the product (§ 3.2(m) (21 CFR 3.2(m))). The regulation includes an algorithm that will be followed when the most important therapeutic action of a combination product cannot be determined with reasonable certainty (§ 3.4(b)). The regulation is intended to promote the public health by codifying the agency's criteria for the assignment of combination products in transparent, consistent, and predictable terms. The regulation went into effect on November 23, 2005. A copy of the final rule is available at http://www.fda.gov/ OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/05-16527.htm.
III. Agreements and Guidances Specific to the Assignment of Combination Products
The agency has identified the three intercenter agreements (ICAs) as the
assignment of combination products to agency centers.
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agreements or guidances specific to the assignment of combination products described in section 503(g)(4)(F) of the act. The three ICAs were entered into in 1991 by the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), and the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) shortly after Congress introduced the concept of combination products in the Safe Medical Devices Act of 1990 (SMDA). Although the three ICAs (i.e., the CDER– CDRH ICA, the CBER–CDER ICA, and the CBER–CDRH ICA) differ in content, format, and scope, they are all specific to the assignment of combination products because they explain how various categories of both combination and single entity products were classified 2 and assigned 3 to an agency center at the time the documents were developed. The ICAs constitute guidance that is not binding on the public or the agency (§ 3.5(a)(2)). The ICAs are available at http:// www.fda.gov/oc/combination/ intercenter.html.
The agency has reviewed the ICAs and preliminarily determined that they are generally consistent with the requirements of section 503(g) of the act in that the principles used to assign combination products described in the ICAs are based on a product's PMOA. The ICAs were developed following the enactment of the statutory PMOA criterion used to assign combination products to an agency center, and were developed using the PMOA principle.
For example, the CDER–CDRH ICA assigns to CDRH products such as a ''device incorporating a drug component with the combination product having the primary intended purpose of fulfilling a device function.'' The premise underlying the assignment to CDRH is that the device component of such a product provides the most important therapeutic action of the product. This ICA assigns to CDER prefilled delivery systems, such as a ''device with primary purpose of delivering or aiding in the delivery of a drug and distributed containing a drug.'' The premise of this assignment to CDER is that the device's primary purpose in delivering or aiding in the delivery of a drug is subordinate to the most important therapeutic action provided by the drug product.
Similarly, the CBER–CDER ICA assigns to CDER ''combination products
2 Classification refers to the determination of a product's regulatory identity as a drug, device, biological product, or combination product.
3 Assignment refers to the determination of the agency center that will have primary jurisdiction for the review and regulation of a product.
that consist of a biological component and a drug component where the biological component enhances the efficacy or ameliorates the toxicity of the drug product.'' The premise underlying this assignment is that the drug product provides the most important therapeutic action of the product, while the biological product has a subordinate role in enhancing such action.
FDA recognizes that, since the ICAs were written in 1991, new products have been developed, new uses for existing products have been devised, and additional laws, regulations, and guidances are in effect. During this period, FDA has continued to classify and assign many new products not specifically covered by the ICAs. In addition, some jurisdictional decisions made since 1991 cover products that appear to be part of a broad class of product included in an ICA, but are classified and/or assigned in a way different from the class of product because of the particular product's specific characteristics or use. Many of these decisions have been made through the formal Request for Designation (RFD) process. For these reasons, the body of jurisdictional decisions has grown over time, and the ICAs have become incomplete statements.
Moreover, in 2003 the agency administratively transferred many therapeutic biological products from CBER to CDER. For this reason, the CBER–CDER ICA is out of date.
IV. Preliminary Proposal to Continue in Effect the CDER–CDRH and CBER– CDRH ICAs, and to Rescind the CBER– CDER ICA
The agency believes it is very important to provide transparency in jurisdictional decisionmaking. Such transparency ensures predictability and consistency of decisions, and decreases ambiguity and uncertainty about agency perspectives. Moreover, as the bases for agency decisionmaking become clearer, the need for formal RFDs and informal inquiries covering specific products may diminish, which should conserve resources for the industry and the agency.
A. CDER–CDRH and CBER–CDRH ICAs
The agency has reviewed the CDER– CDRH and CBER–CDRH ICAs and preliminarily determined that they continue to provide helpful nonbinding guidance, and so proposes to continue them in effect, with the understanding that they should not be independently relied upon as the most current, complete jurisdictional statements.
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The agency considered updating the CDER–CDRH and CBER–CDRH ICAs as a way to continue to provide transparency to its jurisdictional decisionmaking. After consideration, however, the agency believes that the goal of transparency can be achieved more effectively by other means. The process of updating the ICAs would be time consuming, and given the quick pace of product development, the updated ICAs would soon be out of date as well. The agency believes that transparency is better served by articulating the principles upon which it bases determinations of a combination product's PMOA, and by frequently issuing jurisdictional information on particular classes of products as that information becomes available. The agency suggests that persons wishing to get the most current information about jurisdictional determinations consult the numerous other sources of information about jurisdictional determinations described in this document, as well as the ICAs.
B. CBER–CDER ICA
The 2003 administrative transfer of many therapeutic biological products from CBER to CDER has rendered the CBER–CDER ICA out of date. For this reason, the agency preliminarily proposes to rescind the CBER–CDER ICA. A statement of the current assignment of biological products to CBER and CDER is available at http:// www.fda.gov/oc/combination/ transfer.html.
V. Actions Taken to Increase Transparency of Jurisdictional Decisionmaking
Since the enactment of MDUFMA, the agency has implemented, or is developing, the following actions to increase the transparency of jurisdictional decisionmaking:
A. Regulatory Definition of PMOA
As described previously in this document, the agency recently published a final rule defining ''primary mode of action,'' which is the basis for assigning a combination product to a lead center for review. The regulation includes an algorithm that will be followed when the most important therapeutic action of a combination product cannot be determined with reasonable certainty. This clarification of the PMOA principle is expected to significantly increase the transparency of the reasoning underlying the agency's assignment of combination products to an agency center.
B. Guidance for Industry and FDA Staff: How to Write a Request for Designation (RFD)
The goal of the guidance is to provide recommendations regarding the type of information a sponsor should submit in order for the agency to determine the regulatory identity of a product as a drug, device, biological product, or combination product, and to assign the product to the appropriate agency component for review and regulation. The guidance reflects the final rule defining the PMOA of a combination product, and is expected to increase the transparency of the RFD process by clarifying the kind of information that enables the agency to make a prompt and appropriate assignment decision. The guidance is available at http:// www.fda.gov/oc/combination/ howtowrite.html.
C. Jurisdictional Determinations
The agency has made available on the OCP Web site more than 220 capsular descriptions of prior RFD decisions. In selecting which jurisdictional determinations were appropriate to summarize and make public in this way, the agency considered the extent to which the product could be suitably described, the extent to which the existence and description of the product or similarly described products have been made public, and related factors. The agency will continue to update the list of capsular descriptions as new decisions are made and as information on these products becomes publicly available. The capsular descriptions are available at http://www.fda.gov/oc/ combination/determinations.html.
D. Jurisdictional Updates
Jurisdictional updates are more detailed statements of the classification and assignment of various product classes. They reflect past agency decisions, and are not intended to be policy statements. Jurisdictional updates generally contain information about the basis for the assignment and classification decisions that have been made. The agency selects product classes to be the subject of jurisdictional updates based on the agency's perception of the current level of interest in the jurisdictional issue, the extent to which the class of products can be clearly described, the extent to which the existence and description of the class of products has been made public, and related factors. Additional jurisdictional updates will be issued as appropriate. Jurisdictional updates are available at http://www.fda.gov/oc/ combination/updates.html.
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E. RFD Decision Letters
The agency posts on the OCP Web site RFD decision letters for products that have been approved or cleared. These letters have been redacted to remove trade secret and confidential commercial information in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. It should be noted that, in some cases, products undergo changes in name, sponsor, design, or other key aspects following the agency's issuance of an RFD decision. The agency will post RFD decision letters when it is certain that the covered product has been approved or cleared, but it should be recognized that the posting may be incomplete. Posting of these letters, which generally include the agency's reasoning behind the RFD decision, is intended to provide additional transparency on the jurisdictional process. The letters are available at http://www.fda.gov/oc/ combination/rfd.html.
F. Chemical Action
In the course of assigning combination products to an agency center, OCP must often determine whether a product is a combination product—a determination that may turn on whether a constituent part of the product is properly classified as a device. Section 201(h) of the act (21 U.S.C. 321(h)) states that a device cannot achieve its primary intended purposes through chemical action within or on the body of man, or be dependent on being metabolized to achieve its primary intended purposes. The agency plans to develop guidance and/or regulations to further clarify what is meant by ''chemical action within or on the body.'' When final, such guidance and/or regulations should be helpful to sponsors in determining whether a product is a combination product.
G. Devices Regulated by CBER
Certain single entity (i.e., noncombination) devices are regulated under the device provisions of the act by CBER, rather than CDRH. One of the main purposes of the CBER–CDRH ICA is to identify categories of devices regulated by CBER. The agency believes, however, that additional guidance describing the assignment of devices that process human cellular and tissue products would be helpful. This product area was not fully envisioned at the time the CBER–CDRH ICA was developed. The agency plans to develop such guidance to assist sponsors in determining whether certain devices would be regulated by CDRH or CBER.
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H. Combination Product Regulation
For some types of combination products, the CDER–CDRH ICA addresses good manufacturing practices, registration and listing, labeling, and other product regulation issues. The agency is developing guidance and/or regulations to address these and other significant areas of combination product regulation, and when final, these documents will ultimately update the limited information provided in the CDER–CDRH ICA on these topics.
VI. Practices Specific to Assignment of Combination Products
The agency has reviewed its practices specific to the assignment of combination products to ensure that they are in compliance with the requirement of section 503(g)(4)(B) of the act that the agency promptly assign a combination product to an agency center with primary jurisdiction in accordance with section 503(g)(1) of the act.
The agency has refined its processing of jurisdictional requests to ensure that the agency makes its assignments promptly. For example, section 503(g)(4)(A) of the act requires OCP, in determining whether a product is appropriately classified as a combination product, to consult with the component within the Office of the Commissioner that is responsible for such determinations. In the Federal Register of June 23, 2003 (68 FR 37075), the agency issued a final rule announcing that to enhance the efficiency of agency operations, OCP assumed responsibility from the Office of the Ombudsman for designating the component of FDA with primary jurisdiction for the premarket review and regulation of any product requiring a jurisdictional determination under part 3 (21 CFR part 3). This change consolidated the jurisdiction program within OCP, eliminated the requirement for consultation about the classification of a product as a combination product, and made the RFD program more efficient to administer. The final rule also provided for the electronic submission of RFDs (§ 3.7(d)).
Similarly, OCP has refined its internal processes and practices to ensure that all RFDs are resolved within the 60-day timeframe requirement of section 563(b) of the act (21 U.S.C. 360bbb–2(b)) (§ 3.8(b)). All RFDs submitted to OCP since its inception have been resolved within the 60-day period. Furthermore, all requests for reconsideration were responded to within the 15-day timeframe (§ 3.8(c)). For the period from the establishment of OCP through
March 31, 2006, FDA's average RFD processing time for assignments of combination products is 37.7 days (median 40 days, range 11–59 days). Accordingly, the agency has preliminarily determined that its practices are consistent with the requirement contained in section 503(g)(4)(B) of the act that it promptly assign combination products to an agency center based on the product's PMOA. FDA plans to continue in effect the process improvements needed to maintain the prompt assignment of combination products, and plans to continue to work to refine its processes further.
VII. Comments
Interested persons may submit to the Division of Dockets Management (see ADDRESSES) written or electronic comments regarding this document. Submit a single copy of electronic comments or two paper copies of any mailed comments, except that individuals may submit one paper copy. Comments are to be identified with the docket number found in brackets in the heading of this document. Received comments may be seen in the Division of Dockets Management between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Dated: September 22, 2006.
Jeffrey Shuren,
Assistant Commissioner for Policy.
[FR Doc. E6–15967 Filed 9–27–06; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4160–01–S
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
National Institutes of Health
Government-Owned Inventions; Availability for Licensing
AGENCY: National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, HHS. ACTION: Notice.
SUMMARY: The inventions listed below are owned by an agency of the U.S. Government and are available for licensing in the U.S. in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 207 to achieve expeditious commercialization of results of federally-funded research and development. Foreign patent applications are filed on selected inventions to extend market coverage for companies and may also be available for licensing.
ADDRESSES: Licensing information and copies of the U.S. patent applications listed below may be obtained by writing to the indicated licensing contact at the Office of Technology Transfer, National
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Institutes of Health, 6011 Executive Boulevard, Suite 325, Rockville, Maryland 20852–3804; telephone: 301/ 496–7057; fax: 301/402–0220. A signed Confidential Disclosure Agreement will be required to receive copies of the patent applications.
Mammalian Cell Surface Display of Fvs for Rapid Antibody Maturation
Description of Technology: This technology describes a new method of cell surface display of single chain antibodies for affinity maturation in a mammalian system. Cells expressing a rare mutant antibody with higher affinity were enriched about 240 fold by a single-pass cell sorting from a large excess of cells expressing wild-type antibodies with slightly lower affinity. Additionally, a highly enriched mutant with increased binding affinity for CD22 after a single selection of a combinatory library randomizing an intrinsic antibody hotspot was successfully obtained. The system is compatible with other mammalian expression systems and it is a rapid, simple and robust procedure. The method can be useful in isolating high affinity antibodies for cancer, AIDS and other diseases.
Applications: (1) A new method of displaying Fvs on human cells; (2) A new method useful to isolate new high affinity antibodies for cancer, AIDS and other diseases.
Market: The method has a potential several billion dollar market as it can be potentially used in immunotherapeutic approaches for the treatment of cancer, AIDS and other diseases.
Development Status: The technology is currently in pre-clinical stage of development.
Inventors: Drs. Ira Pastan and Mitchell Ho (NCI).
Publication: Mo Ho, S Nagata, I Pastan. Isolation of anti-CD22 Fv with high affinity by Fv display on human cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. Jun 20;103(25):9637–9642. Epub 2006 Jun 8, doi 10.1073/pnas.0603653103.
Patent Status: U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/794,212 filed 21 Apr 2006 (HHS Reference No. E–200–2006/ 0–US–01)
Licensing Status: Available for nonexclusive or exclusive licensing.
Licensing Contact: Jesse S. Kindra, J.D.; 301/435–5559; firstname.lastname@example.org.
Collaborative Research Opportunity: The National Cancer Institute Laboratory of Molecular Biology is seeking statements of capability or interest from parties interested in collaborative research to further develop, evaluate, or commercialize Mammalian Cell Surface Display of Fvs
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EXHIBITOR TERMS & CONDITIONS
The general rules and regulations for the operation of Equifest in addition to those already printed shall be deemed as if they had been printed in full.
1.12. Theft, Damage or Loss
1. GENERAL
1.1. Equifest acting through the appointed officer shall be the sole judge of whether the following items have been adhered to in a proper manner. The decision of Equifest shall in all respects be final and conclusive. If, in the opinion of Equifest, a serious breach of these terms and conditions has taken place, an Exhibitor may be required to remove his/her exhibit within 24 hours of notice being given. In such a case all fees paid or due to Equifest shall be forfeited. Notwithstanding anything contained in the Prospectus, the application for space, or any other document concerning Equifest,. Equifest reserves the unrestricted right to make such rules or orders for the proper conduct of the exhibition, as circumstances may warrant, either before or during the currency of the exhibition.
1.2. Payment Liability - If for any reason the Exhibitor does not make any of the payments on the due date, the Organiser may at their option proceed to resell the site without being liable to account to the Exhibitor for any sum already paid or due from him/her and without prejudice to the Organiser. In the event of the exhibition being cancelled or terminated because of fire or earthquake.
1.3. Cancellation
If a site booking is cancelled by the Exhibitor within 60 days prior to the event, they will forfeit 30% of their site fees. Cancellation of site bookings within 30 days prior to the event will be liable to pay the full cost of the original booking.
If the holding of the Exhibition or the supply of any services by the Organiser is prevented, abandoned, postponed for any reason of fire, national emergency, lightning, lock out, strikes, labour disputes, service being disrupted, civil disturbance, health concern, acts of God, war, pandemic or health concern, unavoidable accident, explosion or any cause not within the control of the Organiser, the Organiser shall not be under any liability or loss or damage for any costs, expenditure or any loss incurred by the Exhibitor, however the Organiser will refund 80% of site fees to the Exhibitor as a fair proportion of any rental paid by the Exhibitor.
1.4. Co-operation
No Exhibitor shall permit their exhibition stand to be used in such a manner as to conflict with the purpose of the exhibition or the rights of other Exhibitors. In the event of any dispute arising between Exhibitors, in relation to the exhibition, such disputes shall be submitted to Equifest in writing for consideration and the decision of Equifest shall be accepted by all parties as final and conclusive in all respects.
1.5. Event Closure
All displays must remain on site for the duration of the Show, that is, until the advertised Show closing time. This rule will be rigidly enforced. During post Show pack down, security remains the responsibility of the Exhibitor.
1.6. Contractors
All Exhibitors shall only use the official contractor appointed by the Organiser for electrical and lighting installation for design and build space options. Approval in writing from us is required if you are using another contractor.
1.7. Security:
Exhibitors are advised to fully insure all exhibits during the period of the exhibition against theft, loss or damage to exhibits or any articles belonging to the Exhibitors. All materials used by Exhibitors in the stand and exhibition construction, must be properly fire proofed.
1.8. Competitions or Contests
Exhibitors desiring to run lottery, raffle, competition, betting, gambling, game of chance, sideshow or riding device must gain approval from Equifest.
1.9. Amendments
The Organisers and Promoters of Equifest reserve the right to amend any part of parts of the here in described.
1.10. Advertising
Exhibitors shall have the full right to advertise within the confines of their own stand but Equifest reserves the right to prohibit any such advertising material or equipment which obstructs aisles, interferes with or obstructs neighbouring stands or is, in the opinion of Equifest, a source of annoyance to others. No Exhibitor, or employee thereof, may canvas other than from their own stand.
1.11. Noise:
Noise Control will be implemented and no loud speakers or loud music or any noise that will affect the next Exhibitor will be permitted. The Organiser may conduct its own noise monitoring and reserves the right to require compliance on demand. The Organiser reserves the right to close down sites if there is failure to comply with instructions regarding noise levels.
It is expressly stated that under no circumstances will the Equifest accept any responsibility whatsoever for any loss, damage or theft to any Exhibitors' stand or equipment by any cause or means whatsoever. Exhibitors are required to provide supervision during the whole time that the exhibition is open to the public. It is requested that all exhibits, fixtures, fittings, equipment etc shall be adequately insured against fire, theft, damage and loss from any cause, during the time in which the articles are on the exhibition premises. The Exhibitor shall further indemnify Equifest against any claims whatsoever in relation to his allocation space and the actions and conduct of employees.
1.13. Security
Equifest have security in the indoor Arena sites, Marquee sites and Outdoor Area for the duration of the show. Exhibitors are not permitted on site until one hour prior to the Show opening to the general public, other than food vendors who must make prior arrangements.
1.14. Liability
Equifest is not liable for any consequential, business interruption, indirect or other loss. Equifest shall not be liable to refund any fees paid or pay damages to any applicants as a result of any grievance relating to the event raised by an applicant.
2. ELIGIBILITY FOR EXHIBITING
2.1. All applications for exhibitors sites should be made promptly via our website and returned to Core Events with a non-refundable deposit of $300 + GST prior to allocation on Tuesday 18th May 2021, in order to secure the display site. The balance is then to be paid be paid on or before 1st September 2021. Equifest reserves the right to allocate sites but where possible will endeavour to meet applicant's request. Allocation will be made by Equifest's appointed officer. A high standard of display is required.
2.2. The Organiser reserves the right to remove any person, Exhibitor or visitor for a good cause.
2.3. The Organiser reserves the right to allocate sites or change locations as they deem fit for the success of the Show. The layout of the Exhibition area and site sizes and shapes may be modified and site numbers may be changed for convenience in locating. Exhibitors will be informed of such changes and given ample time before the Show.
2.4. If an Exhibitor wants to change the site area, which the Exhibitor has applied for under its Exhibitor site contract; the Organiser cannot guarantee another site that would be suitable for the Exhibitor. The Organiser will try its best to see if another site is available and if it deems fit, then only will the Organiser allocate it to Exhibitor/stall holder if exhibition site is available.
2.5. Only the official contractor provided by the Organiser for panel and electrical work are permitted to be used by Exhibitors.
2.6. No alterations at all to be made by the Exhibitors, only the official contractor is permitted to do the necessary changes and that will be according to the standard paneled site as specified in the Prospectus.
2.7. Sublets - Subletting is where an Exhibitor (primary) invites another Exhibitor (secondary) to display or demonstrate their products on the primary Exhibitor's site. The subletting (secondary) Exhibitor must: 1. Be eligible to exhibit at Equifest. 2. Complete and sign an application form. 3. Pay an additional $250 + GST subletting fee. If the secondary Exhibitor fails to complete an application form they will not be allowed to exhibit. The subletting (secondary) Exhibitor will have a separate Show Guide listing and will receive their own ticket allocation.
2.8. The Organiser reserves the right to close any equipment or device at any time during installation or during the Exhibition/ Show if in the Organiser's opinion, such an equipment or device is dangerous. If the Exhibitor or his representative fails to comply with these instructions, the Exhibitor shall immediately, on receiving notice, remove the said equipment/device or product from Indoor site/s failing which, the Organiser will arrange to have the said equipment/device or product removed from the site at the Exhibitor's expense and the Organiser will not be held liable for any loss or damage or any loss in business which may occur during the removal.
2.9. If the Exhibitor fails to recognise, or its representative fails to recognise reasonable standards of behaviour during installation or during the Exhibition/Show, the Organiser shall have the right to remove such persons from the Exhibition Hall and the Organiser shall not be liable for any loss or damage which may be occasioned by the removal.
2.10. To avoid damage; no items are to be attached, pinned, stapled or adhered to any door, wall or window or other parts of the building. The Organiser must approve the hanging of banners. Smoke machines, special balloon effects and /or pyrotechnics cannot be operated without prior written consent from the Organiser and Venue Authority, due to the effect this may have on the smoke detectors and or animals. Should the Fire Brigade respond to an alarm caused by unauthorised usage of special effects, the Exhibitor, his servants and or agents will be liable for any charges incurred by Organiser and Venue Authority.
EXHIBITOR TERMS & CONDITIONS COND.
2.11. The Exhibitor shall ensure that all goods/packages to be delivered to Organiser and Venue are adequately marked with the company name and site number and the senders name and contact phone number. Packages to be collected after the event should be sealed and correctly addressed, with the senders name and contact phone number. The Organiser and Venue take no responsibility for any loss of or damage to any items delivered to Organiser and Venue for use prior to, during or after the exhibition.
4.8. The provision of additional external communication lines shall be the responsibility of the Exhibitor and at the expense of the Exhibitor including telephones and internet (It usually takes at least one month's notice or more to apply with Spark). We will be able to provide you with a form and give you a telephone number to ring.
2.12. Set up time and breakdown time allocated by the Organiser is to be followed strictly. Exhibitors are allowed to display their products only within the confines of their allocated areas. All aisles between stands must be left clear.
2.13. Prohibited Goods: Dangerous goods/articles: These are not to be brought into the Venue/ Premises. Any firearms, explosives, flammable liquids or other dangerous substances or articles which may cause damage or injury to property or persons without the prior express consent of the Organiser and Venue Authority, and then only in accordance with the terms and conditions of that consent in writing. Notwithstanding any such consent, the Exhibitor, its staff, its contractor or its invitees will indemnify the Organiser and the Venue Authority in respect of any liability or expense it incurs as a result of any such damage or injury.
2.14. No Smoking: Equifest is a no smoking event and therefore the exhibitor, staff and its invitees shall not smoke in the premises, venue at The National Equestrian Centre.
2.15. Break down of site: If any Exhibitor starts to break down their site prior to event closing time, they will be liable to pay a penalty of $200.00 plus GST.
3. INDEMNITY, INSURANCE AND LIEN
3.1. All stands and exhibits are at the risk of the Exhibitors, and the Organisers shall not in any way be responsible for any loss or damage. It is a requirement that Exhibitors have Public Liability Insurance Certificate (minimum of two million dollar cover). The Exhibitor is required to provide a copy of the certificate before they begin to setup their site. If they choose not to have Public Liability Insurance, for the duration of the Show, then they will need to sign an insurance waiver before setting up your site.
3.2. The Exhibitor is responsible to take out all the necessary insurance covers including personal and public liability. The Exhibitor undertakes to fully indemnify and at all times to keep indemnified in full the Organiser and/or Venue Authority, its officers, affiliates, servants, agents, staff, representatives, officers, contractors, sub-contractors, volunteers and all its employees, visitors against all losses, liabilities, claims, damages and expenses whatsoever which they may suffer or incur howsoever caused and arising.
3.3. The Exhibitor acknowledges and agrees that the Organiser and/or Venue Authority shall not be responsible for any failure to telecommunications or other electronic communications at the exhibition venue, which is beyond the Organisers and/or Venue Authority's control. 3.4. The Organiser shall not be responsible in any manner whatsoever for the consequences of any introduction or commercial transaction made between the Exhibitor and other parties during or as a result of the Exhibition.
HEALTH & SAFETY
4.1. In accordance with the Building Act 1991, Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992; Exhibitors, contractors, subcontractors undertake at all times need to comply with and indemnify the Organiser/Venue Authority for any cost, claims or liabilities arising as a result of the Exhibitor's actions or inactions or its failure to comply with Local Authority or Government regulations relating to the Exhibitor's site/stand or the exhibition venue.
4.2. Exhibitors must obey all instructions and signs whilst onsite to ensure that their actions will not create hazards to people, property or animals.
4.3. Speed limit on site is strictly 15 km/h.
4.4. All fire and emergency exits are to be kept clear at all times
4.5. Smoke stop doors are to be kept closed at all times, except when attended by a door person.
4.6. Smoking is not allowed in buildings or on site.
4.7. On hearing a fire alarm please leave the building immediately by the nearest Fire Exit. Assemble at the area designated on the Fire Notice at the Exit Door and await further instructions. Proceed to an area clear of buildings and remain outside the buildings until a clear signal is given. Instructions will be given by the Organiser's personnel and supervisors appointed by Organisers/ Venue Authority of each hall or by fire officers. Please do not use lifts when there is a fire alarm on or when there is a fire situation. Please follow instructions given by supervisors appointed by Organisers/Venue Authority/ fire officers.
4.9. The aisles should be clear for visitors to the Show. It is therefore important that Exhibitors keep within their contracted space. Exhibitors shall ensure that all exits are clear and all emergency equipment; including power boxes on the walls above the stands do not cause any obstruction.
4.10. Exhibitors shall ensure that during build up and breakdown that the aisles are clear of debris and Exhibitor's products. The aisles have to be clear of obstruction. No one should be in the aisles.
4.11. No one should be on site during build up/ breakdown time while contractors and workers are undertaking construction or pull down work.
4.12. There will be an allocated time for Exhibitors to come in during build up/setting up and breakdown time.
4.13. Footwear for build up/breakdown should be a shoe that are closed toed footwear.
4.14. No alcohol shall be drunk during build up or break down time.
4.15. Electrical work will need to be done only by the Organiser/ Venue Authority's contractors. If there is electrical work to be done, please inform the Organiser in advance by filling in the form for electrical work. The form will be sent to you closer to the exhibition date. We need at least 6 weeks notice. Any extra electrical work is at the Exhibitor's expense.
4.16. Please ensure that all power cabling is not in the way of visitors and staff at all times. Ensure that the electrical works are in good order. Lighting must be compliant and securely fixed.
4.17. To avoid tripping hazards, please tape down all electrical cables.
4.18. Any material used by the Exhibitor in the site, must be fireproofed.
4.19. Only electricity can be used as a source of light or power at the exhibition venue.
4.20. Keep the stand/site and surroundings clean and remove all waste materials at all times.
4.21. All containers and packaging that are not for display must be removed or disposed after installation and dismantling. No pressurised containers shall be used indoors without prior written approval of the Organiser.
5. COMPLIANCE SECTION
5.1. Power Cables - Electrical wiring must comply with AS/NZS 3002:2008 Electrical Installations – Shows and Carnivals. Any equipment, which will be plugged into venue power, must carry a current "Test & Tag" label.
5.2. Vehicles: All vehicles with LPG Cylinders or gas appliance are required to comply with the NZ Gas regulations and met with all current NZ Industry standards. All Vehicles, Motorhomes, Caravans, Fifth Wheelers or the like, must comply with NZ Land Transport Safety Authority compliance laws.
5.3
. Legal Requirements - Notwithstanding anything contained in any part of these terms and conditions, it shall be local government requirements as may be in force at the time of the exhibition. All Exhibitors must comply with all
the express responsibility of each Exhibitor to ensure that their exhibit complies in all respects with such legal and provisions of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.
5.4. Fire Retardant Materials - In compliance with the NZ Building Code (C3/ASI Table 4) Exhibitors are informed that curtains, drapes or backdrops are to be restricted to Fire Retardant Materials with a flammability index not greater than 12. Further information may be obtained from the Building Inspections Department, Taupo District Council.
6. FOOD AND LIQUOR SITE HOLDERS
6.1. The Exhibitor is responsible for complying with all the health and hygiene regulations under various related Acts of Parliament and Taupo District Council Authority laws.
6.2. All Exhibitors selling food, beverages or alcohol or doing sampling are required to be licensed. Exhibitors to provide details for products for sale, activities at site e.g. food storage, preparation, cooking, stall set up and licenses already in place e.g. Council food premises licence details or NZFSA exemption registration details. Check out, if your site is exempt from requirement to hold a food stall licence for this event. Consent on this matter should be obtained from the Taupo District Council.
6.3. Please apply for a special liquor license 20 working days (1 months) in advance.
EXHIBITOR TERMS & CONDITIONS COND.
6.4. If an Exhibitor who is involved in the food sector, does not have the necessary certificates that Taupo District Council needs, then the Exhibitor will not be allowed by the Taupo District Council to exhibit and all monies paid will be forfeited.
6.5. If any Exhibitor wishes to offer alcoholic sampling and or hold bottle sales for consumption off the premises, then a Special Licence will have to be applied for and issued. A requirement for the Special License is that a holder of a Manager's Certificate will need to be nominated and be present and be on duty for the Duration of the Show. A Manager's Certificate needs to be accompanied with your application for "Special License Certificate".
6.6. Contact the Organiser well in advance to arrange for the "Owner's Consent Written Authorisation" with the Venue Authority – Organiser and Venue Authority and this is required by Taupo District Council.
6.7. If you are an Overseas Company and you are dealing with food or liquor, then the same rules as above apply for foreign companies. The Organiser will do its best to help you with the process and guide you on a without prejudice basis. The Organiser needs to be contacted at least 3 months in advance to get the paper work done.
7. SPECIAL SERVICE
7.1. Publicity materials of any Exhibitor may only be distributed from the Exhibitor's own site. No advertising or touting for business may be carried out anywhere else within the exhibition venue. No exhibits or advertising signs shall be placed outside the confines of the exhibitor's site.
7.2. The Organiser reserves the sole right to distribute promotional material/information and photographs with regards to the exhibition to promotional and advertising organisations, media and site contractors before and after the exhibition and takes no responsibility for any mis-description error, or omission that has been left out in its promotional material.
7.3. With regards to the Privacy Act, the Exhibitor shall let the Organiser know in writing if the Exhibitor has any objection to the transfer of the information to the third parties on signing this contract.
7.4. All exhibits, site materials/publicity material, and the like display items of the Exhibitor shall be removed by the relevant Exhibitor immediately after the closing of the Exhibition according to the arrangements and within the time limits specified by the Organiser and Venue Authority. Any exhibits or site materials/publicity materials left behind in the Exhibition Venue shall be deemed abandoned and shall be disposed of by the Organiser and Venue Authority at the expense of the Exhibitor concerned.
8. CODE OF CONDUCT
Accordingly, Exhibitors doing business are expected to have a high standard of ethics and behaviour at the Show. While the overwhelming majority of staff of exhibiting companies behaves honourably, there is an unethical minority who can cause anguish for others. This includes misleading representations, conflicts of interest and misuse of information.
8.1. The sales process whilst competitive, should not impact on the brands and integrity of others.
8.2. As a general rule, "Sales representations should be made based on the intrinsic value of your OWN product: not on the goods or reputation of others. 8.3. Exhibitors, they're appointed agents and representatives need to comply with all areas of the terms and conditions set down by Equifest.
8.4. Where it comes to our attention that unfair or damaging information is being used to assist the sale process, we will take all steps to identify the staff and company involved. When identified, a verbal warning and written notice will be issued. Should the offender continue, and then a notice of eviction will be issued. There will be no recourse and no correspondence will be entered into.
9. GOVERNING LAW
This Terms & Conditions Contract for Exhibitors' shall be governed by and construed in all respects in accordance with the laws of New Zealand and the Exhibit/Stall Holder irrevocably submits to the exclusive jurisdiction of the New Zealand Courts.
This Terms and Conditions Contract for Exhibitors is supplemental to the Exhibitors Application form. By signing the Exhibitors Application Form, the exhibitors agree to abide by and to be bound by all the terms and conditions hereby stated.
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Stepping Out of
Social Anxiety
Stepping Out of Social Anxiety
Module 4
Behavioural Experiment Stepladders
Introduction
In Module 3, we looked at how avoidance keeps anxiety going, and introduced behavioural experiments as a way to break out of the vicious cycle of anxiety and avoidance and test our social fears. In this module, we will introduce a way to order your behavioural experiments in a step-by-step way, so testing your fears feels more manageable.
Taking it one step at a time
Conducting behavioural experiments to test your fears involves going outside of your comfort zone. Some people find it helps to do this one step at a time, rather than trying to do the hardest possible thing first. Sometimes, if you try to tackle your biggest fear straight away, it can end up being too overwhelming, or it may even leave you more anxious than when you started, or it may be so confronting that you continue to avoid.
Breaking things down and beginning with slightly easier experiments can help in finding a manageable way to get started, and then you can build from there. You can start with experiments that generate mild anxiety, progress to those that generate moderate anxiety, and then work your way up to those that generate high anxiety. One advantage of ordering things this way is that you can test your fears and build your coping skills and confidence as you go – by the time you get to the hardest steps, they may not be as anxiety-provoking as they once were.
Behavioural experiment stepladders
A behavioural experiment stepladder is a tool to plan behavioural experiments in increasing order of difficulty. The following steps will help you develop your behavioural experiment stepladder:
1. Identify an area for change. What would you like to be different? In what area of your life are you having difficulties that you would most like to change?
Most people with social anxiety find that there is more than one area of their life they would like to change. Write down any ideas you have about areas of your life you would like to change on the lines below. Once you have written down your ideas, choose one area you would like to start with. You could choose the area that is most important to you, or the area it would be easiest to make changes in. Working on one goal at a time can help keep you focused, and can give you a greater sense of progress than if you work on lots of different goals as once.
Areas I would like to change:
e.g. Talking to colleagues at work; Being more independent (e.g. going to shops and appointments alone); meeting new people; joining a hobby group; going out on dates______________________________
The area I will start with first:
e.g. Talking to colleagues at work _____________________________________________________________________
2. Identify your fears. Now that you have identified an area for change, the next step is to identify your social fears relating to this area of your life. What are you worried may happen? What negative thoughts or images do you have relating to this situation? What do you predict will happen in these situations?
Write down your answers on the lines below.
e.g. At work I am worried that I will say the wrong thing. People will think I am stupid and they will be frustrated by me___________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________
3. Design behavioural experiments to test your fears. Now that you have identified the fears that you have about this situation, it is time to plan a range of experiments that will help you test your predictions (aim for up to 10 different experiments). What situations will you need to approach to test your negative predictions?
e.g. To find out how my colleagues will respond to me, I will need to talk more at work. I could say something as I walk past someone in the corridor, I could speak to people in the lunch room, or I could speak up at a work meeting.
Try to plan a range of behavioural experiments. You might like to initially plan some experiments that are less challenging, and build towards doing more difficult experiments over time.
There are a number of factors you can tweak to make a behavioural experiment more or less difficult. These could include:
o Who is there?
o How familiar/unfamiliar are the people?
o How many people are there?
o How familiar/unfamiliar is the place?
o When am I doing it?
o What am I doing?
o Where am I doing it?
As you consider these questions, you may be able to change aspects of the situation to make a task more or less challenging. For instance, you might feel more anxious if there are more people around. So speaking to someone one-on-one might feature around the bottom of your stepladder and speaking within a group situation might feature closer to the top. On the next two pages you will find examples of behavioural experiment stepladders.
Behavioural experiment stepladder - example 1
Area for change: Share my ideas more at work
Negative predictions about these situations:
I will say the wrong thing. My colleagues will think I am stupid. They will roll their eyes and laugh about me with each other. They won't want to work with me and will get frustrated if they have to.
Behavioural experiment stepladder - example 2
Area for change: Expanding my social network
Negative predictions about these situations:
Others will think I am weird. They won't want to interact with me. When I try to talk to them they will make an excuse to leave. They will avoid me in future.
Create your own behavioural experiment stepladder
Now that you have seen some examples, it is time to develop your own behavioural experiment stepladder. Use the worksheet on this page to plan your stepladder. There is no right or wrong number of steps – so feel free to add more steps, or use less steps than the spaces on the worksheet allow. It is important to be aware that there is no right or wrong order in which to do your behavioural experiments – if you are willing to start with behavioural experiments that generate high anxiety right away then this is helpful too. The main thing is to find a step you are willing to start with.
My behavioural experiment stepladder
Area for change:
Negative predictions about these situations:
GOAL:
_______________________________
ANXIETY (?/10)
TIP: When thinking about the steps, consider what would make it harder or easier for you to complete the experiment. Who is there? What you are doing? How long are you doing it for? When will you do it? Where will you do it? By manipulating these variables you can create harder or easier steps.
Completing a Step on your stepladder
Now that you have prepared a behavioural experiment stepladder, you can make an appointment with yourself to take the first step. By setting a date, time, and place you are making a firm commitment to yourself to begin. When you are in the situation that you have planned, there are a few points to remember.
1. Expect some anxiety
When you enter the situation – at any step - remember that you'll probably experience some anxiety or discomfort. That's why the stepladder helps you to start small and work your way up. This gives you the chance to adapt to that level of anxiety, so that you aren't overwhelmed by higher levels of distress. After all, the only way to get used to those feelings is by experiencing them.
2. Use your skills
You can use the thought challenging strategy from Module 2 to deal with any unhelpful thoughts that come up. Challenging your unhelpful thinking can help manage your anxiety to enable you to take the steps on your stepladder.
3. Stay in the situation
Some anxiety is expected, and it might be tempting to leave if you feel uncomfortable, but it is very important to stay in the situation until you have had a chance to follow through with your planned experiment. Otherwise, you will not be able to collect the information you need in order to test out your negative predictions. Staying in the situation can also give you the opportunity to learn that as frightening as the feelings are, they are not dangerous and they do subside. You might also learn that you are better able to cope with feeling anxious than you thought you were.
Working through your stepladder
OK, so now that you have some tips on how to get through one step, how do you keep moving onwards and upwards? Here are some guidelines for how you can continue to work through each step to reach your goal.
1. One step at a time
Working through your behavioural experiment stepladder is about taking one small step at a time. You begin with a more manageable step and gradually work your way up to more challenging steps.
2. Over and over again
It can be helpful to repeat experiments in close succession to consolidate your learnings before you move onto the next step. If you only enter a situation once, you might convince yourself that it was luck. Repeating experiments helps to build up the evidence for when you are disputing any unhelpful thoughts, and will help you feel more convinced by the evidence you are gathering.
3. Use your skills
That's right – use your skills again! Work through any unhelpful thoughts about the situation after you have completed each step, or repeated a step. Remind yourself of what you have learned from each experiment to help reinforce new information and break old unhelpful thinking patterns.
4. Acknowledge the progress you are making
When you have completed a particular step, make sure to give yourself credit for your success. This can be hard work, and it helps to remind yourself of the progress you are making rather than just focusing on the eventual goal at the top of your stepladder. Acknowledging your progress can be encouraging and motivating.
5. Setbacks
We all have our good and bad days, and sometimes behavioural experiments might not go as well as you hoped. If a situation hasn't gone as well as you hoped or you've taken a step backwards, there are a number of things you can do.
* Use your thought challenging record as a way of challenging unhelpful thoughts that arise about the situation.
* Set a time and date to try the step again (remember – over and over).
* If you have tried it a few times and you still find it distressing, you may find it useful to create an 'inbetween' step, by planning another step that is slightly less distressing and has a slightly lower anxiety rating. You might think of this as a 'bridging step' in the same way that some people might take a 'bridging course' to get them ready for the next step. You might also want to consider whether there are some additional negative predictions causing the distress that still haven't been tested. Do these predictions require a different behavioural experiment? Is so, set one up and go for it!
* You may find it helpful to go back and repeat the previous step. Sometimes, if it has been a while since you've completed a behavioural experiment, you may find it helpful to repeat it to build your confidence in what you have learned. This can help you feel ready for the next step. You might think of these as 'refreshers' in the same way that people take 'refresher courses' before they go on to the next step.
Module Summary
* Sometimes approaching feared situations can be overwhelming. To assist with this, you can use behavioural experiment stepladders to confront your fears in a step-by-step way.
* You can make each step easier or harder by adjusting the 'Who', 'What', 'When', 'Where' and 'How' components of each step.
* Once you develop your behavioural experiment stepladder, make an appointment with yourself to take the first step. Making a written commitment about the day, time and place to do something increases the likelihood of following through.
* Repetition is important. Repeating the same behavioural experiment multiple times can help reinforce new learnings, and to build confidence before taking the next step. Repeating experiments in close succession is more effective than if we leave a long time between each behavioural experiment.
* Setbacks are normal. If something doesn't go to plan, you can use your skills to manage it and get back on track.
Coming Up…
In the next module we will discuss safety behaviours, which are subtle avoidance behaviours that can keep social anxiety going. We will show how you can apply behavioural experiments to start dropping safety behaviours.
About the Modules
CONTRIBUTORS
Samantha Bank (MPsych 1
)
Melissa Burgess (MPsych 1
)
Clinical Psychologist
Clinical Psychologist
Dr Adelln Sng (MPsych 1 ; PhD 2
)
Dr Mark Summers (MPsych 1 ; PhD 2 )
Senior Clinical Psychologist
Senior Clinical Psychologist
Dr Bruce Campbell(MPsych
1
; DPsych
3
)
Dr Peter McEvoy(MPsych
1
; PhD
2 )
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Senior Clinical Psychologist
Professor, School of Psychology, Curtin University
1Masters of Psychology (Clinical Psychology) 2Doctor of Philosophy3Doctor of Psychology (Clinical)
Some of the materials in the modules of this information package were taken from:
McEvoy, P. & Saulsman, L. (2017). Imagery-Based Cognitive Behaviour Group Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder (IB-CBGT). Perth, Western Australia: Centre for Clinical Interventions.
BACKGROUND
The concepts and strategies in the modules have been developed from evidence based psychological practice, primarily Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). Examples of this are reported in:
McEvoy, P. M., Hyett, M. P., Bank, S. R., Erceg-Hurn, D. M., Johnson, A. R., Kyron, M. J., Saulsman, L. M., Moulds, M. L., Grisham, J. R., Holmes, E. A., Moscovitch, D. A., Lipp, O. V. Campbell, B. N. C., & Rapee, R. M. (in press). Imagery-enhanced versus verbally-based group cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder: a randomized clinical trial. Psychological Medicine. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0033291720003001
Rapee, R. M., Gaston, J. E., & Abbott, M. J. (2009). Testing the efficacy of theoretically derived improvements in the treatment of social phobia. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 77, 317– 327.
REFERENCES
These are some of the professional references used to create the modules in this information package.
McEvoy, P. M., Saulsman, L. M., & Rapee, R. M. (2018). Imagery-enhanced CBT for social anxiety disorder. Guilford Press.
Hackmann, A., Bennett-Levy, J., & Holmes, E. A. (Eds., 2011). Oxford Guide to Imagery in Cognitive Therapy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kemp, N., Thompson, A., Gaston, J., & Rapee, R. (2003). Cognitive behavioural therapy-enhanced for social anxiety disorder: group treatment program. Centre for Emotional Health, Macquarie University.
Saulsman, L. M., Ji, J. L., & McEvoy, P. M. (2019). The essential role of mental imagery in cognitive behaviour therapy: what is old is new again. Invited review for Australian Psychologist, 54, 237-244. doi: 10.1111/ap.12406.
"STEPPING OUT OF SOCIAL ANXIETY"
This module forms part of:
Bank, S., Burgess, M., Sng, A., Summers, M., Campbell, B., & McEvoy, P. (2020). Stepping Out of Social Anxiety. Perth, Western Australia: Centre for Clinical Interventions.
ISBN: 978 0 9757995 1 2 Created: October, 2020
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RN-BSN Student Handbook
2022-2023
The information in the RN-BSN Student Handbook is intended to provide you with the current policies and guidelines important to your success as an undergraduate student in the Department of Nursing.
Tennessee Wesleyan University
Dear RN Student,
Let me be the first to welcome you to Tennessee Wesleyan, we are grateful that you have selected us for your RN to BSN Completion Program! Over the next few semesters, you will be adding new layers of essential skills to your current nursing practice, and I hope these experiences grow into a love for life-long learning.
To assist you on this new adventure, this RN to BSN student handbook is a resource tool that provides quick access to common questions and access to specific policies/ procedures for RN students.
Kind Regards,
Kellee Vess PhD, RN Associate Professor RN to BSN Program Director
The TWU-FSN, RN-BSN Student Handbook is supplemental to the Tennessee Wesleyan University Catalog and Student Handbook. The TWU RN-BSN Student Handbook contains policies and procedures to assist the student in the development of professional practice and to establish a learning community to quality educational outcomes and a successful learning experience. Hyperlinks to other TWU student policies and procedures listed below:
TWU Nursing Student Handbook
TWU Student Handbook TWU Academic Catalog
Contents
Directory
Tennessee Wesleyan University – Fort Sanders Nursing Department
The Tennessee Wesleyan University Fort Sanders Nursing Department (TWU-FSN) evolved in 1999 from a joint effort of two highly respected educational institutions in East Tennessee. The rich heritage in nursing education at Fort Sanders School of Nursing in Knoxville merged with the long tradition of Tennessee Wesleyan University of providing quality education to the community. This initiative created a baccalaureate degree nursing program for basic and registered nurse (RN) students.
Nursing Department Mission Statement
The mission of Tennessee Wesleyan University Fort Sanders Nursing is to prepare professional nurses for lives of significance, leadership and service through quality nursing education within the Christian tradition.
Nursing Department Philosophy
The faculty of the Tennessee Wesleyan University Fort Sanders Nursing Department believe people are unique, biological, emotional, social and spiritual beings with dignity, worth, and inherent rights of freedom and choice. Each person develops values and beliefs which are influenced by the social institutional forces of family, education, government, community and religion. People develop and change throughout the lifespan by interacting with the internal and external components of the environment which impact both human functioning and the state of health. We believe health is a dynamic, multidimensional state of being, based on a wellness/illness continuum. People strive to attain, maintain, and promote a positive state of health by enhancing adaptation to environmental variables. We believe healthcare is a basic human right while the quality of health is an individual responsibility influenced by personal behaviors. We believe nursing is a profession and an academic discipline based on a scientific body of knowledge requiring critical thinking, problem-solving, ethical reasoning, accountability, scholarship and a commitment to lifelong learning. The primary goals of nursing are to maintain, restore and promote optimum health, and to provide end-of-life care with diverse populations in a variety of settings. Safe quality patient care is implemented through the roles of the nurse as a provider of care, manager of care and active member in the profession of nursing. We believe education is a dynamic, on-going process of growth and development that involves acquisition and application of knowledge and skills culminating in new patterns of behavior. The men and women who demonstrate an interest and commitment to nursing are unique individuals with diverse backgrounds and learning styles. Education must take place in a non-threatening, open environment that fosters creativity, self-motivation, the spirit of scientific inquiry and effective communication. The responsibility for learning is shared by both student and faculty; thus, the curriculum is planned, implemented, and evaluated by the faculty with input from students and graduates to assist in meeting educational goals.
Nursing Department Program Objectives
As a professional nurse embodying the roles of provider of care, manager of care, and member of the profession, the graduate will:
1) Coordinate the delivery of health and nursing care through the application of knowledge from the nursing discipline, humanities, and natural and behavioral sciences.
2) Synthesize a plan of care using a systematic problem-solving process for the provision and management of care in a variety of settings for individuals, families, and communities from diverse cultures across the lifespan.
3) Utilize knowledge of the research process and research findings to enhance evidence-based nursing practice.
4) Collaborate effectively with individuals, groups, and members of the health team using various informatics to promote achievement of healthcare goals.
5) Demonstrate leadership in the provision and management of healthcare and in the advancement of professional nursing.
6) Integrate ethical and legal principles into nursing practice.
7) Participate in the social, political, and professional arena that influences the health and welfare of culturally diverse communities of interest.
8) Assume responsibility for personal and professional growth and development through lifelong learning.
9) Minimize risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performance in the clinical experience.
10) Incorporate spirituality and a servant-leader perspective into culturally diverse nursing care during the clinical experience.
Professional Standards
The Nursing Department's philosophy and objectives embody an identified set of professional nursing standards. The selected standards include:
(1) The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2008).
(2) Standards of Clinical Nursing Practice (American Nurses Association, 2010)
(3) Tennessee Nurse Practice Act (2010).
(4) Quality and Safety Education in Nursing (Case Western University, 2014)
RN to BSN Standards for Online Learning
TWU faculty believes that RN-BSN students enter this program with a wide variety of professional and life experiences, and are therefore considered to be adult learners with the following self-directed learning attributes: Guglielmino (1977)
A highly self-directed learner is one who exhibits initiative, independence, and persistence in learning; one who accepts responsibility for his or her own learning and views problems as challenges, not obstacles; one who is capable of selfdiscipline and has a high degree of curiosity; one who has a strong desire to learn or change and is self-confident; one who is able to use basic study skills, organize his or her time and set an appropriate pace for learning, and to develop a plan for completing work; one who enjoys learning and has a tendency to be goal-oriented (p. 73).
Based on this definition and the current delivery format of online education, the RN to BSN should maintain the following online learning "Netiquette" behaviors:
1. Before posting your question to a discussion board, check if anyone has asked it already and received a reply.
2. Stay on topic. Don't post irrelevant links, comments, thoughts or pictures.
3. Don't type in ALL CAPS! If you do it will look like you are screaming.
4. Don't write anything that sounds angry or sarcastic even as a joke, because without hearing your tone of voice, your peers might not realize you're joking.
5. Always remember to say "please" and "thank you" when soliciting help from your classmates.
6. Respect the opinion of your classmates. If you feel the need to disagree, do so respectfully and acknowledge the valid points in your classmate's argument. If you reply to a question from a classmate, make sure your answer is accurate!
7. If you ask questions, many people respond. Summarize all answers and post that summary to benefit your whole class.
8. Be brief. If you write a long dissertation in response to a simple question, it's unlikely that anyone will spend the time to read through it all.
9. If you refer to something your classmate said earlier in the discussion, quote just a few key lines from their post so that others won't have to go back and figure out which post you're referring to.
10. Check the most recent comments before you reply to an older comment.
11. Run a spelling and grammar check before posting anything to the discussion board. (List obtained from: essential-netiquette-guidelines)
TWU RN-BSN Program Overview
The Tennessee Wesleyan Fort Sanders Nursing Department offers an online RN to BSN program for registered nurses to earn a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree. The program features a flexible schedule designed specifically for working registered nurses returning to school. You can complete the program in as little as three semesters, depending on earned University credits and the rate at which courses are taken.
Students who have completed an Associate of Arts, Associate of Science, Bachelor of Arts, or Bachelor of Science degree from a regionally accredited post-secondary institution will be considered to have met the Wesleyan Essentials (WE) at Tennessee Wesleyan with the following exceptions:
* Must complete a minimum of 30 hours of general education courses from each of the following areas: humanities/fine arts, social/behavioral science, and natural science/mathematics.
* Must complete at least one religion course.
* Must complete any pre-requisites for upper-division major courses.
To earn your BSN, you must complete 64 nursing credit hours: 33 of these hours are taken within the upper division nursing curriculum, and the remaining 31 credit hours are placed in escrow based on your previous nursing course work. You will have the opportunity to challenge up to 12 credit hours (pharmacology, health assessment, and advanced nursing). A total of 120 credit hours are needed for graduation.
Online Program Format
The RN-BSN program is delivered mostly in an asynchronous online format, except for an online synchronous orientation session and a few scheduled synchronous class sessions each semester. Orientation day is designed to orient students to the program, review the Learning Management System (SAKAI), library/student resources, and provide opportunities for course overviews and general advisement. Scheduled synchronous class sessions allows for active engagement and community building through meaningful discussion and sharing of ideas.
Applying to the Online RN to BSN Program
1. Complete the online application through Nursing- CAS https://nursingcas.liaisoncas.org/apply/
For more information about the Online RN to BSN Program, contact the TWU-Fort Sanders Nursing Department at (865) 777-6963, Nancy Brooks, M.A.
Tuition & Fees
The online RN to BSN is offered at a rate of $325 per credit hour. Tuition for employees of Covenant Health is a discount rate of $300 per credit hour. Challenge Exam Fee is $175 per credit hour.
Admission Requirements
The requirements for admission to Tennessee Wesleyan and application to the Nursing Department are the same as for the traditional student, with the following additional requirements. Qualified applicants must:
1. Be a graduate of a regionally accredited Associate of Applied Science in Nursing (AAS) or Associate of Science in Nursing (ASN) Program. (For the purpose of admission into the RN to BSN Program, the AAS degree will be considered equivalent to the ASN degree.)
2. Have an overall college GPA of 2.75.
3. Provide evidence of a non-restricted RN license.
4. Provide proof of professional work experience as a registered nurse.
RNs who have graduated from a non-NLNAC/CCNE accredited school will be required to validate prior learning by ACT-PEP nursing exams. A conditional acceptance will be granted to RN applicants awaiting NCLEX-RN results. Applicants conditionally admitted to the RN to BSN program may complete 3 semester hours of course work (NU 305 Transition to Professional Nursing) and Challenge Exams (Health Assessment, Pharmacology, and Advanced Nursing). This conditional acceptance will be removed upon receipt of an active RN license. RN licensure is required for program progression.
Providing that the above admission criteria have been met, applicants will be exempt from University adult studies admission requirements as outlined in the admission section of this catalog. Further exceptions to these requirements will be subject to individual reviews by the Nursing Admissions Review Committee.
There are two official starts each year for the RN-BSN Nursing Program
For Fall (August) Admission: Application deadline July 20th
For Spring (January) Admission: Application Deadline December 15 th
Advisement Overview
Academic/Faculty Advisor - Each student accepted into the TWU-FSN RN to BSN program will be assigned a faculty advisor. Your faculty advisor can assist you if you have questions related to the following:
- Progression through the program.
- Counsel related to personal and interpersonal difficulties that have an impact on the academic experience.
- Guidance related to difficulty with time management, organization, study skills, or academic achievement
Advisement Process
Prior to advisement week your advisor will contact you via email to schedule an advisement appointment. RN students are responsible for responding to the email and finalizing the advisement appointment. Once the advisement appointment is determined, the advisor will enter the meeting in MS Team Calendar application, which generates an email reminder for both participants. This advisement appointment must be completed prior to the finalization of the student's course schedule for the next semester.
Program Contact Information
Coordinator of Admissions
Nancy Brooks, MA 9845 Cogdill Road, Knoxville, TN 37923 firstname.lastname@example.org (865) 777-5100
RN-BSN Program Director
The Program Director is responsible for the implementation and oversight of the accredited undergraduate RN-BSN program consistent with the mission and goals of the Nursing Department and the University. The Director collaborates with online and campus-based faculty and support resources to foster student success and program effectiveness in distance learning environments.
You may contact the RN-BSN Director if you have unresolved advising issues or questions after you have contacted your faculty advisor.
Kellee Vess, PhD, RN 9845 Cogdill Road, Knoxville, TN 37923 (865) 777- 5109
email@example.com
Associate Dean of Allied Health
Lisa Vesser, PhD, firstname.lastname@example.org
9845 Cogdill Road, Knoxville, TN 37923 (865) 777- 5100
Requirements related to Nursing Curriculum
1. Students must earn a grade of "C" (70%) or above in all general education courses taken to meet Tennessee Wesleyan University's Wesleyan Essentials (WE) requirements.
2. Students must earn a grade of "C" (80%) or above in all nursing courses. A grade of "D" is considered failure of the nursing course. Students who withdraw from a nursing course but desire to continue in the program shall submit an application for readmission within 60 days.
3. A nursing course may be repeated only once if a failing grade is obtained. No more than one nursing course may be repeated. A student must successfully repeat a failed course before taking other nursing courses. A student failing two or more nursing courses is not eligible for readmission to the nursing major.
Program Completion
All RN to BSN students has the option to complete this program within 3 semesters. An accelerated option is available upon request and is available to only those RN students who meet the following criteria:
- Holds an active Tennessee RN License
- Completed all Wesleyan Essential (General Education) requirements, except for a 3-credit hour religion or nutrition course.
Curriculum Plan Option: Traditional (Fall Semester Start)
| Fall (7 cr. hrs.) | | | Spring | Summer | | Fall (9 cr. hrs.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | (5 cr. hrs.) | | | December Grad |
| | NUR 305- Transition | NUR 413 – Community Health | NUR 413 – | NUR 431 | NUR 443 – Nursing Synthesis for the RN | NUR 443 – Nursing |
| | to Professional | | Community | Challenge Exam | | Synthesis for the RN |
| | Nursing Practice | | Health | | | |
| | (1st 7 weeks) | | | | | |
| | NUR 405- Nursing | | | | | |
| | Research (2nd 7 | | | | | |
| | weeks) | | | | | |
| NUR 315 – Professional Issues | NUR 315 – | NUR 416- Community Health Capstone | | HE 263 – Nutrition | | NUR 442/ 451 – |
| | Professional Issues | | | (if Needed) | | Leadership& |
| | | | | R100 or R 207- Religion | | Management for the |
| | | | | Course | | Registered Nurse/ |
| | | | | (if Needed) | | CAPSTONE |
Curriculum Plan Option: Accelerated (Spring Semester Start)
| Fall (12 cr. hrs.) | | December Mini | | | Spring (9 cr. hrs.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | | May Grad |
| | NUR | NUR 301, 303, & 431 Challenge Exams | | NUR 443 – Nursing Synthesis for the RN | |
| | 305- Transition to Professional | | | | |
| | Nursing Practice (1st 7 weeks) | | | | |
| | / | | | | |
| | NUR 405- Nursing Research | | | | |
| | (2nd 7 weeks) | | | | |
| NUR 315 – Professional Issues | | HE 263 – Nutrition (if Needed) | | | NUR 442 – Leadership/ |
| | | | | | Management for the Registered |
| | | | | | Nurse |
| NUR 413 – Community Health | | | R100 or R 207- Religion | | NUR 451 – |
| | | | Course | | Leadership/Management Clinical |
| | | | (if Needed) | | Capstone |
| | NUR 416- Community Health | | | | |
| | Capstone | | | | |
Challenge Exam Policy
RN to BSN students can challenge 12 credit hours of upper-level course curriculum. These courses include NUR 301 Pharmacology, NUR 303 Health Assessment, & NUR 430 Advanced Nursing.
Challenge Requirements: The student will have 2 attempts to achieve 80%. Students must complete all Challenge Exams by the first day of class of the semester the student is planning to graduate. For example, students planning a December (winter) graduation needs to have all challenge exams completed by August prior to the ceremony date. Students planning a May (spring) graduation needs to have all challenge exams completed by January prior to the ceremony date.
Challenge Exam Coordinator: Heather Swift MSN, RN Contact email: email@example.com
NUR 301 Pharmacology (4 credit hours) – The student must pass an instructor made exam or activity at 80% or greater.
NUR 303 Health Assessment (4 credit hours) - The student must pass an instructor made exam or activity at 80% or greater.
The second requirement is the completion of a head-to-toe assessment, which can be done face-to-face with an instructor, or video recorded. The student is responsible for selecting a volunteer patient (18 yrs. or older), recording the assessment, or arranging a time to meet with the instructor.
NUR 430 Advanced Nursing (4 credit hours) – The student must pass an instructor made exam or activity at 80% or greater.
Remediation for unsuccessful challenges will require completion of the following:
* For each topic missed, complete an active learning template and/or identify three critical points to remember.
* Minimum one-hour Focused Review
Example Template for Remediation
Remediation must be completed before the student can complete his/her second attempt. After two unsuccessful attempts, the student will be required to complete designated ATI (Assessment Technologies Institute) learning modules, interactive video case studies, and end of module test questions. Students will be required to pay an ATI student enrollment fee.
Leave of Absence
Students who wish to take a leave of absence from the program must complete the procedure listed in the TWU student handbook and notify the Program Director if his or her intent to initiate a leave of absence.
Class Attendance and Participation
Preparation and active participation are essential to success in this program. Active participation involves reading the assigned material while making notes and freely discussing and deliberating with class members and faculty. It is expected that each student will need to engage in two-way (or more) discussions in order to meet the level of learning that is required for this course. It will be necessary that you examine your own level of learning to ensure that you have met the course objectives. Multiple individual postings are expected.
Each learner is a member of a community of learning and shall demonstrate respect for other members and openness to diverse opinions and perspectives.
Late Assignment Policy
It is vital to your success in this program that you routinely check Sakai (TWU's Learning Management System) course sites to ensure that you are up to date on all announcements, discussions, content, and email messages.
RN students are responsible for notifying the instructor if an assignment is going to be late. Scheduling make-up work is at the discretion of the instructor and requires documentation of extenuating circumstances.
Student should notify the instructor via email at least 24 hours before the assignment due date, provided evidence of extenuation circumstances.
Check email communications daily and respond to instructor's requests regarding assignment make-up arrangements.
Complete assignment within 48 hours of the adjusted due date
Otherwise,
Failure to make up work will result in a 5% reduction of the overall grade each day late. Once an assignment is seven, 7, days late a maximum score to achieve is 50% of total points. Failure to follow this protocol may result in the loss of opportunity to submit work for grading
Exams must be made up must be within 48 hours of due date. Failure to take the exam on, before or within the 48-hour window of the scheduled date will result in a 5% reduction of the exam grade each day late.
Students are expected to participate in all discussion forums. The student is to speak with or email the instructor if he or she is unable to participate in weekly discussion forums. Finally, any requests for special circumstances or arrangements shall be discussed individually with the instructor.
Incomplete Grading Policy
A student may receive a grade of incomplete ("I") if for some reason there is a failure to complete a small portion of the work in a course. In all cases, the student must show that the work cannot be completed due to circumstances beyond the student's control.
A grade of "I" must be removed by mid-term of the succeeding term after the student has taken the course. Otherwise the grade will automatically be changed to an "F". Students are to make up examinations at the convenience of the instructors. In computing the student's average, an incomplete will be considered as an "F" until such time as the incomplete is removed.
Grade Appeal policy can be found in the TWU Academic Catalog
Graduation and Awards for RN to BSN Students
Tennessee Wesleyan University holds a commencement ceremony at the end of the Spring semester and another at the end of Fall semester. All graduates are encouraged to participate. The $100.00 graduation fee is applied to all graduates whether they participate in the ceremony or graduate in absentia.
School Pin $35-$65-$365; Graduation Announcements (Optional); Class Picture (Required).
Recognition of Academic Achievement: Honors students with the highest-grade point averages for completed nursing courses. For this award the top 4 GPA's will be selected.
Outstanding RN-BSN Student Award: Recognizes a well-rounded professional RNBSN student who displays leadership, teamwork, and commitment to core standards of professional nursing practice. Award recipient is selected by classmates.
Professionalism and Lifelong Learning Award: This award recognizes an RN-BSN student who consistently displays the attributes of a life-long learner, is one who realizes the importance of continuing education, and was able to successfully balance work, home, and family life with school responsibilities.
Clinical Requirements
RN students at Tennessee Wesleyan University complete a total of 251 clinical experience hours. Successful completion of these clinical hours for RN students includes a variety of experiences in both direct and indirect patient care settings (e.g., acute care [grand rounds], community health, and leadership settings). Clinical experiences are designed to build knowledge and skills in all three domains of learning: psychomotor, cognitive, and affective. Clinical experiences are supervised in both
clinical capstone courses, with evaluations completed by faculty. TWU's RN to BSN program faculty have developed clinical experiences to build upon previously earned academically/supervised clinical hours, and to provide experiences that focus on the development of competencies in professional communication, managing care as apart of interprofessional teams, clinical reasoning, diversity, population health, informatics, and being a member of a profession.
TWU defines "clinical practice" for the RN student, as any clinical activity or experience, whether through direct or indirect patient contact, that prepares students to care for a variety of patients across the lifespan and across the continuum of care.
Direct Care: "Refers to nursing care activities provided at the point of care to patients or working with other healthcare providers that are intended to achieve specific health goals or achieve selected health outcomes" (AACN, 2012, p. 4).
Indirect Care: "Refers to nursing decisions, actions, or interventions that are provided through or on behalf of patients; these decisions or interventions create the conditions under which nursing care or self-care may occur" (AACN, 2012, p. 5).
| RN to BSN Courses | | Activities and Learning Domain (Psychomotor [P], Affective [A], Cognitive [C]) | | Clinical Hours | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | NUR 303 OL | Demonstration of Head-to-Toe Assessment – (C, P, A) Exam - C | | 10 hours | |
| | Health | | | | |
| | Assessment | | | | |
| | (Challenge) | | | | |
| NUR 431 OL Advanced Nursing (Challenge) | | Unfolding Case Study – (C) | | 10 hours | |
| NUR 305 OL Transition to Nursing Practice | | | Clinical Blog – (C, P, A) | | 10 hours – Clinical Blog Assignment |
| | | | Attend Professional Meeting- (C, A) | | 90 hours – Awarded for previously earned |
| | | | Obtain 3 professional letters verifying current nursing practice | | academically supervised clinical hours. |
| | | | skills (P) | | Validated by 3 recommendation letters and |
| | | | Reflection on current and future clinical competencies (A) | | RN licensure. |
| NUR 405 OL Nursing Research | | Professional EBP Poster Presentation – (C) | | 15 hours - Poster Development 1 hour - Live Presentation | |
| NUR 413 OL Community Health for the RN | | FEMA NIMS Certification – (C) Health Promotion Public Service Announcement (PSA) – (C, P, A) Miss Evers Boys Viewing with Reflective Questions – (C, A) SPENT – (C, A, P) Letter to an Elected Official – (C, A, P) | | | 4 hours – Certification |
| | | | | | 2 hours – Professional Speaking Activity |
| | | | | | 4 hours – Reflection Experience |
| | | | | | 2 hours – Community Health Simulation |
| | | | | | Experience |
| | | | | | 4 hours – Member of the Profession, |
| | | | | | Professional writing experience |
| NUR 416 OL Community Health Capstone | | | Community Assessment, Windshield Survey, Associated | 10 hours – Community Assessment 10 hours – Community Assessment 8 hours – Mobile Meals 4 hours – Supermarket Assignment | 10 hours – Community Assessment |
| | | | Pamphlet, Plan of Care- (C, P, A) | | 10 hours – Community Assessment |
| | | | Art Mural Project, Community Assessment – (C, A) | | 8 hours – Mobile Meals |
| | | | Mobile Meals Assignment Experience – (C, P, A) | | 4 hours – Supermarket Assignment |
| | | | Supermarket Experience – (C, P, A) | | |
| | | | Clinical Evaluation – (Completed by instructor) | | |
| NUR 451 OL Leadership and Management for the RN Capstone | Virtual Clinical Experience (C, P, A) | | 1 hours -Simulation Experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| | Resume Writing – (C, A) | | 7 hours – Resume building/writing |
| | e-Portfolio – (C, A) | | 12 hours – e-Portfolio |
| | Grand Rounds Clinical Capstone Project (C, P, A) | | 30 hours – Grand Rounds Clinical Capstone |
| | Clinical Evaluation (Completed by instructor) | | Project |
| TOTAL | | 251 Clinical Experience Hours | |
E-Portfolio
In this assignment you will create an electronic portfolio (e-portfolio) for yourself. Accessible via the internet, your e-portfolio, will not only provide samples of your work but also highlight to potential employers your skills and accomplishments. It will also give you a chance to reflect on your achievements in the program and organize your thoughts about the knowledge, skills, and experience you bring to an organization as a prospective employee. Such reflections will aid you in communicating your strengths to prospective employers as you set out to further your career in nursing.
What is an E-Portfolio?
A portfolio is primarily a collection of an individual's work compiled over time. An eportfolio presents the individual's works in electronic format. Files can be in HTML, pdf or other formats readily viewable in the internet environment.
Why Create an E-Portfolio?
"Creating a professional online presence is now more important than ever. A 2007, poll indicated that at least a quarter of all employers conduct an Internet search of job candidates before hiring them. A recent survey also found that 72% of companies plan to increase their use of social networks for job recruiting. If employers are searching the Internet for information about you, give them a professionally created website that will increase your chances of getting a job" (Dewane, p. 269).
Requirements:
Each student is required to create an electronic portfolio, have it open to the public for viewing and upload URL in the discussion board forum for faculty and student viewing. The portfolio should include, but is not limited to:
* About Me/Personal Page
* Nursing Philosophy Page
* Courses Page: courses you have taken in the RN-BSN Program (with course leaning outcomes (CLOs) listed)
o You may opt to add courses from your ADN program if you desire-however CLOs would need to be listed-easily obtained from your college/university library
* Curricular activities
o You may also elect to imbed links of assignments in the CLO sections and omit the curricular activities page.
- Examples of assignments to imbed: Clinical Practice Blog, Article Critique Assignment, EBP Proposal, Clinical Projects, Patient- Centered Educational Materials, etc.
* Resume
* Contact me page (a google number a great option to utilize instead of listing number online)
If you have a LinkedIn, feel free to list as well. Photographs of yourself (head shot) that you feel will increase your value to a prospective employer may also be included but are not required.
I recommend the site https://www.wix.com/ to build your portfolio. There are numerous platforms to utilize; some are free, some are not. I do not require a specific website to use-however Wix is user friendly without the need for coding. Here is a brief tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYwJ8At-wgs. I do encourage you to watch, as you should be keeping this portfolio and utilizing it in career advancement.
Evaluation:
See rubric attached, however your e-portfolio should have a professional appearance. It should be free of spelling and grammatical errors. Your portfolio should be visually uncluttered and well-organized. It should be easily navigated. Links should be clearly marked and work. Headings should be descriptive. Graphics should be appropriate for the content of the page.
Examples:
https://jrk0023.wixsite.com/eportfolio2 https://mac00740.wixsite.com/mysite
My hope is that you will continue to build on your portfolio as you excel and advance in your career and utilize it not only as class assignment
Appendix A: Scholarly Writing & APA Style Rubric
Effective writing skills are essential for today's professional nurse to thrive in an everchanging health care environment and to succeed in an advanced practice role (Oermann et al., 2014; Trenary & Farrar, 2016). Therefore, TWU-FSN's RN to BSN program will utilize the following Professional Writing Rubric (PWR) for all paper and major project assigned throughout the program.
| Criteria | Excellent | Good (- 1pt./ category) | Needs | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Improvement | (- 3 pts./ |
| | | | (- 2 pts./ | category) |
| | | | category) | |
| Criteria | Excellent | Good (- 1 pt./ category) | | Needs | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | Improvement | (- 3 pts./ |
| | | | | (- 2 pts./ | category) |
| | | | | category) | |
| References & Citations | ___ References on separate titled page (centered) ___ In correct APA format (all information included and appropriate for type of source) ___ Listed alphabetically ___ Hanging indent ___ Each source is cited at least once, and all cited sources are included in references ___ All citations complete and correctly applied | ___References on separate titled page (centered) ___ Not all in correct APA format (all information included and appropriate for type of source) ___ Less than the following (listed alphabetically; hanging indent; each source is cited at least once, and all cited sources are included in references, citations complete and correct) | ___References present but significantly incomplete, unclear or otherwise minimally acceptable | | |
| Criteria | Excellent | Good (- 1 pt./ category) | | Needs | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | Improvement | (- 3 pts./ |
| | | | | (- 2 pts./ | category) |
| | | | | category) | |
| Writing Mechanics (standard grammar, spelling, punctuation, and usage) | ___ Assignment is at least checked using word processing spelling and grammar tools ___ Assignment is also checked visually for errors not detected electronically ___ Syntax, grammar, spelling, punctuation, usage, mechanics, organization, and clarity are at the highest level | ___Assignment is at least checked using word processing spelling and grammar tools ___ Few to several issues with writing mechanics | ___Assignment shows evidence of minimal review for spelling and grammar errors ___ Multiple issues with writing mechanics | | |
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New Acquisitions List
April 2022
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Rhonda V. Magee ; foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The inner work of racial justice : healing ourselves and transforming our communities through mindfulness
First trade paperback edition
[New York] : TarcherPerigree, 2021
xiv, 353 pages ; 21 cm
HT 1523 M325 2021
Suzanne Linder and Elizabeth Majerus, editors
Can I teach that? : negotiating taboo language and controversial topics in the language arts classroom
Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2016]
xiii, 153 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
LB 1631 C365 2016
Kristin Souers with Pete Hall
Fostering resilient learners : strategies for creating a trauma-sensitive classroom
Alexandria, VA : ASCD, [2016]
xiv, 215 pages ; 23 cm
LC 4181 .S68 2016
Christopher C. Madden, Margot Putukian, Eric C. McCarty, Craig Young, editors ; illustrations by Frank H. Netter ; contributing illustrators, Carlos A. G. Machado, John A. Craig, Kristen
Wienandt Marzejon, Tiffany S. DaVanzo, James A. Perkins
Netter's sports medicine
Third edition
Philadelphia, PA : Elsevier, [2023]
1 online resource : illustrations (chiefly color), digital, HTML files
QT 261 N474 2023 EB
Bradley A. Boucher, editor-in-chief ; Peter A. Chyka, associate editor, Andrea S. Franks, associate editor, Robert B. Parker, associate editor
The APhA complete review for the foreign pharmacy graduate equivalency examination
Second edition
Washington, D.C. : American Pharmacists Association, [2018]
1 online resource (xv, 547 pages) : illustrations, digital, HTML files
QV 18.2 A64h 2018 EB
Andrea S. Franks, editor-in-chief ; J. Aubrey Waddell, Bradley A. Boucher, Nancy D. BorjaHart, associate editors
The APhA complete review for pha rm
acy
Thirteenth edition
Washington, D.C. : American Pharmacists Association, [2022]
1 online resource (xx, 1200 pages) : illustrations, digital, HTML files
QV 18.2 A641 2022 EB
Bradley A. Boucher, editor-in-chief ; Peter A. Chyka, associate editor, Andrea S. Franks, associate editor, Robert B. Parker, associate editor
The complete PCOA® review
Washington, D.C. : APhA Publications, [2020]
xiii, 547 pages : illustrations 28 cm
QV 18.2 C66 2020
Kent R. Olson, Craig G. Smollin, Ilene B. Anderson, Neal L. Benowitz, Paul D. Blanc, Susan Y. Kim-Katz, Justin C. Lewis and, Alan H. B. Wu, editors
Poisoning & drug overdose
Eighth edition
[New York] : McGraw-Hill Education, [2022]
1 online resource : illustrations, digital, HTML files
QV 600 P754 2022 EB
Appian Subramoniam
Plants with anti-Diabetes Mellit
us prop
erties
Paperback edition
Boca Raton, Florida : CRC Press, 2020
xiii, 591 pages : black & white photographs ; 26 cm
QV 760 S83 2020
Fred F. Ferri
Ferri's best test : a practical guide to clinical laboratory medicine and diagnostic imaging
Fifth edition
Philadelphia : Elsevier, [2023]
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QY 39 F388 2023 EB
Kathleen Deska Pagana, Timothy J. Pagana, Theresa N. Pagana
Mosby's manual of diagnostic and laboratory tests
Seventh edition
St. Louis, Missouri : Elsevier, [2022]
xxiii, 1174 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm
QY 39 P128m 2022
Hagop M. Kantarjian, Robert A. Wolff, Alyssa G. Rieber, editors
The MD Anderson manual of medical oncology
Fourth edition
New York : McGraw Hill Education, [2022]
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QZ 200 K139 2022 EB
Suleika Jaouad
Between two kingdoms : a memoir of a life interrupted
Random House trade paperback edition
New York : Random House, [2022]
x, 348 pages : map ; 20 cm
RC 643 J35 2021
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Sara E. Wilensky, Joel B. Teitelbaum
Essentials of health policy and law
Fourth edition
Burlington, Massachusetts : Jones & Bartlett Learning, [2020]
xix, 350 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm
WA 33 AA1 T235 2020
Robert P. Olympia, Jeffrey S. Lubin
Prehospital emergency medicine secrets
Philadelphia, PA : Elsevier, [2022]
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WB 18.2 P923 2022 EB
Catherine Musemeche
Hurt : the inspiring, untold story of trauma care
Lebanon, NH : ForeEdge, [2016]
250 pages ; 23 cm
WB 105 M87 2016
John T. Riehl
Tibial plateau fractures
Amsterdam : Elsevier, [2023]
1 online resource : illustrations, digital, HTML files
WE 180 R54 2023 EB
Richard Van Praagh
Congenital heart disease : aclinical, pathological, embryological, and segmental analysis
Philadephia, PA : Elsevier, [2023]
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Philadephia, PA : Elsevier, [2023]
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WG 220 V36 2023 EB
William F. Young, Irina Bancos
Adrenal disorders : 100 cases from the adrenal clinic
Philadelphia, PA : Elsevier, 2022
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WK 760 Y58 2022 EB
David Myland Kaufman, Howard L. Geyer, Mark J. Milstein and Jillian L. Rosengard
Kaufman's clinical neurology for psychiatrists
Ninth edition
Philadelphia : Elsevier, [2023]
1 online resource : digital, HTML files
WL 141 K162 2023 EB
American Psychiatric Association
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders : DSM-5-TR
Fifth edition, text revision
Washington, DC : American Psychiatric Association Publishing, [2022]
1 online resource : digital, HTML files
WM 15 D536t 2022 EB
John F. Butterworth IV, David C. Mackey, John D. Wasnick
Morgan & Mikhail's clinical anesthesiology
Seventh edition
New York : McGraw Hill, [2022]
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WO 200 M821 2022 EB
Carol Soutor, Maria K. Hordinsky, editors
Clinical dermatology : diagnosis and management of common disorders
Second edition
[New York] : McGraw-Hill, [2022]
1 online resource : color illustrations, digital, HTML files
WR 140 C68 2022 EB
Maya Bunik, William W. Hay, Myron J. Levin, Mark J. Abzug, editors
Current diagnosis & treatment: pediatrics
Twenty-sixth edition
[New York] : McGraw-Hill Education, [2022]
1 online resource : illustrations, digital, HTML files
WS 141 C976 2022 EB
Robert M. Kliegman, Heather Toth, Brett J. Bordini and Donald Basel
Nelson pediatric symptom-based diagnosis
Second edition
Philadelphia, PA : Elsevier, [2023]
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WS 141 N45 2023 EB
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Endoscopic craniosynostosis surgery : an illustrated guide to endoscopic techniques
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Holistic health for adolescents : how yoga, aromatherapy, teas, and more can help you get and stay well
First edition
New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2016]
xxviii, 258 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm
WS 350 N55 2016
Jeffrey B. Halter, Joseph G. Ouslander, Stephanie Studenski, Kevin P. High, Sanjay Asthana,
Mark A. Supiano, Christine Ritchie, Kenneth Schmader, editors
Hazzard's geriatric medicine and gerontology
Eighth edition
New York : McGraw Hill, [2022]
1 online resource : digital, HTML files
WT 100 H339 2022 EB
Derald E. Brackmann, Clough Shelton, Moisés A. Arriaga, editors ; associate editor, Richard K. Gurgel
Otologic surgery
Fifth edition
Philadelphia, PA : Elsevier, [2023]
1 online resource : illustrations (some color), digital, HTML files
WV 200 O86 2023 EB
Janice A. Gault
Ophthalmology secrets
Fifth edition
Amsterdam : Elsevier, [2023]
1 online resource : illustrations, digital, HTML files
WW 18.2 O612 2023 EB
Harold A. Stein, Raymond M. Stein, Melvin I. Freeman, Rebecca L. Stein
The ophthalmic assistant : a te xt for a llied and associated ophthalmic personnel
Eleventh edition
Philadelphia, PA : Elsevier, 2021
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WW 21.5 S78 2021 EB
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Fred G. Weissman
A guide to California community pharmacy law 2020-2023
Tenth edition
[Brainerd, MN] : Weissman, [2020]
2 volumes (xviii, 671 pages) ; 22 cm
QV 732 AC2 W438 2020
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American Psychiatric Association
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders : DSM-5-TR
Fifth edition, text revision
Washington, DC : American Psychiatric Association Publishing, 2022
lxix, 1050 pages ; 26 cm
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E. B. Jamieson
The complete set of illustrations of regional anatomy
Eighth edition
Edinburgh : E. & S. Livingstone, [1959-61]
7 volumes, pages of color plates ; 21 cm
QS 17 J32i 1959
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|
Baltimore, MD
Birmingham, AL
Little Rock, AR
*
*
ABA FORUM ON THE CONSTRUCTION INDUST RY
THE Construction Contracts Program:
Understanding and Negotiating the Critical Clauses in the Industry Form Documents
November 3, 2011
Pittsburgh, PA Seattle, WA
S E RVING THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY THROUGH EDUCATION,
LEADERSHIP AND FELLOWSHIP OF CONSTRUCTION LAW Y E R S
This Program has been approved for AIA Learning Units (7hours).
2011 REGIONAL PROGRAM
THE Construction Contracts Program:
Understanding and Negotiating the Critical Clauses in the Industry Form Documents
On November 3, 2011, in five cities across the country, the ABA Forum on the Construction Industry will present THE Construction Contracts Program: Understanding and Negotiating the Critical Clauses in the Industry Form Documents.
Taught by experienced construction attorneys in each locale, this program addresses key contractual issues that commonly arise between and among Owners, Contractors, Subcontractors and Design Professionals. The key issues are examined in the context of the standard form contracts used most in the industry (AIA, EJCDC and the ConsensusDOCS). The program will provide a background discussion of each key topic, identify critical issues, provide a comparison between the form contracts and recommend alternative clauses for the practitioner or industry professional to consider when drafting, negotiating, or interpreting contracts.
This affordable and accessible program is designed to provide an exceptional training o p p o rtunity for lawyers and non-lawyers alike, whether they are experienced practitioners/industry professionals looking for a "crash" course on the industry form documents, or contract novices, recently focusing on issues confronting the c o n s t ruction and design industries. Tuition for the program includes the Foru m publication THE Construction Contracts Book: How to Find Common Ground in Negotiating Design and Construction Contract Clauses, Second Edition. (retail value of $189.99), lunch on site and a full day seminar.
Leadership
Program Co-Chair
David A. Scotti Hergenroeder Rega Scotti Ewing & Kennedy, LLC, Pittsburgh, PA
Program Co-Chair
Andrea G. Woods
Nabholz Construction Corporation, Conway, AR
Governing Committee Liaison
Susan Fisher Stevens
Sprint Law Department, Overland Park, KS
ABA Liaison
Amanda Wynn Raible ABA Forum on the Construction Industry Chicago, IL
Regional Coordinator
Arlan D. Lewis Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, LLP Birmingham, AL
Regional Coordinator
Michael P. O'Day DLA Piper LLP, Baltimore, MD
Regional Coordinator
Karl F. Oles Stoel Rives LLP, Seattle, WA
Regional Coordinator
John M. Tedder Sherrard, German & Kelly, PC, Pittsburgh, PA
Regional Coordinator
Richard R. Newland, Jr. Newland & Associates PLLC Little Rock, AR
Baltimore, MD Matt Crafton Locations and Speakers
The Engineers Club
11 West Mount Vernon Place Baltimore, MD 21201
Crafton, Tull & Associates, Inc., Rogers, AR
Dwayne Shelton
Risk Services of Arkansas, Little Rock, AR
Sponsor:
Nautilus Consulting, LLC
Bethesda, MD
Speakers:
Howard G. Goldberg
Goldberg, Besche & Banks, PC, Baltimore, MD
Joseph C. Kovars
Ober, Kaler, Baltimore, MD
Scott E. Barat
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, McLean, VA
Anthony L. Meagher
DLA Piper LLP, Baltimore, MD
Tracy L. Steedman
Niles, Barton & Wilmer, LLP, Baltimore, MD
Robert F. Carney
Whiteford Taylor Preston, LLP, Baltimore, MD
John M. Cook
Smith Pachter McWhorter, PLC, Vienna, VA
Birmingham, AL
Renaissance Ross Bridge Hotel & Resort
4000 Grand Avenue, Birmingham, AL 3522 Sponsors:
Loeke & Brill Consulting Group
Rochester, NY
Rimkus Consulting Group, Inc.
Houston, TX
Speakers:
Douglas E. Eckert
Hoar Construction, LLC, Birmingham, AL
A.H. “Nick” Gaede Bainbridge, Mims, Rogers & Smith, LLP, Birmingham, AL
Rhonda Caviedes Marshall
Andrews Meyers, PC, Houston, TX
Edward P. Meyerson
Baker Donelson, Birmingham, AL
Luther Graves "Gray" Stiff
Starnes Davis Florie LLP, Birmingham, AL
J. David Pugh
Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, Birmingham, AL
Oscar M. Price, III
Wallace, Jordan, Ratliff & Brandt, LLC, Birmingham, AL
Little Rock, AR
Clinton Presidential Library
1200 President Clinton Avenue
Little Rock, AR, 72201
Sponsors:
Arkansas Contractors Licensing Board
Little Rock, AR
Speakers:
Cyril Hollingsworth
Dover Dixon Horne PLLC, Little Rock, AR
Professor Carl J. Circo
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
Todd Lewis
Conner & Winters LLP, Fayetteville, AR
Joel F. Hoover Newland & Associates, PLLC, Little Rock, AR
John Dewey Watson
ADR, Inc., Little Rock, AR
Pittsburgh, PA
Consol Energy Center, Lexus
1001 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Sponsors:
Precise, Inc.
Pittsburgh, PA
The Simplex Group
Pittsburgh, PA
Speakers:
D. Matthew Jameson
Babst, Calland, Clements & Zomnir, PC, Pittsburgh, PA
Kevin J. McKeon
Watt, Tieder, Hoffar & Fitzgerald, LLP, McLean, VA
Mark F. Nowak Thorp Reed & Armstrong, Pittsburgh, PA
Scott D. Cessar Eckert Seamans LLC, Pittsburgh, PA
David Raves
Maiello, Brungo & Maiello, LLP, Pittsburgh, PA
Joseph L. Luciana, III
Dingess, Foster, Luciana, Davidson & Chieboski, LLP, Pittsburgh, PA
Edward B. Gentilcore
Duane Morris, LLP, Philadelphia, PA
Seattle, WA
Washington Athletic Club
1325 Sixth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101
Sponsors:
ARCADIS
Highlands Ranch, CO
FTI Consulting
Seattle, WA
Speakers:
Kenneth G. Yalowitz
Green & Yalowitz, PLLC, Seattle, WA
Brian W. Esler
Miller Nash, LLP, Seattle, WA
Stevan D. Phillips
Stoel Rives, LLP, Seattle, WA
Arnold R. Hedeen
Hedeen & Caditz, PLLC, Seattle, WA
Richard O. Prentke
Perkins Coie LLP, Seattle, WA
Thomas H. Wolfendale
K&L Gates LLP, Seattle, WA
Stanton P. Beck
Lane Powell PC, Seattle, WA
John P. Ahlers
Ahlers & Cressman PLLC, Seattle, WA
Douglas S. Oles Oles Morrison Rinker & Baker, LLP, Seattle, WA
Bruce P. Babbitt Jameson Babbitt Stites & Lombard, PLLC, Seattle, WA
Alan B. Bornstein
Jameson Babbitt Stites & Lombard, PLLC, Seattle, WA
Program Schedule
Conference Info
ADVANCE REGISTRATION
Please complete and return the attached registration form with your payment by OCTOBER 24, 2011. Conference registrations will only be accepted when accompanied by a check, Visa, American Express or MasterCard information. Credit card registrations may be FAXED directly to the ABA at 312-988-5677. Registrations cannot be held without payment.
ON SITE REGISTRATION
On site registration is available for those persons who missed the registration deadline. If you plan to register at the door, you must call (312) 988-5678, 72 hours before the conference to confirm that space is still available. Failure to call in advance may result in not being admitted to a sold out program. On site registration will only be accepted when accompanied by a check, Visa, American Express or MasterCard information. Registrations will not be accepted without payment.
REGISTRATION CONFIRMATION
If you do not receive a written confirmation by October 25, 2011, please call the ABA at (312) 9885678 to verify that your registration form and check were received. Failure to call in advance of the program may result in not being admitted.
TUITION
Tuition includes admission to the program, coffee breaks, lunch, one set of program course materials. Lunch is limited to registrants, faculty and members of the press.
CANCELLATION POLICY
No refunds will be granted for cancellations received after OCTOBER 24, 2011. To receive a refund, minus a $50 administrative fee, cancellations must be made IN WRITING and RECEIVED on or before OCTOBER 24, 2011. Registrants who are unable to attend may send a substitute or receive course materials in lieu of a refund. The ABA reserves the right to cancel any program, and assumes no responsibility for personal expenses.
CLE CREDIT
ABA programs ordinarily receive CLE credit in AK,AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, DE, FL, GA, GU, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, ME, MN, MS, MO, MT, NH, NM, NV, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC,TN,TX, UT,VT,VA,VI,WA, WI, WV, and WY. These states sometimes do not approve a program for credit before the program occurs.This course is expected to qualify for 6.16 CLE credit hours in 60-minute-hour states, and 7.4 credit hours in 50-minute-hour states. This transitional program is approved for both newly admitted and experienced attorneys in NY.
AIA LEARNING UNITS
This program has been approved for AIA Learning Units (7 hours).
TAX DEDUCTION FOR EDUCATIONAL EXPENSES
In the United States, an income tax deduction may be allowed for educational expenses undertaken to maintain or improve professional skills. This includes registration fees, t r a v e l , m e a l s, and lodging expenses. (see Treas. Reg. 1.162-5) (Coughlin vs. Commissioner 203 F 2d 307).
CELL PHONE POLICY
As a courtesy to speakers and attendees, we request that all cell phones be turned off in the meeting rooms.
ABA Forum on the Construction Industry
2011 REGIONAL PROGRAM: THE Construction Contracts Program:
Understanding and Negotiating the Critical Clauses in the Industry Form Documents
Registration Form
Please print or type
Advanced Registration Deadline: October 24, 2011
2. REGISTRATION FEES:
General Attendees:
______ @ $210
General Attendees after 10/24/11:
______ @ $240
Please choose which city you will attend:
Baltimore Birmingham Little Rock Pittsburgh Seattle
Please note: We have kept the price as low as possible. Coupons cannot be used for the Contracts program.
3. TOTAL PAYMENT:
Total
$____________
4. PAYMENT INFORMATION:
Check (made payable to ABA)
MasterCard American Express VISA
Credit Card Number _________________________________________ Expiration Date___________
Signature_________________________________________________________________________
1. REGISTRANT INFORMATION:
Last Name
First Name
M.I.
(Name as you wish it to appear on attendee list & name badge)
ABA Member ID#
Firm/Company/Agency
Address
City
State
Zip
(Area Code) Business Phone Number
(Area Code) Business Fax Number
E-mail Address
Questions? Call (312) 988-5678
5. THREE WAYS TO REGISTER:
ONLINE:
www.americanbar.org/groups/construction_industry.html
MAIL:
American Bar Association FORUM ON THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY Mailstop 18.2 321 N Clark Street Chicago, IL 60654
FAX:
|
Version 2.4.2
TitleCombinatorial Efficient Global Optimization
AuthorMartin Zaefferer<email@example.com>
MaintainerMartin Zaefferer<firstname.lastname@example.org>
Description
Model building, surrogate model based optimization and Efficient Global Optimization in combinatorial
or mixed search spaces.
LicenseGPL (>= 3)
TypePackage
LazyLoad yes
DependsR (>= 3.0.0)
ImportsMASS, stats, DEoptim, graphics, quadprog, Matrix, methods,
ParamHelpers, fastmatch
Suggests nloptr
ByteCompileTRUE
Date2021-05-13
RoxygenNote7.1.1
EncodingUTF-8
NeedsCompilation yes
RepositoryCRAN
Date/Publication2021-05-13 17:02:12 UTC
R topics documented:
benchmarkGeneratorTSP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Package 'CEGO'
May 13, 2021
CEGO-package
3
Combinatorial Efficient Global Optimization in R
Description
Combinatorial Efficient Global Optimization
Details
Model building, surrogate model based optimization and Efficient Global Optimization in combinatorial or mixed search spaces. This includes methods for distance calculation, modeling and handling of indefinite kernels/distances.
Package: CEGO
Type:
Package
Version: 2.4.2
Date:
2021-05-13
License: GPL (>= 3)
LazyLoad: yes
Acknowledgments
This work has been partially supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the grants CIMO (FKZ 17002X11) and MCIOP (FKZ 17N0311).
Author(s)
Martin Zaefferer <email@example.com>
References
Zaefferer, Martin; Stork, Joerg; Friese, Martina; Fischbach, Andreas; Naujoks, Boris; Bartz-Beielstein, Thomas. (2014). Efficient global optimization for combinatorial problems. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation (GECCO '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 871-878. DOI=10.1145/2576768.2598282
Zaefferer, Martin; Stork, Joerg; Bartz-Beielstein, Thomas. (2014). Distance Measures for Permutations in Combinatorial Efficient Global Optimization. In Parallel Problem Solving from Nature PPSN XIII (p. 373-383). Springer International Publishing.
Zaefferer, Martin and Bartz-Beielstein, Thomas (2016). Efficient Global Optimization with Indefinite Kernels. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN XIV. Accepted, in press. Springer.
See Also
Interface of main function: optimCEGO
Create Flow shop Scheduling Problem (FSP) Benchmark
Description
Creates a benchmark function for the Flow shop Scheduling Problem.
Usage
Arguments
Value
the function of type cost=f(permutation)
See Also
benchmarkGeneratorQAP, benchmarkGeneratorTSP, benchmarkGeneratorWT
Examples
MaxCut Benchmark Creation
Description
Generates MaxCut problems, with binary decision variables. The MaxCut Problems are transformed to minimization problems by negation.
Usage
Arguments
length of the bit strings
The adjacency matrix of the graph. Will be created at random if not provided.
Value
the function of type cost=f(bitstring). Returned fitness values will be negative, for purpose of minimization.
Examples
NK-Landscape Benchmark Creation
Description
Function that generates a NK-Landscapes.
Usage
Arguments
columns.
Value
the function of type cost=f(bitstring). Returned fitness values will be negative, for purpose of minimization.
Create Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) Benchmark
Description
Creates a benchmark function for the Quadratic Assignment Problem.
Usage
Arguments
distance matrix
flow matrix
Value
the function of type cost=f(permutation)
See Also
benchmarkGeneratorFSP, benchmarkGeneratorTSP, benchmarkGeneratorWT
Create (Asymmetric) Travelling Salesperson Problem (TSP) Benchmark
Description
Creates a benchmark function for the (Asymmetric) Travelling Salesperson Problem. Path (Do not return to start of tour. Start and end of tour not fixed.) or Cycle (Return to start of tour). Symmetry depends on supplied distance matrix.
Usage
Arguments
```
distanceMatrix Matrix that collects the distances between travelled locations. Can be "Cycle" (return to start, default) or "Path" (no return to start).
```
Value
the function of type cost=f(permutation)
See Also
benchmarkGeneratorQAP, benchmarkGeneratorFSP, benchmarkGeneratorWT
```
Create single-machine total Weighted Tardiness (WT) Problem Benchmark
```
Description
Creates a benchmark function for the single-machine total Weighted Tardiness Problem.
Usage
Arguments
processing times weights
due dates
Value
the function of type cost=f(permutation)
See Also
benchmarkGeneratorQAP, benchmarkGeneratorTSP, benchmarkGeneratorFSP
Correcting Conditional Negative Semi-Definiteness
Description
Correcting, e.g., a distance matrix with chosen methods so that it becomes a CNSD matrix.
Usage
Arguments
symmetric matrix, which should be at least of size 3x3
string that specifies method for correction: spectrum clip "clip", spectrum flip "flip", nearest definite matrix "near", spectrum square"square", spectrum diffusion "diffusion".
torelance value. Eigenvalues between -tol and tol are assumed to be zero.
Value
the corrected CNSD matrix
References
Martin Zaefferer and Thomas Bartz-Beielstein. (2016). Efficient Global Optimization with Indefinite Kernels. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN XIV. Accepted, in press. Springer.
See Also
Correcting Definiteness of a Matrix
Description
Correcting a (possibly indefinite) symmetric matrix with chosen approach so that it will have desired definiteness type: positive or negative semi-definite (PSD, NSD).
Usage
Arguments
Value
list with mat corrected matrix
isIndefinite boolean, whether original matrix was indefinite lambda the eigenvalues of the original matrix
lambdanew the eigenvalues of the corrected matrix
U
the matrix of eigenvectors a the transformation vector
References
Martin Zaefferer and Thomas Bartz-Beielstein. (2016). Efficient Global Optimization with Indefinite Kernels. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN XIV. Accepted, in press. Springer.
See Also
Examples
Correction of a Distance Matrix
Description
Convert (possibly non-euclidean or non-metric) distance matrix with chosen approach so that it becomes a CNSD matrix. Optionally, the resulting matrix is enforced to have positive elements and zero diagonal, with the repair parameter. Essentially, this is a combination of functions correctionDefinite or correctionCNSD with repairConditionsDistanceMatrix.
Usage
Arguments
Value
list with corrected distance matrix mat, isCNSD (boolean, whether original matrix was CNSD) and transformation matrix A.
References
Martin Zaefferer and Thomas Bartz-Beielstein. (2016). Efficient Global Optimization with Indefinite Kernels. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN XIV. Accepted, in press. Springer.
See Also
correctionDefinite,correctionCNSD,repairConditionsDistanceMatrix
Examples
Correction of a Kernel (Correlation) Matrix
Description
Convert a non-PSD kernel matrix with chosen approach so that it becomes a PSD matrix. Optionally, the resulting matrix is enforced to have values between -1 and 1 and a diagonal of 1s, with the repair parameter. That means, it is (optionally) converted to a valid correlation matrix. Essentially, this is a combination of correctionDefinite with repairConditionsCorrelationMatrix.
Usage
Arguments
Value
list with corrected kernel matrix mat, isPSD (boolean, whether original matrix was PSD), transformation matrix A, the matrix of eigenvectors (U) and the transformation vector (a)
References
Martin Zaefferer and Thomas Bartz-Beielstein. (2016). Efficient Global Optimization with Indefinite Kernels. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN XIV. Accepted, in press. Springer.
See Also
```
correctionDefinite, repairConditionsCorrelationMatrix
```
Examples
Simulation-based Test Function Generator, Object Interface
Description
Generate test functions for assessment of optimization algorithms with non-conditional or conditional simulation, based on real-world data. For a more streamlined interface, see testFunctionGeneratorSim.
Usage
Arguments
whether (TRUE) or not (FALSE) to use conditional simulation a random number generator seed. Defaults to NA; which means no seed is set.
For sake of reproducibility, set this to some integer value.
Value
a list of functions, where each function is the interpolation of one simulation realization. The length of the list depends on the nsim parameter.
References
N. A. Cressie. Statistics for Spatial Data. JOHN WILEY & SONS INC, 1993.
C. Lantuejoul. Geostatistical Simulation - Models and Algorithms. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2002.
Zaefferer, M.; Fischbach, A.; Naujoks, B. & Bartz-Beielstein, T. Simulation Based Test Functions for Optimization Algorithms Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2017, ACM, 2017, 8.
See Also
modelKriging, simulate.modelKriging, testFunctionGeneratorSim
Calculate Distance Matrix
Description
Calculate the distance between all samples in a list, and return as matrix.
Usage
Arguments
list of samples, where each list element is a suitable input for distFun
Value
The distance matrix
Examples
Hamming Distance for Vectors
Description
The number of unequal elements of two vectors (which may be of unequal length), divided by the number of elements (of the larger vector).
Usage
Arguments
first vector second vector
Value
numeric distance value
, scaled to values between 0 and 1
Examples
d(x, y)
Longest Common Substring for Numeric Vectors
Description
Longest common substring distance for two numeric vectors, e.g., bit vectors.
Usage
Arguments
```
first vector (numeric) second vector (numeric)
```
Value
```
numeric distance value
```
```
d(x, y) , scaled to values between 0 and 1
```
Examples
Levenshtein Distance for Numeric Vectors
Description
Levenshtein distance for two numeric vectors, e.g., bit vectors.
Usage
Arguments
```
first vector (numeric) second vector (numeric)
```
Value
```
numeric distance value d(x, y , scaled to values between 0 and 1
```
```
)
```
Examples
Adjacency Distance for Permutations
Description
Bi-directional adjacency distance for permutations, depending on how often two elements are neighbours in both permutations x and y.
Usage
Arguments
```
first permutation (integer vector) second permutation (integer vector)
```
Value
numeric distance value
d(x, y)
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Sevaux, Marc, and Kenneth Soerensen. "Permutation distance measures for memetic algorithms with population management." Proceedings of 6th Metaheuristics International Conference (MIC'05). 2005.
Reeves, Colin R. "Landscapes, operators and heuristic search." Annals of Operations Research 86 (1999): 473-490.
Examples
Chebyshev Distance for Permutations
Description
Chebyshev distance for permutations. Specific to permutations is only the scaling to values of 0 to 1:
where n is the length of the permutations x and y.
Usage
Arguments
Value
numeric distance value
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
Examples
Cosine Distance for Permutations
Description
The Cosine distance for permutations is derived from the Cosine similarity measure which has been applied in fields like text mining. It is based on the scalar product of two vectors (here: permutations).
Usage
Arguments
first permutation (integer vector)
second permutation (integer vector)
Value
```
numeric distance value d(x, y)
```
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Singhal, Amit (2001)."Modern Information Retrieval: A Brief Overview". Bulletin of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Data Engineering 24 (4): 35-43
Euclidean Distance for Permutations
Description
Euclidean distance for permutations, scaled to values between 0 and 1:
where n is the length of the permutations x and y, and scaling factor r = sqrt(2 ∗ 4 ∗ n ∗ (n + 1) ∗ (2 ∗ n + 1)/6) (if n is odd) or r = sqrt(2 ∗ n ∗ (2 ∗ n − 1) ∗ (2 ∗ n + 1)/3) (if n is even).
Usage
Arguments
first permutation (integer vector)
second permutation (integer vector)
Value
numeric distance value
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
Hamming Distance for Permutations
Description
Hamming distance for permutations, scaled to values between 0 and 1. That is, the number of unequal elements of two permutations, divided by the permutations length.
Usage
Arguments
```
first permutation (integer vector)
```
second permutation (integer vector)
Value
```
numeric distance value d(x, y)
```
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
Examples
Insert Distance for Permutations
Description
The Insert Distance is an edit distance. It counts the minimum number of delete/insert operations required to transform one permutation into another. A delete/insert operation shifts one element to a new position. All other elements move accordingly to make place for the element. E.g., the following shows a single delete/insert move that sorts the corresponding permutation: 1 4 2 3 5 -> 1 2 3 4 5.
Usage
Arguments
```
first permutation (integer vector) second permutation (integer vector)
```
Value
```
numeric distance value d(x, y)
```
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Schiavinotto, Tommaso, and Thomas Stuetzle. "A review of metrics on permutations for search landscape analysis." Computers & operations research 34.10 (2007): 3143-3153.
Wikipedia contributors, "Longest increasing subsequence", Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 12 November 2014, 19:38 UTC, [accessed 13 November 2014]
Examples
Interchange Distance for Permutations
Description
The interchange distance is an edit-distance, counting how many edit operation (here: interchanges, i.e., transposition of two arbitrary elements) have to be performed to transform permutation x into permutation y.
Usage
Arguments
```
first permutation (integer vector) second permutation (integer vector)
```
Value
```
numeric distance value d(x, y
```
)
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Schiavinotto, Tommaso, and Thomas Stuetzle. "A review of metrics on permutations for search landscape analysis." Computers & operations research 34.10 (2007): 3143-3153.
Examples
Longest Common Substring Distance for Permutations
Description
Distance of permutations. Based on the longest string of adjacent elements that two permutations have in common.
Usage
Arguments
```
first permutation (integer vector) second permutation (integer vector) #' @return numeric distance value d(x, y)
```
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Hirschberg, Daniel S. "A linear space algorithm for computing maximal common subsequences." Communications of the ACM 18.6 (1975): 341-343.
Examples
Lee Distance for Permutations
Description
Usually a string distance, with slightly different definition. Adapted to permutations as:
)
where n is the length of the permutations x and y.
Usage
Arguments
first permutation (integer vector)
second permutation (integer vector)
Value
numeric distance value
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Lee, C., "Some properties of nonbinary error-correcting codes," Information Theory, IRE Transactions on, vol.4, no.2, pp.77,82, June 1958
Examples
Levenshtein Distance for Permutations
Description
Levenshtein Distance, often just called "Edit Distance". The number of insertions, substitutions or deletions to turn one permutation (or string of equal length) into another.
Usage
Arguments
first permutation (integer vector)
second permutation (integer vector)
Value
numeric distance value
d(x, y)
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Levenshtein, Vladimir I. "Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions and reversals." Soviet physics doklady. Vol. 10. 1966.
Lexicographic permutation distance
Description
This function calculates the lexicographic permutation distance. That is the difference of positions that both positions would receive in a lexicographic ordering. Note, that this distance measure can quickly become inaccurate if the length of the permutations grows too large, due to being based on the factorial of the length. In general, permutations longer than 100 elements should be avoided.
Usage
Arguments
first permutation (integer vector)
second permutation (integer vector)
Value
numeric distance value
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
See Also
Manhattan Distance for Permutations
Description
Manhattan distance for permutations, scaled to values between 0 and 1:
|
where n is the length of the permutations x and y, and scaling factor r = (n 2 − 1)/2 (if n is odd) or r = ((n 2 )/2 (if n is even).
Usage
Arguments
first permutation (integer vector)
second permutation (integer vector)
Value
numeric distance value
)
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
Position Distance for Permutations
Description
Position distance (or Spearmans Correlation Coefficient), scaled to values between 0 and 1.
Usage
Arguments
```
first permutation (integer vector) second permutation (integer vector)
```
Value numeric distance value
d(x, y)
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Schiavinotto, Tommaso, and Thomas Stuetzle. "A review of metrics on permutations for search landscape analysis." Computers & operations research 34.10 (2007): 3143-3153.
Reeves, Colin R. "Landscapes, operators and heuristic search." Annals of Operations Research 86 (1999): 473-490.
Squared Position Distance for Permutations
Description
Squared position distance (or Spearmans Footrule), scaled to values between 0 and 1.
Usage
Arguments
```
first permutation (integer vector) second permutation (integer vector)
```
Value
numeric distance value
d(x, y)
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Schiavinotto, Tommaso, and Thomas Stuetzle. "A review of metrics on permutations for search landscape analysis." Computers & operations research 34.10 (2007): 3143-3153.
Reeves, Colin R. "Landscapes, operators and heuristic search." Annals of Operations Research 86 (1999): 473-490.
R-Distance for Permutations
Description
R distance or unidirectional adjacency distance. Based on count of number of times that a two element sequence in x also occurs in y, in the same order.
Usage
Arguments
```
first permutation (integer vector) second permutation (integer vector)
```
Value
```
numeric distance value d(x, y
```
)
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Sevaux, Marc, and Kenneth Soerensen. "Permutation distance measures for memetic algorithms with population management." Proceedings of 6th Metaheuristics International Conference (MIC'05). 2005.
Reeves, Colin R. "Landscapes, operators and heuristic search." Annals of Operations Research 86 (1999): 473-490.
34
Swap-Distance for Permutations
Description
The swap distance is an edit-distance, counting how many edit operation (here: swaps, i.e., transposition of two adjacent elements) have to be performed to transform permutation x into permutation y. Note: In v2.4.0 of CEGO and earlier, this function actually computed the swap distance on the inverted permutations (i.e., on the rankings, rather than orderin). This is now (v2.4.1 and later) corrected by inverting the permutations x and y before computing the distance (ie. computing ordering first). The original behavior can be reproduced by distancePermutationSwapInv.
Usage
Arguments
first permutation (integer vector)
```
second permutation (integer vector)
```
Value
```
numeric distance value d(x, y)
```
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
References
Schiavinotto, Tommaso, and Thomas Stuetzle. "A review of metrics on permutations for search landscape analysis." Computers & operations research 34.10 (2007): 3143-3153.
Inverse-Swap-Distance for Permutations
Description
The swap distance on the inverse of permutations x and y. See distancePermutationSwap for non-inversed version.
Usage
Arguments
```
first permutation (integer vector) second permutation (integer vector)
```
Value
numeric distance value
d(x, y)
, scaled to values between 0 and 1 (based on the maximum possible distance between two permutations)
Examples
Euclidean Distance
Description
The Euclidean distance for real vectors.
Usage
Arguments
first real vector second real vector
Value
numeric distance value
Examples
Hamming Distance for Strings
Description
Number of unequal letters in two strings.
Usage
Arguments
first string (class: character)
second string (class: character)
Value
numeric distance value
Examples
d(x, y)
Longest Common Substring distance
Description
Distance between strings, based on the longest common substring.
Usage
Arguments
first string (class: character)
second string (class: character)
Value
numeric distance value
Examples
d(x, y)
Levenshtein Distance for Strings
Description
Number of insertions, deletions and substitutions to transform one string into another
Usage
Arguments
first string (class: character)
second string (class: character)
Value
numeric distance value
d(x, y)
Examples
Calculate Distance Vector
Description
Calculate the distance between a single sample and all samples in a list.
Usage
Arguments
Value
A numerical vector of distances
Examples
Negative Logarithm of Expected Improvement
Description
This function calculates the Expected Improvement" of candidate solutions, based on predicted means, standard deviations (uncertainty) and the best known objective function value so far.
Usage
Arguments
minimum of all observations so far
Value
Returns the negative logarithm of the Expected Improvement.
Check for Conditional Negative Semi-Definiteness
Description
This function checks whether a symmetric matrix is Conditionally Negative Semi-Definite (CNSD). Note that this function does not check whether the matrix is actually symmetric.
Usage
Arguments
Value
boolean, which is TRUE if X is CNSD
References
Ikramov, K. and Savel'eva, N. Conditionally definite matrices, Journal of Mathematical Sciences, Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers, 2000, 98, 1-50
Glunt, W.; Hayden, T. L.; Hong, S. and Wells, J. An alternating projection algorithm for computing the nearest Euclidean distance matrix, SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, SIAM, 1990, 11, 589-600
See Also
```
is.NSD, is.PSD
```
Examples
Check for Negative Semi-Definiteness
Description
This function checks whether a symmetric matrix is Negative Semi-Definite (NSD). That means, it is determined whether all eigenvalues of the matrix are non-positive. Note that this function does not check whether the matrix is actually symmetric.
Usage
Arguments
Value
boolean, which is TRUE if X is NSD
See Also
is.CNSD,is.PSD
Examples
Check for Positive Semi-Definiteness
Description
This function checks whether a symmetric matrix is Positive Semi-Definite (PSD). That means, it is determined whether all eigenvalues of the matrix are non-negative. Note that this function does not check whether the matrix is actually symmetric.
Usage
Arguments
a symmetric matrix
torelance value. Eigenvalues between-tolandtolare assumed to be zero.
Symmetric, PSD matrices are, e.g., correlation or kernel matrices. Such matrices are used in models like Kriging or Support Vector regression.
Value
```
boolean, which is TRUE if X is PSD
```
```
See Also is.CNSD, is.NSD
```
Calculate Kernel Matrix
Description
Calculate the similarities between all samples in a list, and return as matrix.
Usage
Arguments
Value
The similarity / kernel matrix
Examples
Create Gaussian Landscape
Description
This function is loosely based on the Gaussian Landscape Generator by Bo Yuan and Marcus Gallagher. It creates a Gaussian Landscape every time it is called. This Landscape can be evaluated like a function. To adapt to combinatorial spaces, the Gaussians are here based on a user-specified distance measure. Due to the expected nature of combinatorial spaces and their lack of direction, the resulting Gaussians are much simplified in comparison to the continuous, vector-valued case (e.g., no rotation). Since the CEGO package is tailored to minimization, the landscape is inverted.
Usage
Arguments
number of Gaussian components in the landscape. Default is 10.
controls width of Gaussian components as a multiplier. Default is 1.
minimal function value of the local minima. Default is 0.2. (Note: Global minimum will be at zero, local minima will be in range [ratio;1])
seed for the random number generator used before creation of the landscape. Generator status will be saved and reset afterwards.
A function of type f(x,y), to evaluate distance between to samples in their given representation.
function to randomly generate the centers of the Gaussians, in form of their given representation.
Value
returns a function.The function requires a list of candidate solutions as its input, where each solution is suitable for use with the distance function.
References
B. Yuan and M. Gallagher (2003) "On Building a Principled Framework for Evaluating and Testing Evolutionary Algorithms: A Continuous Landscape Generator". In Proceedings of the 2003 Congress on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE, pp. 451-458, Canberra, Australia.
Multimodal Fitness Landscape
Description
This function generates multi-modal fitness landscapes based on distance measures. The fitness is the minimal distance to several reference individuals or centers. Hence, each reference individual is an optimum of the landscape.
Usage
Arguments
list of reference individuals / centers
Distance function, used to evaluate d(x,ref[[n]]), where x is an arbitrary new individual
Value
returns a function. The function requires a list of candidate solutions as its input, where each solution is suitable for use with the distance function. The function returns a numeric vector.
See Also
landscapeGeneratorUNI, landscapeGeneratorGaussian
Examples
Unimodal Fitness Landscape
Description
This function generates uni-modal fitness landscapes based on distance measures. The fitness is the distance to a reference individual or center. Hence, the reference individual is the optimum of the landscape. This function is essentially a wrapper for the landscapeGeneratorMUL
Usage
Arguments
reference individual
Distance function, used to evaluate d(x,ref), where x is an arbitrary new individual
Value
returns a function. The function requires a list of candidate solutions as its input, where each solution is suitable for use with the distance function. The function returns a numeric vector.
References
Moraglio, Alberto, Yong-Hyuk Kim, and Yourim Yoon. "Geometric surrogate-based optimisation for permutation-based problems." Proceedings of the 13th annual conference companion on Genetic and evolutionary computation. ACM, 2011.
See Also
landscapeGeneratorMUL, landscapeGeneratorGaussian
Examples
```
Lexicographic order number
```
Description
This function returns the position-number that a permutation would receive in a lexicographic ordering. It is used in the lexicographic distance measure.
Usage
Arguments
```
permutation (integer vector)
```
Value
numeric value giving position in lexicographic order.
See Also
Kriging Model
Description
Implementation of a distance-based Kriging model, e.g., for mixed or combinatorial input spaces. It is based on employing suitable distance measures for the samples in input space.
Usage
Arguments
list of samples in input space column vector of observations for each sample
a suitable distance function of type f(x1,x2), returning a scalar distance value, preferably between 0 and 1. Maximum distances larger 1 are no problem, but may yield scaling bias when different measures are compared. Should be nonnegative and symmetric. It can also be a list of several distance functions. In this case, Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) is used to determine the most suited distance measure. The distance function may have additional parameters. For that case, see distanceParametersLower/Upper in the controls. If distanceFunction is missing, it can also be provided in the control list.
(list), with the options for the model building procedure:
lower lower boundary for theta, default is
1e-6
upper upper boundary for theta, default is
100
corr function to be used for correlation modelling, default is fcorrGauss algTheta algorithm used to find theta (as well as p and lambda), default is optimInterface.
algThetaControl list of controls passed to
algTheta.
useLambda whether or not to use the regularization constant lambda (nugget
effect). Default isFALSE.
lambdaLower lower boundary for lambda (log scale), default is
-6
lambdaUpper upper boundary for lambda (log scale), default is
0
distanceParametersLower lower boundary for parameters of the distance function, default is NA which means there are no distance function parameters. If several distance functions are supplied, this should be a list of lower boundary vectors for each function.
48
distanceParametersUpper upper boundary for parameters of the distance function, default is NA which means there are no distance function parameters. If several distance functions are supplied, this should be a list of upper boundary vectors for each function.
distances a distance matrix. If available, this matrix is used for model building, instead of calculating the distance matrix using the parameters distanceFunction Default is NULL.
scaling If TRUE: Distances values are divided by maximum distance to avoid scale bias.
reinterpolate If TRUE: reinterpolation is used to generate better uncertainty estimates in the presence of noise.
combineDistances By default, several distance functions or matrices are subject to a likelihood based decision, choosing one. If this parameter is TRUE, they are instead combined by determining a weighted sum. The weighting parameters are determined by MLE.
userParameters By default: (NULL). Else, this vector is used instead of MLE to specify the model parameters, in the following order: kernel parameters, distance weights, lambda, distance parameters.
indefiniteMethod The specific method used for correction: spectrum "clip", spectrum "flip", spectrum "square", spectrum "diffusion", feature embedding "feature", nearest definite matrix "near". Default is no correction: "none". See Zaefferer and Bartz-Beielstein (2016).
indefiniteType The general type of correction for indefiniteness: "NSD","CNSD" or the default "PSD". See Zaefferer and Bartz-Beielstein (2016). Note, that feature embedding may not work in case of multiple distance functions.
indefiniteRepair boolean, whether conditions of the distance matrix (in case of "NSD","CNSD" correction type) or correlation matrix (in case of "PSD" correction type) are repaired.
Details
The basic Kriging implementation is based on the work of Forrester et al. (2008). For adaptation of Kriging to mixed or combinatorial spaces, as well as choosing distance measures with Maximum Likelihood Estimation, see the other two references (Zaefferer et al., 2014).
Value
an object of class modelKriging containing the options (see control parameter) and determined parameters for the model:
theta parameters of the kernel / correlation function determined with MLE.
lambda regularization constant (nugget) lambda
yMu vector of observations y, minus MLE of mu
SSQ Maximum Likelihood Estimate (MLE) of model parameter sigma^2
mu MLE of model parameter mu
Psi correlation matrix Psi.
Psinv inverse of Psi nevals number of Likelihood evaluations during MLE of theta/lambda/p
distanceFunctionIndexMLE If a list of several distance measures (distanceFunction) was given, this parameter contains the index value of the measure chosen with MLE.
References
Forrester, Alexander I.J.; Sobester, Andras; Keane, Andy J. (2008). Engineering Design via Surrogate Modelling - A Practical Guide. John Wiley & Sons.
Zaefferer, Martin; Stork, Joerg; Friese, Martina; Fischbach, Andreas; Naujoks, Boris; Bartz-Beielstein, Thomas. (2014). Efficient global optimization for combinatorial problems. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation (GECCO '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 871-878. DOI=10.1145/2576768.2598282
Zaefferer, Martin; Stork, Joerg; Bartz-Beielstein, Thomas. (2014). Distance Measures for Permutations in Combinatorial Efficient Global Optimization. In Parallel Problem Solving from Nature PPSN XIII (p. 373-383). Springer International Publishing.
Zaefferer, Martin and Bartz-Beielstein, Thomas (2016). Efficient Global Optimization with Indefinite Kernels. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN XIV. Accepted, in press. Springer.
See Also
Distance based Linear Model
Description
A simple linear model based on arbitrary distances. Comparable to a k nearest neighbor model, but potentially able to extrapolate into regions of improvement. Used as a simple baseline by Zaefferer et al.(2014).
Usage
Arguments
list of samples in input space matrix, vector of observations for each sample
a suitable distance function of type f(x1,x2), returning a scalar distance value, preferably between 0 and 1. Maximum distances larger 1 are no problem, but may yield scaling bias when different measures are compared. Should be nonnegative and symmetric.
currently unused, defaults to list()
Value
a fit (list, modelLinear), with the options and found parameters for the model which has to be passed to the predictor function:
```
x samples in input space (see parameters) y observations for each sample (see parameters) distanceFunction distance function (see parameters)
```
References
Zaefferer, Martin; Stork, Joerg; Friese, Martina; Fischbach, Andreas; Naujoks, Boris; Bartz-Beielstein, Thomas. (2014). Efficient global optimization for combinatorial problems. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation (GECCO '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 871-878. DOI=10.1145/2576768.2598282
See Also
Examples
RBFN Model
Description
Implementation of a distance-based Radial Basis Function Network (RBFN) model, e.g., for mixed or combinatorial input spaces. It is based on employing suitable distance measures for the samples in input space. For reference, see the paper by Moraglio and Kattan (2011).
Usage
Arguments
```
list of samples in input space column vector of observations for each sample
```
a suitable distance function of type f(x1,x2), returning a scalar distance value, preferably between 0 and 1. Maximum distances larger 1 are no problem, but may yield scaling bias when different measures are compared. Should be nonnegative and symmetric.
(list), with the options for the model building procedure:
beta Parameter of the radial basis function: exp(-beta*D), where D is the distance matrix. If beta is not specified, the heuristic in fbeta will be used to determine it, which is default behavior.
fbeta Function f(x) to calculate the beta parameter, x is the maximum distance observed in the input data. Default function is 1/(2*(x^2)).
distances a distance matrix. If available, this matrix is used for model build-
ing, instead of calculating the distance matrix using the parameters distanceFunction
Default isNULL.
Value
a fit (list, modelRBFN), with the options and found parameters for the model which has to be passed to the predictor function:
```
SSQ Variance of the observations (y) centers Centers of the RBFN model, samples in input space (see parameters) w Model parameters (weights) w Phi Gram matrix Phinv (Pseudo)-Inverse of Gram matrix w0 Mean of observations (y) dMax Maximum observed distance D Matrix of distances between all samples beta See parameters fbeta See parameters distanceFunction See parameters
```
References
Moraglio, Alberto, and Ahmed Kattan. "Geometric generalisation of surrogate model based optimisation to combinatorial spaces." Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011. 142-154.
.
See Also
Examples
Bit-flip Mutation for Bit-strings
Description
Given a population of bit-strings, this function mutates all individuals by randomly inverting one or more bits in each individual.
Usage
Arguments
List of bit-strings
list of parameters: parameters$mutationRate => mutation rate, specifying num- ber of bits flipped. Should be in range between zero and one
Value
mutated population
Block Inversion Mutation for Bit-strings
Description
Given a population of bit-strings, this function mutates all individuals by inverting a whole block, randomly selected.
Usage
Arguments
List of bit-strings
list of parameters: parameters$mutationRate => mutation rate, specifying num- ber of bits flipped. Should be in range between zero and one
Value
mutated population
Cycle Mutation for Bit-strings
Description
Given a population of bit-strings, this function mutates all individuals by cyclical shifting the string to the right or left.
Usage
Arguments
List of bit-strings
list of parameters: parameters$mutationRate => mutation rate, specifying num- ber of bits flipped. Should be in range between zero and one
Value
mutated population
```
Single Bit-flip Mutation for Bit-strings
```
Description
Given a population of bit-strings, this function mutates all individuals by randomly inverting one bit in each individual. Due to the fixed mutation rate, this is computationally faster.
Usage
Arguments
List of bit-strings
not used
Value
mutated population
Insert Mutation for Permutations
Description
Given a population of permutations, this function mutates all individuals by randomly selecting two indices. The element at index1 is moved to positition index2, other elements
Usage
Arguments
Value
mutated population
Interchange Mutation for Permutations
Description
Given a population of permutations, this function mutates all individuals by randomly interchanging two arbitrary elements of the permutation.
Usage
Arguments
List of permutations
list of parameters, currently only uses parameters$mutationRate, which should be between 0 and 1 (but can be larger than 1). The mutation rate determines the number of interchanges performed, relative to the permutation length (N). 0 means none. 1 means N interchanges. The default is 1/N.
Value
mutated population
Reversal Mutation for Permutations
Description
Given a population of permutations, this function mutates all individuals by randomly selecting two indices, and reversing the respective sub-permutation.
Usage
Arguments
Value
mutated population
Swap Mutation for Permutations
Description
Given a population of permutations, this function mutates all individuals by randomly interchanging two adjacent elements of the permutation.
Usage
Arguments
List of permutations
list of parameters, currently only uses parameters$mutationRate, which should be between 0 and 1 (but can be larger than 1). The mutation rate determines the number of swaps performed, relative to the permutation length (N). 0 means none. 1 means N swaps. The default is 1/N.
Value
mutated population
Self-adaptive mutation operator
Description
This mutation function selects an operator and mutationRate (provided in parameters$mutationFunctions) based on self-adaptive parameters chosen for each individual separately.
Usage
Arguments
List of permutations
list, contains the available single mutation functions ( mutationFunctions ), and a data.frame that collects the chosen function and mutation rate for each indi- vidual ( selfAdapt ).
See Also
```
optimEA, recombinationSelfAdapt
```
Examples
Mutation for Strings
Description
Given a population of strings, this function mutates all individuals by randomly changing an element of the string.
Usage
nearCNSD
Arguments
Nearest CNSD matrix
Description
This function implements the alternating projection algorithm by Glunt et al. (1990) to calculate the nearest conditionally negative semi-definite (CNSD) matrix (or: the nearest Euclidean distance matrix). The function is similar to the nearPD function from the Matrix package, which implements a very similar algorithm for finding the nearest Positive Semi-Definite (PSD) matrix.
Usage
Arguments
59
List of permutations list of parameters, with parameters$mutationRate and parameters$lts . parameters$mutationRate should be between 0 and 1 (but can be larger than 1). The mutation rate determines the number of interchanges performed, relative to the permutation length (N). 0 means none. 1 means N interchanges. The default is 1/N. parameters$lts are the possible letters in the string.
Value
mutated population
Value
```
list with: mat nearestCNSD matrix normF F-norm between original and resulting matrices iterations the number of performed rel.tol the relative value used for the tolerance convergence criterion converged a boolean that records whether the algorithm
```
References
Glunt, W.; Hayden, T. L.; Hong, S. and Wells, J. An alternating projection algorithm for computing the nearest Euclidean distance matrix, SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, SIAM, 1990, 11, 589-600
See Also
nearPD, correctionCNSD, correctionDistanceMatrix
Examples
Two-Opt
Description
Implementation of a Two-Opt local search.
Usage
Arguments
start solution of the local search function that determines cost or length of a route/permutation
(list), with the options:
archive Whether to keep all candidate solutions and their fitness in an archive (TRUE) or not (FALSE). Default is TRUE.
budget The limit on number of target function evaluations (stopping criterion) (default: 100)
creationFunction Function to create individuals/solutions in search space. Default is a function that creates random permutations of length 6
vectorized Boolean. Defines whether target function is vectorized (takes a list of solutions as argument) or not (takes single solution as argument). Default: FALSE
Value
```
a list with: xbest best solution found ybest fitness of the best solution count number of performed target function evaluations
```
References
Wikipedia contributors. "2-opt." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 13 Jun. 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
See Also
```
optimCEGO, optimEA, optimRS, optimMaxMinDist
```
Combinatorial Efficient Global Optimization
Description
Model-based optimization for combinatorial or mixed problems. Based on measures of distance or dissimilarity.
Usage
Arguments
Optional initial design as a list. If NULL (default), creationFunction (in control list) is used to create initial design. If x has less individuals than specified by control$evalInit, creationFunction will fill up the design.
target function to be minimized
(list), with the options of optimization and model building approaches employed: evalInit Number of initial evaluations (i.e., size of the initial design), integer, default is 2
vectorized Boolean. Defines whether target function is vectorized (takes a list of solutions as argument) or not (takes single solution as argument). Default: FALSE
verbosityLevel of text output during run. Defaults to 0, no output.
plotting Plot optimization progress during run (TRUE) or not (FALSE). Default is FALSE.
targetYoptimal value to be found, stopping criterion, default is
-Inf budget
maximum number of target function evaluations, default is100
creationRetries When a model does not predict an actually improving solution, a random exploration step is performed. creationRetries solutions are created randomly. For each, distance to all known solutions is calculated. The minimum distance is recorded for each random solution. The random solution with maximal minimum distance is chosen doe be evaluated in the next iteration.
model Model to be used as a surrogate of the target function. Default is "K" (Kriging). Also available are: "LM" (linear, distance-based model), "RBFN" Radial Basis Function Network.
modelSettings List of settings for model building, passed on as the control argument to the model training functions modelKriging, modelLinear, modelRBFN.
infill This parameter specifies a function to be used for the infill criterion (e.g., the default is expected improvement infillExpectedImprovement). To use no specific infill criterion this has to be set to NA, in which case the prediction of the surrogate model is used. Infill criteria are only used with models that may provide some error estimate with predictions.
Value
a list:
xbest ybest
optimizer Optimizer that finds the minimum of the surrogate model. Default is optimEA, an Evolutionary Algorithm.
optimizerSettingsList of settings (control
) for the optimizer
function.
initialDesign Design function that generates the initial design. Default is designMaxMinDist, which creates a design that maximizes the minimum distance between points.
initialDesignSettings List of settings (control) for the initialDesign function.
creationFunction Function to create individuals/solutions in search space. Default is a function that creates random permutations of length 6
distanceFunction distanceFunction a suitable distance function of type f(x1,x2), returning a scalar distance value, preferably between 0 and 1. Maximum distances larger 1 are not a problem, but may yield scaling bias when different measures are compared. Should be non-negative and symmetric. With the setting control$model="K" this can also be a list of different fitness functions. Default is Hamming distance for permutations: distancePermutationHamming.
best solution found
fitness of the best solution
xhistory of all evaluated solutions
ycorresponding target function values f(x)
fit model-fit created in the last iteration
fpred prediction function created in the last iteration
count number of performed target function evaluations
message message string, giving information on termination reason
convergence error/status code: -1 for termination due to failed model building, 0 for termination due to depleted budget, 1 if attained objective value is equal to or below target (control$targetY)
References
Zaefferer, Martin; Stork, Joerg; Friese, Martina; Fischbach, Andreas; Naujoks, Boris; Bartz-Beielstein, Thomas. (2014). Efficient global optimization for combinatorial problems. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation (GECCO '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 871-878. DOI=10.1145/2576768.2598282
Zaefferer, Martin; Stork, Joerg; Bartz-Beielstein, Thomas. (2014). Distance Measures for Permutations in Combinatorial Efficient Global Optimization. In Parallel Problem Solving from Nature PPSN XIII (p. 373-383). Springer International Publishing.
See Also
modelKriging, modelLinear, modelRBFN, buildModel, optimEA
Examples
Evolutionary Algorithm for Combinatorial Optimization
Description
A basic implementation of a simple Evolutionary Algorithm for Combinatorial Optimization. Default evolutionary operators aim at permutation optimization problems.
Usage
Arguments
Optional start individual(s) as a list. If NULL (default), creationFunction (in control list) is used to create initial design. If x has less individuals than the population size, creationFunction will fill up the rest.
target function to be minimized
(list), with the options:
budgetThe limit on number of target function evaluations (stopping criterion)
(default: 1000).
popsizePopulation size (default: 100).
generationsNumber of generations (stopping criterion) (default: Inf).
targetYTarget function value (stopping criterion) (default: -Inf).
vectorized Boolean. Defines whether target function is vectorized (takes a list of solutions as argument) or not (takes single solution as argument). Default: FALSE.
verbosityLevel of text output during run. Defaults to 0, no output.
plotting
Plot optimization progress during run (TRUE) or not (FALSE). De- fault is FALSE.
archive Whether to keep all candidate solutions and their fitness in an archive (TRUE) or not (FALSE). Default is TRUE. New solutions that are identical to an archived one, will not be evaluated. Instead, their fitness is taken from the archive.
recombinationFunction Function that performs recombination, default: recombinationPermutation which is cycle crossover for permutations.
recombinationRate
Number of offspring, defined by the fraction of the popu- lation (popsize) that will be recombined.
mutationFunctionFunction that performs mutation, default:
which is swap mutation for permutations.
parametersDefault parameter list for the algorithm, e.g., mutation rate, etc.
selectionSurvival selection process: "tournament" (default) or "truncation".
tournamentSizeTournament size (default: 2).
tournamentProbability Tournament probability (default: 0.9).
localSearchFunction If specified, this function is used for a local search step. Default is NULL.
localSearchRate Specifies on what fraction of the population local search is applied. Default is zero. Maximum is 1 (100 percent).
localSearchSettings List of settings passed to the local search function control parameter.
stoppingCriterionFunction Custom additional stopping criterion. Function evaluated on the population, receiving all individuals (list) and their fitness (vector). If the result is FALSE, the algorithm stops.
verbosity>0 for text output.
creationFunction Function to create individuals/solutions in search space. Default is a function that creates random permutations of length 6.
selfAdaption An optional ParamHelpers object, that describes parameters of the optimization (see parameters) which are subject to self-adaption. An example is given in mutationSelfAdapt.
selfAdaptTau Positive numeric value, that controls the learning rate of numerical/integer self-adaptive parameters.
selfAdaptP Value in [0,1]. A probability of mutation for all categorical, selfadaptive parameters.
mutationPermutationSwap,
Value
```
a list: xbest best solution found. ybest fitness of the best solution. x history of all evaluated solutions. y corresponding target function values f(x). count number of performed target function evaluations. message Termination message: Which stopping criterion was reached. population Last population. fitness Fitness of last population.
```
See Also
optimCEGO
Examples
,optimRS,optim2Opt,optimMaxMinDist
Optimization Interface (continuous, bounded)
Description
This function is an interface fashioned like the optim function. Unlike optim, it collects a set of bound-constrained optimization algorithms with local as well as global approaches. It is, e.g., used in the CEGO package to solve the optimization problem that occurs during parameter estimation in the Kriging model (based on Maximum Likelihood Estimation). Note that this function is NOT applicable to combinatorial optimization problems.
Usage
Arguments
```
is a point (vector) in the decision space of fun is the target function of type y = f(x,...) is a vector that defines the lower boundary of search space is a vector that defines the upper boundary of search space is a list of additional settings. See details. additional parameters to be passed on to fun
```
Details
The control list contains:
```
funEvals stopping criterion, number of evaluations allowed for fun (defaults to 100) reltol stopping criterion, relative tolerance (default: 1e-6)
```
67
factr stopping criterion, specifying relative tolerance parameter factr for the L-BFGS-B method in the optim function (default: 1e10)
popsize population size or number of particles (default: 10*dimension, where dimension is derived from the length of the vector lower).
restarts whether to perform restarts (Default: TRUE). Restarts will only be performed if some of the evaluation budget is left once the algorithm stopped due to some stopping criterion (e.g., reltol).
method will be used to choose the optimization method from the following list: "L-BFGS-B" -
BFGS quasi-Newton: stats
Package optim
function
"nlminb" - box-constrained optimization using PORT routines: stats
Package tion
"DEoptim" - Differential Evolution implementation: DEoptimPackage
Additionally to the above methods, several methods from the package nloptr
can be chosen.
The complete list of suitable nlopt methods (non-gradient, bound constraints) is:
"NLOPT_GN_DIRECT","NLOPT_GN_DIRECT_L","NLOPT_GN_DIRECT_L_RAND", "NLOPT_GN_DIRECT_N
"NLOPT_GN_ORIG_DIRECT","NLOPT_GN_ORIG_DIRECT_L","NLOPT_LN_PRAXIS",
"NLOPT_GN_CRS2_LM","NLOPT_LN_COBYLA", "NLOPT_LN_NELDERMEAD","NLOPT_LN_SBPLX","NLO
All of the above methods use bound constraints. For references and details on the specific methods, please check the documentation of the packages that provide them.
Value
This function returns a list with:
```
xbest parameters of the found solution ybest target function value of the found solution count number of evaluations of fun
```
Max-Min-Distance Optimizer
Description
One-shot optimizer: Create a design with maximum sum of distances, and evaluate. Best candidate is returned.
Usage
nlminb funcArguments
Optional set of solution(s) as a list, which are added to the randomly generated solutions and are also evaluated with the target function.
target function to be minimized
(list), with the options:
budget The limit on number of target function evaluations (stopping criterion) (default: 100).
vectorized Boolean. Defines whether target function is vectorized (takes a list of solutions as argument) or not (takes single solution as argument). Default: FALSE.
creationFunction Function to create individuals/solutions in search space. Default is a function that creates random permutations of length 6.
designBudget budget of the design function designMaxMinDist, which is the number of randomly created candidates in each iteration.
Value
a list:
xbest ybest
best solution found
fitness of the best solution
xhistory of all evaluated solutions
ycorresponding target function values f(x)
count number of performed target function evaluations
See Also
```
optimCEGO, optimEA, optimRS, optim2Opt
```
Mixed Integer Evolution Strategy (MIES)
Description
An optimization algorithm from the family of Evolution Strategies, designed to optimize mixedinteger problems: The search space is composed of continuous (real-valued) parameters, ordinal integers and categorical parameters. Please note that the categorical parameters need to be coded as integers (type should not be a factor or character). It is an implementation (with a slight modification) of MIES as described by Li et al. (2013). Note, that this algorithm always has a step size for each solution parameter, unlike Li et al., we did not include the option to change to a single stepsize for all parameters. Dominant recombination is used for solution parameters (the search space parameters), intermediate recombination for strategy parameters (i.e., step sizes). Mutation: Selfadaptive, step sizes sigma are optimized alongside the solution parameters. Real-valued parameters are subject to variation based on independent normal distributed random variables. Ordinal integers are subject to variation based on the difference of geometric distributions. Categorical parameters are changed at random, with a self-adapted probability. Note, that a more simple bound constraint method is used. Instead of the Transformation T_a,b(x) described by Li et al., optimMIES simply replaces any value that exceeds the bounds by respective boundary value.
Usage
Arguments
Optional start individual(s) as a list. If NULL (default), creationFunction (in control list) is used to create initial design. If x has less individuals than the population size, creationFunction will fill up the rest.
target function to be minimized.
(list), with the options:
budget The limit on number of target function evaluations (stopping criterion) (default: 1000).
popsizePopulation size (default: 100).
generations Number of generations (stopping criterion) (default: Inf).
targetYTarget function value (stopping criterion) (default: -Inf).
vectorized Boolean. Defines whether target function is vectorized (takes a list of solutions as argument) or not (takes single solution as argument). Default: FALSE.
verbosity Level of text output during run. Defaults to 0, no output.
plotting Plot optimization progress during run (TRUE) or not (FALSE). Default is FALSE.
archive Whether to keep all candidate solutions and their fitness in an archive (TRUE) or not (FALSE). Default is TRUE.
stoppingCriterionFunction Custom additional stopping criterion. Function evaluated on the population, receiving all individuals (list) and their fitness (vector). If the result is FALSE, the algorithm stops.
types A vector that specifies the data type of each variable: "numeric", "integer" or "factor".
lower Lower bound of each variable. Factor variables can have the lower bound set to NA.
upper Upper bound of each variable. Factor variables can have the upper bound set to NA.
levels List of levels for each variable (only relevant for categorical variables). Should be a vector of numerical values, usually integers, but not necessarily a sequence. HAS to be given if any factors/categoricals are present. Else, set to NA.
Details
The control variables types, lower, upper and levels are especially important.
Value
```
a list: xbest best solution found. ybest fitness of the best solution. x history of all evaluated solutions. y corresponding target function values f(x). count number of performed target function evaluations. message Termination message: Which stopping criterion was reached. population Last population. fitness Fitness of last population.
```
References
Rui Li, Michael T. M. Emmerich, Jeroen Eggermont, Thomas Baeck, Martin Schuetz, Jouke Dijkstra, and Johan H. C. Reiber. 2013. Mixed integer evolution strategies for parameter optimization. Evol. Comput. 21, 1 (March 2013), 29-64.
See Also
```
optimCEGO, optimRS, optimEA, optim2Opt, optimMaxMinDist
```
Combinatorial Random Search
Description
Random Search for mixed or combinatorial optimization. Solutions are generated completely at random.
Usage
Arguments
Optional set of solution(s) as a list, which are added to the randomly generated solutions and are also evaluated with the target function.
target function to be minimized
(list), with the options:
budget The limit on number of target function evaluations (stopping criterion) (default: 100)
vectorized Boolean. Defines whether target function is vectorized (takes a list of solutions as argument) or not (takes single solution as argument). Default: FALSE
creationFunction Function to create individuals/solutions in search space. Default is a function that creates random permutations of length 6
Value
```
a list: xbest best solution found ybest fitness of the best solution x history of all evaluated solutions y corresponding target function values f(x) count number of performed target function evaluations
```
See Also
```
optimCEGO, optimEA, optim2Opt, optimMaxMinDist
```
Examples
```
Kriging Prediction
```
Description
Predict with a model fit resulting from modelKriging
Usage.
Arguments
fit of the Kriging model (settings and parameters), of class modelKriging. list of samples to be predicted further arguments, not used
Value
Returned value depends on the setting of object$predAll
TRUE: list with function value (mean) object$y and uncertainty estimate object$s (standard deviation)
object$y
FALSE:
only
See Also
```
Predict: Combinatorial Kriging
```
Description
Predict with amodelLinear fit.
Usage
Arguments
fit of the Kriging model (settings and parameters), of class modelLinear.
```
list of samples to be predicted further arguments, not used
```
Value
numeric vector of predictions
See Also
Predict: Combinatorial RBFN
Description
Predict with a model fit resulting from modelRBFN.
Usage
Arguments
```
fit of the RBFN model (settings and parameters), of class modelRBFN list of samples to be predicted further arguments, not used
```
Value
Returned value depends on the setting of object$predAll
TRUE: list with function value (mean)
$y and uncertainty estimate
$y
FALSE: only
See Also
$s(standard deviation)
Single Point Crossover for Bit Strings
Description
Given a population of bit-strings, this function recombines each individual with another individual by randomly specifying a single position. Information before that position is taken from the first parent, the rest from the second.
Usage
Arguments
```
List of bit-strings not used
```
.
Value
population of recombined offspring
```
Two Point Crossover for Bit Strings
```
Description
Given a population of bit-strings, this function recombines each individual with another individual by randomly specifying 2 positions. Information in-between is taken from one parent, the rest from the other.
Usage
Arguments
```
List of bit-strings not used
```
Value
population of recombined offspring
Arithmetic (AND) Crossover for Bit Strings
Description
Given a population of bit-strings, this function recombines each individual with another individual by computing parent1 & parent2 (logical AND).
Usage
Arguments
List of bit-strings
not used
Value
population of recombined offspring
```
Uniform Crossover for Bit Strings
```
Description
Given a population of bit-strings, this function recombines each individual with another individual by randomly picking bits from each parent. Note, that optimEA will not pass the whole population to recombination functions, but only the chosen parents.
Usage
Arguments
List of bit-strings
```
not used
```
Value
population of recombined offspring
```
Alternating Position Crossover (AP) for Permutations
```
Description
Given a population of permutations, this function recombines each individual with another individual. Note, that optimEA will not pass the whole population to recombination functions, but only the chosen parents.
Usage
Arguments
List of permutations not used
Value
population of recombined offspring
```
Cycle Crossover (CX) for Permutations
```
Description
Given a population of permutations, this function recombines each individual with another individual. Note, that optimEA will not pass the whole population to recombination functions, but only the chosen parents.
Usage
Arguments
```
List of permutations not used
```
Value
population of recombined offspring
```
Order Crossover 1 (OX1) for Permutations
```
Description
Given a population of permutations, this function recombines each individual with another individual. Note, that optimEA will not pass the whole population to recombination functions, but only the chosen parents.
Usage
Arguments
List of permutations
```
not used
```
Value
population of recombined offspring
```
Position Based Crossover (POS) for Permutations
```
Description
Given a population of permutations, this function recombines each individual with another individual. Note, that optimEA will not pass the whole population to recombination functions, but only the chosen parents.
Usage
Arguments
List of permutations
not used
Value
population of recombined offspring
Self-adaptive recombination operator
Description
This recombination function selects an operator (provided in parameters$recombinationFunctions) based on self-adaptive parameters chosen for each individual separately.
Usage
Arguments
List of permutations
list, contains the available single mutation functions ( mutationFunctions ), and a data.frame that collects the chosen function and mutation rate for each indi- vidual ( selfAdapt ).
See Also
optimEA, mutationSelfAdapt
```
Single Point Crossover for Strings
```
Description
Given a population of strings, this function recombines each individual with another random individual. Note, that optimEA will not pass the whole population to recombination functions, but only the chosen parents.
Usage
Arguments
List of strings
not used
Value
population of recombined offspring
```
Repair Conditions of a Correlation Matrix
```
Description
This function repairs correlation matrices, so that the following two properties are ensured: The correlations values should be between -1 and 1, and the diagonal values should be one.
Usage
Arguments
symmetric, PSD distance matrix. If your matrix is not CNSD, use correctionDefinite first. Or use correctionKernelMatrix.
Value
repaired correlation matrix
References
Martin Zaefferer and Thomas Bartz-Beielstein. (2016). Efficient Global Optimization with Indefinite Kernels. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN XIV. Accepted, in press. Springer.
See Also
correctionDefinite, correctionDistanceMatrix, correctionKernelMatrix, correctionCNSD,
Examples
```
Repair Conditions of a Distance Matrix
```
Description
This function repairs distance matrices, so that the following two properties are ensured: The distance values should be non-zero and the diagonal should be zero. Other properties (conditionally negative semi-definitene (CNSD), symmetric) are assumed to be given.
Usage
Arguments
symmetric, CNSD distance matrix. If your matrix is not CNSD, use correctionCNSD first. Or use correctionDistanceMatrix.
Value
repaired distance matrix
References
Martin Zaefferer and Thomas Bartz-Beielstein. (2016). Efficient Global Optimization with Indefinite Kernels. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN XIV. Accepted, in press. Springer.
See Also
correctionDefinite, correctionDistanceMatrix, correctionKernelMatrix, correctionCNSD,
Examples
Kriging Simulation
Description
(Conditional) Simulate at given locations, with a model fit resulting from modelKriging. In contrast to prediction or estimation, the goal is to reproduce the covariance structure, rather than the data itself. Note, that the conditional simulation also reproduces the training data, but has a two times larger error than the Kriging predictor.
Usage
Arguments
fit of the Kriging model (settings and parameters), of classmodelKriging.
number of simulations
random number generator seed. Defaults to NA, in which case no seed is set
list of samples in input space, to be simulated
logical, if set to TRUE (default), the simulation is conditioned with the training data of the Kriging model. Else, the simulation is non-conditional.
if set to TRUE, a list with the simulated values (y) and the corresponding co- variance matrix (covar) of the simulated samples is returned.
further arguments, not used
Value
Returned value depends on the setting of object$simulationReturnAll
References
N. A. Cressie. Statistics for Spatial Data. JOHN WILEY & SONS INC, 1993.
C. Lantuejoul. Geostatistical Simulation - Models and Algorithms. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2002.
See Also
```
modelKriging, predict.modelKriging
```
Binary String Generator Function
Description
Returns a function that generates random bit-strings of length N. Can be used to create individuals of NK-Landscapes or other problems with binary representation.
Usage
Arguments
length of the bit-strings
Value
returns a function, without any arguments
```
Permutation Generator Function
```
Description
Returns a function that generates random permutations of length N. Can be used to generate individual solutions for permutation problems, e.g., Travelling Salesperson Problem
Usage
Arguments
length of the permutations returned
Value
returns a function, without any arguments
Examples
```
String Generator Function
```
Description
Returns a function that generates random strings of length N, with given letters. Can be used to generate individual solutions for permutation problems, e.g., Travelling Salesperson Problem
Usage
Arguments
length of the permutations returned
letters allowed in the string
Value
returns a function, without any arguments
Examples
Simulation-based Test Function Generator, Data Interface
Description
Generate test functions for assessment of optimization algorithms with non-conditional or conditional simulation, based on real-world data.
Usage
Arguments
list of samples in input space, training data column vector of observations for each sample, training data
list of samples in input space, for simulation a suitable distance function of type f(x1,x2), returning a scalar distance value, preferably between 0 and 1. Maximum distances larger 1 are no problem, but may yield scaling bias when different measures are compared. Should be nonnegative and symmetric. It can also be a list of several distance functions. In this case, Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) is used to determine the most suited distance measure. The distance function may have additional parameters. For that case, see distanceParametersLower/Upper in the controls. If distanceFunction is missing, it can also be provided in the control list.
(list), with the options for the model building procedure, it will be passed to the modelKriging function.
(list), with the parameters of the simulation:
nsim the number of simulations, or test functions, to be created.
conditionalSimulation whether (TRUE) or not (FALSE) to use conditional
simulation.
simulationSeed a random number generator seed. Defaults to NA; which means no seed is set. For sake of reproducibility, set this to some integer value.
Value
a list with the following elements: fun is a list of functions, where each function is the interpolation of one simulation realization. The length of the list depends on the nsim parameter. fit is the result of the modeling procedure, that is, the model fit of class modelKriging.
References
N. A. Cressie. Statistics for Spatial Data. JOHN WILEY & SONS INC, 1993.
C. Lantuejoul. Geostatistical Simulation - Models and Algorithms. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2002.
Zaefferer, M.; Fischbach, A.; Naujoks, B. & Bartz-Beielstein, T. Simulation Based Test Functions for Optimization Algorithms Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2017, ACM, 2017, 8.
See Also
modelKriging, simulate.modelKriging, createSimulatedTestFunction
Examples,
Index
```
optimCEGO, 5, 61, 62, 66, 69, 71, 73 optimEA, 58, 61, 63, 64, 69, 71, 73, 77–80 optimInterface, 47, 67 optimMaxMinDist, 61, 66, 68, 71, 73 optimMIES, 70 optimRS, 61, 66, 69, 71, 72 predict.modelKriging, 49, 73, 83 predict.modelLinear, 51, 74 predict.modelRBFN, 53, 75 recombinationBinary1Point, 75 recombinationBinary2Point, 76 recombinationBinaryAnd, 76 recombinationBinaryUniform, 77 recombinationPermutationAlternatingPosition, 77 recombinationPermutationCycleCrossover, 65, 78 recombinationPermutationOrderCrossover1, 78 recombinationPermutationPositionBased, 79 recombinationSelfAdapt, 58, 79 recombinationStringSinglePointCrossover, 80 repairConditionsCorrelationMatrix, 14, 15, 80, 82 repairConditionsDistanceMatrix, 13, 14, 81, 81 simulate.modelKriging, 16, 74, 82, 86 solutionFunctionGeneratorBinary, 83 solutionFunctionGeneratorPermutation, 84 solutionFunctionGeneratorString, 84 testFunctionGeneratorSim, 15, 16, 85
```
|
Mobile Data Logger with GPS Feature for Ground Atmospheric Measurement
Muhammad Abu Bakar Sidik 1 , Mohd Qamarul Arifin Rusli 2 , Zuraimy Adzis 3 , Zolkafle Buntat 4 , Yanuar Arief 5 Shahroom 6 , Zainuddin Nawawi 7 , Muhammad Irfan Jambak 8
, Hamizah [1,2,3,4,5] Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia [6] Institut Voltan dan Arus Tinggi (IVAT), Malaysia [7,8] Universitas Sriwijaya, Indonesia Email: 1 email@example.com
Abstract—The data logger system plays an important role in research and development. In order to obtain valid data, the data logger must be reliable and effective. High investment costs are involved in acquiring a data logger, and choosing a suitable data logger is difficult. In this paper, a mobile data logger is developed by using Arduino-Uno. This mobile data logger is equipped with a GPS module, which provides accurate positioning in the collection of data. Laboratory and field tests were carried out to observe the performance of the mobile data logger system. The results showed that the performance of this system was acceptable.
Furthermore, in outdoor activities, lightning is a natural phenomenon of which people should be aware. Lightning activity correlates with the formation of thunderclouds, which increase the atmospheric electric field (AEF) between the cloud and the earth. Observations of the development of the AEF will allow the prediction of lightning activities close to a particular location. These observations are particularly important in countries with high isokeraunic levels [15-17].
Keywords—mobile; data logger; low cost; global positioning system; atmospheric electric field
I. INTRODUCTION
Much research has focused on the application of sensors and data logger systems in many fields of science and engineering, such as meteorology, geoscience, geophysics, aeronautics, and aerospace. In obtaining accurate data for performing analyses, the process of data recording is critical in the application of a data logger system.
Recent studies have measured temperature and humidity levels. Gasparesc utilised an Arduino Uno board that was connected to a PC with a graphical user interface (GUI) to monitor the desired parameters [1], and Khairi et al. developed a wireless temperature monitoring system [2]. The data were sent through a wireless network in which the data could be observed by using an LCD and portable computer. Similar studies were also presented by Goswami et al., Ibrahim, Kumar et al., and Sigh and Sud. [3-6]. However, applications of portable and mobile data logging with sensors are also in demand [7-9].
Generally, any mobile application is equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) in order to provide the coordinates, time, speed and distance. The GPS has been utilised widely in both scientific research and business, such as navigating for the accurate prediction of traffic flow information, surveying for errors in highway measurements, tracking and surveillance of high altitude UAVs, mobile phone operations, interfacing with GPRS as an outdoor remote wireless data collection, a portable, wearable system that enhances athletes' performances [10-14], and many more.
With regard to AEF, a study using an electric field mill was carried out to develop a thunderstorm warning alarm system [18]. It was based on the measurement of variations in the AEF stationary observation stations.
However, the construction of a stationary observation unit has required a high investment in equipment and installations, including land, tower, antenna, data acquisition, and computer. However, rapid developments in technology have made it possible to develop an effective mobile data logger system at a much lower cost. Interestingly, little research has investigated mobile data logging related to AEF measurement.
This paper presents the development of a low-cost mobile data logger device to record temperature, humidity, AEF magnitude, and location coordinates. The system is developed by using the Arduino-Uno board environment (Arduio-Uno) and Arduino 1.0.5 open project software. In the next study, a low-cost online data logging system integrated with mobile observation stations will be developed.
II. DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
The development process consists of two parts: the selection of components and the programming code. The harmonization of the two parts will determine the overall performance of the device.
A. Components overview
The performance of a mobile data logger device is determined by the selection of components. Our review of previous studies showed that Arduino-Uno is suitable for application in a mobile data logger. Several applications have been developed by using Arduino-Uno, such as in motion, sound, and respond control. The application has been widely used in environmental monitoring, such as observing climate change, green house monitoring, gas sensors and so on [1821].
Arduino-Uno uses the Atmega328 programmable integrated circuit with 6 analogue inputs and 14 digital i/o pins. Arduino-Uno operates at 5 V, which is acceptable in most sensor devices. In this current work, five analogue inputs were used to receive input signals from a temperature and humidity sensor. In addition, the digital i/o was used for the GPS module, LEDs, LCD module, and SD Card module. Fig. 1 presents all components of the design.
A NTC thermistor-based temperature module (NTCmodule) was selected to observe and collect temperature data from the surroundings. The NTC-module is suitable for mobile applications, and its sensitivity fulfils the design requirements of the current work. Compared with the LM35 temperature sensor, the NTC-module is more sensitive and makes fewer reading errors. It comes with two outputs: analogue and digital. Because its power supply ranges from 3.3 V to 5 V DC, the NTC-module can be used immediately. Furthermore, because of its small size (3 cm x 1.6 cm) the NTC-module is easily put into position, which reduces the development cost [22].
In addition to the temperature, an important parameter for observation is the surrounding humidity. Temperature and humidity have a relative correlation, and both parameters will be used to describe the weather conditions. A humidity sensor module with a pre-mounted HR202 humidity sensor was utilized to observe variations in humidity. It operates at 3.3 V to 5 V DC, and it can be used immediately to measure humidity. Operating in 20-95% RH with accuracy of ±5% RH, it is suitable for many applications [13].
Furthermore, a SKM53 GPS Starter Kit (GPS-module) was utilized to acquire the position of the data being collected. The GPS module is equipped with an embedded patch GPS antenna 18.2 x 18.2 x 4.0 mm 3 . It provides a solid fix, even in harsh GPS visibility environments, as well as highperformance navigation in stringent applications. It includes an ultra-high sensitivity (-165 dBm) receiver and an internal back-up battery. Its entire dimensions are 39 x 50 mm 2 . In addition to the position data, the GPS-module also provides information regarding altitude, time, date, and speed. The almanac data is provided by satellites. The position is obtained by determining its distance from visible satellites and by using the triangulation method to calculate it. GPS data is configured according to standards set by the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA). In the current study, the information taken from the GPS module included the position, date, and time.
All data were saved in a secure digital (SD) card, which is a typical flash-based memory card designed specifically to meet the security, performance, and environmental requirements of this study. The SD card was secured in the SD card module BB-SD-0071 SD card breakout board. It very compatible with Arduino and can be operated with a power supply of only 3 V or 5 V DC. The module also has a built in logic-level shifter, so for the data interface, it can be connected directly to the Arduino Uno board without an external circuit.
Finally, a 20 x 4 character LCD was used for instant display during the data logging. The LCD 20x4 was selected because its size is adequate and it is able to display a great amount of data.
B. Programming flowchart
Arduino provides the "Aduino.exe" freeware for users developing programming codes. An extensive reference library of components is included with the freeware, which was developed by various supportive Arduino communities. C language was used to write the programming code in the Arduino freeware environment. It consists of main a programme and a subroutine programme. As shown in Fig. 2, the code starts by importing all related library items to the main programme, which configure the Arduino microcontroller and sensor modules. Subsequently, the global variables are declared. The output- and input-direction ports of the microcontroller are based on the GPS module, the LCD, the temperature and humidity sensor module, as well as other sensors.
The subroutine flowchart is shown in Fig. 3. In a normal condition, the subroutine would operate in a loop continuously, unless it was stopped by the observer. In the first step, the microcontroller would be requested to detect the sensors' availability. If the sensors were not found, an error message then would appear. Otherwise, the next command would be executed.
Fig. 3. Flowchart of PROGRAM LOOP
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The assembled components are shown in Fig. 4. This prototype is utilised in the testing process. A proper casing design will be carried out after the results of the testing are confirmed.
The testing was carried out both inside and outside the laboratory (field-testing). All tests were carried out to examine the harmonization of all components of the device.
A. Laboratory Experiment
Testing inside the laboratory was carried out first. The testing included observations of the surrounding temperature and humidity. The experiment was carried out in the Actuator and System Laboratory, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM Johor Bahru. It was conducted on 20 March 2014 at 12:05 pm. Based on the GPS data, the latitude and longitude of the location were 1.559380 N and 103.642433 E, respectively. The observation was carried out for a duration of one minute with 500 data retrieved; therefore, the data intervals were approximately 0.12 second. In other words, the speed of the data collection was 8.33 data per second. Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 illustrate the results of temperature and humidity observations, respectively. The results showed that in the first 5 seconds, the data oscillated before reaching a steady state. This instability was related to the energising process of the Arduino Uno board.
Fig. 5. Temperatures with Time
B. Field testing
In the field-testing, the humidity and temperature sensors were located on the roof of a car, as shown in Fig. 7, and the prototype data logger, equipped with the GPS system, was placed inside the vehicle.
The vehicle moved for about 1 hour, 9 minutes, and 30 seconds (i.e., from 14:26:31 to 15:36:01), collecting the surrounding temperature and humidity levels, as well as the date, time, latitude and longitude. The data were collected at intervals of 1 second. There were 1,092 data logged during the data collection. A part of the collected data, which was
retrieved from SD cards by using Microsoft Excel, is shown in Fig. 8.
Fig. 8. Snapshot data from MS Excel
The data sample is presented in Fig. 9, which indicates that at first, the temperature increased greatly when the sensor was positioned at the beginning of the observation. After about 3 minutes, the temperature tended to stabilize and slowly increased to more than 40 C. A light rain started when the car had been moving for about 15 minutes, which caused the temperature to drop sharply. However, the observed humidity level was constant, indicating that the humidity sensor did not respond to the change in the surrounding conditions.
In order to verify the operation of the temperature and humidity sensors, a test was conducted by comparing the temperature and humidity data from the prototype device with a device certified by SIRIM Berhad. The devices were positioned close together for 10 minutes prior to the data collection to ensure that all sensors were adapted to the surrounding conditions. Table I shows that the two devices had different readings. The trend of the temperature was similar, with an average discrepancy of 3.18 C. Further calibration work could be carried out to solve this problem.
The discrepancies in the humidity data between the two devices were extreme. Hence, further investigations of the capacity of the HR202 humidity sensor applied in the mobile data logger will be conducted.
TABLE I. COMPARISON RESULTS OF TEMPERATURE AND HUMIDITY.
| Date | Time | Place | Developed device | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | T (°C) | H (%) | T(°C) |
| 06/02/2014 | 12:04 p.m. | IVAT Laboratory | 25.21 | 53.83 | 29.5 |
| 07/02/2014 | 2.45 p.m. | AHU Room | 28.01 | 54.88 | 31 |
| 08/02/2014 | 3:20 p.m. | FKE study corner | 25.05 | 58.74 | 27 |
| 09/02/2014 | 3:51 p.m. | Sensor and Actuator Laboratory | 23.03 | 50.42 | 26.5 |
In addition, to validate the GPS data, the GPS data was transferred to the Google maps tracking software. The results illustrated in Fig. 10 show that the GPS collected the coordinate data accurately; thus, its performance was satisfactory.
The prototype device was designed to be as compact as possible so that it could be carried and positioned easily. It can be powered by using the USB port of computer notebook or a cigarette lighter inside an automobile. It also could be powered through a DC barrel-type power connector.
The total amount of space used by the programming code was 24.24 kbytes of 32 kbytes in Atmega32's flash memory. However, a problem was found regarding the data collection from sensors, in which the microprocessor (Atmega32) could not read the sensors concurrently. Consequently, when data from the first sensor was stored inside the flash memory, the data would not merge with new data from another sensor. In order to address this problem, time delay and memory discharging commands also should be added to the programming section. The command code should be placed before the next sensor was accessed.
In addition to the temperature and humidity sensor port, the prototype device is also equipped with a port for rotating the electric field mill (REFM). Usually, the REFM is utilised to observe the AEF magnitude. Because the output of the REFM is a DC signal, it can be attached to the prototype device. Fig. 11 shows a typical output signal from a developing REFM. However, because the development of REFM for mobile applications is ongoing, the current paper could not present a result related to the mobile data logger.
Another important component of the mobile device is the GPS module. The GPS module utilises satellite information to provide output data. Information about the time and date provided by satellites is very accurate. In the current study, the GPS module needed at least a 10-minute start-up before reliable data was obtained because the module needed to search for and read the signals from satellites. The distance of the module from the satellites also affected the duration of the start-up.
Currently, the device developed here is only used offline. The collected data, which were automatically saved in the SD card, were retrieved and analysed using a PC. However, an online system will be developed in the future [23-25]. In the meantime, the SD Card can be still utilised as back-up storage if the online system presents problems.
IV. CONCLUSION
The design and development of a low-cost mobile data logger was successfully carried out. The laboratory and outdoor testing results showed that the developed device satisfactorily performed the required observations and data logging. All components worked properly at an acceptable speed. The device performed well when applied with a DC input signal.
References
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BMC Genetics
BioMedCentral
Proceedings
Open Access
Interaction of gender and body mass index (BMI) reveals evidence of linkage for hypertension in the Framingham Heart Study
Denise Daley*, Shannon R Edwards, Yeunjoo Song, Dan Baechle, Sobha Puppala, JH Schick, Jane M Olson and Katrina AB Goddard
Address: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Rammelkamp Center for Education and Research, MetroHealth Campus, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Email: Denise Daley* - firstname.lastname@example.org; Shannon R Edwards - email@example.com; Yeunjoo Song - firstname.lastname@example.org; Dan Baechle - email@example.com; Sobha Puppala - firstname.lastname@example.org; JH Schick - email@example.com; Jane M Olson - firstname.lastname@example.org; Katrina AB Goddard - email@example.com
* Corresponding author from Genetic Analysis Workshop 13: Analysis of Longitudinal Family Data for Complex Diseases and Related Risk Factors New Orleans Marriott Hotel, New Orleans, LA, USA, November 11–14, 2002
Published: 31 December 2003
<supplement> <title> <p>Genetic Analysis Workshop 13: Analysis of Longitudinal Family Data for Complex Diseases and Related Risk Factors</p> </title> <editor>Laura Almasy, Christopher I Amos, Joan E Bailey-Wilson, Rita M Cantor, Cashell E Jaquish, Maria Martinez, Rosalind J Neuman, Jane M Olson, Lyle J Palmer, Stephen S Rich, M Anne Spence, Jean W MacCluer</editor> </supplement>
BMC Genetics 2003, 4(Suppl 1):S45
This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2156/4/s1/S45
Abstract
Background: Genetic heterogeneity and complex biologic mechanisms of blood pressure regulation pose significant challenges to the identification of susceptibility loci influencing hypertension. Previous linkage studies have reported regions of interest, but lack consistency across studies. Incorporation of covariates, in particular the interaction between two independent risk factors (gender and BMI) greatly improved our ability to detect linkage.
Results: We report a highly significant signal for linkage to chromosome 2p, a region that has been implicated in previous linkage studies, along with several suggestive linkage regions.
Conclusion: We demonstrate the importance of including covariates in the linkage analysis when the phenotype is complex.
Background
Major risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) include hypertension and obesity, both of which are complex and heterogeneous. It is estimated that hypertension affects ~50 million adult Americans [1]. Although obesity [2] has been identified as a risk factor for hypertension, the exact causes of hypertension are unknown. Both conditions often coexist, suggesting that shared environmental and genetic influences may impact both traits. Population-based samples, such as the Framingham Heart Study, will include sets of individuals with different causes of disease, obscuring evidence of linkage to a particular gene if this heterogeneity is not taken into account in the linkage analysis.
We investigated hypertension as a dichotomous phenotype in the Genetic Analysis Workshop (GAW) 13 data set from the Framingham Heart Study. To allow for genetic heterogeneity, we utilized a covariate-based affected relative pair (ARP) approach [3] using obesity [measured by body mass index (BMI)], gender, and the interaction of BMI and gender as covariates, to identify candidate regions for hypertension. We show that incorporating a parameter that measures the joint action of obesity and gender on hypertension status into the linkage analysis significantly increases the linkage signal in several chromosomal regions.
Methods
In these analyses, we utilized the phenotypic and genotypic information provided for the Framingham real data set. Individuals in Cohorts 1 and 2 were affected with hypertension if their mean for all systolic blood pressure (SBP) readings was ≥140 mm Hg or if they had at least one documented use of antihypertensive medication. Analyses conducted to check for pedigree and genotyping errors using RELTEST and MARKERINFO [4], respectively, did not reveal evidence of miss-specified relationships or nonMendelian segregation of marker genotypes.
Three covariates were incorporated into this analysis: BMI, gender, and their interaction. BMI was calculated as the weight in pounds divided by the height squared in inches and multiplied by 703. Because there were up to 12 measurements of BMI per individual, we defined five summary BMI measurements: first, last, mean, slope, and predicted. First and last BMI represent BMI measurements at the first and last reported visits. Mean BMI is the average of all BMI values for each individual. The slope (i.e., the change in BMI over time) was the model coefficient obtained from a linear regression of age on BMI within each individual. Lastly, predicted BMI is the predicted value of BMI at age 50 from this linear regression. The BMI values were checked for consistency and outliers. One height measurement that was 2 feet less than the prior visit's measurement was removed. The first, last, mean, and slope BMI were adjusted for mean age and gender and predicted BMI was adjusted only for gender. The residuals for all BMI measures were used in subsequent linkage analyses. For all BMI measures and gender, ARP-specific covariate values were generated as the sum of the covariate values for the two individuals in the ARP minus the sample mean. The interaction term between BMI and gender was then obtained by multiplying ARP-specific values of BMI and gender for each relative pair.
We used the one-parameter conditional logistic model [3] for ARP linkage analysis. This model is implemented in the program LODPAL [4] and allows for the incorporation of covariates by fitting a single additional parameter per covariate. In terms of the offspring recurrence-risk ratio denoted as (λ 1 (x)), conditional on K covariates, x k , the model is parameterized as λ 1 ( x ) = exp( β + γ k x k ); in terms of the recurrence-risk ratio for monozygotic twins, denoted as λ 2 ( x ), it is parameterized as λ 2 ( x ) = 3.634 λ 1 ( x) - 2.634. The number of alleles identical by descent (IBD) was computed using multipoint algorithms incorporated into GENIBD [4]. Ten pedigrees were too large for multipoint computation using GENIBD, and were split into two or three sub-pedigrees, resulting in 341 total pedigrees. P-values were obtained for the linkage models using the asymptotic distribution of the likeli-∑ = k K 1
hood ratio tests. In this linkage analysis we define LOD score as the likelihood ratio statistics divided by 4.605 (i.e., 2log e 10).
We used backward selection to identify the most parsimonious model at each location with suggestive evidence for linkage defined as (p < 0.001); i.e., covariates were removed one at a time, starting with the gender by BMI interaction. If the interaction term could not be removed, both main effects were included in the final model. Covariates were retained in the model if the p-value for the likelihood ratio test was < 0.05 (i.e., the likelihood of the model with the covariate vs. the likelihood of the model without the covariate).
Results
Of the 2898 individuals with a mean SBP reading, 1174 individuals (562 males and 612 females) were classified as having hypertension, resulting in 263 affected sib pairs (ASPs), and 450 ARPs available.
We identified significant evidence for linkage on chromosome 2 at 74 cM, and suggestive evidence of linkage on chromosomes 1, 2 at 186 cM, 4, 12, 15, 18, 19, 20 and 22 (Table 1). Four measures of BMI (mean, first, last, and predicted) gave similar results, so we only report results for mean BMI. Additionally, we report results for slope BMI, which measures an individual's change in BMI over time. For the baseline models (without covariates), there were no regions with suggestive evidence of linkage. The highest LOD scores for the baseline models were on chromosomes 7 (LOD = 1.5, p = 0.004), 10 (LOD = 1.89, p = 0.002), and 12 (LOD = 1.68, p = 0.003). The only region suggestive of linkage with BMI only as the covariate was on 15q with mean BMI (Table 1 and Figure 1).
An interaction of BMI with gender is consistent with the observations that the prevalence and age at onset distributions differ for hypertension between the sexes, and there are reports of gender-specific effects for obesity [5], cholesterol [6], and CVD [7]. The highest LOD score for the interaction model was on chromosome 2. For this region, individuals who are male and have a high BMI have the highest sibling recurrence risk ratio (Table 2). Recurrence risks were calculated using the model coefficients in Table 1, under the assumption that both sibs were 50 years of age and had the same BMI using λ s (x)= 1/4 + 1/2 λ 1 (x) + 1/4 λ 2 (x). To validate the signal on chromosome 2 we also used the new Haseman-Elston regression equations as implemented in SIBPAL [4]. In contrast to the LODPAL analysis, this model utilizes discordant sib pairs in addition to the concordant sib pairs, and allows for the nonindependence among different types of sib pairs. When implemented in SIBPAL [4] the interaction between BMI*gender* is highly significant (p = 0.009), giving ˆ π
Table 1: Regions with at least suggestive linkage (p < 0.001) for the most parsimonious model
ALOD score for a model that includes BMI only. Otherwise, LOD scores are for the full model.
further evidence to support the peak on chromosome 2 and the presence of locus heterogeneity measured by the interaction of BMI and gender.
Other regions with suggestive evidence of linkage were found on chromosomes 4 (LOD = 4.66) and 12 (LOD = 4.32). These regions consistently had high LOD scores across the four BMI measures. The most parsimonious model on chromosome 4 shows that the risk increases with BMI in both genders, but is more pronounced in males than in females, and on chromosome 12 the model suggests that males with low BMI and females with high BMI are at the greatest risk. We evaluated the recurrence risk ratio at arbitrary ages for the sibs, and found that the only region to demonstrate an effect of age was on chromosome 18, where the recurrence risk ratio increases with BMI in young males and older females.
the Quebec family study [9] (LOD = 1.02), and SBP in the HERITAGE study [10] (LOD = 1.88) which report linkage to D2S441 located 6 cM from our peak, and of SBP in the NHLBI Heart Study [11] (LOD = 1.1) which reports a signal at 70 cM. In addition, Hunt et al. [11] report another peak on this chromosome at 56 cM (LOD = 1.1) in hypertensive ASPs. Also the NHLBI Family Blood Pressure Program (FBPP) recently reported a LOD score of 3.09 at marker D2S1788, using BMI as a covariate and performing the analysis with LODPAL [12]. Additionally, the peak on chromosome 19 (BMI slope) is near the ApoE locus, which has previously been associated with risk for hypertension and CVD [7,13].
The peak locations for BMI slope were different than the peaks for the other BMI measures (Table 1). When the BMI*gender interaction was included in the model, suggestive evidence of linkage was found on chromosomes 1, 2, 4, 19, 20, and 22 (Table 1). Our strongest peak on chromosome 22 is just below the cut-off for significant evidence for linkage, and the region on chromosome 19 also had suggestive evidence of linkage using the other BMI measures (LOD scores from 3.12 to 3.92).
Conclusions
We have identified significant evidence of linkage to chromosome 2p, and suggestive evidence of linkage on chromosomes 1, 4, 12, 15, 18, 19, 20, and 22. The signal on chromosome 2p replicates the findings of five previous linkage studies including analyses of SBP in the GENOA study [8] (p = 0.0193), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) in
Candidate genes have not been evaluated in these regions, with the exception of chromosome 12, in which a recent case/control study, showed a significant association between the T allele of G-Protein β3-Subunit (GNB3 ~13.6 cM) and hypertensive subjects with increased BMI [14]. Functional assays demonstrate an effect of this polymorphism, with enhanced activity for the T allele [15]. Interestingly, previous linkage studies have failed to identify this region, including that of Rice et al. [9], who typed markers located within GNB3.
Our results differ substantially from the results of the previous genome scan in the Framingham Heart Study population that utilized SBP as a quantitative trait [16]. We did not identify the region on chromosome 17 reported by Levy et al. [16], nor were the linkage signals detected in this analysis identified in that study. Genes impacting the normal variation in blood pressure (measured by SBP as a quantitative trait) may be very distinct from genes impacting extreme hypertension (measured as a discrete trait).
Table 2: Sibling recurrence risk ratios on chromosome 2 (74 cM)
Aλ s computed for the same mean BMI and age (50 yr) for each individual.
Because slope BMI measured the individual change in BMI over time, this covariate may have identified different signals associated with the normal variation in blood pressure. It is interesting to note that the recurrence risk ratios for slope BMI consistently (four out of six signals) showed increasing risk for women with positive slopes, or women who gain weight over time, while the other measures of BMI did not show consistent linkage to either men or women. Furthermore, it should be noted that we used a linear regression equation to model slope BMI; however, during the GAW13 meeting Strug et al. [17] demonstrated that slope BMI did not fit a linear model, but was characterized by a gain phase lasting to approximately age 55 followed by a less extreme decreasing phase in older age, and our findings may change if we were to model slope BMI in this fashion.
We demonstrate the importance of including covariates in linkage analyses that may account for locus heterogeneity. The significant linkage signals on chromosome 2, and most of our other candidate regions, were not detected without including the gender*BMI interaction term. The signal on chromosome 2 is stronger in our analysis than in previous reports and is not accounted for by differences in sample size. It is noteworthy that we are able to detect these signals despite using a broad definition of hypertension. The models developed in our analysis identify phenotypic characteristics of individuals likely to be linked to each candidate region and suggest that complex traits such as hypertension may have gender-specific components. Our results show that some loci influencing hypertension may have multiple additional interacting factors, revealing the complexity of the disease. This information facilitates the identification of target candidate genes and molecular pathways for each region, and also aids in the identification of appropriate populations for confirmatory studies.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by U.S. Public Health Service grants HG01577, from the National Center for Human Genome Research, and RR03655, from the National Center for Research Resources. Some of the results in this paper were obtained using S.A.G.E., which is supported by National Center for Research Resources grant RR03655.
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10. Rice T, Rankinen T, Chagon YC, Province MA, Perusse L, Leon AS, Skinner JS, Wilmore JH, Bouchard C, Rao DC: Genomewide linkage scan of resting blood pressure HERITAGE Family Study. Hypertension 2002, 39:1037-1043.
11. Hunt SC, Ellison RC, Atwood LD, Pankow JS, Province MA, Leppert MF: Genome scans for blood pressure and hypertension: the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Family Heart Study. Hypertension 2002, 40:1-6.
12. Wu X, Thiel B, Kardia S, Rao DC, Province M, Ranade K, Zhu X, Luke A, Kan D, Cooper R: Affected-relative-pair linkage analysis with covariates for hypertension in NHLBI Family Blood Pressure Program (FBPP). Am J Hum Genet 2002, 71(4):355. [abstract 1073]
13. Allayee H, deBruin TW, Dominguez KM, Cheng LS, Ipp E, Cantor RM, Krass KL, Keulen ETP, Aouizerat BE, Lusis AJ, Rotter JI: Genome scan for blood pressure in Dutch dyslipidemic families
reveals linkage to a locus on chromosome 4p. Hypertension 2001, 38:773-778.
14. Siffert W, Rosskopf D, Siffert G, Busch S, Moritz A, Erbel R, Sharma AM, Ritz E, Wichmann HE, Jakobs KH, Horsthemke B: Association of a human G-protein β3 subunit variant with hypertension. Nat Genet 1998, 1:45-48.
15. Pietruck F, Moriz A, Montemurro M, Sell A, Busch S, Rosskopf D, Virchow S, Esche H, Brockmeyer N, Jakobs KH, Siffert W: Selectively enhanced cellular signaling by G i proteins in essential hypertension. Circ Res 1996, 79:974-994.
16. Levy D, DeStefano AL, Larson MG, O'Donnell CJ, Lifton RP, Gavras H, Cupples LA, Myers RH: Evidence for a genome influencing blood pressure on chromosome 17. Genome scan linkage results for longitudinal blood pressure phenotypes in subjects from the Framingham Heart Study. Hypertension 2000, 36:477-483.
17. Strug L, Sun L, Corey M: The genetics of cross-sectional and longitudinal BMI. BMC Genetics 2003, 4(suppl 1):S14.
Publish with BioMed Central and every scientist can read your work free of charge
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|
Developing and Deploying Magento with Composer: Best Practices
Nils Adermann
Co-Founder, Packagist Conductors @naderman - firstname.lastname@example.org
1
Source
Source
Package Repositories
* Third Parties
* Packagist https://packagist.org
* Magento Marketplace https://marketplace.magento.com
* Individual vendors' repositories
* Private Packages
* Any git/svn/mercurial/... repository
* GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab
* Private Packagist https://packagist.com
LeveragingOpen-Source Packages
* Nearly 200k packages on packagist.org
* Many useful well tested, maintained and secure packages
* Large amounts of unmaintained, insecure, broken, or poorly workingcode
LeveragingOpen-Source Packages
* Evaluate packages every time before you write code yourself
* Selection criteria
* Quality of documentation (changelogs?)
* Development activity (commits, issues, PRs)
* Number of maintainers
* Installation counts, GitHub stars
* Complexity
* It's all trade-offs – no golden rule
Magento Marketplace
* Apply similar criteria as for open-source packages
* Additional factors to consider
* Cost
* Licenses
* Reviews / Ratings
* Extension Quality Program
Using your private code withComposer
```
* "repositories": [ {"type": "path", "url": "../core"} ], • "repositories": [ {"type": "vcs", "url": "https://github.com/naderman/symfony" } ], • "repositories": [ {"type": "composer", "url": "https://repo.packagist.com/my-org/" } ],
```
Development Environment Best Practices
create-project insteadof cloning
* composer create-project --repository-url=https://repo.magento.com/magento /project-community-edition <path>
* composer.json will have the correct contents
* Different from forking the community edition
* Magento/project-community-edition is a metapackage
* No code
* Defines dependencies on a number of other packages
* Only clone if you're trying to contribute to a repository directly
Managing Updates: Constraints
* Exact Match
1.0.0
1.2.3-beta2
* Wildcard Range
1.0.*
2.*
* Hyphen Range
1.0-2.0
1.0.0-2.1.0
>=1.0.0 <2.1 >=1.0.0 <=2.1.0
* Unbounded Range Bad!
>=1.0
* Next Significant Release
$$~1.2 ~1.2.3 >=1.2.0 <2.0.0 >=1.2.3 <1.3.0 ^1.2 ^1.2.3 >=1.2.0 <2.0.0 >=1.2.3 <2.0.0$$
* Caret/Semver Operator Best Choice for Libraries
Operators: " " AND, "||" OR
dev-master
Managing Updates: Stabilities
* Order
* Automatically from tags
* 1.2.3 -> stable
* 1.3.0-beta3 -> beta
* Automatically from branches
* branch name -> version (stability)
* 2.0 -> 2.0.x-dev (dev)
* master -> dev-master (dev)
* myfeature -> dev-myfeature (dev)
* Choosing
* "foo/bar": "1.3.*@beta"
* "foo/bar": "2.0.x-dev"
* "minimum-stability": "alpha"
dev -> alpha -> beta -> RC -> stable
Managing Updates: SemanticVersioning
x.y.z
(BC-break).(new functionality).(bug fix)
https://semver.org
Managing Updates: SemanticVersioning
Promise of Compatibility
X.Y.Z
* Must be used consistently
* Dare to increment X!
* Only valuable if BC/compatibility promise formalized
* https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/contributor-guide/backward-compatible-development/
* http://symfony.com/doc/current/contributing/code/bc.html
* Document breaks in changelog
Managing Updates
* composer update
* No isolation of problems unless run very frequently
* composer update <package...>
* Explicit conscious updates
* composer update --dry-run [<package...>]
* Understanding and preparing effects of updates
* Read CHANGELOGs
* composer outdated
Managing Updates: UnexpectedResults
composer why [--tree] foo/bar mydep/here 1.2.3 requires foo/bar (^1.0.3)
composer why-not [--tree] foo/bar ^1.2
foo/bar 1.2.3 requires php (>=7.1.0 but 5.6.3 is installed)
Managing Updates: Partial Updates
```
{ "name": "zebra/zebra", "require": { "horse/horse": "^1.0" }} { "name": "giraffe/giraffe", "require": { "duck/duck": "^1.0" }}
```
Managing Updates: Partial Updates
```
{ "name": "horse/horse", "require": { "giraffe/giraffe": "^1.0" }} { "name": "duck/duck", "require": {} }
```
Managing Updates: Partial Updates
```
{ "name": "my/project", "require": { "zebra/zebra": "^1.0", "giraffe/giraffe": "^1.0" } }
```
Managing Updates: Partial Updates
Now each package releases version 1.1
Managing Updates: Partial Updates
$ composer update zebra/zebra Updating zebra/zebra (1.0 -> 1.1)
Managing Updates: Partial Updates
$ composer update zebra/zebra --with-dependencies Updating horse/horse(1.0 -> 1.1) Updating zebra/zebra (1.0 -> 1.1)
Managing Updates: Partial Updates
$ composer update zebra/zebra giraffe/giraffe Updating zebra/zebra (1.0 -> 1.1) Updating giraffe/giraffe(1.0 -> 1.1)
Managing Updates: Partial Updates
$ composer update zebra/zebra giraffe/giraffe --with-dependencies
Updating duck/duck(1.0 -> 1.1)
Updating giraffe/giraffe(1.0 -> 1.1)
Updating horse/horse(1.0 -> 1.1)
Updating zebra/zebra(1.0 -> 1.1)
Managing Updates: Partial Updates
```
$ composer update zebra/zebra --with-all-dependencies Updating duck/duck(1.0 -> 1.1) Updating giraffe/giraffe(1.0 -> 1.1) Updating horse/horse(1.0 -> 1.1) Updating zebra/zebra(1.0 -> 1.1)
```
Managing Updates: The Lock File
* Contents
* All dependencies including transitive dependencies
* Exact version for every package
* Download URLs (source, dist, mirrors)
* Hashes of files
* Purpose
* Reproducibility across teams, users, and servers
* Isolation of bug reports to code vs. potential dependency breaks
* Transparency through explicit updating process
Commit The Lock File
Every composer install withouta lock file is a catastrophe waiting to happen
The Lock File Will Conflict
Week 2: Strange new zebras requireduck
master
Text-based Merge
master
Merge results in invalid dependencies
Reset composer.lock
git checkout <refspec> -- composer.lock git checkout master -- composer.lock
Resolving composer.lockmerge conflicts
* composer.lock cannot be merged without conflicts
* Contains hash over relevant composer.json values
* git checkout <refspec> -- composer.lock
* git checkout master -- composer.lock
* Repeat: composer update <list of deps>
* Store parameters in commit message
* Separate commit for the lock fileupdate
Publishing Packages
* composer validate
* Will inform you about problems like missing fields and warn about problematic choices like unboundversion constraints
* Do not publish multiple packages under the same name, e.g. CE/EE
* Names must be unique
ContinuousIntegration for Packages
* Multiple runs
* composer install from lock file
* composer update for latest deps
* composer update --prefer-lowest --prefer-stable for oldest (stable) deps
Development Tools
* require-dev in composer.json
* These packages won't be installed if you run composer install --no-dev
* Use for testing tools, code analysis tools, etc.
* --prefer-source
* Clone repositories instead of downloading and extracting zip files
* Default behaviour for dev versions
* Allows you to push changes back into dependency repos
Deployment Best Practices
What propertiesshould a deploymentprocess have?
* Unreliable or slow deployment process
* You will be scared to deploy
* You will not enjoy deploying
* Consequence: You will not deploy often
* Infrequent deploys increase risks
* Youwill not beable to spotproblemsas quickly
* Problems will fester over time
* Vicious Cycle
* Reliability and speed are keyto breakingit
Composer install performance
* --prefer-dist
* Will always download zip files over cloning repositories
* Store ~/.composer/cache/ betweenbuilds
* How to do this depends on CI product/setup you use
AutoloaderOptimization
* composer install --optimize-autoloader
* composer dump-autoload –optimize
* composer install --optimize-autoloader --classmap-authoritative
* composer dump-autoload –optimize --classmap-authoritative
* composer install --optimize-autoloader --apcu-autoloader
* composer dump-autoload –optimize --apcu
https://getcomposer.org/doc/articles/autoloader-optimization.md
Reduce Dependence on External Services
* Build process (move more into this)
* Install dependencies (Composer, npm, …)
* Generate assets (Javascript, CSS, …)
* Create an artifact with everything in it
* Deployment process (make this as small as possible)
* Move the artifact to your production machine
* sftp, rsync, apt-get install, …
* Machine dependent configuration
* Database modifications
* Start using new version
Never Deploy without a composer.lock
Reduce Dependence on External Services
* Composer install loads packages from URLs in composer.lock
* Packagist.org is metadata only
* Open-Source dependenciescould come from anywhere
* Solutions to unavailability
* Composer cache in ~/.composer/cache
* Unreliable, not intended for this use
* Fork every dependency
* Hugemaintenance burden
* Your own Composer repository mirroring all packages
* Private Packagist
Summary
Development
* Makea checklistfornew dependencies
* composercreate-project
* SemVer: Don'tbe afraidto increase X
* FormalizeBC promisesforusersof your libraries
* composerupdate [--dry-run] <package..>
* git checkout<branch> --composer.lock then replaycomposerupdate
Deployment
* Document& automate buildprocess
* Composer install --prefer-dist--optimizeautoloader--no-dev
* Use a highly availableComposer repository (Private Packagist)
* Deploy morefrequently
* Focus on reliability and speedofyour deploymentprocess
* Deployingshouldnot be scary
* Documentchangestodependencies
Nils Adermann - @naderman – email@example.com
|
MIDLOTHIAN RISK AND AUDIT SERVICES
INTERNAL AUDIT REPORT
Subject:
Property Maintenance: Rechargeable Work
Issued to:
John Blair, Director, Corporate Resources Garry Sheret, Head of Property and Facilities Management Kevin Anderson, Head of Housing and Community Safety Gary Fairley, Head of Finance and Human Resources Murray Sinclair, Property Maintenance Manager Jacqui Dougall, Business Services Manager Mike O’Rourke, Business Systems Officer
Copied to:
Kenneth Lawrie, Chief Executive Other Members of the Corporate Management Team Members of the Audit Committee Grant Thornton, External Auditors Business Development Adviser, Corporate Resources division
Date: 17 th October 2012
Author:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Objective of the Audit
The objective of the audit was to ensure that all rechargeable work carried out by the Property Maintenance service is identified, invoiced to debtors and paid promptly by the debtors.
Remit and Scope
The following areas were included in the scope of the review:
Policy over property maintenance recharges;
Control of budgets and reporting;
Procedures for staff to follow;
Use of software to control processes and any manual aspects;
Internal check within the processes; and
Monitoring of income collection rates
Background
Most, if not all, property maintenance jobs and commitments are controlled through software called Total Repairs (system administered by Business Services, Corporate Resources division) and within the software there are codes used to identify jobs that are rechargeable to other parties. Other parties are normally in the following categories: former housing tenants who have left Council houses in a poor state, insurers who may bear the cost of fire or water damage, other bodies that the Council has carried out work for, owner/occupiers that reside next door to Council houses and are affected by 'mutual repairs' or existing Council house tenants who may have been responsible for some property damage.
The responsibility for identifying rechargeable jobs lies with the Contact Centre, in taking calls from Council house tenants, and Property Maintenance personnel with the former being the main point of contact.
Rechargeable jobs are coded as they arise and there are 12 codes used. For example, if a former tenant is to be recharged, the code inserted into Total Repairs is 'FTNT'.
The vast majority of jobs are not rechargeable and are coded 'NA'.
Periodically a Total Repairs report is produced and staff in Business Services issue invoices to the debtors. Income is coded to housing services finance codes
Rechargeable repairs are covered by policy and procedures for staff involved to follow. The Contact Centre, on receiving calls, has adopted a diagnostic which asks a series of questions of the caller which leads to a decision to establish a recharge or not. The caller is notified that there will be a recharge and has the option to arrange the work themselves.
Regarding the amount of income received each year from Property Maintenance rechargeable work, it appears that around £112k was identified and invoiced in the financial year 2011/12 and this appears typical.
Audit Conclusion.
We have found strengths within the system, in particular:-
The policy and procedures are robust, but require update;
The diagnostics system adopted by the Contact Centre is very useful, being a part of the Total Repairs system;
The Total Repairs software, system administered by Business Services and used by the Contact Centre and the Property Maintenance services, provides a robust means of controlling jobs and identifying recharges;
Attempts are made to identify debtors where they have left the area; and
The risk of fraud is low.
However, while the systems and processes have their strengths, our audit has found the following weaknesses:-
External contractors carrying out works can sometimes be late in submitting their invoices which can lead to delays in completing jobs and issuing invoices to debtors. Invoices submitted by external contractors may also be queried and placed on dispute for good reasons
Business Services are regularly unable to meet the deadline of four weeks after the completion of jobs, in raising invoices on debtors. This is because of other priorities.
We found in the period 1-3 2012/13 recharging exercise that invoices totalling £559 had failed to be raised;
An audit trail between the rechargeable repairs report and invoices raised was missing, therefore it wasn't clear at the time that invoices had been raised without discussion with the person responsible;
Mutual repairs, where private properties are involved, are currently sometimes managed outside Total Repairs;
Housing rechargeable work has an extremely low income collection performance rate, as low as 10% at times, which appears to be caused by debtors unwilling to pay but could be compounded by the delays in raising invoices; and
The likely result of the bad debts is that these will have to be written off at some stage in the future.
Therefore our opinion is that overall the system is weak and management has agreed the recommendations found at the rear of the report. Using the grid below, on this occasion we have rated our opinion as amber.
| Full Assurance | BLUE |
|---|---|
| Reduced Assurance | GREEN |
| Limited Assurance | AMBER |
| No Assurance | RED |
MANAGEMENT ACTION PLAN
Policy
A policy for property maintenance recharges was developed in 2008 and this has been applied by Property Maintenance Services and the Contact Centre. The policy is clear, concise and has the potential to direct management actions.
However, the policy is now four years old and requires an update when time allows. For example, it makes mention of the post of General Manager, Facilities and Construction when the post is now Head of Property and Facilities Management. There may be other minor changes required.
Procedures
At the same time as the policy was developed, procedures were developed. Again these have been adopted by relevant parties and they are clear and concise.
The Contact Centre is aware of the procedure but has developed a diagnostic to discuss repairs with callers, which leads to the identification of rechargeable work. Implementation of the diagnostic tool was carried out by Business Services following discussions with Contact Centre and Property Maintenance staff. The East Lothian Council contact centre deals with calls between 20:00 hours at night and 8:00 hours in the morning and the Contact Centre is currently ensuring the East Lothian staffing is properly identifying rechargeable income.
When time allows, the procedures are in need of a review and update, given that they are now four years old.
Potential for Fraud or Error
It would seem low-risk that officers could make the incorrect charge to debtors because each typical recharge is based on a set of previously agreed schedule of rates which are reviewed every year. Generally officers do not need to individually calculate recharges as the system does it for them.
It also appears low-risk that after a job has been coded by an officer as a rechargeable one, the Total Repairs periodical report would fail to pick up all these jobs coded accordingly.
It is possible that a rechargeable job could be coded incorrectly (but still recharged) but this appears to be low risk.
It is possible that a rechargeable job could be missed, accidentally or on purpose, but our testing of this aspect has brought positive assurance. We reviewed 18,000 jobs over the past year that had been coded 'NA' meaning that they were not rechargeable jobs. We then looked for typical words attaching to rechargeable jobs like 'owner/occupier', 'former tenant', 'choked WC', 'rechargeable', 'mutual', 'TNT', 'void', 'forced entry', 'damage' and 'recharge' to test whether these should have been rechargeable. This showed that we had 75 jobs that potentially were rechargeable. Detailed discussions with relevant staff confirmed that these 75 jobs were in fact non-rechargeable.
If anything, the error is occasionally the other way; jobs are coded as rechargeable when in fact they are not. However, Business Services normally spot these and take action.
Adequate resources and urgency given to raising income
In the case of the Contact Centre, identifying rechargeable income is built into the 'day-job' through regular contact with Council house tenants. The same applies to Property Maintenance personnel and the raising of income is part of the duties of Support personnel in Business Services, based at Dundas Buildings.
However, there are indications of some lack of urgency in identifying and collecting valuable income. These include:-
Occasionally external contractors delay submitting invoices to property maintenance, there are subsequent delays in completing jobs and delays in making recharges. The incremental delays could be contributing to the poor collection performance mentioned below but this is not certain at this stage;
Occasionally Support personnel in Dundas Buildings are often delayed in carrying out incomeraising duties and again delays in issuing invoices occur. Accounts receivable is only part of their duties. The number of support staff has reduced in recent years but systems of work remain outdated and labour-intensive. Senior Management priority in past year or so has been payment of purchase ledger invoices, and complying with the Late Payments legislation, therefore resources have been prioritised accordingly.
A Support Assistant had failed to invoice four debtors in the period 1-3 2012/13 recharging exercise which contributed to delays in collecting some £559. There was no apparent reason for the omission, which has now been rectified;
There was also no audit trail between the rechargeable income report and invoices raised. Essentially, the Support Assistant should be marking the invoice numbers on the rechargeable report so as to create an audit trail;
When a Mutual Repair is required this normally involves repairs to Council property but also neighbouring properties owned by private parties. Currently these are not always controlled through Total Repairs because the Council cannot hold repairs data on private houses. However, all the mutual repairs to other properties could be recorded under the Council's property and managed that way;
The very poor collection rate on housing rechargeable work has been highlighted during previous audits of accounts receivable but a solution has not been achieved. It seems that several debtors have no intention of paying, others cannot be located to a forwarding address while others may have sensed that the Council is late with its billing and the debtors will then delay payment; and
The period 11 2011/12 recharges report was reviewed and this showed that:-
33 invoices totalling £5,118 were due to be raised;
For 5 of these (£1,200), there was no forwarding address for the debtor and therefore income opportunities were denied; there has to be an acceptance that on occasion tenants leave without providing a forwarding address
For 3, the debtors had all paid sums totalling £235;
For 13, the debtors still had not paid (£1,744);
For 8, the recharge should not have been identified as a recharge, they were erroneous (£1,380) and this may be typical in any periodic report; and
For 4, Business Services had omitted to invoice the debtors (£559) (referred to above).
Viewed another way:-
66% of raised income was not really converting into actual cash (5 + 13 + 4)
There was a 24% error rate (8 invoices) in raising invoices.
Only 10% of invoices had been paid by the debtors, which corroborates the analysis in previous audits of accounts receivable that property maintenance repairs has a very poor income collection rate. Other reviews in previous years confirmed that the collection rates were no better and therefore when invoices are raised, they are credited to the housing cost centre, brought into budgetary control but a lot of this income turns out to be 'false' as the cash has not been collected. It is not clear at this stage whether these debtors also have Council Tax and House Rents arrears but the feeling is that this is likely.
The Head of Housing and Community Safety is aware of these issues and has commented that a prepayment system for rechargeable works to current tenants in a property is feasible. He has said in the case of former Council tenants that a Service Review project is taking place in the Housing SystemsThinking assessment by Vanguard Consultants which has identified cross–service opportunities in Homelessness, Housing Allocations, Estate Management and in the tasks shared with Corporate Resources Division for rent recovery, arrears management, housing benefit, house repairs and void properties for re-let to the next tenant.
This project is due to deliver by the year-end and any service changes and potential savings will be realised in the years from 2013 onwards.
In other discussions within Property Maintenance services and Business Services, the opinion is that like other services that raise invoices, housing officers should be discussing (where possible) bad debts with housing tenants, at an early stage.
Risk Management
The Head of Housing and Community Safety has agreed that this risk exposure (poor income collection performance) should be registered as a current risk in his operational risk register and this has been carried out and will remain in the spotlight until the risk appetite is achieved. He has also agreed to include 'income' as a standing agenda item for meetings with the property maintenance service.
Conclusion
It seems that the main issues centre on:-
Lack of urgency in raising invoices; however even with urgency, there could still be a poor income collection rate;
Some errors in allocating rechargeable jobs;
Audit trails;
Risk management; and
A very poor collection performance which has existed for some time.
Therefore the following recommendations are aimed at directly addressing these issues.
| | Finding/ | | Recommendations | | Priority | | Manager | Target Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Rec. No. | | | | | | | |
| 1 | | When time allows, the policy and procedures for rechargeable work should be reviewed and updated | | Medium | | Property Maintenance Manager | | |
| 2 | | Business Services should attempt to avoid any delays in raising invoices and aim for invoices to be raised, at the latest six weeks after the job is completed. (In due course, it can be judged whether or not this is having a positive impact on collection rates) | | Medium | | Business Services Manager | | |
| 3 | | Contractors (and their sub- contractors) should be reminded that it is not acceptable to delay the submission of invoices | | Medium | | Property Maintenance Manager | | |
| 4 | | To create an audit trail, the periodic rechargeable repairs report produced by Business Services should show against each charge the invoice number being produced | | Medium | | Business Services Manager | | |
| | avenues of risk mitigation, like consulting the Council’s debt collectors for advice) | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Property maintenance personnel should be alerted to the error rate in identifying rechargeable jobs that aren’t rechargeable and instructed to improve | Medium | Property Maintenance Manager |
| 7 | The poor income collection rate on housing recharges should be registered as a risk in the Housing and Community Safety risk register with the current risk score, target risk and a target date for low risk | High | Head of Housing and Community Safety |
| 8 | Mutual repairs should be included in Total Repairs under the account of the Council house property | Medium | Property Maintenance Manager |
| 9 | The build-up of bad debts should be quantified and a solution found to the writing-off of very old debt and how this will impact on ongoing budgets | High | Head of Housing and Community Safety |
High priority recommendations are urgent and should make a significant difference to internal control
Medium priority recommendations are meant to be installed in a reasonable timescale and should add value.
|
ILLUSION
of a
romantic relationship
By Lisa A. Tyler National Escrow Administrator
Investing in real estate can be a terrific way to build wealth in America. Property values have increased, providing property owners with big returns on their investment. Owners have also found creative ways to sell their property. Some turn to the many online resources to market their property without the benefit of a licensed real estate agent. The competitive, low inventory real estate market has made it difficult for investors and home buyers to identify new properties to buy. Many search online for properties being sold For Sale by Owner (FSBO), but some have discovered that purchasing properties direct from the seller comes with added risks. Read "FSBO" to discover more.
There are a number of programs or companies offering equity participation products geared towards residential owners. These programs include second loans secured by an appreciation in the equity or options, in return for down payment help that look to appreciation in the property for repayment. Fidelity's underwriting counsel has reviewed these programs and decided that our Company is NOT interested in providing either title or closing services to these providers. Read "EQUITY share programs" to find out more.
Romance scams occur when a criminal adopts a fake online identity to gain a victim's affection and trust. The scammer then uses the illusion of a romantic or close relationship to manipulate and/or steal from the victim. The criminals who carry out romance scams are experts at what they do and will seem genuine, caring and believable. Unfortunately, con artists are present on most dating and social media sites.
The scammer's intention is to establish a relationship as quickly as possible, endear himself to the victim and gain trust. They may propose marriage and make plans to meet in person, but that will never happen. Eventually, they will ask for money. Discover how this scam affected the real estate industry when an escrow company owner and limited practice officer fell for the scam in "ROMANCE scam."
There are good hackers who work with companies to help develop security measures to prevent a malicious computer or network attack. Unfortunately, there are too many bad hackers who do it for basic bragging rights, curiosity, revenge, boredom, challenge, theft for financial gain, sabotage, vandalism, corporate espionage, blackmail and/or extortion. The intention of some hackers is launching a ransomware attack. They often work with others who are all part of a criminal organization to develop and deploy a digital suite of malware tools used to target businesses and individuals all over the world. Read more about it in this month's article on ransomware, titled "WHO do they attack and why."
IN THIS ISSUE
EQUITY
share
programs
Share Fraud Insights
via email, mail or word of mouth.
Publisher
Fidelity National Financial
Editor
Lisa A. Tyler National Escrow Administrator
volume 17 issue 5
FSBO
Kelly Lobeck, escrow officer for Ticor Title in Las Vegas, has more than 20 years of experience in the escrow industry. She has worked hard to develop a great reputation. A real estate agent she knows referred one of his family members to her. He had found a lot for sale on one of the hottest real estate websites. The site allows owners to list their home for sale without the benefit of a real estate agent.
The sales price was $150,000 for a vacant lot.
The buyer felt he had found a hidden gem.
Escrow was opened and Kelly reached out to the seller who was only available by email because he was currently working overseas.
Kelly sent her opening packages to the buyer and seller to complete and sign electronically, but she took one more step. She reviewed the property tax website which included a mailing address for the seller. She sent an introductory letter to the seller via overnight delivery at the address listed on the property tax website.
Since the buyer had cash on hand, the transaction was moving quickly. Then Kelly received a response to her letter, which stated:
Hello Kelly,
John and Joan are long time clients and friends of mine. I am assisting them in communicating with you. The Smiths are in receipt of your letter regarding their property. This is a fraudulent transaction. The Smiths have never listed this property for sale. I have copied Mr. Smith in this email.
Please advise what the Smiths should do to protect their property and stop this fraudulent transaction.
My number is listed below. John's number is 555-555-5555. Thank you.
Kind regards, Adam Jones / Top Seller Team REALTOR ®
Kelly called the seller to confirm the letter was accurate. The seller was relieved because the property had an actual value of more than $1,000,000. He thanked her for contacting him.
Kelly called the buyer, who was shocked and said the deal felt too good to be true. He asked Kelly to put him in touch with the seller's real estate agent to see if they could work something out. In the end, she resigned from the transaction, returned the earnest money to the buyer and cancelled her file.
Kelly did not skip a beat. She opened the order, but immediately performed her due diligence in an effort to protect the Company from a potential claim. Her efforts paid off for the Company and as a thank you she will receive a reward of $1,500.
Absentee property owners are under attack. Our industry and our product, title insurance, is more valuable than ever before. Title insurance is an insurance policy, but it works differently than other types of insurance, because the coverage provided is based on items which can be found in public records.
Title companies eliminate risks by a thorough examination of the items of record affecting the property. Title clearance is performed, providing prospective buyers and lenders with information concerning which items may or may not affect the property.
The title report helps determine what must be addressed before the transaction can close. Dollar-for-dollar, title insurance is the best investment a property owner can make to protect their interest.
Article provided by contributing author:
Diana Hoffman, Corporate Escrow Administrator Fidelity National Title Group National Escrow Administration
May 2022
EQUITY share programs
Under an equity share agreement, an organization provides funding under a home buyer program (picture down payment assistance) or a homeowner program in exchange for an option to purchase an interest in the property in the future.
The equity share agreements allow for the organization to exercise its option under certain circumstances, such as the expiration of a 30-year term, eventual sale of the subject property, death of the homeowner or a request from the homeowner for a special termination of the agreement.
In these cases, the organization values its interest and is paid off in lieu of exercising its option to purchase an interest in the property; the agreement can potentially harm the homeowner by taking all their earned equity.
The average down payment assistance for a purchase is $100,000. The average payment under a homeowner program is $115,000. At closing, the home buyer or owner is presented with 80+ pages of documents to review and sign. The documents can include:
1. Option Agreement (sets out the financial terms)
2. Covenant Agreement (outlines the homeowner's rights)
4. Memorandum (recorded notice of the organization's rights)
5. Mortgage (recorded under the homeowner program)
Every equity sharing transaction must be thoroughly investigated by our underwriting colleagues before determining if we can agree to close and insure. The underwriting counsel will attempt to determine if the program clogs the equity of redemption and could potentially harm the homeowner.
There are some programs for teachers and other first time homebuyers that title companies will close and insure. If you are requested to participate in any transaction that includes this type of "down payment help" please refer the request to your regional counsel.
Despite refusing this business in the past, some of these transactions may have closed with our agents or operations. There are companies that claim they have closed with Fidelity brands; we are concerned that this representation — while it may have been true in an inadvertent situation — will mislead offices and agents to assume that we have somehow approved these processes when we have not.
3. Security Agreement (recorded lien on the property)
ROMANCE scam
An escrow company owner who was also a limited practice officer, which is required in her state in order to complete legal documents, maintained an escrow trust account at a national banking institution.
In October 2021, the bank issued two notices of insufficient funds for the account. In September and October 2021, the company owner knowingly made multiple, unauthorized disbursements of customer escrow funds by wire transfers to a payee in Turkey; the disbursements totaled nearly $2 million, causing overdrafts to the payees of other checks.
When the payees discovered their checks were returned by the issuing bank for insufficient funds, they reached out to the escrow company owner who told them the company's escrow trust account had been hacked. She promised she would make the checks good, but she never did.
On November 10, 2021, the escrow company owner emailed two of the check payees admitting to lying about the account hack and informing them she had willfully transferred funds from the trust account to an unknown party; she caused the account shortage but was unable to pay them.
When the state's regulators found out, they issued a cease and desist, ordering the escrow company to immediately stop accepting new escrow transactions; the escrow company could not accept or disburse any funds from the escrow trust account or the operating account.
As a result of the escrow company owner's actions, all existing active transactions had to be transferred to another escrow company to close and her limited practice officer license was surrendered.
The company was not only out the $2 million she wired from the escrow trust account, but she was out another $1.5 million of her own personal funds that she wire transferred to Turkey in a cash-out refinance of her personal residence.
[Continued on pg 4]
[ROMANCE scam — continued]
The 68-year-old woman admitted she had wire transferred $3.5 million to Turkey to assist a friend who was in danger and in fear for his life. As a result of her actions the public interest was irreparably harmed. In addition, she lost her company, her limited practice office license and her life savings.
Below are tips from the FBI on avoiding the romance scam:
» Be careful what you post and make public online. Scammers can use details shared on social media and dating sites to better understand and target you.
» Research the person's photo and profile using online searches to see if the image, name or details have been used elsewhere.
» Go slowly and ask lots of questions.
» Beware if the individual seems too perfect or quickly asks you to leave a dating service or social media site to communicate directly.
» Beware if the individual attempts to isolate you from friends and family, or requests inappropriate photos or financial information that could later be used to extort you.
WHO do they attack and why
Cyber criminals often partner up with other syndicates to share their hacking techniques, malware code and information they have uncovered about technology infrastructure. This helps them to develop new techniques or employ previously used ones for phishing attacks that deliver ransomware.
municipalities make good targets because their security may be weak and/or they may need to quickly pay a ransom because the services they provide are critical.
Hackers post their successes to criminal name-and-shame websites used to embarrass and coerce victims. The gangs also share software flaws referred to as zero-day vulnerabilities.
Cyber criminals use a few different methodologies to pick their targets. In most cases, it comes down to opportunity and reward. Meaning, they may target a specific industry because their security protocols are weak; they may target a company who needs to access their data immediately, therefore being more likely to quickly pay a ransom. Other businesses pay the ransom in order to avoid the attack from being publicized.
Some cyber criminals target various sectors in the U.S. and other countries. The gangs believe healthcare providers and small
Utility companies are also prime targets. The attack on the Colonial Pipeline which caused gasoline shortages proved this. The hackers were successful in extorting millions of dollars in order for the pipeline to be put back into service.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said, "Ransomware and cyber-attacks are victimizing businesses large and small across America and are a direct threat to our economy."
In recent years, syndicates have implemented new extortion tactics designed to create additional incentives for victims to pay the ransoms, resulting in maximized profits. It is referred to as double extortion or leakware. The hackers threaten to publish the encrypted data if the ransom they demand is not paid.
Cyber criminals focus on infrastructure critical to public safety. This includes emergency service providers, such as hospitals and other first responders or emergency service providers, because they cannot afford to be offline without dire effects which threaten society.
Clearly no one is immune, and everyone must be on high alert. Here at the Fidelity family of Companies our information security teams are constantly putting measures in place to secure our customers' information.
Next month's article will explore in detail some of the different types and methods of ransomware.
Article provided by contributing author:
Diana Hoffman, Corporate Escrow Administrator Fidelity National Title Group National Escrow Administration
» Beware if the individual promises to meet in person but then always has an excuse why he or she cannot meet. If you have not met the person after a few months, for whatever reason, you have good reason to be suspicious.
» Never send money to anyone you have only communicated with online or by phone.
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EUROPEAN COMMISSION
MEMO
EU Air Safety List: Questions and answers on air carriers that are restricted from operating within the European Union.
What is the EU Air Safety List?
The EU Air Safety List (ASL – formerly referred to as the "EU blacklist") is a list of air carriers from non-EU countries which do not fulfil the necessary international safety standards. The carriers on the ASL are banned from operating to, in and from the EU. Also, carriers which do not operate to the EU can be put on the ASL, in order to warn the public travelling outside of the EU about their unsafe status. If the safety authorities of a third country are not able to fulfil their international safety oversight obligations, all the carriers of such country can be put on the ASL.
The EU Air Safety List, while evidently not popular with the countries affected, has developed into a very powerful, and internationally recognised tool to help improve the safety of international aviation, both for flights to the EU, but also for aviation outside of the EU. The ASL is also seen as a strong preventive tool, because countries which are under scrutiny tend to improve their safety oversight to prevent seeing their air carriers on the list.
Which carriers are currently on the EU Air Safety List?
After the update of April 2019, the 33rd update, 120 air carriers are on the ASL:
- 114 airlines certified in 16 states 1 , due to a lack of safety oversight by the aviation authorities from these states;
- Six individual airlines, based on safety concerns with regard to these airlines themselves: Avior Airlines (Venezuela), Iran Aseman Airlines (Iran), Iraqi Airways (Iraq), Blue Wing Airlines (Suriname), Med-View Airlines (Nigeria) and Air Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe).
An additional four airlines are subject to operational restrictions and can only fly to the EU with specific aircraft types: Afrijet (Gabon), Air Koryo (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), Air Service Comores (the Comoros) and Iran Air (Iran).
Who is responsible for the updates to the EU Air Safety List?
For the purpose of updating the list, the Commission is assisted by the EU Air Safety Committee (ASC) which is composed of aviation safety experts from all the EU Member States and chaired by the Commission. Acting on a proposal by the Commission, the Air
1 Afghanistan, Angola (with the exception of 2 airlines), Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon (with the exception of 1 airlines which operate under restrictions and conditions), the Kyrgyz Republic, Liberia, Libya, Republic of Moldova (with the exception of 3 airlines), Nepal, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone and Sudan.
Safety Committee adopts its opinion by qualified majority, which is then submitted to the European Parliament before final adoption by the Commission and subsequent publication in the Official Journal. To date, all decisions taken by the Commission to impose or to lift restrictions have always been reached with the unanimous support of the ASC. Equally, every update of the ASL met with the unanimous support of the European Parliament's Transport Committee.
What is the procedure for updates to the EU Air Safety List?
All Member States and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) have the obligation to communicate to the Commission information which may be relevant to updating the list. The European Commission and the Air Safety Committee use a variety of sources of information when assessing whether or not international safety standards are respected. These sources include ICAO, FAA, EASA, SAFA 2 and TCO 3 reports, as well as information gathered by individual Member States and the Commission itself. It is important to note that this assessment is made against international safety standards (and not the EU safety standards, which are sometimes more stringent), and notably the standards promulgated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
To whom does it apply?
The rules establishing the list of banned carriers apply to all air carriers irrespective of their nationality – EU and non-EU ones. The rules apply only to commercial air transport, i.e. to air transport of passengers and cargo for remuneration or hire. The rules do not apply to private and non-commercial flights.
How often is the list updated and what is the timeframe for this? Is there not a risk that it will quickly become obsolete?
The Air Safety List may be updated whenever the Commission deems it is necessary, or upon request of an EU Member State. The ASC meets normally two or three times every year, as necessary. In cases of emergency, a specific procedure is foreseen.
How can an airline be cleared and taken off the list?
It is possible for states and air carriers to be removed from the air safety list. If an airline considers that it should be taken off the list because it complies with the relevant safety standards, it can address a request to the Commission or a Member State, either directly or through its civil aviation authority. To enable a ban to be lifted, sufficient evidence needs to be provided to the EU to proof that the capacity of the airline and of its oversight authority to implement international safety standards is of a sufficient level. The Air Safety Committee will then assess the evidence presented by the airline and/or its oversight authority to substantiate its request for being withdrawn from the air safety list and formulate its opinion to the Commission. As a consequence, if an air carrier is on the air
2 The SAFA (Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft) programme conducts inspections of aircraft landing at EU airports for compliance with ICAO Standards. The results are analysed by the European Aviation Safety Agency, and the data is used to assist in determining the safety performance of third country air carriers.
3 The TCO (Third Country Operator) programme is run by EASA and obliges every air carrier from outside of the EU to obtain a safety authorisation from EASA before it can operate to the EU.
safety list because the compliance with ICAO standards by its safety oversight authorities is very poor, it will require the state to address the significant non-compliances before that air carrier can be removed from the list.
In practical terms, this involves the air carrier and its state providing written information, attending meetings with the Commission and Member States, sometimes being subject to an on-site visit led by the Commission, and hearings in front of the Air Safety Committee.
How is an airline added to the list?
The procedure is the same as the one for updating the list. If the Commission or a Member State acquires evidence indicating serious safety deficiencies on the part of an airline or its oversight authority anywhere in the world, the list will be updated to include such airline or all the airline of such country.
Does the inclusion of an airline in the air safety list always mean that it is no longer allowed to fly in Europe?
YES. As long as the air carrier is subject to a total ban, it cannot operate with its aircraft and personnel in the EC. The airline is placed on Annex A to the regulation whereby the air safety list is updated. Equally, as long as an air carrier is subject to a partial ban it can operate only with the aircraft stipulated in the Regulation and cannot expand its network. The airline is placed on Annex B to the regulation whereby the Air Safety List is updated.
Also, banned airlines can use the aircraft and personnel of other airlines which are not on the ASL, on the basis of contracts called "wet-lease agreements". In this way, passengers and cargo can still be transported but only by airlines which fully comply with the safety rules. Furthermore, aircraft which are used for government or state purposes (e.g. transport of the heads of state and/or government), do not fall under the safety requirements of ICAO. Such aircraft are considered to be operating "state flights" and they can fly into the EU even if they are banned from operating commercial flights to the EU. However, such flights do need a special authorisation from all the Member States which the state aircraft overflies, as well as from the state of destination.
Finally, banned airlines cannot enter the airspace of any Member State and fly over their territory while they are banned (totally or partially).
Does the list prevent EU Member States from taking individual safety measures at a national level?
NO. The general principle is that whatever measure is considered at national level must be also examined at Union level. When an air carrier is considered unsafe and therefore banned in one Member State, there is an obligation to examine this measure at EU level with a view to applying it throughout the European Union. Nevertheless, even where a ban is not extended to the EU, there is scope for Member States to continue to act at national level in certain exceptional cases, particularly in emergencies or in response to a safety issue specifically affecting them.
What are airlines' "rights of defence"?
Airlines which have been banned, or which are being investigated in view of a potential ban, have the right to express their points of view, submit any documents which they consider appropriate for their defence, and make oral and written presentations to the Air Safety Committee and the Commission. This means that they can submit comments in writing, add new items to their file, and ask to be heard by the Commission or to attend a hearing before the Aviation Safety Committee, which then formulates its opinion based on these proceedings and the materials submitted prior to or during the hearing.
Is there not a risk of retaliation by affected countries?
The Commission's sole aim is to improve aviation safety, which is in everyone's interest, and in no way to affect a country's economic or social development. Countries affected can put in place technical assistance measures to help airlines achieve a satisfactory level of aviation safety. While in the past the focus has been to put countries and carriers on the ASL, the Commission is now also focusing on working with affected states to help them improve their safety situation, in order to allow them to be released from the EU Air Safety List once the necessary safety levels have been reached.
How is the public informed about the EU Air Safety List?
The latest version of the list is made available to the public online at https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/air/safety/air-ban_en. The Commission also liaises closely with European and international travel agent associations each time that any changes are made to the list in order that they may be in the best possible position to aid their clients – the passengers – in making informed decisions when making their travel arrangements. Moreover, the "Air Safety List" regulation also obliges national civil aviation authorities, EASA and airports in the territory of the Member States to bring the ASL to the attention of passengers, both via their websites and, where relevant, in their premises.
In what way does the EU Air Safety List provide rights to European travellers?
The Air Safety List Regulation establishes the right of any passenger to know the identity of every airline they fly with throughout their trip. To this effect, the contracting carrier is required to inform passengers of the identity of the operating air carrier or carriers when making a reservation, whatever the means used to make the booking. The passenger must also be kept informed of any change of operating carrier, either at check-in or, at the latest, when boarding. The Regulation also gives passengers the right to reimbursement or re-routing if a carrier with which a booking has been made is subsequently added to the Air Safety List, resulting in cancellation of the flight concerned.
In what way does the publication of the EU Air Safety List help European citizens travelling beyond EU territory?
The ASL does not only ban unsafe airlines from operating to, from and into the EU. The publication of the list also provides useful information to people wishing to travel outside the European Union, in order for them to avoid flying with these airlines when travelling outside of the EU. The list also safeguards the rights of consumers who have bought a trip at a travel agent which includes a flight operated by an airline on the ASL.
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®
Board of Directors & Officers
President, Thomas C. Stiles, Bureau Director, Kansas Department of Health and Environment
Vice President, Andrew Gavin, Deputy Executive Director, Susquehanna River Basin Commission
Treasurer,Amanda Vincent,
Louisiana Department of
Environmental Scientist Manager,
Environmental Quality
Secretary,Lee Currey,
Department of the Environment
Director of Science Services, Maryland
Past President, Melanie Davenport, Water Permitting Division Director, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality
Regional Representatives
Region I -Tracy Wood(NH)
Region II -Carol Lamb-LaFay(NY)
Region III -Lee Currey(MD)
Region IV -Jennifer Dodd(TN)
Region V -Adrian Stocks(WI)
Region VI -Shelly Lemon(NM)
Region VII -Chris Wieberg(MO)
Region VIII -Karl Rockeman(ND)
Region IX -Karen Mogus(CA)
Region X -Mary Anne Nelson(ID)
Interstates -Evelyn Powers(IEC)
Executive Director & General Counsel Julia Anastasio
1634 I Street, NW, Ste. # 750, Washington, DC 20006
TEL: 202-756-0605
WWW.ACWA-US.ORG
August 2, 2021
United States Environmental Protection Agency William Jefferson Clinton Building 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20460 email@example.com
Via Regulations.gov: Docket ID No. EPA–HQ–OW–2021–0302
RE: Notice of Intention To Reconsider and Revise the Clean Water Act Section 401 Certification Rule
The Association of Clean Water Administrators (hereinafter "ACWA" or the "states") is the independent, nonpartisan, national organization of state, interstate and territorial water program managers, who on a daily basis implement the water quality programs of the Clean Water Act ("CWA"). ACWA's members are responsible for implementing section 401 of the CWA and, therefore, have a unique interest in working cooperatively with EPA as the regulations are reconsidered. The states support the agency's efforts to review and revise the sec. 401 water quality certification rule and encourage the agency to engage in robust coordination with the states through organizations like ACWA.
As the agency undertakes its efforts to reconsider and revise the 2020 sec. 401 certification rule (hereinafter "2020 rule"), ACWA offers the following recommendations: any new rule must fully incorporate the principles of cooperative federalism and respect the role of the states in protecting its water resources and enforcing state requirements; any rule should fully incorporate the decision in PUD No. 1 of Jefferson County v. Wash. Dep'.t of Ecology, 511 U.S. 700 (1994)(hereinafter "PUD No. 1"), and respect the role of states in in fully evaluating the impact of potential projects on state resources; and any new rule should maintain those provisions from the 2020 rule that increased transparency, predictability and efficiency.
Cooperative Federalism & Coordination with Co-Regulators
As the agency undertakes an examination of the 2020 rule and considers revising it, the states appreciate EPA seeking pre-proposal comment from stakeholders on this important issue. Under the CWA, Congress clearly and purposefully articulated the designation of states as co-regulators under a system of cooperative federalism that recognizes the primacy of state authority over the allocation, administration, protection and development of water resources. Section 101 of the CWA expresses Congress' intent to:
…recognize, preserve, and protect the primary responsibilities and rights of States to prevent, reduce, and eliminate pollution, to plan the development and use (including restoration, preservation, and enhancement) of land and water resources, and to consult with the Administrator in the exercise of his authority under this chapter.
This declaration demonstrates Congress' explicit recognition that states have the technical expertise and particular knowledge of their waters to manage their resources. Section 101 also recognizes that state management is preferable to a federally mandated one-size-fitsall approach to water management and protection that does not accommodate the practical realities of geographic and hydrologic diversity among states. State authority to certify and condition federal permits of discharges into waters of the United States under Section 401 is authority directly granted to the states by Congress and affirmed by the
U.S. Supreme Court in PUD No. 1. This authority helps ensure that activities associated with federally permitted discharges will not impair state water quality.
States have clear authority to protect their water resources under CWA Section 401. As stated above, Congress purposefully and clearly designated states as co-regulators under the CWA in Section 101. In accordance with the expressed purposes listed in sec. 101, Congress included sec. 401 in the CWA codifying state authority to certify and condition federal permits of discharges into waters of the United States. In advocating for the inclusion of Section 401 in its original location, the Water Quality Improvement Act of 1970, Senator Edmund Muskie stated, "No polluter will be able to hide behind a Federal license or permit as an excuse for a violation of water quality standard[s]." 116 Cong. Rec. 8984 (1970). In 2006, the United States Supreme Court upheld state authority under Section 401 stating, "[s]tate certifications under [CWA Section] 401 are essential in the scheme to preserve state authority to address the broad range of pollution". S.D. Warren Co. v. Maine Board of Environmental Protection, 547 U.S. 370 (2006), See also Jefferson County PUD v. Washington Dept. of Ecology, 511 U.S. 700, 704 (1994) (explaining the "distinct roles for the Federal and State Governments" under the CWA). Therefore, EPA must not make any clarifications to sec. 401 or changes to related federal regulations and guidance that diminish state authority, as expressed by Congress, and reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, to protect its water resources utilizing CWA sec. 401.
Scope of Review
As EPA reconsiders and revises the 2020 sec. 401 water quality certification rule, the states encourage EPA to craft a rule that recognizes the scope of state review. For some states this would mean analyzing the activity's impacts on state resources. The 2020 rule restricted states' ability to consider how a federally approved project, as a whole, will impact state water quality. States should be allowed to consider a set of impacts best tailored to local needs and apply conditions that may be relevant to state laws that they deem necessary to best protect their waters. However, there are other states that are prohibited from considering the activity as a whole and rather focus on the project at hand. Because of the variety of approaches implemented throughout the states, it is essential that the agency craft a rule that respects these differences and provides states with the flexibility they need to implement the CWA in their states.
Any revisions to the 2020 rule, must also restore the authority of states to have broad discretion when developing the conditions included in a sec. 401 water quality certification. The agency should revise its interpretation of scope to include potential impacts to water quality not only from the ''discharge'' but also from the ''activity as a whole'' consistent with Supreme Court case law. This discretion should include the ability to place conditions on impacts from nonpoint sources once the overall activity has triggered the need for a water quality certification. This flexibility is "essential in the scheme to preserve state authority to address a broad range of pollution." S.D. Warren v. Maine Bd. Env'tal Prot., 547 U.S. 370, 386 (2006). However, this direction should not be mandatory but rather flexible so that states can implement the CWA in their states as they see fit.
Process Improvements
ACWA supports efforts to streamline or clarify the sec. 401 water quality certification process to increase transparency and clarity for the regulated public. However, the states stress that it is essential for EPA to avoid maintaining the changes in the 2020 rule or expanding any changes to the sec. 401 regulations that would weaken the abilities of state water programs to protect the quality of their waters.
Many states have found the 2020 rule's pre-filing meeting provisions helpful to both the state and project proponents. However, as EPA is revising the 2020 rule, states caution the agency to refrain from making any pre-filing meeting provisions mandatory for states to follow. Even before the 2020 rule, states already employed a series of "best practices" to ensure complete requests and timely certifications. State websites often have guidance documents and other materials to assist applicants. States also reach out directly to applicants when requests are incomplete. Meaningful early engagement gives states a chance to raise water quality concerns about projects during the planning process and gives project proposers and federal agencies a chance to address those concerns in ways that facilitate the certification process and protect water quality. Early engagement also ensures that states have timely access to the information they need to make informed certification decisions.
Any newly revised sec. 401 rule must also include provisions that empower states to determine when a complete application is received by the state, thereby triggering the "reasonable period of time" clock. The states hope that any new regulation makes it explicitly clear that the "reasonable period of time" does not begin until the states have all of the necessary information to evaluate the proposed project's impacts. Due to the wide variety in the types of projects in need of a water quality certification and the essential role as co-regulators that states play in the certification process, states must have the authority to determine when the reasonable period of time starts, provided, provided all reviews fall within the statutory one-year limit.
The states also suggest that any revised sec. 401 water quality certification rule should require project proponents to provide sufficient information for states to properly evaluate a proposed project's impacts on the state resources. The 2020 rule provisions do not provide sufficient information for states to fully understand the scope of proposed projects to determine all of the necessary information required to make a decision. States often encounter challenges in issuing timely water quality certification responses due to actions or inactions by the project proposers themselves. Examples of these challenges include: 1) incomplete or inconsistent application packages that are missing key information, and/or maps that would enable states to make an informed decision on a project or the project scope, 2) design or construction plans that may have been altered without supplying regulators with updates on the impacts of the changes,3) slow responses (and sometimes refusals) by regulated entities to respond to state requests for information needed to complete an application and allow for effective review of water quality impacts, and 4) certification requests that are filed prior to completion of all federal permitting reviews. In order for states to effectively and efficiently complete the water quality certification process, they must have the appropriate information upon which to base their decision. Any new regulation should also define the processes, timelines and expectations of project applicants for submitting and supplementing information to states (and applicable federal agencies) in relation to any request for CWA sec. 401 certification. At the same time, a new regulation should incorporate flexibility to reflect the variety of state-specific certification request requirements and information needs, which may also differ from project to project.
EPA should restore States' authority to modify or include "reopener" clauses in sec. 401 water quality certifications once they have been issued to cure any deficiencies. The 2020 regulation prohibited modifications and, as such, this change has resulted in an increase in certification denials by state water quality certification programs because they do not have the ability to evaluate new information or data about the proposed project. Authority to modify a request or reopen a certification allows for quick responses and flexibilities when circumstances require changes to a project and therefore require the modification of relevant water quality certifications. Under the 2020 rule, if a project has even minor changes the applicant is forced to go through an entirely new certification process which may result in costly delays.
Role of Federal Agencies
As EPA re-evaluates and revises the 2020 rule, EPA should revise provisions related to the role of federal agencies in reviewing state certifications. A state's sec. 401 water quality certification authority is statutory authority directly granted to the states; not authority that the states need to seek delegation for from EPA. Therefore, the states do not believe that it is appropriate for federal agencies to review certifying authority actions or to reject state conditions. The CWA does not support such authority. Furthermore, it is essential that any new rule reinstate the states' authority to enforce conditions included in a sec. 401 water quality certification. In order to be able to enforce conditions, any new regulations must include provisions authorizing states to inspect projects to ensure compliance with certification conditions. Finally, some states believe EPA should eliminate the following requirement to include in certification conditions "ii) A statement explaining why discharges that could be authorized by the general license or permit will not comply with the identified water quality requirements; (in section 121.7)". Other states, however, do not see this requirement as an impediment or a provision that should be removed.
Delayed Effective Date
Once EPA has concluded this effort at reevaluating and revising the 2020 rule, EPA should provide for a delayed effective date so that states have time, if necessary, to revised state statutory or regulatory requirements to ensure clarity and transparency is achieved. The states would also recommend that any concomitant regulatory changes should be proposed and finalized simultaneously by relevant federal agencies (e.g., the Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) so that implementation of revised water certification provisions would be more effectively coordinated and would avoid circumstances where regulations could be interpreted as inconsistent with one another.
Conclusion
Because of states' unique and congressionally designated role under the CWA as co-regulators, ACWA recommends that EPA provide a genuine outreach to states and maintain regular contact and dialogue, through forums, calls, and other communication, throughout the life of this effort. When commissioners and elected officials need to discern how to implement this new rule and what effects it will have on state government, local landowners, and other stakeholders, on permitting efficiency, and on water quality our members are the experts they will turn to. ACWA urges EPA to continue to take advantage of this expertise and experience by working directly with ACWA and its members as the proposed rule is drafted.
Specifically, we ask that EPA provide at least an early draft of regulatory text, or options with sufficient detail for our workgroup members to give EPA useful and specific feedback on the new rule. Providing this information to state surface water program directors would be tremendously beneficial for EPA, as our members are uniquely qualified to evaluate the regulatory text in terms of technical details, implementation challenges and barriers, and unintended consequences. Undertaking such a series need not be a drawn-out process, as our workgroup is ready and able to have thorough discussions in a short period of time to meet your schedule.
While ACWA's process to develop comments is comprehensive and intended to capture the diverse perspectives of the states that implement these programs, EPA should also seriously consider the recommendations that come directly from individual states, interstates, and territories. Thank you again for the opportunity to provide pre-proposal recommendations on this effort. Please contact ACWA's Executive Director Julia Anastasio at firstname.lastname@example.org or (202) 756-0600 with any questions regarding ACWA's comments.
Sincerely,
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FISCAL COMMITTEE OF THE GENERAL COURT MINUTES April 29, 2008
The Fiscal Committee of the General Court met on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 210-211 of the Legislative Office Building.
Members in attendance were as follows:
Representative Marjorie Smith, Chairman
Representative Neal Kurk
Representative Daniel Eaton, Alternate
Representative Stephen Stepanek, Alternate
Representative Peter Franklin
Representative Kenneth Weyler, Alternate
Senator Lou D'Allesandro
Senate President Sylvia Larsen
Senator Kathleen Sgambati
Senator Theodore Gatsas
Senator John Gallus
Chairman Smith opened the meeting at 9:05 a.m.
NEW BUSINESS:
FIS 08-150 Office of the Governor – His Excellency, Governor John H. Lynch and Linda Hodgdon, Commissioner, Department of Administrative Services, presented a replacement to Executive Order 2008-5 and responded to questions of the Committee. Also present to respond to questions of the Committee was Michael Buckley, Legislative Budget Assistant.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee approve the request of the Office of the Governor, for "an order directing a freeze of Executive Branch purchases", as specified in Executive Order 2008-5. MOTION ADOPTED. (8-Yes, 1-No)
ACCEPTANCE OF MINUTES:
On a motion by Senator D'Allesandro, seconded by Representative Eaton, that the minutes of the March 26, 2008 be accepted as written. MOTION ADOPTED.
OLD BUSINESS:
FIS 07-111 Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Medicaid Business and Policy – for authorization to clarify physician services reimbursements to comply with recent instructions from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Tabled 4/19/07 and 5/15/07. No action taken.
FIS 07-238 Department of Health and Human Services – authorization to complete the bid process for the GraniteCare Selective Contracting Program. Tabled 7/24/07. No action taken.
FIS 07-360 Department of Health and Human Services – requests approval of one of four options for a new rate structure for pediatric specialty care Tabled 11/14/07. Replacement Item submitted for approval of one of five options for a new rate structure for pediatric specialty care. Tabled 12/13/07. No action taken.
RSA 9:16-a, TRANSFERS AUTHORIZED:
CONSENT CALENDAR
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee approve the requests on the agenda under this section as submitted. MOTION ADOPTED. [FIS 08-112 Treasury Department – transfer $365,000, FIS 08-119 New Hampshire Fish and Game Department – transfer $50,000, FIS 08-144 Department of Safety – transfer $40,000]
RSA 14:30-a,VI FISCAL COMMITTEE APPROVAL REQUIRED FOR ACCEPTANCE AND EXPENDITURE OF FUNDS OVER $50,000 FROM ANY NON-STATE SOURCE: CONSENT CALENDAR
Items FIS 08-114 Treasury Department – replacement request to accept and expend $1,200,000 and FIS 08-139 Department of Safety – budget and expend $287,650 in prior year carry forward funds were removed from the Consent Calendar at the request of Senator D'Allesandro.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator Gallus, that the Committee approve all the remainder of the requests on the agenda under this section as submitted. MOTION ADOPTED. [FIS 08-113 Postsecondary Education Commission – accept and expend $123,105, FIS 08-120 Office of the Adjutant General – accept and expend $94,559, FIS 08-121 Department of Environmental Services – authorize the Oil Fund Disbursement Board to accept and expend $8,000, FIS 08-128 Department of Safety – amend FIS 07-313 approved October 17, 2007 by reallocating $1,725 in federal funds through September 30, 2008, FIS 08-129 Department of Safety – budget and expend $52,500 in prior year carry forward funds, FIS 08-138 Department of Environmental Services – accept and expend $44,000,000]
FIS 08-114 Treasury Department – Michael Buckley, Legislative Budget Assistant, presented the request to the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator Larsen, that the Committee approve the replacement request of the Treasury Department to accept and expend $1,200,000. MOTION ADOPTED.
FIS 08-139 Department of Safety – John Barthelmes, Commissioner, Wesley Colby, Director, Division of Administration, and Richard Mason, Director, Division of Fire Standards and Training, Department of Safety, responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Safety to budget and expend $287,650 in prior year carry forward funds. MOTION ADOPTED. (8-Yes, 2-No)
RSA 9:16-a, TRANSFERS AUTHORIZED AND CHAPTER 262:1, LAWS OF 2007, PAU 0401-02-04-01, BUDGET FOOTNOTE C:
FIS 08-137 Department of Transportation – Jeff Brillhart, Assistant Commissioner, and Thomas Martin, Director of Finance, Department of Transportation presented the request and responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Transportation to transfer $322,00 between Highway fund accounts, authorization to accept and expend $2,500,000 in other funds for the Mechanical Services Bureau, and further authorization to transfer $185,000 between Turnpike fund accounts.
A roll call was requested by Senator Gatsas and the results were as follows:
Representative Smith – Yes
Representative Kurk – No
Representative Eaton – Yes
Representative Stepanek – No
Representative Franklin – Yes
Senator D'Allesandro – Yes
Senator Larsen – Yes
Senator Sgambati – Yes
Senator Gatsas – No
Senator Gallus – No
(6-Yes; 4-No) MOTION ADOPTED.
RSA 9:17-d SUPREME COURT; TRANSFER OF APPROPRIATIONS:
FIS 08-126 Administrative Office of the Courts – On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Representative Franklin, that the Committee approved the request of the Administrative Office of the Courts to transfer $37,100. MOTION ADOPTED.
RSA 14:30-a,VI FISCAL COMMITTEE APPROVAL REQUIRED FOR ACCEPTANCE AND EXPENDITURE OF FUNDS OVER $50,000 FROM ANY NON-STATE SOURCE AND RSA 124:15 POSITIONS RESTRICTED:
FIS 08-127 Department of Education – Mary Heath, Deputy Commissioner, and Michael Bieniek, Business Administrator, Department of Education presented the request and responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Senator D'Allesandro, seconded by Senator Larsen, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Education to accept and expend $142,866 in federal funds and further authorization to establish a class 046 (consultants) expenditure and budget funds for contract consultants through June 30, 2008. MOTION ADOPTED. (8-Yes, 2-No)
FIS 08-140 Department of Safety – John Barthelmes, Commissioner, and Wesley Colby, Director, Division of Administration, Department of Safety, presented the request and responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Safety to retroactively amend the grant award termination date from March 30, 2008 to March 30, 2009, with no increase in funding (approved FIS 06-327 November 14, 2006, subsequently amended and approved FIS 07-211 June 28, 2007), authorization to establish a consultant position through March 30, 2009 and, pending approval of the proceeding requests, authorization to amend the grant by reallocating $21,560 in federal grant funds (FIS 06-327 approved November 14, 2006, subsequently amended FIS 07-211 approved June 28, 2007). MOTION ADOPTED.
FIS 08-143 Department of Environmental Services – On a motion by Senator D'Allesandro, seconded by Representative Eaton, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Environmental Services to establish a Hydrogeologist I position through December 31, 2008 and further authorization to accept and expend $322,184 in federal funds through June 30, 2009. MOTION ADOPTED.
RSA 21-P:23 HIGHWAY FUND SURPLUS:
FIS 08-145 Department of Safety – John Barthelmes, Commissioner, and Wesley Colby, Director, Division of Administration, Department of Safety, presented the request and responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator Larsen, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Safety to transfer $516,500 from the Highway Fund Surplus account.
A roll call was requested by Senator Gatsas and the results were as follows:
Representative Kurk – No
Representative Eaton – Yes
Representative Franklin – Yes
Representative Weyler – No
Senator D'Allesandro – Yes
Senator Larsen – Yes
Senator Sgambati – No
Senator Gatsas – No
Senator Gallus – No
(4-Yes; 5-No) MOTION FAILED.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee table the request of the Department of Safety to transfer $516,500 from the Highway Fund Surplus account. MOTION ADOPTED.
RSA 126-A:3, VII MEDICAID HOSPITAL OUTPATIENT SERVICES; DESIGNATION IN OPERATING BUDGET:
FIS 08-130 Department of Health and Human Services – Nicholas Toumpas, Commissioner, and Marilee Nihan, Financial Manager, Office of Medicaid Business and Policy, Department of Health and Human Services, presented the request and responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Senator Larsen, seconded by Representative Eaton, that the Committee table the request of the Department of Health and Human Services to revise the reimbursement rate paid to non-critical access hospitals for outpatient services from 81.24% of Medicare allowable costs to 62.82% of Medicare allowable costs retroactively to January 1, 2008.
A roll call was requested by Representative Kurk and the results were as follows:
Representative Smith – Yes
Representative Kurk – No
Representative Eaton – Yes
Representative Franklin – Yes
Representative Weyler – No
Senator Larsen – Yes
Senator Sgambati – Yes
Senator Gatsas – No
Senator Gallus – Yes
(6-Yes; 3-No) MOTION ADOPTED.
RSA 206:33-b TRANSFERS FROM THE FISH AND GAME FUND:
FIS 08-131 New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game – On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Representative Franklin, that the Committee approve the request of the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game to transfer $25,000. MOTION ADOPTED.
CHAPTER 263:28, II, LAWS OF 2007, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; PROGRAM ELIGIBILITY; ADDITIONAL REVENUES; TRANSFER AMONG ACCOUNTS:
FIS 08-122 Department of Health and Human Services – On a motion by Representative Franklin, seconded by Representative Eaton, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Health and Human Services to accept and expend $90,500 in additional federal carryover balances. MOTION ADOPTED.
FIS 08-147 Department of Health and Human Services – Nicholas Toumpas, Commissioner, Department of Health and Human Services responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Representative Franklin, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Health and Human Services to accept and expend $4,711,438 in additional federal grant funds. MOTION ADOPTED.
CHAPTER 263:28, II, LAWS OF 2007, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; PROGRAM ELIGIBILITY; ADDITIONAL REVENUES; TRANSFER AMONG ACCOUNTS AND RSA 124:15 POSITIONS RESTRICTED:
FIS 08-149 Department of Health and Human Services – Nicholas Toumpas, Commissioner, and Dague Clark, Fiscal Administrator, Division of Children, Youth and Families, Department of Health and Human Services presented the request and responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Franklin, seconded by Senator Sgambati, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Health and Human Services to accept and expend $12,934.50 in SFY 2008 and $150,540.07 in SFY 2009 from parental reimbursement funds and further authorization to accept and expend $12,934.50 in SFY 2008 and $150,540.07 in SFY 2009 in federal funds and authorization to establish six (6) full-time temporary Reimbursement Specialist positions through June 30, 2009. MOTION ADOPTED. (6-Yes, 1No)
CHAPTER 263:28, II AND III, LAWS OF 2007, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; PROGRAM ELIGIBILITY; ADDITIONAL REVENUES; TRANSFER AMONG ACCOUNTS:
FIS 08-133 Department of Health and Human Services – Nicholas Toumpas, Commissioner, and Marilee Nihan, Financial Manager, Office of Medicaid Business and Policy, Department of Health and Human Services, presented the request and responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Franklin, seconded by Representative Eaton, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Health and Human Services to accept and expend $2,838,467 in additional restricted federal matching funds, accept and expend $7,140,891 in additional unrestricted revenue, authorization to transfer $9,979,358 in general funds and further authorization to accept and expend $9,989,337.36 in federal matching funds. MOTION ADOPTED. (7-Yes, 1-No)
CHAPTER 263:28, III, LAWS OF 2007, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; PROGRAM ELIGIBILITY; ADDITIONAL REVENUES; TRANSFER AMONG ACCOUNTS:
FIS 08-123 Department of Health and Human Services – On a motion by Representative Franklin, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Health and Human Services to transfer $46,200. MOTION ADOPTED.
AUDITS:
State of New Hampshire, Board of Medicine, Performance Audit Report, April 2008 – Richard Mahoney, Director, and Steven Grady, Senior Audit Manager, Audit Division, Office of Legislative Budget Assistant presented the report and responded to questions of the Committee. Amy Feitelson, Vice-President, and Dr. Robert Cervenka, Board Member, Board of Medicine, were also present to respond to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the report be accepted, placed on file and released in the usual manner. MOTION ADOPTED
MISCELLANEOUS:
Michael Buckley, Legislative Budget Assistant, requested Committee approval to fill two vacant positions in the Office of Legislative Budget Assistant, Audit Division.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee approve the request of the Office of Legislative Budget Assistant, Audit Division to fill two vacancies. MOTION ADOPTED.
ADJOURNMENT:
At the call of the Chair the meeting was recessed until Monday, May 5, 2008 at 11:00 a.m.
Fiscal Committee Minutes
September 5, 2007
Chairman Smith reconvened the April 29, 2008 meeting on Monday, May 5, 2008 at 11:00 a.m. with the following members in attendance:
Representative Marjorie Smith, Chairman
Representative Daniel Eaton, Alternate Representative Norman Major, Alternate Representative Peter Franklin Representative Kenneth Weyler, Alternate Senator Lou D'Allesandro Senate President Sylvia Larsen Senator Martha Fuller Clark Senator Theodore Gatsas
Chairman Smith opened the meeting at 11:10 a.m.
RSA 21-P:23 HIGHWAY FUND SURPLUS:
FIS 08-145 Department of Safety – On a motion by Senator D'Allesandro, seconded by Representative Eaton, that the Committee remove the request from the table. MOTION ADOPTED.
John Barthelmes, Commissioner, and Wesley Colby, Director, Division of Administration, Department of Safety, responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee approve the request of the Department of Safety to transfer $516,500 from the Highway Fund Surplus account.
A roll call was requested by Senator Gatsas and the results were as follows:
Representative Smith – Yes
Representative Weyler – No
Representative Eaton – Yes
Representative Major – No
Representative Franklin – Yes
Senator D'Allesandro – Yes
Senator Larsen – Yes
Senator Fuller Clark – Yes
Senator Gatsas – No
(6-Yes; 3-No) MOTION ADOPTED.
OLD BUSINESS:
FIS 07-238 Department of Health and Human Services – authorization to complete the bid process for the GraniteCare Selective Contracting Program Tabled 7/24/07. On a motion by Senator Gatsas, seconded by Representative Weyler, that this request be removed from the table.
A roll call was requested by Senator Gatsas and the results were as follows:
Representative Smith – Yes
Representative Weyler – Yes
Representative Eaton – Yes
Representative Major – Yes
Representative Franklin – Yes
Senator D'Allesandro – Yes
Senator Larsen – No
Senator Fuller Clark – No
Senator Gatsas – Yes
(7-Yes; 2-No) MOTION ADOPTED.
Nicholas Toumpas, Commissioner, Department of Health and Human Services reported to the Committee that he was not prepared to discuss this request at this time.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator Larsen, that the Committee table the request of the Department of Health and Human Services for authorization to complete the bid process for the GraniteCare Selective Contracting Program, Tabled 7/24/07. MOTION ADOPTED. (8-Yes, 1-No)
AUDITS:
State of New Hampshire, Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of Elderly and Adult Services, Financial and Compliance Audit Report For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2007 – Richard Mahoney, Director, and Pamela Veeder, Senior Audit Manager, Audit Division, Office of Legislative Budget Assistant presented the report and responded to questions of the Committee. Nicholas Toumpas, Commissioner, Kathleen Otte, Administrator, Bureau of Elderly and Adult Services, Department of Health and Human Services, were also present to respond to questions of the Committee. William Howley, Administrator Financial Operations, Division of Community Based Care Services, Department of Health and Human Services also respond to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Weyler, seconded by Representative Eaton, that the report be accepted, placed on file and released in the usual manner. MOTION ADOPTED
LATE ITEM:
FIS 08-151 Judicial Council – Nina C. Gardner, Executive Director, Judicial Council presented the request and responded to questions of the Committee.
On a motion by Representative Eaton, seconded by Senator D'Allesandro, that the Committee approve the request of the Judicial Council to receive $125,000 in additional general funds through June 30, 2008. MOTION ADOPTED.
INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS:
FIS 08-141 Department of Health and Human Services – Chapter 262:1, Laws of 2007 – update on the status of the new Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS).
Nicholas Toumpas, Commissioner, Department of Health and Human Services presented an update and responded to questions of the Committee.
FIS 08-142 Department of Administrative Services – Chapter 259:16, II, Laws of 2005 – 60 Day Report on the progress and implementation of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Project for the period of March 1, 2008 through April 30, 2008 and FIS 08-146 Berry, Dunn McNeil and Parker – NH First Monthly Quality Assurance Status Report for March 2008.
Nicholas Toumpas, Commissioner, Department of Health and Human Services and Richard C. Bailey Jr., Chief Information Officer, Office of Information Technology presented an update and responded to questions of the Committee.
The informational items were accepted and placed on file.
ADJOURNMENT:
The next regular meeting of the Fiscal Committee was set for Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. (Whereupon the meeting adjourned at 12:55 p.m.)
__________________________________
Representative Neal Kurk, Clerk
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Data Sheet
10-Bit, 4× Oversampled SDTV Video Decoder with Differential Inputs and Deinterlacer
ADV7283
FEATURES
Worldwide NTSC/PAL/SECAM color demodulation support One 10-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), 4× oversampling per channel for CVBS, Y/C, and YPrPb modes
6 analog video input channels with on-chip antialiasing filters
Video input support for CVBS (composite), Y/C (S-Video), and
YPrPb (component)
Fully differential, pseudo differential, and single-ended CVBS video input support
NTSC/PAL/SECAM autodetection
Up to 4 V common-mode input range solution
Excellent common-mode noise rejection capabilities
5-line adaptive 2D comb filter and CTI video enhancement
Adaptive Digital Line Length Tracking (ADLLT), signal processing, and enhanced FIFO management provide
time-base correction (TBC) functionality
Integrated automatic gain control (AGC) with adaptive peak white mode
Fast switching capability
Integrated interlaced-to-progressive (I2P) video output converter (deinterlacer)
Adaptive contrast enhancement (ACE)
Down dither (8-bit to 6-bit)
Rovi® (Macrovision) copy protection detection
8-bit ITU-R BT.656 YCrCb 4:2:2 output
Full featured vertical blanking interval (VBI) data slicer with world system teletext (WST) support
Power-down mode available
2
2-wire, I C-compatible serial interface
Qualified for automotive applications
−40°C to +105°C automotive temperature grade
−40°C to +85°C industrial qualified temperature grade
32-lead, 5 mm × 5 mm, RoHS-compliant LFCSP
APPLICATIONS
Automotive infotainment Smartphone/multimedia handsets DVRs for video security Media players
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The ADV7283 is a versatile one-chip, multiformat video decoder that automatically detects standard analog baseband video signals compatible with worldwide NTSC, PAL, and SECAM standards in the form of composite, S-Video, and component video.
The ADV7283 converts the analog video signals into a YCrCb 4:2:2 video data stream that is compatible with the 8-bit ITU-R BT.656 interface standard.
The six analog video inputs of the ADV7283 can accept singleended, pseudo differential, and fully differential signals. The ADV7283 contains a deinterlacer (I2P converter) that allows the device to output video in a progressive format.
The ADV7283 is programmed via a 2-wire, serial bidirectional port (I 2 C compatible) and is fabricated in a 1.8 V CMOS process.
The ADV7283 is provided in a space-saving LFCSP surfacemount, RoHS-compliant package.
The ADV7283 is available in an automotive grade rated over the −40°C to +105°C temperature range, as well as a −40°C to +85°C temperature range, making the device ideal for both automotive and industrial applications.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
5/2014—Revision 0: Initial Version
FUNCTIONAL BLOCK DIAGRAM
Figure 1.
SPECIFICATIONS
ELECTRICAL SPECIFICATIONS
AVDD, DVDD, and PVDD = 1.71 V to 1.89 V, DVDDIO = 1.62 V to 3.63 V, specified at operating temperature range, unless otherwise noted.
Table 1.
| Parameter | Symbol | Test Conditions/Comments | Min Typ Max |
|---|---|---|---|
| STATIC PERFORMANCE ADC Resolution Integral Nonlinearity Differential Nonlinearity | N INL DNL | CVBS mode CVBS mode | 10 2 ±0.6 |
| DIGITAL INPUTS Input High Voltage Input Low Voltage Input Leakage Current Input Capacitance | V IH V IL I IN C IN | D = 3.3 V VDDIO D = 1.8 V VDDIO D = 3.3 V VDDIO D = 1.8 V VDDIO RESET pin SDATA, SCLK pins PWRDWN, ALSB pins | 2 1.2 0.8 0.4 −10 +10 −10 +15 −10 +50 10 |
| CRYSTAL INPUT Input High Voltage Input Low Voltage | V IH V IL | XTALN pin XTALN pin | 1.2 0.4 |
| DIGITAL OUTPUTS Output High Voltage Output Low Voltage High Impedance Leakage Current Output Capacitance | V OH V OL I LEAK C OUT | D = 3.3 V, I = 0.4 mA VDDIO SOURCE D = 1.8 V, I = 0.4 mA VDDIO SOURCE D = 3.3 V, I = 3.2 mA VDDIO SINK D = 1.8 V, I = 1.6 mA VDDIO SINK | 2.4 1.4 0.4 0.2 10 20 |
| POWER REQUIREMENTS1, 2, 3 Digital I/O Power Supply PLL Power Supply Analog Power Supply Digital Power Supply Digital I/O Supply Current PLL Supply Current Analog Supply Current Single-Ended CVBS Input Differential CVBS Input Y/C Input YPrPb Input Digital Supply Current Single-Ended CVBS Input Differential CVBS Input Y/C Input YPrPb Input | D VDDIO P VDD A VDD D VDD I DVDDIO I PVDD I AVDD I DVDD | Fully differential and pseudo differential CVBS Fully differential and pseudo differential CVBS | 1.62 3.3 3.63 1.71 1.8 1.89 1.71 1.8 1.89 1.71 1.8 1.89 5 12 47 69 60 75 70 70 70 70 |
1 Guaranteed by characterization.
2 Typical current consumption values are measured with nominal voltage supply levels and an SMPTE bar test pattern.
3 All specifications apply when the I2P core is activated, unless otherwise stated.
VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS
AVDD, DVDD, and PVDD = 1.71 V to 1.89 V, DVDDIO = 1.62 V to 3.63 V, specified at operating temperature range, unless otherwise noted. Specifications guaranteed by characterization.
Table 2.
| Parameter | Symbol | Test Conditions/Comments | Min Typ Max |
|---|---|---|---|
| NONLINEAR SPECIFICATIONS1 Differential Phase Differential Gain Luma Nonlinearity | DP DG LNL | CVBS input, modulated five-step CVBS input, modulated five-step CVBS input, five-step | 0.9 0.5 2.0 |
| NOISE SPECIFICATIONS Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), Unweighted Analog Front-End Crosstalk Common-Mode Rejection Ratio2 | SNR CMRR | Luma ramp Luma flat field | 57.1 58 60 73 |
| LOCK TIME SPECIFICATIONS Horizontal Lock Range Vertical Lock Range Subcarrier Lock Range Color Lock-In Time Synchronization Depth Range Color Burst Range Fast Switch Speed3 | f SC | | −5 +5 40 70 ±1.3 60 20 200 5 200 100 |
1 These specifications apply for all CVBS input types (NTSC, PAL, and SECAM), as well as for single-ended and differential CVBS inputs.
2 The CMRR of this circuit design is critically dependent on the external resistor matching on the circuit inputs (see the Input Networks section). The CMRR measurement was performed with 0.1% tolerant resistors, a common-mode voltage of 1 V, and a common-mode frequency of 10 kHz.
3 Fast switch speed is the time required for the ADV7283 to switch from one analog input (single-ended or differential) to another, for example, switching from AIN1 to AIN2.
ANALOG SPECIFICATIONS
AVDD, DVDD, and PVDD = 1.71 V to 1.89 V, DVDDIO = 1.62 V to 3.63 V, specified at operating temperature range, unless otherwise noted. Specifications guaranteed by characterization.
Table 3.
| Parameter | Test Conditions/Comments | Min Typ Max |
|---|---|---|
| CLAMP CIRCUITRY External Clamp Capacitor Input Impedance Large Clamp Source Current Large Clamp Sink Current Fine Clamp Source Current Fine Clamp Sink Current | Clamps switched off | 0.1 10 0.4 0.4 10 10 |
CLOCK AND I 2 C TIMING SPECIFICATIONS
AVDD, DVDD, and PVDD= 1.71 V to 1.89 V, DVDDIO = 1.62 V to 3.63 V, specified at operating temperature range, unless otherwise noted. Specifications guaranteed by characterization.
Table 4.
| Parameter | Symbol | Min Typ Max |
|---|---|---|
| SYSTEM CLOCK AND CRYSTAL Nominal Frequency Frequency Stability | | 28.63636 ±50 |
| I2C PORT SCLK Frequency SCLK Minimum Pulse Width High SCLK Minimum Pulse Width Low Hold Time (Start Condition) Setup Time (Start Condition) SDATA Setup Time SCLK and SDATA Rise Times SCLK and SDATA Fall Times Setup Time (Stop Condition) | t 1 t 2 t 3 t 4 t 5 t 6 t 7 t 8 | 400 0.6 1.3 0.6 0.6 100 300 300 0.6 |
| RESET INPUT RESET Pulse Width | | 5 |
PIXEL PORT TIMING SPECIFICATIONS
AVDD, DVDD, and PVDD = 1.71 V to 1.89 V, DVDDIO = 1.62 V to 3.63 V, specified at operating temperature range, unless otherwise noted. Specifications guaranteed by characterization.
Table 5.
| Parameter | Symbol | Test Conditions/Comments | Min Typ Max |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLOCK OUTPUTS LLC Output Frequency LLC Mark Space Ratio | t :t 16 17 | | 27 45:55 55:45 |
| DATA AND CONTROL OUTPUTS Data Output Transitional Time | t 18 t 19 | Negative clock edge to start of valid data (t = t − t ) SETUP 17 18 End of valid data to negative clock edge (t = t − t ) HOLD 16 19 | 3.8 6.9 |
ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM RATINGS
Table 6.
1 The absolute maximum ratings assume that the DGND pins and the exposed pad of the ADV7283 are connected together to a common ground plane (GND). This is part of the recommended layout scheme. See the PCB Layout Recommendations section for more information. The absolute maximum ratings are stated in relation to this common ground plane.
Stresses at or above those listed under Absolute Maximum Ratings may cause permanent damage to the product. This is a stress rating only; functional operation of the product at these or any other conditions above those indicated in the operational section of this specification is not implied. Operation beyond the maximum operating conditions for extended periods may affect product reliability.
THERMAL RESISTANCE
The thermal resistance values in Table 7 are specified for the device soldered onto a 4-layer printed circuit board (PCB) with a common ground plane (GND) and with the exposed pad of the device connected to DGND. The values in Table 7 are maximum values.
Table 7. Thermal Resistance for the 32-Lead LFCSP
ESD CAUTION
PIN CONFIGURATION AND FUNCTION DESCRIPTIONS
Figure 4. Pin Configuration
Table 8. Pin Function Descriptions
THEORY OF OPERATION
The ADV7283 is a versatile one-chip, multiformat video decoder. The device automatically detects standard analog baseband video signals compatible with worldwide NTSC, PAL, and SECAM standards in the form of composite, S-Video, and component video.
The ADV7283 converts the analog video signals into an 8-bit YCrCb 4:2:2 video data stream that is compatible with the 8-bit ITU-R BT.656 interface standard.
The analog video inputs of the ADV7283 accept single-ended, pseudo differential, and fully differential composite video signals, as well as S-Video and YPrPb video signals, supporting a wide range of consumer and automotive video sources.
In differential CVBS mode, the ADV7283, along with an external resistor divider, provides a common-mode input range of up to 4 V, enabling the removal of large signal, common-mode transients present on the video lines.
The advanced I2P function allows the ADV7283 to convert an interlaced video input into a progressive video output. This function is performed without the need for external memory. The ADV7283 uses edge adaptive technology to minimize video defects on low angle lines.
The AGC and clamp restore circuitry allow an input video signal peak-to-peak range of 1.0 V p-p at the analog video input pins of the ADV7283. Alternatively, the AGC and clamp restore circuitry can be bypassed for manual settings.
The external ac coupling capacitors protect the ADV7283 from short-to-battery (STB) events on the analog video input pins.
The ADV7283 supports a number of other functions, including 8-bit to 6-bit down dither mode and ACE.
The ADV7283 is programmed via a 2-wire, serial bidirectional port (I 2 C compatible) and is fabricated in a 1.8 V CMOS process. The monolithic CMOS construction of the ADV7283 ensures greater functionality with lower power dissipation.
The ADV7283 is provided in a space-saving LFCSP surfacemount, RoHS-compliant package.
The ADV7283 is available in an automotive grade that is rated over the−40°C to +105°C temperature range, making the device ideal for automotive applications.
The ADV7283 is also available in a −40°C to +85°C temperature range, making it ideal for industrial applications.
ANALOG FRONT END
The analog front end (AFE) of the ADV7283 comprises a single high speed, 10-bit ADC that digitizes the analog video signal before applying it to the standard definition processor (SDP). The AFE uses differential channels to the ADC to ensure high performance in mixed-signal applications and to enable differential CVBS inputs to connect directly to the ADV7283.
The AFE also includes an input mux that enables the application of multiple video signals to the ADV7283. The input mux allows the application of up to six composite video signals to the ADV7283.
Current clamps are positioned in front of the ADC to ensure that the video signal remains within the range of the converter.
A resistor divider network is required before each analog input channel to ensure that the input signal is kept within the range of the ADC (see the Input Networks section). Fine clamping of the video signal is performed downstream by digital fine clamping within the ADV7283.
Table 9 lists the three ADC clock rates that are determined by the video input format to be processed. These clock rates ensure 4× oversampling per channel for CVBS, Y/C, and YPrPb modes.
Table 9. ADC Clock Rates
1 Based on a 28.63636 MHz crystal between the XTALP and XTALN pins. The fully differential AFE of the ADV7283 provides inherent small and large signal noise rejection, improved electromagnetic interference (EMI) protection, and the ability to absorb ground bounce. Support is provided for both true differential and pseudo differential signals.
STANDARD DEFINITION PROCESSOR
The ADV7283 can decode a large selection of baseband video signals in composite (both single-ended and differential), S-Video, and component formats. The video processor supports the following standards:
* PAL B, PAL D, PAL G, PAL H, PAL I, PAL M, PAL N, PAL Nc, PAL 60
* SECAM B, SECAM D, SECAM G, SECAM K, SECAM L
* NTSC J, NTSC M, NTSC 4.43
Using the SDP, the ADV7283 can automatically detect the video standard and process it accordingly.
The ADV7283 has a five-line adaptive 2D comb filter that provides superior chrominance and luminance separation when decoding a composite video signal. This highly adaptive filter automatically adjusts its processing mode according to the video standard and signal quality without user intervention. Video user controls such as brightness, contrast, saturation, and hue are also available with the ADV7283.
The ADV7283 implements the patented Adaptive Digital Line Length Tracking (ADLLT™) algorithm to track varying video line lengths from sources such as VCRs. ADLLT enables the ADV7283 to track and decode poor quality video sources such as VCRs and noisy sources from tuner outputs and camcorders.
The ADV7283 contains a chroma transient improvement (CTI) processor that sharpens the edge rate of chroma transitions, resulting in sharper vertical transitions.
The ACE feature of the ADV7283 offers improved visual detail using an algorithm that automatically varies contrast levels to enhance picture detail. ACE increases the contrast in dark areas of an image without saturating the bright areas of the image. This feature is particularly useful in automotive applications, where it can be important to discern objects in shaded areas.
Down dithering converts the output of the ADV7283 from an 8-bit to a 6-bit output, enabling ease of design for standard LCD panels.
The I2P block converts the interlaced video input into a progressive video output without the need for external memory.
The SDP can process a variety of VBI data services, such as closed captioning (CCAP), wide screen signaling (WSS), copy generation management systems (CGMS), and teletext data slicing for world system teletext (WST).
The ADV7283 is fully Rovi® (Macrovision) compliant; detection circuitry enables Type I, Type II, and Type III protection levels to be identified and reported to the user. The decoder is also fully robust to all Rovi signal inputs.
POWER SUPPLY SEQUENCING OPTIMAL POWER-UP SEQUENCE
The optimal power-up sequence for the ADV7283 is to first power up the 3.3 V DVDDIO supply, followed by the 1.8 V supplies (DVDD, PVDD, and AVDD).
When powering up the ADV7283, follow these steps (during power-up, all supplies must adhere to the specifications listed in the Absolute Maximum Ratings section):
1. Assert the PWRDWN and RESET pins (pull the pins low).
2. Power up the DVDDIO supply.
3. After DVDDIO is fully asserted, power up the 1.8 V supplies.
5. Wait 5 ms and then pull the RESET pin high.
4. After the 1.8 V supplies are fully asserted, pull the PWRDWN pin high.
6. After all power supplies and the PWRDWN and RESET pins are powered up and stable, wait an additional 5 ms before initiating I 2 C communication with the ADV7283.
SIMPLIFIED POWER-UP SEQUENCE
Alternatively, the ADV7283 can be powered up by asserting all supplies and the PWRDWN and RESET pins simultaneously. After this operation, perform a software reset, then wait 10 ms before initiating I 2 C communication with the ADV7283.
While the supplies are being established, ensure that a lower rated supply does not go above a higher rated supply level. During power-up, all supplies must adhere to the specifications listed in the Absolute Maximum Ratings section.
POWER-DOWN SEQUENCE
The ADV7283 supplies can be deasserted simultaneously as long as DVDDIO does not go below a lower rated supply.
DVDDIO SUPPLY VOLTAGE
Under normal operating conditions, the ADV7283 operates with a nominal DVDDIO voltage of 3.3 V. The device can also
operate with a nominal DVDDIO voltage of 1.8 V. When operating with a nominal voltage of 1.8 V, apply the power-up sequences described in the Optimal Power-Up Sequence and Simplified Power-Up Sequence sections. The only changes are that DVDDIO is powered up to 1.8 V instead of 3.3 V, and the PWRDWN and RESET pins of the ADV7283 are powered up to 1.8 V instead of 3.3 V.
Note that when the ADV7283 operates with a nominal DVDDIO voltage of 1.8 V, then set the drive strength of all digital outputs to a maximum.
Note that when DVDDIO is set to a nominal voltage of 1.8 V, no pins can be pulled up to 3.3 V. For example, pull the I 2 C pins of the ADV7283 (SCLK and SDATA) up to 1.8 V instead of 3.3 V.
POWER SUPPLY REQUIREMENTS
Table 10 shows the current rating recommendations for power supply design. Use these values when designing a power supply section to ensure that an adequate current is supplied to the ADV7283.
Table 10. Current Rating Recommendations for Power Supply Design
INPUT NETWORKS
An input network (external resistor and capacitor circuit) is required on the AINx input pins of the ADV7283. The components of the input network depend on the video format selected for the analog input.
SINGLE-ENDED INPUT NETWORK
Figure 6 shows the input network to use on each AINx input pin of the ADV7283 when any of the following video input formats are used:
* Single-ended CVBS
* YPrPb
* Y/C (S-Video)
The 24 Ω and 51 Ω resistors supply the 75 Ω end termination required for the analog video input. These resistors also create a resistor divider with a gain of 0.68. The resistor divider attenuates the amplitude of the input analog video and scales the input to the ADC range of the ADV7283. This allows an input range of up to 1.47 V p-p. Note that amplifiers within the ADC restore the amplitude of the input signal so SNR performance is maintained.
The 100 nF ac coupling capacitor removes the dc bias of the analog input video before it is fed into the AINx pins of the ADV7283. The clamping circuitry within the ADV7283 restores the dc bias of the input signal to the optimal level before it is fed into the ADC of the ADV7283.
DIFFERENTIAL INPUT NETWORK
Figure 7 shows the input network to use when differential CVBS video is input on the AINx input pins of the ADV7283.
Fully differential video transmission involves transmitting two complementary CVBS signals. Pseudo differential video transmission involves transmitting a CVBS signal and a source ground signal.
Differential video transmission has several key advantages over single-ended transmission, including
* Inherent small signal and large signal noise rejection
* An ability to absorb ground bounce
* Improved EMI performance
Resistor R1 provides the RF end termination for the differential CVBS input lines. For a pseudo differential CVBS input, a value of 75 Ω is recommended for R1. For a fully differential CVBS input, a value of 150 Ω is recommended for R1.
The 1.3 kΩ and 430 Ω resistors create a resistor divider with a gain of 0.25. The resistor divider attenuates the amplitude of the input analog video, but increases the input common-mode range of the ADV7283 to 4 V p-p. Note that amplifiers within the ADC restore the amplitude of the input signal so that SNR performance is maintained.
The 100 nF ac coupling capacitors remove the dc bias of the analog input video before it is fed into the AINx pins of the ADV7283. The clamping circuitry within the ADV7283 restores the dc bias of the input signal to the optimal level before it is fed into the ADC of the ADV7283.
The combination of the 1.3 kΩ and 430 Ω resistors and the 100 nF ac coupling capacitors limits the current flow into the ADV7283 during STB events (see the Short-to-Battery Protection section).
To achieve optimal performance, the 1.3 kΩ and 430 Ω resistors must be closely matched; that is, all 1.3 kΩ and 430 Ω resistors must have the same resistance tolerance, and this tolerance must be as low as possible.
SHORT-TO-BATTERY PROTECTION
In differential mode, the ADV7283 is protected against STB events by the external 100 nF ac coupling capacitors (see Figure 7). The external input network resistors are sized to be large enough to reduce the current flow during an STB event, but small enough to avoid affecting the operation of the ADV7283.
The power rating of the input network resistors must be chosen withstand the high voltages of STB events. Similarly, ensure that the breakdown voltage of the ac coupling capacitors is robust enough to handle STB events.
The R1 resistor is protected because no current or limited current flows through it during an STB event.
APPLICATIONS INFORMATION
INPUT CONFIGURATION
The input format of the ADV7283 is specified using the INSEL[4:0] bits (see Table 11). These bits also configure the SDP core to process CVBS, differential CVBS, Y/C (S-Video), or component (YPrPb) format. The INSEL[4:0] bits are located in the user sub map of the register space at Address 0x00[4:0]. For more information about the registers, see the Register Maps section.
The INSEL[4:0] bits specify predefined analog input routing schemes, eliminating the need for manual mux programming and allowing the user to route the various video signal types to the decoder. For example, if the CVBS input is selected, the remaining channels are powered down.
Table 11. Input Format Specified by the INSEL[4:0] Bits
| INSEL[4:0] Bit Value | Video Format |
|---|---|
| 00000 00001 00010 00011 00100 00101 00110 00111 | CVBS CVBS CVBS CVBS Reserved Reserved CVBS CVBS |
| 01000 01001 01010 01011 | Y/C (S-Video) Y/C (S-Video) Reserved Y/C (S-Video) |
| 01100 01101 | YPrPb Reserved |
| 01110 01111 10000 10001 | Differential CVBS Differential CVBS Reserved Differential CVBS |
| 10010 to 11111 | Reserved |
ADAPTIVE CONTRAST ENHANCEMENT
The ADV7283 can increase the contrast of an image depending on the content of the picture, making bright areas brighter and dark areas darker. The optional ACE feature increases the contrast within dark areas without significantly affecting the bright areas. The ACE feature is particularly useful in automotive applications, where it is important to discern objects in shaded areas.
The ACE function is disabled by default. To enable the ACE function, execute the following register writes:
1. Write 0x40 to Register 0x0E in User Sub Map (0x40 or 0x42). This enters User Sub Map 2.
2. Write 0x80 to Register 0x80 in User Sub Map 2 (0x40 or 0x42). This enables ACE.
3. Write 0x00 to Register 0x0E in User Sub Map 2 (0x40 or 0x42). This reenters User Sub Map.
To disable the ACE function, execute the following register writes:
1. Write 0x40 to Register 0x0E in User Sub Map (0x40 or 0x42). This enters User Sub Map 2.
2. Write 0x00 to Register 0x80 in User Sub Map 2 (0x40 or 0x42). This disables ACE.
3. Write 0x00 to Register 0x0E in User Sub Map 2 (0x40 or 0x42). This reenters User Sub Map.
I2P FUNCTION
The I2P function of the ADV7283 allows the device to convert an interlaced video input into a progressive video output. This function is performed without the need for external memory. The ADV7283 use edge adaptive technology to minimize video defects on low angle lines.
The I2P function is disabled by default. To enable the I2P function, use the recommended scripts from Analog Devices, Inc.
ITU-R BT.656 TRANSMITTER CONFIGURATION
The ADV7283 receives analog video and outputs digital video according to the ITU-R BT.656 specification. The ADV7283 outputs the ITU-R BT.656 video data stream over the P0 to P7 data pins, and has a line-locked clock (LLC) pin.
Video data is output over the P0 to P7 pins in YCrCb 4:2:2 format. Synchronization signals are automatically embedded in the video data signal in accordance with the ITU-R BT.656 specification.
The LLC output clocks the output data on the P0 to P7 pins at a nominal frequency of 27 MHz.
I 2 C PORT DESCRIPTION
The ADV7283 supports a 2-wire, I 2 C-compatible serial interface. Two inputs, serial data (SDATA) and serial clock (SCLK), carry information between the ADV7283 and the system I 2 C master controller. The I 2 C port of the ADV7283 allows the user to set up and configure the decoder and to read back captured VBI data.
The ADV7283 has a number of possible I 2 C slave addresses and subaddresses (see the Register Maps section). The main map of the ADV7283 has four possible slave addresses for read and write operations, depending on the logic level of the ALSB pin (see Table 12).
Table 12. Main Map I 2 C Address
| ALSB Pin | R/W Bit | Slave Address |
|---|---|---|
| 0 0 1 1 | 0 1 0 1 | 0x40 (write) 0x41 (read) 0x42 (write) 0x43 (read) |
The ALSB pin controls Bit 1 of the slave address. By changing the logic level of the ALSB pin, it is possible to control two ADV7283 devices in an application without using the same I 2 C slave address. The LSB (Bit 0) specifies either a read or write operation: Logic 1 corresponds to a read operation, and Logic 0 corresponds to a write operation.
To control the device on the bus, a specific protocol is followed.
1. The master initiates a data transfer by establishing a start condition, which is defined as a high to low transition on SDATA while SCLK remains high, and indicates that an address/data stream follows.
the SDATA and SCLK lines for the start condition and the correct transmitted address.
The R/W bit determines the direction of the data. Logic 0 on the LSB of the first byte means that the master writes information to the peripheral. Logic 1 on the LSB of the first byte means that the master reads information from the peripheral.
The ADV7283 acts as a standard I 2 C slave device on the bus. The data on the SDAT A pin is eight bits long, supporting the 7-bit address plus the R/W bit. The device has subaddresses to enable access to the internal registers; therefore, it interprets the first byte as the device address and the second byte as the starting subaddress. The subaddresses auto-increment, allowing data to be written to or read from the starting subaddress. A data transfer is always terminated by a stop condition. The user can also access any unique subaddress register individually without updating all the registers.
Stop and start conditions can be detected at any stage during the data transfer. If these conditions are asserted out of sequence with normal read and write operations, they cause an immediate jump to the idle condition. During a given SCLK high period, issue only one start condition, one stop condition, or a single stop condition followed by a single start condition. If the user issues an invalid subaddress, the ADV7283 does not issue an acknowledge and returns to the idle condition.
If the highest subaddress is exceeded in auto-increment mode, one of the following actions is taken:
* In read mode, the register contents of the highest subaddress continue to be output until the master device issues a no acknowledge, which indicates the end of a read. A no acknowledge condition occurs when the SDATA line is not pulled low on the ninth pulse.
3. The peripheral that recognizes the transmitted address responds by pulling the data line low during the ninth clock pulse; this is known as an acknowledge (ACK) bit.
2. All peripherals respond to the start condition and shift the next eight bits (the 7-bit address plus the R/W bit). The bits are transferred from MSB to LSB.
* In write mode, the data for the invalid byte is not loaded into a subaddress register. The ADV7283 issues a no acknowledge, and the device returns to the idle condition.
4. All other devices withdraw from the bus and maintain an idle condition. In the idle condition, the device monitors
MAIN MAP
VPP MAP
DEVICE ADDRESS
WRITE: 0x84
READ: 0x85
(RECOMMENDED
SETTINGS)
VPP MAP DEVICE ADDRESS IS
REGISTER 0xFD IN THE USER
PROGRAMMABLE AND SET BY
SUB MAP
Figure 11. Register Map and Sub Map Access
REGISTER MAPS
User Sub Map 2
The ADV7283 contains two register maps: the main register map and the VPP register map.
Note that the main map of the ADV7283 contains three sub maps: the user sub map, the interrupt/VDP map, and User Sub Map 2.
Main Map
The ALSB pin sets the I 2 C slave address of the main map of the ADV7283 (see Table 12). The main map allows the user to program the I 2 C slave addresses of the VPP map. The main map contains three sub maps: the user sub map, the interrupt/VDP sub map, and User Sub Map 2. These three sub maps are accessed by writing to the SUB_USR_EN bits (Address 0x0E[6:5]) within the main map (see Figure 11 and Table 13).
User Sub Map
The user sub map contains registers that program the analog front end and digital core of the ADV7283. The user sub map has the same I 2 C slave address as the main map. To access the user sub map, set the SUB_USR_EN bits in the main map (Address 0x0E[6:5]) to 00.
Interrupt/VDP Sub Map
The interrupt/VDP sub map contains registers that can be used to program internal interrupts, control the INTRQ pin, and decode VBI data.
The interrupt/VDP sub map has the same I 2 C slave address as the main map. To access the interrupt/VDP sub map, set the SUB_USR_EN bits in the main map (Address 0x0E[6:5]) to 01.
User Sub Map 2 contains registers that control the ACE, down dither, and fast lock functions. It also contains controls that set the acceptable input luma and chroma limits before the ADV7283 enters free run and color kill modes.
User Sub Map 2 has the same I 2 C slave address as the main map. To access User Sub Map 2, set the SUB_USR_EN bits in the main map (Address 0x0E[6:5]) to 10.
VPP Map
The video postprocessor (VPP) map contains registers that control the I2P core (interlaced-to-progressive converter).
The VPP map has a programmable I 2 C slave address, which is programmed using Register 0xFD in the user sub map of the main map. The default value for the VPP map address is 0x00; however, the VPP map cannot be accessed until the I 2 C slave address is set. The recommended I 2 C slave address for the VPP map is 0x84.
To set the I 2 C slave address of the VPP map, write to the VPP_SLAVE_ADDRESS[7:1] bits of the user sub map (Address 0xFD[7:1]).
It is recommended to set the VPP_SLAVE_ADDRESS[7:1] bits to a value of 0x84. This sets the VPP map I 2 C write address to 0x84 and the I 2 C read address to 0x85.
SUB_USR_EN Bits, Address 0x0E[6:5]
The ADV7283 main map contains three sub maps: the user sub map, the interrupt/VDP sub map, and User Sub Map 2 (see Figure 11). The user sub map is available by default. The other two sub maps are accessed using the SUB_USR_EN bits. When programming of the interrupt/VDP map or User Sub Map 2 is completed, write to the SUB_USR_EN bits to return to the user sub map.
Table 13. I 2 C Register Map and Sub Map Addresses
| ALSB Pin | R/W Bit | Slave Address | SUB_USR_EN Bits (Address 0x0E[6:5]) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 X1 X1 | 0 (write) 1 (read) 0 (write) 1 (read) 0 (write) 1 (read) 0 (write) 1 (read) 0 (write) 1 (read) 0 (write) 1 (read) 0 (write) 1 (read) | 0x40 0x41 0x40 0x41 0x40 0x41 0x42 0x43 0x42 0x43 0x42 0x43 0x84 0x85 | 00 00 01 01 10 10 00 00 01 01 10 10 XX1 XX1 |
1 X and XX mean don't care.
PCB LAYOUT RECOMMENDATIONS
The ADV7283 is a high precision, high speed, mixed-signal device. To achieve maximum performance from the device, it is important to use a well designed PCB. This section provides guidelines for designing a PCB for use with the ADV7283.
Analog Interface Inputs
When routing the analog interface inputs on the PCB, keep track lengths to a minimum. Use 75 Ω trace impedances when possible; trace impedances other than 75 Ω increase the chance of reflections.
Power Supply Decoupling
It is recommended that each power supply pin be decoupled with 100 nF and 10 nF capacitors. The basic principle is to place a decoupling capacitor within approximately 0.5 cm of each power pin. Avoid placing the decoupling capacitors on the opposite side of the PCB from the ADV7283 because doing so introduces inductive vias in the path.
Place the decoupling capacitors between the power plane and the power pin. Current must flow from the power plane to the capacitor and then to the power pin. Do not apply the power connection between the capacitor and the power pin. The best approach is to place a via close to or beneath the decoupling capacitor pads down to the power plane (see Figure 12).
NOTES
OF THE PCB.
1. GND REFERS TO THE COMMON GROUND PLANE
Figure 12. Recommended Power Supply Decoupling
It is especially important to maintain low noise and good stability for the PVDD pin. Pay careful attention to regulation, filtering, and decoupling. It is highly desirable to provide separate regulated supplies for each circuit group (AVDD, DVDD, DVDDIO, and PVDD).
Some graphic controllers use substantially different levels of power when active (during active picture time) and when idle (during horizontal and vertical sync periods). This disparity can result in a measurable change in the voltage supplied to the analog supply regulator, which can, in turn, produce changes in the regulated analog supply voltage. To mitigate this problem, regulate the analog supply, or at least the PVDD supply, from a different, cleaner power source, for example, from a 12 V supply.
Using a single ground plane for the entire board is recommended. Using multiple ground planes can be detrimental because each separate ground plane is smaller, and can result in long ground loops. Therefore, using a single ground plane can improve noise performance.
VREFN and VREFP Pins
Place the circuit associated with the VREFN and VREFP pins as close as possible to the ADV7283 and on the same side of the PCB as the device.
Digital Outputs
The ADV7283 digital outputs are INTRQ, LLC, and P0 to P7.
Minimize the trace length that the digital outputs must drive. Longer traces have higher capacitance, requiring more current and, in turn, causing more internal digital noise. Shorter traces reduce the possibility of reflections.
Adding a 30 Ω to 50 Ω series resistor can suppress reflections, reduce EMI, and reduce current spikes inside the ADV7283. If series resistors are used, place them as close as possible to the
pins of the ADV7283. However, do not add vias or extra length to the output trace in an attempt to place the resistors closer.
If possible, limit the capacitance that each digital output must drive to less than 15 pF. This recommendation can be easily accommodated by keeping traces short and by connecting the outputs to only one device. Loading the outputs with excessive capacitance increases the current transients inside the ADV7283, creating more digital noise on the power supplies.
Exposed Metal Pad
The ADV7283 has an exposed metal pad on the bottom of the package. This pad must be soldered to ground. The exposed pad is used for proper heat dissipation, noise suppression, and mechanical strength.
Digital Inputs
The digital inputs of the ADV7283 are designed to work with 1.8 V signals (3.3 V for DVDDIO) and are not tolerant of 5 V signals. Extra components are required if 5 V logic signals must be applied to the decoder.
TYPICAL CIRCUIT CONNECTION
Figure 13 provides an example of how to connect ADV7283. For detailed schematics of the ADV7283 evaluation board, contact a local Analog Devices field applications engineer or an Analog Devices distributor.
OUTLINE DIMENSIONS
ORDERING GUIDE
| Model1, 2 | Temperature Range | Package Description |
|---|---|---|
| ADV7283BCPZ ADV7283BCPZ-RL ADV7283WBCPZ ADV7283WBCPZ-RL EVAL-ADV7283EBZ | −40°C to +85°C −40°C to +85°C −40°C to +105°C −40°C to +105°C | 32-Lead Lead Frame Chip Scale Package [LFCSP_WQ] 32-Lead Lead Frame Chip Scale Package [LFCSP_WQ] 32-Lead Lead Frame Chip Scale Package [LFCSP_WQ] 32-Lead Lead Frame Chip Scale Package [LFCSP_WQ] Evaluation Board for the ADV7283 |
1 Z = RoHS Compliant Part.
2 W = Qualified for Automotive Applications.
AUTOMOTIVE PRODUCTS
The ADV7283W model is available with controlled manufacturing to support the quality and reliability requirements of automotive applications. Note that this automotive model may have specifications that differ from the commercial models; therefore, designers should review the Specifications section of this data sheet carefully. Only the automotive grade products shown are available for use in automotive applications. Contact your local Analog Devices account representative for specific product ordering information and to obtain the specific Automotive Reliability reports for this model.
I 2 C refers to a communications protocol originally developed by Philips Semiconductors (now NXP Semiconductors).
|
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Jake Brigance is back! The hero of A Time to Kill, one of the most popular novels of our time, returns in a courtroom drama that The New York Times says is "riveting" and "suspenseful." Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds
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himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-yearold boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Jake's fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line. In what may be the most personal and accomplished legal thriller of John Grisham's storied career, we deepen our acquaintance with the iconic Southern town of Clanton and the vivid cast of characters that so many readers know and cherish. The result is a richly rewarding novel that is both timely and timeless, full of wit, drama, and—most of all—heart. Bursting with all the courthouse scheming, small-town intrigue, and stunning plot twists that have become the hallmarks of the master of the legal thriller, A Time for Mercy is John Grisham's most powerful courtroom drama yet. There is a time to kill and a time for justice. Now comes A Time for Mercy.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham's first work of nonfiction: a true crime story that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence. NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES "Both an American tragedy and [Grisham's] strongest legal thriller yet, all the more gripping because it happens to be true."—Entertainment Weekly In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron's home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death—in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man's already broken life, and let a true killer go free. Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, The Innocent Man reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book no American can afford to miss. Praise for The Innocent Man "Grisham has crafted a legal thriller every bit as suspenseful and fast-paced as his bestselling fiction."—The Boston Globe "A gritty, harrowing true-crime story."—Time "A triumph."—The Seattle Times BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from John Grisham's The Litigators.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions—a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives. Because Troy Phelan's new will names a sole surprise heir to his eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil. Enter the lawyers. Nate O'Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan's family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate goes crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman—pursued by enemies and friends alike—holds a stunning surprise of her own. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from John Grisham's Sycamore Row.
In this sixth novel in the award-winning Myron Bolitar series, Harlan Coben delivers a riveting powerhouse thriller—a twisting mystery of betrayal, family secrets, and murder. Myron Bolitar's colleague at MB SportsReps, Esperanza, has been arrested for the murder of a client, a fallen baseball star attempting a comeback. Myron is determined to prove Esperanza's innocence—even if she won't speak to him on the advice of her lawyer, who warns Myron to keep away from both the case and his client. But Myron is already too close, too involved, and has too much at stake. And the closer Myron gets to the truth, the more the evidence points to the only viable suspect besides Esperanza: Myron himself. "By the founder of the first organization in the US committed to freeing the wrongly imprisoned, a riveting story of devotion, sacrifice, and vindication Jim McCloskey was at a midlife crossroads when he met the man who would transform his life. A former management consultant, McCloskey had grown disenchanted with the business world; he enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary at the age of 37. His first assignment found him a chaplain at Trenton State Prison in 1980, where he ministered to some of the most violent offenders in the state. Among them was Jorge de los Santos, a heroin addict who'd been convicted of murder years earlier. De los Santos swore to McCloskey that he was innocent--and over time, McCloskey came to believe him. With no legal or investigative training to speak of, McCloskey threw himself into the man's case. Two years later, he successfully effected his exoneration. McCloskey found his calling. He would go on to establish Centurion Ministries, the first group in America devoted to overturning wrongful convictions. Together with a team of forensic experts, lawyers, and volunteers--through tireless investigation and an unflagging dedication to justice--Centurion has freed 63 prisoners and counting, When Truth Is All You Have is McCloskey's inspirational story as well as those of the unjustly imprisoned for whom he has advocated. Spanning the nation, it is a chronicle of faith and doubt; of triumphant success and shattering failure. It candidly exposes a life of searching and struggle, uplifted by McCloskey's certainty that he had found what he was put on earth to do. Filled with generosity, humor, and compassion, it is the account of a man who has redeemed innumerable lives--and incited a movement--with
It's summer in Memphis. The sweat is sticking to Rudy Baylor's shirt and creditors are nipping at his heels. Once he had aspirations of breezing through law school and punching his ticket to the good life. Now he doesn't have a job or a prayer...except for one: an insurance dispute that leaves a family devastated and opens the door for a lawsuit, if Rudy can find a way to file it. By the time Rudy gets to court, a heavyweight corporate defense team is there to meet him. And suddenly he's in over his head, plunged into a nightmare of lies and legal maneuverings. A case that started small is exploding into a thunderous million-dollar war of nerves, skill and outright violence--a fight that could cost one young lawyer his life, or turn him into the biggest rainmaker in the land.... BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from John Grisham's The Litigators.
nothing more than his unshakeable belief in the truth"--
When the Supreme Court's most liberal and most conservative justices are gunned down, law student Darby Shaw builds
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a case against a powerful suspect, whose threats send her underground. By the author of The Firm. 250,000 first printing. $500,000 ad/promo. Tour.
Lucas Davenport risks his sanity in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • John Grisham takes you to a different kind of court in his first basketball novel. Samuel "Sooley" Sooleymon is a raw, young talent with big hoop dreams—and even bigger challenges off the court. "Hard to put down ... the pages turn quickly ... building to a climax that won't leave readers doubting whether this is a John Grisham novel." —Associated Press In the summer of his seventeenth year, Samuel Sooleymon gets the chance of a lifetime: a trip to the United States with his South Sudanese teammates to play in a showcase basketball tournament. He has never been away from home, nor has he ever been on an airplane. The opportunity to be scouted by dozens of college coaches is a dream come true. Samuel is an amazing athlete, with speed, quickness, and an astonishing vertical leap. The rest of his game, though, needs work, and the American coaches are less than impressed. During the tournament, Samuel receives devastating news from home: A civil war is raging across South Sudan, and rebel troops have ransacked his village. His father is dead, his sister is missing, and his mother and two younger brothers are in a refugee camp. Samuel desperately wants to go home, but it's just not possible. Partly out of sympathy, the coach of North Carolina Central offers him a scholarship. Samuel moves to Durham, enrolls in classes, joins the team, and prepares to sit out his freshman season. There is plenty of more mature talent and he isn't immediately needed. But Samuel has something no other player has: a fierce determination to succeed so he can bring his family to America. He works tirelessly on his game, shooting baskets every morning at dawn by himself in the gym, and soon he's dominating everyone in practice. With the Central team losing and suffering injury after injury, Sooley, as he is nicknamed, is called off the bench. And the legend begins. But how far can Sooley take his team? And will success allow him to save his family? Gripping and moving, Sooley showcases John Grisham's unparalleled storytelling powers in a whole new light. This is Grisham at the top of his game.
A startling and original courtroom drama from New York Times #1 Bestseller John Grisham that is the prequel to his newest legal thriller, THE WHISTLER A judge's first murder trial. A defense attorney in over his head. A prosecutor out for blood and glory. The accused, who is possibly innocent. And the killer, who may have just committed the perfect crime.
After spotting fugitive Pete Duffy on the Metro in Washington D.C. and playing a role in his capture, Theodore Boone must face a greater danger than ever before.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This ebook edition contains a special preview of Dean Koontz's The Silent Corner. Past midnight, Chyna Shepard, twenty-six, gazes out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend's family. Instinct proves reliable. A murderous sociopath, Edgler Foreman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside. A self-proclaimed "homicidal adventurer," Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse, or limits, to live with intensity. Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit. Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At first her sole aim is to get out alive—until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess's next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl . . . as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.
Luther and Nora Krank are fed up with the chaos of Christmas. The endless shopping lists, the frenzied dashes through the mall, the hassle of decorating the tree... where has all the joy gone? This year, celebrating seems like too much effort. With their only child off in Peru, they decide that just this once, they'll skip the holidays. They spend their Christmas budget on a Caribbean cruise set to sail on December 25, and happily settle in for a restful holiday season free of rooftop snowmen and festive parties. But the Kranks soon learn that their vacation from Christmas isn't much of a vacation at all, and that skipping the holidays has consequences they didn't bargain for... A modern Christmas classic, Skipping Christmas is a charming and hilarious look at the mayhem and madness that have become ingrained in our holiday tradition. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from John Grisham's The Litigators.
In suburban Georgetown, a killer's Reeboks whisper on the floor of a posh home. In a seedy D.C. porno house, a patron is swiftly garroted to death. The next day America learns that two of its Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. And in New Orleans, a young law student prepares a legal brief. To Darby Shaw it was no more than a legal shot in the dark, a brilliant guess. To the Washington establishment it's political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder–a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds that there is only one person–an ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate–she can trust to help her piece together the deadly puzzle. Somewhere between the bayous of Louisiana and the White House's inner sanctums, a violent cover-up is being engineered. For someone has
Private Investigator Sharon McCone goes undercover to investigate the murders of two Indigenous women in remote Northern California in this gripping, atmospheric mystery in the New York Times bestselling series. When the bodies of two Indigenous women are found in the wilderness of northern California, it is only the latest horrific development in a string of similar crimes in the area. Despite all evidence to the contrary, officials rule the deaths isolated incidents, which soon join the ranks of countless other unsolved cases quickly dismissed by law enforcement. In a town where too many injustices are tolerated or brushed under the rug, only a few people remain who refuse to let a killer walk free. But Private Investigator Sharon McCone is one of those few. She is hired by an organization called Crimes against Indigenous Sisters to go undercover in Meruk County—a community rife with secrets, lies, and corruption—to expose the truth. In an isolated cabin in the freezing, treacherous woods, McCone must work quickly to unravel a mystery that is rooted in profound evil—before she becomes the killer's next target.
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Copyright : www.treca.org read Darby's brief–someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime. Two Supreme Court Justices Justices are dead. Their murders are connected only in one mind, and in one legal brief conceived by that mind.Brilliant, beautiful and ambitious, New Orleans legal student Darby Shaw little realises that her speculative brief
Ray Atlee and his brother, Forrest, receive a letter from their father, a reclusive, retired judge, instructing them to return home to Clanton, Mississippi, to discuss his estate, but the judge dies before his sons arrive, leaving behind a secret known only to Ray. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.
_______________________________________ A man will do almost anything for ninety million dollars. So will its rightful owners. They found him in a small town in Brazil, near the border with Paraguay. He had a new name, Danilo Silva, and his appearance had been changed by plastic surgery. The search had taken four years. They'd chased him around the world, always just missing him. It had cost their clients $3.5 million. But so far none of them had complained. The man they were about to kidnap had not always been called Danilo Silva. Before he had had another life, a life which ended in a car crash in February 1992. His gravestone lay in a cemetery in Biloxi, Mississippi. His name before his death was Patrick S. Lanigan. He had been a partner at an up-and-coming law firm. He had a pretty wife, a young daughter, and a bright future. Six weeks after his death, $90 million disappeared from the law firm. It was then that his partners knew he was still alive. And the chase was on... _______________________________________ 'A master at the art of deft characterisation and the skilful delivery of hair-raising crescendos' – Irish Independent 'John Grisham is the master of legal fiction' – Jodi Picoult 'The best thriller writer alive' – Ken Follett 'John Grisham has perfected the art of cooking up convincing, fast-paced thrillers' – Telegraph 'Grisham is a superb, instinctive storyteller' – The Times 'Grisham's storytelling genius reminds us that when it comes to legal drama, the master is in a league of his own.' – Daily Record 'Masterful – when Grisham gets in the courtroom he lets rip, drawing scenes so real they're not just alive, they're pulsating' – Mirror 'A giant of the thriller genre' – TimeOut
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In 1970, Willie Traynor comes to Clanton, Mississippi, in a Triumph Spitfire and a fog of vague ambitions. Within a year, the twenty-three-year-old finds himself the owner of Ford County's only newspaper, famous for its well-crafted obituaries. While the rest of America is in the grips of turmoil, Clanton lives on the edge of another age—until the brutal murder of a young mother rocks the town and thrusts Willie into the center of a storm. Daring to report the true horrors of the crime, Willie makes as many friends as enemies in Clanton, and over the next decade he sometimes wonders how he got there in the first place. But he can never escape the crime that shattered his innocence or the criminal whose evil left an indelible stain. Because as the ghosts of the South's past gather around Willie, as tension swirls around Clanton, men and women who served on a jury nine years ago are starting to die one by one—as a killer exacts the ultimate revenge. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from John Grisham's The Litigators.
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MVA Handbook Summer Session 2022
Enrollment deadline: May 24
Orientation (all new students and parents): May 31
Summer Session: May 31– July 22
Table of Contents
- School Contact Information
- Academic Honesty
- Attendance
- Dropping a Class
- Final Exams
- Grading Scale
- Code of Conduct Online
- MVA Enrollment Agreement
- Student's To-Do-List
- Parent's To-Do-List
School Contact Information
MVA Office Number……………………..……………..785-587-2100, ext. 8073
Fax Number………………………………………………….785-587-2140
Mailing Address………………………………………......Manhattan Virtual Academy Manhattan High School 2100 Poyntz Avenue Manhattan, Kansas 66502
Director/Principal Counselor Academic Success Coach Office Professional
Brooke Blanck, firstname.lastname@example.org Tami Simkins, email@example.com Fani Wefald, firstname.lastname@example.org Ronna Olivier, email@example.com
School Policies
-Honor Code- Academic Integrity
Academic integrity is a key component of honor and trustworthiness and is fundamental to the academic work students do at MVA. All schoolwork submitted must be created by and represent the individual efforts of the enrolled student. To help maintain an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence, MVA has established the following honor code (unless otherwise instructed by the teacher):
The student on assignments, quizzes and exams:
* will take the assessment alone.
* will not use google, yahoo answers, or other cheat sites to find answers to questions; citing these as sources does not excuse this type of plagiarism
* will not cut, copy, or plagiarize internet content or the work of your online classmates
* will treat the assessment as "closed book" which means that he or she may not use any textbooks, references, or other materials (printed or electronic) during the assessment—unless the teacher or the specific assessment states otherwise.
* will treat the assessment as "single browser" which means that during the assessment you may not log in a second time to your course.
* will complete quizzes and exams to represent his or her work only; the student will not plagiarize in any way.
* will not confer with other persons by any means during the assessment.
* will not copy or redistribute any part of the assessment in any way.
The student on written assignments:
* will not use google, yahoo answers, or other cheat sites to find answers to questions; citing these as sources does not excuse this type of plagiarism
* will submit work completely free of plagiarism
* will cite work that is taken directly from other sources. A great website for help with citations: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
Plagiarism
The definition of plagiarism is copying or imitating the language, ideas, and thoughts of another writer and passing them off as the student's own original work. Specific examples of plagiarism that will not be tolerated are copying, paraphrasing or summarizing another person's work without citing that source, using material, including photographs, from the internet or any other source and representing as the student's own, even if he or she has changed some of the words.
Consequences for Cheating
All teachers, beginning especially at the middle school grades, will educate students as to what constitutes academic honesty. It is the responsibility of all faculty members to monitor students' work to avoid any academic dishonesty and to administer penalties. MVA teachers use a variety of tools to monitor the integrity of student work, including a plagiarism detection program, an integrity database, teacher expertise, and more. The parents shall be contacted as soon as practical to report any alleged academic dishonesty on the part of students.
First Offense – Student and Parent will be made aware of the academic dishonesty by phone and email by the teacher. Violation of this policy at the high school level will result in assignments being given a score of zero with the opportunity to redo for a grade.
Second Offense – Student and Parent will meet with the teacher and Principal to discuss academic dishonesty. Violation of this policy at the high school level will result in assignments being given a score of zero with no opportunities to redo for a grade.
Third Offense – Student, Parent and Administration will be made aware of the academic dishonesty by phone and email by the teacher. Student will be removed from the course with a failing grade.
Additional offenses in other courses may result in student expulsion from Manhattan Virtual Academy
-Attendance
MVA documents and keeps attendance based on students' time online, participation in vClasses, and progress towards course completion. Active participation is required for successful completion of summer courses.
Attendance/Participation Guidelines
In order to be in full attendance with MVA, a student must:
* Participate in every course each week for an average of one hour per day per course.
* Complete and submit course assignments as indicated on each Pace Chart in accordance with due dates to make adequate progress toward course completion.
* Communicate with MVA Staff as needed via vClasses; telephone conversations, email correspondence, and /or IM.
* Check email at least once daily and respond to any teacher or staff inquiries within 24 hours.
* Adhere to the MVA school calendar for attendance days; however, students may choose to work on noninstructional days or swap vacation days during the summer, as long as they are on pace and passing all courses. Students who swap vacation days must consult with their teachers to ensure that no deadlines are missed.
* Summer School dates are May 31, 2022, through July 22, 2022.
* All 1 st semester course work must be completed by June 24, 2022.
* All 2 nd semester course work must be completed by July 22, 2022.
A student who is not regularly attending/participating in the online course and/or not submitting assignments will be addressed in the following order:
1. The teacher will notify the parent to communicate the concern and expectation that the student participates in the course on a daily basis and make academic progress in alignment with the course pace chart.
2. If lack of progress continues, the teacher will notify the parent, and MVA administration. The student will be expected to show academic progress and be in attendance.
3. Failure to adhere to these guidelines can result in a failing grade on the student's permanent transcript. Fees will not be refunded.
-Dropping a Class
* Students can drop a class until the end of the second week of the summer session – June 14, 2022.For classes dropped by this deadline, no grade will be recorded, and the class will not be part of the student's permanent record. Enrollment fees will not be refunded after June 10.
* After June 14, 2022, a student dropping a course will receive an "F" to be included on his/her permanent record.
-Zeroing Policy
Incomplete assignments will be zeroed every Monday, beginning June 3 rd . The reason for zeroing is to prevent the student's grade from being temporarily inflated if the deadline for an assignment has passed. Students are still able to complete the zeroed assignments. We highly recommend that students follow the course Pace Chart so they do not fall behind.
Warning: All course work must be completed by June 24 th (1 st sem.) and July 22 nd (2 nd sem.).
-Final Exams for High School Students
Final exams will be at the end of 1 st sem. and the end of 2 nd sem. These can be taken at home.
-Grading Scale
Numeric Values
A = 90-100
B = 80-89
C = 70-79
D = 60-69
F = 59 and below
- Online Code of Conduct
Introduction
Access to MVA data and information, and access to IT accounts, systems, and applications, is based on your need for access and your consent to use that access appropriately. These services are integral to the operation of the school, and security and privacy laws and other school policies protect much of the information. Therefore, before you can be granted access, you must read and agree to follow these acceptable usage standards and must accept responsibility to preserve the security and confidentiality of information that you access, in any form, including oral, print, or electronic formats. Read the information below carefully. It establishes user responsibilities.
Students will receive a username and password to be used in accessing their courses, and monitoring tools. Students and parents should keep the login information private. Passwords should never be shared with other MVA students or with any individuals outside of MVA. This information is used to identify a student or parent online and to help in the tracking of student progress. Students or parent who suspect that their login information has been accidentally compromised should ask the Academic Success Coach to reset their password.
Email
Student will create an email account to be used for MVA school related electronic communication only. Students and parents are required to check their email account daily for important communications from the school or from their teachers. Please specify student name and course name in the body or subject line of the email.
Internet Safety
MVA provides a secure, password-protected, online learning environment for students. All course materials are located within this system. At times, teachers will provide students links to appropriate internet sites for students to do additional research or exploration. At no time will an MVA teacher or staff member direct students to an internet site with inappropriate internet content.
Parents need to be vigilant in monitoring their child's internet use
MVA recommends that parents acquire internet filtering software for their student's computer to provide internet protection for times when parents may not be working directly with their student. Some practice s that can help keep students safe when working online include: keeping student work areas in a public area of the home where their internet use can be more easily monitored, talking with your child about the importance of keeping their personal information private, to only visit internet sites provided through MVA courses, and to make use of internet filtering and other programs that track student access to the internet so that parents can periodically review their child's web surfing habits. Student or parent who have concerns about internet sites that are required for school should feel free to contact the course teacher.
Submission or Posting of Inappropriate Content
Students are not allowed to submit, post, write about, or otherwise promote any inappropriate content in any of their courses or any other online MVA social networking platforms. This includes drug-related content, sexually explicit content, or anything that violates laws of the generally accepted standards of school appropriateness.
Virtual Classroom Conduct
In order for a virtual classroom session to be educationally effective for students, all students should abide by a standard set of rules. The following rules govern student conduct in the virtual classroom:
* Students' written and oral communications must be free of vulgar, belittling, or offensive language.
* Students must abide by rules established by the course teacher.
* Students must comply with usage instructions communicated orally or in writing by the teacher.
Students who violate the virtual classroom rules of conduct will be warned by the teacher to correct their behavior. If the student does not comply with the teacher's instructions, he/she will be removed from the virtual classroom for the rest of the session.
Use of Language and Images
Students must not use vulgar, obscene, abusive, or demeaning language, writing, pictures, signs or acts in written or oral communications, including email, discussion board, virtual classroom, student websites, social networking, or in photographs. Students are prohibited from posting content from or links to suggestive, lewd, or otherwise inappropriate websites.
Personal Respect
Administrators, teachers, and students know that personal respect is the foundation of learning. Language, comments, or images that show a lack of respect for individuals or groups will lead directly to disciplinary action.
Defiance
Students should follow the requests of school staff; failure to do so is defiance toward school personnel or rules. Defiance is defined as defying instructions of school personnel, the bold resistance of school authority, and /or contemptuous behavior or attitude that is manifested by breaking of school rules. Acts of defiance may result in disciplinary action.
Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying
No one should be subjected to harassment at school for any reason. Therefore, it is MVA policy that all students will deal with all persons in ways which convey respect and dignity. Harassment in the form of name-calling, taunting, gestures, intimidation, conduct, jokes, pictures, slurs, or ridicules are prohibited. Such conduct referencing or directed at an individual or group that demeans that person/group based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, creed, age, disability, or other extraneous factors is prohibited and shall be grounds for disciplinary action.
MVA has a zero-tolerance policy towards intimidation, harassment, bullying and/or fighting. Intimidation, harassment, bullying, fighting and racial and/or sexual harassment are violent acts against others. These behaviors cannot be tolerated, and the natural consequences is to be barred from interactions with others. MVA staff will promptly and thoroughly investigate reports of harassment and bullying, whether of a physical or of a nonphysical form. If it is determined that either has occurred, MVA will act appropriately within the discipline codes of MVA and will take reasonable action to end bullying.
MVA Enrollment Agreement Summer 2022
A student enrolled in Manhattan Virtual Academy is part of a Learning Team that includes the Student, Parent/Guardian, Teachers, the school Counselor and Academic Success Coach. Every member of the Learning Team is important to the student's academic success in the online learning environment. Please confirm that you agree to your role on this team by completing and initialing this Enrollment Agreement.
I agree that my student and I will participate in the required online Student and Parent Orientation at the beginning of the summer school term.
I agree to ensure my student is meeting the state mandatory attendance requirements outlined in the MVA Student Handbook. Requirements include active course participation, staying on pace, and logging in for about 3-4 hour per school day.
I agree to check my parent email account daily to receive communications from MVA teachers and administrative staff, and to respond within 24 hours to emails and phone messages.
I agree to be an active observer for my student by logging in to MVA and checking weekly progress to keep track of student activity, grades, and pace.
I agree to contact the school if my student will be absent on a school day.
I agree to help my student create a workspace that allows for quiet concentration and to help my student create a regular learning schedule to keep him or her on pace.
I agree to provide my student with continuous internet access and to find an alternative internet connection should home internet service be interrupted.
I agree to report technical problems immediately, in order to receive timely assistance.
I agree to contact course instructors on any questions related to course content, assignments, exams, or grades.
I agree to work with the Academic Success Coach and/or Counselor if my student is falling behind in grades or pace in any or all courses.
I agree to contact the school with my telephone number or address changes in a timely manner so I will continue to receive regular communications from Manhattan Virtual Academy.
NOTE: This is a COPY of the Enrollment Agreement you signed and agreed to upon enrollment with Manhattan Virtual Academy. Please retain this copy for your records.
Username: _____________________ Password: ______________________
Student's To-Do-List
1. Check your email DAILY. This is VERY important. You will have an MVA Gmail account to communicate with your teachers and office staff.
2. Know where to find your teachers' contact information and how to email them right from your course.
3. Attend your vClasses! Know when they are and plan to attend them. If you cannot attend one, watch the recording.
4. Communicate! Email your teachers with questions or concerns as soon as you have them. The sooner you get the question answered, the sooner you can move on.
5. Get organized and stay organized. Make a weekly calendar with all assignments for the week on Monday morning. Then, check for conflicts/overload and make a plan on how to resolve them.
6. Set a daily schedule. Be disciplined and follow it. Summer School is condensed into 8 weeks, so will be a big time commitment.
7. Log in daily Monday-Friday to insure you have the most up-to-date class information and announcements.
8. Start on pace and stay on pace! It's always better to be ahead than to be struggling at the last minute. Break down big projects into small, manageable parts and give yourself a deadline for each one. Don't drag your feet-make yourself do things on time, and you'll be better off in the long run.
9. Take a break. Breaks are a good thing, but it is important to limit your "digital distractions" and keep yourself on track by setting a time limit and sticking to it.
10. Create a folder for your class on your computer for class assignments. This will keep you organized and make it easy to locate assignments. Don't forget to back up your papers.
11. Have a weekly parent conference to review your progress, assignments that need completed, and grades to date.
Parent's To-Do-List
1. Please check your email DAILY, as it will be used as the primary contact from MVA.
2. Help your student make school a priority. Summer School is condensed into 8 weeks, so will be a big time commitment.
3. Help your student construct his/her schedule and maintain a consistent weekly plan. The more engaged parents are with the learning process, the more successful a student will be in MVA.
4. Make sure your student knows when his/her vClasses are and they are attending them. If he/she can't attend them live, they can watch the recording.
5. Know how to access grades. By logging in to your student's Connexus account, you can see his/her overall grades in each course, all assignments and test scores, and how much time he/she is spending in the course.
6. Know where to find the teacher contact information. Teachers post their contact information in the 'Course Information folder' in each course. Feel free to contact teachers or office staff if you have questions or concern and encourage your student to do the same.
7. Schedule a weekly meeting with your student to review progress and check grades. These meetings are important and will help your student stay on pace.
8. Encourage your student to email his/her teachers with questions or concerns as soon as his/her has them. Continued communication with his/her teachers is key.
10
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What is pharmaceutical Supply
PBS NewsHour full episode, Dec. 17, 2020
Chain Management?
SUPPLY CHAIN Interview Questions And TOP SCORING ANSWERS!PROCUREMENT MANAGER Interview Questions And Answers (Procurement Officer Job Interview Tips!) What is Blockchain What is Supply Chain Management? (SCM 101), should you major in it?(Part 1/3);Best Careers/Jobs 2020 What is Supply Chain Management? Module 1: What is Supply Chain Management? (ASU-WPC-SCM) - ASU's W. P. Carey School Using Blockchain Technology To Manage Supply Chains: How Smart Contracts Can Transform Supply Chains Using blockchain to prevent counterfeit drugs in Kenya Blockchain for Supply Chain Transparency \u0026 Traceability Simardeep Big Pharma Companies Are Exploiting The World's Poor 5 Things Big Pharma Can Expect from the 2020s / Episode 13 - The Medical Futurist Life Sciences 2020: Pharmaceutical Supply Chain and Innovation International Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Imperiled Like Never Before Top Trends in Pharma Supply Chains Pharma supply chains threatened by virus What is Supply Chain Management? Definition and Introduction | AIMS UK Procurement, Supply chain management, Pharmacy Practice UNZA BPHARM 4 My Experience - Pharmaceutical Commodity Supply Chain Management Program (PharmCom) Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Drug Quality
The Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA), was enacted by Congress on
November 27, 2013. Title II of DQSA, the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), outlines steps to build an electronic,...
Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) | FDA
The United States, in particular, is susceptible to interruptions in the supply chain for pharmaceutical drugs because many of the raw materials, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and manufacturing processes needed to produce domestically marketed prescription drugs have been outsourced beyond U.S. borders.
Fortifying the US Pharmaceutical Supply Chain | Bill of Health Error-proofing in the production process of pharmaceuticals isn't just a matter of good business, it has life-and-death implications for consumers. To that end, the 2013 Drug Quality and Security Act in large part requires new mandates on tracking and tracing chain of custody in the supply chain.
Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Drug Quality and Security Act ...
The pharmaceutical supply chain faces its own set of challenges, including supply chain visibility, drug counterfeiting, cold-chain shipping, and raising prescription drug prices, which can significantly increase out-of-pocket costs for patients. In the following article, PharmaNewsIntelligence breaks down the fundamentals of the pharmaceutical supply chain to uncover strategies for overcoming the most common challenges and ways to get patients consistent access to their medications.
Fundamentals of the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain
Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Drug Quality and Security Act - Kindle edition by Kuglin, Fred A.. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Drug Quality and Security Act.
Amazon.com: Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Drug Quality and ...
To that end, the 2013 Drug Quality and Security Act in large part requires new mandates on tracking and tracing chain of custody in the supply chain. Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Drug Quality and Security Act overviews the new mandate and its implications, including implementation strategies for track-and-trace programs along with presenting a ...
Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Drug Quality and Security Act ...
HealthTrust evaluates pharmaceutical supply chains for missioncritical drugs to identify predictors of shortages & key characteristics. HealthTrust Pharmacy Services recently launched its first products for the Supply Interruption Mitigation Strategies (SIMS) project in order to help combat drug shortages, and their ensuing price increases, in the generic injectables market.
An Ideal Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Quality Comes First ... Pharmaceutical supply chain should provide medicines in the right quantity, with the acceptable quality, to the right place and customers, at the right time and with optimum cost to be consistent with health system's objectives and also it should make benefits for its stockholders.
An Overview on Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: A Next Step ... Best Practices for Maintaining Pharma Supply Chain Continuity in a Complex & Dynamic Environment. ... Division of Drug Quality; United Kingdom's Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) Each day of the conference has live Q&A sessions with the attendees and the speakers, and identical to last year's inaugural APAC conference ...
Best Practices for Maintaining Pharma Supply Chain ...
Drug Supply Chain Security Act (Title II of the Drug Quality and Security Act) Overview of Product Tracing Requirements September 2015
Drug Supply Chain Security Act - Food and Drug Administration
Supply chain is very critical as it maintains the complex network relationship between drug manufacturers, trading partners, wholesalers and retailers. Pharmaceutical products need temperature...
(PDF) Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Management
By connecting to the Elemica Digital Supply Network, enterprises manage supply chain execution and quality across all of their trading partners, hospitals, and pharmacies, while gaining visibility and insights to the needs of their customers and patients. All networked multi-enterprises can track and manage quality, orders, inventory, and shipments in real-time as products flow through from raw material suppliers all the way to the patient.
Elemica Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Increases Quality ...
According to an executive from the drug development services company, pharma professionals should pay close attention to supply chain continuity and safety in the coming year. Brad Payne (BP), chief operating officer of PCI Pharma Services, talked with OutsourcingPharma (OSP) about the factors that shaped the pharmaceutical industry in 2020 ...
Stay on top of your pharma supply chain in 2021: PCI
Generic drug supply chain disruptions and shortages are symptomatic of a dysfunctional business environment caused by predatory pricing and lack of supply chain partnerships. The generic drug...
Unsustainable Low Prices Causing Generic Drug Market ...
The role of the wholesaler in the life sciences supply chain management is to make the process of purchasing drug products from pharmaceutical manufacturers more efficient. Wholesale distributors
connect 60,000 U.S. pharmacies and outpatient dispensing outlets.
How Does the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Work?
Flexibility and agility are required across the entire pharmaceutical supply chain, from raw material, intermediate, drug substance, and drug product manufacturing, to the production of materials and components of manufacturing equipment, to the design and manufacture of packaging solutions, and on to warehousing and distribution of all of these important items.
Rethinking the Global Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Post ...
Recently, inspectors from the FDA have issued warning letters to manufacturers abroad at an increasing rate, putting quality and compliance in focus as the pharmaceutical industries in China and India look to move up the value chain into novel drug development. It's not just manufacturing, though.
Top challenges facing drug supply chains | BioPharma Dive
The Drug Supply Chain Securities Act is a great example. The 2013 law requires every drug to be tracked and traced from manufacturer to end user. The law's provisions are phased in through 2023, but the pharmacies that get it aren't waiting until then to put systems in place to comply with the law.
Connecting Pharmaceutical Distribution and Supply Chain ...
Under the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain will be brought together by an electronic, interoperable system to identify and trace prescription drugs as they're distributed throughout the country. This has radical implications for the entire industry, as regulators and stakeholders all race the clock to transform how drugs reach the patients who need them.
Error-proofing in the production process of pharmaceuticals isnt just a matter of good business, it has life-and-death implications for consumers. To that end, the 2013 Drug Quality and Security Act in large part requires new mandates on tracking and tracing chain of custody in the supply chain. Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Drug Quality and Securi
The adulteration and fraudulent manufacture of medicines is an old problem, vastly aggravated by modern manufacturing and trade. In the last decade, impotent antimicrobial drugs have compromised the treatment of many deadly diseases in poor countries. More recently, negligent production at a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy sickened hundreds of Americans. While the national drugs regulatory authority (hereafter, the regulatory authority) is responsible for the safety of a country's drug supply, no single country can entirely guarantee this
today. The once common use of the term counterfeit to describe any drug that is not what it claims to be is at the heart of the argument. In a narrow, legal sense a counterfeit drug is one that infringes on a registered trademark. The lay meaning is much broader, including any drug made with intentional deceit. Some generic drug companies and civil society groups object to calling bad medicines counterfeit, seeing it as the deliberate conflation of public health and intellectual property concerns. Countering the Problem of Falsified and Substandard Drugs accepts the narrow meaning of counterfeit, and, because the nuances of trademark infringement must be dealt with by courts, case by case, the report does not discuss the problem of counterfeit medicines.
The Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) was passed by Congress in the fall of 2013 and signed into law by President Barack Obama on November 27, 2013. The DSCSA was Title II of the Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA). The law establishes new requirements that must be administered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These requirements escalate over time from 2015 through 2023 in a series of stages. They include lot-based tracing of prescription pharmaceuticals from the manufacturer to the dispenser from 2015 through 2023 and serialization-based tracing after 2023. Drug manufacturers must apply unique identifiers on all prescription drug packages by November 2017 and repackagers, wholesale distributors and dispensers must begin to buy and sell products marked with those identifiers by November of 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively. This book explains the DSCSA, section by section, so that drug manufacturers, repackagers, wholesale distributors, dispensers, contract partners (CMOs, CPOs, 3PLs), solution providers, consultants, law firms, regulators and students can understand the text, the meaning and the significance of the law. The book also includes more than two dozen of the most informative RxTrace essays about various aspects of the DSCSA. These essays, by Dirk Rodgers, help to expose the implications of the law and provide the context necessary to understand its full impact on companies in the supply chain. In these essays, the latest FDA guidance related to the DSCSA, as of book publication, are explained. Praise for The Drug Supply Chain Security Act Explained, Second Edition: "Dirk Rodgers has an unparalleled knowledge of federal track and trace legislation. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand and benefit from coming changes to the pharmaceutical supply chain." -Adam J. Fein, Ph.D., president, Pembroke Consulting, Inc., and CEO, Drug Channels Institute "Through RxTrace, Dirk Rodgers has provided stakeholders valuable insights on DSCSA. As DSCSA has evolved, his questions and opinions have helped all the stakeholders understand compliance. Dirk's new book brings years of wisdom from RxTrace and more together in one volume." -- Napoleon Monroe, Managing Director, New Directions Technology Consulting, LLC "As dispensers entrusted with the last encounter for patient safety, it is important to have a venue for discussion on DSCSA implementation challenges amongst trading partners. In this book, Dirk provides his experience as a
resource for companies to use to create solutions." -- Chris Chandler, PharmD, VP of USDM Healthcare
This book bridges the gap between practitioners of supply-chain management and pharmaceutical industry experts. It aims to help both these groups understand the different worlds they live in and how to jointly contribute to meaningful improvements in supply-chains within the globally important pharmaceutical sector. Scientific and technical staff must work closely with supply-chain practitioners and other relevant parties to help secure responsive, cost effective and risk mitigated supply chains to compete on a world stage. This should not wait until a drug has been registered, but should start as early as possible in the development process and before registration or clinical trials. The author suggests that CMC (chemistry manufacturing controls) drug development must reset the line of sight – from supply of drug to the clinic and gaining a registration, to the building of a patient value stream. Capable processes and suppliers, streamlined logistics, flexible plant and equipment, shorter cycle times, effective flow of information and reduced waste. All these factors can and should be addressed at the CMC development stage.
Throughout history, the development and application of technology has been crucial to progress in healthcare provision. The shape that healthcare processes take will impact not only the quality of the resulting service but also the way in which suppliers of healthcare products will need to operate to make the most of their opportunities. In this cutting edge guide to strategic supply chain management, Rob Whewell shows how to develop a strategy to protect your pharmaceutical business from key threats whether legal or illegal. Parallel trading and counterfeit drugs, the requirements of organizations such as the FDA demanding more rigorous controls and traceability, new technologies and new ways of working with wholesalers or alternative distributors, all offer a new flexibility in manufacturing and the ability to respond to immediate opportunities or crises in any given market. The authoritatively written Supply Chain in the Pharmaceutical Industry provides you with the means to develop a strategic approach to supply chain that allows you to minimize risk and ensure flexibility and improved long-term profitability.
"Since 1987, the federal government and later, the state governments, have tried to combat counterfeit drugs from entering the United States and the state's pharmaceutical supply chain. The latest attempt to prevent counterfeit drugs from entering the state drug supply chain was the California E-Pedigree drug tracing program that was to be implemented by the end of 2017. The California E-Pedigree system uses GS1 PDMS tracing system as its guideline. Since all of the states use paper format pedigree systems, California would have been the first electronic pedigree system in the U.S. However, on November 27, 2013, the President of the United States signed into law the Drug Quality Security Act (DQSA). Title II of DQSA is called Drug Supply Chain
Security Act (DSCSA) and it removes all existing or future drug track or trace systems including pedigree systems from all states. DSCSA does establish a new federal drug tracing program that uses pedigrees and product identifiers for verification of the drugs being accepted by the buyer. Although the full implementation of the DSCSA will take about ten years from its enactment, the basic structure of the new federal tracing program is laid out. My thesis will analyze the current state of the pharmaceutical industry, the impact from counterfeit medicine, and anti-counterfeit technologies. We will proceed to analyze the DSCSA to create a basic logical model and show a possible implementation of its verification process. Additionally, we will discuss DSCSA model as to its effectiveness of the basic design against the entrance of counterfeit medicine into the United States Pharmaceutical Supply Chain. This will be followed by a conclusion"--Leaf iv.
This book provides an insight of relevant case studies and updated practices in "PharmaceuticalSupply Chains" (PharmSC) while addressing the most relevant topics within the COST Action "Medicines Shortages" (CA15105).The volume focuses on the most recent developments in the design, planning and scheduling ofPharmSC, broadening from the suppliers' selection to the impact on patients and healthcaresystems, addressing uncertainty and risk mitigation, and computational issues. It is directed at MSc/PhD students and young researchers (Post-Docs) in Pharmaceutics/Pharmaceutical sciences, Engineering fields, Economics/Management, as well as pharmaceutical decision makers, managers, and practitioners, and advanced readers demanding a fresh approach to decision making for PharmSC. The contributed chapters are associated with the homonymous COST Training Schools (TS), and the book creates a better understanding of the Action "Medicines Shortages" challenges and opportunities.
In a rapidly growing global economy, where there is a constant emergence of new business models and dynamic changes to the business ecosystem, there is a need for the integration of traditional, new, and hybrid concepts in the complex structure of supply chain management. Within the fast-paced pharmaceutical industry, product strategy, life cycles, and distribution must maintain the highest level of agility. Therefore, organizations need strong supply chain capabilities to profitably compete in the marketplace. Global Supply Chains in the Pharmaceutical Industry provides innovative insights into the efforts needed to build and maintain a strong supply chain network in order to achieve efficient fulfillment of demand, drive outstanding customer value, enhance organizational responsiveness, and build network resiliency. This publication is designed for supply chain managers, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students, and covers topics centered on economic cycles, sustainable development, and new forces in the global economy.
Copyright : drilling.ohio.com
Read Book Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Drug Quality And Security Act
don't know it-- and pharmaceutical companies are not eager to tell them. This probing book examines the implications for the quality and availability of vital medicines for consumers"--Provided by publisher.
This book offers policy makers a hands-on approach, tested in the World Bank's field work in many countries, for developing policies that improve access to safe, effective medicines in health systems of low- and middle-income economies.
Copyright code : 33d273dd5f79766d8bc7c1cc7a73fa1b
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Introduction
Toynbee Hall's youth projects have been a major beneficiary of Proms at St Jude's fundraising for 19 years. For the last four years, Proms has been the largest funder of the Make It! project which works with students in East London secondary schools who are in Year 8 (aged 12-13) to support their progress. The students are involved throughout the school year in a project that encourages the development of self-confidence and social awareness, which, in turn, enhances emotional well-being. The activities also build skills such as critical thinking and team-working, which are vital to success in school and eventually in the workplace. Above all, students are empowered to engage more fully with school and their communities, thereby raising their aspirations and life chances. As well as benefitting themselves, the young people often go on to mentor younger students, as well as making a practical contribution to a project within the local community.
and consolidate skill development and expose participants to classical music and opera. The workshops make a direct link between the work in schools and the music at Proms at St Jude's, as well as involving Investec volunteers. The schools programme has been led by award winning poet and educator Anthony Anaxagorou, using music and musicality to help create spoken word poetry. At the initial workshop, students worked with Anthony, Nicholas Chalmers (Artistic Director of Nevill Holt Opera and an experienced music educator) and soprano Sky Ingram to explore Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (performed by Nevill Holt earlier this week and sponsored by Investec). In this and later workshops, the Speak It! students have drawn on the music and themes of the opera to create spoken word pieces in which they are also able to write and speak about their own identities.
Speak It! has emerged from Make It! and is now in its second year. Directly funded by Investec, Speak It! works with students who have graduated from the Make It! project to enhance
I was hugely impressed with the quality and variety of the pupils' poems. A fantastic example of the power of poetry to communicate to its audience in multiple levels.
Representatives of Investec, Toynbee and Proms at St Jude's have all been involved in judging the final pieces. The winner from each school will read their poems after the interval at tonight's Prom. The positive impacts are many, but self-confidence, public speaking
It was great to see the poets pushing the boundaries with their authentic language.
Eddy Hargreaves, Investec judge
Jim Minton, CEO of Toynbee Hall www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
skills, pride in their communities and cultural heritage, and the opportunity to discuss and challenge stereotypes are all important.
Whilst the Make It! and Speak It! projects are the biggest Proms-related education projects, involvement with children and young people has always been important. As Proms has grown, the size and ambition of its educational projects have grown too. A Schools' Prom is a long-standing feature, involving thousands of local children over the years. The Schools' Prom embraces primary and secondary groups and is preceded by a workshop in each school. We hope to expand this further; whilst the benefits of music education are well known, funding and curriculum time pressures are squeezing provision.
with classical music, hopefully contributing to a life-long relationship.
Proms at St Jude's music programme starts with our youngest audience members. Earlier this week our Teeny Proms, sponsored and led by DaCapo Music Foundation, involved under fives (and their cuddly toys!) in songs, percussion and musical games. Still to come are the family events with Beaten Track Percussion and a performance of Carnival of the Animals. Free for children, these offer the opportunity for the whole family to engage
New this year is the Fanfare project; an opportunity for talented teenage musicians to compose a piece for orchestral performance. We are delighted that Theo Gill's fanfare will be performed at the Last Night of Proms at St Jude's and hope this project will become an established feature of future programming.
None of these projects could happen without volunteers and our loyal audiences – they say the support of sponsors, Friends who have donated to our Music Education Appeal, 'it takes a village' – in this case, the Proms at St Jude's village!
www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
3
Poetry and Opera
Nicholas Chalmers and Anthony Anaxagorou
S peak It! is an incredibly important programme in that it endeavours to engage young people in not only poetry and wordplay, but also critical thinking. By breaking down various stigmas associated with poetry by introducing relevant and contemporary styles, students are able to use the medium to navigate not only how they see the world, but their place in it. The added bonus was incorporating the operatic element into the format as it demonstrated how story-telling, poetry, music and culture all are highly accessible. The students found the fusion to be of great interest and wrote some great poems responding to the protagonists in the opera. Anthony Anaxagorou, poet and Speak It! facilitator
T he Speak It! project is a fantastic opportunity for kids to explore the musical infl uence on poetry. The beautiful musical lines of Le nozze di Figaro have inspired generations of artists. Music can create impressions of colour, atmosphere and structure of language. It was wonderful to watch and hear the way in which the kids reacted to Mozart's music.
Sky Ingram
It was a joy to be involved in the Speak It! School Workshops with poet Anthony Anaxagorou. There were two standout points I noticed to each school workshop... Firstly, there was the glorious breakdown in stereotypes and preconceptions of what an opera singer, a conductor, and a poet look and sound like. Then, after learning to think outside the box, describing operatic sounds in terms of colour, and challenge what 'identity' truly means, we witnessed some incredible moments where students embraced their new way of thinking to write their very own poem. We certainly learnt as much as the students and felt so privileged to bond artistically with them all. Sky Ingram, Nevill Holt Opera Company
Young people love to mix songs and stories. In the Speak It! project a Mozart opera met poetry, and brought to life the magic of marrying words and music as well the musicality of our words. Michelle Groves, Chair, Education Committee, Proms at St Jude's
Nicholas Chalmers, Artistic Director, Nevill Holt Opera Company www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
Pranksters
By Volkan O'Grady
The sky was cold grey, the angry thunder striking and the happy birds scared. There he lay dead on the floor. Eagles surrounding him like mice to cheese. How did this happen? Murder or suicide? If it was murder where would they hide? What should I do, confused and puzzled, should I go or stay? No one around The eagles are hungry He opens his eyes, birds fly formula one fast He grabbed me and gripped on me That's when I smelt the ketchup Moon running away from the day, laughing.
It's about raising confidence in public speaking and self-expression. It helps the students' improve their ability to interpret their own feelings in a controlled way. The messages I heard today were really powerful. Carl Kemp, Community Manager at George Green's talking about hosting the Speak It! project at the school
I was impressed with the diverse sense of identities presented today which is a testament that the young people have an understanding of who they are. It was good to see how they linked their identity to things they do day to day or that they own.
Ed Martoni, Investec judge www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
5
A Shark's Secret Make-up
By Nicole Barrios
I am a fuse that swims
The sun's skin colour
I am a chip on a board
The wrong religion
I am paper kissing the wall
Background noise
I am a praying fly
Food in a dungeon
I am a piano on a glass of water
Swag
I am a shoe on a sock
Faith
I am a paper on a screw
I am a dirty shoe
Family prisoner
I am a tattoo on a pen
Past dreaming
I am a nail on an eye
School/ job
I am a scratch on a dress
Secret lock and key
I am a bread on hair
Shopping
I am a tight shirt on a fat person
Godly hair
I am a pencil that writes history
Stereotyping twin
Nicole Barrios of Kingsford Community School
www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
Class
By Henoc Lingomba
I am struggling money
Crawling towards a trustworthy Family.
I am interesting culture
Slipping finance into my
Back pocket.
I am a greedy & book keeping All the words for myself I am caring religion Laying myself beside the homeless The underclass dreaming of jewellery Diamonds to Eat.
The students had such interesting ideas which they were able to convey in a powerful and vivid way. I felt privileged to have been able to hear their poems, some of which clearly took them out of their comfort zones and made them reflect on some very personal issues. I hope they enjoyed the project, I certainly enjoyed meeting them and hearing their poems.
Judy Knox, Proms at St Jude's judge
Michelle Main, Anthony Anaxagorou, Henoc Lingomba of Lister Community School, Vanessa Scolding, Jim Minton and Tina Isaacs
www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
7
8
Gorgeous
Stunning
Silver Mirror
By Saarah Rahman, Langdon Park School
Harsh chemicals in bleach murdered my black long hair like an onslaught of spears.
Beautiful
I look at myself in the silver mirror Staring so lovingly at my beautiful slim figure I blinked a million times to look at myself in the mirror clearer
To stare so lovingly at my ombre curls as well as my sharp cheekbones
Why couldn't I love myself before this?
Crystal clear tears will drip down my chubby cheeks
When I look at those gorgeous beautiful stunning girls on my phone
Crystal clear tears will drip down my chubby cheeks
When those gorgeous beautiful stunning girls Stand there posing all stick thin while I stay elephant-big
I want to be, NO, I needed to be Those gorgeous, beautiful, stunning girls All fake they would say at my bruised face, Red and aching yet gorgeous beautiful and now stunning.
I would make myself sick, face down in the toilet
After every meal but no one would care.
In an ear-spllitting ambulance rushed off to hospital
Diagnosed with anorexia.
No flowers, no get will soon cards Just crystal clear tears ruining my mascara like a wild forest fire burning.
Society and the media sell us these ideas of beauty.
Cheekbones, full lips, caked face. And I was weak enough to believe it
I wanted to be those
Gorgeous
Beautiful
Stunning
Girls you see on your phone
But it turns out I was always one already Before this whole mess.
I was already beautiful, now I look at myself in the silver mirror
And see crystal clear tears running down my cheeks
Over my smile and into my happiness.
www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
Eerie Emotions
By Charlotte Sonnex, Central Foundation School
Riding on the skeleton of race
Baking memories of life Wearing death's shining outfit. Sharing with hostile, lost, broken people Changing its lonely colours, And its dying thoughts. Trotting in the shoes of hate And piecing together time and tales Like a puzzle in the sea Sweeping deadly thought, onto the shore of life Then hiding in the shell of skin Away, away from reality! Lost emotions Galloping down the isle of personality The rotting clothes that cover all, The broken chains of war's heart The mixture of innocent people
Very enjoyable experience. The students' commitment shone through as they presented and took in feedback on their poems. They have obviously taken this very seriously.
The hairstyles that hide the death of memories All those cuffs that won't free people Lost,
Lost, lonely hidden eyes,
Bullets, bullets that take shots in the eyes of the innocent
Bullets, bullets that smash the minds of the hurt
The hurt, the lost, the broken, the normal ones
The ones that don't care, all these people
But no one wants to walk down those steps
Those steps that make hearts ache
Those steps, the ones, the ones that break hearts,
The ones that save lives… the crimes that are lost behind the falling walls…. Time.
They say actions speak louder than words, but it is often overlooked that actions happen because inspiring words have been uttered in the first place! Investec volunteer 2017
… very insightful. The energy in the
Kate Webster, Proms at St Jude's judge room was amazing! Investec volunteer 2017
www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
9
What I Call Change
By Shabiha Saleh, Morpeth School
You decided to change
I accepted that,
I call you an honest thief
You took things from me,
Mine, and your memories,
As I let you take them from me,
I call you vengeful,
You mock the blank space in my heart
No, my soul,
You were a part of me once,
I call you ungrateful,
As I was just an insignificant pawn,
I call you a user,
I was always the one to clean up
After your mess,
The maid to all your dynamic emotions,
www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
I call you a liar,
You told me that we were always equal,
Never less,
I call you a heated oppressor,
It was always me, whose secrets were confessed
I call myself an afraid betrayer,
Because I knew you had always cared for me,
I'm all these things and more,
After I let you leave.
I was impressed by the openness and courage of the students and the things they were willing to write about. You have to remind yourself how young they are... and then get impressed all over again.
Michelle Main, Investec judge
It's so brave of the students to share all kinds of feelings in front of strangers and peers. You could just feel their honesty. I feel very lucky to have been able to take part in judging.
Vanessa Scolding, Investec judge
Interesting to see the experiences that have gone into their poems by the choice of their words. It is a difficult theme for the teenagers and they managed to express themselves very clearly. Ben Cohen, Investec judge
www.promsatstjudes.org.uk
11
Thanks
Proms at St Jude's thanks everyone who helped make Speak It! happen:
Toynbee Hall
Anthony Anaxagorou
Nicholas Chalmers and Sky Ingram, Nevill Holt Opera
George Green's School
Kingsford Community School
Lister Community School
And a special thank you to Speak It! sponsor: Investec
Music enhances the education of our children by helping them to make connections and broadening the depth with which they think and feel. If we are to hope for a society of culturally literate people,music must be a vital part of our children's education.
Yo-Yo Ma
RAISING FUN DS F O R TOY N B E E H A L L A N D N O R T H LO N D O N H O S P I C E
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PART 1 G E N E R A L
1.01 SECTION INCLUDES
A. Portland cement concrete paving.
1.02 MEASUREMENT AND PAYMENT
A. Unit Prices.
1. Payment for concrete paving is on square yard basis. Separate pay items are used for each different required thickness of pavement.
2. Payment for concrete paving, high early strength, is on square yard basis.
3. Measurement for utility projects: Match actual pavement replaced but no greater than maximum pavement replacement limits shown on Drawings.
a. When removed pavement is greater than one-half of pavement lane width or within 18 inches of longitudinal joint, replace pavement for full lane width or to nearest longitudinal joint.
b. No payment will be made for work outside pavement limits or in areas removed or replaced for Contractor's convenience. Maximum payment limits are shown on Drawings. When extent of pavement replacement is increased to full lane width or to nearest longitudinal joint, maximum payment limits are increased to same extent.
4. Refer to Section 01270 - Measurement and Payment for unit price procedures.
5. Refer to Paragraph 3.15, Unit Price Adjustment.
B. Stipulated Price (Lump Sum). If Contract is Stipulated Price Contract, payment for Work in this Section is included in total Stipulated Price.
1.03 REFERENCES
A. ASTM A 82 - Standard Specification for Steel Wire, Plain, for Concrete Reinforcement.
B. ASTM A 185 - Standard Specifications for Steel Welded Wire Fabric, Plain, for Concrete Reinforcement.
Section 02751
CONCRETE PAVING
C. ASTM A 615 - Standard Specification for Deformed and Plain Billet - Steel Bars for Concrete Reinforcement.
D. ASTM C 31 - Standard Practice for Making and Curing Concrete Test Specimens in the
Field.
E. ASTM C 33 - Standard Specifications for Concrete Aggregates.
F. ASTM C 39 - Standard Test Method for Compressive Strength of Cylindrical Concrete Specimens.
G. ASTM C 40 - Standard Test Method for Organic Impurities in Fine Aggregates for Concrete.
H. ASTM C 42 - Standard Test Method of Obtaining and Testing Drilled Cores and Sawed Beams of Concrete.
I. ASTM C 78 - Standard Test Method for Flexural Strength of Concrete (Using Simple Beam with Third Point Loading).
J. ASTM C 94 - Standard Specification for Ready-Mixed Concrete.
K. ASTM C 131 - Standard Test Method for Resistance to Degradation of Small-Size Coarse Aggregate by Abrasion and Impact in the Los Angeles Machine.
L. ASTM C 136 - Standard Method for Sieve Analysis of Fine and Coarse Aggregates.
M. ASTM C 138 - Standard Test Method for Unit Weight, Yield, and Air Content (Gravimetric) of Concrete.
N. ASTM C 143 - Standard Test Method for Slump of Hydraulic Cement Concrete.
O. ASTM C 150 - Standard Specification for Portland Cement.
P. ASTM C 174 - Standard Test Method for Measuring Thickness of Concrete Elements Using Drilled Concrete Cores.
Q. ASTM C 231 - Standard Test Method for Air Content of Freshly Mixed Concrete by the Pressure Method.
R. ASTM C 260 - Standard Specification for Air-Entraining Admixtures for Concrete.
S. ASTM C 494 - Standard Specification for Chemical Admixtures for Concrete.
T. ASTM C 618 - Standard Specification for Coal Fly Ash and Raw or Calcined Natural Pozzolan for use as a Mineral Admixture in Portland Cement Concrete.
U. TxDOT Tex-203-F - Sand Equivalent Test.
02-01-08
V. TxDOT Tex-406-A - Material Finer than 75 Fm (No. 200) Sieve In Mineral Aggregates (Decantation Test for Cement Aggregates).
1.04 SUBMITTALS
A. Conform to requirements of Section 01330 - Submittal Procedures.
B. Submit proposed mix design and test data for each type and strength of concrete in Work. Include proportions and actual flexural strength obtained from design mixes at required test ages.
C. Submit for approval manufacturer's description and characteristics for mixing equipment, and for traveling form paver, when proposed for use.
D. Submit manufacturer's certificates giving properties of reinforcing steel. Include certificate of compliance with ASTM A 82. Provide specimens for testing when required by City Engineer.
1.05 HANDLING AND STORAGE
A. Do not mix different classes of aggregate without written permission of City Engineer.
B. Class of aggregate being used may be changed before or during Work with written permission of City Engineer. Comply new class with specifications.
C. Reject segregated aggregate. Before using aggregate whose particles are separated by size, mix them uniformly to grading requirements.
D. Reject aggregates mixed with dirt, weeds, or foreign matter.
E. Do not dump or store aggregate in roadbed.
PART 2 P R O D U C T S
2.01 MATERIALS
A. Portland Cement:
1. Sample and test cement to verify compliance with Standards of ASTM C 150, Type I or Type III.
2. Bulk cement which meets referenced standards may be used when method of handling is approved by City Engineer. When using bulk cement, provide satisfactory weighing devices.
3. Fly ash, which meets standards of ASTM C 618, may be used as mineral fill when method of handling is approved by City Engineer.
B. Water: Conform to requirements for water in ASTM C 94.
C. Coarse Aggregate: Crushed stone, gravel, or combination thereof, which is clean, hard, durable, conforms to requirements of ASTM C 33, and has abrasion loss not more than 45 percent by weight when subjected to Los Angeles Abrasion Test (ASTM C 131).
1. Maximum percentage by weight of deleterious substances shall not exceed following values:
* In case of manufactured sand, when material finer than 75-μm (No. 200) sieve consists of dust of fracture, essentially free from clay or shale, these limits may be increased to 5 and 7 percent, respectively.
2. Conform coarse aggregate (size 12 inch to No. 4 sieve) to requirements of ASTM C 33. Use gradation within following limits when graded in accordance with ASTM C 136:
* In case of aggregates made primarily from crushing of stone, when material finer than 200 sieve is dust of fracture essentially free from clay or shale as established by Part III of TxDOT Tex-406-A, percent may be increased to 1.5.
D. Fine Aggregate: Sand, manufactured sand, or combination thereof, composed of clean, hard, durable, uncoated grains, free from loams or other injurious foreign matter. Conform fine aggregate for concrete to requirements of ASTM C 33. Use gradation within following limits when graded in accordance with ASTM C 136:
1. When subjected to color test for organic impurities (ASTM C 40), fine aggregate shall not show color darker than standard color. Fine aggregate shall be subjected to Sand Equivalent Test (Tex-203-F). Sand equivalent value shall not be less than 80, unless higher value is shown on Drawings.
E. Mineral Filler: Class C fly ash of acceptable quality and meeting requirements of ASTM C 618 may be used as mineral admixture in concrete mixture. When fly ash mineral filler is used, store and inspect in accordance with ASTM C 618. Do not use fly ash in amounts to exceed 30 percent by absolute volume of cementitious material in mix design. Cement content may be reduced when strength requirements can be met. Note: When fly ash is used, term "cement" is defined as cement plus fly ash.
F. Air Entraining Agent: Furnish air-entraining agent conforming to requirements of ASTM C 260.
G. Water Reducer: Water reducing admixture conforming to requirements of ASTM C 494 may be used when required to improve workability of concrete. Amount and type of admixture subject to approval by City Engineer.
H. Reinforcing Steel:
1. Provide new billet steel manufactured by open hearth process and conforming to ASTM A 615, Grade 60. Store steel to protect it from mechanical injury and rust. At time of placement, steel shall be free from dirt, scale, rust, paint, oil, or other injurious materials.
2. Cold bend reinforcing steel to shapes shown. Once steel has been bent, it may not be rebent.
3. Provide wire fabric conforming to ASTM A 82. Use fabric in which longitudinal and transverse wires have been electrically welded at points of intersection. Welds shall have sufficient strength not to be broken during handling or placing. Conform welding and fabrication of fabric sheets to ASTM A 185.
I. Fibrous Reinforcing: Conform to requirements of Section 03240 - Fibrous Reinforcing.
2.02 EQUIPMENT
A. Conform Equipment to requirements of ASTM C 94.
2.03 MIXING
A. Flexural strength shall be as specified using test specimens prepared in accordance with ASTM C 31 and tested in accordance with ASTM C78 (using simple beam with third-point loading). Compressive strength shall be as specified using test specimens prepared in accordance with ASTM C 31 and tested in accordance with ASTM C 39. Determine and measure batch quantity of each ingredient, including water for batch designs and all concrete produced for Work. Mix shall conform to these specifications and other requirements indicated on Drawings.
B. Mix design to produce concrete, which will have flexural strength of 500 psi at 7 days and 600 psi at 28 days. Slump of concrete shall be at least 2 inches but no more than 4 inches, when tested in accordance with ASTM C 143.
1. Concrete pavement, including curb, curb and gutter, and saw-tooth curb, shall contain at least 52 sacks (94 pounds per sack) of cement per cubic yard, with not more than 6.5 gallons of water, net, per sack of cement (water-cement ratio maximum 0.57). Determine cement content in accordance with ASTM C 138. Addition of mineral filler may be used to improve workability or plasticity of concrete to limits specified.
2. Coarse dry aggregate shall not exceed 85 percent of loose volume of concrete.
3. Add air-entraining admixture to ensure uniform distribution of agent throughout batch. Base air content of freshly mixed air-entrained concrete upon trial mixes with materials to be used in Work, adjusted to produce concrete of required plasticity and workability. Percentage of air entrainment in mix shall be 42 percent plus or minus 12 percent. Determine air content by testing in accordance with ASTM C 231.
4. Use retardant when temperature exceeds 90 degrees F. Proportion as recommended by manufacturer. Use same brand as used for air-entraining agent. Add and batch material using same methods as used for air-entraining agent.
C. Use high early strength concrete pavement to limits shown on Drawings. Design to meet following:
1. Concrete Mix: Flexural strength greater than or equal to 500 psi at 72 hours.
2. Cement: Minimum of 7 sacks of cement per cubic yard of concrete.
3. Water-Cement Ratio: Less than or equal to 5 gallons per sack. Changes in watercement ratio and mix design including increase in cement factor when necessary, will be made when 72-hour flexural strength does not meet minimum value of 500 psi.
4. Other requirements for proportioning, mixing, execution, testing, etc., shall be in accordance with this Section 02751 - Concrete Paving.
PART 3 E X E C U T I O N
3.01 EXAMINATION
A. Verify compacted base is ready to support imposed loads and meets compaction requirements.
B. Verify lines and grades are correct.
3.02 PREPARATION
A. Properly prepare, shape and compact each section of sub grade before placing forms, reinforcing steel or concrete. After forms have been set to proper grade and alignment, use sub grade planer to shape sub grade to its final cross section. Check contour of sub grade with template.
B. Remove sub grade that will not support loaded form. Replace and compact sub grade to required density.
3.03 EQUIPMENT
A. Alternate equipment and methods, other than those required by this Section, may be used provided equal or better results will be obtained. Maintain equipment for preparing sub grade and for finishing and compacting concrete in good working order.
B. Sub grade Planer and Template:
1. Use sub grade planer with adjustable cutting blades to trim sub grade to exact section shown on Drawings. Select planer mounted on visible rollers, which ride on forms. Planer frame must have sufficient weight so that it will remain on form, and have strength and rigidity that, under tests made by changing support from wheels to center, planer will not develop deflection of more than c inch. Tractors used to pull planer shall not produce ruts or indentations in sub grade. When slip form method of paving is used, operate sub grade planer on prepared track grade or have it controlled by electronic sensor system operated from string line to establish horizontal alignment and elevation of subbase.
2. Provide template for checking contour of sub grade. Template shall be long enough to rest upon side forms and have strength and rigidity that, when supported at center, maximum deflection shall not exceed c inch. Fit template with accurately adjustable rods projecting downward at 1-foot intervals. Adjust these rods to gauge cross sections of slab bottom when template is resting on side forms.
C. Machine Finisher: Provide power-driven, transverse finishing machine designed and operated to strike off and consolidate concrete. Machine shall have two screeds accurately adjusted to crown of pavement and with frame equipped to ride on forms. Use finishing machine with rubber tires when it operates on concrete pavement.
D. Hand Finishing:
1. Provide mechanical strike and tamping template 2 feet longer than width of pavement to be finished. Shape template to pavement section.
2. Provide two bridges to ride on forms and span pavement for finishing expansion and dummy joints. Provide floats and necessary edging and finishing tools.
E. Burlap Drag for Finishing Slab: Furnish four plies of 10-ounce burlap material fastened to bridge to form continuous strip of burlap full width of pavement. Maintain contact 3-foot width of burlap material with pavement surface. Keep burlap drags clean and free of encrusted mortar.
F. Vibrators: Furnish mechanically operated, synchronized vibrators mounted on tamping bar which rides on forms and hand-manipulated mechanical vibrators. Furnish vibrators with frequency of vibration to provide maximum consolidation of concrete without segregation.
G. Traveling Form Paver: Approved traveling form paver may be used in lieu of construction methods employing forms, consolidating, finishing and floating equipment. Meet requirements of this specification for sub grade, pavement tolerances, pavement depth, alignments, consolidation, finishing and workmanship. When traveling form paver does not provide concrete paving that meets compaction, finish, and tolerance requirements of this Specification, immediately discontinue its use and use conventional methods.
1. Equip traveling paver with longitudinal transangular finishing float adjustable to crown and grade. Use float long enough to extend across pavement to side forms or edge of slab.
2. Ensure that continuous deposit of concrete can be made at paver to minimize starting and stopping. Use conventional means of paving locations inaccessible to traveling paver, or having horizontal or vertical curvature that traveling paver cannot negotiate.
3. Where Drawings require tie bars for adjacent paving, securely tie and support bars to prevent displacement. Tie bars may be installed with approved mechanical bar inserter mounted on traveling-form paver. Replace pavement in which tie bars assume final position other than that shown on Drawings.
3.04 FORMS
A. Side Forms: Use metal forms of approved shape and section. Preferred depth of form equal to required edge thickness of pavement. Forms with depths greater or less than required edge thickness of pavement will be permitted, provided difference between form depth and edge thickness when not greater than 1 inch, and further provided that forms of depth less than pavement edge are brought to required edge thickness by securely attaching wood or metal strips to bottom of form, or by grouting under form. Bottom flange of form shall be same size as thickness of pavement. Aluminum forms are not allowed. Forms shall be approved by City Engineer. Length of form sections shall be not less than 10 feet and each section shall provide for staking in position with not less than 3 pins. Flexible or curved forms of wood or metal of proper radius shall be used for curves of 200-foot radius or less. Forms shall have ample strength and shall be provided with adequate devices for secure setting so that when in-place they will withstand, without visible springing or settlement, impact and vibration of finishing machine. In no case shall base width be less than 8 inches for form 8 inches or more in height. Forms shall be free from warp, bends or kinks and shall be sufficiently true to provide straight edge on concrete. Top of each form section, when tested with straight edge, shall conform to requirements specified for surface of completed pavement. Provide sufficient forms for satisfactory placement of concrete. For short radius curves, forms less than 10 feet in length or curved forms may be used. For curb returns at street intersections and driveways, wood forms of good grade and quality may be used.
B. Form Setting:
1. Rest forms directly on sub grade. Do not shim with pebbles or dirt. Accurately set forms to required grade and alignment and, during entire operation of placing, compacting and finishing of concrete, do not deviate from this grade and alignment more than c inch in 10 feet of length. Do not remove forms for at least 8 hours after completion of finishing operations. Provide supply of forms that will be adequate for orderly and continuous placing of concrete. Set forms and check grade for at least 300 feet ahead of mixer or as approved by City Engineer.
2. Adjacent slabs may be used instead of forms, provided that concrete is well protected from possible damage by finishing equipment. Do not use adjacent slabs for forms until concrete has aged at least 7 days.
A. Place reinforcing steel and joint assemblies and position securely as indicated on Drawings. Wire reinforcing bars securely together at intersections and splices. Bars and coatings shall be free of rust, dirt or other foreign matter when concrete is placed. Secure reinforcing steel to chairs.
B. Position pavement joint assemblies at required locations and elevations, and rigidly secure in position. Install dowel bars in joint assemblies, each parallel to pavement surface and to centerline of pavement, as shown.
C. Cut header boards, joint filler, and other material used for forming joints to receive each dowel bar.
D. Secure in required position to prevent displacement during placing and finishing of concrete.
E. Drill dowels into existing pavement, secure with epoxy, and provide paving headers as required to provide rigid pavement sections.
F. Use sufficient number of chairs for steel reinforcement bars to maintain position of bars within allowable tolerances. Place reinforcement as shown on Drawings. In plane of steel parallel to nearest surface of concrete, bars shall not vary from plan placement by more than 1/12 of spacing between bars. In plane of steel perpendicular to nearest surface of concrete, bars shall not vary from plan placement by more than 3 inch.
3.06 FIBROUS REINFORCING
A. Do not use fibrous reinforcing to replace structural, load-bearing, or moment-reinforcing steel.
B. Mix and place in accordance with requirements of Section 03240.
3.07 PLACEMENT
A. Place concrete when air temperature taken in shade and away from artificial heat is above 35 degrees F and rising. Do not place concrete when temperature is below 40 degrees F and falling.
B. Place concrete within 90 minutes after initial water had been added. Remove and dispose of concrete not placed within this period.
C. Concrete slump during placement shall be 1 to 4 inches, except when using traveling-form paver, slump shall be maximum of 2 inches.
D. Deposit concrete continuously in successive batches. Distribute concrete in manner that will require as little rehandling as possible. Where hand spreading is necessary, distribute concrete with shovels or by other approved methods. Use only concrete rakes in handling
concrete. At placement interruption of more than 30 minutes, place transverse construction joint at stopping point. Remove and replace sections less than 10 feet long.
E. Take special care in placing and spading concrete against forms and at longitudinal and transverse joints to prevent honeycombing. Voids in edge of finished pavement will be cause for rejection.
3.08 COMPACTION
A. Consolidate concrete using mechanical vibrators as specified herein. Extend vibratory unit across pavement, not quite touching side forms. Space individual vibrators at close enough intervals to vibrate and consolidate entire width of pavement uniformly. Mount mechanical vibrators to avoid contact with forms, reinforcement, transverse or longitudinal joints.
B. Furnish enough hand-manipulated mechanical vibrators for proper consolidation of concrete along forms, at joints and in areas not covered by mechanically controlled vibrators.
3.09 FINISHING
A. Finish concrete pavement with power-driven transverse finishing machines or by hand finishing methods.
1. Use transverse finishing machine to make at least two trips over each area. Make last trip continuous run of not less than 40 feet. After transverse screeding, use hand-operated longitudinal float to test and level surface to required grade.
2. Hand finish with mechanical strike and tamping template in same width as pavement to be finished. Shape template to pavement section shown on Drawings. Move strike template forward in direction of placement, maintaining slight excess of material in front of cutting edge. Make minimum of two trips over each area. Screed pavement surface to required section. Work screed with combined transverse and longitudinal motion in direction work is progressing. Maintain screed in contact with forms. Use longitudinal float to level surface.
B. On narrow strips and transitions, finish concrete pavement by hand. Thoroughly work concrete around reinforcement and embedded fixtures. Strike off concrete with strike-off screed. Move strike-off screed forward with combined transverse and longitudinal motion in direction work is progressing, maintaining screed in contact with forms, and maintaining slight excess of materials in front of cutting edge. Tamp concrete with tamping template. Use longitudinal float to level surface.
C. After completion of straightedge operation, make first pass of burlap drag as soon as construction operations permit and before water sheen has disappeared from surface. Follow with as many passes as required to produce desired texture depth. Permit no unnecessary delays between passes. Keep drag wet, clean and free from encrusted mortar during use.
02-01-08
3.10 JOINTS AND JOINT SEALING
A. Conform to requirements of Section 02752 - Concrete Pavement Joints.
3.11 CONCRETE CURING
A. Conform to requirements of Section 02753 - Concrete Pavement Curing.
3.12 TOLERANCES
A. Test entire surface before initial set and correct irregularities or undulations. Bring surface within requirements of following test and then finish. Place 10-foot straightedge parallel to center of roadway to bridge depressions and touch high spots. Do not permit ordinates measured from face of straight edge to surface of pavement to exceed 1/16 inch per foot from nearest point of contact. Maximum ordinate with 10-foot straightedge shall not exceed c inch. Grind spots in excess of required tolerances to meet surface test requirements. Restore texture by grooving concrete to meet surface finishing specifications.
3.13 FIELD QUALITY CONTROL
A. Perform testing under provisions of Section 01454 - Testing Laboratory Services.
B. Compressive Strength Test Specimens: Make four test specimens for compressive strength test in accordance with ASTM C 31 for each 150 cubic yards or less of pavement that is placed in one day. Test two specimens at 7 days. Test remaining two specimens at 28 days. Test specimens in accordance with ASTM C 39. Minimum compressive strength shall be 3000 pounds per square inch at 7 days and 3500 pounds per square inch at 28 days.
C. When compressive test indicates failure, make yield test in accordance with ASTM C 138 for cement content per cubic yard of concrete. When cement content is found to be less than that specified per cubic yard, increase batch weights until amount of cement per cubic yard of concrete conforms to requirements.
D. Minimum of one 4-inch core will be taken at random locations per 375 feet per 12 feet lane or 500 square yards of pavement to measure in-place depth. Measure depth in accordance with ASTM C 174. Each core may be tested for 28-day compressive strength according to methods of ASTM C 42. 28-day compressive strength of each core tested shall be minimum of 3000 pounds per square inch.
E. Request, at option, three additional cores in vicinity of cores indicating nonconforming inplace depths at no cost to City. In-place depth at these locations shall be average depth of four cores.
F. Fill cores and density test sections with new concrete paving or non-shrink grout.
3.14 NONCONFORMING PAVEMENT
A. Remove and replace areas of pavement found deficient in thickness by more than 10 percent, or that fail compressive strength tests, with concrete of thickness shown on Drawings.
B. When measurement of any core is less than specified thickness by more than 10 percent, actual thickness of pavement in this area will be determined by taking additional cores at 10foot intervals parallel to centerline in each direction from deficient core until, in each direction, core is taken which is not deficient by more than 10 percent. Exploratory cores for deficient thickness will not be used in averages for adjusted unit price. Exploratory cores are to be used only to determine length of pavement in unit that is to be removed and replaced. Replace nonconforming pavement sections at no additional cost to City.
3.15 UNIT PRICE ADJUSTMENT
A. Unit price adjustments shall be made for in-place depth determined by cores as follows:
1. Adjusted Unit Price shall be ratio of average thickness as determined by cores to thickness bid upon, times unit price.
2. Apply adjustment to lower limit of 95 percent and upper limit of 100 percent of unit price.
3. Average depth below 95 percent but greater than 90 percent may be accepted by City Engineer at adjusted Unit Price of :
Unit Price Bid - [2 x (1-ratio) x Unit Price Bid]
4. Average depth below 90 percent will be rejected by City Engineer.
3.16 PAVEMENT MARKINGS
A. Restore pavement markings to match those existing in accordance with City of Tomball standard specifications and details and City Engineer's requirements.
3.17 PROTECTION
A. Barricade pavement section to prevent use until concrete has attained minimum design strength. Cure barricade pavement section for minimum 72 hours before use. Do not open pavement to traffic until concrete is at least 10 days old. Pavement may be open to traffic earlier provided Contractor pays for testing and additional beam once 7 day specified flexural strength is obtained. Pavement may be opened when high early strength concrete is used meeting specified 72-hour strength.
B. High early strength concrete may be used to provide access at driveways, street intersections, esplanades and other locations approved by City Engineer.
C. On those sections of pavement to be opened to traffic, seal joints, clean pavement, and place earth against pavement edges before permitting use by traffic. Opening of pavement to traffic shall not relieve responsibility for Work.
D. Maintain concrete paving in good condition until completion of Work.
E. Repair defects by replacing concrete to full depth.
END OF SECTION
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PLEASE READ CAREFULLY – THESE DOCUMENTS REQUIRE YOUR URGENT ATTENTION
Dear Student:
You are embarking on an exciting education as a future healthcare professional! As with every career, there comes the need for health and safety for both the professional and the patient. One way in which you may protect yourself and the patient is by having up-to-date immunizations.
* Ontario legislation specifies certain surveillance requirements for those entering into a practice setting. The Health, Wellness and Sciences Standards were developed in accordance with the Public Hospitals Act and are based on the Canadian Immunization Guide, Evergreen Edition and Canadian TB Standards
* The completion of this information is mandatory as per Academic Policy 4.2.3 "Placement Requirements": http://cat.georgiancollege.ca/academic-regulations/registration/ and must be completed before you begin placement. The agencies and institutions where you will be completing placement require this information.
* There are costs associated with immunizations, lab tests and certifications. We recommend keeping your receipts.
* This is your personal information and, as such, is confidential.
* Please download and print the Clinical Preparedness Permit. You will need to take the permit AND this document to your physician/health care practitioner for completion of components and ordering of serology (lab tests/bloodwork).
* All supporting documents need to be submitted with your permit; copies of lab results (serology) for specified diseases, First Aid and CPR-HCP certificate, Mask Fit test card, Worker Health and Safety certificate, WHMIS certificate and Police Record Check with Vulnerable Sector Screen.
* It is your responsibility to keep this information up-to-date and safe at all times. Make a photocopy of this permit and all supporting documents after each time it is revised or updated and store in a safe place.
* Enter all of your identifying data where specified on your permit, including your Georgian College student number. You will have received this number in your acceptance package.
* Once you have everything completed, your FINAL STEP is to book an appointment with Synergy Gateway online at https://verified.sgappserver.com/. It is mandatory that you submit all of the original documents and pay the Service Fees at your scheduled appointment. Synergy Gateway, a third party, will review your submissions. There is a cost to the student to have these documents reviewed so ensure everything is in order. Please DO NOT book a Synergy Permit Checking Appointment with INCOMPLETE forms, otherwise they will charge you a Follow up Appointment Fee.
You must begin completion of this information as soon as possible as some of the components may take weeks, even months. Read through and familiarize yourself with all of the components. If you have any questions please contact your program coordinator or Synergy Gateway Help Desk: www.synergyhelps.com.
Clinical Permit Notes – These requirements may include a change from what is in the main permit pages. Refer to your specific program below to see if there are any exceptions.
Information Package and Detailed Guidelines: Clinical Preparedness Permit
| PROGRAM | | Permit Due (See Program Coordinator for exact Permit due date) | | COVID- 19 Vaccine | | Mask Fit Test** | | Police Vulnerable Sector Check (PVSC) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acupuncture | | 2nd Semester | | | Not | | Not | See page 7 | |
| | | | | | required | | required | | |
| Communicative Disorders Assistant | | End of 1st Semester | | See page 5 | | See page 8 | | See page 7 | |
| | Dental Assisting | | | | | | | | ***See DNAS Clinical Preparedness Permit here. |
| Dental Hygiene | | Middle of 1st Semester | | Not required | | See page 8 | | Prior to start of Semester 4 | |
| Denturism | | | End of 2nd | | Not | See page 8 | | See page 7 | |
| | | | Semester | | required | | | | |
| Enhanced Practice for Internationally Educated Nurses – Complex Care | | End of 1st Semester | | See page 5 | | See page 8 | | Every 6 months | |
| Esthetician | | | | | | | | | |
| Gerontology and Palliative Care – Graduate Certificate program | | End of 1st Semester | | See page 5 | | See page 8 | | See page 7 | |
| | Honours Bachelor of Science | | Beginning of 3rd | See page 5 | | See page 8 | | Every 6 months | |
| | – Nursing, ALL CAMPUSES* | | Semester | | | | | | |
| Massage Therapy | | End of 2nd Semester | | See page 5 | | See page 8 | | Required end of Semester 2 & start of Semester 4 | |
| Medical Skin Care Therapy | | | | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mental Health – Graduate Certificate | | End of 1st Semester | | See page 5 | See page 8 | | See page 7 | | |
| | Occupational Therapist | End of 1st Semester | | See page 5 | See page 8 | | Every 6 months | | |
| | Assistant and | | | | | | | | |
| | Physiotherapist Assistant | | | | | | | | |
| Paramedic | | End of 1st Semester | | See page 5 | See page 8 | | Every 6 months | | |
| Paramedic—Advanced Care | | | End of 1st | See page 5 | See page 8 | | Every 6 months | | -Physician signature only (Clinical Permit pgs. 2-3) |
| | | | | | | | | | -Serology required for MMR and Varicella |
| | | | Semester | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | -AEMCA required in place of SFA |
| Personal Support Worker, ALL CAMPUSES | | End of 1st Semester | | See page 5 | See page 8 | | Every 6 months | | |
| Pharmacy Technician | | | Middle of 2nd | See page 5 | | 4th | | 2nd semester—Police | |
| | | | | | | | | Criminal Record Check | |
| | | | Semester | | | Semester | | | |
| | | | | | | | | 4th Semester—PVSC | |
| Practical Nursing, ALL CAMPUSES | | Middle of 1st Semester | | See page 5 | See page 8 | | Every 6 months | | |
Information Package and Detailed Guidelines: Clinical Preparedness Permit
*This is for the Georgian College degree and not the permit for the York Collaborative degree or the Ontario Tech RPN Bridge to BScN program.
** Mask Fit requirements are subject to more frequent change than what would be typical as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
.
***Dental Assisting, Esthetician, and Medical Skin Care Therapy programs have revised Clinical Preparedness Permits that can be found here
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
The Canadian Government requires all international students in a program with a placement component (e.g. Co-Op, Clinic, Clinical, etc.) to have a valid International Student Co-op Work Permit, in addition to your Study Permit.
If you are not sure what the Co-op Work Permit is or how to obtain it please visit our Immigration Support page on the student portal. If you are on the Barrie Campus you can visit International in C Building, 2nd Floor or call them at 705.728.1968 ext. 1218
If the you would like to connect with the immigration triage team, email Immigration Support at Georgian College.
FAILED PERMIT
A Clinical Preparedness Permit that has not received a "PASS" is called a "Failed Permit". The reasons for a failed permit may include, but are not limited to, the following:
* Missing forms or requirements
* Incomplete forms or requirements (does not meet criteria as listed in Permit and Information Package)
* Not submitted or not submitted by deadline
"PLACEMENT"
In this document, you will see the term "Placement" used. This term is defined as any experiential learning activity that occurs either in the Georgian College Health & Wellness Clinics or at an off-site location – examples may include a hospital or long-term care facility. Other terms that may be used interchangeably with "placement" in this document are "Clinical", "Co-Op", "Praxis" or "Practicum".
RECORD OF IMMUNIZATION:
Information Package and Detailed Guidelines: Clinical Preparedness Permit MEDICAL REQUIREMENTS
This section must be completed by your Health Care Provider (Medical Physician, Nurse Practitioner, or Registered Nurse). Copies of lab results (serology) for specified diseases must be presented with your permit.
1. COVID-19 (Coronavirus 2019) – Evidence of full immunization is required.
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that originate in animals but are known to cause respiratory infections in humans. Novel coronaviruses include Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). COVID-19 is a novel (new) coronavirus that was first identified in Wuhan, China in late 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
An individual is defined as fully immunized ≥14 days after receiving their second dose of a two-dose Health Canada or World Health Organization approved COVID-19 vaccine series.
NOTE: In lieu of a COVID-19 vaccine, some clinical agencies may accept a medical note exemption from your physician. Ask your doctor for this if you are unable to be immunized for medical reasons and be prepared to share it with the clinical agency.
2. TETANUS/DIPHTHERIA/PERTUSSIS - A Td or Tdap booster within the last 10 years is required.
Tetanus (Lockjaw)
Diphtheria is a bacterial infection that can cause breathing problems, heart failure, paralysis and death.
breathing failure and death.
is caused by bacteria and spores in the soil, which can infect wounds and causes painful muscle spasms,
Pertussis (Whooping Cough) is a bacterial disease with whooping inspirations and coughing followed by vomiting. Adolescents and adults with untreated pertussis are the most common source of infection for young unimmunized or partially immunized infants.
Routine childhood immunizations include all three of these vaccines. If childhood vaccines were not received, refer to your Health Care Provider for the required schedule to receive the complete series.
Adults are eligible for a one-time pertussis-containing booster (Tdap). This is generally given 10 years after the adolescent booster, which is given at 14-16 yrs. of age. If you are due for a booster, and have not had a pertussiscontaining booster as an adult, you should receive Tdap vaccine in place of Td vaccine.
3. MMR (MEASLES, MUMPS AND RUBELLA)
Mumps is a viral disease resulting in fever, headache, earache, painful swelling of the glands in the mouth and neck and can cause inflammation of the brain. It can also cause temporary and permanent deafness, as well as swelling of the ovaries in women and testes in men, possibly leading to sterility.
Measles is a viral disease resulting in rash, high fever, cough, runny nose and watery eyes. It also leads to middle ear infection, pneumonia (lung infection) and inflammation of the brain, hearing loss, brain damage and death.
Rubella (German Measles) is a viral disease resulting in fever, rash, and swelling of the neck glands and painful swelling of the joints. It can also cause bruising and bleeding. If a pregnant woman acquires rubella, it is very dangerous for the unborn baby.
Please provide evidence of vaccination with two doses of MMR (at least one month apart after one year of age) OR lab results (serology) showing immunity to measles, mumps and rubella.
Additional immunization can be discussed with your health care provider. If a booster is required due to having no immunity or indeterminate results for MMR, serology is not required after the booster.
4. VARICELLA (CHICKEN POX)
Varicella is a viral disease resulting in scarring of the skin, skin infections, pneumonia, inflammation of the brain and death. It can also cause "shingles" a painful rash later in life.
Please provide evidence of Varicella vaccination (2 doses at least 6 weeks apart) OR, if no documentation of vaccination, serology lab results are required.
5. POLIO (POLIOMYELITIS)
Polio is a viral disease affecting nerve cells in the spinal cord and causes paralysis, inflammation of the brain and death.
Routine childhood immunizations include Polio vaccine. If childhood vaccines were not received, refer to your Health Care Provider for the required schedule to receive the complete series.
Influenza is a viral infection of the nose, throat and lungs and causes cough, high fever chills, headaches and muscle pain. Influenza is highly contagious and can be life threatening. The severity of this infection varies from year to year depending on the strain.
Information Package and Detailed Guidelines: Clinical Preparedness Permit 6. SEASONAL FLU SHOT (INFLUENZA VACCINE), required annually
The Influenza vaccine is only available during Flu Season, beginning in October/November. An increasing number of Health Care Facilities have adopted the Influenza vaccine as mandatory, whether there is an outbreak or not. If the vaccine was not received, you may be denied access to the facility, thus jeopardizing the successful completion of your placement.
Influenza virus vaccine is available free of charge from health services in the fall or can be obtained from your Health Care Provider. Submit evidence of the vaccination to Synergy at no additional charge, through your profile and Synergy Help Desk.
7. HEPATITIS B (Hep. B)
Hepatitis B is a viral disease that can cause serious liver problems such as liver failure and liver cancer.
Serology is MANDATORY to inform response in cases of acute infection and lab results must be included with this Permit.
Students may enter clinical placements as long as they have had at least their 2 nd Hepatitis B vaccine due to the 612 month wait for the 3 rd vaccine. Additional serology (lab work) is required 4-6 weeks after the 3 rd vaccination. If the 3 rd vaccine was missed, please contact Synergy directly for next steps.
The vaccine is free to Grade 7 students in Ontario and, since 2000, has been a two-dose schedule. Adults require a three-dose schedule.
For non-responders, additional doses up to another complete series of three can be done, with testing for response after each dose. Persons who fail to respond to three additional doses of vaccine are unlikely to benefit from further immunization.
If your serology indicates you are a Carrier, please ATTACH to your permit a copy of the most recent "Antigen Positive" blood test and notify the medical officer of health. It is the responsibility of Synergy Gateway to notify the Placement Office of these results. The Placement Office will advise the Associate Dean who will then work in collaboration with experts in the field, the relevant professional college and other individuals at Georgian College who are deemed necessary in the consultation process to determine available options. Every effort will be taken to protect the privacy of the student. THIS MAY RESULT IN A FAILED PERMIT.
8. TUBERCULOSIS SCREENING, required annually, process can take 6-8 weeks to complete
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease spread through air by coughing, sneezing or spitting. Classic symptoms are a chronic cough with blood-tinged sputum, fever, night sweats and weight loss. Some living, travel or work history may mean you are at risk for tuberculosis.
1. Documentation of a Base-line Two Step Mantoux skin test is required for all students.
b) Students who have a previously documented negative Two Step test must complete a One Step test.
a) Students who have never completed TB testing must complete a Base-line Two Step Mantoux skin test.
c) Students who have received a BCG vaccination are not exempt from Mantoux testing.
2. Students who have had a previously documented positive Mantoux test should not receive further Mantoux testing.
b) A chest x-ray every 2 years is required for positive Mantoux test.
a) If a student has a previously documented positive Mantoux Two-Step screening and has received investigation – a copy of chest x-ray report from this year and a note must be provided indicating that the "student is free from signs and symptoms of active tuberculosis" and must be included in this package.
For any student that tests positive for the first time:
b) A chest x-ray is required and the report must be enclosed in this package.
a) Include results of the positive Mantoux screening (mm of duration).
c) The responsibility for follow-up lies with the physician as per OHA/OMA Communicable Disease Surveillance Protocols.
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS (Mandatory)
9. POLICE VULNERABLE SECTOR CHECK (PVSC) – Valid for 12 months unless otherwise stated on Pages 2-3 of this document for YOUR program.
Notice: Health Sciences students are required by host agencies/employers to provide a current Police Vulnerable Sector Check (PVSC) from a recognized police service before they start their clinical placement. Individuals who have been charged or, convicted criminally and not pardoned, will be prohibited from proceeding to a clinical or work placement as per Georgian College Academic Policy 2.7: http://cat.georgiancollege.ca/academicregulations/admissions/ and Policy 4.2.3: http://cat.georgiancollege.ca/academic-regulations/registration/ .
Students should check their Program Outline for more information. These checks are required prior to the placement start.
Accordingly, if a student is registering in a program with a clinical placement component, it is the student's responsibility to ensure that they are eligible to participate. Further, Georgian College assumes no responsibility for these matters and students should be aware that tuition and related fees would not be refunded in the event that access to a clinical or placement course is denied. Students should also be aware that some professions and licensing boards also have a criminal record check provision to ensure suitability to practice in the profession. Accordingly, it is recommended that students who have a criminal record contact the appropriate professional association or licensing agency prior to starting their college studies. The costs associated with the provision of the criminal record check are to be borne by the student.
This must be renewed every twelve months, unless otherwise stated on Pages 2-3 of this Guideline. However, our Hospital, Long Term Care and Paramedic Service partners require that students' PVSC be current within 6 months. Please check Pages 2-3 of this document to see if this is a requirement of your program.
**Students are required to carry their PVSC to the clinical area. A representative in the agency may ask to see that you have a valid Police Vulnerable Sector Check at any time. **
: depending on the police service this process may take 12 weeks or more, so be sure to apply early.
Please note
For students who currently reside in Barrie:
*
To apply or renew your Barrie Police vulnerable sector check, please find all instructions on their website.
For students who currently reside in South Simcoe or Toronto region:
* It is mandatory that you bring your student card and a government issued photo ID card at your scheduled appointment.
* To apply or renew your South Simcoe Police or Toronto Police check, please email the Clinical Placement Office for instructions.
* Please do not apply or pay at your local South Simcoe or Toronto Police Station or any third-party agency, as it will NOT be a valid police check. You must follow the instructions above.
For students who currently reside in an area serviced by the Ontario Provincial Police:
* All checks are currently being completed in a central department. Please visit the Ontario Provincial Police website for specific instructions.
* If you live in an area serviced by the Ontario Provincial Police, you will require a letter stating that you are a Georgian College student in order to pay the student rate. These can be found under Important Forms on your Synergy Gateway profile. If you are a new student, and do not yet have access to Synergy, please email the Clinical Placement Office for the letter.
For students in Acupuncture, Esthetician and Medical Skin Care Therapy, required annually in lieu of a new record check: Students are required to sign the Clinical Placement Criminal Record/Vulnerable Sector Check Declaration Form and upload to Synergy Gateway.
Information Package and Detailed Guidelines: Clinical Preparedness Permit
10. STANDARD FIRST AID, refer to card for expiry date - Standard First Aid is required upon entry into the program.
11. CPR – LEVEL HCP (For Health Care Providers) or BLS (Basic Life Support), required annually
the student's responsibility to ensure that the certificate is current throughout the program. Blended (online + in-person) courses are accepted. Those that are ONLY online are NOT accepted.
CPR at the Health Care Provider Level (HCP) is required yearly, regardless of the expiry date on the card. It is
12. RESPIRATOR MASK FIT TESTING, required every two years
Students attending off-campus placements are required to be fit tested for a 3M N95 respirator prior to their 1st clinical placement and at least every two years thereafter. This is an agency specific requirement.
Mask Fit Tests are a student expense that is not included in other fees. Georgian College will arrange for oncampus mask fit testing if the service is available. At other times, students may be directed to obtain testing at an agency or third party. Mask Fit requirements are subject to more frequent change than what would be typical as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dental students require a specific brand of mask for our clinics. If you are a dental student obtaining a mask fit outside of the college please check with your Program Coordinator to ensure you select the correct brand.
Please note: You are unable to complete the Fit Testing if you have facial hair, injury or piercings that interfere with respirator use. If you lose/gain a significant amount of facial weight or experience changes in your facial shape, i.e. trauma, surgery or pregnancy, fit testing should be repeated earlier than two years.
13. WHMIS CERTIFICATE
Http://portal.mycampus.ca/mycampusfiles/dc/fieldplacement/WHMIS/story.html
The WHMIS module is available through this link:
Students require a minimum grade of 80% to pass. Please print your certificate following completion of the module, remembering to select Georgian College so it appears on the certificate.
14. MINISTRY OF LABOUR – WORKER AND SAFETY AWARENESS CERTIFICATE
This certification is available on the Ministry of Labour website, via a free eLearning module. Students must access the eLearning module from any computer, complete the training and print the certificate of completion.
It is crucial you print your own certificate at the time of completion because the Ministry does not maintain a database. You need to complete the module in a single sitting, it is not possible to stop part way through and resume at a later time/date. The website indicates that the module takes 45-60 minutes to complete.
To access the eLearning module:
2. Visit this website: https://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/hs/elearn/worker/foursteps.php
1. Use a computer with audio and a printer.
3. Click the link titled "Access the eLearning Module".
5. Print your certificate of completion.
4. Complete the eLearning module.
6. Keep your printed certificate of completion with your permit and upload to your Synergy profile
15. WSIB STUDENT DECLARATION
The WSIB Student Declaration form is available in the Important Forms tab on Synergy Gateway's Verified system. By signing the form, students acknowledge they have read and understand that WSIB or private insurance coverage will be provided through the Ministry of Colleges and Universities while they are in their unpaid clinical placement that is required by their program of study. They also agree to immediately report any workplace related injury or disease to their placement agency as well as my Georgian College Monitor/Placement Supervisor.
Information Package and Detailed Guidelines: Clinical Preparedness Permit
16. COMBINED CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICT OF INTEREST, CLINICAL PERMIT FORM
The combined form is available in the Important Forms tab on Synergy Gateway's Verified system.
17. For Massage Therapy students ONLY – IPAC Competencies:
Massage Therapy students are required to complete the seven (7) Core Competency modules for Infection Prevention and Control for Public Health Ontario. (1. Occupational Health and Safety, 2. Chain of Transmission and Risk Assessment, 3. Healthcare Provider Controls, 4. Control of the Environment, 5. Administrative Controls, 6. Additional Precautions, 7. Personal Risk Assessment in Community-Clinic)
Once each module is complete, please print the certificate as proof of completion. Please be prepared to take a screenshot or print-screen in case there is any issue with the website and you are unable to print.
You will need to register for a free account to access the modules. You can access the modules here: https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/LearningAndDevelopment/OnlineLearning/InfectiousDiseases/IPACCore/P ages/Course.aspx
18. For second year Primary Care Paramedic (PCP) Students ONLY – Health Status Report-Communicable Diseases
The Health Status Report-Communicable Diseases form is available in the Important Forms tab on Synergy Gateway's Verified system. The report is requested to comply with the conditions of the Ambulance Services Communicable Disease Standards October 2002, which states that each paramedic with the service is to be free from all communicable diseases as listed on the from. The form must be completed by a Physician.
19. For INTERNATIONAL students ONLY – Work Permit:
The Canadian Government requires that International students in a program with a placement component have a valid International Student Co-op Work Permit. The Co-op Work Permit requirement is mandatory and must be completed before you begin placement. Please see page 3 of this document for more information.
Synergy Gateway Information:
To assist you in completing and verifying you have met Georgian College's Clinical Preparedness Permit requirements, you will be provided access to Verified- a software platform by Synergy Gateway, via a secure username and password (check your school email). You will use Verified to book your permit checking appointments, upload this form along with supporting documentation requirements and check your clinical placement eligibility status.
To access Verified: https://verified.sgappserver.com/
Need help? Open a ticket through Synergy Gateway's Help Desk by visiting: www.synergyhelps.com
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In The Supreme Court of the United States
--------------------------------- ♦---------------------------------
JOSÉ ERNESTO MEDELLÍN,
Petitioner,
v.
THE STATE OF TEXAS,
Respondent.
--------------------------------- ♦---------------------------------
On Writ of Certiorari to the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
--------------------------------- ♦---------------------------------
APPENDIX TO BRIEF FOR RESPONDENT
--------------------------------- ♦---------------------------------
GREG ABBOTT Attorney General of Texas
KENT C. SULLIVAN First Assistant Attorney General
ERIC J.R. NICHOLS Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice
R. TED CRUZ Solicitor General Counsel of Record
SEAN D. JORDAN Deputy Solicitor General
KRISTOPHER S. MONSON DANIEL L. GEYSER ADAM W. ASTON Assistant Solicitors General
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL P.O. Box 12548 Austin, Texas 78711 (512) 936-1700
================================================================
APPENDIX TABLE OF CONTENTS
MANDATE FROM COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS Austin, Texas
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE STATE OF TEXAS, TO THE 339TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT OF HARRIS COUNTY – GREETINGS:
Before our COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS, on the 30th day of April A.D. 1997 the cause upon appeal to revise or reverse your Judgment between
JOSE ERNESTO MEDELLIN,
– vs. –
THE STATE OF TEXAS,
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CCRA No. 71,997
Tr. Ct. No. 675430
was determined: and therein our said COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS made it's order in these words:
"This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record of the Court below, and the same being considered, because it is the Opinion of this Court that there was no error in the judgment, it is ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED by the Court that the judgment be AFFIRMED, in accordance with the Opinion of this Court, and that the appellant pay all costs in this behalf expended, and that this Decision be certified below for observance."
The Appellant's Motion for Rehearing is Denied.
WHEREFORE, We command you to observe the Order of our said COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS in this behalf and in all things have it duly recognized, obeyed and executed.
WITNESS, THE HONORABLE MICHAEL J. MCCORMICK Presiding Judge,
of our said COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS, with the Seal thereof annexed, at the City of Austin, this 16th day of May A.D. 1997. T ROY C. B ENNETT , J R ., Clerk B ELVA M YLER , Deputy Clerk
Appeal from HARRIS County No. 71,997
JOSE ERNESTO MEDELLIN,
– v. –
THE STATE OF TEXAS,
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
OPINION
Appellant, Jose Ernesto Medellin, was convicted in September of 1994 of a capital murder committed in June of 1993. TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. §19.03(a)(2). Pursuant to the jury's answers to the special issues set forth in Texas Code of Criminal Procedure art. 37.071 §§ 2(b) and 2-(e), the trial judge sentenced appellant to death. 1 Article 37.071 § 2(g). Direct appeal is automatic. Article 37.071 § 2(h). We will affirm.
1 Any subsequent references to Articles are to those in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure unless otherwise indicated.
Appellant
Appellee
Appellant raises nine points of error, including challenges to the sufficiency of the, evidence at both stages of trial. In his first point of error, appellant asserts that this cause should be abated and remanded to the trial court for the trial judge to enter written findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding the outcome of a hearing on the voluntariness of appellant's confession as required by Article 38.22 § 6 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. Because this has been done, appellant's first point of error is now moot. 2
A recitation of the facts will be helpful in addressing the remaining points of error. Looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, the record reveals the following facts: On the night of June 24, 1993, a gang called the "Black and Whites" had come together to initiate a new member, Raul Villareal. The other gang members present were appellant, Peter Cantu, Roman Sandoval, Efrain Perez, and Sean O'Brien. Roman's brother, Frank, and appellant's fourteen-year-old brother, Venancio, were also tagging along. The initiation involved fighting each member of the gang for a five to ten minute period. After the fighting was over, Raul was welcomed into the gang.
Meanwhile, fourteen-year-old Jennifer Ertman and sixteen-year old Elizabeth Pena were visiting a girl-friend. Around 11:15 p.m., Jennifer and Elizabeth decided to head for their respective homes by way of a shortcut across the
2 This cause was abated on May 8, 1996, pursuant to Tex. R. App. Proc. 40(b)(2). See Green v. State, 906 S.W.2d 937 (Tex. Crim. App. 1995). The requested findings of fact and conclusions of law were thereafter forwarded to this Court. The trial court having complied with our order, we now continue the appeal of this cause.
railroad tracks. Jennifer and Elizabeth first encountered Roman and Frank as they made their way home, but managed to pass the brothers without incident. However, as they passed appellant, he attempted to engage Elizabeth in conversation. When Elizabeth tried to run from appellant, he grabbed her and threw her to the ground. Elizabeth screamed for Jennifer to help her. In response to her friend's cries, Jennifer ran back to help, but Peter and Sean grabbed her and threw her down as well. At this point, the Sandoval brothers decided that it was time to leave.
Subsequent boastful statements of appellant and other gang members revealed that what ensued was a brutal gang rape of both of the girls. After the girls were thrown to the ground, the gang members orally, vaginally, and anally raped both of them. After the assault, appellant, Raul, Efrain, and Peter regrouped at Peter's house where he lived with his brother and sister-in-law, Joe and Christina Cantu, to brag about their exploits. Christina noticed that Raul was bleeding and that Efrain had blood on his shirt. She asked the group what had occurred and appellant responded that they "had fun" and that their exploits would be seen on the television news. Appellant was hyper, giggling, and laughing. He boasted to Joe and Christina that the group had met two "hos" [sic] and had sex with them. He also told the couple that two girls had been talking to them and that he punched one of the girls because she had started screaming after he grabbed her.
Appellant related to Joe and Christina that he sexually assaulted one of the girls and bragged about having "opened" her since she had apparently been a virgin. As if to accentuate his conquest, appellant showed Christina his blood soaked underwear. Appellant related that after another gang member sexually assaulted the second girl, he "turned her around" and anally raped her. Appellant also bragged of having forced both girls to engage in oral sex with him. Peter joined the group shortly thereafter and began to divide up the money and jewelry that had been taken from the two girls. Peter gave appellant a ring with an "E" design on it so that he could give it to his girlfriend, Esther.
When Christina asked the group what happened to the girls, appellant told her that they had been killed so that they could not identify their attackers. Appellant then elaborated that it would have been easier with a gun, but because they did not have one at the scene of the incident, he took off one of his shoelaces and strangled at least one of the girls with it. 3 Both Joe and Christina noted that appellant complained of the difficulty group encountered in killing the girls. After appellant related the difficulty he encountered in strangling one of the girls, he said that he put his foot on her throat because she would not die.
Christina subsequently convinced her husband to report the incident to the police. By the time the bodies were discovered, they were so badly decomposed that dental records were required to identify them. However, enough tissue remained for the medical examiner to
3 Apparently all of the gang members were talking about having killed the two girls which resulted in some degree of confusion on the part of the witnesses. However, Christina testified that she understood appellant to have said that he personally participated in killing both of the girls, while Joe testified that he understood appellant to have said that he strangled one of the girls while his companions killed the other girl.
determine that each girl had died of a trauma to the neck consistent with strangulation.
Eventually, all of the individuals who participated in the rapes and murders were apprehended. After appellant was arrested, he gave a written and then an oral, taperecorded statement, the latter of which was never offered into evidence at trial. In the written statement, appellant admitted to having had oral sex with Elizabeth, but commented that he only peripherally participated in her murder.
At the punishment stage of trial, appellant's parents testified that appellant had been a good student and had made good grades until he entered the sixth grade. After that point, appellant's behavior deteriorated rapidly. Appellant was suspended from middle school in the Fall of 1990 for "misconduct and repeated misbehavior." In high school, appellant was well known to administrators due to his repeated disciplinary violations. In January of 1992, appellant was restrained by an assistant principal from attacking another student. Furthermore, appellant repeatedly threatened to kill the assistant principal and to "fix it" so that he could not father any more children. Appellant told the assistant principal that life meant nothing to him. (appellant) and that someday he would be featured on television or the front page of the newspaper as the result of having killed someone, "probably a cop." In October of 1992, appellant was involved in a gang related fight at school which resulted in his expulsion from school and subsequent placement at an alternative school.
Appellant was also known to the police. In January of 1992, police were called to a restaurant in response to a disturbance call involving a terroristic threat. When initially confronted by police, appellant refused to stop or to remove his hand from his pocket. He was later found to have a .38 caliber pistol concealed in his pocket. In June of 1993, appellant was found at the emergency room of a Houston hospital where Efrain Perez was being treated for a gunshot wound. Testimony from an employee of the hospital regarding a conversation the employee overheard between appellant and co-defendant Cantu indicated that the two knew who had shot Perez and that they were going to go after that individual themselves. When a police officer arrived to investigate the shooting, appellant was belligerent and uncooperative.
While appellant was in jail awaiting trial on the instant offense, a search of appellant's cell turned up a "shank" 4 which had been fashioned from a disposable razor. Another search of appellant's cell a year later, the day before punishment arguments were to be heard in the instant case, turned up another "shank" in the making.
I. SUFFICIENCY OF THE EVIDENCE
Appellant asserts in his sixth point of error that the evidence was legally insufficient to support the jury's guilty verdict. In reviewing the sufficiency, of the evidence, this Court reviews all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979). Appellant concedes that sufficient evidence exists to prove his participation in the underlying
4 A "shank" was described as a type of homemade or jailmade knife.
offenses to the capital murder. However, appellant takes issue with the sufficiency of the evidence to prove his specific intent to commit the offense of murder. He contends the evidence supporting this intent, the testimony of Joe and Christina Cantu, was more accurately attributable to appellant's co-defendants than to appellant.
A review of the testimony of both Christina and Joe Cantu shows that they did indeed attribute many statements about the deaths of the two victims to the generic "they" encompassing the whole group. However, each witness also testified to statements attributed only to appellant. Specifically, Christina testified that appellant told her he killed the victims. In fact, she stated that appellant said that he took turns killing both of the girls.
Christina commented that appellant told her that "he took off his shoelace and strangled one of the girls."
Christina also told the jury that appellant related to her that he put his foot on one of the girl's throats, and she testified that appellant "said it would have been faster if he had a gun to kill them." When Joe Cantu was asked if he remembered specifically what appellant told him about the killing, Joe responded that appellant had told him that appellant strangled one of the victims from the back and when she didn't look like she was dead, he started stomping on her. Joe also testified that appellant commented that it would have been easier with a gun.
Given the totality of the evidence, we hold that a rational trier of fact could have found appellant guilty of the offense of capital murder beyond a reasonable doubt. Point of error number six is overruled.
In his seventh point of error, appellant posits that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's affirmative answer to the issue on whether appellant would be a continuing danger. Article 37.071 § 2(b)(1). In reviewing whether the evidence is sufficient to support the jury's affirmative finding on the issue of future dangerousness, this Court looks at the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have believed beyond a reasonable doubt that "there is a probability that (appellant] would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society." Article 37.071 § 2(b)(1); Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979); Allridge v. State, 850 S.W.2d 471 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 114 S.Ct. 101 (1993). The facts of the crime alone can be sufficient to support the affirmative finding to the special issue. Allridge, supra. In fact, the circumstances of the crime may provide greater probative evidence of a defendant's probability for committing future acts of violence than any other factor relevant to the second special issue. Id.
At trial, the jury is – permitted to look at several factors in its review of future dangerousness including, but not limited to:
1. the circumstances of the capital offense, including the defendant's state of mind and whether he was acting alone or with other parties;
2. the calculated nature of the defendant's acts;
3. the forethought and deliberateness exhibited by the crime's execution;
4. the existence of a prior criminal record, and the severity of the prior crimes;
5. the defendant's age and personal circumstances at the time of the offense;
6. whether the defendant was acting under duress or the domination of another at the time of the offense;
7. psychiatric evidence; and
8. character evidence.
Barnes v. State, 876 S.W.2d 316, 322 (Tex. Crim. App.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 174 (1994); Keetnon v. State, 724 S.W.2d 58, 61 (Tex. Crim. App. 1987) ("Keeton I"). These factors are also helpful in this Court's evaluation of this question.
The facts of the instant case are brutal and barbaric enough to alone support the jury's answer to the special issue. The instant scenario began with underage drinking and fighting as a gang initiation rite. When the two victims came into the picture, appellant not only took full part in violently raping both of them and killing at least one of them, but appears to have initiated those actions.
In contrast to showing remorse afterward, appellant laughed about the incident, referred to the girls in derogatory terms, and enjoyed the spoils of the group's perceived conquest.
In addition, appellant has a history of misconduct and violent misbehavior both in school and out, with repeated suspensions, expulsions, and arrests dating back to the sixth grade. He has a history of threatening individuals with bodily harm or death and a history of being found in possession of a firearm. Before his imprisonment, appellant chose to spend his social hours with a group of young men who engaged in illegal drinking and violent behavior.
After being imprisoned, appellant continued to associate himself with weapons.
Given the totality of the evidence, we hold that a rational trier of fact could have believed beyond a reasonable doubt that "there is a probability that [appellant] would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society," whether in prison or out. Point of error seven is overruled.
II. VOIR DIRE
Appellant complains in his third point of error that the trial court erred in granting the State's challenge for cause to venireperson R. L. Mackey pursuant to her views concerning the death penalty. The State contends the trial court did not abuse its discretion in granting the challenge for cause because the veniremember's attitude about the death penalty would have prevented or substantially impaired the performance of her duties as a juror in accordance with her oath and the instructions of the court. See Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412 (1985); Coleman v. State., 881 S.W.2d 344, 347-48 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994), cert. denied, ___U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 763 (1995). In reviewing such a point of error, we apply a deferential standard because the trial court was in the best position to evaluate the responses of the veniremember. Coleman, supra.
The record reveals the following pertinent exchanges:
THE COURT: Do you have any conscientious, religious, moral, or philosophical scruples against the infliction of death as punishment in an appropriate case?
[VENIREMEMBER:] No.
[THE COURT:] You said no, you don't. So do you have any opposition to the death penalty?
[VENIREMEMBER:] Religious beliefs. Thou shall not kill.
[THE COURT:] Well, you're entitled to those; and nobody is going to disagree with you.
* * *
What we don't want is someone whose beliefs are so strong that when they take an oath to follow the law and render a true verdict according to that law, that it's going to do violence to their conscience.
* * *
So, [veniremember], only you know the answer to this question. Are your religious beliefs so strong that you could not follow the oath you would have to take as a juror and render a true verdict according to the law and the evidence and if the evidence called for it, vote in such a way that it would result in the death penalty?
I know that's a mouthful. But did you understand the question? Might have been too long.
[VENIREMEMBER:] I could follow the law; but, like I say, it's just my religious belief. The law says one thing, and the religious belief says another.
[THE COURT:] Could you then participate with 11 other people in voting on these questions that we'll go over, in voting in such a way that you know would result in this defendant receiving a death sentence if the evidence called for it?
[VENIREMEMBER:] If the evidence called for it, yes.
* * *
[THE STATE:] And when you filled out your questionnaire, you stated to Question 86 – . . . that: I'm opposed to capital punishment under any circumstances.
Okay. Now, I take it, if you marked that, you had a reason for marking it, correct?
[VENIREMEMBER:] Yes, I did.
[THE STATE:] That's what you believe?
[VENIREMEMBER:] Uh-huh.
* * *
[THE STATE:] In response to . . . Question No. 12, you said: I do not believe in capital punishment under any circumstance; and you checked that "disagree."
And then in response to 89, you said you don't want to be a juror in this case because of your religious background, you don't think that you could.
[VENIREMEMBER:] Uh-huh, that's what I stated.
[THE STATE:] Followed by 90 that states: My Bible tells us thou shall not kill and this is my belief.
* * *
And if you were seated on this jury with those conflicts that you are having – I'm evidencing right now that perhaps you are having some conflict about this. Am I correct?
[VENIREMEMBER:] If – if – if – yes.
[THE STATE:] And only if I'm correct, ma'am. Certainly. Nobody is here to try to persuade you or make you participate in this. This is fully one where you have an opportunity to say: No; that if I was called upon to participate in this trial, that my belief would substantially impair me from participating and returning a verdict of death in this case even if it was the right thing to do because of my religious belief.
Is that the way you feel?
[VENIREMEMBER:] Yes.
[THE STATE:] And you understand that I'm just a mere mortal man. I don't think I have the power of persuasion and [ability to] cloud your mind like the shadow could and get you to do my deed in light of your religious belief. And if you were selected on this jury, you would be more inclined to try to find a way, if you did end up on this jury, in some manner or form, you would try to find a way to come up with a life sentence, would you not, if you were put in that box?
[VENIREMEMBER:] That's correct.
* * *
[THE STATE:] To be a juror would substantially impair you from carrying out the law, following the law in this case, because of your religious belief?
You answered yes to that at one time.
[VENIREMEMBER:] The reason I said yes is I have just retired. And I worked with children, young adults, and I worked with young adults which have cancer. And my daughter died of cancer and that has a total thing with me for – I would say just to be in the situation like this, so I would rather not.
[THE STATE:] Well, one of the magic words, we have to have you say on the record. If it would substantially impair you from doing your duty as a juror, then you've met the qualification under the law to be discharged.
Would it substantially impair you – [VENIREMEMBER:] Yes, it would.
Upon continued questioning by the parties and the court, the veniremember continued to express her feelings that she did not want to participate on this jury and that she would be inclined to answer the punishment questions in such a way that appellant would receive a life sentence. Given the totality of the voir dire, we cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in sustaining the State's challenge for cause to the veniremember. Coleman, Supra; see also Staley v. State, 887 S.W.2d 885 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994). Point of error three is overruled.
In his fourth point of error appellant claims the trial court erred in overruling his Batson 5 and Article 35.261 6 challenges to the State's peremptory strike of venireperson R. Rodriguez. The record reveals that after the State exercised its peremptory strike on the venireperson, appellant
5 Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).
6 Article 35.261 prohibits the use of peremptory challenges on racial grounds. It reads in pertinent part:
(a) After the parties have delivered their lists to the clerk under Article 35.26 of this code and before the court has impaneled the jury, the defendant may request the court to dismiss the array and call a new array in the case. The court shall grant the motion of a defendant for dismissal of the array if the court determines that the defendant is a member of an identifiable racial group, that the attorney representing the state exercised peremptory challenges for the purpose of excluding persons from the jury on the basis of their race, and that the defendant has offered evidence of relevant. facts that tend to show that challenges made by the attorney representing the state were made for reasons based on race. If the defendant establishes a prima facie case, the burden then shifts to the attorney representing the state to give a racially neutral explanation for the challenges. The burden of persuasion remains with the defendant to establish purposeful discrimination.
stated, "we'll make a Batson challenge." Nowhere did appellant invoke the application of Article 35.261 or move for a dismissal of the array. Furthermore, appellant has not separately argued the protection of 35.261 in his brief. Hence, we find any complaint as to Article 35.261 has not been preserved for appellate review. Camacho v. State, 864 S.W.2d 524, 528 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 114 S.Ct. 1339 (1994); Tex. R. App. Proc. 52(a).
With regard to appellant's Batson claim, we stated in Satterwhite v. State, 858 S.W.2d 412, 423 (Tex. Crim. App.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 114 S.Ct. 455 (1993):
In order to invoke the protections set forth in Batson, appellant must first raise an inference of purposeful discrimination through the State's use of its peremptory strikes. Once appellant has established such purposeful discrimination, the burden of production shifts to the prosecutor to come forward with racially neutral explanations for the strikes. Once the prosecutor has articulated racially neutral explanations, the burden shifts back to the defendant to persuade the trial court that the "neutral explanation" for the strike is really a pretext for discrimination. [Citations omitted.] This Court will reverse the trial court's resolution of a Batson issue only if the court's findings are found to be clearly erroneous.
In the complained-of instance, appellant made a Batson challenge and offered the veniremember's questionnaire as evidence. He noted that the veniremember stated that he could basically look at both sides and was generally in favor of the death penalty. After noting that this was a
Batson claim and not a Wainwright v. Witt claim, 7 the trial court held that a prima facie case had been established. The prosecutor then gave the following race reasons for striking Rodriguez:
My reason for striking Mr. Rodriguez is there was a great deal of hesitation with his explanation on the death penalty when he was speaking with you. He's also for the death penalty without any compulsion whatsoever if it happened to one of his relatives. I still do not have a full understanding of his position on the death penalty.
With respect to the question I asked him, he gave me a philosophical – he gave a theological and Biblical and his own philosophy. One of the things put me on edge, turning the cheek, you turning the other cheek. That goes back to the philosophy if you're slapped, you turn the other cheek.
I'm afraid he may be looking to turn the other cheek in this case, and I don't want it turned in my favor.
The trial court accepted these reasons as race-neutral and appellant made no attempt to rebut the explanations given or otherwise explain why they were only pretexts for discrimination. A review of the entirety of the veniremember's voir dire reveals that the prosecutor's reasons were supported by the record. Given this, we cannot say that the judge's ruling in this instance was clearly erroneous. See Satterwhite, supra. Point of error four is overruled.
7 469 U.S. 412 (1985)
In his eighth and ninth points of error, appellant claims the trial court reversibly erred in granting school exemptions for prospective jurors M. L. Lambeth and P. S. Jolly. The August 11, 1994, voir dire of Lambeth revealed that the venireperson had recently graduated from Texas A & M University. However, she had also completed one semester of Nursing School. Furthermore, it was established that Lambeth was only on summer break and had already enrolled in and paid for nine hours of Nursing classes for the fall semester which would commence on August 29, 1994. Because her classes were scheduled to run every day of the week, and because the trial was not scheduled to begin until September 12, 1994, it was undisputed that the trial and the classes would conflict.
Tex. Gov't Code § 62.106 states that:
A person qualified to serve as a petit juror may establish an exemption from jury service if he:
* * *
(4) is a person enrolled and in actual attendance at an institution of higher education[.]
Even if Lambeth was not properly excused under this section, 8 the judge properly excused her under Tex. Code of
8 Appellant contends that she was not properly excused pursuant to this section because she was not attending classes at the time of voir dire. However, we note that Gov't Code § 62.106 deals with "jury service" and not voir dire. In the instant case, the venireperson would be attending classes at the time of "jury service."
Appellant also contends under this point that Nursing School is a "technical" or "vocational" school and not an "institution of higher education." Given the disposition of the point of error, we need not address this contention here.
Crim. Proc. Article 35.03. 9 See Butler v. State, 830 S.W.2d 125, 131-132 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992); Harris v. State, 784 S.W.2d 5, 18-19 (Tex. Crim. App.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1090 (1990).
Jolly's voir dire also established that while she was not in school at the time of her individual voir dire on August 10, 1994, she had registered and paid for college classes which she would attend, commencing August 29, 1994. Although Jolly testified that she might be able to make up the classes she would miss due to the trial, she was not sure about this and she did not want to get behind in her classwork. As with Lambeth, the trial judge excused the potential juror pursuant to Tex. Gov't Code § 62.106 as well as Tex. Code of Crim. Proc. 35.03. As with the previous point, we hold that, even if the trial court erred in excusing the veniremember pursuant to Tex. Gov't Code § 62.106, she was properly excused under Article 35.03. See Butler, supra; Harris, supra. Points of error eight and nine are overruled.
III. ADMISSION OF EVIDENCE
Appellant contends in his second point of error that the trial court erred "in admitting into evidence the appellant's written custodial statement obtained after his unlawful arrest." Appellant notes that he was arrested pursuant to an arrest warrant. However, he states
9 Article 35.03 states in pertinent part:
Sec. 1. Except as provided by Sections 2 and 3 of this article, the court shall then hear and determine excuses offered for not serving as a juror, and if the court deems the excuse sufficient, the court shall discharge the juror or postpone the juror's service to a date specified by the court.
with-out authority or analysis that the affidavit for the warrant was insufficient on its face to provide probable cause to arrest appellant. Hence, he concludes, appellant's statement was the fruit of an illegal arrest and thus should not have been admitted at trial. Appellant then proceeds to argue why the taint from the arrest was not attenuated. 10
Appellant seems to be complaining that because the affidavit on its face did not specifically tie appellant to the two bodies found, it was insufficient to support probable cause. We disagree. It is well-settled that, in determining the sufficiency of an affidavit for an arrest or search warrant, a reviewing court is limited to the "four corners of an affidavit." Jones v. State, 833 S.W.2d 118, 123 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 921 (1993). However, this determination is not meant "to place legalistic blinders on the process wherein a neutral and detached magistrate must decide whether there are sufficient facts stated to validate issuance of a proper warrant." Id. Rather, the warrant affidavit should be interpreted in a common sense and realistic manner and the reviewing magistrate is permitted to draw reasonable inferences from the information contained therein. Id.
The affidavit in the instant cause reads as follows:
On June 28, [sic] 1993, your affiant [a homicide investigator employed by the Houston Police Department] personally went to a wooded area
10 Because appellant has given us nothing more than his conclusory statement that the affidavit was insufficient to show probable cause, he has inadequately briefed this point of error. Tex. R. App. Proc. 74(f). However, we have reviewed the affidavit in the interest of justice.
within the vicinity of West 34th St. and T. C. Jester in Houston, Harris County, Texas. At that location your affiant observed the bodies of two females, one of them was naked, and the other was partially unclothed and both appearing to have been dead for several days based upon the decomposition which had taken place on their bodies. The amount of decomposition which had taken place made the identification of the bodies by physical features difficult, if not impossible. The bodies were removed to the Harris County Morgue for complete autopsies and for dental analysis and comparison with the dental charts of two missing females, Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena.
Your affiant is personally aware that a report had been made to the Houston Police Department that Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena had been reported missing since June 24, 1993. Your affiant has personally read Houston Police Department report number 66830993 which was prepared by R. L. Curl of the Houston Police Department and which states that on June 25, 1993, Randy Ertman called the Department to state that his daughter, Jennifer Ertman and her friend, Elizabeth Pena were last seen walking from a friends house at approximately 11:00 P.M. on June 24, 1993 and that they said that they were going to take the short cut along the railroad tracks which are near T. C. Jester and West 34th and that they were going to go to Ertman's apartment. He reported that his daughter nor the other girl had been seen.
Your affiant is aware that an investigation had begun by the Houston Police Department in order to locate the two missing girls.
Your affiant is aware that on June 27, 1993 a man called the Houston Police Department dispatcher claiming to be Mr. Gonzalez [sic] and who told the dispatcher a possible location where the bodies of the two girls could be found. Your affiant is aware that officers of the Houston Police Department were sent to the location that "Mr. Gonzales" told them of and the officers were unable to locate their bodies.
On June 24, [sic] 1993, the same person called back claiming to be Mr. Gonzales and giving them a more specific location where the bodies could be located. He told the dispatcher that he had found the bodies himself and wanted to let the police department know. where the bodies were. On this occasion, your affiant personally went to the location as given to the dispatcher by "Mr. Gonzales" which was a wooded area near the intersection of T. C. Jester and West 34th St., Houston, Harris County, Texas. It was at this time that your affiant observed the bodies of the two girls.
Later on June 24, [sic] 1993, your affiant received information from officer Ken Weiner of the Houston Police Department Crime Stopper Division. He told your affiant that a female had called him telling him that her sister told her that her husband's, the caller's brother in law, brother had admitted to both her sister and her sister's husband that he and several other men had grabbed the two girls near the railroad tracks which run near the intersection of T. C. Jester and West 34th and that they raped and then killed the two girls. Weiner told your affiant that the caller left him her telephone number. Your affiant is personally aware that Officer Todd Miller of the Houston Police Department
Homicide Division called the telephone number and spoke with veronica Barroso who told Miller that her sister and brother in law are Christina and Joe Adam Cantu and that they live at 1128 Ashland in Houston. She further said that Christina told her that her brother in law, Peter Cantu, and Joe Madellin both admitted to both her and her husband Joe Adam Cantu that they, along with some other men, saw the two girls walking down the railroad tracks near T. C. Jester and West 34th the night of June 24, 1993 and that they all grabbed the girls, raped them and then killed them.
Based upon the aforesaid, your affiant brought Joe Adam Cantu to the offices of the Houston Police Department Homicide Division on June 28, 1993 in order to talk with him about this information. Cantu gave a sworn affidavit to [Officer] Todd Miller in which he states, under oath, that in the early morning hours of June 25, 1993, his brother, Peter Cantu, who lives with him and his wife in the house on Ashland St. came into the house along with Efrin
Perez and another man whose name he did not know. He said that Peter, Efrin, Jose Madellin and the other man started telling him about two girls that they raped and killed in the woods near the railroad tracks near West 34th and T. C. Jester. They showed him jewelry that they had taken from the girls and they admitted raping the two girls and then killing them by strangling them and leaving the bodies out in the woods. He then said that later a black male who he knows as Derrick Shawn O'Brien called his house and told him that he, too, had participated in the rapes and the murder of the two girls.
Your affiant has checked the records of the Houston Police Department and learned that Joe Adam Cantu has only one arrest for a Class C Misdemeanor ticket but that he has no other arrests and is going to school at this time and is close to graduating from the school.
As of the making of this affidavit your affiant has not learned from the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office as to the caused (sic] of death of either of the two girls. Further, your affiant is not aware that a positive identification has been made of the two bodies but, based upon all of the information that your affiant has gathered it is the opinion of your affiant that the two bodies that were found this morning are, in fact, the bodies of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena.
Based upon the admissions which were made by the aforementioned Defendants to Cantu in which each of the men stated that they each raped the two girls and the fact that your affiant is personally aware, based upon years of experience as a Homicide investigator for the Houston Police Department, it is the opinion of your affiant that the DNA of each of the men who raped, the girls will be present in fluid samples extracted from the deceased girls during the autopsies. Further, by taking blood and saliva samples from each of the Defendants upon their arrest it will be possible for chemists to extract from those samples the known DNA of each Defendant and to then compare that with the DNA found from the autopsies of the two dead girls which will be evidence of the guilt of each defendant in these Capital Murder cases.
The affidavit contains facts which establish probable cause. In short, the affidavit states that two girls had disappeared on June 24, 1993, and were last known to be in a specific area of Houston that evening. Pursuant to a tip received by law enforcement personnel three days subsequent to the girls' disappearance, two female bodies were discovered in the same area in which the girls were last known to be. These bodies were determined to have been deceased for several days. In calling the telephone number left by the tipster, police officers located one Joe Cantu who told them, under oath, that his brother, appellant, and some others had come to his home in the early morning hours of June 25, 1993, claiming to have just raped and killed two girls in the precise area in which the two girls had last been placed and the two female bodies had been found.
Additionally, each individual cited within the affidavit is identified by name, and some are also identified by address. The majority of the facts contained in the affidavit were told either directly to the affiant, or to other law enforcement personnel. Earhart v. State, 823 S.W.2d 607, 631 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991), vacated on other grounds, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 3026 (1993) 11 ; Wilkerson v. State, 726 S.W.2d 542 (Tex. Crim. App. 1986), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 940 (1987). Hence, we hold that the affidavit contained sufficient information with which a detached magistrate could have found probable cause. Id.
Because appellant was arrested pursuant to a lawful arrest warrant, the trial court did not err in denying
11 Earhart was vacated by the United States Supreme Court and remanded to: this Court in light of Johnson v. Texas, 509 ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 2658 (1993). The case was then reaffirmed by this Court. Earhart v. State, 877 S.W.2d 759 (Tex. Crim. App.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 431 (1994).
appellant's motion to suppress his custodial statement. 12 Point of error two is overruled.
In supplemental points of error two-(A) through two(E), appellant claims the trial court abused its discretion in determining his custodial statement was given intentionally, knowingly, and voluntarily, in violation of the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution; Article I, §§ 10 and 19 of the Texas Constitution; and Articles 38.22 and 38.23. Appellant briefs all of these contentions together. Appellate urges that we abandon our previous standard of reviewing voluntariness of a statement in favor of the standard set forth in Clewis v. State, 922 S.W.2d 126 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996). Appellant says that under this standard, we would have to conclude that the trial court abused its discretion in concluding his statement was voluntarily made.
At a hearing on a motion to suppress a defendant's statement, the trial court is the sole judge of the credibility of witnesses and the weight to be given their testimony. Penry v. State, 903 S.W.2d 715, 744 (Tex. Crim. App. 1995); Romero v. State, 800 S.W.2d 539, 543 (Tex. Crim. App. 1990). Therefore, if the record supports the trial court's findings, we will not disturb those findings. Id. On appeal, we only consider whether the trial court applied the law to the facts properly. Id. In Clewis, we held that courts of appeals have jurisdiction to review questions of fact, and in reviewing factual sufficiency of the elements of the
12 To the extent appellant may otherwise be complaining that his statement was not voluntarily given, he has not adequately set out the issue in a-separate point of error or properly briefed it. Therefore, any further claim as to appellant's statement will not be entertained here. Tex. R. App. Proc. 74(f).
offense, the court of appeals "should set aside the verdict only if it is so contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence as to be clearly wrong and unjust." 922 S.W.2d at 134-36.
We leave for another day whether we will extend Clewis. 13 Even if Clewis were applied to the facts of this case, appellant would not be entitled to relief. After giving his written statement, appellant gave a tape recorded statement to another officer. This tape recorded statement was not admitted into evidence and appellant does not question its legality. But appellant says the recording reflects that he asked for an attorney and that this is evidence that he had wanted an attorney at the time of his written statement. While the tape is not made a part of the record on appeal, the trial court made the following findings of fact regarding the taped conversation:
Officer C.C. Abbondandolo . . . conducted an oral, taperecorded interview with the defendant.
Abbondandolo provided cigarettes to the defendant and arranged for him to be served a meal, but the defendant stated that he did not like the food and declined to eat it.
Abbondandolo warned the defendant of his rights pursuant to art. 38.22, 5 2, supra, and Miranda v. Arizona, supra. The appellant asked if an attorney could be appointed immediately, and
13 See German v. State, No. 10-94-192-CR slip op. (Tex. App.– Waco July 5, 1995) (do not publish), reh'g denied (Aug. 2, 1995) (do not publish) pet. granted (PDR No. 1036-95 granted to determine whether great weight and preponderance of evidence standard for factual sufficiency applies to trial court's ruling on mixed questions of fact and law).
Abbondandolo responded that if he wanted an attorney at that time, they would have to terminate the interview.
The defendant indicated that he desired to continue with the interview, and he voluntarily discussed the rape and murder . . .
The fact that appellant requested an attorney during his tape recorded statement does not render the trial court's conclusions as to the voluntariness of his previous written statement "so contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence as to be clearly wrong and unjust." It does not strain credibility to believe that a defendant might provide a written statement without invoking his right to an attorney, but change his mind while giving a second statement and request an attorney at that time. Appellant contends his request for an attorney during the taped conversation clearly indicates that he did not understand his rights at the time of the written statement. This, without more, does not follow. Therefore, even if a Clewis standard were applied here, which we expressly do not decide, appellant's claim would have no merit. Appellant's points of error two-(A) through two-(E) are overruled.
In his fifth point of error, appellant alleges the trial court erred in admitting into evidence scene and autopsy photographs of the two deceased victims because their probative value was far outweighed by their prejudicial value in violation of Tex. R. Crim. Evid. 403. Appellant recognizes that this Court has held that a photograph is generally admissible where a verbal description of the same is admissible. Long v. State, 823 S.W.2d 259, 270 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991), cert. denied, 505 U.S. 1224 (1992). But, he maintains that, in the instant case, the photographs' prejudicial value substantially outweighed any probative value they may have had thus rendering them inadmissible. In his point of error, appellant refers to thirty-nine (39) different photographs, three (3) of which appear to be scene photographs with the remainder being autopsy photographs of the two different victims.
Of the three photographs depicting the crime scene, one shows both victims as their bodies appeared in relation to the surrounding environment. One of the remaining two photographs shows a close-up shot of one of the victims in the position in which she was found while the other photograph shows the second victim as she was found. Although these photographs are gruesome, they are highly probative in reflecting the nature and scene of the crime and the extent of some of the victims' injuries. Barnes v. State, 876 S.W.2d 316, 326 (Tex. Crim. App.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 174 (1994).
With regard to the autopsy photographs, the medical examiner told the trial court that she needed all of the photographs to testify to the nature and extent of the injuries inflicted. While these photographs are also grotesque and depict extensive environmental deterioration of the subject pictured, they are probative in reflecting the nature of the crime in the context in which it occurred and the extent of some of the injuries. This visual evidence was also probative of the perpetrator's state of mind and intent during the commission of the crime due to the nature and extent of the injuries inflicted. Given the totality of the evidence, we cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in finding that the prejudicial effect of the photographs, if any, did not outweigh their probative value. Point of error five is overruled.
Finding no reversible error, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.
MEYERS, J.
Delivered March 19, 1997 Do Not Publish En Banc
Appeal from Harris County No. 71,997
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JOSE ERNESTO MEDELLIN,
Appellant
– v. –
THE STATE OF TEXAS,
Appellee
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CONCURRING OPINION
I concur in the result as to appellant's supplemental points of error, and otherwise join the opinion of the Court. However, I would directly address the merits of appellant's supplemental points of error and make clear to the, bench and bar that Clewis v. State, 922 S.W.2d 126 (Tex.Cr.App. 1996), has no application in reviewing a trial court's determination of a motion to suppress.
McCormick, Presiding Judge
(Delivered March 19, 1997) En Banc Do Not Publish
Statement of Jose Ernesto Medellin, State's Trial Exhibit 113 at 000076, State v. Medellin, No. 675430 (339th Dist. Ct. 1994)
STATEMENT OF PERSON IN CUSTODY
Tuesday, June 29, 1993
Time: 554 Hrs.
Statement of Jose Ernesto Medellin taken in Harris County, Texas.
Prior to making this statement I was warned by Sgt. L.W. Hoffmaster of the Houston Police Homicide Division, the person to whom this statement was made, that:
1.) JEM I have the right to remain silent and not make any statement at all and any statement I make may and probably will be used against me at my trial;
2.) JEM Any statement I make may be used as evidence against me in court; Response: yes.
3.) JEM I have the right to have a lawyer present to advise me prior to and during any questioning; Response: yes sir.
4.) JEM If I am unable to employ a lawyer, I have the right to have a lawyer appointed to advise me prior to and during any questioning and; Response: yes sir.
5.) JEM I have the right to terminate, or stop, this
interview at any time. Response: yes sir.
6.) JEM Prior to and during the making of this statement I knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily waived, or gave up, the rights set out above and made the following voluntary statement:
Response: yes sir.
Response: yes sir. JEM
My name is Jose Ernesto Medellin. I am 18 years old years old. I was born in Laredo Mexico on 3/4/75. I last went to school at Eisenhower High School and have a total of 8 years of formal education.
On Thursday June 24th, 1993, around 8:30 or 9:00PM in the evening, I went to the Brook Green apartments with Raual (doesn't know last name), Peter Cantu, my little brother Venancio Medellin Jr., Efrain Perez, Frank Sandaval and his brother Roman Sandaval. Another friend Sean Derrick Obrien, lives in the Brook Green Apartments. I went to Sean's Apartment and told him that we were going to initiate Raual into our gang. Sean and I went to the parkinglot to go meet the others. Then we went to the railroad tracks behind the Brook Green Apartments and crossed over to the grass area on the banks of the bayou. Peter told Sean to take him, meaning to fight Raual, Raual's initiation was going to be to fight all of us. Sean said no I can't see, it's too dark. Sean has vision problems.
JOSE E. MEDELLIN Signature
Witnesses:
S
GT
. G. J. N
OVAK
6-29-93 7:23 AM
M. E. D
OYLE
6-29-93 7:23 AM
Page 2 of Custodial Statement of Jose Ernesto Medellin.
Me and Peter were talking to Sean about it. We called Roman Sandoval to where we were and told Roman to take him. Roman said no man he's a little bit to big for me. Then we told Roman that if we were to get into a fight out on the street he wouldn't be able to say that. Roman said fuck it, I'll take him. Roman went up to Raual and started fighting with him. They stopped fighting and Sean said fuck it, I'll whip his ass to. Then Sean started fighting with Raual. They stopped fighting and Peter said I'll take him. I told Peter no you are the leader I'll take him. I fought Raual and then we stopped. Then Peter said you take him Junior, meaning Efrain Perez and they started fighting. When they stopped Peter told Raual that if he could stand up for more than ten seconds, he was in. Then we went back to the tracks in the middle of the railroad bridge and we were drinking up there. We were talking and drinking and we said fuck it lets find something else for him to do.
We were walking back to the parking lot and as we were walking down the tracks a girl passed by us. When Peter saw the second girl, he said kick his ass Junior to Efrain Perez. Peter thought the hispanic girl was a boy. We started talking to the two girls, they told us their names were Jenifer and Elizabeth and that they had to go home.
Peter grabbed Jenifer and said bitch your going to come over here. Peter told Raual to grab the other one. The were saying let us go please and Peter said bitch were going to fuck your ass. Elizabeth said don't hurt me I'll let you do it. I was with Peter and Elizabeth and Sean, Raual and Efrain were with Jenifer. Peter was having sex with Elizabeth, then Peter ask her for her phone number and she gave him a number, 686-3267. Then Peter ask her why don't you suck my friends dick, meaning me, and she said yes. Then she did it. Elizabeth told me to hurray up that she had to go home. She ask Peter you're going to let us go right and he said yes.
While this was going on Raual, Sean and Efrain were taking turns having sex with Jenifer.
Then Peter called Raual and me over to where he was. Peter told my little brother to get all their stuff, beepers, watch, rings and necklaces. Then we took them to the woods and Efrain began having sex with Elizabeth in the woods and Sean with Jenifer. Then Peter told Raual to kill Jenifer, Sean handed Raual a belt and said do it with this. Raual strangled Jenifer with the belt. The belt tore and Jenifer fell to the ground and Peter told Raual to use his foot, to put his foot on her throat and step on it. Then Raual did that. Peter told Efrain to do the same thing to Elizabeth but to use his shoe lace. Efrain couldn't get a good grip so he told me to hold one end of the shoe lace. Then Efrain got a better grip on the shoe lace and took it
JOSE E. MEDELLIN Signature
Witnesses:
Page 3 of Custodial Statement of Jose Ernesto Medellin.
back and continued to choke Elizabeth. Efrain let go and she was still moving and Peter told him to step on her throat and Efrain did that.
As all of this was going on, my little brother walked by and Peter told me to tell him to leave, so that he wouldn't see it but they had already started killing the girls.
As we were leaving Raual said I don't think this bitch is dead, he was talking about Jenifer. Raual started stomping on Jenifer's face with his foot. Then he started doing the same thing to Elizabeth. Then we left.
Raual kept some of the jewelry and I threw one of the beepers in the bayou and Peter threw the other beeper in the bayou. Then we went home. The Mickey Mouse Watch that my little brother Venancio had belonged to one of the girls, I don't know which one.
I have read this, my statement, consisting of 3 page/pages, and finished reading it at 7:23 Hrs.
JOSE E. MEDELLIN Signature
Witnesses:
SGT. G. J. NOVAK
Pr# 39034 Date: 6-29-93
M. E. DOYLE
Pr# 40900 Time: 07:23 Hrs.
End of statement of Jose Ernesto Medellin.
Affidavit of Manuel Perez Cardenas, the Consul General of Mexico, filed in support of state post-conviction application for a writ of habeas corpus; Ex parte Medellin, No. 675430-A (339th Dist. Ct. 2001); No. 50,191-01 (Tex. Crim. App. 2001).
AFFIDAVIT OF MANUEL PEREZ-CARDENAS
STATE OF TEXAS §
COUNTY OF HARRIS §
My name is Manuel Perez Cardenas, Consul General of Mexico in Houston, Texas. My current address is 1440 Westoffice Drive, Houston Texas 77042. I am above the age of eighteen (18) years and am competent in all respects to make this oath. I am personally acquainted with the facts herein stated.
I am the Consul General of Mexico in Houston, Texas. One of the duties of the Mexican Consulate in Houston is to advise any Mexican National who, having been arrested or detained for some crime committed here, exercises his right under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963, to contact the Mexican Consulate for help in responding to the fact of his detention, dealing with the arresting authority, and arranging for representation for local legal counsel. When Jose Ernesto Medellin was arrested for capital murder in Harris County he was not advised of his right to contact with his Consulate, the Mexican Consulate was not timely informed. Had the Mexican Consulate been informed of Jose Ernesto Medellin arrest, an officer of the Consulate would have contacted him immediately to explain to him the full significance and importance of his right under Miranda Warning included to have legal counsel present to serve as an intermediary between himself and the police in the custodial setting (particularly in a capital charge). Had the Mexican Consulate been timely informed of Jose Ernesto Medellin's arrest, an officer of the Consulate would have immediately arranged to have legal counsel present during any custodial interrogation. Finally, had the Mexican Consulate been told Jose Ernesto Medellin's detention, the Consulate representative would have strongly advised him that he had a right not to speak to the police except on the advice and in the presence of his legal counsel, and that it would be in his best interest not to speak to the police unless and until his lawyer might advise that he do so. "Nothing included in this document shall be construed or interpreted as a waiver of the immunities, privileges and rights of Consul General Manuel Perez Cardenas, established by the Vienna Convent on Consular Relations, the US-Mexico Consular Convention of 1942, and international law".
MANUEL PEREZ-CARDENAS Manuel Perez-Cardenas Consul General of Mexico in Houston
SIGNED under oath before me on March 24, 1998
[NOTARY STAMP] LISA MILSTEIN Notary Public, State of Texas My Commission Expires 04-15-2001
LISA MILSTEIN
NOTARY PUBLIC, State of Texas
IN THE 339TH DISTRICT COURT OF HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS
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Cause No. 675430-A
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EX PARTE
JOSE ERNESTO MEDELLIN,
Applicant
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RESPONDENT'S PROPOSED FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND ORDER
The Court, having considered the applicant's application for writ of habeas corpus, the Respondent's Original Answer, the evidence elicited at the applicant's capital murder trial in cause no. 675430, affidavits submitted in cause no. 675430-A, and official court documents and records, makes the following findings of fact and conclusions of law:
FINDINGS OF FACT
1. The applicant, Jose Ernesto Medellin, was indicted and convicted of the felony offense of capital murder in cause no. 675430 in the 339th District Court of Harris County, Texas.
2. The applicant was represented during trial by counsel Jack Millin, now deceased, and Linda Mazzagatti.
3. On September 20, 1994, the trial court assessed the applicant's punishment at death by lethal injection after the jury affirmatively answered the first two special issues and negatively answered the third special issue.
4. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the applicant's conviction in an unpublished opinion delivered March 19, 1997. Medellin v. State, No. 71,997 (Tex. Crim. App. Mar. 19, 1997) (not designated for publication).
First Ground – ineffective assistance of appellate counsel re Batson claim: Fourth Ground – Batson claim:
5. The Court finds that, during the State's voir dire examination of prospective juror Elizabeth Ann Berry, she stated that both of her brothers had been arrested for drug-related offenses; that both have had a "number of cases;" that one was "serving time now;" that they had been in and out of the prison system often in the last five or six years; and, that the cases were prosecuted in Harris County (R. XX – 181-2).
6. The Court finds that, on the juror questionnaire, prospective juror Elizabeth Berry described a defense attorney as the underdog, always fighting, and a prosecutor as "on the attack" (R. XX – 184).
7. The Court finds that the State exercised a peremptory strike at the conclusion of the voir dire examination of prospective juror Elizabeth Berry, and the applicant made a Batson challenge (R. XX – 226).
8. The Court finds that the trial court requested that the State, "regardless of a prima facie showing," offer an explanation for the strike of prospective juror Elizabeth Berry, and that the State explained that the strike was based upon Berry having two brothers involved in drugs and serving time in prison; that one brother had been in prison on numerous occasions; and, that one brother was presently on parole and the other brother was presently in custody (R. XX – 227-8).
9. The Court finds that the State, in explaining its strike of prospective juror Elizabeth Berry, noted Berry's characterization of the prosecution as on the attack and the defense as the underdog and stated that, as a result, the State would have the perception during the trial that Berry viewed the applicant as the underdog and the prosecutor as a "wild mongrel" on the attack (R. XX – 228).
10. The Court finds that the State, via prosecutor Mark Vinson, stated that he had an appreciation of blacks serving on juries, because he was a black male who grew up during the 1940's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's (R. XX – 229).
11. The Court finds that the trial court stated that it did not believe that a prima facie showing had been made at that time, but the trial court found that the State's reasons for striking prospective juror Elizabeth Berry were race-neutral based on Berry's demeanor and her responses and her juror questionnaire (R. XX – 230).
12. The trial court denied the applicant's Batson motion and informed the applicant that the court would reconsider the motion if the applicant wanted to reurge it at the end of jury selection (R. XX – 230).
13. The Court finds that the trial court noted, after denying the applicant's Batson challenge, that the jury was then composed of nine people, including a black female, a black male, an Hispanic male, and an Hispanic female; that there was no indication of gender bias; and, that the jury composition at that time was a black female, two white females, an Hispanic female, an Hispanic male, two white males, and a black male (R. XX – 230-1).
14. The Court finds that, during the State's voir dire examination of prospective juror Rafael F. Rodriguez, the State noted that there was hesitation on Rodriguez's part regarding the death penalty when questioned by the trial court and Rodriguez stated that he had not given the death penalty much thought (R. XXI – 71).
15. The Court finds that, during the State's voir dire examination of prospective juror Rafael Rodriguez, his responses concerning his thoughts on the death penalty were unclear and ambiguous (R. XXI – 90, 92-6).
16. The Court finds that, at the conclusion of the voir dire of prospective juror Rafael Rodriguez, the State exercised a peremptory strike on Rodriguez and the applicant made a Batson challenge, noting that the applicant and Rodriguez are both Hispanic (R. XXI – 115-6).
17. The Court finds that, at the conclusion of the State's voir dire of prospective juror Rafael Rodriguez and after the applicant's Batson challenge, the trial court made a finding of a prima facie case, and the State gave the following explanations for the peremptory strike of Rodriguez: that he had a great deal of hesitation when he was talking about the death penalty with the trial court; that the State still did not have a full understanding of Rodriguez's position on the death penalty; and, that Rodriguez had stated that he was absolutely in favor of the death penalty without any compunctions if the victim were a relative of Rodriguez (R. XXI – 117).
18. The Court finds that the State also noted that prospective juror Rafael Rodriguez's theological and philosophical reply during voir dire examination concerning "turning the other cheek" indicated that Rodriguez would be "looking to turn the other cheek in this case . . . " (R. XXI – 118).
19. The Court finds that the trial court found that the State's explanation for the peremptory strike of prospective juror Rafael Rodriguez was a racially neutral explanation and the trial court denied the applicant's Batson challenge (R. XXI – 118).
20. The Court finds that the applicant, on August 17, 1994, presented a written motion to strike the jury panel based, in part, on the State's exercising thirteen preemptory strikes against the following prospective jurors, as noted by the applicant: (1) Kirven O'Neal Tillis, black male; (2) Mary Freeman, white female; (3) Kathy Felder, black female; (4) Bernard Richardson, black male; (5) Walter Wynn Martin, white male; (6) Andra McCoy, black male; (7) Marie Clark, white female; (8) Vastine Dickie, black male; (9) Christine Rossi, white female; (10) Raford Earl Gresham, white male; (11) Porfirio Rodriguez, Jr., Hispanic male; (12) Elizabeth Ann Berry, black female; and (13) Rafael Rodriguez, Hispanic male (R. I – 264-5) (R. XXVI – 11).
21. The Court finds that, on August 17, 1994, the applicant presented the following argument in support of its motion:
And the State exercised six of it's (sic) peremptory challenges against black venire members and eight of it's (sic) peremptory challenges against males and the State exercised two of it's (sic) peremptory challenges against Hispanic male venire members. And this also includes a Batson Challenge. And, of course, the
Court – I agree that whatever Batson challenges were preserved during the proper objection at the time would be the Batson Challenges that would be considered. But we are bringing to the Court's attention that these persons have been struck and that we would suggest to the Court that it's a prima facie case of discrimination for the State's use of peremptory challenges and we would suggest to the Court that the motion – that our Motion to Strike the Panel be also granted on this premise.
[R. XXVI – 11-2).
22. The Court finds that the State, in response to the applicant's August 17, 1994 argument in support of the applicant's motion to strike the panel, informed the trial court that the record reflected that the final jury was a "melting jury" and that the thirteen noted peremptory strikes were racially neutral (R. XXVI – 12-3).
23. The Court finds that the trial court denied the applicant's motion to strike the jury panel by written order on August 19, 1994 (R. I – 267).
24. The Court finds that the State exercised thirteen peremptory strikes and that a review of the State's peremptory strikes, as noted in the applicant's motion to strike the jury panel, shows that the State struck three white females and two white males, comprising almost fifty percent of the State's thirteen total peremptory strikes (R. I – 264-5) (R. XXVI – 11-2).
25. The Court finds, based on personal recollection, that the prosecutor in the applicant's case was also the prosecutor in the 1993 Harris County capital murder trial of Kenneth Wayne Morris; that the trial judge in the applicant's case and the trial judge in Kenneth Wayne
Morris' case was the same person; that the prosecutor offered an explanation for a peremptory strike during jury selection in Kenneth Wayne Morris' case; that the trial judge found the prosecutor's explanation to be racially neutral in Kenneth Wayne Morris' case; and, that the trial judge noted in Kenneth Wayne Morris' case that the same prosecutor had tried a capital case three months earlier and that there were either three or four black jurors. See Volume 4, page 115, appellate record of The State of Texas v. Kenneth Wayne Morris, cause no. 597997.
26. The Court finds that the Court of Criminal Appeals, on direct appeal of the capital murder conviction of Kenneth Wayne Morris, overruled Morris' claim that the trial court improperly based her ruling on the absence of purposeful discrimination by the same prosecutor in another criminal trial and stated, "A ruling on a Batson objection is a credibility determination. Because the trial judge determines the issue of the prosecutor's credibility, it is not error for the court to consider its past experiences with a prosecutor in determining his credibility." Morris v. State, 940 S.W.2d 610, 612 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996).
First Ground – ineffective assistance of appellate counsel re Motion to Preclude State from Seeking Death Penalty:
27. The Court finds that the applicant, prior to trial, filed a written motion to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty and that the clerk's file-mark on the face of the motion notes that the motion was filed at 2:00 p.m. on July 29, 1994 (R. I – 95-107).
28. The Court finds that the face of the applicant's written motion to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty shows the following stamp:
On The Record
Date: 9/9/94
Ct. Reporter: Wong Lee
(R. I – 108).
29. The Court finds that the written order accompanying the applicant's motion to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty is signed by the Honorable Caprice Cosper, the presiding judge of the 339th District Court and that there are initials placed on the line next to "GRANTED" (R. I – 108).
30. The Court finds, based on the appellate record, that the trial court ruled on pre-trial motions and verbally denied the applicant's objection to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty (R. XXVII – 9).
31. The Court finds, based on its personal recollection, that the written order notation on the applicant's motion to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty is an inadvertent error.
32. The Court finds that the applicant's written motion to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty and its accompanying order were a request for the trial court to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty, not a motion requesting that the State be precluded from carrying out a constitutionally valid death sentence after such sentence is assessed.
33. The Court further finds, based on the applicant's trial in which the State sought the death penalty and on the applicant's resulting death sentence, that the inadvertent error on the written order accompanying the applicant's motion to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty was rendered moot by the applicant's trial and subsequent sentence of death.
Second Ground – ineffective assistance of counsel re contacting probation officer:
34. The Court finds that evidence was presented during the guilt-innocence phase of the applicant's trial showing that the applicant and his co-defendants, Peter Cantu, Efrain Perez, Derrick Sean O'Brien, and Raul Villarreal, took turns sexually assaulting the complainant and Jennifer Ertman (R. XXXII – 948-9); that the applicant participated in the strangulation deaths of the complainant and Ertman after the repeated sexual assaults (R. XXXII – 949); that the applicant afterwards laughed and bragged about his part in the sexual assaults and murders (R. XXIX – 389-90); that the applicant said that he "fucked one of the girls in the pussy" and then "fucked her in the ass;" (R. XXIX – 391-2); that the applicant said that he made one of the girls give him a "blow job" and that he hit her on the top of her head when she would not close her mouth (R. XXIX – 395, 425); and, that the applicant later showed Christina Cantu his underwear with blood on it and stated that he could not believe that one of the girls was telling the truth when she said that she was a virgin; that the applicant, who admitted having sex with both girls, seemed proud that he "opened" the girl who was a virgin, and that he "dirtied" the inside of the girl when he was first entering her; that the applicant said they had fun; and, that the applicant took part of the property stolen from the murdered girls (R. XXIX – 393-4, 397-401, 405, 422, 424-5) (R. XXX – 477-8, 533-4).
35. The Court finds that, during the punishment phase of the applicant's trial, the State presented evidence that the applicant was suspended from school at the age of fourteen in 1990; that he was placed in an alternative school for repeated misbehavior and misconduct; and, that he was not able to function at the alternative school and was expelled from the school district for the remainder of the school year (R. XXXIV – 76-8).
36. The Court finds that, during the punishment phase of the applicant's trial, the State further presented evidence that the applicant called a female teacher a whore, used profanity and defied the rules (R. XXXIV – 713).
37. The Court finds that, during the punishment phase of the applicant's trial, the State presented evidence that the applicant made threats of physical violence toward two adult principals when the applicant was a sixteen-year old student in 1992; that he was confrontational, aggressive, and physically resisted the principals when they attempted to calm the applicant; that he screamed profanities at another student; and, that the applicant stated that life did not mean anything to him; he would be on television or in the newspaper for killing someone and jail did not scare him (R. XXXIV – 17-64).
38. The Court finds that, during the punishment phase of the applicant's trial, the State presented evidence that the applicant had been suspended several times from school by 1992; that he was expelled from school after being in a gang-related fight; and, that the applicant never altered his behavior while attending school before he was permanently removed (R. XXXIV – 64-9).
39. The Court finds that, during the punishment phase of the applicant's trial, the State presented evidence that the applicant was referred as a juvenile on a weapons charge after he was detained as a result of an auto theft and after he was found in possession of a .38 revolver on January 4, 1992 (R. XXIV – 110-54), and that the applicant was charged with the offense of carrying a weapon on July 18, 1992, after a .38 weapon was found partially under the applicant's car seat on the floorboard of the car next to two live rounds of .38 SP ammunition, a more powerful round than a normal .38 round (R. XXXIV – 17981)
40. The Court finds that, during the punishment phase of the applicant's trial, the State presented evidence that the police talked to the applicant outside of the emergency room at Memorial Northwest Hospital after the applicant and Peter Cantu accompanied the gunshot Efrain Perez to the hospital on June 6, 1993; that the applicant and Cantu were uncooperative, belligerent, abusive, sarcastic and vulgar; and, that the applicant changed his story concerning the shooting several times (R. XXXIV – 197, 216-8).
41. The Court finds that, during the punishment phase of the applicant's trial, the State presented evidence that a shank was found during a search of the applicant's one-man cell in the Harris County Jail on July 1, 1993 (R. XXXIV – 84-90), and that an L-shaped metal pipe, capable of causing serious bodily injury and death, with a sharpened end was also found in the mattress in the applicant's lock-down cell (R. XXXIV – 225-7).
42. The Court finds, based on the appellate record, that information, if any, that the applicant was punctual for appointments with his juvenile probation officer and did not cause his probation officer any problems is inconsequential in light of the overwhelming evidence of the applicant's prior history and in light of the brutality of the offense which the applicant committed.
43. The Court finds, based on the appellate record, that information, if any, that the applicant presented no problems for his probation officer does not establish that the applicant does well when supervised and does not establish that such evidence is indicative of the applicant's expected behavior in prison if he received a life sentence, in light of the extensive evidence showing the applicant's repeated illegal activities and inability to function in structured environments, including jail.
Second Ground – ineffective assistance of counsel re parole eligibility instruction:
44. The Court finds that, during the applicant's trial, trial counsel stated that counsel did not want the trial court to inform the jury of the applicant's parole eligibility in the event of a life sentence because counsel's previous experience in capital cases showed that polled jurors thought that a life sentence was truly a life sentence (R. V. XXVII – 12-3).
45. The Court finds that the issue of parole eligibility was not a matter for the jury's consideration at the time of the applicant's September, 1994 capital murder trial, and the trial court was not required to instruct the jury concerning parole eligibility in a capital case. Martinez v. State, 924 S.W.2d 693 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996);
Rhoades v. State, 934 S.W.2d 113 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996) (citing Smith v. State, 898 S.W.2d 838, 846 (Tex. Crim. App. 1995)).
Third Ground – Vienna Convention:
46. The Court finds that the applicant did not object pre-trial or during trial to any violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations which grants a foreign national who has been arrested, imprisoned or taken into custody a right to contact his consulate and requires the arresting government authorities to inform the individual of this right "without delay." Vienna Convention, art. 36(1)(b), 21 U.S.T. at 100-101; 595 U.N.T.S. at 292.
47. The Court finds that testimony during the applicant's trial and the applicant's statement reflect that the applicant was born in Mexico, but lived most of his life in the United States; that he spoke, read and wrote the English language; that he attended Houston public schools beginning with elementary school; that he initially did well in elementary school; that his family and friends lived in the United States; that his father had been gainfully employed since his arrival in the United States; that his mother was presently employed; and that the applicant had been employed in the United States while going to Houston schools (R. XXXV – 279-92) (R. XXX – 652, 670).
48. The Court finds that the applicant's father testified that they had lived in the United States for fifteen years and that both he and the applicant's mother had a "green card" (R. XXXV – 279-80, 288).
49. The Court finds that the applicant's school records contain the notation "516396627" under social security number for the applicant.
50. The Court finds, based on the appellate record, that there was no testimony presented during the applicant's trial that he was not a United States citizen; that the applicant told anyone during his detention that he was a Mexican national; that he requested assistance from the Mexican consulate; or, that he was prevented from requesting assistance from the Mexican consulate.
51. The Court finds that it is a reasonable inference that the applicant was familiar with the laws and procedures of the country and state in which he had lived almost his entire life and that the applicant was familiar with the criminal justice system based on his prior criminal history.
52. The Court finds that the applicant was informed of his Miranda rights prior to giving a statement admitting participation in the offense (R. XXX – 633-40) (R. XXXII – 942-5).
53. The Court finds that the Court of Criminal Appeals has held that a defendant does not have standing to advance a claim that his death sentence violated the United Nations Charter, stating that " . . . treaties operate as contracts among nations. Therefore, it is the offended nation, not an individual, that must seek redress for a violation of sovereign interests." Hinojosa v. State, No. 72,932 (Tex. Crim. App. Oct. 27, 1999).
54. The Court finds that the Court of Criminal Appeals has also held that treaties do not constitute "laws" for the purposes of TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 38.23;
specifically, that "the Vienna Convention Treaty illustrates well the proposition that Article 38.23 is not a suitable enforcement mechanism for international treaties." Rocha v. State, 16 S.W.3d 1, 19 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000).
55. The Court finds that federal courts have found that a violation of the provisions of the Vienna Convention will not require reversal of a criminal conviction or other judgment, in the absence of a showing that the defendant was actually harmed by the violation. Faulder v. Johnson, 81 F.3d 515, 520 (5th Cir. 1996), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 117 S. Ct. 487 (1997); United States v. $69,530.00 in United States Currency, 22 F.Supp.2d 593, 595 (W.D.Tex. 1998).
Fifth Ground – Brady issue:
56. The Court finds that, during the guilt-innocence phase of the applicant's trial, the State presented testimony from Joe Cantu, the brother of the applicant's codefendant Peter Cantu, and from Christina Cantu, Joe Cantu's wife, about the admissions the applicant made concerning his part in the capital murder (R. XXIX – 366373, 383-425) (R. XXX – 490-540).
57. The Court finds, according to the credible affidavit of Gail Hays, Harris County District Attorney's Office Investigator, that Hays was assigned as an investigator to the 263rd District Court during 1994; that Assistant District Attorney Marie Munier was the chief of the 263rd District Court and was the prosecutor in the trial of the applicant's co-defendant Efrain Perez at that time; that Hays talked with witnesses Christina and Joe Cantu; that Hays made no deals or agreements with Christina and Joe Cantu in exchange for their cooperation or testimony as witnesses; that Hays did not promise the Cantus any reward money in exchange for their cooperation or testimony; and, that Hays did not promise "protection" to either Christina or Joe Cantu.
58. The Court further finds, according to the credible affidavit of Gail Hays, that Hays was aware that Christina Cantu was pregnant, but Hays was not aware of any miscarriage and was never informed of any alleged beating of Christina Cantu; that Hays became aware that Joe Cantu had been arrested prior to trial when Christina Cantu telephoned Hays and gave her such information; that Hays' understanding was that Joe Cantu made a statement about "blowing up" his place of employment after having an argument at work and Joe Cantu was subsequently arrested; that Hays informed Assistant District Attorney Marie Munier of Joe Cantu's arrest either the night Hays learned he had been arrested or the next business day; that Hays had no knowledge of any events concerning Joe Cantu's arrest after that time; that Hays did not recommend a lawyer or give any lawyer's name to either Joe or Christina Cantu; that Hays made no promises concerning Joe Cantu's case; and, that Hays was not aware of the disposition of Joe Cantu's arrest until December, 1999.
59. The Court finds, according to the credible affidavit of Harris County Assistant District Attorney Marie Munier, the prosecutor in the case of the applicant's codefendant Efrain Perez, that Munier learned that Joe Cantu had been arrested prior to trial; that Munier has no specific recollection of informing Assistant District Attorneys Mark Vinson or Terry Wilson of Joe Cantu's arrest; that Munier made no deals or agreements with Joe or Christina Cantu involving their testimony in the trials or involving Joe Cantu's arrest; that Munier took no action involving Joe Cantu's arrest or the disposition of his case; that Munier was aware that Joe Cantu's case was dismissed prior to the trials of the applicant and co-defendant Efrain Perez; that Munier made no promises or assurances to either Joe or Christina Cantu concerning any reward money in exchange for their cooperation or testimony; Munier was aware that Christina Cantu was pregnant, but Munier was not aware of any miscarriage; and, that Munier was never told of any alleged beating of Christina Cantu.
60. The Court finds, according to the credible affidavit of Harris County Assistant District Attorney Mark Vinson, the prosecutor in the applicant's capital murder trial, that, Vinson did not make any deals or agreements with Joe or Christina Cantu involving their testimony in the trials; that Vinson did not promise or assure either Joe or Christina Cantu that they would receive any reward money in exchange for their cooperation and testimony; that Vinson has no specific recollection of being aware of either Joe Cantu's 1994 arrest for a misdemeanor offense or the disposition of Joe Cantu's case; that Vinson had nothing to do with the disposition of Joe Cantu's case; that Vinson has a slight recollection of being aware that Christina Cantu was pregnant, but he was never aware of any miscarriage; and, that Vinson was never told of any alleged beating of Christina Cantu.
61. The Court finds, based on official court records, that a complaint against Joe Cantu for the misdemeanor offense of terroristic threat, cause no. 9425339, Harris County Court at Law # 13, was dismissed on August 4, 1994, based on insufficient evidence; that trial testimony began in the applicant's case on September 12, 1994 (R.
XXVIII – 34); and, that Joe Cantu testified in the applicant's case on September 14, 1994 (R. XXX – 490-577). See attached complaint and motion to dismiss, cause no. 9425339.
62. The Court finds, based on the credible affidavit of Harris County Assistant District Attorney Joni Vollman, that Vollman was the chief prosecutor in Harris County Court at Law #13 in August, 1994; that Vollman signed the motion to dismiss contained in the clerk's file in the State of Texas v. Joe Cantu, cause no. 9425339, in which Cantu was charged with the misdemeanor offense of terroristic threat; that Vollman has no specific recollection as to the facts of the case in cause no. 9425339; that Vollman had some awareness that Joe Cantu was related to the defendant Peter Cantu, one of the defendant's in Elizabeth Pena and Jennifer Ertman's murders; that Vollman's vague awareness about this relationship did not influence Vollman's dismissal of the charges against Joe Cantu in cause no. 9425339; that Vollman would have specifically remembered if anyone in the Harris County District Attorney's Office had approached her, requesting, suggesting, or ordering that charges be dismissed against Joe Cantu; that Vollman states with certainty that she has no such recollection; and, that the charges against Joe Cantu in cause no. 9425339 were dismissed based on insufficient evidence. See attached March 1, 2000 affidavit of Joni Vollman.
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
First Ground – ineffective assistance of appellate counsel re Batson claim: Fourth Ground – Batson issue:
1. The trial court properly found that the State's explanations that the State exercised a peremptory strike against prospective juror Elizabeth Berry based on her two brother's criminal history, including one of the brother's being on parole and the other brother being incarcerated, and based on Berry's perception of the applicant being the underdog and the prosecutor being the attacker were racially neutral explanations logically related to the instant case. See Harris v. State, 827 S.W.2d 945, 955 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992) (holding that prosecutor's explanation in capital case that he struck venireperson because her brother was on probation for burglary was racially neutral).
2. The trial court properly found that the State's explanation that the State struck prospective juror Rafael Rodriguez, in part, because the State still did not have a full understanding of Rodriguez's position on the death penalty is supported by the ambiguity of Rodriguez's cited voir dire statements about the death penalty, and the State's explanation that the State feared that Rodriguez believed in "turning the other cheek" was a racially neutral explanation which does not violate the precepts of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712 (1986); see Cantu v. State, 842 S.W.2d 667, 688-9 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992) (holding that trial court's finding that prosecutor's reasons for striking prospective juror were racially neutral where prosecutor stated that strike was based, in part, on prospective juror's volunteer work indicating that she would be "kind-hearted"); see also Lewis v. State, 911 S.W.2d 1, 4 (Tex. Crim. App. 1995) (holding that prosecutor could exercise peremptory strikes against two prospective jurors who were not in favor of death penalty as long as strikes not made in racially discriminatory manner).
3. The applicant, in his written motion to strike the jury panel, fails to establish a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination in the State's peremptory strikes. Harris, 827 S.W.2d at 955 (holding that defendant, in order to establish prima facie case, may rely on fact that peremptories constitute jury selection practice that allows those to discriminate who are of mind to discriminate, and defendant must show this fact and other relevant circumstances raise inference that peremptories were exercised to exclude prospective jurors on basis of race).
4. In the alternative, the trial court properly found that the State's explanations for striking specific jurors were racially neutral. Wheatfall v. State, 882 S.W.2d 829, 835 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994) (holding State has burden to present neutral explanation for strike); see also Trevino v. State, 864 S.W.2d 499, 500 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993) (holding State's explanation for strike does not have to rise to level needed to justify challenge for cause).
5. The applicant fails to show that the trial court's decision that the State's strikes were racially neutral was clearly erroneous. Id. (holding appellate court may not reverse trial court's decision that State's strike is racially neutral unless trial court's decision is clearly erroneous and trial court's choice of interpretation may not be found to be clearly erroneous when evidence is susceptible to two reasonable interpretations and trial court's decision is in accord with one of these two interpretations).
6. The applicant fails to show that the trial court erred in allegedly failing to grant a Batson hearing, and the applicant fails to show that his rights under the equal protection clause, U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, were violated.
7. The applicant fails to show that appellate counsel is ineffective for not presenting on direct appeal the claim that the trial court allegedly erred in finding that the
State gave race neutral reasons for peremptory strikes and in allegedly not granting a Batson hearing. The applicant fails to show that, but for appellate counsel's alleged error, the results of the proceeding would have been different. Ex parte Butler, 884 S.W.2d 782, 783 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994) (holding that Strickland standard applies to appellate counsel as well as trial counsel).
First Ground – ineffective assistance of appellate counsel re Motion to Preclude State from Seeking Death Penalty:
8. The applicant fails to show that appellate counsel is ineffective for not advancing the meritless claim that the trial court allegedly erred in orally denying the applicant's Motion to Preclude State from Seeking the Death Penalty when the trial court allegedly granted the same written motion. See Butler, 884 S.W.2d at 783; see also Kinnamon v. State, 791 S.W.2d 84, 97 (Tex. Crim. App. 1990) (counsel not ineffective for failing to request jury charge on lesser-included of murder when the evidence did not support such charge).
Second Ground – ineffective assistance of counsel re contacting probation officer:
9. The applicant fails to show deficient performance, much less harm, in trial counsel's not contacting probation officer Guerra and not presenting punishment evidence that the applicant was allegedly punctual for appointments with his probation officer and that the applicant allegedly presented no problems for his probation officer, in light of the overwhelming evidence of the brutality of the applicant's crime, the applicant's past illegal activities, and the applicant's inability to function in the structured environments of school and jail. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052 (1984).
Second Ground – ineffective assistance of counsel re parole eligibility instruction:
10. The trial court properly did not instruct the jury as to parole eligibility and defense counsel properly did not voir dire on the issue of parole eligibility. See Martinez v. State, 924 S.W.2d 693 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996) (holding issue of parole eligibility not a matter for jury's consideration in capital murder trial); Rhoades v. State, 934 S.W.2d 113 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996) (citing Smith v. State, 898 S.W.2d 838, 846 (Tex. Crim. App. 1995)).
11. Trial counsel are not ineffective for making the reasonable, strategic decision, based on prior experience, not to request that the jury be informed and instructed concerning parole eligibility, an instruction which would make the jury aware that the eighteen-year old applicant would be eligible for parole at the relatively young age of forty-three. Ex parte Ewing, 570 S.W.2d 941 (Tex. Crim. App. 1978) (appellate court will review trial strategy only when it is without a plausible basis).
12. The applicant fails to show deficient performance, much less harm, based on trial counsels' reasonable trial strategy of not informing the jury concerning parole eligibility; thus, the applicant fails to show that his rights, pursuant to U.S. CONST. Amends. VI and XIV, were violated.
Third Ground – Vienna Convention:
13. Based on the applicant's lack of objection at trial to the alleged failure to inform him of his rights under the
Vienna Convention, the applicant is procedurally barred from presenting his habeas claim that the alleged violation of the Vienna Convention violated his constitutional rights. Hodge v. State, 631 S.W.2d 754, 757 (Tex. Crim. App. 1982); Williams v. State, 549 S.W.2d 183, 187 (Tex. Crim. App. 1977).
14. In the alternative, the applicant fails to show foreign nationality which requires notification of a foreign consulate when a "national" of the "sending state" is detained in custody. See Maldonado v. State, 998 S.W.2d 239, 246-7 (Tex. Crim. App. 1999) (holding that defendant not entitled to art. 38.23 instruction where defendant not informed of his right to consult consulate but evidence showed that defendant lived in United States many years, spoke English, had Texas driver's license, and bought car in United States and evidence did not show that defendant was a Mexican citizen).
15. In the alternative, the applicant, as a private individual, lacks standing to enforce the provisions of the Vienna Convention. Hinojosa v. State, No. 72,932 (Tex. Crim. App. Oct. 27, 1999) (holding that treaties operate as contracts among nations; thus, offended nation, not individual, must seek redress for violation of sovereign interests).
16. In the alternative, the applicant fails to show that he was harmed by any lack of notification to the Mexican consulate concerning his arrest for capital murder; the applicant was provided with effective legal representation upon the applicant's request; and, the applicant's constitutional rights were safeguarded. See and cf. Rocha v. State, 16 S.W.3d 1, 19 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000) (holding that treaties do not constitute "laws" for purpose of TEX.
CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 38.23, and Vienna Convention Treaty illustrates proposition that art. 38.23 is not suitable enforcement mechanism for international treaties).
17. The applicant fails to show that his rights, pursuant to U.S. CONST. amends. V, VI, and XIV, were violated and fails to show that any non-notification of the Mexican authorities impacted on the validity of his conviction or punishment. Ex paste Barber, 879 S.W.2d 889, 89192 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994) (holding that, in order to be entitled to habeas relief, defendant must plead and prove that complained-of error did, in fact, contribute to his conviction or punishment).
Fifth Ground – Brady issue:
18. The applicant fails to show that there was any deal between the State and Joe and Christina Cantu; thus, the applicant fails to show that the State did not disclose material evidence, i.e., a non-existent agreement between Joe and Christina Cantu in exchange for their testimony during the applicant's trial. The applicant fails to show that the State did not disclose a non-existent agreement or any alleged favorable and material information in the instant case. United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S. Ct. 2392 (1976); United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 105 S.Ct. 3375 (1985) (holding evidence is material where there is a reasonable probability that, if disclosed, result of the proceeding would have been different). The applicant fails to show that he was denied due process under U.S. CONST. amend. XIV and TEX. CONST. art. 1, § 10.
19. The applicant fails to demonstrate that his conviction was unlawfully obtained. Accordingly, it is recommended to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that relief be denied.
BY THE FOLLOWING SIGNATURE, THE COURT ADOPTS THE RESPONDENT'S PROPOSED FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW IN CAUSE NO. 675430-A.
Signed this 22nd day of January, 2001.
CAPRICE COSPER
CAPRICE COSPER Presiding Judge 339th District Court
IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TEXAS
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No. 50,191-01
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EX PARTE JOSE ERNESTO MEDELLIN
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HABEAS CORPUS APPLICATION FROM HARRIS COUNTY
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The order was entered per curiam.
ORDER
This is an application for writ of habeas corpus filed pursuant to the provisions of Art. 11.071, V.A.C.C.P.
On September 16, 1994, a jury found applicant guilty of capital murder. The jury returned answers to the punishment phase special issues and the trial court assessed punishment at death. This Court affirmed applicant's conviction on direct appeal. Medellin v. State. No. 71,977 (Tex.Cr.App. delivered March 19, 1997).
In the instant cause, applicant presents five allegations challenging the validity of his conviction and resulting sentence. The trial court has entered findings of facts and conclusions of law recommending the relief sought be denied.
This Court has reviewed the record. The trial court's findings and conclusions are supported by the record and upon such basis the relief sought by the applicant is denied.
IT IT SO ORDERED THIS 3RD DAY OF OCTOBER, 2001. Do Not Publish
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS HOUSTON DIVISION
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Civil Action No. H-01-4078
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JOSE ERNESTO MEDELLIN,
Petitioner,
– v. –
JANIE COCKRELL, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division,
Respondent.
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ORDER
Petitioner Jose Ernesto Medellin ("Medellin") filed a federal petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his capital conviction and death sentence. (Docket Entry # 12). Pending before the Court is Respondent Janie Cockrell's ("Respondent") motion for summary judgment. (Docket Entry # 16). Having considered the record, the pleadings, and the applicable law, particularly the application of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA"), the Court grants respondent's motion for summary judgment, denies Medellin's petition, and denies a Certificate of Appealability.
BACKGROUND
On September 23, 1993, a Texas grand jury indicted Medellin for his role in the capital murder of Elizabeth Pena. The evidence in the guilt/innocence phase of trial showed that on June 24, 1993, Medellin and his fellow gang members raped and killed sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Pena and her fourteen-year-old friend, Jennifer Ertman. The evidence at trial, briefly summarized, showed that, after participating in a gang initiation, Medellin and other gang members encountered the victims walking along railroad tracks at approximately 11:30 p.m. Over the next hour, the gang repeatedly and viciously raped the two girls. The testimony at trial established that Medellin participated in the rape of both victims. The gang members then strangled the two girls to death. Trial testimony established that Medellin helped strangle Elizabeth Pena with one of his shoestrings. In describing the attacks later, Medellin appeared "hyper, giggling and laughing" as he recounted his role. Medellin also bragged about deflowering one of the young girls. The only remorse Medellin showed was that he did not have a gun so that the killing would have been quicker. 1
The jury found Medellin guilty of capital murder. 2 In a separate punishment phase, the State presented evidence
1 Medellin confessed to his participation in the rape and murder of the two girls. Medellin's confession portrays a more limited involvement in the crimes than he bragged about immediately after the killings. Medellin's confession, however, indicates that he participated in the rape of Elizabeth Pena and then helped another gang member strangle her.
2 The State indicted Medellin under three different theories: capital murder of Elizabeth Pena in the course of a kidnaping; capital murder of Elizabeth Pena in the course of a robbery; and capital murder of Elizabeth Pena in the course of aggravated sexual assault. Tr. Vol. I at 6. The jury instructions provided for his conviction under any of those theories. Tr. Vol. I at 285-86. The jury returned a general verdict of guilty without specifying under which theory it convicted Medellin. Tr. Vol. I at 294.
of Medellin's violent character and criminal offenses. Medellin had a long history of violent threats and misbehavior, often associated with the possession of firearms. The State also presented evidence that Medellin had been discovered with a "shank" in his cell while incarcerated pending trial. The defense's punishment phase case focused on testimony that Medellin had a good character and on an expert's opinion that he would not be a future danger to society. The jury answered Texas' special issues in a manner requiring the imposition of a death sentence.
The Court of Criminal Appeals denied Medellin's direct appeal from his conviction and sentence on March 19, 1997. Medellin v. State, No. 71, 997 (Tex. Crim. App. Mar. 19, 1997) (unpublished). Medellin did not seek certiorari review in the United States Supreme Court.
Medellin filed a state application for habeas corpus relief. The trial habeas court held that no controverted, previously unresolved issues existed and found it unnecessary to hold an evidentiary hearing. State Habeas Record at 177. 3 On January 22, 2001, the trial court signed the State's proposed findings and conclusions recommending that habeas relief be denied. State Habeas Record at 198218. The Court of Criminal Appeals found that the record supported the lower court's findings and conclusions and, on that basis, denied relief. Ex parte Medellin, No. 50, 19101 (Tex. Crim. App. Oct. 3, 2001).
On November 28, 2001, Medellin filed a preliminary federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus through appointed counsel. (Docket Entry # 5). On July 18, 2002,
3 Judge Caprice Cosper presided over Medellin's trial and his state habeas proceedings.
Medellin amended his habeas petition. (Docket Entry # 12). Medellin's amended petition raises five grounds for habeas relief:
1. Medellin's Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel was violated by trial counsel's 4 failure to present evidence of his good behavior while on juvenile probation, trial counsel's failure to present evidence of the parole eligibility accompanying a life sentence, and appellate counsel's 5 failure to seek enforcement of a trial court order allegedly precluding the State from seeking a death sentence;
2. The State violated Medellin's rights under the Vienna Convention by not protecting his right to consular access;
3. The State violated the Fourteenth Amendment by exercising its peremptory challenges in a discriminatory manner;
4. The State failed to disclose material exculpatory information to the defense; and
5. The trial court denied Medellin an impartial jury by excluding a potential juror for her opposition to capital punishment.
Respondent seeks summary judgment on the merits of Medellin's claims. (Docket Entry # 16). Medellin has filed a response to the summary judgment motion. (Docket Entry # 24).
4 Jack Millin and Linda Mazzagatti represented Medellin at trial. For the sake of clarity, the Court will generally refer to these attorneys conjunctively as "trial counsel."
5 Randy McDonald represented Medellin on appeal. This Court will refer to him as "appellate counsel."
STANDARDS OF REVIEW
Respondent seeks summary judgment in this case. In ordinary civil cases, summary judgment is appropriate if "there is no genuine issue as to any material fact" and "the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." FED. R. Civ. P. 56(c); Rojas v. TK Communications, Inc., 87 F.3d 745, 747 (5th Cir. 1996). A petition for writ of habeas corpus is a civil action in federal court. See Archer v. Lynaugh, 821 F.2d 1094, 1096 (5th Cir. 1987). "As a general principle, Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, relating to summary judgment, applies with equal force in the context of habeas corpus cases." Clark v. Johnson, 202 F.3d 760, 764 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 831 (2000). However, "[t]he Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply in the context of habeas suits to the extent that they are not inconsistent with the Habeas Corpus Rules." Woodford v. Garceau, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 1398, 1402 (2003); see also Rule 11 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts. In habeas proceedings, a court's summary judgment review is circumscribed by the AEDPA. See Proctor v. Cockrell, 283 F.3d 726, 729-30 (5th Cir. 2002).
The intent of the AEDPA is "to prevent federal habeas 'retrials' and to ensure that state-court convictions are given effect to the extent possible under law." Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685, 693 (2002); see also Woodford ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1401 ("Congress enacted AEDPA to reduce delays in the execution of state and federal criminal sentences, particularly in capital cases."). The AEDPA "embodies the principles of federalism, comity, and finality of judgments," Evans v. Cockrell, 285 F.3d 370, 374 (5th Cir. 2002), "substantially restrict[ing] the scope of federal review of state criminal court proceedings." Montoya v.
Johnson, 226 F.3d 399,404 (5th Cir. 2000), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 1067 (2001); see also Woodford v. Visciotti, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 357, 360 (2002) ("[Section] 2254(d)'s highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings . . . demands that state court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt."). In essence, the "AEDPA was enacted, at least in part, to ensure comity, finality, and deference to state court habeas determinations by limiting the scope of collateral review and raising the standard for federal habeas relief." Robertson v. Cockrell, 324 F.3d 297, 306 (5th Cir. 2003).
The AEDPA provides that a federal habeas petition shall not be granted with respect to any claim adjudicated on the merits in state court unless the adjudication:
(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or
(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.
28 U.S.C. § 2254 (d)(1)-(2). Deference under the AEDPA differs depending on whether the state court engaged in a legal, factual, or mixed inquiry. See Gachot v. Stalder, 298 F.3d 414, 417-18 (5th Cir. 2002).
Federal courts analyze questions of law and mixed questions of law and fact under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) to determine whether the state court decision was either "contrary to" or an "unreasonable application" of Supreme Court precedent. See DiLosa v. Cain, 279 F.3d 259, 262 (5th Cir. 2002); Martin v. Cain, 246 F.3d 471, 475 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 534 U.S. 885 (2001). The Supreme Court holds that a state court decision is "contrary to" federal precedent if: (1) the state court's conclusion is "opposite to that reached by [the Supreme Court] on a question of law" or (2) "the state court decides a case differently than [the Supreme Court] has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 413 (2000); see also Bell, 535 U.S. at 698; Early v. Packer, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 362, 365 (2002). A state court may unreasonably apply federal law if it "identifies the correct governing legal rule from [the Supreme Court] cases but unreasonably applies it to the particular facts of the particular state prisoner's case" or "if the state court either unreasonably extends a legal principle from [Supreme Court] precedent to a new context where it should not apply or unreasonably refuses to extend that principle to a new context where it should apply." Williams, 529 U.S. at 407. 6
A federal habeas court's review under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) "should be on the ultimate legal conclusion that the state court reached and not on whether the state court considered and discussed every angle of the evidence." Neal v. Puckett, 286 F.3d 230, 246 (5th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 963 (2003). In reviewing the state court's substantive decision under the AEDPA,
6 An unreasonable application of federal law "is different from an incorrect application of federal law." Id. at 410. To provide relief, a federal habeas court must not only conclude that "the relevant statecourt decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Rather, that application must also be unreasonable." Id. at 411; see also Woodford, ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 361 (differentiating between an incorrect state determination and an "unreasonable application of federal law"); Valdez v. Cockrell, 274 F.3d 941, 947 (5th Cir. 2001) ("Thus, a state court application may be incorrect in our independent judgment and, yet, reasonable."), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 106 (2002).
this court focuses on " 'determining the reasonableness of the state court's 'decision,' . . . not grading their papers.' " Santellan v. Cockrell, 271 F.3d 190, 193 (5th Cir. 2001) (quoting Cruz v. Miller, 255 F.3d 77, 86 (2d Cr. 2001)), cert. denied, 535 U.S. 982 (2002); cf. Dillard v. Blackburn, 780 F.2d 509, 513 (5th Cir. 1986) (observing that "federal courts do not sit as courts of appeal and error for state court convictions"). Thus, this Court bases its analysis on "the state court's ultimate conclusion, not on its reasoning process." DiLosa, 279 F.3d at 262; Neal, 286 F.3d at 246.
The AEDPA affords deference to a state court's resolution of factual issues. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2) "a decision adjudicated on the merits in a state court and based on a factual determination will not be overturned on factual grounds unless objectively unreasonable in light of the evidence presented in the state-court proceeding[.]" Miller-El v. Cockrell, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 1029, 1043 (2003). A federal habeas court must presume the underlying factual determinations of the state court to be correct, unless the petitioner "rebut[s] the presumption of correctness by clear and convincing evidence." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1); see also Miller-El, ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S. Ct. At 1036. 7
7 The AEDPA also established strict standards limiting the availability of evidentiary hearings in federal court. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2). Medellin requests a hearing but has not shown that such a hearing is necessary to the adjudication of his claims. As the availability of an evidentiary hearing is within the discretion of this Court, see Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 420, 436 (2000) (stating that it was "Congress' intent to avoid unneeded evidentiary hearings in federal habeas corpus"); Rule 8 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases ("If it appears that an evidentiary hearing is not required, the judge shall make such disposition of the petition as justice shall require."), this Court holds that there is no need for an evidentiary hearing in this case.
Notwithstanding a petitioner's ability to show that a state court decision is erroneous under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), that does not guarantee that a petitioner is entitled to habeas relief. The language of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) "does not require federal habeas courts to grant relief reflexively." Robertson, 324 F. 3d at 306; see also Aleman v. Sternes, 320 F.3d 687, 690-91 (7th Cir. 2003) (finding that 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) does not entitle a petitioner to habeas relief). No Supreme Court case "ha[s] suggested that a writ of habeas corpus should automatically issue if a petitioner satisfies the AEDPA standard[.]" Horn v. Banks, 536 U.S. 266, 272 (5th Cir. 2002). A habeas corpus petitioner meeting his burden under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) must still comply with 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a): he must show that "he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or law and treaties of the United States." This includes a showing that any constitutional error at trial "had a 'substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict.' " Robertson, 324 F.3d at 304 (quoting Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 623 (1993)); see also Aleman, 320 F.3d at 690 ("Nothing in the AEDPA suggests that it is appropriate to issue writs of habeas corpus even though any error of federal law that may have occurred did not affect the outcome"). Habeas relief is also unavailable if it would require the creation of a new constitutional rule. See Horn, ___ U.S. at ___, 122 S. Ct. at 2151 (relying on Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989)).
ANALYSIS OF THE CASE
I. Effective Assistance of Counsel
Medellin raises three claims criticizing his trial and appellate legal representation. Medellin first argues that trial counsel's representation in the punishment phase fell below constitutional norms when counsel failed to present evidence of his good probation history. Also, Medellin faults trial counsel for not alerting the jury to the fact that he would not be eligible for parole for at least thirty-five years if given a life sentence. Medellin finally faults appellate counsel for not seeking enforcement of an apparently erroneous order precluding the State from seeking the death penalty. The Texas courts rejected each of those claims. This Court will consider their merits under the relevant legal standards.
A. Strickland standard
The proper standard for evaluating the effectiveness of counsel is reasonable performance under prevailing professional norms. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 688 (1984). In Strickland, the Supreme Court established a two-prong test for resolving ineffective assistance claims. Under that test, a defendant must show that counsel's performance was deficient and prejudicial to the defense. Id. at 687. "Failure to make the required showing of either deficient performance or sufficient prejudice defeats the ineffectiveness claim." Id. at 700. Both the performance and prejudice components of the ineffective assistance of counsel inquiry are mixed questions of law and fact. See Motley v. Collins, 18 F.3d 1223, 1226 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 960 (1994).
To establish deficient performance, the petitioner must show that "counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as the 'counsel' guaranteed . . . by the Sixth Amendment." Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687. In reviewing ineffectiveness claims "judicial scrutiny of counsel's performance must be highly deferential," and every effort must be made to eliminate "the distorting effect of hindsight." Id. at 689.
A petitioner must also show that counsel's deficient performance resulted in a reasonable probability of a different result. A reasonable probability is one that is sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome. See id. However, "an analysis focusing solely on mere outcome determination, without attention to whether the result of the proceeding was fundamentally unfair or unreliable, is defective." Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U.S. 364, 369 (1993). Thus, in addition to establishing a reasonable probability of a different result, a petitioner must demonstrate that counsel's deficient performance rendered the result of the proceeding fundamentally unfair or unreliable. See Vuong v. Scott, 62 F.3d 673, 685 (5th Cir.) (citing Lockhart, 506 U.S. at 372), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1005 (1995).
The burden of proof in a habeas corpus proceeding attacking the effectiveness of trial counsel is on the petitioner. See Montoya, 226 F.3d at 408; Jernigan v. Collins, 980 F.2d 292, 296 (5th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 508 U.S. 978 (1993). A petitioner's conclusory and speculative allegations will not suffice in this regard. See Kinnamon v. Scott, 40 F.3d 731, 734-35 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1054 (1994); Barnard v. Collins, 958 F.2d 634, 643 n.11 (5th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 1057 (1993). The Fifth Circuit has cautioned that
[a] claim of ineffective assistance of counsel must be judged with eyes directly upon the reality of the situation facing defense counsel at the time of the acts and not years later. This discipline best assures faithful application of the objective measure of whether the decisions of defense counsel are within the range of those a reasonably competent lawyer might have made under those same facts and circumstances. It also takes us far along in judging its prejudice, if that inquiry is required.
Black v. Cockrell, 314 F.3d 752, 754-55 (5th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, ___ S. Ct. ___, 2003 WL 1235155 (April 21, 2003). 8 The Court will apply the above-stated standards to Medellin's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims.
8
The Fifth Circuit's language echos [sic] the
Strickland decision:
A fair assessment of attorney performance requires that every effort be made to eliminate the distorting effects of hindsight, to reconstruct the circumstances of counsel's challenged conduct, and to evaluate the conduct from counsel's perspective at the time. . . . There are countless ways to provide effective assistance in any given case. Even the best criminal defense attorneys would not defend a particular client in the same way.
* * *
Thus, a court deciding an actual ineffectiveness claim must judge the reasonableness of counsel's challenged conduct on the facts of the particular case, viewed as of the time of counsel's conduct. . . . The court must then determine whether, in light of all the circumstances, the identified acts or omissions were outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance. . . . [T]he court should recognize that counsel is strongly presumed to have rendered adequate assistance and made all significant decisions in the exercise of reasonable professional judgment.
Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689-90; see also Williams v. Collins, 16 F.3d 626, 631 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 512 U.S. 1289 (1994).
B. Failure to present evidence of good behavior while on juvenile probation
During the punishment phase, trial counsel called several witnesses to present testimony that would support a life sentence. These witnesses included former employers, friends, and family members. Medellin also called a psychologist whose testimony suggested that Medellin would not be a future danger to society. Medellin now argues that trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by not calling his former juvenile probation officer as a witness. Medellin contends that trial counsel should have presented his probation officer's testimony to show that he would not be a danger when placed under supervision, thus encouraging the jury to answer the special issues in a manner favoring a life sentence.
Medellin fails to support this claim with competent evidence. Claims of uncalled witnesses are not favored on habeas review because they are "largely speculative." Evans, 285 F.3d at 377. A petitioner raising such claims generally leaves a court to speculate on the exact nature of an uncalled witness' putative testimony. Here, Medellin has failed to provide this Court with any reliable indication of what testimony Medellin's former probation officer would have given if called as a witness. Medellin relies on an affidavit from his state habeas investigator stating that his probation officer, Maria Guerra, told her that Medellin "came on time" and that she "never had a problem" with him. (Docket Entry # 12, Exhibit F). Essentially, Ms. Guerra allegedly told the investigator that Medellin "did what he was supposed to do." (Docket Entry # 12, Exhibit F). What Medellin's former probation officer allegedly told his habeas investigator is hearsay, and Medellin has not shown that it falls under any exception to the hearsay rule. Cf. FED R. EVID. 802; see also Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 417-18 (1993) (holding on the facts of the case that affidavits containing hearsay statements obtained eight years after the habeas petitioner's trial were not sufficient to grant habeas relief). Absent the hearsay statements in his investigator's affidavit, this Court is left with nothing but speculation concerning what a former probation officer may have added to Medellin's defense. This claim could be rejected on that basis alone.
Even assuming that the hearsay statements are reliable, Medellin fails to show an entitlement to habeas relief. The state habeas court issued several factual findings commenting on the potential impact of the putative evidence:
42. The Court finds, based on the appellate record, that information, if any, that the applicant was punctual for appointments with his juvenile probation officer and did not cause his probation officer any problems is inconsequential in light of the overwhelming evidence of the applicant's prior history and in light of the brutality of the offense which the applicant committed.
43. The Court finds, based on the appellate record, that information, if any, that the applicant presented no problems for his probation officer does not establish that the applicant does well when supervised and does not establish that such evidence is indicative of the applicant's behavior in prison if he received a life sentence, in light of the extensive evidence showing the applicant's repeated illegal activities and inability to function in structured environments, including jail.
State Habeas Record at 207, ¶¶42, 43. The state habeas court concluded that the absence of the probation evidence did not meet either prong of the Strickland analysis. State Habeas Record at 215, ¶9. That decision was neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, federal law.
Trial evidence portrayed Medellin as an extremely violent and depraved individual. The State presented extensive evidence that Medellin consistently broke the law, often in a violent manner. Medellin participated in the brutal gang rape and murder of two young girls. As noted by the Court of Criminal Appeals on direct review, "[t]he facts of the case are brutal and barbaric enough to alone support the jury's answer to the [future dangerous] special issue." Opinion on Direct Review ("Opinion") at 7. The mere fact that Medellin was prompt at his probation appointments and never caused his probation officer problems would not overcome the substantial, nearly overwhelming, evidence of his future dangerousness.
The punishment phase evidence rebuts Medellin's insistence that the probation officer's testimony could have shown that he would not be a threat in a structured environment. The State presented evidence that, while incarcerated pending trial, Medellin secreted weapons in his cell. Medellin's own actions refute any inference that he would not be violent in prison. In light of the depraved nature of the offense, his highly violent character, and his poor behavior while incarcerated, the fact that Medellin was not tardy at his probation meetings does not create a reasonable probability that the jury would not find him to be a future danger. The state court's decision was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, federal law. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). This claim is denied.
C. Failure to emphasize the parole eligibility accompanying a life sentence
Medellin also faults counsel for not making the jury aware, either through voir dire questioning or through a jury instruction, that Texas law provided for parole only after thirty-five years incarceration if the jury returned a life sentence. The trial court indicated to the defense that it would be willing to allow parole eligibility information to come before the jury. Tr. Vol. 27 at 12. Trial counsel Ms. Mazzagatti told that court that her co-counsel Mr. Millin has already articulated to the Court his reasons for not wanting to pursue the basis of informing the jurors of the 35 years because he had previously, based on his experience in six other capital murder trials, polled jurors and found that they believe that it was truly a life sentence. And so he thought as a strategy he would not proceed with the advising people on the 35 years.
Tr. Vol. 27 at 12-13. Medellin now argues that trial counsel's failure to present evidence of parole eligibility meets both prongs of the Strickland analysis.
The state habeas court held that trial counsel made a strategic decision not to inform the jury about parole eligibility. The state habeas court concluded that "[t]rial counsel are not ineffective for making the reasonable, strategic decision, based on prior experience, not to request that the jury be informed and instructed concerning parole eligibility, an instruction which would make the jury aware that the eighteen-year old applicant would be eligible for parole at the relatively young age of forty-three." State Habeas Record at 215-16, ¶ 11. 9 The state habeas court's decision was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, federal law.
Trial counsel apparently hoped to leave the jury with the impression that a life sentence meant just that – lifelong incarceration. The integrity of trial counsel's choice is reflected in concerns raised by the Fifth Circuit in other cases: that a jury's knowledge that the defendant could one day return to society may " 'predispose[ ] them to impose a death penalty.' " Woods v. Johnson, 75 F.3d 1017, 1037 (5th Cir.) (quoting King v. Lynaugh, 850 F.2d 1055, 1060 (5th Cir. 1988)), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 854 (1996). Indeed, as noted by the Fifth Circuit in another case, the petitioner's crime, and his revelry in it, leave no room for hypothesizing that a jury, faced with the information about parole for which [the petitioner] contends, would have been more lenient. If anything, given the egregious nature of this case, a suggestion to prospective jurors that [the petitioner] might return to society in [thirty-five] years could very easily have predisposed them to impose a death sentence.
King, 850 F.2d at 1061. This concern is amplified in this case due to Medellin's youth at the time of the murders. Trial counsel made a choice not to risk the chance that a jury would not view thirty-five years as an appropriate
9 The Court notes that the state habeas court erred in its mathematical computation of at what age Medellin would be eligible for parole. Nonetheless, the same principle applies whether Medellin would be released in his forties or his fifties – he could still commit a violent crime.
amount of time before parole, and thus return a death sentence.
The Supreme Court has recognized that "[i]n a State in which parole is available, how the jury's knowledge of parole availability will affect the decision whether or not to impose the death penalty is speculative, and we shall not lightly second-guess a decision whether or not to inform a jury of information regarding parole." Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154, 168 (1994). Trial counsel based his decision not to inform the jury of parole eligibility on his prior experience and on objectively defensible strategy. As Medellin failed to show that the state habeas court's decision was contrary to or an unreasonable application of federal law, this claim is denied. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). 10
D. Failure to seek enforcement on appeal of the trial court's order allegedly precluding the State from seeking a death sentence
Prior to trial, Medellin filed a "Motion to Preclude Prosecution from Seeking the Death Penalty." Tr. Vol. I at 95-107. Medellin's motion argued that Texas should not be permitted to seek the death penalty against him because
10 The state habeas court also found that Medellin failed to show that he was prejudiced by trial counsel's failure to offer evidence or question about parole eligibility. State Habeas Record at 216, ¶ 12. Medellin's response to the summary judgment motion relies on studies showing that a jury's correct knowledge of parole eligibility increases the likelihood of them imposing a life sentence. Considering the overwhelming evidence that supported a death sentence in this case, and the brutal nature of the murders, there is no reasonable probability that a jury would return a life sentence had it known about the lengthy time before Medellin would be eligible for parole.
of various perceived deficiencies in the capital sentencing statute. On September 9, 1994, the trial court held a hearing to address various pre-trial motions. There, the following interchange occurred:
Trial counsel:
Your Honor, could we start with the Motion to Declare the Texas Capital Sentencing Scheme Unconstitutional and Motion to Preclude the Imposi- tion of the Death Penalty because these will probably be –
Trial court:
That will be denied. All right. What else?
Trial counsel:
Then the next one, Your Honor, will be the Motion to Preclude the Prose- cution from Seeking the Death Pen- alty.
Trial court: That will be denied.
Tr. Vol. 27 at 9. When the trial court signed the defense's proposed order that day, however, the trial judge initialed the line indicating that the motion to preclude the death penalty had been granted. Tr. Vol. I at 108. Neither trial nor appellate counsel seized on the written order as an opportunity to avoid a capital conviction.
Medellin argues that the written order of the trial court was enforceable and should have prevented his capital prosecution. Medellin faults his appellate counsel for not identifying the existence of the challenged order in the record. Medellin contends that appellate counsel rendered ineffective assistance by not asking the Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate his death sentence because the trial court initialed the portion of his written order that would prevent his capital prosecution, even when the trial court clearly evinced on the record the intent to deny the motion.
Medellin raised this claim on state habeas review. There, the same court which presided over his trial issued the following factual finding: "The Court finds, based on its personal recollection, that the written order notation on the applicant's motion to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty is an inadvertent error." State Habeas Record at 204, ¶ 31. 11 On that basis, the court denied habeas relief. State Habeas Record at 215, ¶ 8. This conclusion is neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, federal law. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).
The state habeas court explicitly found its notation on the written order was inadvertent. This Court must presume that finding to be correct unless Medellin shows clear and convincing evidence to the contrary. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). Medellin has not produced any evidence that would suggest that the trial court intended to prevent the State from seeking a death sentence. The record itself, most particularly the interchange where the trial court orally denied the motion, supports the conclusion that the written order reflects an inadvertent error. Nothing would indicate that the trial court meant to prevent the State from seeking a death sentence.
An appellate attorney cannot be faulted for not raising meritless claims. See United States v. Kimler, 167 F.3d 889,
11 The trial court additionally found "based on the applicant's trial in which the State sought the death penalty and on the applicant's resulting death sentence, that the inadvertent error on the written order accompanying the applicant's motion to preclude the State from seeking the death penalty was rendered moot by the applicant's trial and subsequent sentence of death." State Habeas Record at 204, ¶ 33.
893 (5th Cir. 1999) ("An attorney's failure to raise a meritless argument thus cannot form the basis of a successful ineffective assistance of counsel claim because the result of the proceeding would not have been different had the attorney raised the issue."); Williams v. Collins, 16 F.3d 626, 634 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 512 U.S. 1289 (1994). "Failure to raise meritless objections is not ineffective lawyering; it is the very opposite." Clark v. Collins, 19 F.3d 959, 966 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 966 (1994); see also Green v. Johnson, 160 F.3d 1029, 1037 (5th Cir. 1998) ("[F]ailure to make a frivolous objection does not cause counsel's performance to fall below an objective level of reasonableness . . . "), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1174 (1999). The trial court obviously made an inadvertent mistake in signing the order upon which Medellin now relies. Appellate counsel had no chance of crafting that into a viable, meritorious appellate argument. The state habeas court's rejection of this claim was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, federal law. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). This claim is denied.
II. Vienna Convention
Medellin is a citizen of Mexico. Medellin contends that he was never given consular access before, during, or after his trial. Medellin maintains that this denial of consular assistance violated his rights under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, May 22, 1969, art. 31(1), 8 I.L.M. 4 (1969) ("Vienna Convention"). Because of this denial, Medellin asks this Court to order that a new trial be held.
Medellin presented this claim on state habeas review. The state habeas court held that Medellin failed to object to the violation of the Vienna Convention at trial. On that basis, the state habeas court concluded that his failure to properly preserve the claim waived his right to assert the claim on post-conviction review. State Habeas Record at 210, ¶ 13. 12 Respondent argues that the state habeas court's reliance on an independent and adequate state procedural rule, i.e., Texas' contemporaneous objection rule, bars federal consideration of Medellin's Vienna Convention claim.
The Fifth Circuit "has consistently held that the Texas contemporaneous objection rule constitutes an adequate and independent state ground that procedurally bars federal habeas review of a petitioner's claims." Fisher v. State, 169 F.3d 295, 300 (5th Cir. 1999); see also Sharp v. Johnson, 107 F.3d 282, 285-86 (5th Cir. 1997); Nichols v. Scott, 69 F.3d 1255, 1280 n.48 (5th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 518 U.S. 1022 (1996); Amos v. Scott, 61 F.3d 333, 345 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1005 (1995). Medellin, however, argues that Vienna Convention claims are exempt from the constrains of the procedural default doctrine.
In Breard v. Greene, 523 U.S. 371 (1998), the Supreme Court considered the effect of the procedural default doctrine on a prisoner's Vienna Convention claim. Recognizing that federal courts "should give respectful consideration to the interpretation of an international treaty
12 The state habeas court also considered the merits of Petitioner's Vienna Convention claim. A state court's alternative adjudication of a claim on the merits does not vitiate the validity of its procedural bar. See Corwin v. Johnson, 150 F.3d 467, 473 (5th Cir.) ("It is clear in this Circuit that alternative rulings do not operate to vitiate the validity of a procedural bar that constitutes the primary holding."), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1049 (1998).
rendered by an international court," the Supreme Court nonetheless found that, "absent a clear and express statement to the contrary, the procedural rules of the forum State govern the implementation of the treaty in that State." Id. at 375. 13 The Supreme Court held that the procedural default doctrine could bar consideration of a Vienna Convention claim. See id. at 375-76. The Supreme Court supported this finding by recognizing that the procedural default doctrine applied is even to claims brought under the United States Constitution – a document " 'on full parity with a treaty.' " Id. ay [sic] 376 (quoting Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 8 (1957)). The Supreme Court also expressed doubt that any Vienna Convention claim could be successful absent "some showing that the violation had an effect on the trial." Breard, 523 U.S. at 377 (citing Arizona v. Fulminate, [sic] 499 U.S. 279 (1991)). The Breard decision would allow Medellin's failure to comply with Texas' contemporaneous objection rule to bar federal review of this claim.
Medellin, however, argues that a case decided in the International Court of Justice ("ICJ") abrogates reliance on a procedural bar in rejecting Vienna Convention claims. In the LaGrand Case (Germany v. United States), 2001 I.C.J. 104, the ICJ found that the procedural default rule itself did not violate the Vienna Convention. See LaGrand
13 The Supreme Court noted that "[t]his proposition is embodied in the Vienna Convention itself, which provides that the rights expressed in the Convention 'shall be exercised in conformity with the laws and regulations of the receiving State,' provided that 'said laws and regulations must enable full effect to be given to the purposes for which the rights accorded under this Article are intended.' " Breard, 523 U.S. at 375 (quoting Article 36(2), [1970] 21 U.S. T., at 101]).
Case, 2001 I.C.J. 104, at ¶ 90. 14 The ICJ, however, condemned the application of the procedural default rule when "it prevent[ed] 'full effect [from being] given to the purposes for which the rights accorded under [the Vienna Convention] are intended." Id. at ¶ 91. The ICJ held that, because of "the failure of the American authorities to comply with their obligation" under the Vienna Convention, "the procedural default rule prevented [LaGrand] from attaching any legal significance" to the State's violation of the Vienna Convention. Id. According to Medellin, the effect of the LaGrand Case is that "procedural default rules may not be invoked to deny meritsbased review of [a Vienna Convention] violation." (Docket Entry # 24 at 21).
Medellin forfeited consideration of his Vienna Convention claim by failing to comply with an adequate and independent state procedural rule. The Supreme Court has long held that such procedural rules bar federal consideration of defaulted claims, except under narrow exceptions. Medellin's reliance on the LaGrand Case would create a wholesale exception to procedural limitations when a petitioner raises Vienna Convention claims – potentially invalidating well-settled law such as the AEDPA's insistence on the exhaustion of remedies and the timely presentation of claims. The concerns of comity, federalism, and finality of state judgements suggest that this Court refrain from jettisoning the procedural bar doctrine until the Supreme Court reconciles its caselaw
14 The ICJ previously entered an order requiring the United States to ensure that LaGrand was not executed. Arizona executed LaGrand in 1999. The ICJ did not enter its final judgment in the LaGrand Case until 2001.
with the ICJ action in the LaGrand Case. This Court is simply wary of finding that the ICJ overruled entrenched Supreme Court precedent. 15
Even if this Court were to consider the merits of the claim, Medellin is not entitled to federal habeas relief The state habeas court found that Medellin "as a private individual, lacks standing to enforce the provisions of the Vienna Convention." State Habeas Record at 216, ¶ 15. Federal law supports the state habeas court's rejection of this claim. The preamble to the Vienna Convention explains that it is "not to benefit individuals but to ensure the efficient performance of functions by consular posts on behalf of their respective States. . . . " On that basis, the Fifth Circuit has refused to recognize that the Vienna Convention "creates judicially enforceable rights of consultation between a detained foreign national and his consular office." United States v. Jimenez-Nava, 243 F.3d 192, 198 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 533 U.S. 962 (2001). 16 If this
15 The wisdom in this approach is suggested by the fact that the Supreme Court refused to stay LaGrand's execution, notwithstanding the fact that the ICJ ordered the United States to "take all measures at its disposal to ensure that [LaGrand] is not executed pending the final decision in these proceedings." LaGrand Case, 2001 I.C.J. 104, at 32. The Supreme Court's refusal to stay LaGrand's execution raises substantial questions concerning its own view of the ICJ's ability to intrude in American legal proceedings.
16 In Beard [sic], the Supreme Court considered whether the Vienna Convention provided a private, enforceable right. Finding the claim procedurally barred, the Supreme Court did not directly rule on the claim. While the Supreme Court noted that the Vienna Convention "arguably confers on an individual the right to consular assistance following arrest[,]" the Supreme Court left the resolution of that issue to the lower courts. 523 U.S. at 376. Since 1970, the United States Department of State has interpreted the Vienna Convention as not creating enforceable individual rights. See United States v. Li, 206 F.3d 56, 63 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 956 (2000). The federal circuit (Continued on following page)
Court were to recognize that the Vienna Convention created a personally-enforceable right, such a finding would create a new rule of law, violating the nonretroactivity principle of Teague v. Lane. See Flores v. Johnson, 210 F.3d 456, 457-58 (5th Cir. 2000) (finding that any recognition of enforceable, individual rights under the Vienna Convention would amount to a new rule of law in violation of Teague's non-retroactivity principle), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 987 (2000). The ICJ's rejection of the procedural default doctrine in Vienna Convention cases did not purport to overrule the Supreme Court's weighty Teague jurisprudence. This Court, therefore, cannot grant habeas relief on Petitioner's Vienna Convention claim.
Even if procedural law and non-retroactivity principles did not mandate the denial of this claim, and the Court were to assume that the Vienna Convention created an enforceable right, Petitioner would have to show concrete, non-speculative harm for the denial of his consular rights. See Breard, 523 U.S. at 377; Faulder v. Johnson, 81 F.3d 515, 520 (5th Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 995 (1996). When a Vienna Convention claim is "properly raised and proven, it is extremely doubtful that the
courts that have considered the issue have generally refused to address the merits of the question, instead finding that the defendant failed to demonstrate prejudice or sought an unavailable remedy. See United States v. De La Pava, 268 F.3d 157, 164-66 (2nd Cir. 2001); United States v. Minjares-Alvarez, 264 F.3d 980, 986-88 (10th Cir. 2001); United States v. Page, 232 F.3d 536, 540 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 935 (2001); United States v. Lawal, 231 F.3d 1045, 1048 (7th Cir. 2000); United States v. Chanthadara, 230 F.3d 1237, 1255 (10th Cir. 2000), cert. denied, 122 S. Ct. 457 (2001); United States v. Cordoba-Mosquera, 212 F.3d 1194, 1196 (11th Cir. 2000), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 1131 (2001). No circuit court has held that the Vienna Convention creates valid, enforceable individual rights.
violation should result in the overturning of a final judgment of conviction without some showing that the violation had an effect on the trial." Breard, 523 U.S. at 377. Medellin contends that the Mexican Consular would have taken immediate steps to secure representation for him and would have advised him not to confess to the rape and murder of the two young girls.
The state habeas court, however, found that Petitioner "fail[ed] to show that he was harmed by any lack of notification to the Mexican consulate concerning his arrest for capital murder; [Medellin] was provided with effective legal representation upon [his] request; and, [his] constitutional rights were safeguarded." State Habeas Record at 217, ¶ 16. Petitioner has not shown that this determination was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, federal law. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Medellin's allegations of prejudice are speculative. The police officers informed Medellin of his right to legal representation before he confessed to involvement in the murders. Medellin waived his right to advisement by an attorney. Medellin does not challenge the voluntary nature of his confession. There is no indication that, if informed of his consular rights, Medellin would not have waived those rights as he did his right to counsel. Medellin fails to establish a "causal connection between the [Vienna Convention] violation and [his] statements." United States v. Ortiz, 315 F.3d 873, 886 (8th Cir. 2002). Petitioner has failed to show prejudice for the Vienna Convention violation. 17 This claim is denied.
17 Furthermore, Petitioner has not demonstrated that a new trial would be an appropriate remedy under the Vienna Convention. The Vienna Convention does not articulate a specific remedy for its (Continued on following page)
III. Batson Claim
Medellin claims that the State violated his constitutional rights through the discriminatory use of peremptory challenges. Medellin first raised the issue of discrimination when the State used a peremptory challenge to excuse potential juror Elizabeth Ann Berry. Medellin raised a Batson 18 challenge, contending that the State only struck Ms. Berry because she was an African-American woman. Tr. Vol. 20 at 227. After Medellin raised the Batson challenge, the following exchange occurred:
Trial court:
Mr. Millin, that's plenty. If you want to put something in rebuttal, that's fine. But there's a Batson challenge on the table. Mr. Vinson, do you want to go ahead and – I will ask that the State, regardless of a prima facie showing, put its explanation on the record at this time because its fresh in everybody's mind. Mr. Millin, if you want to reurge your Batson
violation. See Jimenez-Nava, 243 F.3d at 199. Federal courts generally hold that Vienna Convention violations do not require the dismissal of an indictment or the suppression of evidence. See De La Pava, 268 F.3d at 164-66; Page, 232 F.3d at 540-41; Cordoba-Mosquera, 212 F.3d at 1195-96; Li, 206 F.3d at 61-62. The Fifth Circuit has held that reversal is not an appropriate remedy when trial counsel had access to the same information as consular officials. See Faulder, 81 F.3d at 520. The Fifth Circuit has also rejected the suggestion that the exclusionary rule should prevent the introduction of confessions taken in violation of the Vienna Convention. See Jimenez-Nava, 243 F.3d at 197-98. No court has reversed a capital conviction or set aside a death sentence on the basis of a Vienna Convention violation. This Court questions its ability to overturn Medellin's conviction and sentence under the Vienna Convention, especially in light of his failure to demonstrate prejudice.
18 Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).
motion at a later time. The jury (sic) is not clearly the reason of selecting a capital murder jury.
The State:
I guess the main issue and problem that I have with Ms. Berry is that she has two brothers of which both have been involved in drugs. Both have been to the penitentiary. One, I think, has been on numerous occasions, she testified to. And I think one is released on parole at this time and one is in custody at the penitentiary at this time as well. Moreover, I did not feel comfortable with Mrs. Berry's characterization of the prosecutors as on the attack and defense attorneys as being the underdog. And throughout this trial, I would have a perception in my mind to present my case to Mrs. Berry, she's looking at the defendant as the underdog and I'm the one on attack, like a wild mongrel.
Tr. Vol. 20 at 227-28. The prosecutor also provided relevant personal information relating to his choice of strikes:
The State:
Moreover, your Honor, the record as [sic] been silenced on my color. The prosecutor in this case, I would like the record to reflect is a black prosecutor and has an appreciation of blacks serving on juries, having grown up during the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90 –
Trial court:
Are you saying you're an old black prosecutor?
The State: That's right.
Trial court:
Let the record reflect that Mr. Vin- son is African American and he is old. However, he is
The State: And youthful in appearance.
Trial court:
However, he looks much younger than his years.
Tr. Vol. 20 at 228-29. In rebuttal, the defense argued that Mrs. Berry expressed an ability to be impartial notwithstanding her brothers' criminal record. Tr. Vol. 20 at 229. The trial court then denied the Batson challenge to Mrs. Berry as follows:
Trial court:
Let me state that I do not believe that there's a prima facie showing that's been made at this time. However, I find based on observing Ms. Berry's demeanor and her responses and viewing her questionnaire, that Mr. Vinson's reason[s] proffered are racial, neutral reasons. At this time, I will deny any Batson motion. If you'd like to, Mr. Millin, reurge your Batson challenge at the end of the jury selection, I will reconsider it at that time as well. However, let the record reflect at this time – still at this time, our nine-man jury is comprised of a black female, a Hispanic male, a Hispanic female, a black male. . . . And so there's no indication of gender bias. There are – the composition of males to females are a black female, a white female, a Hispanic female, a white female; and with regard to
men, Hispanic male, a white male, a black male, and a second white male.
Tr. Vol. 20 at 230-3 1.
Medellin next raised a peremptory challenge when the State excused potential juror Rafael Rodriguez with a peremptory strike. The trial court found that Medellin made a prima facie case for the purposes of Batson by noting that the potential juror was Hispanic and had generally stated that he could be impartial. Tr. Vol. 21 at 117. The State then explained the motivation for striking Mr. Rodriguez:
The State:
My reason for striking Mr. Rodriguez is there was a great deal of hesitation with his explanation on the death penalty when he was speaking with you. He's also for the death penalty without any compulsion whatsoever if it happened to one of his relatives. I still do not have a full understanding of his position on the death penalty. With respect to the question I asked him, he gave me a philosophical – he gave a theological and Biblical and his own philosophy. One of the things put me on edge, turning the cheek, you turning the other cheek. That goes back to the philosophy if you're slapped, you turn the other cheek. I'm afraid he may be looking to turn the other cheek in this case, and I don't want it turned in my favor.
Tr. Vol. 21 at 117-18. The trial court found that to be a race-neutral explanation and denied the Batson challenge. Tr. Vol. 21 at 118.
After the parties selected the jury panel, Medellin filed a "Motion to Strike Jury Panel." Tr. Vol. I at 260. According to Medellin's count, the State struck eight men and five women. Five of those excluded [sic] white, six were black, and two were Hispanic. 19 Medellin argued that the State based its voir dire strategy on removing minorities and men from the jury panel.
On August 17, 1994, the trial court discussed Medellin's motion to strike the panel in a pretrial hearing. In that hearing, the defense asked the court to quash the entire panel because the State allegedly used its peremptory challenges in a discriminatory manner. Tr. Vol. 26 at 11-12. The State responded to that allegation:
The State: Your Honor, I think the record will reflect too the final disposition of that jury again is a melting pot jury. And while the State exercised those strikes, I think it was 13 – I don't have mine with me right now. But those are all race neutral strikes.
19 In his motion, Medellin noted that the State exercised its peremptory challenges against the following prospective jurors: Kirven O'Neal Tillis, a black male; Mary Freeman, a white female; Kathy Felder, a black female; Bernard Richardson, a black male; Walter Wynn Martin, a white male; Andra McCoy, a black male; Marie Clark, a white female; Vastine Dickie, a black male; Christine Rossie, a white female; Raford Earl Gresham, a white male; Porfirio Rodriguez, a hispanic male; Elizabeth Ann Berry, a black female; and Rafael Rodriguez, a hispanic male. Tr. Vol. I at 264.
Tr. Vol. 26 at 12-13. At that point, the trial court went off the record. The record from that hearing does not reflect any further on-the-record discussion of the Batson issue. On August 19, 1994, the trial court entered a written order denying Medellin's motion to strike the jury panel. Tr. Vol. I at 267.
A. Claim raised on direct review
On direct appeal, Medellin raised a single Batson claim. Medellin argued that the State violated the equal protection clause with respect to the peremptory strike of Mr. Rodriguez. 20 The Court of Criminal Appeals recognized that the trial court found that Medellin made a prima facie case for discrimination. Opinion at 12. The Court of Criminal Appeals then noted that the State gave a raceneutral explanation for the challenge to Mr. Rodriguez: that his opinion on the death penalty would not make him an attractive juror for the State. Opinion at 12. The Court of Criminal Appeals found that
20 Medellin raised this claim under Batson and under the relevant state statute prohibiting the use of race-based peremptory challenges. While the Court of Criminal Appeals found that Medellin failed to preserve error on his state law claim, the Court of Criminal Appeals considered the merits of his Batson argument. Apparently anticipating that Respondent would rely on the procedural default doctrine to bar this claim, Medellin now argues that appellate counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to present a broad Batson claim on direct review. Medellin has not shown that he was prejudiced by this failure. Aside from the fact that he fails to show that a Batson violation actually existed, Medellin presented the Batson claim on state habeas review where it received full consideration by the Court of Criminal Appeals. The state habeas court rejected that claim. There is no reason to suppose that the claim would have fared better on direct review. Medellin fails to show Strickland prejudice with respect to the ineffective-assistance-of appellate counsel nuance of his Batson claim.
[t]he trial court accepted these reasons as raceneutral and appellant made no attempt to rebut the explanations given or otherwise explain why they were only pretexts for discrimination. A review of the entirety of the veniremember's voir dire reveals that the prosecutor's reasons were supported by the record. Given this, we cannot say that the judge's ruling in this instance was clearly erroneous.
Opinion at 12.
Medellin renews his Batson claim against Mr. Rodriguez in his federal petition. Medellin argues that the lack of clarity in Mr. Rodriguez's opinion on the death penalty does not provide a race-neutral basis for a peremptory strike. Medellin argues that the trial court should have required additional questioning of Mr. Rodriguez. The record indicates, however, that the peremptory strike of Mr. Rodriguez complied with the Supreme Court's Batson jurisprudence.
Under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the State violates the equal protection clause when it challenges potential jurors solely on the basis of race. A court addresses Batson claims under a three-step burden shifting scheme:
[t]he process for evaluating an objection under Batson requires that (1) a defendant make a prima facie showing that the prosecutor has exercised his peremptory challenges on the basis of race, (2) the burden then shifts to the prosecutor to articulate a race-neutral reason for excusing the juror in question, and (3) the trial court must determine whether the defendant has carried his burden of proving purposeful discrimination.
Thompson v. Cain, 161 F.3d 802, 810-11 (5th Cir. 1998); see also United States v. Montgomery, 210 F.3d 446, 453 (5th Cir. 2000); United States v. Bentley-Smith, 2 F.3d 1368, 1373 (5th Cir. 1993). " 'The 'shifting burden' described in the Batson framework is one of production only.' The party asserting the claim of purposeful discrimination always shoulders the ultimate burden of persuasion." Soria v. Johnson, 207 F.3d 232, 239 (5th Cir.) (quoting BentleySmith, 2 F.3d at 1373), cert. denied, 530 U.S. 1286 (2000); see also Lockett, 230 F.3d at 707 (citing Batson and stating that "[t]he burden of demonstrating that a constitutional violation occurred is, or [sic] course, on a habeas petitioner.").
In the instant case, the trial court called on the State to provide a race-neutral explanation for the use of the peremptory strike against Mr. Rodriguez. "Once a court has taken that step, we no longer examine whether a prima facie case exits." United States v. Webster, 162 F.3d 308, 349 (5th Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 829 (1999). This Court's "decision, then, must rest on (1) whether the government articulated race-neutral explanations for the exercise of its challenges and (2) whether [the petitioner] has demonstrated that those justifications are pre-textual and that the government engaged in purposeful discrimination." Id.
As previously noted, the State offered several reasons for its peremptory strike of Mr. Rodriguez that were not based on his race. Under the second part of the Batson burden-shifting scheme, "[u]nless a discriminatory intent is inherent in the prosecutor's explanation, the reason offered will be deemed race neutral." Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765, 768 (1995) (finding the prosecution's explanation that the potential juror had long hair and a beard to be a sufficient race-neutral explanation for the purposes of the second step of the Batson analysis); see also Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 359-60 (1991). 21 "In such cases, a 'legitimate reason' is not a reason that makes sense, but a reason that does not deny equal protection." Id.; see also Miller-El, ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1040 ("In that instance the issue comes down to whether the trial court finds the prosecutor's race-neutral explanations to be credible.").
Medellin now disputes the reasons proffered by the State, pointing to Mr. Rodriguez's testimony in an attempt to show that the State's reasons were baseless or warranted further questioning. "[T]he ultimate inquiry for the judge is not whether counsel's reason is suspect, or weak, or irrational, but whether counsel is telling the truth in his or her assertion that the challenge is not race-biased." Bentley-Smith, 2 F.3d at 1375. In Batson the Supreme Court noted that the finding of intentional discrimination is a factual finding that "largely will turn on evaluation of credibility." Batson, 476 U.S. at 98 n.21. In making such determinations, the trial court evaluates the State's explanation, but also observes the demeanor of the prosecutor and the prospective jurors. See Jones v. Butler, 864 F.2d 348, 369 (5th Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1075 (1989) Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 365 (stating that "the best
21 "Under Batson, a prosecutor's explanation for a peremptory strike need not rise to the level of a challenge for cause; rather, it merely must contain a clear and reasonably specific articulation of legitimate reasons for the challenge." United States v. Clemons, 941 F.2d 321, 325 (5th Cir. 1991). At the second step, the "race-neutral explanation tendered by the proponent need not be persuasive, or even plausible." United States v. Huey, 76 F.3d 638, 641 (5th Cir. 1996). Indeed, the explanation "simply must be race-neutral and honest." Webster, 162 F.3d at 349.
evidence often will be the demeanor of the attorney who exercises the challenge"). "Credibility can be measured by, among other factors, the prosecutor's demeanor; by how reasonable, or how improbable, the explanations are; and by whether the proffered rationale has some basis in accepted trial strategy." Miller-El, ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1040. In essence, "the decisive question will normally be whether a proffered race-neutral explanation should be believed." Bently-Smith [sic], 2 F.3d at 1373.
A state court's credibility determinations are afforded "significant deference" on federal review, especially in light of the AEDPA. See Miller-El, ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1041. 22 Under the AEDPA, a petitioner bears the substantial burden of showing that a state court erred in its credibility determination. See id. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1041-42. This Court is bound by the factual findings of the Court of Criminal Appeals unless Medellin can demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the presumption of correctness should not apply. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1).
Under Batson's final step, Medellin ultimately bears the burden of establishing that the government engaged in "purposeful discrimination" based on race. Purkett, 514 U.S. at 767; Bentley-Smith, 2 F.3d at 1373. Here, Medellin "offers no direct evidence of purposeful discrimination, but rather argues that the government's proffered reasons are pretextual. . . . " Id. Medellin attempts to prove his case by demonstrating an absence of record support for the
22 This deference does not suggest an abdication of judicial review. See Miller-El, ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1041. A federal court may reject a state credibility finding so long as a petitioner complies with the AEDPA's stringent standards. See id at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1041.
reasons offered by the State; however, even if the reasons advanced by the State are only weakly supported by the record, the thrust of this Court's analysis concerns the State's intent in seeking the peremptory strike. See BentlySmith [sic], 2 F.3d at 1373-74 (stating that as a general rule, "[t]here will seldom be any evidence that the claimant can introduce – beyond arguing that the explanations are not believable or pointing out that similar claims can be made about non-excluded jurors who are not minorities"). While Medellin now asks this Court to find that the reasons advanced by the State during jury selection were pre-textual, he must also demonstrate that the State engaged in purposeful discrimination on the basis of race or gender. The record supports a finding that the State did not exercise its peremptory challenge on account of race or gender. The State struck Mr. Rodriguez for his opinion on the death penalty. That excuse is sufficiently race-neutral to survive a Batson challenge.
After a review of the record, this Court finds Medellin has not demonstrated why the deference to the trial judge's implicit determination concerning the prosecution's intent should be called into doubt. Accordingly, Medellin has not provided clear and convincing evidence that the state court findings were incorrect. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). Medellin has also failed to demonstrate that the state court's decision rejecting the Batson claim against Mr. Rodriguez was "an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence. . . . " 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2).
B. Claim raised on state habeas review
On state habeas review, Medellin raised the expansive Batson claim which he now presents in his federal petition. As opposed to the challenge to Mr. Rodriguez's dismissal raised on direct review, Medellin's state habeas claim broadly challenged the State's motive in exercising all of its peremptory challenges. Medellin argued that he made a prima facie showing that the State's practice in jury selection was to remove all African American and male jurors. To establish the alleged pattern of discriminatory strikes, Medellin relied only on the fact that the State used six of its thirteen peremptory strikes to remove minority potential jurors and also used eight to excuse men, resulting in a pattern of discriminatory strikes. Medellin also criticized the trial court for not making the State provide a race-neutral reason for each of those strikes when he raised the issue after the impanelment of the jury.
The state habeas court rejected this claim. The state habeas court first reviewed the voir dire of Elizabeth Ann Berry, the only potential juror other than Mr. Rodriguez specially identified by Medellin on habeas review as being subject to a discriminatory strike. The state habeas court found that the State's explanation for striking Ms. Berry, that she had brothers who were incarcerated and displayed a manner favoring the defense, was race neutral. State Habeas Record at 199, ¶¶ 5-9, 11. The state habeas court also relied heavily on the prosecutor's credibility. The state habeas court noted that the prosecutor was himself black. State Habeas Record at 200, ¶10. The state habeas court specifically noted previous cases in which the prosecutor had exercised peremptory challenges without discriminatory motive. State Habeas Record at 202-03, ¶¶ 25-26.
The state habeas court concluded that Medellin's motion in which he merely described the composition of the peremptory strikes failed to establish a prima facie case of discrimination. State Habeas Record at 213, ¶ 3. The state habeas court found that the prosecution employed racially-neutral strikes. State Habeas Record at 214, ¶¶ 4-5. Accordingly, the state habeas court also found that appellate counsel's failure to raise a broad Batson claim on direct review did not violate Medellin's constitutional rights. State Habeas Record at 214, ¶ 7.
The state habeas court's decision on this issue was not unreasonable in light of the facts of this case. Medellin based his arguments to the trial court only on an alleged pattern of strikes used by the State. Those strikes, however, did not demonstrate a markedly disproportionate application against members of a particular racial group or gender. The composition of the jury in this case does not suggest the exclusion of a cognizable group. The state habeas court found that Medellin did not make a prima facie case for discrimination; this Court agrees. 23
23 Medellin argues that he made a prima facie case for discriminatory intent, but also claims that the State did not provide any raceneutral explanation for its strikes. Generally, once a State provides a race-neutral explanation the question of whether a defendant has made a prima facie case becomes moot. See Ladd v. Cockrell, 311 F.3d 349, 355 (5th Cir. 2002). Here, the trial court did not ask the State to explain its strikes; the State addressed the defense's objection on its own initiative. Tr. Vol. 26 at 12. The State's explanation, that the jury represented a "melting pot," challenged the establishment of a prima facie case.
After the State challenged the defense's prima facie case, the trial court went off the record. The record is silent as to whether the trial court and the parties continued discussing the Batson challenge. Medellin has not provided affidavit or other evidence that would indicate what transpired during the off-the-record discussion. The discussion, however, is of no moment. Medellin has failed to make a prima facie case of discrimination, both in state and federal court. While a Batson challenge may rest on either the discrete circumstances of a particular strike or a showing of historic, systemic discrimination, see Batson, 476 U.S. at 96, Medellin only shows that, while accepting minority and male jurors, the State struck some AfricanAmericans and men. He has not shown a "pattern of strikes" against a protected group. See id. at 97. The absence of a pattern is evident from the fact that at least four minorities and an equal number of men and women served as jurors at trial.
The state court also made a credibility determination that must be presumed correct under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). The state habeas court, based on its experience with the prosecutor and on its observation of the proceedings, found that the State did not engage in discrimination. Medellin makes no showing to the contrary. The record before the Court would suggest that the state determination is correct. The state court's rejection of this claim was not unreasonable. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). This claim is denied.
IV. Brady Claim
Medellin contends that the State failed to disclose material evidence before trial. Medellin argues that the
State violated his constitutional rights by not disclosing the fact that one witness at trial, Joe Cantu, had previously been arrested for an unrelated charge that had been dropped. Medellin assumes that the State dropped the charges in exchange for his trial testimony. Also, Medellin argues that the State failed to disclose important impeachment evidence by not passing along the fact that Joe Cantu and his wife unsuccessfully sought compensation and protection from the police in return for their testimony.
A. Background
Before trial, Medellin requested that the State turn over any exculpatory evidence, including "[a]ny 'deals,' whether expressly written or implied, to any individual who agrees to testify for the State in this case." Tr. Vol. I at 44, 67-74. In an August 17, 1994, pre-trial hearing, the State agreed to "run out of an abundance of precaution the criminal records of any witnesses." Tr. Vol. 26 at 28. The trial court also ordered the State to provide the defense with information about any witness' "final convictions and felonies," along with any witness' placement on deferred adjudication. Tr. Vol. 26 at 29. The, trial court then questioned the need for disclosure of arrest records:
Trial court:
Why would arrest records be rele- vant?
Trial counsel:
Well, Your Honor, it could possibly go to any kind of agreements that could possibly have been made. I certainly don’t believe there are any.
Trial court: You have a separate motion for that?
App. 108
Trial counsel:
Right. But that's why it could possibly be relevant in this motion as well.
Trial court: Well, the arrest records I don't beDistrict Attorney's Office. So articu- lieve are relevant except and to the extent that they provide the basis for some type of an agreement by the late some reason why they might be or some bias
Trial counsel: In other words, if somebody has a case dismissed in order that he might testify.
Trial court: I think your Motion to Disclose or to Reveal the Agreements –
Trial counsel: That covers – that should cover it.
Trial counsel: So then denied as to the arrest records and granted as to the conviction records, is that correct?
Trial court:
Yes. And the conviction includes things like deferred adjudication and probation and, of course, your Brady Motion covers all of this. So if there is something that is somehow exculpatory about an arrest –
Trial counsel: The State's witness –
Trial court: Right. Or if it reveals some type of bias on the part of the witness, I expect that it should be disclosed under –
Trial counsel: Under Brady.
The State: Okay.
Trial court: Okay.
Tr. Vol. 26 at 30-31. In that hearing, the parties also discussed the fact that the State had assured that it made no agreements with the witnesses in this case. Tr. Vol. 26 at 32-33.
On state habeas review, Medellin claimed that the State failed to disclose the arrest of Joe Cantu for making terroristic threats. 24 At trial, Joe Cantu and his wife Christina related statements made to them by Medellin after he participated in the rape and murder of the two young victims. Joe and Christina Cantu's testimony helped establish Medellin's precise role in the girls' death. Trial counsel asked Joe Cantu at trial whether he had entered into any deal in exchange for his testimony:
Trial counsel:
Have you, Mr. Cantu, received any- thing from the State in the way of any assistance, anything like that, to secure your presence as a witness?
Mr. Cantu: I don't understand your question.
Trial counsel:
Have you been given anything by the State in order for you to be available to testify?
Mr. Cantu:
Just that I won’t be prosecuted for anything that I say.
Trial counsel
And did the State talk to you about the possibility of you being prose- cuted for you pawning that stolen necklace?
Mr. Cantu: No.
24 Joe Cantu was the brother of one of Medellin's co-defendants and a former member of Medellin's gang.
Trial counsel:
They did make an agreement not to prosecute you if you did testify?
Mr. Cantu: They didn't say nothing about that.
The State: We made no agreement with this –
Trial court: Approach the bench.
(W HEREUPON , there was a discussion held off the re- cord outside the hearing of the court reporter)
Trial counsel:
So, anyway, Mr. Cantu, you testified that it was agreed that you wouldn’t be prosecuted for anything you said today; is that right?
Mr. Cantu: Not today but in the previous –
Trial counsel:
Okay. In the previous – you’ve al- ready testified in several trials; is that right?
Mr. Cantu: Right.
Tr. Vol. 30 at 544-45. Medellin argues that Joe Cantu lied; he contends that evidence produced during the state habeas proceedings shows that the State entered into a deal to secure Mr. Cantu's testimony.
Medellin bases his claim on an affidavit from Christina Cantu. Christina Cantu's affidavit describes information about her and her husband's testimony that was not presented to the defense. Christina Cantu describes how she asked the prosecution about the possibility of a reward in exchange for their testimony, but states that the police told her that the available award money in this case went to another individual. Christina Cantu also states that the State promised her "protection as a witness," but that "never occurred." Because of that, she was "physically beaten at school several times." Christina Cantu also provides details about Joe Cantu's arrest for making terroristic threats:
Around the time that Jose Medellin went to trial, my husband, Joe Cantu, was arrested for threatening to blow up his place of employment, American Plasma. Joe's brother, Rudy Cantu, informed me of this arrest. I contacted Gail Hayes of the Harris County District Attorneys Office and she stated she was aware of Joe's arrest. Joe was in jail for two days. When he was released he informed me that he spoke with Gail Hayes and that she contacted an attorney for him. I know that Joe went to court one time on this case, but I do not believe he was ever charged or paid a fine. I have never informed anyone about Joe's arrest.
(Docket Entry # 12, Exhibit E). Medellin supports the information contained in Christina Cantu's statement with an affidavit from his trial counsel, Linda Mazzagatti. Trial counsel states that
With respect to Joe Cantu and Christina Cantu, [current federal habeas counsel] asked me whether I remembered receiving any information, from the District Attorney's Office or elsewhere, that Jose Cantu was arrested for threatening to blow up his place of employment. I have no independent memory of ever learning such information, and my records do not reflect such information.
(Docket Entry # 12, Exhibit G). An investigator's affidavit indicates that the State filed charges against Joe Cantu on
June 23, 1994, and then dismissed those charges due to insufficient evidence shortly before Medellin's trial. (Docket Entry # 12, Exhibit I).
Medellin argues that the existence of a deal between the State and Joe Cantu requires reversal of his conviction. Medellin states that
Joe Cantu's testimony in particular appeared to be credible because he testified against his brother and friends, for no discernable reason. However, had the jury learned that Joe Cantu and Christina were expecting "witness protection," considering the possibility of a reward, currently charged with a criminal offense and represented by an attorney secured by the prosecutors, reasons for the Cantu's testimony. Clearly, such impeachment information was "material" in this case.
(Docket Entry # 12 at 39-40).
In state habeas court, the State produced an affidavit from the prosecutor in this case. The prosecutor stated that he did not enter into any agreements with the Joe or Christina Cantu in exchange for their testimony. State Habeas Record at 108. The prosecutor stated that "I was not involved in Joe Cantu's misdemeanor case and had nothing to do with the ultimate disposition of his case." State Habeas Record at 108. The prosecutor affirmed that he made no promise to the Cantus for a reward in exchange for their testimony. State Habeas Record at 108. Marie Munier, a prosecutor from one of Medellin's codefendants also submitted a statement wherein she related that she knew about Joe Cantu's arrest, but did not make any deals with him in exchange for his testimony. State Habeas Record at 111. That prosecutor stated that she made no promise for a reward in exchange for Joe and Christina Cantu's testimony. State Habeas Record at 111.
The State also submitted an affidavit from Gail Hayes, an investigator who worked for the Harris County District Attorney's Office. Ms. Hayes stated that in her investigation of this case "Joe and Christina Cantu asked me about the Crime Stoppers reward money. Subsequently, I learned that the Crime Stoppers money had been given to Christina's sister. I never promised or made assurances to either Joe or Christina Cantu that they would receive any reward money in exchange for cooperation or testimony." State Habeas Record at 114-15. Ms. Hayes also stated that she did not promise any protection or deal to Mr. or Mrs. Cantu in exchange for their testimony. State Habeas Record at 115. Ms. Hayes also addressed the question of Joe Cantu's arrest:
Prior to trial, Christina Cantu telephoned me and told me that Joe Cantu had been arrested. Joe Cantu was working at a plasma clinic, got into an argument with someone, made a statement about "blowing the place up," and was subsequently arrested. I informed Marie Munier about Joe Cantu's arrest either that night or the next business day. I have no knowledge of any events concerning Joe Cantu's arrest after that time. I did not recommend a lawyer or give any lawyer's name to either Christina or Joe Cantu. I made no promises concerning the disposition of Joe Cantu's case or concerning his incarceration. I was not aware of the disposition of Joe Cantu's arrest until I talked with Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson in December, 1999.
State Habeas Record at 115. The State also submitted an affidavit from Joni M. Vollman, the prosecutor in Joe Cantu's terroristic threat case. That prosecutor testified that the State did not make any deal with Joe Cantu in exchange for dismissing the charges against him. Instead, the State dismissed the terroristic threat case for a lack of evidence. State Habeas Record at 172. This testimony is confirmed by a copy of the State's Motion to Dismiss in that case. State Habeas Record at 220. The motion indicates that the charges were dismissed for "insufficient evidence." State Habeas Record at 220.
The state habeas court rejected Medellin's claim that the State violated his constitutional rights by not disclosing material exculpatory information prior to trial. The state habeas court reviewed the affidavits submitted by the State and found each to be credible. State Habeas Record at 210-21, ¶57-62. Finding the information contained in those affidavits did not indicate the existence of any deal between the State and Joe Cantu that resulted in the dismissal of his misdemeanor charge, the state habeas court issued the following legal conclusion:
The applicant fails to show that there was any deal between the State and Joe and Christina Cantu; thus, the applicant fails to show that the State did not disclose material evidence, i.e., a non-existent agreement between Joe and Christina in exchange for their testimony during the applicant's trial. The applicant fails to show that the State did not disclose a non-existent agreement or any alleged favorable and material information in the instant case. United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S. Ct. 2392 (1976); United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 105 S. Ct. 3375 (1985) (holding that evidence is material where there is a reasonable probability that, if disclosed, result of the proceeding would have been different). The applicant fails to show that he was denied due process under U.S. Const. amend. XIV and Tex. Const. art. 1, § 10.
State Habeas Record at 217-18 ¶18. Medellin is entitled to habeas relief if the state court's rejection of his claim was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, federal law. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Medellin has failed to support his AEDPA burden with respect to this claim.
B. Legal standard
"[T]he suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of good faith or bad faith of the prosecution." Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963); see also Little v. Johnson, 162 F.3d 855, 861-62 (5th Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1118 (1999). There are three elements required for a valid Brady claim: (1) the prosecution must suppress or withhold evidence, (2) which is favorable to the defense, and (3) material to either guilt or punishment. See United States v. Lowder, 148 F.3d 548, 550 (5th Cir. 1998); In re Smith, 142 F.3d 832, 836 (5th Cir. 1998); East v. Johnson, 123 F.3d 235, 237 (5th Cir. 1997). Evidence is "material" under Brady if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would be different. See Williams v. Puckett, 283 F.3d 272, 279 (5th Cir. 2000), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 504 (2002).
C. Failure to prove the existence of Brady material
The thrust of Medellin' argument is that the State should have disclosed the existence of a deal wherein Joe Cantu's terroristic threat charge would be dropped in exchange for his testimony. Yet Medellin has never presented concrete evidence that such an agreement existed. Instead, Medellin rests his argument on the speculation that the State dismissed that charge as part of a secret deal. "Such speculation does not support a Brady claim." Hughes v. Johnson, 191 F.3d 607, 630 (5th Cir.1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1145 (2000); see also United States v. Dierling, 131 F.3d 722, 736 (8th Cir. 1997) ("Mere speculation that the government had exculpatory evidence is an insufficient basis for a Brady claim. . . . "), cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1066 (1998); United States v. Van Brocklin, 115 F.3d 587, 594 (8th Cir. 1997) ("Mere speculation that materials may contain exculpatory evidence is not, however, sufficient to sustain a Brady claim."), cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1122 (1998). Medellin's claim is based on nothing more than insinuation. Medellin has not presented any factual allegation that would call into doubt the state habeas court finding that there was no deal with Joe Cantu.
Medellin's argument rests largely on the supposition that there must have been a deal because the State did not try Joe Cantu after his misdemeanor arrest. This argument fails to acknowledge the record evidence that strongly shows that charge was dismissed for insufficient evidence. Medellin has not produced any clear and convincing evidence that would show otherwise, and has failed to produce any competent summary judgment evidence that would demonstrate the existence of a "deal," much less the suppression of a "deal" by the State. Habeas
relief is unavailable on Brady claims based only on unsupported inferences.
Further, habeas relief is unavailable on the claim that the State failed to divulge Joe Cantu's arrest, independent of any deal. Through pretrial motions, the defense requested that the State provide information about the arrest record of its witnesses. However, in the pretrial hearing the defense agreed that the State would only turn over information about felony arrests and convictions. Tr. Vol. 26 at 28-31. It is undisputed that Joe Cantu had been arrested for a misdemeanor charge. As the defense agreed to the limitation of disclosure to felony offenses and convictions, Medellin cannot complain now that he did not know about Joe Cantu's arrest.
D. Failure to prove materiality
Even accepting as true Medellin's claim that the State failed to disclose information concerning Joe Cantu's arrest, his "deal," and the Cantus' request for a reward from Crime Stoppers and physical protection, he has failed to show materiality under Brady. The materiality standard for Brady claims focuses on whether "there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different. A 'reasonable probability' is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome." United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682 (1985). The failure to provide the defense with the challenged information, insofar as it is correct, did not "put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict." Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 435 (1995); see also Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 290 (1999) (finding evidence to be not material if there is only "a reasonable possibility that either a total, or just a substantial, discount of [a witness's] testimony might have produced a different result").
Medellin is correct in noting that the State placed great importance on Joe and Christina Cantu's testimony at trial. Nonetheless, they did not come before the jury unblemished. Trial testimony made the jury aware that the both had long participated in gang activity. Joe had been a member of the same gang as Medellin; Christina belonged to the "Heights" gang whose primary objective was "[s]tealing cars, jumping people." Tr. Vol. 29 at 433. The jury knew that Joe and Christina Cantu had destroyed physical evidence related to the murders and had pawned some of the victims' jewelry. The jury would not be surprised at the production of a criminal arrest record or at the presence of additional motives for testifying. Even so, the jury also knew that Joe Cantu agreed to testify against his own brother and that the Cantus had reasons to come forward other than for personal gain. In other words, the introduction of the information that Medellin claims was suppressed would have had little impeachment value.
In addition, substantial and convincing evidence of Medellin's role in the murders existed independent from the testimony from Mr. and Mrs. Cantu. A member of the gang who left before they began raping the girls placed Medellin at the scene of the murders. Tr. Vol. 28 at 23537. Medellin gave some of the victims' jewelry to his girlfriend. Tr. Vol. 31 at 743-50. Most importantly, Medellin confessed to the rape and murder of the two girls. In highly disparaging language, Medellin described his involvement in the tortuous rapes and killings. Medellin's confession admitted, at a minimum, to his sexual assault of the victim for whose death he was convicted. Also, his confession admitted that he "h[eld] one end of the shoe lace" used to strangle the victim. Simply, "[t]he record provides strong support for the conclusion that petitioner would have been convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, even if [Joe and Christina Cantu] had been severely impeached." Strickler, 527 U.S. at 294. There is no reasonable probability of a different outcome had the defense received the information that Medellin claims was withheld.
The state court did not unreasonably conclude that Medellin failed to establish that a constitutional violation tainted his trial. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). This claim is denied.
V. Exclusion of Potential Juror
Medellin challenges the trial court's exclusion of potential juror Rosie L. Mackey for cause. When asked by the trial court whether she had any opposition to the death penalty she answered: "Religious beliefs. Thou shall not kill." Tr. Vol. 18 at 215. Ms. Mackey acknowledged a conflict: "I could follow the law; but, like I say, it's my religious belief. The law says one thing, and the religious belief says another." Tr. Vol. 18 at 216. Nonetheless, she indicated that she could impose a death sentence "if the evidence called for it." Tr. Vol. 18 at 216.
The State then questioned Ms. Mackey. The State focused on the statement in Ms. Mackey's jury questionnaire that she was "opposed to capital punishment under any circumstances." Tr. Vol. 18 at 218. She also indicated that she did not want to serve as a juror because of her religious convictions. Tr. Vol. 18 at 219. Ms. Mackey affirmed that her religious beliefs would impair her ability to return a death sentence in this case, and that, in fact, she would try to find a way to give a life sentence. Tr. Vol. 18 at 221-23.
Trial counsel then questioned Ms. Mackey about her ability to serve as an impartial juror. Ms. Mackey stated that she would be able to consider the guilt/innocence issues without any problem. Tr. Vol. 18 at 228-29. When asked if she could answer the special issues in a manner requiring the imposition of a death sentence, she stated "I still would have a hard time with it. I could vote like that, but I still would have a hard time within myself." Tr. Vol. 18 at 229-30. Even so, she could not imagine a case in which she would be able to impose a death sentence, except that of Adolf Hitler. Tr. Vol. 18 at 230-31.
The State again questioned Ms. Mackey and she clarified her position on serving as a juror:
My religious belief is I don't believe in the death penalty. That was why I was asking if I could be excused from being in this jury or this case. I even stated on the paper – I remember on the back page that it stated: Would you want to be a juror in this case; I stated no.
Tr. Vol. 18 at 234. The trial court continued questioning Ms. Mackey. Ms. Mackey testified that she would be inclined to answer the special issues in such a way to ensure a life sentence, and would look at the evidence with that result in mind. Tr. Vol. 18 at 237.
The State moved to have Ms. Mackey excused for cause because of her inability to consider a death sentence. Tr. Vol. 18 at 238. Trial counsel opposed that motion. Tr.
Vol. 18 at 238. The trial court then made the following findings:
The Court makes specific findings in the standard set forth in Wainwright versus Witt in that I think Ms. Mackey is the classic vacillating juror.
Based on her responses to the questionnaire, which she had validated in her oral responses to the Court, the Court finds that her strong feelings against capital punishment would prevent or substantially impair her performance as a juror in accordance with her oath and the Court's instructions, specifically her strong religious background which Mr. Vinson certainly established, her checking that she was opposed to capital punishment under any circumstances.
* * *
The Court finds Ms. Mackey should be excused for cause.
Tr. Vol. 18 at 238-239.
Medellin raised this claim on direct review. After reviewing the applicable law and the voir dire transcript, the Court of Criminal Appeals stated that "[g]iven the totality of the voir dire, we cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in sustaining the State's challenge for cause to the veniremember." Opinion at 10. This Court reviews that decision under the AEDPA.
Exclusion of prospective jurors "hesitant in their ability to sentence a defendant to death" without any limitations violates the Fourth and Fourteenth amendments. Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U.S. 719, 732 (1992); see also Adams v. Texas, 448 U.S. 38, 45 (1980); Witherspoon v.
Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 521-22 (1968). The State must demonstrate through questioning that the potential juror it seeks to exclude lacks impartiality, and the judge must then determine whether the state's challenge is proper. See Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412, 423 (1985). Thus, the key issue is "whether the juror's views would 'prevent or substantially impair the performance of his duties as a juror in accordance with his instructions and his oath.' " Id. at 424 (quoting Adams, 448 U.S. at 45). "This standard . . . does not require that a juror's bias be proved with 'unmistakable clarity.' " Wainwright, 469 U.S. at 424. Thus, a reviewing court gives deference to a trial judge who could observe the demeanor of the potential juror. Id. at 424-26. This deference is consistent with AEDPA's presumption of correctness.
The exclusion of potential jurors is a question of fact. See McCoy v. Lynaugh, 874 F.2d 954, 960 (5th Cir. 1989); Patton v. Yount, 467 U.S. 1025, 1036 (1984). The factual determinations of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals are presumed to be correct, and the petitioner has the burden of rebutting these determinations by clear and convincing evidence. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). This Court can grant federal habeas relief only if the state court decision "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2); see also Fuller v. Johnson, 114 F.3d 491, 500-01 (5th Cir.) (holding that a trial court's finding of juror bias is entitled to a presumption of correctness), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 963 (1997); Granviel v. Lynaugh, 881 F.2d 185, 187 (5th Cir. 1989) (stating that "[b]ecause of the difficulty of divining a prospective juror's state of mind, particularly on a cold record, we pay deference to the trial court's factual determination"), cert. denied, 495 U.S. 963 (1990).
The trial court found that Ms. Mackey exemplified the juror described in Wainwright v. Witt:
What common sense should have realized experience has proved: many veniremen simply cannot be asked enough questions to reach the point where their bias has been made "unmistakably clear"; these veniremen may not know how they will react when faced with imposing the death sentence, or may be unable to articulate, or may wish to hide their true feelings. Despite this lack of clarity in the printed record, however, there will be situations where the trial judge is left with the definite impression that a prospective juror would be unable to faithfully and impartially apply the law.
469 U.S. at 424-25 (footnote omitted). The state court's characterization of Ms. Mackey as a vacillating juror is presumed correct because Medellin has not rebutted the finding with appropriate evidence. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). After reviewing the record, this Court is in agreement with Respondent's assertion that the state court's finding was reasonable in light of Ms. Mackey's responses. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). Because the trial court clearly could have been "left with the definite impression that [Ms. Mackey] would be unable to faithfully and impartially apply the law," Witt, 469 U.S. at 426, the trial court had a reasonable basis for granting the State's challenge for cause. In short, Medellin has failed to demonstrate that the state court disposition "resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the state court proceeding." See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). This claim is denied.
CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY
Although Medellin has not yet requested a Certificate of Appealability ("COA"), the issue of a COA is likely to arise. This court may deny a COA sua sponte. See Alexander v. Johnson, 211 F.3d 895, 898 (5th Cir. 2000). 25 The Supreme Court has explained the standard for evaluating the issuance of a COA as follows:
Where a district court has rejected the constitutional claims on the merits, the showing required
25 The Supreme Court in Miller-El v. Cockrell, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 1029 (2003), recently reversed a case from the Fifth Circuit involving the COA standard. Prior to Miller-El, the Fifth Circuit resolved the question of COA in some cases by first determining whether a petitioner was entitled to relief and then denying COA because the appeal lacked merit. In Miller-El, the Supreme Court clarified a circuit court's role in the COA process. The Miller-El Court found that a circuit court's COA analysis should not rest upon a "full consideration of the factual or legal bases adduced in support of the claims." Miller-El, ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1039 (2003). Rather, "[t]he COA determination under § 2253(c) requires an overview of the claims in the habeas petition and a general assessment of their merits." Id. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1039 (emphasis added). Thus, the Supreme Court held that "[w]hen a court of appeals side steps this process by first deciding the merits of an appeal, and then justifying the denial of a COA based on its adjudication of the actual merits, it is in essence deciding an appeal without jurisdiction." Id. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1039. A district court's evaluation of the COA sua sponte does not raise the same jurisdictional concerns present in Miller-El. While Miller-El rejected the Fifth Circuit's review of the merits of a claim before that claim was properly before the circuit court, the same jurisdictional concern is not present when a district court evaluates a COA sua sponte before appeal. This Court clearly has jurisdiction to decide sua sponte whether a COA is warranted.
to satisfy § 2253(c) is straightforward: The petitioner must demonstrate that reasonable jurists would find the district court's assessment of the constitutional claims debatable or wrong. The issue becomes somewhat more complicated where . . . the district court dismisses the petition based on procedural grounds. We hold as follows: When the district court denies a habeas petition on procedural grounds without reaching the prisoner's underlying constitutional claim, a COA should issue when the prisoner shows, at least, that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the petition states a valid claim of the denial of a constitutional right and that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the district court was correct in its procedural ruling.
Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000); see also Miller-El, ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S. Ct. at 1039-40.
The Court has carefully considered each of Medellin's claims. While the issues Medellin raises deserve scrutiny, the Court finds that each of his claims is foreclosed by clear, binding precedent. Under the appropriate standards, this Court concludes that Medellin has failed to make a "substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right" with respect to each issue raised in his petition. 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2). This Court concludes that Medellin is not entitled to a COA on any of his claims.
CONCLUSION
Based on the foregoing, the Court concludes that Medellin is not entitled to federal habeas relief. As a result, it is hereby
ORDERED that Respondent's Motion for Summary Judgment (Docket Entry # 16) is Granted. It is further
ORDERED that Jose Ernesto Medellin's Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus is DENIED, this case is DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE, and a Certificate of Appealability will not issue.
The Clerk will provide copies of this Order to the parties.
SIGNED this 25th day of June, 2003.
JOHN D. RAINEY John D. Rainey United States District Judge
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS HOUSTON DIVISION
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Civil Action No. H-01-4078
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JOSE ERNESTO MEDELLIN,
Petitioner,
– v. –
JANIE COCKRELL, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division,
Respondent.
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FINAL JUDGMENT
(Filed June 26, 2003)
For the reasons stated in the Court's Order denying habeas relief and granting summary judgment in favor of Respondent, it is ORDERED that this case be dismissed with prejudice. The Court DENIES a certificate of appealability.
THIS IS A FINAL JUDGMENT.
SIGNED this 25th day of June, 2003.
JOHN D. RAINEY
John D. Rainey
United States District Judge
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Trend Micro Incorporated (4704) Tanshin of the first half of FY2007
Report of First–Half Year Results (Consolidated)
For Fiscal Year Ending December 31, 2007
Company: Trend Micro Incorporated
Tokyo Stock Exchange 1 st Section
Code:
4704
Location : Tokyo
(URL http://www.trendmicro.co.jp/)
Representative:
Title
Representative Director and Chief Executive Officer
Name Eva Chen
Contact:
Title
Representative Director (Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer)
Name Mahendra Negi
(Phone: +81-3-5334-4899)
Date of the board of directors meeting authorizing the first-half year results:
September 27, 2007
1. Financial Highlights for the first half of FY 2007 (January 1, 2007 through June 30, 2007) (All figures except for per share information are rounded down to millions of yen.)
(1) Consolidated Results of Operations
| Growth Net Sales Rate | Operating Growth Income Rate | Ordinary Growth Income Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Millions of yen % 48,390 17.4 41,225 | Millions of yen % 16,237 11.5 14,557 | Millions of yen % 18,063 18.7 15,219 |
| 85,613 | 29,359 | 31,902 |
| | Net income per share(basic) |
|---|---|
| The first half of FY 2007 The first half of FY 2006 | Yen 86.53 64.48 |
| FY 2006 (annual) | 144.26 |
(Note) 1. Equity in earnings of affiliated companies: 33 million yen (10 million yen in the first half of FY 2006, 49 million yen in FY 2006)
2. The Company does not inscribe year-on-year of the first half of FY2006, because the Company did not prepare the audited financial statements of the first half of FY 2005 that based on Japan GAAP.
(2) Consolidated Financial Position
| As of June 30, 2007 June 30, 2006 | Millions of yen 174,217 146,804 | Millions of yen 92,325 84,282 | % 52.4 57.4 | Yen 688.93 625.93 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 31, 2006 | 165,948 | 90,635 | 54.4 | 679.06 |
(Note) Equity capital : 91,247 million yen (84,277 million yen as of June 30, 2006, 90,203 million yen as of December 31, 2006)
(3) Consolidated Cash Flows
| | Cash flows from operating activities | Cash flows from investing activities | Cash flows from financing activities |
|---|---|---|---|
| The first half of FY 2007 The first half of FY 2006 | Millions of yen 15,987 20,113 | Millions of yen (3,804) (3,167) | Millions of yen (12,707) (6,061) |
| FY 2006 (annual) | 37,463 | (11,104) | (12,449) |
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2. Dividend of surplus
| As of | The ended of interim | The ended of terminal |
|---|---|---|
| December 31, 2006 | Yen ― | Yen 84.00 |
| December 31, 2007 | ― | |
3. Projected consolidated earnings
Projected earnings for the next quarter (July 1, 2007 through September 30, 2007)
| | Net sales | Operating income | Ordinary income | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3rd Qtr | Millions of yen % 24,400 15.3 | Millions of yen % 7,400 2.6 | Millions of yen % 9,000 11.7 | Millions of yen % 5,450 13.2 |
(Note) Since the business environment surrounding Trend Micro Group tends to fluctuate in the short run, it is difficult to make a highly reliable projection figures on a yearly basis. We, therefore, have decided to announce the earnings on a quarterly basis in the fiscal year ending in December 2007 as well as earnings projection of the succeeding quarter.
When we find through our calculation conducted from time to time that the net sales will fluctuate from the most recent quarterly projection by more than 10%, or operating income, ordinary income or net income fluctuates by more than 30%, we will announce the revision to the earnings projection.
4. Others
(1) Change in the basis of Consolidation and Application of equity method: N/A
(2) Change in the basis of Accounting Principles, Accounting Procedures and Methods for Consolidated Financial Statements
A. Change under a revision to Accounting Standards: Yes
B. Others: Yes
(Note) As regards to the details of above, please check "Change in Significant Accounting Policies and Practices for Preparing Interim Consolidated Financial Statements", page 35.
(3) Number of shares issued (common shares)
A. Number of shares issued at the end of interim 2007 (including treasury stocks)
: 137,714,004 shares (137,179,504 shares in the first half of FY 2006, 137,344,504 shares in FY 2006)
B. Number of treasury stocks at the end of interim 2007
: 5,265,509 shares (2,536,949 shares in the first half of FY 2006, 4,509,612 shares in FY 2006)
(Note) As regards to the basis of calculation for net income per share, please check "Reconciliation of the difference between basic and diluted net income per share ("EPS")", page 47.
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Results of the non-consolidated operations
1. Financial Highlights for the first half of FY 2007 (January 1, 2007 through June 30, 2007)
(1) Results of operations
| | Net sales Growth rate | Operating Growth rate income |
|---|---|---|
| The first half of FY 2007 The first half of FY 2006 | Millions of yen % 29,533 11.4 26,522 18.3 | Millions of yen % 13,730 14.4 12,000 15.8 |
| FY 2006 (annual) | 53,431 | 22,661 |
| | Net income |
|---|---|
| The first half of FY 2007 The first half of FY 2006 | Millions of yen % 8,515 21.6 7,000 19.0 |
| FY 2006 (annual) | 14,265 |
(2) Financial Position
| | Total assets | Shareholders’ equity | Shareholders’ equity ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| As of June 30, 2007 June 30, 2006 | Millions of yen 103,850 92,431 | Millions of yen 58,251 59,743 | % 55.1 64.6 |
| December 31, 2006 | 99,796 | 61,240 | 61.0 |
(Note) Equity capital : 57,182 million yen (59,743 million yen as of June 30, 2006, 60,814 million yen as of December 31, 2006)
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1. Management Policy and Business Performance
I. OPERATING RESULTS
1. CHANGE IN ACCOUNTING PRINCIPLES FOR PREPARING CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
Trend Micro has changed the accounting principles for preparing its consolidated financial statements required under the Securities and Exchange Law of Japan and the Company Law of Japan from U.S. GAAP to Japan GAAP, effective for the first half of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2007 (the 6 months ended June 30, 2007) and thereafter.
As a result, Trend Micro plans to prepare its consolidated financial statements to be filed or disclosed for future financial periods in accordance with Japan GAAP, as required under Japanese law.
2. OPERATING RESULTS ANALYSIS
(1). REVIEW OF CURRENT PERIOD
(Unit: million yen)
| | Net Sales | Operating income | Ordinary income | Net income before tax | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The first half of FY2007 | 48,390 | 16,237 | 18,063 | 18,031 | 11,469 |
| The first half of FY2006 | 41,225 | 14,557 | 15,219 | 13,218 | 8,661 |
| Rate of Change (%) | 17% | 12% | 19% | 36% | 32% |
(Unit: million yen)
| | Net Sales | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| | The first half of FY2007 | The first half of FY2006 | Rate of Change (%) |
| Japan | 17,779 | 16,155 | 10% |
| North America | 12,093 | 9,068 | 33% |
| Europe | 11,838 | 10,257 | 15% |
| Asia and Pacific Reg. | 5,143 | 4,435 | 16% |
| Latin America | 1,535 | 1,308 | 17% |
4
［ Overview of Current Business Performance］
The Japanese economy during this semi-annual term has seemed to continue its gradual expanding trend. According to the Short-term Economic Survey of Enterprise in Japan (Tankan) announced in March and June 2007, the business conditions of large enterprise and manufacturing has remained the same high level for 2 consecutive terms. According to its report of June especially, when compared to large enterprise, there has been a continued slump in the confidence of medium-sized and small enterprises. On the other hand, the fixed investment has remained strong showing a 3.1% increase over the previous year's after the result of upward revision. The Japanese economy once again shows clear signs of strength in the business confidence of enterprise organizations. On the other hand, the Consumer Price Index in May 2007 has been decreasing continuously for 4 months compared to the previous fiscal year. This means that the Japanese economy has not yet broken out of the deflation, and it's undeniable that wage-price is slowly sustaining.
In spite of approaching the limits of the spare productive capacity by OPEC, crude oil consumption has been increasing and oil price shows uptick again toward the end of this semi-annual term. There has been still no denying the possibility of persistence of inflationary pressures over the world. In addition to geopolitical risks owing to events such as the Nigeria and Iraqi situation, and sharp downturns of U.S. economy due to subprime crisis, the world market should watch out the expansion of global economic imbalances continuously.
In the network security industry, malicious code causing information leakage and financial loss has been flying around the web worldwide since 2005. New computer crime trends emerged in 2006 and have continued during 2007. There has been a shift in the intent of malicious attackers away from pleasure to focus on the theft of proprietary information and to specific targeted attacks, rather than desire of general public notoriety. In addition to increased sophistication of method of attack, malicious attackers are also getting becoming greatly professional. Under such a situation, the number of virus infection damage incident in Japan was 37,363 reports during this semi-annual term of 2007. Compare to first and last half of year 2006, 42,741reports and 49,160 reports, this term's number is on a declining trend. On the other hand, in the world situation, the defacing incidents which attack to a lot of popular official sites in US and Asia have been increasing in frequency from this year. One clear example of such attacks was Italian Job, which compromised more than 1,000 sites in Italy and across Europe this June. The attack is believed to have utilized a tool called MPack , which is a malware tool to take advantage of a security hole and was sold in Russian underground forum. Recently creating attacking tools is no longer just cyber crime activities, but is also finding uses in business and the creation of attacking tools is causing the number of incidents to expand greatly. Also, there are other ad-hoc vulnerabilities such as an zero-day attacks, which is a computer threat that exposes unpatched computer application vulnerabilities. These attacks are becoming more routine and a mass mailing type of the worm generally called Storm Worm was reported in a confined area outside of Japan. Those threats spread out sequential attacking including distributing and developing their subspecies, downloading malicious program after hacking, etc. To counter such a multi-infection attack, content security including not only mail filtering but also URL filtering should be necessary and effective to Web Threats. As a result, the malicious code, that aims to get concrete gains such as money, has continued evolving its method of attack since last year. Such a trend has been progressing and the cost of damage associated with fraud and identity theft will also become enormous.
Under such an environment, our group's business conditions are as follows:
First of all, in Japan, though the numbers of infection reports have been decreasing, also the damage cost by the attacking trend which has shifted to the specific targets rather than general public will continue to increase further. In addition, the demand for the security products continues to increase to the SMB market since the full enforcement of the personal information protection law from April 2005. Under these circumstances, our flagship personal product "Virus Buster" has still seen healthy growth continuously. In this term, this products' revision of subscription renewal fee made a big contribution to Japan sales. In those results, the amount of sales for this period in Japan was 17,779 million yen (10% increase from the same period in previous year).
In the North American region, there have prospects that US economy will expand at moderate pace toward the end of 2008. On the other hand, there is a possibility of stagnation of housing market growth by increasing to squeeze and attach the credit standing. Considering slow consumer spending growth, soaring crude oil prices and U.S. retail and food services sales show a part of weakness, it has clouded opportunity in uncertain economic conditions. Under these circumstances, increasing demands and stable renewal customer acquisition in consumer market made a great contribution to US sales. At the same time, sales growth for enterprise market also continues to be strong. In those results, the amount of sales for this period in
5
North America was 12,093 million yen (33% increase from the same period in previous year) with its growth rate recording the highest across all regions for this period.
In the European region, the euro zone economy seems currently to be on a steady growth path. Continuous exports firmly support this growth and domestic demands would be anticipated to continue with relatively strong momentum. According to these conditions, the medium-term economic prospect remains positive. Under these circumstances, sales in this region on a local currency basis were of low tone though sales for the large enterprise market in Germany and some other parts of Europe have seen growth toward the end of this term. However, owing to the exchange rate , the effects of the Japanese yen's sharp fall against the Euro, the sales for this period in the region came to 11,838 million yen (15% increase from the previous period).
In Asia and Pacific regions, although there has been negative news such as economic discrepancy, climate change, and inflation fears; economic expansion was continuously supported by favorable domestic and foreign demand particularly in India, Vietnam, and Korea. Also stock movements over the Asian countries have been increasing in trend toward the end of this term. According to such a situation, we have a big growth of sales for large enterprise and consumer market, especially in Australia. At the same time, mainland China and Malaysia have been showing steady performance of sales for large enterprise market. The net sales for this period in the regions came to 5,143 million yen (16% increase from the previous period).
In the Latin America region, due to steady performance of especially SMB business market in Brazil and Mexico, the result is largely the excellent condition of the domestic sales. In this region net sales came to 1,535 million yen (17% increase from the previous period).
Regarding this semi-annual term of year 2007 sales achievement according to customer size, net sales of the Enterprise business was 14,612 million yen, Small and Mid-size business was 21,413 million yen, and Consumer was 12,365 million yen.
As a result, the consolidated net sales for this period came to 48,390 million yen (17% increase from the previous period). Operating expenses totaled 32,153 million yen (this is a 21% increase from the previous period) due to no issuance which has resolute from May 1, 2006 as started of new company law in Japan in the previous semi-annual term of 2006, and an increase in new employee recruitment. The consolidated operating income for this period was 16,237 million yen (12% increase from the previous period), the Consolidated ordinary income for this period was 18,063 million yen (19% increase from the previous period), and the consolidated net income for this period was 11,469 million yen (32% increase from the previous period).
6
(2). Projection for the Third Quarter of the fiscal year 2007 (from July 1, 2007 to September 30, 2007)
Since the business environment surrounding Trend Micro Group tends to fluctuate in the short run, it is difficult to make a highly reliable projection figures on a yearly basis. We, therefore, have decided to announce the earnings on a quarterly basis in the fiscal year ending in December 2007 as well as earnings projection of the succeeding quarter.
When we find through our calculation conducted from time to time that the net sales will fluctuate from the most recent quarterly projection by more than 10%, or operating income, ordinary income or net income fluctuates by more than 30%, we will announce the revision to the earnings projection.
Business forecast for the Third Quarter of FY2007 (July 1, 2007 – September 30, 2007)
Consolidated net sales
24,400 million yen
Consolidated operating income
7,400 million yen
Consolidated ordinary income
9,000 million yen
Consolidated net income
5,450 million yen
In development of the business forecasts the main assumed exchange rates are as follows.
1 US $
118 yen
1 Euro
161 yen
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3. FINANCIAL CONDITION ANALYSIS
CONDITION OF ASSETS, LIABILITIES, AND NET ASSETS
Total assets at the end of this period were 174,217 million yen, 27,412 million yen increase year on year.
On the other hand, total liabilities at the end of this period were 81,891 million yen, 19,369 million yen increase year on year.
Total net assets at the end of this period were 92,325 million yen, an increase of 8,042 million yen as compared with the previous period.
As a result, cash and cash equivalents at the end of this period amounted to 79,290 million yen, an increase of 7,133 million yen year on year.
CONDITION OF CASH FLOW
(Unit: million yen)
| | The first half of FY2007 | The first half of FY 2006 |
|---|---|---|
| Cash Flows from Operating Activities | 15,987 | 20,113 |
| Cash Flows from Investing Activity | (3,804) | (3,167) |
| Cash Flows from Financing Activity | (12,707) | (6,061) |
| Effect of Exchange Rate Changes on Cash and Cash Equivalents | 2,370 | 621 |
| Net increase (Decrease) in Cash and Cash Equivalents | 1,846 | 11,505 |
| Cash and Cash Equivalents at beginning of period | 76,196 | 59,612 |
| Cash and Cash Equivalents at end of period | 78,043 | 71,118 |
[Overview of Cash Flow]
For the cash flows from operating activity for this period, cash inflows decreased by 4,126 million yen compared with the previous period and the balance was ended with a surplus of 15,987 million yen. In spite of increase in net income, this decrease in cash inflows is mainly due to a substantial increase in Income taxes and there were proceeds from legal settlement etc. in previous term.
For the cash flows from investing activity, cash outflows increased by 637 million yen compared with the previous period and the balance was ended with a deficit of 3,804 million yen. This increase in cash outflows is mainly due to decrease proceeds from sales/redemption of marketable securities and security investments.
For the cash flows from financial activity, cash outflows increased by 6,646 million yen compared with the previous period and the balance was ended with a deficit of 12,707 million yen. This increase in cash outflows is mainly due to substantial increase in payment for purchase of treasury stock and dividends paid.
Taking these increases and decreases and the effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents into account, the cash and cash equivalents at the end of this period was 78,043 million yen and was increased by 6,925 million yen compared with the previous period.
8
[Trends of Cash Flow Indexes]
(Japan GAAP)
| | FY2006 | The first half of FY2007 |
|---|---|---|
| Shareholder’s equity Ratio (%) | 54.4 | 52.4 |
| Capital Adequacy Ratio on Market Value Basis (%) | 279.4 | 302.6 |
| Debt Redemption Period (years) | - | - |
| Interest Coverage Ratio | 1,907.7 | 1,851.9 |
(U.S .GAAP)
| | FY2003 | FY2004 | FY2005 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shareholder’s equity Ratio (%) | 54.1 | 59.2 | 61.6 |
| Capital Adequacy Ratio on Market Value Basis (%) | 462.2 | 690.0 | 449.9 |
| Debt Redemption Period (years) | 0.4 | - | - |
(Note)
Shareholder's Equity Ratio
: (Total shareholder's Equity)/(Total Assets)
Capital Adequacy Ratio on Market Value Basis: (Total Market Value of Shares)/(Total Assets)
Debt Redemption Period
: (Interest-bearing Debt)/(Operating Cash Flow)
Interest Coverage Ratio
: (Operating Cash Flow)/(Interest Payment)
*All indexes are calculated from the financial statement amounts on a consolidated basis.
*"Total Market Value of Shares" is calculated as follows; "closing share price at the term end" multiplies by "number of shares issued at the term end "(net of treasury shares).
*"Operating Cash Flow" is "Net cash flows provided by operating activity" in the consolidated statement of cash flows. "Interest-bearing Debt" is all debts with interest payments among the debts reported in the consolidated balance sheet. "Interest Payment" is the amount of payment for interest expense in the consolidated statement of cash flows
*With the enforcement of the revision of "Rules on the terms, forms and making method of a consolidated financial statement" in March 2002, the consolidated financial statements have been prepared based on U.S. GAAP from the year ended December31, 2003 to the year ended December31, 2005.
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4. BASIC POLICY OF PROFIT SHARING
We intend to continue to return profits to shareholders based on the net profit on a consolidated basis while striving to enhance financial strength and secure internal reserve in order to deal with significantly changing business environment and maintain competitive edge against competitors. As our basic policy about dividend, we plan to pay a year-end dividend on the basis of the dividend ratio of 50% excluding the effect of stock option compensation expenses. We will add stock option expenses back to accounting net income for pay-out calculations.
5. RISK FACTORS
The occurrence of any of the following risks could affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. In such case, the trading price of our shares could decline and you could lose all or part of your investment. Other risks and uncertainties not now known to us or that we think are immaterial may also impair our business.
MAJOR SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE VENDORS MAY INCORPORATE ANTIVIRUS PROTECTION IN THEIR PRODUCT OFFERINGS, WHICH COULD RENDER OUR PRODUCTS OBSOLETE OR UNMARKETABLE.
Major vendors of operating system software and other software such as firewall or e-mail software or computer hardware may decide to enhance or bundle their products with their other products to include antivirus functions. These companies may offer antivirus protection as a standard feature in their products, at minimal or no additional cost to customers. This could render our products obsolete or unmarketable, particularly if antivirus products offered by these vendors were comparable or superior to our products. In addition, even if these vendors' antivirus products offered fewer functions than our products, or were less effective in detecting and cleaning virus-infected files, customers could still choose them over our products due to lower cost or for any other reasons.
Microsoft Corp., a major operating system vendor, has acquired several security vendors such as GeCAD Software Srl., an antivirus software vendor in Romania. Microsoft Corp. has launched antivirus products or services such as " Windows Live TM OneCare TM " for consumer users since May 2006 in US, January 2007 in Japan. Also they started the service for enterprise named "Microsoft® Forefront TM Client Security" since July 2007. If antivirus functions were to be included in its operating system products by Microsoft Corp., this could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
BECAUSE WE GENERATE SUBSTANTIALLY ALL OF OUR SALES FROM A SINGLE PRODUCT LINE, WE ARE VULNERABLE TO DECREASED DEMAND FOR SUCH PRODUCTS.
Unlike software companies with diversified product lines, we derive substantially all of our net sales from licensing and selling antivirus software products. Although we have begun to offer more comprehensive network and internet security and management software and services, we expect antivirus products to continue to account for the largest portion of our net sales for the foreseeable future. If the demand for, or the prices of, antivirus products drop as a result of competition, technological change or other factors such as lower growth or a contraction in the worldwide antivirus software market, this could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
DETERIORATION IN OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH SOFTBANK BB CORP. COULD RESULT IN A DECREASE IN SALES OF OUR PRODUCTS.
We depend on our relationship with SOFTBANK BB (formerly SOFTBANK COMMERCE CORP.), which has played an instrumental role in the development of our business in Japan. SOFTBANK BB also has close relationships with many resellers and systems integrators through
Trend Micro Incorporated (4704) Tanshin of the first half of FY2007
which we sell our antivirus software to corporate end users in Japan. An adverse change in our relationship with SOFTBANK BB would result in decreased sales to SOFTBANK BB and could disrupt our relationship with many resellers of our products. This could make it
difficult for us to market our products in Japan. Sales to SOFTBANK BB totaled approximately (Yen) 10.4 billion, or 16.8%, of our net sales in fiscal 2004, approximately (Yen) 10.6 billion, or 14.5%, of our net sales in fiscal 2005, and approximately (Yen) 11.0 billion, or
12.9%, of our net sales in fiscal 2006. Because of our dependence on SOFTBANK BB, the price of shares could fall as a result of adverse events affecting SOFTBANK BB, even if the events do not relate directly to us.
OUR PRODUCTS MAY BECOME OBSOLETE BECAUSE RAPID TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
REGULARLY OCCURS IN THE ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE MARKET.
The antivirus software market is characterized by:
* rapid technological change;
* the proliferation of new and changing computer viruses;
* frequent product introductions and updates; and
* changing customer needs.
These characteristics of our market create significant risks and uncertainties for our business success. For example, our competitors might introduce antivirus products that are technologically superior to our products. Additionally, new software operating system, network
system or antivirus software industry standards could emerge. Emerging trends in these systems and standards currently include applications distributed over the Internet and the use of a web browser to access client-server systems. Our existing products might be
incompatible with some or all of such standards. Our business, financial condition and results of operations could materially suffer unless we are able to respond quickly and effectively to these developments.
OUR HARDWARE-BASED PRODUCTS FACE MANUFACTURING AND INVENTORY RISKS.
We rely on a small number of third parties to manufacture some of our hardware-based products, such as the Trend Micro Network VirusWall and InterScan Gateway Security Appliance. We expect our reliance on third-party manufacturers to become more important as the number of
our hardware-based products increases. Reliance on third-party manufacturers involves a number of risks, including a lack of control over the manufacturing process and the potential absence or unavailability of adequate capacity. If any of our third-party manufacturers cannot or
will not manufacture our products in required volumes in compliance with environmental and other regulations in the markets we serve, on a cost-effective basis, in a timely manner, or at all, we will have to secure additional manufacturing capacity. The unexpected loss of any of
our manufacturers could disrupt our business. Furthermore, our hardware-based products contain critical components supplied by a single or a limited number of third parties. Any significant shortage of components or the failure of the third-party supplier to maintain or enhance
these products could lead to cancellation of customer orders or delays in the placement of orders and adversely affect our financial condition and results of operation.
WE MAY NOT GENERATE EXPECTED RESULTS IN STRATEGIC ALLIANCES
Because we are mainly focusing our business on the field of antivirus software and do not offer other security products such as firewalls, we actively pursue strategic alliances with other companies that allow us to provide customers with integrated or other new products and services
derived from the alliances. In fiscal year 2004, we began to provide a third party URL filtering solution and have signed contracts with
Cisco Systems to integrate network worm and virus outbreak prevention services with Cisco's products and services. To launch and provide such products and services, we may invest substantial cash and other resources in product developments, marketing promotions and support
and maintenance activities. But we may not earn revenue successfully from alliances despite our efforts, and such alliance may be terminated or dissolved by various causes before generating revenue.
WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO INCREASE OUR MARKET SHARE IN THE U.S. AND EUROPEAN MARKETS BECAUSE OUR COMPETITORS ARE MORE ESTABLISHED THAN WE ARE IN THESE MARKETS.
We believe that our share of the antivirus software market in the U.S. and Europe is significantly smaller relative to the market shares of our principal competitors, despite the growth of our sales in these markets in fiscal 2005 and 2006. Because our competitors are already well-established in these key markets and have greater financial and other resources and brand recognition, we may not be able to compete effectively for market share. If this happens, we may not be able to increase sales or our market share in these markets, which could materially hurt the prospects for growth in our business.
Some of our major competitors have the following advantages over us in the U.S. and European markets:
* greater name recognition;
* more diversified product lines;
* larger customer bases; and
* significantly greater financial, technical, marketing and other resources.
As a result, as compared to us, our competitors may be able to:
* better withstand downturns in the antivirus software market and in the computer software market in general;
* adapt more quickly to new or emerging technologies or changes in customer requirements; or
* more effectively and profitably market, sell and support their products.
THE POSIBILITY OF DECRESE SALES AND MARKET SHARE IN OUR CORE JAPANESE MARKET IF OUR COMPETITORS ACHIEVE SUCCESS IN JAPAN.
Our major competitors, McAfee, Inc. and Symantec Corporation, are active in the Japanese antivirus software market and have allocated significant resources to achieve success in the Japanese antivirus software market. Additionally, competition in our core Japanese market
could intensify in the future if other competitors emerge. As a result of our competitors' efforts, we may not be able to maintain our current leading market position in Japan in the future. Also, in order to respond effectively to increased competition, we may be required to devote
more of our product development, marketing and other resources to the Japanese market, which could limit our ability to grow in other markets. A material loss of sales and market share in Japan as a result of our competitors’ success could have a material adverse effect on
our business, financial condition and results of operations.
BECAUSE WE MAY ACQUIRE COMPANIES TO GROW OUR BUSINESS, FUTURE ACQUISITIONS MAY
REDUCE OUR EARNINGS AND RESULT IN INCREASED COSTS IN OUR BUSINESS OPERATIONS.
In a rapidly changing industry, we occasionally review acquisition opportunities. Accordingly, we may seek to expand our business through acquisitions. Unlike some of our major competitors, we have limited experience in acquiring existing businesses. Future
acquisitions could result in numerous risks and uncertainties, including:
*our inability to retain customers, suppliers and other important business relationships of an acquired business;
*difficulties in integrating an acquired company into Trend Micro, including the acquired company's operations, personnel, products and information systems;
concerns; and
*adverse effects on our results of operations from acquisition-related charges, impairment of goodwill and purchased technology and possible recognition of impairment charge.
If we make such an acquisition using our stock, our current shareholders' ownership interests will be diluted. Any of these factors could materially hurt our business, financial condition and results of operations.
For example, in 2000, we acquired ipTrend to start a new business selling a Linux based remotely managed server appliance solution to small and medium sized companies. However, ipTrend performed poorly and was liquidated in December 2001. Due to the liquidation of ipTrend, (Yen) 2.3 billion was booked as goodwill write-off in 2001.
IF HACKERS GAIN UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO OUR SYSTEMS, WE COULD SUFFER DISRUPTIONS IN OUR BUSINESS AND LONG-TERM DAMAGE TO OUR REPUTATION.
We may be more susceptible to problems caused by hackers than other software companies. As an antivirus software company that delivers virus protection products over the Internet, hackers specifically target us in order to cause us to transmit computer viruses or interrupt the delivery of our antivirus software monitoring and security services over the internet which could result in further interruptions. We could suffer substantial disruptions in our business and material damage to our reputation which could in turn result in a significant loss of our customers and other important business relationships. We could also incur costs for public relations efforts following attacks by hackers. Hacker activities could also force us to incur substantial costs to fix technical problems or result in hackers gaining access to our proprietary information.
WE FACE NEW RISKS RELATED TO OUR ANTI-SPAM AND ANTI-SPYWARE SOFTWARE PRODUCTS.
Our anti-spam and anti-spyware products may falsely identify emails or programs as unwanted "spam" or "potentially unwanted programs," or alternatively fail to properly identify unwanted emails or programs, particularly as "spam" emails or spyware are often designed to circumvent anti-spam or spyware products. Parties whose emails or programs are blocked by our products may seek redress against us for labeling them as "spammers" or spyware, or for interfering with their business. In addition, false identification of emails or programs as unwanted "spam" or "potentially unwanted programs" may reduce the adoption of these products.
WE MUST EFFECTIVELY MANAGE OUR GROWTH.
Our business has grown rapidly. This growth has placed, and any future growth would continue to place, a significant strain on our limited personnel, management and other resources. Our ability to manage any future growth in our business will require us to:
* attract, train, retain, motivate and manage new employees successfully;
* effectively integrate new employees into our operations; and
* continue to improve our operational, financial, management and information systems and controls.
If we continue to grow, our management systems currently in place may be inadequate or we may not be able to effectively manage our growth. In particular, we may be unable to:
* provide effective customer service;
* develop and deliver products in a timely manner;
* implement effective financial reporting and control systems; and
* exploit new market opportunities and effectively respond to competitive pressures.
WE SELL OUR PRODUCTS THROUGH INTERMEDIARIES WHO MAY NOT VIGOROUSLY MARKET OUR PRODUCTS, OR MAY RETURN OUR PRODUCTS.
We market substantially all of our products to end users through intermediaries, including distributors, resellers and value-added resellers. Our distributors sell other products that are complementary to, or compete with, our products. While we encourage our distributors to focus on our products, these distributors may give greater priority to products of other suppliers, including competitors'. They may also return the products to us under certain circumstances.
OUR CUSTOMERS MAY CANCEL OR DELAY THEIR PURCHASES OF OUR PRODUCTS, WHICH COULD ADVERSELY AFFECT OUR BUSINESS.
Our products may be considered to be capital purchases by certain enterprise customers. Capital purchases are often uncertain and, therefore, are canceled or delayed if the customer experiences a downturn in its business prospects or as a result of unfavorable economic conditions. Any cancellation or delay could adversely affect our results of operations.
WEAK FINANCIAL CONDITIONS OF SOME OF OUR DISTRIBUTORS MAY ADVERSELY AFFECT OUR OPERATING RESULTS.
Some of our distributors are experiencing financial difficulties worldwide, which may adversely impact our collection of accounts receivable. We regularly review the collectability and creditworthiness of our distributors to determine an appropriate allowance for doubtful receivables. Our uncollectible accounts could exceed our current or future allowance for doubtful receivables, which would adversely impact our operating results.
OUR RESULTS OF OPERATIONS MAY SUFFER IF WE ARE REQUIRED TO PAY SIGNIFICANT
AMOUNTS OF PENALTY PAYMENTS PURSUANT TO THE TERMS OF OUR SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS.
We guarantee a certain quality of product support to our customers through our service level agreements. Pursuant to the terms of these agreements, under some circumstances, we are required to make penalty payments to our customers. For example, if we fail to provide our customers a virus pattern file within two hours of our receipt of a virus from the customer, the terms of the agreement require us to make a penalty payment to the dissatisfied customer which may amount up to 20% of the initial sale price. We have established reserves based on our assumptions and estimates. However, our assumptions and estimates may be wrong and our actual total penalty payments could materially exceed our reserves and adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.
WE RELY HEAVILY ON OUR MANAGEMENT AND TECHNICAL PERSONNEL, WHO MAY NOT REMAIN WITH US IN THE FUTURE.
We rely, and will continue to rely, on a number of key technical and management employees, including our Chief Executive Officer, Eva Yi-Fen Chen. While we require our employees to sign employment agreements, our employees are generally not otherwise subject to noncompetition covenants. If any of our key employees leave, our business, results of operations and financial condition could suffer.
FLUCTUATIONS IN OUR QUARTERLY FINANCIAL RESULTS COULD CAUSE THE MARKET PRICE FOR OUR SHARES TO BE VOLATILE.
that do not reflect the long-term trend of our future financial
performance. It is likely that in some future quarterly periods, our operating results may be below the expectations of public market analysts and investors. In this event, the price of our shares could fall.
Factors which could cause our quarterly financial results to fluctuate include:
*timing of sales of our products and services due to customers' budgetary constraints, seasonal buying patterns and our promotional activities;
*new product introductions by our competitors;
*significant marketing campaigns, research and development efforts, employee hiring, and other capital expenditures by us to drive the growth of our business;
*changes in customer needs for antivirus software; and •changes in economic conditions in our major markets.
WEAKNESS IN THE JAPANESE ECONOMY MAY HURT OUR BUSINESS PERFORMANCE BECAUSE JAPAN IS OUR LARGEST MARKET.
While our sales in the US and Europe have increased in recent years, we remain significantly dependent on the Japanese market. Net sales in Japan accounted for approximately 41% in fiscal 2004, approximately 40% in fiscal 2005 and approximately 39% of our net sales in fiscal 2006. Because of our dependence on the Japanese market, any deterioration in the condition of the Japanese economy could negatively impact our net sales.
FOREIGN EXCHANGE FLUCTUATIONS COULD LOWER OUR RESULTS OF OPERATIONS BECAUSE WE EARN REVENUES DENOMINATED IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT CURRENCIES.
Our reporting currency is the Japanese yen and the functional currency of each of our subsidiaries is the currency of the country in which the subsidiary is domiciled. However, a significant portion of our revenues and operating expenses is denominated in currencies other than the Japanese yen, primarily the US dollar, euro and the New Taiwan dollar. As a result, appreciation or depreciation in the value of other currencies as compared to the Japanese yen could result in material transaction or translation gains or losses which could reduce our operating results. These negative effects from currency fluctuations could become more significant if we are successful in increasing our sales in markets outside of Japan. We do not currently engage in currency hedging activities.
INFRINGEMENT OF OUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY COULD HURT OUR BUSINESS.
Our success depends upon the development of proprietary software technology. We rely on a combination of contractual rights and patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws to establish and protect proprietary rights in our software. If we are unable to establish and protect these rights, our competitors may be able to use our intellectual property to compete against us. This could limit our growth and hurt our business. At present, we hold thirteen issued patents. It is possible that no additional patents will be issued to us or any of our subsidiaries. In addition, our issued patents may not prevent other companies from competing with us. On the other hand, there is the possibility of the suspension of our products and services sales, compensation, and royalty payment of licensee because of our patent infringement upon another company. Additionally, there is also a possibility that a case brought against a service invention and suit filed by employee. In the case of losing such a lawsuit, payment to compete the employee may be incurred.
PRODUCT LIABILITY CLAIMS ASSERTED AGAINST US IN THE FUTURE COULD HURT OUR BUSINESS.
Our products are designed to protect customers' network systems and personal computers from damage caused by computer viruses. As a result, if a customer suffers damage from viruses, the customer could sue us on product liability or related grounds, claim damages for data loss or make other claims. Additionally, as viruses are constantly evolving, purchasers of our software products must regularly update the software they have purchased from us with virus protection files that we make available for download from our website. Should we fail to properly test these virus protection files and distribute a defective file, these files could cause damage to the personal computers of our customers who have downloaded a defective file. Our license agreements typically contain provisions, such as disclaimers of warranty and limitations of liability, which seek to limit our exposure to certain types of product liability claims. However, in some jurisdictions these provisions may not be enforceable on statutory, public policy or other grounds. In the case of losing such a law suit, there is a possibility that the case brought against it, and suit filed by our services and products user with brought an action for damages and recovery of pain and suffering damages, could have a material adverse effect on our business.
OUR BUSINESS FACES THE RISK OF EFFECT FROM VIOLATION OR AMMENDMENT OF THE LAW AND THE LEGAL ACT.
All our business would be under various laws, legal acts, and regulations in each country and each region. If we would fail to comply with those laws and regulations, it would provide more severe administrative guidance and penal regulations. In such a case, there is the possibility to have a material adverse effect on our operating results. Also, in the case of the laws and regulations legal amendments, there are the possibilities to be tightening regulations and restrictions on our products and services and carry a cost in terms of relevant issues. In such a case, our business may have a material adverse effect on our operating results,
OUR BUSINESS FACES THE RISK OF INTERRUPTION FROM POWER SHORTAGES, EARTHQUAKES, OUTBREAK OF BIOLOGICAL VIRUSES AND OTHER HAZARDS.
We face a number of potential business interruption risks that are beyond our control. The State of California experienced intermittent power shortages in 2000, sharp increases in the cost of energy and even interruptions of service to some business customers. If power shortages continue to be a problem, our business may be materially adversely affected. Additionally, we may experience natural disasters that could interrupt our business.
Tokyo, where our corporate headquarter is located, is near a major earthquake fault. The impact of a major earthquake on our facilities, infrastructure and overall operations is not known. There is no guarantee that an earthquake would not seriously disturb our entire business operations. We are largely uninsured for losses and business disruptions caused by an earthquake and other natural disasters.
In addition, many of the key countries and regions in which we operate have sustained negative economic impact from events such as the continued fear of future terrorist attacks and the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. Prolonged continuation of these adverse factors may hurt our results of operations and financial condition.
BECAUSE OF THE INFLUENCE OF OUR PRINCIPAL SHAREHOLDERS, OUR OTHER SHAREHOLDERS MAY BE UNABLE TO INFLUENCE OUR BUSINESS.
Our principal shareholders, including major shareholders who beneficially own more than 5% of the issued shares of our common stock and directors, beneficially owned approximately 39.5% of our outstanding shares as of December 31, 2006. These shareholders, if they act together, would be able to significantly influence all matters requiring approval by our shareholders, including the election of directors and the approval of mergers or other business combination transactions. Our principal shareholders may have strategic or other interests that
conflict with the interests of our other shareholders. As a result, the concentration in our shareholdings may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change in control of Trend Micro, which could result in the loss of a significant financial gain to our shareholders.
OUR STOCK PRICE IS VOLATILE, AND INVESTORS BUYING THE SHARES MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RESELL THEM AT OR ABOVE THEIR PURCHASE PRICE.
Shares of our common stock are traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Recently, the Japanese securities markets have experienced significant price and volume fluctuations. The market prices of securities of high-tech companies, and internet companies in particular, have been especially volatile. Since trading in our shares commenced on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on August 17, 2000, our stock price has fluctuated between a low of (Yen) 1,440 and a high of (Yen) 9,005. The closing price on the Tokyo Stock Exchange for our stock on June 29, 2007 was (Yen) 3,980. The market price of our shares is likely to fluctuate in the future.
BECAUSE OF DAILY PRICE RANGE LIMITATIONS UNDER JAPANESE STOCK EXCHANGE RULES, YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO SELL YOUR SHARES OF OUR COMMON STOCK AT A PARTICULAR PRICE ON ANY PARTICULAR TRADING DAY, OR AT ALL.
Stock prices on Japanese stock exchanges are determined on a real-time basis by the equilibrium between bids and offers. These exchanges are order-driven markets without specialists or market makers to guide price formation. To prevent excessive volatility, these exchange set daily upward and downward price fluctuation limits for each stock, based on the previous day's closing price. Although transactions may continue at the upward or downward limit price if the limit price is reached on a particular trading day, no transactions may take place outside these limits. Consequently, an investor wishing to sell at a price above or below the relevant daily limit may not be able to sell his or her shares at such price on a particular trading day, or at all.
2. Condition of corporate group
Trend Micro Group consists of Trend Micro Inc. (Japan), and its subsidiaries which develop and sell anti-virus products and offer other rel ated services. Affiliated companies are Soft Trend Capital Corporation which manages capital funds to be invested into Internet-related vent ures and NetSTAR Inc. which develops and offers URL filtering products.
Products related to anti-virus:
PC client products LAN server products Internet server products All Suite products Other products
The business functions in Trend Micro Group are described below.
| Research and development | Japan | Trend Micro Inc.(Japan) |
|---|---|---|
| | North America | Trend Micro Inc.(U.S.A.) |
| | Europe | Trend Micro Deutschland GmbH (Germany) |
| | Asia Pacific | Trend Micro Incorporated (Taiwan) Trend Micro(China)Incorporated |
| Manufacturing of the Products | Asia Pacific | Trend Micro Incorporated (Taiwan) |
| | Japan | Trend Micro Inc.(Japan) |
| | North America | Trend Micro Inc.(U.S.A.) |
| | Asia Pacific |
|---|---|
| | Latin America |
| Back office | Europe |
| | Latin America |
In addition, Trend Micro Inc. (Japan) owns software copyrights and receives from its overseas subsidiaries royalties based on the respective sales of products to such subsidiaries.
The Company omits "Condition of subsidiaries", because there has no significant change from latest Annual security report (issued on March 29, 2007).
3. MANAGEMENT POLICY
1. BASIC POLICY OF MANAGEMENT
Our Vision: To create a world safe for exchanging digital information.
Our Mission: We ensure digital operational continuity against unpredictable threats.
Computer networks, mainly those linked to the internet, have become a global infrastructure, as lifelines of the information society regardless of individual, business or national border. In the information society which is flooded with vast amounts of information, the computer network systems
are used as communication methods comparable to telephones and faxes, and as a means to improve and rationalize business process for companies in recent years, and the systems play a role in improving productivity and efficiency. Today many companies and individuals are being connected via
the internet and it has produced various working styles, such as small offices and home offices, which enable employees to work in remote locations and in business forms that establish data management operations and customer support operations, etc. in areas where the cost of labour is relatively
low beyond the confines of country, industry, business form. The diffusion of networks on a global scale has already become the foundation for the global economy with the elimination of the geological restrictions of business activities.
In typical homes there are many devices with internet functions, and the fusion of home appliance and IT is emerging as a result of the breadth of technologies deployed through Information Communications Technology devices, mobile phones, video game consoles, IP telephone, and
peer-to-peer (P2P) as file-sharing programs, broadband high-speed communication technology and wireless communication technology. In-home networks have become increasingly popular, often with several internet devices in each household, and our daily life is evolving, influenced by the
advanced information society.
In the 2007 white paper on information and communication in Japan, which the Internal Affairs and Communications Minister announced in July,
"
2007, Japan's economic growth from a very long-range standpoint had passed through the era of the agriculture,
" then next " the era of the industry,"
at last will be coming on " the era of the information and knowledge. "
. The source of Japan's economic growth will be through information and knowledge from the global network. Moreover, in an advanced online society with the ubiquitous society in which people can be connected to
computer networks anytime and anywhere, if progress is made in transforming Japan into a more advanced online society, it would raise gross domestic product about 1 percent year by year toward 2010.
In this way today's computer network systems have much impact on the global economy and the whole society to bring about changes in business forms and individual lifestyles around the world. When we think about the changes of our life from the viewpoint of information, the benefit of
worldwide networking cannot be overestimated. Non standardized manufactures as the obstacle digital information exchanges in the past have gradually disappeared, and as a consequence, improvements in compatibility and convenience are achieved. On the other hand, with the
disappearance of diversity, the possibility to use vulnerabilities for attacking the whole network system by computer viruses is acknowledged as a problem. With the standardization of the global infrastructure network, the convenience enabled by the internet and the risks associated with it are on
two sides of the same coin. Crimes carried out through the manipulation of computer networks, such as phishing, theft of proprietary information and virus incidents, could have significant impact on our daily life and economic activities. Today the threats on the network such as computer viruses,
spyware and spam are not of the nature that can be predicted beforehand and treated with all possible measures. It seems there is now a requirement for enterprises and individuals to deploy security measures against new network threats and crimes which are increasing, causing theft of proprietary
information, monetary damages, flattening the networks and all the rest around the world.
For such a great responsibility to protect the global infrastructure, we will provide strongly supportive products and services promptly beyond national boundaries for every phase of operations in the network such as vulnerability prevention, risk management, outbreak prevention, timely update of
virus/ spyware / spam pattern files, assessment and restoration. We are not only protecting enterprises and individual users from the threats over the networks without interrupting economic activities, but also would like to contribute to the further development of the information society by improving
the safety of the whole network system.
2. TARGET MANAGEMENT INDEX
According to a research institute, the antivirus industry that we belong to, is estimated to expand at an annual growth rate of around 11% from 2005 to 2010 (December 2006, IDC, USA). Making the growth rate of our consolidated net sales to exceed the industry average without fail is an important index that tells us whether or not we can grow to become a leading company which can contribute to customers in the global market as well as the Japanese market
In view of the fact that we have a relatively small amount of investments in physical fixed assets such as manufacturing equipment, have no significant time-lag between accounting profit and loss and cash flows as a characteristics of software companies, and have uncertainty about the long-term forecast of the whole industry which, including our company, has a relatively short history, we set target as operating income margin rate of 35 – 40% at this time.
3. MID- TO LONG-TERM BUSINESS STRATEGY
Today, computers and the Internet are used by every person and in all types of location in every country across the world. It has already become a firmly rooted part of our life and society. Under such circumstances, the security business is required to keep pace with this growth.
In terms of Internet threats, recently, virus outbreaks (which are a sudden increase in numbers of a harmful malicious code attacks) has been dwarfed by the increase of numerous subspecies and specific targeted attacks. The development of not only personal computers, but also network devices, means application programs have become diversified. As a result, the malicious attacks have created many different environments, and subsequently the competition in the security market has changed, becoming more intensive with new entries.
And we recognize that those all changes will be business opportunities.
The number of reported worms which used to be a primary infector for virus incidents has stayed at about the same level recently. On the other hand, Web threats are marking a sharp increase.
There no longer exists a single solution that can protect against all the different threat environments. In response to this, we will provide customizable and scalable solutions with our business partners, for the customer. To combat the current Web threats, we need a consolidated, multilayered defence, including Web reputation service. This then becomes our strength, as we are able to provide a multi-pronged solution for multiple layers of the network.
In 2007, we have founded Regional TrendLabs, a global network of research, service and support centers committed to constant threat surveillance and attack prevention focused on protecting against regional threats. In Japan, we can respond to new threats in real time, in native language, and we will establish the leadership to resolve local threats in each region under Regional TrendLabs.
Moreover, we will continue to advance the relationship with our partners, adding value and by providing more customizable and scalable solutions. We are working with our partners, and implement their products to create various solutions for the customer.
With such a co-operation with partners, research focused on local threats by Regional TrendLabs, and our consolidated multilayered defence, we will respond to the current Web threats, providing protection through customizable and scalable solutions.
4. ISSUES TO DEAL WITH
In the antivirus industry which we belong to, there have been two competitors having higher market shares than ours in the U.S. In addition to this, Microsoft Corporation, a major operating system software vendor, announced that it has entered into the security market, so we will face a new, big competitor in the near future.
Microsoft Corporation has launched "Microsoft® Windows Vista TM ," a new OS which is said to have an enhanced security function, global launch in January 2007 and also started the supply of "Windows Live TM OneCare TM ," a security service for consumers since May 2006 in US and January 2007 in Japan. Microsoft has also begun offering a service called "Microsoft® Forefront TM Client Security" for corporate users since July, 2007.
It is anticipated that the possibility of their entry into the security market will make the competition in the market more intense.
In response to such intense competition, we are enhancing our wide range of technologies to realize multifaceted security measures against new threats evolving day by day, through the acquisition in 2005, of InterMute Inc. which provides antispyware technologies and Kelkea Inc. which provides IP filtering and reputation services.
We, an expert in the antivirus area, have formed several alliances with some of the most respected names in the IT industry including Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S., the worldwide leader in networking for the internet. They have been delivering the advanced prevention solution named Cisco Incident Control System (ICS) which contains a part of our antivirus functions into Cisco's routers, switches and security appliance products.
We believe this kind of alliance has importance for our products and sales strategies, because it has potential effects from the fusion of competitive products in each other's fields and the supplement of sales channels between affiliated vendors.
We would like to continue to develop original solutions faster than the competitors by concentrating our business resources and improve our superiority in products and services with advancing product specifications and performance from the viewpoint of customers. At the same time, we will aim at company growth for the future to strength our loyalty for customers with marketing development to be conscious of the customer attributes based on differences in each buying behaviour.
(1) Consolidated Interim Balance Sheets
(Thousands of yen)
| Account | June 30, 2006 | June 30, 2007 |
|---|---|---|
| | Amount % | Amount % |
(Thousands of yen)
| Amount | % | Amount | % | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 961,885 2,484,867 2,868,852 8,075,552 991,249 517,796 37,722,951 2,340,723 | | 1,132,925 2,348,672 2,898,539 7,305,014 1,395,539 476,919 50,765,964 3,121,344 | | 1,571,838 2,507,894 3,478,927 9,496,465 1,245,671 208,274 45,093,702 2,983,471 |
| 55,963,879 5,581,312 906,578 70,095 | | 69,444,919 11,149,416 1,275,953 21,210 | | 66,586,246 7,681,730 1,005,785 39,784 |
| 6,557,985 | | 12,446,580 | | 8,727,299 |
| 62,521,865 | | 81,891,500 | | 75,313,546 |
| 13,294,143 16,017,739 60,139,087 (7,441,366) | | 13,891,619 16,614,813 71,040,841 (16,510,705) | | 13,479,075 16,202,547 70,779,936 (14,166,725) |
| 82,009,604 825,700 1,442,008 | | 85,036,569 1,558,250 4,652,348 | | 86,294,834 978,271 2,929,903 |
| 2,267,708 － 5,571 | | 6,210,599 1,069,225 9,355 | | 3,908,174 425,525 6,631 |
| 84,282,884 | | 92,325,750 | | 90,635,166 |
| 146,804,750 | | 174,217,250 | | 165,948,713 |
(2)Consolidated Interim Statements of Income
(Thousands of yen)
| | | Amount | % | Amount | % | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I Net Sales II Cost of sales Gross profit III Operaring expenses Operating income IV Non-operating incomes 1. Interest income and dividend received 2. Gain on sales of marketable securities 3. Equity in earnings of affiliated 4. Foreign exchange gain 5. Investment fund income 6. Other income Total non-operating income V Non-operating expenses 1. Interest expenses 2. Loss on sales of markerable securities 3. Foreign exchange loss 4. Other expense Total non-operating expense Ordinary income VI Extraordinary gain 1. Legal settlement 2. Reversal of Stock purchase warrant Total extraordinary gain VII Extraordinary losses 1. Loss on disposal of fixed assets 2. Loss for retroactive year Total extraordinary losses Net income before taxes Income taxes: Current Deferred Minority interest in income of consolidated subsidiaries Net income | *1 *2 | 41,225,514 7,101,024 | 100.0 17.2 82.8 47.5 35.3 2.1 0.5 36.9 4.7 9.5 32.1 11.1 0.0 21.0 | 48,390,710 8,540,754 | 100.0 17.6 82.4 48.8 33.6 3.8 0.1 37.3 － 0.1 37.2 13.5 0.0 23.7 | 85,613,662 15,152,751 |
| | | 34,124,489 19,566,527 | | 39,849,955 23,612,298 | | 70,460,910 41,101,681 |
| | | 14,557,962 707,820 125,405 10,942 － － 21,763 | | 16,237,657 1,304,787 318,913 33,685 153,528 － 61,207 | | 29,359,229 1,775,896 520,784 49,206 － 286,916 47,746 |
| | | 865,932 7,825 51,576 127,424 17,405 | | 1,872,122 5.383 6,387 － 34,914 | | 2,680,550 19,638 56,730 37,954 22,728 |
| | | 204,232 | | 46,684 | | 137,051 |
| | | 15,219,661 | | 18,063,094 | | 31,902,728 |
| | | 1,766,250 176,700 | | － － | | 1,766,250 176,700 |
| | | 1,942,950 15,147 3,928,895 | | － 31,889 － | | 1,942,950 38,538 3,928,895 |
| | | 3,944,042 | | 31,889 | | 3,967,434 |
| | | 13,218,568 | | 18,031,204 | | 29,878,243 |
| | | 7,937,943 (3,381,267) | | 8,492,065 (1,930,896) | | 15,513,232 (4,963,487) |
| | | 4,556,675 (573) | | 6,561,168 (488) | | 10,549,744 (811) |
| | | 8,661,318 | | 11,469,547 | | 19,327,687 |
(3)Consolidated Interim Statements of Changes in Net Assets
From January 1, 2006 to June 30, 2006
(Thousands of yen)
| | Shareholders’ equity | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Common stock | Capital surplus | Retained earnings | Treasury stock | Total shareholders’ equity |
| Balance at December 31, 2005 | 12,484,849 | 15,087,304 | 59,018,855 | (7,283,242) | 79,307,767 |
| Movement for this period | | | | | |
| Issuance of new stock | 809,294 | 809,085 | | | 1,618,380 |
| Transfer from stock warrant | | 121,350 | | | 121,350 |
| Dividend of surplus | | | (7,509,067) | | (7,509,067) |
| Net income | | | 8,661,318 | | 8,661,318 |
| Sales of treasury stock | | | | 147,692 | 147,692 |
| Loss on sales of treasury stock | | | (32,019) | | (32,019) |
| Purchase of treasury stock | | | | (305,816) | (305,816) |
| Movement for this period excluding shareholders’ equity | | | | | |
| Total movement | 809,294 | 930,435 | 1,120,231 | (158,124) | 2,701,837 |
| Balance at June 30, 2006 | 13,294,143 | 16,017,739 | 60,139,087 | (7,441,366) | 82,009,604 |
| | Revaluation surplus | | Minority interest |
|---|---|---|---|
| | Valuated difference on available-for-sale | Cumulative translation adjustments | |
| Balance at December 31, 2005 | 656,477 | 1,466,097 | 4,530 |
| Movement for this period | | | |
| Issuance of new stock | | | |
| Transfer from stock warrant | | | |
| Dividend of surplus | | | |
| Net income | | | |
| Sales of treasury stock | | | |
| Loss on sales of treasury stock | | | |
| Purchase of treasury stock | | | |
| Movement for this period excluding shareholders’ equity | 169,222 | (24,089) | 1,040 |
| Total movement | 169,222 | (24,089) | 1,040 |
| | Common stock | Capital surplus | Retained earnings | Treasury stock |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balance at December 31, 2006 | 13,479,075 | 16,202,547 | 70,779,936 | (14,166,725) |
| Movement for this period | | | | |
| Issuance of new stock | 412,544 | 412,266 | | |
| Dividend of surplus | | | (11,158,130) | |
| Net income | | | 11,469,547 | |
| Sales of treasury stock | | | | 196,038 |
| Loss on sales of treasury stock | | | (50,511) | |
| Purchase of treasury stock | | | | (2,540,019) |
| Movement for this period ex cluding shareholders’ equity | | | | |
| Total movement | 412,544 | 412,266 | 260,905 | (2,343,980) |
| Balance at June 30, 2007 | 13,891,619 | 16,614,813 | 71,040,841 | (16,510,705) |
| | Revaluation surplus | | Share warrants | Minority interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Valuated difference on available-for-sale | Cumulative translation adjustments | | |
| Balance at December 31, 2006 | 978,271 | 2,929,903 | 425,525 | 6,631 |
| Movement for this period | | | | |
| Issuance of new stock | | | | |
| Dividend of surplus | | | | |
| Net income | | | | |
| Sales of treasury stock | | | | |
| Loss on sales of treasury stock | | | | |
| Purchase of treasury stock | | | | |
| Movement for this period excluding shareholders’ equity | 579,979 | 1,722,445 | 643,700 | 2,723 |
| Total movement | 579,979 | 1,722,445 | 643,700 | 2,723 |
| Balance at June 30, 2007 | 1,558,250 | 4,652,348 | 1,069,225 | 9,355 |
27
| | Shareholders’ equity | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Common stock | Capital surplus | Retained earnings | Treasury stock | Total shareholders’ equity |
| Balance at December 31, 2005 | 12,484,849 | 15,087,304 | 59,018,855 | (7,283,242) | 79,307,767 |
| Movement for this period | | | | | |
| Issuance of new stock | 994,226 | 993,893 | | | 1,988,120 |
| Transfer from stock warrant | | 121,350 | | | 121,350 |
| Dividend of surplus | | | (7,509,067) | | (7,509,067) |
| Net income | | | 19,327,687 | | 19,327,687 |
| Sales of treasury stock | | | | 234,359 | 234,359 |
| Loss on sales of treasury stock | | | (57,539) | | (57,539) |
| Purchase of treasury stock | | | | (7,117,842) | (7,117,842) |
| Movement for this period excluding shareholders’ equity | | | | | |
| Total movement | 994,226 | 1,115,243 | 11,761,080 | (6,883,482) | 6,987,067 |
| Balance at December 31, 2006 | 13,479,075 | 16,202,547 | 70,779,936 | (14,166,725) | 86,294,834 |
| | Revaluation surplus | | Share warrants | Minority interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Valuated difference on available-for-sale | Cumulative translation a djustments | | |
| Balance at December 31, 2005 | 656,477 | 1,466,097 | - | 4,530 |
| Movement for this period | | | | |
| Issuance of new stock | | | | |
| Transfer from stock warrant | | | | |
| Dividend of surplus | | | | |
| Net income | | | | |
| Sales of treasury stock | | | | |
| Loss on sales of treasury stock | | | | |
| Purchase of treasury stock | | | | |
| Movement for this period excluding shareholders’ equity | 321,793 | 1,463,805 | 425,525 | 2,100 |
| Total movement | 321,793 | 1,463,805 | 425,525 | 2,100 |
| Balance at December 31, 2006 | 978,271 | 2,929,903 | 425,525 | 6,631 |
28
For the first half
| | of the previous | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| | fiscal year | | |
| Cash flows from operating activities: Net income before tax Depreciation and amortization Stock compensations Amortization of Goodwill Increase in Allowance for bad debts Increase in Allowance for sales returns Increase in Allowance for retirement benefits Interest income Equity in earnings of affiliated companies (Gain) loss on sales of marketable securities (Gain) loss on sale and disposal of fixed assets (Gain) loss for retroactive year (Increase) decrease in notes and accounts receivable (Increase) decrease in inventories Increase (decrease) in notes and accounts payable Increase (decrease) in deferred revenue Law suit settlement Interest expense Other Subtotal Proceeds from interest and dividend received Payment for income tax Proceeds from law suit settlement Payment for interest expense Net cash provided by operating activities Cash flows from investing activities: (Payments for)/Proceeds from time deposits Payments for purchases of marketable securities and security investments Proceeds from sales or redemptions of marketable securities and security investments Payments for purchases of property and equipment Payments for purchases of other intangibles Other Net cash used in investing activities | | 18,031,204 1,788,931 643,700 300,896 189,798 260,845 245,227 (1,304,787) (33,685) (312,525) 31,889 - (521,670) (148,469) (490,311) 7,458,167 - 5,383 (454,198) 25,690,394 1,303,134 (10,997,463) - (8,633) 15,987,433 (733,046) (14,757,778) 13,702,749 (1,030,910) (985,106) - (3,804,092) | 29,878,243 3,404,158 425,525 582,882 264,558 (228,189) 241,708 (1,775,896) (49,206) (464,054) 38,538 3,928,895 (121,325) (303,253) 587,337 12,960,443 (1,766,250) 19,638 (829,771) 46,793,981 1,641,922 (12,718,541) 1,766,250 (19,638) 37,463,973 920,999 (44,354,426) 37,939,910 (1,942,091) (2,851,974) (816,655) (11,104,238) |
| | 13,218,568 | | |
| | 1,620,974 | | |
| | - | | |
| | 289,790 | | |
| | 156,050 | | |
| | 91,363 | | |
| | 40,517 | | |
| | (707,820) | | |
| | (10,942) | | |
| | (73,828) | | |
| | 15,147 | | |
| | 3,928,895 | | |
| | 3,258,519 | | |
| | (137,609) | | |
| | 33,512 | | |
| | 3,621,986 | | |
| | (1,766,250) | | |
| | 7,825 | | |
| | 328,796 | | |
| | 23,915,497 | | |
| | 685,298 | | |
| | (6,245,698) | | |
| | 1,766,250 | | |
| | (7,995) | | |
| | 20,113,353 | | |
| | 396,422 | | |
| | (21,393,376) | | |
| | 20,063,114 | | |
| | (957,213) | | |
| | (1,276,679) | | |
| | - | | |
| | (3,167,733) | | |
For the first half
| Account | | For the first half | For the first half of the current fiscal year |
|---|---|---|---|
| | | of the previous | |
| | | fiscal year | |
| Cash flows from financing activities: Issuance of common stock pursuant to exercise of stock purchase warrants and stock acquisition rights Payment for purchase of treasury stock Proceeds from sales of treasury stock Dividends paid Net cash used in financing activities Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period Cash and cash equivalents at end of period | *1 | | 824,809 (2,540,019) 145,527 (11,138,067) (12,707,750) 2,370,843 1,846,433 76,196,954 78,043,387 |
| | | 1,618,380 | |
| | | (305,816) | |
| | | 115,672 | |
| | | (7,489,965) | |
| | | (6,061,729) | |
| | | 621,888 | |
| | | 11,505,779 | |
| | | 59,612,576 | |
| | | 71,118,355 | |
30
NOTES TO INTERIM CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL
Significant Accounting Policies and Practices for Preparing Interim Consolidated Financial Statements
| For the first half of the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006) | For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007) | For the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To December 31, 2006) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Accounting principles for presenting consolidated financial statements The interim consolidated financial statements of the Company had been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America (“U.S. GAAP”). Effective from the first half of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2007, the Company adopted generally accepted accounting principles in Japan (“Japan GAAP”), and prepared its interim consolidated financial statements in accordance with Regulation for interim consolidated Financial statements. Accordingly, the financial statements for the first half of the previous fiscal year were adjusted and reclassified to conform with Japan GAAP for the comparison. This change in accounting principles is due to applying to delist its American Depositary Shares (“ADR”) from the NASDAQ Stock Market and to terminate its registration of its common stock in U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) as of May 31, 2007. The change in accounting principles resulted in increase in net income by 276,429 thousands of yen. | 1. Accounting principles for presenting consolidated financial statements The interim consolidated financial statements of the Company had been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America (“U.S. GAAP”). Effective from the first half of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2007, the Company adopted generally accepted accounting principles in Japan (“Japan GAAP”), and prepared its interim consolidated financial statements in accordance with Regulation for interim consolidated Financial statements. This change in accounting principles is due to applying to delist its American Depositary Shares (“ADR”) from the NASDAQ Stock Market and to terminate its registration of its common stock in U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) as of May 31, 2007. | 1. Accounting principles for presenting consolidated financial statements The consolidated financial statements of the Company had been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America (“U.S. GAAP”). Effective from the fiscal year ending December 31, 2007, the Company adopted a generally accepted accounting principles in Japan (“Japan GAAP”), and prepared its consolidated financial statements in accordance with Regulation for consolidated Financial statements. This change in accounting principles is due to applying to delist its American Depositary Shares (“ADR”) from the NASDAQ Stock Market and to terminate its registration of its common stock in U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) as of May 31, 2007. Consolidated balance sheet, consolidated statements of income, Consolidated statements of shareholders’ equity and consolidated statements of cash flows for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2006 were adjusted and reclassified to conform with Japan GAAP, though they are unaudited. The change in accounting principles resulted in increase in net income by 2,091,497 thousands of yen. |
| 2. Basis of consolidation (1)Consolidated subsidiaries All of our 19 subsidiaries are consolidated. Names of major subsidiaries: Trend Micro Inc. Trend Micro (EMEA) Limited (Ireland) Trend Micro France SA (2) The Company has no unconsolidated subsidiaries. | 2. Basis of consolidation Same as left | 2. Basis of consolidation Same as left |
For the first half of
| 3. Affiliated companies Equity method of accounting is applied to investments in the following affiliated companies *Soft Trend Capital Corporation (Japan) *Net STAR, Inc. (Japan) | 3. Affiliated companies Same as left |
|---|---|
| 4. Fiscal year of consolidated subsidiaries All financial statements included in a set of consolidated financial statements are prepared as of the same date. | 4. Fiscal year of consolidated subsidiaries Same as left |
| 5. Accounting Policies (1)Accounting for evaluation of assets A. Marketable securities and investment securities Available-for-sale with market value: The securities are stated at the market value method based on the value at the end of the period (valuated differences are recognized in equity directly. Cost of selling is determined by the moving average method.) Available-for-sale without market value: Cost basis by moving average method B. Inventories Lower of cost or market by moving Average method (2) Depreciation and amortization A. Property and equipment Mainly, depreciation is computed by declining-balance method in parent company and is computed by a straight-line method in consolidated subsidiaries. Useful lives of the main property and equipment are as follows : Office furniture and equipment : 2– 10 years B. Intangibles a. Software for sale Straight -line method over the estimated useful lives (12 months) b. Software for internal use Straight-line method over the estimated useful lives (mainly 5 years) - Other intangibles Straight-line method over the estimated useful lives | 5. Accounting Policies (1)Accounting for evaluation of assets A. Marketable securities and investment securities Available-for-sale with market value: Same as left Available-for-sale without market value: Same as left B. Inventories Cost basis by moving average method. Unprofitable inventories are devaluated. (2) Depreciation and amortization A. Property and equipment Same as left B. Intangibles a. Software for sale Same as left b. Software for internal use Same as left - Other intangibles Same as left |
For the first half of
For the previous
For the first half of the previous fiscal year
For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007)
33
For the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To December 31, 2006)
For the first half of the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006
For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007
34
For the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006
| For the first half of the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006) | For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007) |
|---|---|
| (Accounting standards for impairment of long-lived assets) Effective from the first half of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2006, the Company adopted the accounting standards for impairment of long-lived assets, “Statement of Opinion on Establishment of Accounting Standards for Impairment of Long-lived Assets” (issued by Business Accounting Council on August 9, 2002) and “Application Guidance on Accounting Standards for Impairment of Long-lived Assets” (Accounting Standard Application Guidance No.6, which was issued on October 31, 2003). The adoption of these standards had no impact on net income. (Accounting standards for presentation of net assets in the balance sheet) Effective from the first half of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2006, the company adopted “Accounting Standard for Presentation of Net Assets in the Balance Sheet” (Accounting Standard No.5, which was issued on December 9, 2005) and “Application Guidance on Accounting Standard for Presentation of Net Assets in the Balance Sheet” (Accounting Standard Application Guidance No.8, which was issued on December 9, 2005). The adoption of these standards had no impact on net income. The total amount if calculated as existing Stockholders’ equity is 84,277,313 thousands yen . Besides, The Company made up “Net assets in the balance sheet” of this period by revised regulation for interim consolidated financial statements. (Partial amendment of accounting standards for decrease of treasury stock and legal reserve) Effective from the first half of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2006, the Company adopted “Accounting Standard for decrease of stock option and legal reserve” (Accounting Standard No.1 which was amended on August 11, 2006) and “Application Guidance on Accounting Standard for decrease of stock option and legal reserve” (Accounting Standard Application Guidance No.2 which was amended on August 11, 2006). The adoption of these standards had no impact on net income. | ―――――――――――――― ―――――――――――――― ―――――――――――――― |
35
| For the first half of the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006) | For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007) | For the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To December 31, 2006) |
|---|---|---|
| (Accounting standards for stock option) Effective from the first half of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2006, the Company adopted “Accounting Standard for stock option” (Accounting Standard No.8 which was issued on December 27, 2005) and “Application Guidance on Accounting Standard for stock option” (Accounting Standard Application Guidance No.11 which was issued on May 31, 2006). The adoption of these standards had no impact on net income. ―――――――――――――― ―――――――――――――― | ―――――――――――――― (Accounting standard for measurement of inventories) Effective from this current semiannual accounting, the company early adopted “Accounting Standard for Measurement of Inventories” (ASBJ Statement No. 9 which was issued on July 5, 2006). There is no effect in balance sheet and income statement. (Revision of the depreciable limit for newly acquired asset) Effective from this current semiannual accounting, the company adopted the revision of corporate tax law with respect to the depreciable limit for newly acquired asset. There is not material effect. | (Accounting standards for stock option) Effective from the fiscal year ending December 31, 2006, the Company adopted “Accounting Standard for stock option” (Accounting Standard No.8 which was issued on December 27, 2005) and “Application Guidance on Accounting Standard for stock option” (Accounting Standard Application Guidance No.11 which was issued on May 31, 2006). As a result, 78,871 thousands of yen and 346,653 thousands of yen of stock compensations were recorded in “cost of sales” and “selling and administrative expense”, respectively, and operating income ordinary, income and net income before tax decreased by 425,525 thousands of yen, respectively. ―――――――――――――― ―――――――――――――― |
Supplementary information
| For the first half of the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006) | For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007) |
|---|---|
| ―――――――――――――― | (Method of Sales recording) Sales of packaged goods were used to be recognized on the date that goods were delivered to customers. Assuming a day for the carriage to customers, the sales on the year end (half year end) shipment were recognized in next accounting period (second half accounting period). The company reverts to recognize the sales of packaged goods on the shipping date from current semiannual accounting. The effect of this change is not material. |
(Thousands of Yen)
| At the end of the first half of the previous fiscal year (As of June 30, 2006) | At the end of the first half of the current fiscal year (As of June 30, 2007) |
|---|---|
| *1 Accumulated depreciation of property and equipment 4,316,332 | *1 Accumulated depreciation of property and equipment 6,091,932 |
| *2 Presentation of consumption tax Consumption tax is included in others of current liabilities. | *2 Presentation of consumption tax Same as left |
Interim Consolidated Income Statement
(Thousands of yen)
| For the first half of the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006) | For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007) |
|---|---|
| *1 Major components of selling, general and administrative expenses are as follows Advertising 971,204 Sales promotions 2,168,603 Salaries and bonuses 7,616,399 Outside service fee 1,897,371 Depreciation expense 667,347 Tel communication 1,077,216 & delivery Traveling costs 1,008,886 Research and 2,041,612 development costs | *1 Major components of selling, general and administrative expenses are as follows Advertising 1,129,426 Sales promotions 2,491,417 Salaries and bonuses 9,208,303 Outside service fee 2,257,957 Depreciation expense 984,247 Tel communication 1,422,489 & delivery Traveling costs 1,135,305 Research and 2,055,614 development costs |
| *2 The details of loss on disposal of property, equipment and software Property and equipment 5,028 Software 10,118 | *2 The details of loss on disposal of property, equipment and software Property and equipment 31,889 |
For the six months ended June 30, 2006
1. Number of common stock issued
| Class of stock | As of Dec 31, 2005 | Increase | Decrease |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common stock | 136,603,725 | 575,779 | － |
The increase by 575,779 shares is due to exercise of stock acquisition rights.
2. Number of Treasury stocks
| Class of treasury stock | As of Dec 31, 2005 | Increase | Decrease |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common stock | 2,513,231 | 74,218 | 50,500 |
The increase by 74,218 shares is due to purchasing of shares less than one unit, and the decrease by 50,500 shares is due to disposition of treasury stock upon the exercise of stock acquisition rights.
3. Dividend of surplus
| Resolution | Class of stock | Total dividends (thousands of yen) | Cash dividends per share (yen) | Record date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shareholders’ meeting on Mar 28, 2006 | Common stock | 7,509,067 | 56 | Dec 31,2005 |
4. Stock acquisition rights
| Detail | Class of shares subject to stock acquisition right | Number of shares subject to the exercise of stock acquisition right | | | | Amount outstanding (Thousands of yen) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | As of Dec 31,2005 | Increase | Decrease | As of Jun 30, 2006 | |
| Stock Option | Common stock | 12,910,000 | － | 1,018,000 | 11,892,000 | 0 |
The decrease by 1,018,000 shares is due to 392,000 shares for exercise of stock acquisition rights and 626,000 shares for cancellation of stock acquisition rights.
(Note) With regard to the number of shares as of June 30, 2006, the first day of exercise period has not come yet for 5,569,500 shares.
1. Number of common stock issued
| Class of stock | As of Dec 31, 2006 | Increase | Decrease |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common stock | 137,344,504 | 369,500 | － |
The increase by 369,500 shares is due to exercise of stock acquisition rights.
2. Number of Treasury stocks
| Class of treasury stock | As of Dec 31, 2006 | Increase | Decrease |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common stock | 4,509,612 | 820,897 | 65,000 |
The increase by 820,897 shares is due to 1,897 shares for purchasing of shares less than one unit and 819,000 shares for purchasing from stock market.
The decrease by 65,000 shares is due to disposition of treasury stock upon the exercise of stock acquisition right.
3. Dividend of surplus
4. Stock acquisition rights
| | | As of Dec 31,2006 | Increase | Decrease | As of Jun 30, 2007 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stock Option | Common stock | 14,603,000 | － | 434,500 | 14,168,500 | 1,069,225 |
The decrease by 434,500 shares is due to exercise of stock acquisition rights
(Note) With regard to the number of shares as of June 30, 2007, the first day of exercise period has not come yet for 2,904,000 shares.
1. Number of common stock issued
| Class of stock | As of Dec 31, 2005 | Increase | Decrease |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common stock | 136,603,725 | 740,779 | － |
The increase by 740,779 shares is due to exercise of stock acquisition rights.
2. Number of Treasury stocks
| Class of treasury stock | As of Dec 31, 2005 | Increase | Decrease |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common stock | 2,513,231 | 2,074,881 | 78,500 |
The increase by 2,074,881 shares is due to 74,881 shares for purchasing of shares less than one unit and 2,000,000 shares for purchasing from stock market.
The decrease by 78,500 shares is due to disposition of treasury stock upon the exercise of stock acquisition right.
3. Dividend of surplus
| Resolution | Class of stock | Total dividends (thousands of yen) | Cash dividends per share (yen) | Record date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shareholders’ meeting on Mar 28, 2006 | Common stock | 7,509,067 | 56 | Dec 31, 2005 |
4. Stock acquisition rights
| Detail | Class of shares subject to stock acquisition right | Number of shares subject to the exercise of stock acquisition right | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | As of Dec 31,2005 | Increase | Decrease | As of Dec 31, 2006 |
| Stock Option | Common stock | 12,910,000 | 2,904,000 | 1,211,000 | 14,603,000 |
The increase by 2,904,000 shares is due to granting new stock acquisition rights.
The decrease by 1,211,000 shares is due to 585,000 shares for exercise of stock acquisition rights and 626,000 shares for cancellation of stock acquisition rights.
(Note) With regard to the number of shares as of December 31, 2006, the first day of exercise period has not come yet for 2,904,000 shares.
(Thousands of yen)
*1
(Lease transactions)
The Company omits "Lease transactions", because for the first half of current fiscal year, the Company considers there is not a strong need to release it.
As of June 30, 2006
1 Available-for-sale investments with fair market value
(Thousands of yen)
| | Purchase Cost | Fair value on consolidated balance sheet | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bonds (1)Government bonds (2)Corporate bonds (3)Others Others | 10,505,599 5,625,318 3,997,239 13,406,144 | 10,523,086 5,662,382 4,011,700 14,718,364 | 17,487 37,064 14,460 1,312,220 |
| Total | 33,534,301 | 34,915,534 | 1,381,232 |
2 Major securities without fair market value and their stated value on consolidated balance sheet
Available-for-sale (Thousands of yen)
As of June 30, 2007
1 Available-for-sale investments with fair market value
(Thousands of yen)
| | Purchase Cost | Fair value on consolidated balance sheet |
|---|---|---|
| Bonds (1)Government bonds (2)Corporate bonds (3)Others Others | 15,735,680 5,099,340 4,997,773 15,921,560 | 16,034,310 5,331,747 4,901,500 18,201,531 |
| Total | 41,754,355 | 44,469,090 |
2 Major securities without fair market value and their stated value on consolidated balance sheet
As of December 31, 2006
1 Available-for-sale investments with fair market value
(Thousands of yen)
| | Purchase Cost | Fair value on consolidated balance sheet | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bonds (1)Government bonds (2)Corporate bonds (3)Others Others | 15,885,901 5,171,276 4,997,533 13,721,043 | 107,643 16,109,193 5,305,626 4,987,900 15,113,145 | 223,291 134,349 (9,633) 1,392,102 |
2 Major securities without fair market value and their stated value on consolidated balance sheet
(Stock Option)
The amount of costs, related with stock option
(Tousands of Yen)
1 Sales and operating income results of business segments
The main businesses of the Company are develop and sell anti-virus products and offer other related services.
For the first half of the previous fiscal year(from January 1, 2006 to June 30, 2006), the first half of the current fiscal year(from January 1, 2007 to June,30 2007), and the previous fiscal year(from January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2006), the ratio of the main businesses account more than 90% of total sales amount and operationg income.
Therefore the Company omits "Sales and operating income results of business segments"
2. Sales and operating income results of regional segments
For the six month ended June 30, 2006
(Thousands of Yen)
| | Japan | North America | Europe | Asia Pacific | Latin America | Corporate or Elimination |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales (1) Net sales to external customers (2) Intercompany sales | 16,155,903 10,366,318 | 9,068,186 4,992,546 | 10,257,392 2,027,590 | 4,435,823 3,899,011 | 1,308,207 171,688 | － (21,457,155) |
| Total sales | 26,522,221 | 14,060,733 | 12,284,983 | 8,334,835 | 1,479,896 | (21,457,155) |
| Operating Expense | 4,410,176 | 14,029,386 | 11,211,351 | 7,389,901 | 1,096,220 | (11,469,483) |
| Operating income or (loss) | 22,112,045 | 31,346 | 1,073,632 | 944,934 | 383,675 | (9,987,671) |
For the six month ended June 30, 2007
(Thousands of Yen)
| Sales (1) Net sales to external customers (2) Intercompany sales | 17,779,888 11,753,410 | 12,093,136 3,806,921 | 11,838,534 2,408,845 | 5,143,836 5,228,538 | 1,535,313 194,526 | － (23,392,242) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total sales | 29,533,299 | 15,900,058 | 14,247,379 | 10,372,374 | 1,729,840 | (23,392,242) |
| Operating Expense | 5,395,190 | 16,177,387 | 13,236,269 | 9,464,873 | 1,396,709 | (13,517,378) |
| Operating income or (loss) | 24,138,108 | (277,328) | 1,011,110 | 907,500 | 333,130 | (9,874,864) |
For year ended December 31, 2006
(Thousands of Yen)
| | Japan | North America | Europe | Asia Pacific | Latin America | Corporate or Elimination |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales (1) Net sales to external customers (2) Intercompany sales | 33,248,209 20,286,640 | 19,295,082 10,309,835 | 21,150,417 4,334,612 | 9,148,674 8,583,069 | 2,771,277 294,260 | － (43,808,419) |
| Total sales | 53,534,850 | 29,604,917 | 25,485,029 | 17,731,744 | 3,065,537 | (43,808,419) |
| Operating Expense | 9,318,215 | 27,935,697 | 23,707,266 | 16,078,385 | 2,221,109 | (23,006,242) |
| Operating income or (loss) | 44,216,634 | 1,669,220 | 1,777,763 | 1,653,359 | 844,428 | (20,802,176) |
Note:
1 The classification of the regional segment is based on geographic proximity.
2 Major countries other than Japan:
North America U.S.A.
Europe
Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, UK
Asia pacific
Taiwan, Korea, Australia, China, Philippine, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India Brazil, Mexico
Latin America
3 The unapportionable amount of operating expenses that is included in "Corporate or Elimination".
For the six month ended June 30, 2006
(Thousands of Yen)
| | North America | Europe | Asia Pacific | Latin America |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Sales to overseas | 9,153,261 | 10,251,429 | 4,434,949 | 1,315,673 |
| 2 Consolidated total sales | － | － | － | － |
For the six month ended June 30, 2007
(Thousands of Yen)
| | North America | Europe | Asia Pacific | Latin America |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Sales to overseas | 12,201,716 | 11,810,290 | 5,145,298 | 1,543,528 |
| 2 Consolidated total sales | － | － | － | － |
| 3 Sales % to Overseas to Consolidated total sales | 25.2 | 24.4 | 10.6 | 3.2 |
For the year ended December 31, 2006
(Thousands of Yen)
| | North America | Europe | Asia Pacific | Latin America |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Sales to overseas | 19,439,256 | 21,166,655 | 9,146,837 | 2,786,079 |
| 2 Consolidated total sales | － | － | － | － |
| 3 Sales % to Overseas to Consolidated total sales | 22.7 | 24.7 | 10.7 | 3.3 |
Note:
1 The classification of the regional segment is based on geographic proximity.
2 Sales to overseas are sales amount to foreign countries or areas other than Japan.
3 Major countries other than Japan:
North America U.S.A.
Europe
Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, UK
Asia pacific
Taiwan, Korea, Australia, China, Philippine, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India
Latin America
Brazil, Mexico
(Yen)
| | For the first half of the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006) | For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007) | For the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To December 31, 2006) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shareholders’ equity per share Basic EPS Diluted EPS | 625.93 64.48 63.95 | 688.93 86.53 86.11 | 679.06 144.26 143.28 |
Basis of calculation for net income per share and diluted net income per share were as follows.
| | For the first half of the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006) | For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007) |
|---|---|---|
| <Basic EPS> Net income (Thousands of Yen) -not to attributable to common stock holders -to common stock holders Weighted-average number of common shares (Shares) <Diluted EPS> Adjustment to Net income (Thousands of Yen) Increased common stock (Shares) - Stock purchase warrants - Stock acquisition rights | 8,661,318 － 8,661,318 134,323,039 － 1,112,313 － 1,112,313 | 11,469,547 － 11,469,547 132,556,787 － 632,299 － 632,299 - 2,497,000 shares for stock acquisition rights which were based on the resolution of shareholders’ meeting on March 25, 2004 and regulated by previous commercial law 280-20 and 280-21 were issued on April 28, 2004 - 1,768,500 shares for stock acquisition rights which were based on the resolution of shareholders’ meeting on March 25, 2004 and regulated by previous commercial law 280-20 and 280-21 were issued on October 28, 2004 - 3,170,000 shares for stock acquisition rights which were based on the resolution of shareholders’ meeting on March 25, 2005 and regulated by previous commercial law 280-20 and 280-21 were issued on July 22, 2005 |
| Details of shares not included in the computation of diluted EPS since it did not have dilutive effect | - 2,497,000 shares for stock acquisition rights which were based on the resolution of shareholders’ meeting on March 25, 2004 and regulated by previous commercial law 280-20 and 280-21 were issued on April 28, 2004 - 1,768,500 shares for stock acquisition rights which were based on the resolution of shareholders’ meeting on March 25, 2004 and regulated by previous commercial law 280-20 and 280-21 were issued on October 28, 2004 | |
| For the first half of the previous fiscal year (From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006) | For the first half of the current fiscal year (From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007) |
|---|---|
| | - 2,397,000 shares for stock acquisition rights which were based on the resolution of shareholders’ meeting on March 25, 2005 and regulated by previous commercial law 280-20 and 280-21 were issued on December 14, 2005 - 1,451,000 shares for stock acquisition rights which were based on the resolution of shareholders’ meeting on March 28, 2006 and regulated by previous commercial law 280-20 and 280-21 were issued on July 10, 2006 - 1,453,000 shares for stock acquisition rights which were based on the resolution of shareholders’ meeting on March 28, 2006 and regulated by previous commercial law 280-20 and 280-21 were issued on November 8, 2006 |
48
13. Significant Subsequent Events
For the first half of
For the first half of
For the previous the previous fiscal year
the current fiscal year fiscal year
For the first half of
For the first half of
For the previous
1. Non-consolidated interim Financial Statements
(1) Non-consolidated interim balance sheets
(Thousands of yen)
| Period Account | At the end of the first half of the previous fiscal year (As of June 30, 2006) | | At the end of the first half of the current fiscal year (As of June 30, 2007) | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Assets) Ⅰ Current assets 1. Cash and bank deposits 2. Accounts receivable, trade 3. Marketable securities 4. Inventories 5. Intercompany short-term loan receivables 6. Other receivables 7. Deferred tax assets 8. Others 9. Allowance for bad debt Total current assets Ⅱ Non-current assets 1. Property and equipment *1 2. Intangibles (1) Software (2) Software in progress (3) Others Total intangibles 3. Investments and other non-current assets (1) Investment securities (2) Investments in subsidiaries and affiliates (3) Deferred tax assets (4) Others (5) Allowance for bad debt (6) Allowance for loss on investments in subsidiaries and affiliates Total investments and other non-current assets Total non-current assets Total assets | Amount | % | Amount | % | Amount |
| | 42,146,031 10,190,421 2,181,348 113,318 33,724 154,475 8,182,991 924,019 (40,365) | 69.1 0.5 2.1 28.3 30.9 100.0 | 36,423,503 20,410,479 21,646,309 171,699 36,074 521,137 8,127,665 1,053,649 (58,768) | 85.1 0.5 2.5 11.9 14.9 100.0 | 42,292,620 13,750,099 17,968,014 135,868 34,859 446,172 7,933,826 962,302 (48,803) |
| | 63,885,965 475,438 1,283,228 119,961 537,076 | | 88,331,749 498,561 1,951,784 316,855 356,125 | | 83,474,960 459,852 1,837,648 416,493 446,600 |
| | 1,940,265 22,354,546 2,152,563 1,291,491 393,183 (115) (62,038) | | 2,624,765 6,935,195 2,152,563 3,304,934 397,212 (123) (394,481) | | 2,700,743 8,413,367 2,152,563 2,261,004 395,130 (119) (60,788) |
| | 26,129,631 | | 12,395,300 | | 13,161,157 |
| | 28,545,335 | | 15,518,628 | | 16,321,753 |
| | 92,431,300 | | 103,850,377 | | 99,796,714 |
(Thousands of yen)
| Period Account | At the end of the first half of the previous fiscal year (As of June 30, 2006) | | At the end of the first half of the current fiscal year (As of June 30, 2007) | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ( Liabilities) Ⅰ Current liabilities 1. Accounts payable, trade 2. Accounts payable, other 3. Accrued income and other taxes 4. Allowance for bonuses 5. Allowance for sales returns 6. Deferred revenue 7. Others *3 Total current liabilities Ⅱ Long-term liabilities 1. Deferred revenue 2. Allowance for retirement benefits 3. Allowance for retirement benefits for directors and corporate auditors Total long-term liabilities Total liabilities (Net assets) Ⅰ Shareholders’ equity 1. Common stock 2. Capital surplus (1) Additional paid-in capital Total capital surplas 3. Retained earnings (1) Legal reserve (2) Accumulated profit Retained ernings carried forward Total retained earnings 4. Treasury stock *2 Total shareholders’ equity Ⅱ Revaluation surplus 1. Net unrealized gain (loss) on debt and equity securities Total revaluation surplus Ⅲ Share Warrant Total net assets Total liabilities and net assets | Amount 96,460 5,925,372 6,432,901 53,078 274,728 16,887,664 645,418 | % 32.8 2.6 35.4 14.4 17.3 40.1 △8.1 63.7 ― 64.6 100.0 | Amount 164,279 12,469,366 6,723,007 57,416 197,309 19,904,197 731,991 | % 38.8 5.1 43.9 13.4 16.0 40.0 △15.9 53.5 1.6 1.0 56.1 100.0 | Amount 167,506 9,367,849 7,320,978 73,972 23,740 17,558,125 717,367 |
| | 30,315,623 1,724,440 641,157 6,585 | | 40,247,568 4,630,125 712,800 8,090 | | 35,229,538 2,624,830 694,912 7,340 |
| | 2,372,183 | | 5,351,016 | | 3,327,082 |
| | 32,687,807 13,294,143 16,017,739 | | 45,598,584 13,891,619 16,614,813 | | 38,556,621 13,479,075 16,202,547 |
| | 16,017,739 20,833 36,977,549 | | 16,614,813 20,833 41,523,985 | | 16,202,547 20,833 44,216,948 |
| | 36,998,383 (7,441,366) | | 41,544,818 (16,510,705) | | 44,237,781 (14,166,725) |
| | 58,868,900 | | 55,540,546 | | 59,752,680 |
| | 874,593 | | 1,642,020 | | 1,061,886 |
| | 874,593 ― | | 1,642,020 1,069,225 | | 1,061,886 425,525 |
| | 59,743,493 | | 58,251,792 | | 61,240,092 |
| | 92,431,300 | | 103,850,377 | | 99,796,714 |
(2)Non-consolidated interim income statements
(Thousands of yen)
| Period Account | For the first half of the previous fiscal year From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006 | | For the first half of the current fiscal year From January 1, 2007 To June 30, 2007 | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Amount | % | Amount | % | Amount |
| Ⅰ Net Sales Ⅱ Cost of sales *6 Gross profit Selling, general and Ⅲ administrative expenses *1,6 Operating income Ⅳ Non-operating income *2 Ⅴ Non-operating expense *3 Ordinary income Ⅵ Extraordinary gain *4 Ⅶ Extraordinary loss *5 Income before taxes Corporate, inhabitant and enterprise tax Income tax - deferred Net income | 26,522,221 4,599,604 | 100.0 17.3 82.7 37.5 45.2 1.7 0.2 46.7 7.8 11.6 42.9 26.4 | 29,533,299 5,344,335 | 100.0 18.1 81.9 35.4 46.5 3.1 0.5 49.1 0.0 1.2 47.9 28.8 | 53,431,654 9,635,687 |
| | 21,922,617 9,921,827 | | 24,188,963 10,458,587 | | 43,795,967 21,134,761 |
| | 12,000,789 457,120 59,181 | | 13,730,376 914,533 137,955 | | 22,661,205 1,655,555 197,627 |
| | 12,398,728 2,070,331 3,078,972 | | 14,506,954 8,579 372,117 | | 24,119,133 2,063,138 3,101,372 |
| | 11,390,087 6,812,160 (2,422,936) | | 14,143,416 7,263,511 (1,635,774) | | 23,080,900 12,086,896 (3,271,778) |
| | 7,000,863 | | 8,515,679 | | 14,265,781 |
)
(3)Statements of changes in net assets
From January 1, 2006 to June 30, 2006 (Thousands of yen)
| | Shareholders’ equity | | | | | | Revaluation surplus | Share warrant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Common stock | Capital surplus | Retained earnings | | Treasury stock | Total shareholders’ equity | Net unrealized gain (loss) on debt and equity securities | |
| | | Additional paid-in capital | Legal reserve | Accumulated profit | | | | |
| | | | | Retained earnings carried forward | | | | |
| Balance at December 31, 2005 | 12,484,849 | 15,087,304 | 20,833 | 37,517,773 | △7,283,242 | 57,827,518 | 688,420 | ― |
| Movement for this period | | | | | | | | |
| Issuance of new stock | 809,294 | 809,085 | | | | 1,618,380 | | |
| Transfer from stock warrant | | 121,350 | | | | 121,350 | | |
| Dividend of surplus | | | | △7,509,067 | | △7,509,067 | | |
| Net income | | | | 7,000,863 | | 7,000,863 | | |
| Sales of treasury stock | | | | | 147,692 | 147,692 | | |
| Loss on sales of treasury stock | | | | △32,019 | | △32,019 | | |
| Purchase of treasury stock | | | | | △305,816 | △305,816 | | |
| Movement for this period excluding shareholders’ equity | | | | | | | 186,172 | |
| Total movement | 809,294 | 930,435 | ― | △540,223 | △158,124 | 1,041,382 | 186,172 | |
| Balance at June 30, 2006 | 13,294,143 | 16,017,739 | 20,833 | 36,977,549 | △7,441,366 | 58,868,900 | 874,593 | ― |
| | Shareholders’ equity | | | | | | Revaluation surplus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Common stock | Capital surplus | Retained earnings | | Treasury stock | Total shareholders’ equity | Net unrealized gain (loss) on debt and equity securities |
| | | Additional paid-in capital | Legal reserve | Accumulated profit | | | |
| | | | | Retained earnings carried forward | | | |
| Balance at December 31, 2006 | 13,479,075 | 16,202,547 | 20,833 | 44,216,948 | △14,166,725 | 59,752,680 | 1,061,886 |
| Movement for this period | | | | | | | |
| Issuance of new stock | 412,544 | 412,266 | | | | 824,810 | |
| Transfer from stock warrant | | | | | | | |
| Dividend of surplus | | | | △11,158,130 | | △11,158,130 | |
| Net income | | | | 8,515,679 | | 8,515,679 | |
| Sales of treasury stock | | | | | 196,038 | 196,038 | |
| Loss on sales of treasury stock | | | | △50,511 | | △50,511 | |
| Purchase of treasury stock | | | | | △2,540,019 | △2,540,019 | |
| Movement for this period excluding shareholders’ equity | | | | | | | 580,133 |
| Total movement | 412,544 | 412,266 | ― | △2,692,962 | △2,343,980 | △4,212,133 | 580,133 |
| Balance at June 30, 2007 | 13,891,619 | 16,614,813 | 20,833 | 41,523,985 | △16,510,705 | 55,540,546 | 1,642,020 |
Statements of changes in net assets for the previous fiscal year From January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2006
(Thousands of yen)
| | Shareholders’ equity | | | | | | Revaluation surplus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Common stock | Capital surplus | Retained earnings | | Treasury stock | Total shareholders’ equity | Net unrealized gain (loss) on debt and equity securities |
| | | Additional paid-in capital | Legal reserve | Accumulated profit | | | |
| | | | | Retained earnings carried forward | | | |
| Balance at December 31, 2005 | 12,484,849 | 15,087,304 | 20,833 | 37,517,773 | △7,283,242 | 57,827,518 | 688,420 |
| Movement for this period | | | | | | | |
| Issuance of new stock | 994,226 | 993,893 | | | | 1,988,120 | |
| Transfer from stock warrant | | 121,350 | | | | 121,350 | |
| Dividend of surplus | | | | △7,509,067 | | △7,509,067 | |
| Net income | | | | 14,265,781 | | 14,265,781 | |
| Sales of treasury stock | | | | | 234,359 | 234,359 | |
| Loss on sales of treasury stock | | | | △57,539 | | △57,539 | |
| Purchase of treasury stock | | | | | △7,117,842 | △7,117,842 | |
| Movement for this period excluding shareholders’ equity | | | | | | | 373,466 |
| Total movement | 994,226 | 1,115,243 | ― | 6,699,174 | △6,883,482 | 1,925,162 | 373,466 |
Significant accounting policies and practices for preparing non-consolidated interim financial statemens.
1.Accounting for evaluation of assets
(1) Securities
- Investments in subsidiaries and affiliates.
Change in account processing
(Accounting standard for measurement of inventories)
Effective from this current semiannual accounting, the company early adopted "Accounting Standard for Measurement of Inventori es" (ASBJ Statement No. 9 which was issued on July 5, 2006). There is no effect in balance sheet and income statement.
(Revision of the depreciable limit for newly acquired asset)
Effective from this current semiannual accounting, the company adopted the revision of corporate tax law with respect to the deprec iable limit for newly acquired asset. There is not material effect.
Supplementary information
Sales of packaged goods were used to be recognized on the date that goods were delivered to customers. Assuming a day for the ca rriage to customers, the sales on the year end (half year end) shipment were recognized in next accounting period (second half accou nting period).
The company reverts to recognize the sales of packaged goods on the shipping date from current semiannual accounting. The effect of this change is not material.
Notes
(Non-consolidated interim balance sheets)
(Thousands of Yen)
（Non-consolidated semi-annual income statement）
(Thousands of yen)
(Statements of changes in net assets ) From January 1, 2007 to June 30, 2007
Class of treasury stock and number of shares.
| Class of treasury stock | As of Dec 31, 2006 | Increase | Decrease | As of Jun 30, 2007 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common stock | 4,509,612 | 820,897 | 65,000 | 5,265,509 |
The increase by 1,897 shares is due to the purchase of shares less than one unit, and 819,000shares is due to the purchase in market, and the decrease by 65,000 shares is due to the disposition of treasury stock upon the exercise of stock acquisition right.
Lease transactions
The Company omits "Lease transactions", because for the first half of current fiscal year, the Company considers there is not a strong need to release it.
Marketable securities
The Company omits "Marketable securities", because for the first half of current fiscal year, the Company considers there is n ot a strong need to release it.
Per Share Data
(Yen )
| For the first half of the previous fiscal year | | | For the first half of the current fiscal year |
|---|---|---|---|
| ( | From January 1, 2006 To June 30, 2006 | ) | ( From January 1, 2007 ) To June 30, 2007 |
*Basis of calculation for net income per share and diluted net income per share is as follows.
For the first half of
For the first half of the previous fiscal year
the current fiscal year
(
From January 1, 2006)
(
)
(
)
To June30, 2006
From January 1, 2007
To June 30, 2007
For the previous fiscal year
From January 1, 2006
To December 31, 2006
Significant subsequent events
None
60
Trend Micro Incorporated (4704) Tanshin of the first half of FY2007
|
The Cuban staircase sequences of coral reef and marine terraces: A forgotten masterpiece of the Caribbean geodynamical puzzle
Leandro Peñalver, Kevin Pedoja, Denyse Martin-Izquierdo, Christine Authemayou, Arelis Nuñez, Denovan Chauveau, Gino de Gelder, Pedro Davilan, Laurent Husson
To cite this version:
Leandro Peñalver, Kevin Pedoja, Denyse Martin-Izquierdo, Christine Authemayou, Arelis Nuñez, et al.. The Cuban staircase sequences of coral reef and marine terraces: A forgotten masterpiece of the Caribbean geodynamical puzzle. Marine Geology, Elsevier, 2021, 440, pp.106575. 10.1016/j.margeo.2021.106575. hal-03341917v2
HAL Id: hal-03341917 https://hal.univ-brest.fr/hal-03341917v2
Submitted on 2 Mar 2022
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers.
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The Cuban staircase sequences of coral reef and marine terraces: A forgotten masterpiece of the Caribbean geodynamical puzzle
Leandro Peñalver, Kevin Pedoja, Denyse Martin-Izquierdo, Christine Authemayou, Arelis Nuñez, Denovan Chauveau, Gino de Gelder, Pedro Davilan, Laurent Husson
PII:
S0025-3227(21)00157-2
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.margeo.2021.106575
Reference:
MARGO 106575
To appear in:
Marine Geology
Received date:
20 April 2021
Revised date:
22 July 2021
Accepted date:
23 July 2021
Please cite this article as: L. Peñalver, K. Pedoja, D. Martin-Izquierdo, et al., The Cuban staircase sequences of coral reef and marine terraces: A forgotten masterpiece of the Caribbean geodynamical puzzle, Marine Geology (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.margeo.2021.106575
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
© 2018 © 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.
The Cuban staircase sequences of coral reef and marine terraces : a forgotten masterpiece of the Caribbean geodynamical puzzle
Leandro Peñalver 1 , Kevin Pedoja 2,* email@example.com , Denyse Martin-Izquierdo 1 , Christine Authemayou 3 Arelis Nuñez 1 , Denovan Chauveau 3 , Gino de Gelder 5 , Pedro Davilan 4 , Laurent Husson 5
1 Institute of Geology and Paleontology, La Habana, Cuba,
2 Normandie Univ, Unicaen, Unirouen, CNRS, M2C, 14 000 Caen, France. 3 LGO, IUEM, CNRS, UMR 6538, Université de Bretagne Occidental, UBO, Plouzané, France 4 Univ Moa, Moa, Cuba 5 Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, ISTerre, Grenoble, France. * Corresponding author. Abstract The emerged sequences of coral reef and marine terraces of the Cuban Archipelago have been recognized since the end of the 19 th century but with noticeable exceptions, their bioconstructions and/or deposits are not dated. The northern Caribbean islands and associated archipelagos are located in a left-lateral strike-slip tectonic setting, at the boundary between the North America and Caribbean plates. Cuba is the only landmass located on the American Plate directly adjacent to this transform fault zone. Quantifying upper Pleistocene coastal uplift is thus key to elucidate the recent vertical deformation of the Caribbean geodynamic puzzle with regards to the active tectonic segmentation of this area. We compiled bibliographic data and present new measurements concerning the Cuban sequences of coral reef and marine terraces; maximum elevations, minimum
Sequences of marine and coral reef terraces, herein called coastal terraces, are widespread indicators of Late Cenozoic coastal tectonics and sea levels (e.g. Lyell, 1830; Darwin, 1842; Davis, 1915; Daly, 1925; Berry et al., 1966; Broecker et al., 1968; Montaggioni and Braithwaite, 2009; Pedoja et al., 2011; 2014; Murray-Wallace and Woodroffe, 2014; Hibbert et al., 2016). Within the Caribbean Sea, islands and archipelagos exhibit emerged sequences of coastal terraces. Most studied are the coastal landforms correlated to Marine Isotopic Stage 5e (MIS 5e, 122 ± 6 ka); for instance in the West Indies (Feuillet et al., 2004; Léticée et al., 2019), in Curacao, Bonaire, Aruba (Alexander, 1961; Hippolyte and Mann, 2011) and in Jamaica (e.g. Horsfield, 1975; Szabo, 1979; Mitchell et al., 2000, 2001). The island of Barbados displays one of the most studied number of successive strandlines and elevation of the lowermost terrace. The Cuban Archipelago exhibits five main uplifting coastal stretches separated by subsiding areas, with at least 23 emerged staircase sequences of coastal terraces. At four sites, the lowest coral reef terrace has been previously correlated to the Last Interglacial Maximum (MIS 5e, 122 ± 6 ka). At nine sites, we extended the morpho-stratigraphy to derive Upper Pleistocene apparent and eustasy-corrected uplift rates. Alongshore Cuba, MIS 5e coastal terraces and associated shoreline angles occur at elevations ranging from 7 m to 40 m, yielding eustasy-corrected uplift rates ranging from 0.06 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 (NW Cuba) to 0.33 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 (SE Cuba). More than 400 km northward of the transform fault, eustasycorrected uplift rates (0.13 mm.yr -1 ) suggest that the whole Cuban Archipelago is affected by the North America/Caribbean plate motion, with a partitioned compressive component resulting in block tectonics with tilting controlled by regional faults. Keywords: glacial cycle; Pleistocene; Caribbean; Cuba; marine and coral reef terraces 1 Introduction Journal Pre-proof
sequence of coral reef and marine terraces (Mesolella, 1967; Broecker et al., 1968; James et al., 1971, Schellmann and Radtke, 2004a,b) which constitutes a benchmark for sea level and climate studies over the last 1 Ma (Murray-Wallace and Woodroffe, 2014). The Late Cenozoic sequences of coastal terraces of the two largest Caribbean islands and archipelagos, Cuba and Hispaniola, have been recognized since a long time (Crosby, 1883; Darwin, 1890; Agassiz, 1894; Spencer, 1895), and considered as an "ensemble" together with Barbados, Jamaica (Jones, 1918; Trechmann, 1933) and the Cayman Islands (Matley, 1926; Brunt et al., 1973; Emery, 1981; Woodroffe et al., 1983; Spencer, 1985; Coyne et al., 2007). The formation of such sequences is related to vertical deformation associated with the Great Antillean/Northern Caribbean fault zone (Taber, 1922; Woodring, 1954), at the boundary between the North American and Caribbean plates. Recent studies including absolute dating are rather scarce, for example for Haiti (Dumas et al., 2006; Hearty et al., 2007), for the Dominican Republic (Diaz de Neira et al., 2015, 2017; Escuder – Viruelte et al., 2020), and for Cuba (Toscano et al., 1999; Pajon et al., 2006; De Waele et al., 2017, 2018; Muhs et al., 2018, Schielien et al., 2020). Journal Pre-proof
For the Cuban Archipelago, descriptions of the coastal landforms are abundant and contain quantified geomorphic data (e.g. Vaughan and Spencer, 1902; Meinzer, 1933; Massip, 1936; Marie-Victorin and Léon, 1942; Ducloz, 1963; Iturralde-Vinent, 1967, 1969a,b; 1977, 1981, 1982, 1994, 2003; Kartashov and Mayo, 1974; Kartashov et al., 1976; 1981; Shantzer et al., 1976; Peñalver et al., 1982a, b and c; 1997; 1998; Franco, 1983; Puschcharovski, 1988; Salomon, 1995; Cabrera and Peñalver, 2001; Perez-Aragon et al., 2001). Combining field observations with a synthesis of previous literature, we describe the distribution of the Cuban staircase sequences of coastal terraces and propose quantitative morphometrics, such as their maximum elevations and the minimum number of successive terraces. Studies including U/Th (Toscano et al., 1999; Pajon et al., 2006; De Waele et al., 2017, 2018; Muhs et al., 2018), ESR (Schielien et al., 2020) or
paleomagnetic dating (Pérez Lazo, 1986; Peñalver et al., 2003), all correlated the lowermost terrace (T1) to the Last Interglacial Maximum (MIS 5e; 122 +/- 6 ka). In the following, we assume this morpho-stratigraphy (T1 = MIS 5e) is correct for sequences of coastal landforms including a single terrace or for sequences for which we know the elevation of the lowermost terrace, although we specify the cases in which this is directly confirmed by dating. Using five sea-level curves, we derive 15 relative and absolute Upper Pleistocene uplift rates at 13 sites. This approach allows us to discuss the coastal tectonics of the Cuban archipelago located in the vicinity of the left-lateral Transform Fault Zone between the North American and Caribbean plates.
2 Settings 2.1 Geodynamics, geology, hydrodynamics The Caribbean and Central American region contains two subduction zones, the Lesser Antilles Trench to the East and the Central America Trench to the West, connected through a large transform fault zone (Mann and Burke, 1984; Fig.1). The transform boundary between the Caribbean plate and North American plate is partitioned into two major active E-W left lateral strike-slip fault zones (Mann et al., 1991; Calais and de Lépinay, 1995). These strike-slip fault zones, seismically active, are located North and South of the Cayman Trough (Perrot et al., 1997; Calais and de Lépinay, 1992). They extend over ~ 2000 km and are named the Oriente Transform Fault to the North and the Enriquillo-Plantain-Garden Transform Fault to the South (Calais et al., 1998; Prenctice et al., 2010; Le Roy et al., 2015). To the East, the two fault zones bound the GonaveHispanolia microplate (Fig.1), and accommodate the strike-slip component of the oblique convergence between the Caribbean and North American plates at a rate of 19 mm·a −1 (Symithe et al., 2005; Calais et al., 2016; Fig. 1). The Gonave Hispaniola Block is also Journal Pre-proof
affected by shortening, both due to the convergence obliquity of the plate boundary associated with the Bahamas platform collision to the North, and due to the Beata ridge indentation to the South (Mann et al., 2002, Calais et al., 2016; Rojas-Agramonte et al., 2005; Corbeau et al., 2019). South of Cuba Island (Figs.1, 2, 3, 4), the Oriente Transform Fault includes various segments with transtensive and transpressive relay zones and parallel offshore thrusts named the Santiago Deformed Belt (Calais and Mercier de Lépinay, 1995; Le Roy et al., 2015; Corbeau et al., 2016; Wessels et al., 2019).
The Cuban archipelago includes a main island and more than 4000 associated islands, islets and cayos, all located on a continental platform (Fig. 2). The island belongs to the Great Arc of the Caribbean, which initially formed by subduction along an inter-American Transform Fault at ~135 Ma, during Cretaceous times (Burke, 1988; Pindell et al., 2012; Hastie et al., 2013). During the late Upper Cretaceous, this arc became inactive, collided with the Bahamas carbonate platform and subsequently fragmented to form the Greater Antilles islands (Mann et al., 1995; Cruz-Orosa et al., 2012; Leroy et al., 2000). In Cuba, the Paleocene-Eocene collision between the island arc of the Caribbean plate and Bahamas platform of the North American plate resulted in an ENE-WSW and NW-SE trending orogenic belt (Gordon et al., 1997). This orogenic belt is associated with synorogenic basins and ENE-WSW-trending regional normal and strike-slip faults (Pinar Fault, Trocha Fault, Cauto-Nipe Fault, on Fig. 4) that bound several tectonics blocks and accommodate a part of the westward offshore NW-SE-trending and then NE-SW-trending Yucatan basin opening (Le Roy et al., 2000; Pindell et al., 2005; Cruz-Orosa et al., 2012). During the arc/platform collision, the obliquity of the North American/Caribbean plate convergence increased (Gordon et al., 1997; Cruz-Orosa, et al., 2012). Since Oligocene time, plate motion is mainly accommodated along the Oriente Transform Fault, South of Cuba Island (Iturralde-Vinent, 1996; Pindell et al., 2005; Rodríguez-Cotilla, 2014; Calais et
al., 2016; Alvarez et al., 2017). A vertical motion component along this fault is revealed by pervasive uplifting coastal stretches (Peñalver et al., 2003) and associated sequences of fossil shorelines studied herein (Figs. 2, 3, 4, 5).
The Cuban archipelago is located in a semi-diurnal, micro-tidal area, with tidal ranges from 0.4 to 0. 8 m. Ground swell, mostly coming from the Atlantic Ocean, is consistent only in winter and the wave-height rarely exceeds two meters as the swell is dampened by the Bahamas platform (Colas and Shuterland, 2001). The South part of Cuba Main Island is occasionally subjected to the Antarctic groundswell and affected by hurricanes (Colas and Shuterland, 2001).
2.2 Previous studies of the Cuban coastal terraces The first mention of the emerged sequences of coastal terraces of Cuba seems to have been by Crosby (1883), who described emerged fossil reefs near La Habana (NE) and Baracoa (SE; Figs. 2, 3, 4). At the latter site, he described coral limestone up to ~ 243 m in elevation. By analogy with Jamaica, he proposed that emerged reefs could be present up to ~ 610 m. Crosby (1883) proposed a 'general' sequence of coastal terraces including four successive reefs with the lowest one found at ~ 9 m at various sites on the island and the upper one at ~ 243 m at the mouth of the Rio Yumuri, near Baracoa (Fig. 2; Table 1). Darwin (1890) discussed the possible origin of the South Cuban and Haitian sequences of coastal terraces. Agassiz (1894) sketched some South Cuban sequences. Then Hill (1894, 1895) proposed correlation of some elevated reefs across the Island. Spencer (1895) described coastal uplift at Matanzas. Vaughan and Spencer (1902) reported coastal terraces near La Habana - Matanzas, Cabo Cruz, and Punta de Maisi (Table 1). Based on Journal Pre-proof
paleontological evidence, Vaughan and Spencer (1902) proposed an Oligocene age for the upper reefal terraces at Punta de Maisi and noted that the fossil coral colonies from the lowermost terrace are similar to the one found in modern reefs. Jennings (1913) briefly described the emerged reef at Isle of Pines (now renamed Isla de la Juventud, Fig. 2, Table 1). Vaughan (1914) compared the modern and emerged reefs of Florida with some Cuban sites. The Cabo Cruz sequence, at the SW tip of Cuba Island (Figs. 2, 3, 4), was interpreted by Taber (1931) as evidence for the protracted uplift of the Sierra Maestra. Later, the Punta de Maisi (Figs. 2, 3, 4, Table 1), at the SE tip of Cuba Island raised, again, attention and was considered as Plio-Pleistocene (Woodring, 1954). The post 1960 literature concerning the Cuban sequences of coastal terraces consisted mainly of geomorphic studies (e.g. Ducloz, 1963; Iturralde-Vinent, 1967, 1969a,b; 1977, 1981, 1982, 1994, 2003, 2013; Franco, 1983; Kartashov and Mayo, 1974; Kartashov et al., 1976; 1981; Shantzer et al., 1976; Peñalver et al., 1982a, b and c; 1997; 1998; Puschcharovski, 1988; Cabrera and Peñalver, 2001; Perez-Aragon et al., 2001), or focused on specific landforms such as karstified notches (Molerio-Leon, 2003) or on archaeology (Pajon et al., 2006). Journal Pre-proof
Geogically speaking, the reefal bioconstructions of the lowermost terrace (T1) are grouped into the Late Pleistocene Jaimanitas Formation (Naprstek, 1978; Salomon, 1995; Toscano et al., 1999; Pajon et al., 2006; see map in Muhs et al., 2018). Regressive, coastal clastic deposits overlying the bioconstructions are defined as the La Cabaña Formation (Peñalver et al., 2003). The Jamainitas Formation consists of shallow marine, lagoonal, and reef carbonates (Cabrera and Peñalver, 2001; 2003; Perera and Rojas, 2005; Toscano et al., 1999; Peñalver et al., 2003). The Jaimanitas Formation is widely present along the coast of the Cuba Island and constitutes the foundation for the cities of La Habana and Santiago de Cuba (Figs. 2, 3, 4). The first attempts at absolute dating of the deposits and bioconstructions from the lower T1 coastal terrace, i.e. the Jamainitas Formation, started
during the late-70s with 14 C dating, which yielded results beyond the limit of the method (Naprstek, 1978; Glushankova et al., 1980). Paleomagnetic dating on the Jaimanitas formation as well as on higher and older terraces has been carried out at Punta de Maisi (Pérez Lazo, 1986; Peñalver et al., 2003) and yielded normal polarities compatible with the correlation of the MIS 5 and MIS 7 highstands with the two lowermost coastal terraces. Older terraces have been dated at 0.8 to 3 Ma (Pérez Lazo, 1986; Peñalver et al., 2003). Coral colonies of the Jamainitas Fm. from coral reef terraces were U/Th dated and correlated to the last interglacial maximum at Matanzas (Toscano et al., 1999) as well as on the NW tip of the Island (Pajon et al., 2006). In NE Cuba, at Matanzas, the Jamainitas Fm (T1) was, again, dated by U/Th and ESR and correlated to MIS 5e in studies of karst systems (De Waele et al., 2017, 2018; Schielien et al., 2020). Finally, in SE Cuba, to the South of the 116 km² Guantanamo American Naval Base, fossil coral-colonies forming the bio-constructed part of the lowest coastal terrace, i.e. the Jamainitas Fm., were massively sampled and U/Th dated (> 50 samples). Thirteen dates were considered as reliable and correlated T1 to the last interglacial maximum (MIS 5e; see Table 1 in Muhs et al., 2018). 3 Methods
3.1 Emerged sequences of tropical coastal terraces and uplift estimates
Coastal terraces such as marine, sedimentary, and coral reef terraces forming emerged sequences are stacked fingerprints of the course of sea-level changes on rising coastal realms (Guilcher, 1969; Mesosella, 1969, Lajoie, 1986, Pedoja et al., 2011, 2014; MurrayWallace and Woodroffe, 2014; Rovere et al., 2016). These terraces are, to the first order, associated with Quaternary interglacial sea-level high-stands (Murray-Wallace and
Woodroffe, 2014). The shoreline angle is defined as the break of slope between the rockyshore platform or the reef flat and the fossil sea-cliff associated with the terrace (e.g. Lajoie, 1986; Jara-Muñoz et al., 2019), and usually provides a good estimate for the position of the sea level when the terrace was formed (Bull, 1985; Speed and Cheng, 2004).
In tropical environments, coral reef crests and reef flats are not always present alongshore. Some stretches are carved into notches and shore platforms, whereas others include beaches, estuaries and/or mangroves. When present, coral reefs display a variety of morphologies that record the interplay between sea level oscillations and vertical land motion (e.g. Montaggioni and Braithwaite, 2009; Husson et al., 2018; Pastier et al., 2019). Modern and ancient coastal records usually exhibit alongshore variations of erosional landforms, deposits and bio-constructions (Speed and Cheng, 2004; Pedoja et al., 2018). The lowest Cuban coastal terrace T1 perfectly illustrates the interplay between constructional, erosional and depositional processes (Crosby, 1883; Agassiz, 1894; Iturarralde Vinent, 2013). The coastal terrace (Fig. 5) comprises an upgrading fossil reefal unit, the Jamainitas Fm. which is frequently truncated by an erosive surface and overlain by the regressive shingle or sandy beach deposits of the La Cabaña Fm. (Peñalver et al., 2003; Muhs et al., 2018). Such composite landforms are also described at la Désirade (Léticée et al., 2019) and Haiti (Jones, 1918; Woodring, 1964).
We mapped the Cuban sequences of coral reef and marine terraces based on our field observations complemented by the analysis of literature and maps. We measured the elevations of the fossil shoreline angles from topographic maps and/or by the use of various barometrical altimeters. Besides instrumental errors, we assigned a margin of error to all field measurements. The natural rugosity of the landforms is the main source of error;
far beyond instrumental errors. The roughness of the landforms increases with elevation and age. For low-standing landforms, the margin of error is set to ± 1 m whereas for upper strandlines it reaches ± 10 m because of increased erosion and karstification with age and elevation, as observed in the field.
3.2 Pleistocene sea-level curves, uplift rates, Holocene relative sea-level
Taking into account previous dating, we derive Upper Pleistocene uplift rates (Table 2) based on the elevation of the coastal terraces allocated to the Last Interglacial Maximum, MIS 5e (122 ± 6 ka). Eustasy-corrected or absolute uplift rates are given by dividing the difference between the present elevation of the shoreline angle and the eustatic sea-level at its formation time by the age of the terrace (Lajoie, 1986). Apparent (or relative) uplift rates neglect any priori eustatic correction (as in Pedoja et al., 2011; 2014; 2018; Yildirim et al., 2013; Authemayou et al., 2016). Correcting for eustasy requires some knowledge of the absolute sea level at the time of construction of the marine terrace. Many sea-level curves have been derived from the oxygen isotopic records (Shackleton, 1987; Waelbroeck et al., 2002; Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005; Bintanja and Van de Waal, 2008; Zachos et al., 2008; Rohling et al., 2009, see de Gelder et al., 2020 for details on these curves), but also from -or combined to- the geomorphologic record (Siddall et al., 2006; Murray-Wallace and Woodroffe, 2014). These sea-level curves frequently present discrepancies in the ages and elevation of MIS highstands (Table 2; see Caputo, 2007; Murray-Wallace and Woodroffe, 2014; de Gelder et al., 2020), but there is a relative consensus on the succession of the most recent high-stands. The most common high-stands in the geomorphological record are those related the last interglacial period, MIS 5 (Johnson and Libbey, 1997; Stirling et al., 1998; Pedoja et al., 2011; MurrayWallace and Woodroffe, 2014), which includes three relative high-stands, MIS 5a (85 ± 5
ka), MIS 5c (105 ± 5 ka) and MIS 5e (128 ka to 116 ka). The MIS 5e highstand corresponds to the last interglacial maximum; it displays one to three coastal terraces in nearly all the studied sequences worldwide and constitutes a common benchmark (Pedoja et al., 2011; 2014; Murray-Wallace and Woodroffe, 2014).
In order to account for the variability of sea-level curves, we analyzed the sequences of the Cuban Archipelago considering a recent compilation of geomorphic indicators (MurrayWallace and Woodroffe, 2014) but also five eustatic curves (Table 2, Waelbroeck et al., 2002; Bintanja and Van der Wal, 2008; Grant et al., 2014; Shakun et al., 2015; Spratt and Lisiecki, 2016). Murray-Wallace and Woodroffe, (2014) consider that MIS 5e, MIS 7, MIS 9, and MIS 11 highstands were respectively at 6 ± 4 m, -8 ± 12 m, 3 ± 2 m, and 9.5 ± 3.5 m with respect to present-day sea level (Table 2). The five sea-level curves (see Table 2 for more details) were selected to encompass five different reconstruction methods, to cover the time-range of interest and to have quantified uncertainties (Waelbroeck et al., 2002; Bintanja and Van der Wal, 2008; Grant et al., 2014; Shakun et al., 2015; Spratt and Lisiecki, 2016). These different estimates of past sea levels convert into different estimates of uplift rates (e.g. de Gelder et al., 2020). Journal Pre-proof
Contrarily, to the Indo-Pacific, the Caribbean has no mid-Holocene highstand (Fig. 5C) as evidenced by the documented monotonic rise in Holocene sea level and explained by Glacial Isostatic Adjustment models (Fairbridge, 1961; Clark et al., 1978; Kahn et al., 2017).
4 The Cuban sequences of coastal terraces
The Cuban archipelago and continental platform (Figs. 2, 3, 4, 5) exhibit five main areas of
emerged coastal terrace sequences (Table 1). These uplifting coastal stretches are separated by subsiding areas (Iturralde-Vinent, 2013; Fig. 5). In total, we collected quantitative data for 23 sequences (Fig. 3, Table 1) that generally correspond to staircase coastal landscapes including up to four successive strandlines 1. The most complete sequences, in terms of successive fossil shorelines, are preserved on the SE and SW tips of Cuba Island (sequences I and V, VI, VII Table 1 Figs. 3, 4). Submerged sequences of terraces are mentioned to the N and SE of the Cuban Archipelago (Fig. 5).
The uplifting coastal stretch n°1 (sequences I to VIII, Table 1, Figs. 3, 4) corresponds to the whole southern coast of Cuba Island, from Nibujón (Baracoa district) in the East, to Cabo Cruz in the West. Along this ~ 500 km long coastal stretch, we identified eight sequences. In agreement with previous observations (e.g. Pérez et al., 2011), we observed that the lowest coastal terrace (T1) is almost continuous over 350 km, from Santiago de Cuba to Baracoa (Figs. 2, 3, 4). Between West Santiago de Cuba and East Cabo Cruz (Fig. 2), the coast is characterized by plunging sea-cliffs and no sequences of coral reef and marine terraces are present (Cabrera et al., 2003; Iturarralde Vinent, 2013). At the Guantanamo USA naval base, coral colonies from the lowermost terrace were previously U/Th dated and correlated to the last Interglacial (sequence n°IV, Table 1 and section 2.2). Nevertheless, all along South Cuba, the shoreline angle of the lowermost coastal terrace, that we infer to relate to MIS 5e, is emplaced at elevations that still have to be determined more accurately, and needs to be dated to confirm this inference (Muhs et al., 2018). The SW and SE tips of Cuba Island, Cabo Cruz and Punta de Maisi
1
respectively, exhibit well-preserved sequences of marine and coral reef terraces (Fig. 6). To the SW, the Cabo Cruz sequence (sequence I, Table 1, Figs. 3, 4) reaches 263 ± 10 m and includes 13 coastal terraces and an unknown number of associated notches. Cabo Cruz is referred to as a major natural site for world heritage by UNESCO 2 but the bioconstructions associated to the successive terraces of this impressive sequence 3,4 are not yet dated. On Punta de Maisi (sequence VI, Table 1, Figs. 3, 4, 6), the sequence reaches a maximum elevation of 560 ± 10 m, includes 24 coastal terraces and an unknown number of associated notches. There, the two lowermost coastal terraces are raised at elevations ranging from 15 to 40 m for T1 and from 25 to 60 m for T2 and have been correlated to MIS 5 and MIS 7 highstands in paleomagnetic studies (section 2.2.). Here, we assign the lowest terrace T1 to MIS 5e, akin to other Cuban coastal sites, and also because it yields the lowest, or minimum uplift rates for the last interglacial as the last interglacial maximum is the oldest highstand of this MIS with the highest eustatic sea-level. At other sites of the Cuban South shore, such as Siboney and Juragua, the sequences include 3 to 4 successive shorelines 5,6, 7 (sequence II, III, V Table 1, Figs. 3, 4). The uplifting southern shore of Cuba (area 1) is delimited to the North by the subsiding Guacanoyabo-Nipe tectonic corridor (Fig. 4). Journal Pre-proof
The uplifting coastal stretch n°2 (sequences IX to XII Table 1, Figs. 3, 4) is ~ 420 km long and includes the rocky islets (cayos) of the Sabana - Camaguey Archipelago (Fig. 2) as well as a part of the NW-SE trending shore of the NE side of Cuba island (sequence XII,
2 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/889/
3 https://youtu.be/7I9mK8a_bI8
4 https://youtu.be/vW_zErZWMDc
5 https://youtu.be/hFLFR8i4kyo
6 https://youtu.be/6HwpmNV5538
7 https://youtu.be/GDuZqlRjNpk
Table 1, Figs. 3, 4). In this area, a single terrace has its shoreline angle raised at elevations ranging from 8 ± 1 m to 15 ± 1 m (Table 1, Fig. 3). Northwards, the uplifting coastal stretch ends on the Caibarién Fault, which separates it from the second subsiding area. Northwards, this subsiding area is limited by another major fault: the NS trending Cochinos - Cardenas Fault which also affects the fifth area exhibiting emerged coastal sequences (Figs. 3, 4).
The uplifting coastal stretch n°3 extends from Varadero to Bahia Onda (sequences XIV to XVIII, Table 1, Figs. 2, 3) over ~ 240 km and includes the Matanzas sequence (n°XV Fig. 3, Table 1). The central part of this coastal stretch exhibits sequences with up to 3 coastal terraces, reaching maximum elevations of 100 ± 10 m. The sequences located eastwards (sequence XIV) and westwards (sequence XVIII) of the central part exhibit only a single coastal terrace. The shoreline angle of T1 is emplaced at higher elevation (19 ± 1 m at sequence XIV) in the East than in the West (7 ± 1 m at sequence XVIII). At Matanzas, the lowest T1 terrace, dated and correlated to MIS 5e (section 2.2.) has its shoreline angle raised at 16 ± 1 m. This uplifting coastal stretch is parallel to the Pinar Fault and separated from the fourth area of coastal sequences by the subsiding Batanao Gulf (Figs. 3, 4).
The 240 km long uplifted coastal stretch n°4 festoons the NW tip of Cuba island (sequence XIX, Table 1, Figs. 3, 4) as well as the southern shore of La Juventud Island (sequence XX, Table 1, Fig. 3). On the NW tip of Cuba (sequence XIX and XX, Table 1, Fig. 3), the sequences include two successive coastal terraces up to 20 ± 1 m in elevation whereas on La Juventud Island a single terrace is preserved at 10 ± 1 m (Table 1, Fig. 3).
The subsiding Batanao Gulf (Fig. 4) delimits, to the NW, the uplifting coastal stretch n° 5
(sequence XXI to XXIII, Table 1, Fig. 3) which extends on the central part of South Cuba over 200 km. Within this area, the Cochinos - Cardenas Fault perpendicularly crosscuts the modern coastline. To the West of the fault, sequence XXI includes a single coastal terrace for which the shoreline angle is preserved at 15 ± 1 m, while eastwards, the sequences XXII and XXIII include up to three successive shorelines, and reaches 78 ± 1 m at sequence XXIII (Table 1, Fig. 3). At sequence XXI, the distribution of the coastal terrace suggests the occurrence of a paleo-gulf as the fossil shoreline enters inland, unlike its modern counterpart. To the East, the fifth uplifting coastal stretch ends at the La Trocha Fault (Fig. 4), which borders the SW subsiding areas of the Cuban Archipelago.
The elevation and distribution of the coastal sequences of the Cuban archipelago depict nine units with different tectonic behavior intimately related with onshore and offshore faults (Fig. 4). Five blocks are uplifting and four subsiding. The blocks are generally delimited by onshore faults associated with a vertical component, generally normal except the Cochinos-Cardenas reverse fault, and for some with strike-slip component, particularly Cauto-Nipe and La Trocha (Fig. 4 ; Garcia, 2001). The uplifted sections are characterized by coastal sequences with different morphologies revealing variable Upper Pleistocene (MIS 5e) uplift rates and Late Cenozoic emersion histories (Fig. 4). Journal Pre-proof
5 Discussion
5.1 Estimates of Upper Pleistocene uplift rates and timing for the emersion of some sequences of coastal terraces
Most of the Cuban coastal terraces allocated to the Last Interglacial Maximum (MIS 5e)
are found at lower elevations than 20 m (Table 2), which implies low to very low apparent uplift rates (Class C and D, Fig. 4 in Pedoja et al., 2011) ranging from 0.06 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 on the NW tip of Cuba main island (sequence XIX) to 0.13 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 at Matanzas (sequence XV, Table 1, Fig. 4). At Punta de Maisi (sequence VI, Table 1), the shoreline angle of the MIS 5e reefal terrace is emplaced at a maximum elevation of 40 ± 1 m (Pérez Lazo, 1986; Peñalver et al., 2003) which implies a moderate apparent coastal uplift rate of 0.33 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 (Class B on Fig. 4 in Pedoja et al., 2011). On the southern part of the US Naval base of Guantanamo Bay, MIS 5e apparent uplift rates are low with values of 0.12 ± 0.02 mm.yr -1 (Guantanamo Lighthouse Table 1) in the exposed area and of 0.09 ± 0.02 mm.yr -1 in the protected area (Guantanamo Bay Table 1).
As the MIS 5e landform is generally low (< 20 m), eustasy-corrected uplift rates are more variable since the rates largely depend on the correction applied (Table 2). Within the Guantanamo embayment, the shoreline angle of the reefal terrace correlated to the MIS 5e is emplaced at 10.8 ± 1 m which yields uplift rates of 0.05 ± 0.12 mm.yr -1 (following Waelbroeck et al., 2002) or 0.18 ± 0.10 mm.yr -1 (following Shakun et al., 2015). Upon some sea-level curves and taking into account the large margins of error, uplift rates can even be negative, and therefore the MIS 5e terrace interpreted as evidence of subsidence (Table 2), although this would be at odds with the accompanying sequences of coastal landforms that attest for an overall uplift. Journal Pre-proof
Assuming constant apparent uplift rates, we extrapolated the apparent MIS 5e uplift rates to propose a possible age for the uppermost shorelines of some sequences (as in Lajoie, 1986). These extrapolations provide an indicative chronological framework. Extrapolating eustasy-corrected uplift rates would yield older emersion age for the considered sequences. Extrapolating an apparent MIS 5e uplift rate of 0.13 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 , the
summit of the Matanzas sequence (n° XV Fig. 3) at 100 ± 10 m would have emerged between 640 ka and 910 ka, during middle or early Pleistocene time (Fig. 4). The more complete sequences of Maisi (560 ± 10 m) and Cabo Cruz (263 ± 10 m) seem to represent longer periods of time, probably since Pliocene in agreement with paleomagnetic dating indicating ages of 3 Ma at Punta de Maisi (section 2.2). Consequently at Maisi and Cabo Cruz, the long-lasting records of sea-level fluctuations are intermediary steps between the ~ 1 Ma coastal sequences preserved on Barbados or Sumba island (Indonesia) and the long lasting sequence of Buton Island (SE Sulawesi, Indonesia) which probably record 3.8 ± 0.6 Ma (Fig. 15 Pedoja et al., 2018a for a graphical representation of the long lasting reefal sequences mentionned here).
5.2 Tectonic implications Within the current state of the art regarding Cuban coastal sequences, as intuitively suspected the highest apparent or eustasy-corrected Upper Pleistocene coastal uplift rates from dated reefal terraces (maximum of 0.33 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 ) are located next to the transform zone, at Punta de Maisi (sequence V, Table 1, Fig. 3). We stress that there are no dating and/or elevations measurements for the Cabo Cruz sequence (sequence I, Table 1, Figs. 3, 4) also located next to the Transform Fault Zone and which might reveal similar or stronger Upper Pleistocene uplift rates than at Punta de Maisi. Journal Pre-proof
Cuban coastal sequences evidence non-negligible uplift of NW Cuba Island (sequences XV, Fig. 2B), more than 400 km to the North of the Oriente Transform Fault Zone. Such coastal uplift is probably the aftermath of the tilting of tectonic blocks, associated with E-Wtrending faults crossing the Cuban platform (Figs. 1, 4). Some uplifting coastal stretches are obviously tilted or warped like Area 3 (Fig. 3) and the Punta de Maisi. Within the uplifting coastal stretch n°3, the T1 shoreline angle elevation yields higher apparent uplift
rates in the East (sequence XIV, 0.16 ± 0.02 mm.yr -1 ) than in the West (sequence XVIII, 0.06 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 ). Not taking into account the Punta de Maisi, the highest Upper Pleistocene apparent coastal uplift rates are those determined some 190 km North of the Transform Fault Zone at or near Matanzas (sequence XIV and XV, respectively 0.16 ± 0.02 mm.yr -1 and 0.13 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 , Tables 1, 2, Fig. 3), similar or slightly higher than the uplift rates experienced by the south coast of Guantanamo U.S. Military Naval Base (0.12 ± 0.02 mm.yr -1 ), 35-km North of the Oriente Transform Fault.
In the eastern part of the northern Caribbean transform plate boundary, shortening occurs due to the obliquity of plate convergence. The transition from a transform to a subduction plate boundary implies the Bahamas bank collision to the North and the Beata ridge indentation to the South (Mann and Burke, 1984; Mann et al., 1995, 2005; Rojas agramonte et al. 2005; Symithe et al., 2015; Calais et al., 2016; Corbeau et al., 2019; Wessels et al., 2019) (Fig. 1). Uplift of some stretches of the Cuban coasts suggests that compression might affect areas located as far as 400 km North of the Transform Fault, probably through (re-)activation of Paleocene-Eocene strike-slipe faults with some vertical motion components, like the Caute-Nipe, La Trocha and Pinar Faults. Major sinistral transpressive deformations associated with folding and thrusting has been described all across Hispaniola island with various proxies: bathymetry and seismic reflection profiles across the western basins (Calais and de Lépinay, 1995; Le Roy et al., 2015; Corbeau et al., 2016), geological cross-sections (Pubellier et al., 2000; Escuder-Viruete and Pérez, 2020), seismicity (Calais et al., 2010; Possee et al., 2018; Cordeau et al., 2019), paleoseismicity (Bakun et al., 2012; Prentice et al., 2010); and GPS networks (Benford et al., 2012; Symithe et al 2005; Calais et al 2016). Coastal uplift seems to be higher in Haiti, where impressive sequences are present in the Northwest of Hispaniola Island (Dodge et al., 1983). In NW Haiti, the shoreline angle of MIS 5e coral reef terrace reaches 60 m
which yields an apparent uplift rate of ~0.5 mm.yr -1 (Dumas et al., 2006) although these results have been commented (Hearty et al., 2007).
East of the Caribbean area, the most studied sequence of coastal terraces is the one present on Barbados Island located ~ 1 700 km SE of SE Cuba (Fig. 1). The island, an uplifting accretionary prism at the front of the Lesser Antilles subduction zone, exhibits a staircase sequence which reaches 300 +/- 10 m in elevation, includes 13 main coastal terraces, and represents ~ 1 Ma of sea-level fluctuations. The MIS 5e shoreline angle is raised at a maximum elevation of 41 ± 1 m (Radtke & Schellmann, 2006; Potter et al., 2004; Schellmann & Radtke, 2004a,b; Thompson et al., 2003; Villemant & Feuillet, 2003; Gallup et al., 2002; Johnson, 2001; Muhs, 2001), yielding apparent uplift rates of 0.33 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 . Such rates are comparable to those determined herein, for the Punta de Maisi, in SE Cuba, just in front of the Transform Fault Zone. However, at la Desirade Island, in front of the Caribbean subduction zone at a location where the accretionary prism is less developed, the shoreline angle of the coastal terrace allocated to the last interglacial maximum (MIS 5e, 122 ± 6 ka) lies at 10 ± 1 m (Léticée et al., 2019). This yields an apparent uplift rate of 0.08 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 equivalent to the upper Pleistocene coastal uplift rates in NE Cuba, ~ 190 km from the Transfom Fault Zone. The scarcity of dating of Pleistocene coastal landforms for the impressive sequences of South Cuba and West Haiti, which are higher in elevation and more complete in terms of successive terraces than the canonical Barbados sequence, avoid us from having detailed Pleistocene vertical motions and, overall, better constrained coastal uplift rates for the Caribbean area.
Considering a database made by members of our team (Pedoja et al., 2014), at a global scale, within transform tectonics settings, the MIS 5e benchmark is recorded at i) 121 sites
of which 3 are submerged, ii) MIS 5e shoreline angles are found at elevations ranging from - 5 ± 5 m (Belize Island) to 275 ± 25 m (at Smith Gulf, California) with a mean of ~30.5 ± 3 m, and iii) the mean Late Pleistocene apparent uplift rate of Transform settings is 0.25 ± 0.02 mm.yr -1 . Such values would be probably slighlty different considering more recent databases on the MIS 5e shoreline elevation and other sea level proxies in the Caribbean area (Rubio-Sandoval et al., 2021; Simms 2021) but the latter do not include geodynamical data. Nevertheless, in theory, purely transform settings do not cause vertical land motion, which is in practice seldom observed. On coasts located in front of intraoceanic subduction zones, the elevation of MIS 5e shorelines range from -85 ± 2.5 m to 240 ± 3 m with a mean of ~51.3 ± 3.1 m. The mean Late Pleistocene apparent coastal uplift rate is 0.42 ± 0.03 mm.yr -1 (Pedoja et al., 2014). The Lesser Antilles Fault Zone exhibits relatively low Upper Pleistocene uplift rates when compared to similar settings (subduction Mariana type). The apparent Late Pleistocene uplift rates experienced at the SE tip of Cuba (Maisi Peninsula, 0.33 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 ) or Haiti, are typical of Transform Fault Zone settings. Transform Fault zones frequently experience positive vertical deformations in relation to, among other, plate convergence obliquity, mantle flow and/or the rotation of crustal blocks. The relative contribution of these processes responsible for the Late Cenozoic uplift of the Cuban coasts still has to be determined.
Conclusion
The Late Cenozoic coastal evolution of the Cuban Archipelago includes the uplift of five coastal stretches, recorded by 23 emerged sequences of coastal terraces. MIS 5e terraces (122 ± 6 ka) are found at elevations lower than 20 m, except at Punta de Maisi in front of the Oriente Transform Fault Zone where it is raised at a maximum elevation of 40 ± 1 m.
Consequently, upper Pleistocene apparent coastal uplift rates range from 0.06 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 to the NW of Cuba Island to 0.33 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 in front of the Oriente Transform Fault Zone. Coastal uplift distribution shows that deformation is active up to 400 km North of the Transform Fault Zone. Long lasting sequences of notches, marine and coral reef terraces are preserved on the southern tips of Cuba Island at Punta de Maisi (SE) and Cabo Cruz (SW), in front of the Transform Fault Zone. At Maisi the sequence of 24 coastal terraces reaches 560 ± 10 m in elevation and represent a ~ 3 Ma record of sea-level fluctuations assuming constant uplift rates. On Cabo Cruz, the poorly studied sequence of 13 coastal terraces reaches 263 ± 10 m in elevation but there are no dating nor precise elevations of the successive terraces and notches. Future dating of the Cuban coastal terraces will shed light on regional tectonics and on Pleistocene coastal morphogenesis in an area, a priori less exposed to Holocene sea level variations than other regions. Acknowledgments This work was supported by ISblue project, Interdisciplinary graduate school for the blue planet (ANR-17-EURE-0015) and co-funded by a grant from the French government under the program "Investissements d'Avenir" (VuCoREm, Authemayou) and the CNES TOSCA program (CETTROPICO, C. Authemayou). We thank Mary Elliot for her polishing and bettering of our manuscrit. We thank all the coastal dwellers who shared their knowledge with us.
Declaration of interest: None
Figure 1: The Caribbean geodynamical puzzle. MIS 5e data is from Pedoja et al. (2011, 2014), geodynamics and tectonics redrawn from Symithe et al., (2005) and Wessels et al., (2019),
Figure 2: The Cuban archipelago and toponymy used herein.
Figure 3: Distribution of the coastal sequences. Elevations below 30 m have a margin of error of ± 1 m, those above ± 10 m.
Figure 4: Coastal uplift and main onshore and offshore faults of the Cuban Archipelago. The possible timing for the emersion of the uplifted coastal stretch of the Cuba Archipelago come from the extrapolation of MIS 5e coastal uplift rates (see text for more details). Tectonics information compiled from Gordon et al., 1997 and Alvarez et al., 2017.
Figure 6: The coastal sequences between Imias and Baracoa, Oriente, Cuba. A) Toponymy B) Sequences distribution C) The Punta Caleta sequence D) The lowest coastal terrace at Jauco E), F) Incised sequence G) The Punta Caleta sequence H) The Punta de Maisi sequence as seen from the lighthouse I) The East Baracoa sequence. J) The lower terrace at Baracoa. CRT coral reef terrace, Pta Punta, Sequ. Coastal sequence.
Figure 5 : The lowermost coastal terrace (T1) near Imias A) General view of the composite landform B) Zoom on the distal edge of the coastal terrace. The coastal terrace consist of a reefal limestone unit (Jamainitas Fm.) uncoformably overlain by regressive clastic conglomerates (Cabañas Fm.). C) Comparison of the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean Holocene sea-levels and influence on the processes resulting in coastal terraces formation. Journal Pre-proof
Table 1: The coastal sequences of the Cuba Archipelago.
Table 2: Apparent and eustasy-corrected corrected uplift rates of the Cuban Archipelago. All the rates and associated errors are in mm.yr -1 or m.ka -1 . The estimates vary in function of the eustatic range yielded by various methods. Es elevation strandline. Age MIS : age of the marine isotopic stage. e : eustatic correction. U max :maximal uplift rate. U min : minimal uplift rate. U mean : mean uplift rate.
Apparent up
U
me an
0.1
2
0.0
9
0.1
2
0.3
3
0.1
2
0.0
8
0.0
7
0.0
8
0.1
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Elevati | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | on | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Strandl | | Age | | | |
| | | | | | | | | Chrono | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | Seque | | | | | | | | | | | ine / | | MIS | | | |
| n | Ar | | | Site | | Terr | | - | | Dating | | Refere | | | | | | |
| | | nce | | | | | | | | | | | landfor | | | | | |
| ° | ea | | | name | | ace | | stratigr | | Method | | nce | | | | | | |
| | | n° | | | | | | | | | | | m | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | aphy | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | a | | U | U |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | M | | M | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Es | | g | | m | mi |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | oE | | oE | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | e | | ax | n |
| | | | | Guanta | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | f Muhs | | | | | | |
| | | | | namo | | | | | | U/Th on | | | | | 12 | | 0. | 0. |
| 1 | 1 | IV | | | | T1 | | MIS 5e | | | | o et al., | 15 | 1 | | 6 | | |
| | | | | light | | | | | | coral | | | | | 2 | | 14 | 11 |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | 2018 | | | | | | |
| | | | | house | | | | | o | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | Guatan amo bay | | | | | | | | | Muhs | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | r U/Th on | | | 10 | | 12 | | 0. | 0. |
| 2 | 1 | IV | | | | T1 | | MIS 5e | | | | et al., | | 1 | | 6 | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | p coral | | | .8 | | 2 | | 1 | 08 |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | 2018 | | | | | | |
| | | | Peninsu la Maisi | | | | | | - e r paleomag netism | | | Pérez | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Lazo, | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | 1986; | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Peñalv | | | 12 | | 0. | 0. |
| 3 | 1 | VI | | | | T1 | | P MIS 5e | | | | | 15 | 1 | | 6 | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | er et | | | 2 | | 14 | 11 |
| | | | | | | | a l | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | al., | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | 2001; | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | 2003 | | | | | | |
| | | | Peninsu o la Maisi J | | r | | n | | paleomag netism | | | Pérez | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Lazo, | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | 1986; | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Peñalv | | | 12 | | 0. | 0. |
| 4 | 1 | VI | | | | u T1 | | MIS 5e | | | | | 40 | 1 | | 6 | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | er et | | | 2 | | 35 | 3 |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | al., | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | 2001; | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | 2003 | | | | | | |
| | | | Banes | | | | | | inferred | | this study | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 12 | | 0. | 0. |
| 5 | 2 | IX | | | | T1 | | MIS 5e | | | | | 15 | 1 | | 6 | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2 | | 14 | 11 |
| | | | Ciego de Avila SE | | | | | | inferred | | this study | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 12 | | 0. | 0. |
| 6 | 2 | X | | | | T1 | | MIS 5e | | | | | 10 | 1 | | 6 | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2 | | 09 | 07 |
| | | | Ciego de Avila Cayos | | | | | | inferred | | this study | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 12 | | 0. | 0. |
| 7 | 2 | XI | | | | T1 | | MIS 5e | | | | | 8 | 1 | | 6 | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2 | | 08 | 05 |
| | | | Ciego de Avila NE | | | | | | inferred | | this study | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 12 | | 0. | 0. |
| 8 | 2 | XII | | | | T1 | | MIS 5e | | | | | 10 | 1 | | 6 | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2 | | 09 | 07 |
| | | | Cayo Santa | | | | | | inferred | | this study | | | | 12 | | 0. | 0. |
| 9 | 2 | XIII | | | | T1 | | MIS 5e | | | | | 12 | 1 | | 6 | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2 | | 11 | 09 |
0.1
6
0.1
3
0.0
6
0.0
6
0.0
8
0.1
2
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Thompson, W. G., M. W. Spiegelman, S. L. Goldstein and R. C. Speed (2003). "An opensystem model for U-series age determinations of fossil corals." Earth and Planetary Science Letters 210(1-2): 365-381. Toscano, M. A., E. Rodriguez and J. Lundberg (1999). Geologic investigation of the late Pleistocene Jaimanitas Formation: Science and society in Castro's Cuba. Proceedings of the 9th symposium on the geology of the Bahamas and other carbonate regions, San Salvador, Bahamas, Bahamian Field Station. Trechmann, C. T. (1933). "The uplift of Barbados." Geological Magazine 70(1): 19-47. Valle, R. D., L. L. Peñalver, M. Cabrera and C. Pérez (2003). Consideraciones acerca de algunos ambientes marinos litorales del Cuaternario en el occidente de Cuba y sus implicaciones estratigraficas. V Congreso de Geologia y Mineria : Geologia del Cuaternario, Geomorfologia y Carso, La Habana. Vaughan, T. W. (1914). "Sketch of the geologic history of the Florida coral reef tract and comparisons with other coral reef areas." Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 4(2): 26-34. Vaughan, T. W. and A. C. Spencer (1902). "The geography of Cuba." Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 34(2): 105-116. Villemant, B. and N. Feuillet (2003). "Dating open systems by the 238U-234U-230Th method: application to Quaternary reef terraces." Earth and Planetary Science Letters 210(1-2): 105-118. Viruete, J. E. and Y. Pérez (2020). "Neotectonic structures and stress fields associated with oblique collision and forearc sliver formation in northern Hispaniola: Implications for the seismic hazard assessment." Tectonophysics: 228452.
Wessels, R. J. F., N. Ellouz-Zimmermann, N. Bellahsen, Y. Hamon, C. Rosenberg, R. Deschamps, R. Momplaisir, D. Boisson and S. Leroy (2019). "Polyphase tectonic history of the Southern Peninsula, Haiti: from folding-and-thrusting to transpressive strike-slip." Tectonophysics 751: 125-149.
Woodring, W. P. (1954). "Caribbean land and sea through the ages." Geological Society of America Bulletin 65(8): 719-732.
Woodroffe, C. D., D. R. Stoddart, R. S. Harmon and T. Spencer (1983). "Coastal morphology and late quaternary history, Cayman Islands, West Indies." Quaternary Research 19(1): 64-84.
Yildirim, C., D. Melnick, P. Ballato, T. F. Schildgen, H. Echtler, A. E. Erginal, N. Kayak and M. R. Strecker (2013). "Differential uplift along the northern margin of the Central
Anatolian Plateau: inferences from marine terraces." Quaternary Science Reviews 81: 12-28.
Zachos, J. C., G. R. Dickens and R. E. Zeebe (2008). "An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics." Nature 451(7176): 279-283.
Highlights
- First distribution of the Cuban emerged sequence of coral reef and marine terraces
- The Cuban Archipelago, located in a transform setting, is affected by a partitioned compressive component resulting in block tectonics with tilting controlled by regional faults
- Upper Pleistocene apparent uplift rates ranging from 0.06 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 (NW Cuba) to 0.33 ± 0.01 mm.yr -1 (SE Cuba) in front of the main transform fault.
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Practicing Presence
"The Invitation to solitude and silence… is an invitation to enter more deeply into the intimacy of relationship with the One who waits just outside the noise and busyness of our lives. It is an invitation to communication and communion with the One who is always present even when our awareness has been dulled by distraction."
Ruth Haley Barton
Welcome!
You are about to enter into a quiet space. Though we have intentionally planned for this space to be quiet, that does not mean that you will hear or experience nothing. In fact, it is the quiet that we pray helps you hear more clearly – not hear yourself or someone else, but to hear the still small voice of the Lord.
Within these pages, you will find some of the practices that Christians through the centuries have used to tune their souls to hear and respond to the Lord. Practices could also be called spiritual disciplines or habits. Practices help us open our lives to the Holy Spirit's work of transforming us into the image of Jesus for the sake of others.
A good image to describe practices is a sailboat. A sailboat cannot move on its own. It is the wind that moves a boat. But the sails must be up in order to catch the wind. In the same way, we cannot transform ourselves. The Holy Spirit transforms us. Yet, we have a part to play: we hoist our sails. Practices are ways in which we "hoist our sails" and allow room for the Spirit to transform us. What the image of the sailboat does not capture is that as we engage with the Lord, we are not only moved, we are also changed and strengthened. As we hoist
Spiritual disciplines are means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. It means somewhere you're not occupied and you're certainly not preoccupied. It means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned on or counted on.
Henry Nouwen
our sails through practices and the Spirit moves us, new sails are formed so that we become a strong ship, able by the Lord's goodness to respond readily to His love and share His love with others.
The practices in this book are not ways in which we get the Lord to do our bidding, earn the Lord's favor, or in any way try to be in control of our own spiritual growth. Practices are offered to the Lord with no strings attached. We simply offer the practice to the Lord for the Lord to use as He will, to transform us through the power of the Spirit. This means, if you don't "feel" anything while you practice, that is okay, even normal, especially when it's new. No matter what we feel, we can trust that the Lord will be the one to do good work in and through us.
The practices in this booklet are only some of the practices you might engage in. They are particularly suited to a quiet space. In addition to these, there will be other practice ideas provided on a rotating basis. You may find these ideas on the table outside of this space.
May God — Father, Son, and Spirit — be glorified!
Prayer Practices
Praying Scripture
"But what if prayer is more than simply self-expression? What if prayer is a kind of craft or exercise that shapes us? What if God uses prayer to "act back on us," to form us? What if set liturgical prayers are an ancient tool that reframe our perspectives and desires so that we might learn to pray in ways that are beyond us? For most of church history, Christians understood prayer not primarily as a means of authentic self-expression, but as a learned way of approaching God. The earliest prayer book of the church was the Psalms, which have been prayed, memorized, and sung in every language and time throughout the history of Judaism and Christianity."
Tish Harrison Warren
Praying Scripture expands our vocabulary, forming us to love what God loves. It is a hedge that keeps us from using prayer to get God to do what we want, and instead gives God room to tell us what He wants. Praying Scripture is also a gift in the times in which we have no words – lost in grief, doubt, melancholy, confusion or whatever it may be that steals our ability to express ourselves or reveals that we do not truly know ourselves or what is best for us.
Here are some ways to pray Scripture:
* Use the Lord's prayer. Pause after each phrase and let the phrase lead you into prayer. For example, after praying "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name," spend time adoring God for who He is.
* Pray through the Psalms, one each evening or morning, in order, even if the Psalm doesn't match your current mood.
* Other prayers: Ephesians 1:15-21, Philippians 1:3-6, 9; John 17
The Examen* The Examen is prayerful reflection for discerning God's presence and work in the ordinary of our days. It was developed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th century and disciples of many traditions have found it a helpful way to become aware of and thankful for the Lord. It is often practiced in the evenings as a way to review the day and look ahead to the next. It can also be practiced with a larger period in mind: a week, month, or season.
Step 1 — Become aware of the Lord's presence. Ask the Lord to help you see your days through His eyes.
Step 2 — Review the last day/week/season with the Lord. For what moment(s) are you most grateful? When did you receive and give the most love? Talk to the Lord about what it was like for you to be in that moment. Share your thanksgiving and let it lead you into prayer.
Step 3 — Continue to review your day/week/season with the Lord by considering the low points. For what moment(s) are you least grateful? When did you receive and give the least love? Try to attend to your thoughts and emotions without cleaning them up. Offer your thoughts and emotions to the Lord and let it lead you into prayer.
Step 4 — Pray about the day/week/season to come. Imagine the things you will be doing, the people you will be interacting with, and the decisions that may need to be made. Ask the Lord to make you aware of His presence through the day, and to give you His wisdom and strength especially in those places which did not go well today.
Step 5 — Rest in God's grace.
* App Option: Fuller Theological Seminary has a free Examen App that helps engage our visual and auditory senses as we go through the steps of this prayer. The full video is 18 minutes long. It is available in the App store, or you may find it here: https:// fullerstudio.fuller.edu/prayer-of-examen/ If you use this option while in the quiet space, please use your headphones.
Breath Prayer
The breath prayer is a practice that allows us to bring our desire to God in a simple way that connects with our very breath. It is an ancient Christian practice that has been used at least since the 6th century. It's also known as the "Jesus Prayer," named after the most well known breath prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God; have mercy on me a sinner," sometimes shortened to "Jesus, have mercy." Breath prayers are short and simple, only 6-8 syllables so that you can verbally or silently pray it while you inhale and exhale. Breath prayers are an excellent way to meditate, quiet your heart, and know that God is God. They can be used anywhere and everywhere, even as you work and play.
Form your own breath prayer. Following these suggested steps may help:
1. Ask God to direct your prayer.
3. Reflect on what you, or another person, may need. This will be the second part of your breath prayer, prayed when you exhale.
2. Choose a name and/or characteristic of God that tugs at your heart and mind. This will be the first part of your breath prayer, prayed when you inhale.
4. Breath prayers can adjust depending on what you need and how God leads.
Examples of breath prayers:
* Holy God… give us/me your peace.
* Lord Jesus… be near.
* You are my shepherd… I shall not want.
* Abba… I belong to you.
* Pursuing God… bring home my lost daughter.
Prayer Postures
We are creatures with bodies and our bodies matter. Our bodies can be a part of our prayer, embodying our prayers and shaking us out of our routines, which may help us better hear the Lord. Try out one or more of these prayer postures:
* Bowing is a posture of giving honor and respect. (Psalm 95:6)
* Kneeling is a posture of humility and dependence. (Acts 7:60; Luke 22:41)
* Standing is a posture of respect. The early church often stood during corporate prayers.
* Lying prostrate (flat on ground) is a posture taken when overwhelmed by need, thanksgiving, or awe. (Numbers 20:6; Revelation 7:11)
* Hands raised is a posture of adoration. (Psalm 134)
* Palms up/down — Holding open hands, palms up, during prayer is a posture of receiving. Placing your palms down is a posture of letting go. Try opening your hands while listening to God in silence, and then turning your hands over when praying for needs, releasing them to God's sovereignty.
Scripture Practices
Meditating on Scripture
Another word for meditation is rumination. It is a helpful synonym as it relates to a cow chewing its cud. Cows digest their food in stages by chewing, swallowing, regurgitating, and chewing again. This is rumination. In meditation we ruminate on the Word of God, taking it in, working it over, allowing it to settle, then working it over again to get all the nutrition for our souls out of it that we can.
Adele Calhoun, in Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, writes this about meditation: "Meditation runs counter to our busy culture, where speed reading, first impressions and skimming are as deep as we go. In meditation we gaze at something or someone long and longingly. We seek the treasure and truth of what we see. Just as moving a prism reveals different bands of color, meditation allows God to shine his truth and light into our hearts."
A Process for Meditating on Scripture:
* Start by reminding yourself that meditation is meant to help you love God with your whole being.
* Think about the important words in the text. What do they mean in this setting? What mood or tone do you hear from the verses?
* Read the passage that you will meditate on several times. Pay attention to the flow, general ideas, and the main point of the text.
* Invite the Holy Spirit to come and illuminate (shed light, light up) the Word in your mind and soul. Without the help of God it is impossible for us to understand the deep meaning of Scripture.
* In a relaxed manner, examine the passage in your mind. What associations with other passages in the Bible come to mind? What have you heard said about this text before? Do connections come to your mind with events or circumstances in your life, past or present?
* Now consider where the passage settles in your soul and emotions. What response is it evoking within you?
* Thank God for speaking with you through His Word.
Lectio Divina
Lectio divina means "divine reading." It exists to further companionship with the Lord. It invites us into God's presence to listen for His particular, loving word to each of us at this moment in time. It is a way of praying with the heart, allowing the Spirit room to transform us through the Word of God. There are
When we submit our lives to what we read in Scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories, but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.
various ways to approach lectio divina. This particular method includes five movements: silence, reading, meditating, praying, and contemplating.
Silence. Silence is preparation for spiritual reading. It's a way to shift from control to receptivity, from information to formation, from observation to obedience. Come into God's presence: slow down, relax, and intentionally release the chaos and noise in your mind to God.
Eugene Peterson
Read. Read a Scripture passage slowly, lingering over the words so that they resonate in your heart. When a word or phrase catches your attention, stop and attend to what God is saying to you. Be open to the word. Try not to analyze, and instead listen and wait.
Meditate. Read the Scripture a second time. Savor the words. Listen for any invitation that God is extending to you in His word. Reflect on the importance of the words that resonate with you.
Respond in prayer. Read the Scripture a third time. Now is the moment to enter into a personal conversation with God. There is no right or wrong way to do this. The important thing is to respond truthfully and authentically. We share with God the feelings the text has aroused in us: feelings such as love, joy, sorrow, anger, repentance, desire, need, conviction, or consecration. We pour out our hearts to God in complete openness and honesty, especially as the text has probed aspects of our being and doing in the midst of various issues and relationships.
Contemplate. Rest and wait in the presence of God. Allow some time for the word to sink deeply into your soul. Yield and surrender yourself to God. Before you end your time, ask the Lord for a reminder that can help you dwell on or live out this word through the day.
Engaging your senses
The imaginative method of engaging in Scripture uses our feeling and sensing functions. It is a particularly helpful way to read the narrative passages of Scripture (such as the Gospels). We enter the passage as if we are there, experiencing the moment for ourselves. As you read a passage, imagine yourself to be a part of the scene, a participant in the story. Imaging could include:
Letting your imagination loose and using all of your senses:
* What would you be seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling?
* Consider where or who you would be as the story unfolds. With whom do you identify?
* Consider being in Jesus' presence in this narrative. What do you feel as you watch Him? What is the look in His eyes as He turns to you? Does He have something He wants to say to you?
Once you have recreated the scene and placed yourself there, begin to examine your thoughts and feelings that have arisen.
* Is there something in the story with which you identify?
* Is there something that resonates or that brings you comfort?
* Is there something that creates dissonance or that makes you uncomfortable?
If something sticks out to you during your meditation, share it with God. Sit for a few moments in peace, companioning with God as His word settles in. In the stillness, listen to see if the Lord has something to say to you. Close your time with a prayer of thanksgiving.
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466
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 18 No. 3, 2017
pp. 466-469
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-04-2017-0060
Guest editorial
1. Intellectual capital management as a driver of competitiveness and sustainability
1.1 Synthesis of the papers included in this special issue
The aim of this special issue was to explore, through empirical research and theoretical work, the relation between intellectual capital management (ICM) and competitiveness and sustainability and to highlight trends, issues and problems related with the application, diffusion of IC concepts and conceptual innovation.
The resulting special issue, integrated by 11 papers, selected among dozens of proposals, covers interesting and important matters and shows that IC is a subject of vibrant interest.
This special issue opens with a qualitative research proposed by Osinski et al. (2017) about IC measurement issues and existing measurement methods. The problem of intangibles and IC measurement is an open issue that, in our view, is waiting yet for an acceptable theoretical model to build instances applicable to specific domains. This paper is an abstraction effort in this direction, presenting useful definitions of important concepts and its relations and the main characteristics of existing businesses' IC measurement systems.
The important subjects of IC reporting (ICR) and IC disclosure are covered by two papers proposed by Cabrita et al. (2017) and Castilla-Polo and Ruiz-Rodríguez (2017).
IC disclosure addresses the challenging and sensible problem of searching for solutions that conciliate the opposing aims of restraining the diffusion of information about strategic matters and the legal obligation to report the organizations' activity.
In the paper of Cabrita et al. (2017), a quantitative study, involving 28 banks, is reported and the definition of a disclosure index for banking sector allowing its measurement is presented.
Following the topic of disclosure, Castilla-Polo and Ruiz-Rodríguez (2017) report an important qualitative investigation, aiming the state of the art of the use of content analysis in the field of intangible assets disclosure. An interesting synthesis is presented, covering the period of 2000-2017, expressed through a table that can be very useful as support for future research works and the starting point for others.
Connections among intellectual capital and sustainability are the main focus of the paper of Cavicchi (2017). This interesting case study addresses the problem of relations between IC and sustainability through a qualitative methodology, involving the Italian Regional Health Service.
Also, related with the Italian social enterprises, Benevene et al. (2017), using a qualitative methodology based on 81 interviews of senior managers, explores the perception of IC concepts among nonprofit organizations. This paper reveals that there is a considerable gap between the perception of this concept and its intended meaning expressed in the technical literature, with obvious consequences for practical applications and diffusion matters.
Guest Editors are very grateful to the authors and the reviewers who contributed to this special issue, helping to highlight important insights into this research area.
The Guest Editors are also deeply grateful to Rory Chase, whose help was very important in all stages of the editorial process. He was determinant to the editorial success of this special issue.
Wiedenhofer et al. (2017) report the practices and results of a successful knowledge transfer to Slovakia's Higher Educational Institutions, both public and private, of Austrian and German ICR models, having in mind the evaluation of those models, in response to a recognized weak connection between Slovak labor market and vocational training system.
Universities, traditionally considered important players by their two missions of research and diffusion of knowledge, are now seen as major players of a knowledge-based economy (its third mission). A large part of innovations and new ideas in all social and economic sectors are generated at universities, where the creative power of youth is concentrated during a considerable length of time. This means that the efficiency and effectiveness of technology transfer is now more important than ever, making sense to speak of university competitiveness. Secundo et al. (2017) present the results of a study involving 18 European universities, addressing the problem of measuring the efficiency of universities' Technology Transfer Offices, using a Maturity Model as a methodologic tool.
Financial performance and market capitals are the topics of the papers presented by Mohammadi and Taherkhani (2017) and Jordão and Almeida (2017), both of quantitative nature: the first one addressing the specific concept of cost stickiness and its relations with IC (specifically with organizational capital) in the context of the Tehran Stock Exchange and the second one, addressing the issue of companies' financial long-term performance.
In relation to Mohammadi and Taherkhani (2017)'s paper, one of the main conclusions, based on an inferential statistical study of panel data, is that there is a significant relationship (of causal nature) between organizational capital and cost stickiness, with direct implications in the revision of rules for investment in intangibles.
Jordão and Almeida (2017)'s paper is a theoretic research of relations between Brazilian companies' IC and the long-term financial performance (financial sustainability) of those companies. The study is supported with data from the Brazilian companies, listed in a specific stock market, for the period 2005-2014, one of the main conclusions being that the more intangible-intensive companies present a better financial long-term performance – profitability and return – than the others.
Networks and its relationship with IC and knowledge management in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is the subject matter of a conceptual paper presented by Jordão and Novas (2017). From a qualitative study, using content analysis of websites in the internet and spread all over the world, the authors conclude that, consequence of intense exchange and sharing of knowledge through networks, knowledge networks emerge naturally, becoming Knowledge and IC Generators.
Finally, the paper presented by Matos et al. (2017) completes this special issue. Smart City is a recent concept that has many points in common with IC, but has a technological origin, in contrast with IC managerial origin. The relations between these concepts and the proposal of a theoretical framework for smart cities' strategic and operational planning are the main contribution of this conceptual paper. Using biological and psychological concepts as an inspiration source, the paper also analyses the problem of IC formation and meaning of a collective reasoning entity (such as a city).
2. Conclusion
In conclusion, we believe that this special issue reflects the heterogeneity of areas and activity sectors where IC studies are being carried out: banking, stock markets, public administration, health management, social economy, finance, SME's management, universities, cities and regions governance, to mention only a few.
As shown by the content of the present papers, IC is also a concept that is attracting the attention and is being used both as a research subject and management strategic instrument in such diverse geographies as Austria, Brazil, Iran, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain, to mention only the authors' countries.
Guest editorial
468
Among the papers findings, despite this universality, we single out the manifestations of resistance to the diffusion of the IC concept practical applications, given the traditional management reasoning and experience in "doing things". The simple concept of intangible, as something that is not tangible or directly observed but that is the cause of organizations' tangible behavior and value, raises important understanding and acceptance difficulties that can only be overcome with appropriate methodology.
Although IC measurement was not one of the subjects in the call, the existence of a universally accepted method of IC measurement is mentioned in several papers as a highly needed instrument to answer, in an objective way, to performance and sustainability issues.
Qualitative methodologies were employed for most of the papers but the proportion of those using the quantitative data analysis and statistical inference was significant, reflecting performance measurement needs, associated with financial sustainability or disclosure modeling.
In sum, we believe that this special issue is a reliable manifestation of current ICM practices and research problems and, by that, will become a useful source of knowledge and inspiration for near future practical work and new IC applied research works.
Florinda Matos and Valter Martins Vairinhos
Intellectual Capital Accreditation Association, Santarém, Portugal
References
Benevene, P., Kong, E., Barbieri, B., Lucchesi, M. and Cortini, M. (2017), "Representation of intellectual capital's components amongst Italian social enterprises", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 564-587.
Cabrita, M.R., Ribeiro da Silva, M.L., Gomes Rodrigues, A.M. and Muñoz Dueñas, M.P. (2017), "Competitiveness and disclosure of intellectual capital: an empirical research in Portuguese banks", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 486-505.
Castilla-Polo, F. and Ruiz-Rodríguez, C. (2017), "Content analysis within intangible assets disclosure: a strutured literature review", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 506-543.
Cavicchi, C. (2017), "Healthcare sustainability and the role of intellectual capital: evidence from an Italian regional health service", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 544-563.
Jordão, R.V. and Almeida, V. (2017), "Performance measurement, intellectual capital & financial sustainability", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 643-666.
Jordão, R.V. and Novas, J. (2017), "Knowledge management and Intellectual capital in networks of small and medium-sized entreprises", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 667-692.
Matos, F., Vairinhos, V., Dameri, R.P. and Durst, S. (2017), "Increasing smart city competitiveness and sustainability through managing structural capital", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 693-707.
Mohammadi, A. and Taherkhani, P. (2017), "Organizational capital, intellectual capital and cost stickiness (evidences from Iran)", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 625-642.
Osinski, M., Selig, P.M., Matos, F. and Roman, D.J. (2017), "Methods of evaluation of intangible assets and intellectual capital", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 470-485.
Secundo, G., De Beer, C., Schutte, C. and Passiante, G. (2017), "Mobilising intellectual capital to improve European universities' competitiveness: the technology transfer offices' role", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 607-624.
Wiedenhofer, R., Friedl, C., Billy, L. and Olejarova, D. (2017), "Application of IC-models in a combined public-private sector setting for regional innovation in Slovakia", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 588-606.
About the Guest Editors
Florinda Matos received the PhD Degree in Social Sciences, Organizational Behavior Studies from the Technical University of Lisbon. She has a Master's Degree in Business Sciences from the ISCTE – IUL Business School. She is a Postdoc Researcher at the FCT – UNL, Portugal. She teaches several disciplines in graduate and post-graduate courses and she is a Partner and a Business Consultant in several companies. She is ICAA – Intellectual Capital Accreditation Association's President, and she is leading the ICLab – Research Center in Intellectual Capital. Her main research interests are: knowledge management, intellectual capital, measuring of intangibles, organizational behavior, marketing, competitive strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship. Florinda Matos is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: firstname.lastname@example.org
Valter Martins Vairinhos is a Retired Portuguese Navy Officer where he served as a Naval Engineer between 1964 and 2009. He received his Naval Engineer Degree from Portuguese Naval School, an Applied Mathematics Degree (Licenciatura), and a Master's Degree in Statistics and Operations Research from Faculdade de Ciencias, Lisbon Classic University and a Doctoral Degree – in Multivariate Data Analysis – from the Statistics Department, Salamanca University. He currently shares his investigation activity between ICAA – Santarem and the Departamento de Estatística, Salamanca University. His main investigative interests are related with graph data mining and automatic synthesis of results from multivariate data analysis, being the author of a methodology, based in intersection graphs, to generate automatic synthetic descriptions of results from multivariate data analysis and its implementation through a software (BiplotsPMD) where those ideas are put to use.
Guest editorial
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Intended for undergraduate/graduate-level foundation engineering courses. This book emphasizes a thorough understanding of concepts and terms before proceeding with analysis and design, and integrates the principles of foundation engineering with their application to practical design problems.
This textbook first published in 1992 now appearing in its third edition retains the best features from the earlier editions and adds significantly to the contents, which include developments in the 1990s.
This book helps people prepare for the ITIL® 2011 Edition Foundation qualification exam. It contains direct links to the full syllabus and specifies the terms and definitions required. In addition it gives sample questions for practice both within the text and also a number of the official exams questions in the back. The content of this book is based on the ITIL® 2011 Edition core guidance and APMG's ITIL Foundation Certificate syllabus edition 2011. Written by globally experienced trainers and reviewed by other professionals this unique work provides clear and concise guidance for all those seeking to achieve success at the ITIL Foundation Level. Covering: A clear and concise explanation of the exam structure; Key text for the exams; Sample exam questions and sample answers and Hints and Tips and practical Page 6/12
examples this book will highlight for readers the key items they need for the ITIL Foundation Exam that will increase chances of success. By this book is a separate file (free, via internet) available: • All images in the book, in Powerpoint format. Click on the button Training Material by the book on our website.
Designing for Cisco Network Service Architectures (ARCH) Foundation Learning Guide, Fourth Edition · Learn about the Cisco modular enterprise architecture · Create highly available enterprise network designs · Develop optimum Layer 3 designs · Examine advanced WAN services design considerations · Evaluate data center design considerations · Design effective modern WAN and data center designs · Develop effective migration approaches to IPv6 · Design resilient IP multicast networks · Create effective network security designs Designing for Cisco Network Service Architectures (ARCH) Foundation Learning Guide , Fourth Edition, is a Cisco-authorized, self-paced learning tool for CCDP foundation learning. This book provides you with the knowledge needed to perform the conceptual, intermediate, and detailed design of a network infrastructure that supports desired network solutions over intelligent network services to achieve effective performance, scalability, and availability. This book presents concepts and examples necessary to design converged enterprise networks. You learn additional aspects of modular campus design, advanced routing designs, WAN service designs, enterprise data center design, IP multicast design, and security design. Advanced and modern network infrastructure solutions, such as virtual private networks (VPN), Cisco Intelligent WAN (IWAN), and Cisco Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI), are also covered. Chapter-ending review questions illustrate and help solidify the concepts presented in the book. Whether you are Page 7/12
preparing for CCDP certification or CCDE certification, or simply want to gain a better understanding of designing scalable and reliable network architectures, you will benefit from the foundation information presented in this book. Designing for Cisco Network Service Architectures (ARCH) Foundation Learning Guide, Fourth Edition, is part of a recommended learning path from Cisco that includes simulation and hands-on training from authorized Cisco Learning Partners and self-study products from Cisco Press. To find out more about instructor-led training, e-learning, and hands-on instruction offered by authorized Cisco Learning Partners worldwide, please visit https://learningnetwork.cisco.com. Category: Cisco Certification Covers: CCDP ARCH 300-320
An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival. What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? "Design justice" is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims expilcitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world. This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to "build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability." Along the way, the book documents a Page 8/12
multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.
This book will show you how to create robust, scalable, highly available and fault-tolerant solutions by learning different aspects of Solution architecture and next-generation architecture design in the Cloud environment.
* New York Times bestseller • The 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world “At this point in time, the Drawdown book is exactly what is needed; a credible, conservative solution-by-solution narrative that we can do it. Reading it is an effective inoculation against the widespread perception of doom that humanity cannot and will not solve the climate crisis. Reported by-effects include increased determination and a sense of grounded hope.” —Per Espen Stoknes, Author, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming “There’s been no real way for ordinary people to get an understanding of what they can do and what impact it can have. There remains no single, comprehensive, reliable compendium of carbon-reduction solutions across sectors. At least until now. . . . The public is hungry for this kind of practical wisdom.” —David Roberts, Vox “This is the ideal environmental sciences textbook—only it is too interesting and inspiring to be called a textbook.” —Peter Kareiva, Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have Page 9/12
come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. One hundred techniques and practices are described here—some are well known; some you may have never heard of. They range from clean energy to educating girls in lower-income countries to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination. If deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, they represent a credible path forward, not just to slow the earth's warming but to reach drawdown, that point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere peak and begin to decline. These measures promise cascading benefits to human health, security, prosperity, and well-being—giving us every reason to see this planetary crisis as an opportunity to create a just and livable world.
Geotechnical Engineering: Principles and Practices, 2/e, is ideal or junior-level soil mechanics or introductory geotechnical engineering courses. This introductory geotechnical engineering textbook explores both the principles of soil mechanics and their application to engineering practice. It offers a rigorous, yet accessible and easy-to-read approach, as well as technical depth and an emphasis on understanding the physical basis for soil behavior. The second edition has been revised to include updated content and many new problems and exercises, as well as to reflect feedback from reviewers and the authors' own experiences.
For policy makers and policy implementers, design challenges abound. Every design challenge presents an opportunity for change and transformation. To get from policy intent to policy outcome, however, is not a straightforward Page 10/12
journey. It involves people and services as much as it involves policies and organizations. Of all organizations, perhaps government agencies are perceived to be the least likely to change. They are embedded in enormous bureaucratic structures that have grown over decades, if not centuries. In effect, many people have given up hope that such an institution can ever change its ways of doing business. And yet, from a human-centered design perspective, they present a fabulous challenge. Designed by people for people, they have a mandate to be citizencentered, but they often fall short of this goal. If humancentered design can make a difference in this organizational context, it is likely to have an equal or greater impact on an organization that shows more flexibility; for example, one that is smaller in size and less entangled in legal or political frameworks. Transforming Public Services by Design offers a human-centered design perspective on policies, organizations and services. Three design projects by large-scale government agencies illustrate the implications for organizations and the people involved in designing public services: the Tax Forms Simplification Project by the Internal Revenue Service (1978-1983), the Domestic Mail Manual Transformation Project by the United States Postal Service (2001-2005) and the Integrated Tax Design Project by the Australian Tax Office. These case studies offer a unique demonstration of the role of human-centered design in policy context. This book aims to support designers and managers of all backgrounds who want to know more about reorienting policies, organizations and services around people.
In Foundation Design: Theory and Practice, Professor N. S. V. Kameswara Rao covers the key aspects of the subject, including principles of testing, interpretation, analysis, soilstructure interaction modeling, construction guidelines, and Page 11/12
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applications to rational design. Rao presents a wide array of numerical methods used in analyses so that readers can employ and adapt them on their own. Throughout the book the emphasis is on practical application, training readers in actual design procedures using the latest codes and standards in use throughout the world. Presents updated design procedures in light of revised codes and standards, covering: American Concrete Institute (ACI) codes Eurocode 7 Other British Standard-based codes including Indian codes Provides background materials for easy understanding of the topics, such as: Code provisions for reinforced concrete Pile design and construction Machine foundations and construction practices Tests for obtaining the design parameters Features subjects not covered in other foundation design texts: Soil-structure interaction approaches using analytical, numerical, and finite element methods Analysis and design of circular and annular foundations Analysis and design of piles and groups subjected to general loads and movements Contains worked out examples to illustrate the analysis and design Provides several problems for practice at the end of each chapter Lecture materials for instructors available on the book's companion website Foundation Design is designed for graduate students in civil engineering and geotechnical engineering. The book is also ideal for advanced undergraduate students, contractors, builders, developers, heavy machine manufacturers, and power plant engineers. Students in mechanical engineering will find the chapter on machine foundations helpful for structural engineering applications. Companion website for instructor resources: www.wiley.com/go/rao
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Journal of Global Oral Health
Review Article COVID-19-associated fungal spectrum: The intraoral purview Official Publication of ACADEMY OF DENTISTRY INTERNATIONAL (ADI)
JOURN;ALOF
Naila Perween 1 , Anam Mushtaq 2 , Sakshi Chawla 2
1Department of Prosthodontics, ESIC Dental College and Hospital, Delhi, 2Department of Pedodontics, ITS Dental College, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India.
ABSTRACT
*Corresponding author: Naila Perween, Tutor, Department of Prosthodontics, ESIC Dental College and Hospital, Delhi, India.
email@example.com
Received: 05 June 2021 Accepted: 21 September 2021 EPub Ahead of Print: 22 January 2022 Published: 29 July 2022
DOI
10.25259/JGOH_20_2021
Quick Response Code:
COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has created havoc all around the world. The COVID-19 virus is reportedly responsible for causing severe immunodeficiency states in patients. This has led to a rise in opportunistic infections, majorly being fungal in form. This increase in fungal infections may also be linked to other factors such as immunosuppressive drugs or antiviral drugs which have been discussed on this platform. Fungal infections most commonly associated with COVID-19 virus are those which majorly affect upper respiratory tract and/or lungs, that is, Mucor, Aspergillus, and Candida. Fungal infections can cause great discomfort to the patient and, hence, need to be diagnosed at the earliest followed by subsequent therapeutic management or else can prove to be fatal. Conclusively, this review suggests that clinicians need to be vigilant about the possible opportunistic infections, and thus, COVID-19 management should be done judiciously.
Keywords: Mycoses, COVID-19, Mucor, Aspergillus, Candida
INTRODUCTION
Since 2019, the world has been battling a devastating pandemic in the form of COVID-19 infection, which has afflicted more than 170 million people and has led to 3.6 million deaths worldwide. [1] Dealing with the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2) infection was dwelling into an unexplored universe with limited knowledge about disease presentation, the possibility of rapid and frequent viral mutations, an individual's immune response, as well as in the context of the resources available in the prevailing health-care system. With this finite understanding, India entered the catastrophic second wave that witnessed numerous COVID-19 patients being managed with diverse treatment protocols which included multivitamins, antiparasitics, systemic corticosteroids, and injectable antivirals (Remdesivir). Several cases of severe COVID-19 required administration of oxygen, hospitalization, prolonged stay in ICU, and mechanical ventilator support.
The immune dysregulation triggered by SARS-CoV-2 along with the already prevalent immunosuppressive states such as diabetes mellitus, hematological malignancies, lung diseases, and the concurrent administration of immunosuppressive corticosteroid therapy served as a causal pathway for the initiation and progression of other opportunistic infections dominated by ones of fungal origin. [2] The exact etiology of COVID-19-associated fungal spectrum (CAFS) is yet to be realized. However, with various fungal infections being declared as an epidemic in
India, the critical reality demands urgency for special focus on different aspects of CAFS.
AN INSIGHT INTO CAFS
CAFS encompasses Aspergillus, Candida, Mucor, Coccidioides, Cryptococcus, Pneumocystis, and Saccharomyces. The fungal coinfections linked with COVID-19 remain to be largely missed or misdiagnosed. Interestingly, the fungi that commonly colonize the respiratory tract and oropharyngeal mucous membrane have been most regularly associated with COVID-19 infection, namely, Mucor, Aspergillus, and Candida. [3] Moreover, the treatment of these possibly fatal infections has become an additional burden to the already stressed health-care system. The mycological conditions have varied intraoral presentation ranging from superficial to deep fungal infections of the oral tissues. Hence, a dental professional can play a key role in the early diagnosis and prompt management of fungal infections, thereby, reducing the mortality rate significantly. The present perspective is to summarize the fungal infections reported in COVID-19 patients.
COVID-19 AND MUCOR
Mucormycosis is the fungal infection caused by fungi of Mucorales order; genus Mucor, Rhizopus, Rhizomucor, and Absidia in Zygomycetes class. Immunosuppression caused due to COVID-19 infection leads to a reduction in the number of circulating CD4 T and CD8 T cells and an overwhelming inflammatory response that renders the body weak and susceptible to infections. This is aggravated by the immune suppressing effects of underlying conditions especially diabetes and use of steroids. Other factors such as humid climate and high temperature also provide a conducive environment for the growth of these fungi, leading to an increased risk of these infections. [4]
During the second wave of COVID-19, India has seen an increase in the incidence of rhino-orbitocerebral mucormycosis in patients suffering from COVID-19 or recovering from the infection. [5,6] Recently, in May 2021, the Health Ministry of India urged the state governments to declare the mucormycosis infection also known as black fungus, as a notifiable disease. Following this advisory, many Indian states and union territories have declared mucormycosis as an epidemic among which Rajasthan was the first state to declare mucormycosis epidemic on May 19, 2021. [7]
Clinical signs and symptoms
Mucormycosis can show a varied clinical presentation based on anatomical involvement that includes gastrointestinal, rhinocerebral, pulmonary, cutaneous, and disseminated form of mucormycosis. [8] General presentation may be of fever, headache or facial pain. Nasal stuffiness or purulent discharge, unpleasant smell, epistaxis, ulcerations, or inflammation in the nasal mucosa with ischemia or eschar may be seen. Ophthalmic involvement includes periocular edema or discoloration; facial pain and swelling; periorbital pain, tenderness, or pain in sinus region or toothache. Severe mucormycosis may present with proptosis or ptosis, loss of vision, diplopia, facial palsy, paralysis, or even seizure attacks. [9]
Oral manifestations appear usually in the form of ulcer, necrosis, crusting, or black eschar of the palate. It may also present as aphthous and tongue lesions or even loosening of teeth. The infection may progress to palatal perforation if it spreads to nasal cavity or involves the paranasal sinuses through the palatal vessels. [10]
Diagnosis
It can be detected using fluorescent stains in direct microscopy which shows Mucorales hyphae. Routine culture can also be done at 30–37° temperature and it shows cotton white or grayish-black fungal colonies. Advanced diagnostic tests as molecular level include polymerase chain reaction and rDNA analysis. [2,11]
Management
Effective management involves antifungal therapy with amphotericin B (AMB) which is considered as the first-line treatment of mucormycosis along with surgical debridement of necrotic lesions besides comprehensive control and management of associated underlying systemic illness. [12] The Indian Council of Medical Research guidelines advise strict monitoring of diabetic patients, judicious use of steroids, and antimicrobials for the prevention of this disease. Use of sterile water in humidifiers for oxygen therapy is also advised for hospitalized patients requiring oxygen support. A strict clinical and radiographic monitoring of patients is advised to assess treatment response and progression of infection. [13]
COVID-19 AND ASPERGILLUS
Spores of Aspergillus are typically present everywhere around us, hence, can be inhaled easily and subsequently enter the human lung tissues and/or paranasal sinuses causing local to disseminated aspergillosis. They are known to cause lifethreatening invasive aspergillosis in immunocompromised individuals with bone marrow transplantations or hematological malignancies. The species causing invasive aspergillosis (Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger, and Aspergillus terreus) have 30–95% mortality rate even if diagnosed early and despite appropriate antifungal treatment. [14]
As reported by Lei et al. in China, patients with severe COVID-19 had high rates of positive galactomannan, thereby increasing the probability of concomitant fungal infection. [15] Furthermore, patients with COVID-19 have presented with high serum levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin (IL)-6 and IL-10. Following an increase in IL-10 levels, greater Th2 response and Th1 immune depression are seen which increase host susceptibility to lethal Aspergillus infection. IL-6 plays an important role in protective immunity against Aspergillus. Immunomodulatory treatment with tocilizumab which has been approved in patients with severe COVID-19 as an anti-IL-6 agent can, nevertheless, potentially cause Aspergillus infection by reducing IL-6 immune response. [16] In the study by Bartoletti et al., most patients received anti-IL-6 treatment with tocilizumab as well as corticosteroids. [17]
Clinical signs and symptoms
Aspergillus spores once inhaled, can affect both upper and/ or lower respiratory tract and clinical manifestations are seen in paranasal sinuses, larynx, eyes, ears, or oral cavity. Refractory fever for more than 3 days, worsening respiratory status (e.g. tachypnea or increasing oxygen requirements), chest pain, cough, hemoptysis, or pleural friction rub can suggest diagnostic investigations for invasive pulmonary aspergillosis. Invasion of the orbit and adjacent craniofacial areas may occur in cases of chronic and/or aggressive invasive sinonasal aspergillosis. [18]
Oral aspergillosis manifests as black or yellow necrotic tissue on an ulcer base over the palate or in the posterior tongue. Aspergillus invades soft-tissue lining of maxillary sinus, from where it progresses down to the bone and causes palatal infarction and manifests in the oral mucosal tissues or disseminates into systemic organs. Aspergillosis organisms eventually develop into ball-shaped masses due to their centrifugal linear growth. [19]
Diagnosis
Fungus culture, PCR, galactomannan tests, and b-D-glucan test are used to detect the presence of Aspergillus species. Detection of galactomannan in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid is highly suggestive of aspergillosis. Histopathological examination reveals invasive growth of septate fungi that branch at 45° angle along with conidiospores and fruiting bodies. In addition, radiographic picture of patients with COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis shows peripheral nodule, air crescent, reverse halo sign, nodular consolidation, ground-glass opacities, crazy paving pattern, pleural effusion, and pulmonary cysts. [16]
Management
Cases of aspergillosis have shown favorable responses with AMB, voriconazole, isavuconazole, and caspofungin. Surgical management has a significant role in treating invasive aspergillosis of sinus. Few reports have suggested local debridement with AMB as an adjunct treatment modality following surgical treatment. [18]
COVID-19 AND CANDIDA
Candida albicans is a common resident of the oral mucosa, however, its growth is suppressed by other organism in the oral microbiome, thus, remaining non-virulent. Species such as Candida tropicalis, Candida glabrata, Candida krusei, and Candida parapsilosis are found at various mucosal surfaces, such as the skin and the pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and urinary tracts. [20,21] A literature of 11 cases by Moser et al. reported upregulated monocyte CD80 and negate release of IL-6 and IL-1α, thus increasing the susceptibility for candidemia in critically ill COVID-19 patients. [22] India reports the rate of superficial and invasive candidiasis to be 2.5% in the first wave. [23] Researchers support the concept of classical risk factors such as prolonged ICU hospitalization, central venous catheters, and broad-spectrum antibiotic use [24] for invasive candidiasis despite the marked immune cell dysregulation seen in COVID-19 patient. [25]
Clinical signs and symptoms
Infections on skin and mucosa including vulvovaginal or oropharyngeal regions are the most prevalent clinical entities of superficial candidiasis. [26] Invasive candidiasis is a serious infection that can affect the blood (candidemia), heart, brain, eyes, bones, and also other parts of the body and can project symptoms accordingly. The most common symptoms are fever and chills that do not improve after antibiotic treatment for suspected bacterial infections.
The recent case reports of patient infected with SARS-CoVassociated oropharyngeal candidiasis present an array of symptoms ranging from white membranous non-scrapable patches on the mucosa, tongue, and palate to throbbing pain in the oropharyngeal region. Loss of taste, severe burning sensation, and erythematous patches of candidiasis have also been observed. Majority of cases had oral pseudomembranous candidiasis described as white plaque extending over tongue dorsum and oral mucosa responding well to topical antifungal agents. [27]
Diagnosis
The clinical presentation with its classical features, exfoliative cytology, potassium peroxide staining, oral swab specimen for culture analysis, and oral mucosal biopsy of candidiasis is used for diagnosis of candidiasis. Definitive diagnosis is obtaining with the help of special staining procedure such as periodic acid-Schiff. [19,25]
Management
The empirical approach for candidiasis treatment is with nystatin oral suspension which is discontinued after 48 h of disappearance of perioral symptoms. At times, endocrineassociated candidiasis may not responds to nystatin treatment for which alternative antifungal regime should be suggested. Oropharyngeal candidiasis is approached with clotrimazole tablets or fluconazole. Systemic candidiasis respond well with flucytosine and flucytosine oral rinse is recommended for the oral lesions of systemic candidiasis. [28]
OTHER FUNGAL INFECTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH COVID-19
Although not diagnosed in India yet, there are other fungal organisms reportedly associated with COVID-19. Coccidioidomycosis and COVID-19 coinfection have been reported in Southwest United States, both diseases having common symptoms that include fever, dry cough, dyspnea, myalgia, and headache. Infection with COVID-19 might reactivate Coccidioides fungus which remains in the lung in a latent state. This has been seen in certain conditions such as pregnancy or immunocompromised states. [29]
Histoplasmosis and Cryptococcus are seen as opportunistic fungal coinfections in COVID-19 patients with AIDS and immunosuppression. Histoplasmosis capsulatum causes Histoplasmosis infection which is a deep fungal infection affecting pulmonary tissue or mucocutaneous areas. Mucocutaneous form may produce solitary, painful or painless, ulcerative, erosive lesions on the tongue, palate, and/ or buccal mucosa. Oral ulcerations are typically characterized by firm rolled borders that mimic a malignant neoplasm. [30]
Cryptococcemia caused by Cryptococcus neoformans, a known cause of meningoencephalitis in immunocompromised patients, has been reported in COVID-19 patients with a history of receiving tocilizumab and corticosteroids. [31]
Cases of Saccharomyces cerevisiae have been reported in a few COVID-19 patients hospitalized in ICU, who have taken probiotics containing Saccharomyces. These infections are often misdiagnosed as Candida infections. [32]
Pneumocystis pneumonia, mostly seen as an opportunistic fungal infection in AIDS patients, was reported as a coinfection in a patient with COVID-19 but with no known immunodeficiency or risk factors for the development of Pneumocystis jirovecii infection. [33]
CONCLUSION
There is enough evidence to suggest that COVID-19 infection causes immunosuppression, hence, increasing the susceptibility of developing opportunistic fungal infections.
India has reported multiple cases of such fungal infections as post-COVID complications, often nicknamed as white fungus (Candida), black fungus (mucormycosis), and yellow fungus (aspergillosis). The development of these diseases may be attributed to the use of glucocorticoids, and hence, judicious use of these drugs has been suggested. Further, in the absence of a clear benefit, drugs targeting immune pathways such as tocilizumab should be discouraged.
The stewardship in managing COVID-19 patients needs to focus on expanding knowledge about the risk factors associated with the development of opportunistic fungal infections. Early diagnosis and timely management of these infections can improve patient outcomes significantly. These infections have proven to be fatal, and thus, it is important to be vigilant about opportunistic fungal pathogens and robust surveillance of high-risk hosts is required to reduce the number of these infections.
Declaration of patient consent
Patient consent not required as there are no patients in this study.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
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26. Singh A, Verma R, Murari A, Agrawal A. Oral candidiasis: An overview. J Oral Maxillofac Pathol 2014;18 Suppl 1:S81-5.
25. Arastehfar A, Carvalho A, Nguyen MH, Hedayati MT, Netea MG, Perlin DS, et al. COVID-19-associated candidiasis (CAC): An underestimated complication in the absence of immunological predispositions. J Fungi (Basel) 2020;6:211.
27. Riad A, Gomaa E, Hockova B, Klugar M. Oral candidiasis of COVID-19 patients: Case report and review of evidence. J Cosmet Dermatol 2021;20:1580-4.
29. Heaney AK, Head JR, Broen K, Click K, Taylor J, Balmes JR, et al. Coccidioidomycosis and COVID-19 co-infection, United States, 2020. Emerg Infect Dis 2021;27:1266-73.
28. Mead G. Management of oral mucositis associated with cancer chemotherapy. Lancet 2002;359:815-6.
30. Basso RP, Poester VR, Benelli JL, Stevens DA, Zogbi HE, Vasconcellos IC, et al. COVID-19-associated histoplasmosis in an AIDS patient. Mycopathologia 2021;186:109-12.
32. Ventoulis I, Sarmourli T, Amoiridou P, Mantzana P, Exindari M, Gioula G, et al. Bloodstream infection by Saccharomyces cerevisiae in two COVID-19 patients after receiving supplementation of Saccharomyces in the ICU. J Fungi (Basel) 2020;6:98.
31. Khatib MY, Ahmed AA, Shaat SB, Mohamed AS, Nashwan AJ. Cryptococcemia in a patient with COVID-19: A case report. Clin Case Rep 2021;9:853-5.
33. Menon AA, Berg DD, Brea EJ, Deutsch AJ, Kidia KK, Thurber EG, et al. A case of COVID-19 and Pneumocystis jirovecii coinfection. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2020;202:136-8.
How to cite this article: Perween N, Mushtaq A, Chawla S. COVID-19associated fungal spectrum: The intraoral purview. J Global Oral Health 2022;5:41-5.
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FLAMBOROUGH PARISH COUNCIL MINUTES OF PARISH COUNCIL MEETING 9 th MAY 2016, 7.30 PM, WI HALL, FLAMBOROUGH
Present: Councillors D Morton (in the Chair), P. Couzens, J Crossland, A. Grainger, V Leppington, B. Maxwell, R Sellick, Mrs M Sexton, Mrs C Taylor and Ward Councillor Matthews Clerk, Lynne Dennis, recorded the minutes 6 members of the public
90/16 To receive apologies for absence:
Apologies were received from Ward Councillors Harrap and Milns.
91/16 Code of Conduct:
(a) To record Declarations of Pecuniary/non-Pecuniary Interests by any member of the Council in respect of the agenda items listed below. Members declaring interests should identify the agenda item and type of interest being declared:
Any declarations of interest made by Councillors are recorded at the appropriate Minute.
(b) To note dispensations given to any member of the Council in respect of agenda items below:
None
92/16 Presentation/Questions from Inspector Robert Cocker on Community Policing in Your Area:
Inspector Robert Cocker and Sergeant Chris Hines attended to discuss recent changes in local policing and to answer questions from councillors.
- Inspector Cocker noted that crime in the East Riding is significantly less than other areas in the country and asked what the perception of policing in the area was.
- Councillor Grainger commented that opinion was low, for example, shop lifting was not responded to in a timely way, with officers not attending the shop for a number of days. Sergeant Hines noted that this was common as thefts could be caught on CCTV and the shop lifter identified for action in due course.
- Councillor Sellick noted that with the changes to staffing over the last year although less crime was recorded it had been difficult to actually report crime via the 101 number due to the issues which had previously been discussed by the parish council. It was acknowledged that there had been a number of issues when the service was passed over to inexperienced staff due to the creation of a 'Hub' to deal with calls, but after the changes implemented from February 2016 these had now been mostly resolved.
- Sergeant Hines noted that the funding cuts had impacted on resources, but that Flamborough was a victim of its own success in that less crime reported meant less staff assigned to the area.
- Inspector Cocker noted that it was unlikely that further staff would be removed from Bridlington, as it was geographically further away from other urban areas and could not easily be covered by these. Post April 2015 there had been a significant increase in staffing in Bridlington but these officers had been relocated from other areas, some of these had now been reassigned back to those areas, so there was not an overall reduction in original staffing numbers.
- Councillor Couzens noted an incident where he had rung 999 and been passed through to North Yorkshire Police to deal with an incident in Flamborough. Sergeant Hines noted that this can sometimes happen if the call centre is busy and calls will be directed to the nearest available force.
- Councillor Crossland commented on the reduction in police presence in the village which used to have a dedicated PC with an additional one allocated for the summer months, now there is just a PCSO to cover the area. Sergeant Hines noted that with changes to staffing and practice the force had to change accordingly and unfortunately could not supply dedicated PCs to villages.
- Inspector Cocker noted that the force now has approximately 1600 PCs, a significant reduction from over 2000 previously employed.
- Councillor Taylor expressed concern over the large area that PSCO Smith had to cover, including Flamborough and outlying villages. Sergeant Hines responded that she was able to do this as there were very few incidents so the level of crime was manageable for the level of staffing.
- Inspector Cocker commented on alternative ways of working in the absence of PCs, for example, automatic number recognition was now more widely available and affordable, this has been used successfully such as identifying poachers moving around the countryside. There is a commitment to using technology where possible to assist in policing.
- Councillor Morton commented that for crime such as speeding, a physical presence was often the best deterrent and that if officers were visible then it would deter offenders.
- Sergeant Hines stressed that it was important that anyone aware of incidents should notify the police, this then gets into the system and action can be taken if incidents become persistent. Inspector Cocker also encouraged intelligence from the public of perpetrators of crime and that these could be reported to PCSO Smith and they would be logged.
- Councillor Crossland noted that there was reluctance to report crime as the perception is that often nothing happens or even that it can't be reported, i.e. no answer or cut off from 101 service. Inspector Cocker reiterated that it was important that all crime should be reported, as if the police don't know they can't act upon it. For example, if stolen property is not reported, even if it is later recovered a crime cannot be proved or the property returned to its owner. He noted that public intelligence links numerous crimes together which can then be actioned, e.g. the recent spate of fake £50 notes was tied together through several reports and various reports of drug crime can be linked together to provide enough evidence to conduct a police operation.
- Inspector Cocker noted that the outgoing Police and Crime Commissioner wanted to improve working with communities and parish councils, for instance using local knowledge on the best places to site speed cameras, however with the recent change of PCC it is unknown whether this work will continue.
- Councillor Crossland asked why the Police Liaison Committees no longer meet. Councillor Morton also noted that Community Partnership Meetings involving Fire, Health, Ward Councillors, Parish Councillors etc. used to be held but are also now defunct following a review by ERYC. Sergeant Hines noted that the police work closely with the ERYC's Anti-Social Behaviour team, but again that if there are problems with individuals notify the police and they can be logged and investigated.
- PCSO Smith noted that there was a new Neighbourhood Watch group on Castle Crescent with 23 new members and that 3 incidents of criminal damage had occurred to parked cars including a marked police vehicle.
93/16 Public Participation Session (15 minutes):
- None
94/16 To approve Minutes of Ordinary Parish Council Meeting of 4 th April 2016:
RESOLVED: (All in favour) that all Minutes of these meetings be approved and signed as a true and correct record.
95/16 To receive the Clerk's Report and Action Log:
- Street Lighting – The new street light on the corner of Allison Lane has now been installed by ERYC, all costs to be covered by Warriror Developments. A complaint was received from the resident of the adjacent property to object to light filtering into her house and anticipated problems caused by dogs fouling near the lamppost. The Clerk responded to these concerns and has requested that a shield be fitted to the light to minimize light filtering into the property.
- Citizen Link – The lease has now been sign and witnessed and returned to ERYC for finalisation. Additional keys to be sent by ERYC so work can commence on making the building fit for use.
- Pre-School Fence - In conjunction with the Pre-School a solicitor has been appointed to undertake drafting a licence, a copy has been circulated and a couple of amendments highlighted have been sent back for revision. In light of this, work has commenced on erecting the fence, with the licence to be formalized as soon as the amendments have been made. Work will begin to erect the fence on 19 th May 2016.
- Internal Audit – Documentation has been collated and sent to the IA.
- South Sea Mews – Complaint has been received from 2 residents over the lack of street lighting. It was noted that the street has not yet been adopted and therefore no action can be taken to pursue additional street lighting.
- North Landing Benches – An urgent request has been received from a memorial seat donor to make safe those seats currently marked off as unsafe due to the cliff landslip. If this cannot be actioned they have request the bench back to be housed at their residence. Councillor Crossland to continue to pursue with the landowners as a matter of urgency to resolve the situation.
- Clerk's hours – 48 hours worked in April, 16 hours emergency annual leave taken.
96/16 To receive the Ward Councillors report:
- Fire Authority Consultation outcome has indicated that there will be no reduction of fire appliances within the East Riding, one fire engine will be removed from Immingham and there will be no redundancies.
- ERYC will be conducting a review of library services with a public consultation taking place between 25 May and 3 August 2016.
- Councillor Matthews is now on ERYC Strategic Planning Committee.
97/16 Questions/Reports from Councillors and Committee Representatives:
Councillor Taylor
- Noted that the area at the back of library is a mess with broken glass etc. To report to Darren Stephens at ERYC in the first instance.
Councillor Couzens
- Noted that several street lights are still not working near the lighthouse. Also that some potholes on South Sea Mews still require filling. Also that gullies need to be cleaned.
Councillor Maxwell
- Noted that there is a problem with overflowing rubbish from the bin outside the bakery. To request more regular emptying by ERYC.
Councillor Crossland
- Noted that he had spoken to Arthur Hall regarding the possibility of the Allotment Society taking on the running of the Bempton Lane site. It was confirmed that this was not something that the Society wished to do.
- Bourne Leisure have provided high visibility wear to the group of volunteer litter pickers led by Mrs Aitken. It has been arranged for a photo opportunity to take place with the group and members of the Borne Leisure team for inclusion in the Bridlington Free Press. Councillor Sexton proposed a vote of thanks to Councillor Crossland for arranging.
Councillor Sexton
- Asked the Council to add their support in opposition to the proposed cancellation of the Bridlington/Scarborough Hospital Shuttle Bus. Letter to be sent to York NHS Trust, MP and Clinical Commissioning Group.
- North Marine Road parking issues with vehicles parking on yellow lines during the enforceable period (9am – 6pm). Ongoing issue and to be reviewed again with ERYC.
98/16 Chairman's Report:
None.
99/16 To consider Planning Applications as listed below and subsequent plans received after the agenda is sent out (planning applications available for public inspection at 7.15 pm:
(1) 16/01059/OUT – Outlined – Erection of a dwelling (access to be considered) (Resubmission of 15/03431/OUT)
Weissdorn, 1 Lighthouse Road, Flamborough
Mrs Catherine Pashley
Outline Planning Permission
RESOLVED: (All in favour) that objection be raised to the application on grounds of the proximity of a listed building directly opposite to the proposed development site and also concern over the access and egress to the site would be difficult given the narrowness of West Street which would not allow safe movement of traffic to the proposed dwelling.
(2) 16/01216/TELCOM – Installation of radio base station consisting of a 15m tower supporting 3 antennas, 2 transmission dishes, 3 equipment cabinets, 3 remote radio units (RRU) and erection of 1m post and rail enclosure
Telecomms Mast, Lighthouse Road, Flamborough
CTIL and Telfonica UK LTD
Telecommunications – Prior Notifications
Councillor Crossland left the meeting at the point.
RESOLVED: (All in favour) Object to the proposal due to concerns over the risk of interference to television reception for residents in the village as a result of the 4G mast.
(3) DC/15/01388/OUT/EASTNN/SWOOD – Outline Residential development (all matters reserved) Land South of Church Street House, West Street, Flamborough
Mr and Mrs K Edeson
Outline Planning Permission
RESOLVED: (All in favour) that objection be raised with concerns noted against the original submission still standing as to access to the proposed property, given that the there is no pathway and vehicles would exit straight onto the road and the site is not big enough to accommodate a building of the proposed size, thereby overdeveloping the area.
100/16 To note/deal with correspondence as listed below:
Apr 16
ERYC ASB Six Month Statistics – emailed 27/04/16
Apr 16
ERYC Notice of adoption of the Affordable Housing Supplementary Planning Document
(April 2016) – emailed 27/04/16
Apr 16
ERNLLCA Newsletter – emailed 30/04/16
101/16 Accounts:
(a) To approve payment of accounts to 4 th May 2016:
Accounts for Payment
Received
Allotment Rent:
£ 45.75
Toilet Donations:
£ 18.05
Vat Refund:
£1,502.92
Total:
£1,566.72
Schedule of Accounts for Payment 9 th May 2016
| Chq No | Creditor | Net Due | VAT |
|---|---|---|---|
| | | £ | £ |
| 2687 | Miss L Dennis: Clerk (Apr) | 886.38 | - |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2688 | Mr G Liddan: Toilet Cleaning (Apr) | 228.94 | - |
| 2689 | HMRC: Tax/NI (Apr) | 155.71 | - |
| 2690 | Clerk Expenses (Apr): – telephone £8, broadband £7.50, working from home expenses £12, car allowance £20, postage £2.85 | 50.35 | - |
| 2691 | ERYC: Half yearly repairs (street lighting) | 465.00 | 93.00 |
| 2692 | ERYC: Street light testing | 165.00 | 33.00 |
| 2693 | Npower: Street lighting 01-03/16 | 1873.08 | 374.61 |
| 2694 | WI Hall hire: May 16 – May 17 | 306.00 | - |
| 2695 | MR & KM Couzens: Grasscut 1 | 247.00 | 49.40 |
| 2696 | MR & KM Couzens: Grasscut 2 | 247.00 | 49.40 |
| 2697 | Viking: Stationery | 55.68 | 11.14 |
| 2698 | ERYC: Surveyor and Legal fees (Citizen Link) | 700.00 | - |
| 2699 | MR & KM Couzens: Allotment Plot Clearance | 1536.50 | 307.30 |
| 2700 | Viking: Toilet Supplies | 13.89 | 2.78 |
| 2701 | Npower: Toilets electric 05/02/16 – 26/04/16 | 81.04 | 4.05 |
| | Totals | 7011.57 | 924.68 |
May wages £1,200 (projected)
Councillor Couzens declared a pecuniary interest in so far as he had an account for payment, did not take part in discussion and did not vote.
RESOLVED: (All in favour) to approve the accounts for payment as presented.
102/16 To approve the erection of a section of fencing around the small green (Councillor Morton):
Councillor Sellick proposed that costs be obtained for the fencing before a decision is made. To be deferred until costs are obtained.
103/16 To approve the use of £200 donation from North Wolds Lions Club:
Councillor Leppington proposed that a memorial bench for Mary Sunley in recognition of all her work on behalf of the village and particularly its young people with any shortfall made up the parish council. The bench to be sited at the Sports Club Playing Fields.
RESOLVED: (All in favour) that a request is made for the £200 donation to go towards a memorial bench.
104/16 To discuss refit of the Citizen Link Kiosk to provide a suitable and secure working environment:
Council to conduct a site visit to view the kiosk and review any work to be undertaken – Monday 16 th May 2016 at 6pm.
105/16 Allotments:
(a) To report on the Council's site visit and approve action for management of the site (enclosed):
(b) To let plots and approve permissions:
RESOLVED: (All in favour) that:
- Plot 20 be turned over as requested by the tenant.
Signed as a true and correct record ………………………………………………. Date 6 th June 2016 Chairman, Councillor D Morton
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2022 Virtual IRS Nationwide Tax Forum Webinars
(Updated 5/9/2022)
(T) Federal Tax Law*
(E) Ethics*
(U) Federal Tax Law Update*
(F) Certified Financial Planner**
There are no advanced preparation requirements or prerequisite requirements for the webinars listed below.
ATTENTION:
*Please follow the notations (T), (U) and (E) for webinars that qualify for continuing education credit for enrolled agents, certified public accountants and Annual Filing Season Program participants.
**Seminars marked (F) are pending review by the Certified Financial Planner Board and may qualify for continuing education credit for certified financial planners. Notations will be updated for each webinar following the review procedure.
1. Advisory/Compliance Considerations for Making S-Election
[x] ethically and properly proposing the S-Election;
(T) (F) In a time where incorrect information spreads faster than light, tax professionals are constantly battling misperceptions on reducing tax liability through entities. Single Member LLC vs S-Corp is a constant comparison. By the end of this webinar, attendees will have a better understanding of:
[x] educating the client on compliance considerations at federal and state levels;
[x] managing client's expectations on additional cost of maintenance and compliance; and
[x] long-term considerations, such as:
* tax law changes (i.e., QBI),
* additional shareholders,
* exit strategy; and
Presented by the National Association of Enrolled Agents, www.naea.org.
* lifestyle or legacy.
2. Advocating for Taxpayers Who Receive Collection Notices
[x] identify the most common notices the IRS sends to request payment of taxes or to propose enforced collection action through liens and levies;
(T) (F) The IRS is required by statute to send certain notices to taxpayers before it can collect taxes the IRS believes are owed. By the end of this presentation, attendees will be able to:
[x] understand the effect of the IRS's temporary suspension of these notices; and
[x] advise their clients about the options for responding to these notices.
3. Cannabis Reporting: Retail, Medical & Illegal
[x] prepare the appropriate tax schedules when cannabis is illegal at the federal level, but legal in many states;
(T) (F) If you have clients now or in the future who are involved in cannabis, this course will give insight and direction into the taxation of retail, medical and illegal cannabis. We will look at income, cost of goods sold, and business expenses under IRS Code Section 280E and compare the taxation of a cannabis business to that of a regular business. We will also look at federal and state filing requirements. Upon completion of this webinar, you will be able to:
[x] summarize unique accounting and tax reporting methods for the industry;
[x] prepare Schedule C for a cannabis business.
[x] calculate cost of goods sold; and
Presented by the National Association of Tax Professionals, www.natptax.com.
4. Child Tax Credit Issues: Things Learned During the 2022 Filing Season (T) (F) This course discusses the experiences realized after applying the provisions that were changed, created and for the moment, temporary because of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA of 2021). The course will review the updated Form 8812 and issues encountered during the 2022 filing season. The course will also discuss federal tax policy issues experienced by both the tax professional community and the Internal Revenue Service. At the completion of the course, participants will understand the impact of the changes made by the ARPA of 2021 and the need to provide more tax planning opportunities for individual taxpayers as the law reverts to the provisions under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Presented by the National Society of Tax Professionals, www.nstp.org.
5. Cybersecurity for Tax Professionals – Advanced Session
[x] identify, map and protect high-risk data;
(T) (F) This presentation is designed to delve deeper into the most pressing cyber risks facing small and medium-sized companies in the tax industry, including ransomware, social engineering scams and supply chain compromises. The webinar will focus on the changing threat landscape and best security practices for tax preparers to adopt proper safeguards, implement strong security controls and develop an effective incident response plan. The goal is to guide attendees on how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, mitigate and remediate common cyber incidents. It will include a discussion of enterprise risk management and prevention; data security planning and implementation; effective responses to an attack and/or breach; IRS requirements to protect taxpayers and their data; and state and federal laws and regulations governing data security and privacy. Whether attendees are the sole tax practitioner in their office or part of a multi-partner accounting firm, this webinar will help them in developing an effective cybersecurity strategy fit for their business to better combat fraud, scams, cybercrimes and protect their client's data. By the end of this webinar, you will be able to:
[x] recognize the signs of phishing, spear-phishing, fraud, ransomware, third-party compromise and other common cyber risks to the tax industry;
[x] design a data privacy and security program fit for your business;
[x] select appropriate security measures to prevent, protect, mitigate, respond to and remediate cyber incidents and intrusions;
[x] understand the federal and state laws that apply to your business;
[x] develop a cyber incident response plan and data breach notification process;
[x] adopt cyber hygiene best practices; and
Presented by the American Coalition for Taxpayer Rights, an IRS Security Summit partner, www.irs.gov/securitysummit.
[x] understand the leadership responsibilities in cybersecurity policy development, implementation and communication.
6. Deeper Dive Into Emerging Cyber Crimes and Crypto Tax Compliance (Also presented in Spanish; See #29)
[x] understanding and responding to a business email compromise and/or data breach;
(T) (F) As your business increases its protection against cyber threats, the criminals are increasing their efforts to gain access to your data. Hear what you can do to help protect against tax fraud and this new wave of cybercriminals. IRS Criminal Investigation will cover what they are doing to combat the emerging areas of refund fraud and cybercrime. Together, we can help protect client data and their confidence in the tax system. Learning objectives include:
[x] identifying what the Dark Web is and how it is utilized for cybercrime and identity theft;
[x] understanding the efforts by IRS-Criminal Investigation to combat cyber criminals and illicit activity.
[x] recognizing general terms and information pertaining to virtual currency; and
**Note: this class is also offered in Spanish (#29). Attending both webinars #6 and #29 will result in only one CE credit**
7. e-Services and You
[x] register for ID.me;
(T) (F) This webinar will provide an overview of IRS e-Services and helpful resources that are available to tax professionals. Participants will learn how to register for an ID.me account and maintain an e-file application. The webinar will also cover changes to the fingerprint process for e-file applicants and discuss where to call for assistance. By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:
[x] identify what e-Services tools are available to tax professionals;
[x] understand the changes to the fingerprint process for e-file applicants; and
[x] understand how to maintain an e-file application;
[x] understand the Help Desk support and additional resources available to tax professionals.
8. Foreign Tax Credit (Form 1116) & Common Errors
(T) (F) The U.S. taxes its citizens and residents on worldwide income. The primary purpose of the foreign tax credit (FTC) is to mitigate the potential effects of double taxation. The individual FTC is reported on Form 1116, Foreign Tax Credit. It is important to understand Form 1116 and how the numbers flow from various sections of a tax return to this form. In this webinar, you will learn in some detail the lines on Form 1116 and what they represent. We will provide an example of how to complete the various parts of Form 1116 and point out common errors. We will go over key terms,
important concepts and interplays such as how claiming the foreign earned income exclusion can impact the FTC. Adjustments to qualified dividend income and impacts of the 2017 TCJA (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) will also be discussed. After completing this webinar, you will be able to:
[x] identify common errors found on Form 1116 and related schedules; and
[x] explain the basic requirements for claiming an FTC;
[x] explain the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on the FTC.
9. The Fundamentals and Tax Treatment of Digital Assets/Virtual Currency
[x] explain the key concepts of digital assets/virtual currency;
(T) (F) This presentation addresses the fundamentals of digital assets/virtual currency and how these assets are treated for federal income tax purposes. At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
[x] describe published guidance and legal concepts governing digital assets/virtual currency taxation;
[x] explain the recordkeeping issues associated with digital assets.
[x] summarize how digital assets/virtual currency transactions are reported to the IRS; and
10. Get the Facts: Planning for the Transition from EFTPS to T2C
[x] understand the IRS' new T2C electronic payment platform and initiative;
(U) (F) The IRS and Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) are committed to being efficient stewards of taxpayer dollars and providing great service to our customers. Our customers expect their financial interactions with the government to be seamless and secure, whether they are paying their taxes or receiving a refund. This webinar will give an update on the new electronic payment platform, Transforming Tax Collection (T2C) and talk about electronic payment benefits for both you and your clients. This webinar will build on the information shared during the 2020 tax forums to get deeper into how T2C will affect third party processors. By the end of this webinar, participants will:
[x] know the status of the T2C project and plan for the transition from EFTPS to T2C;
[x] understand the benefits of making electronic payments for both you and your clients; and
[x] know how T2C will affect EFTPS Batch Provider Software users;
[x] identify current electronic payment options for paying federal tax liabilities for you and your clients.
11. Helping You and Your Clients Steer Clear of Fraud and Scams
[x] how TIGTA raises tax expert's awareness in addressing the allegations of tax preparer fraud and IRS employee's misconduct;
(T) (F) In this course, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) will explore the critical role that tax expert's play in ensuring that taxpayers receive help from tax professionals with the highest level of ethics and integrity in the federal tax administration. At the conclusion of this webinar, you will have a better understanding of:
[x] raise awareness for tax experts on the latest IRS impersonation schemes; and
[x] cyber targeting of tax professionals.
12. Improving Access to the IRS
[x] gain a brief overview of the objectives and mission of the IRS Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Civil Rights Unit;
(T) (F) This webinar will focus on the latest steps the agency is taking to help ensure accessibility of its programs and services for taxpayers who may need a reasonable accommodation or language assistance. By the end of the webinar, you will:
[x] gain a brief overview of the objectives and mission of the IRS Alternative Media Center;
[x] become familiar with the resources available to taxpayers with limited English proficiency and taxpayers with disabilities; and
[x] become familiar with the resources and accessibility services provided by the IRS Alternative Media Center for visually impaired taxpayers;
[x] gain an understanding on how to contact the IRS EDI Civil Rights Unit for assistance.
13. Improving the Taxpayer Experience With the IRS Independent Office of Appeals
[x] the Appeals process;
(T) (F) This webinar is an overview of the examination and collection hearing processes. It will also provide updates on new initiatives within the IRS Independent Office of Appeals aimed at improving the taxpayer experience. At the end of this webinar, you will have a general understanding of:
[x] efforts to improve taxpayer experience with Appeals;
[x] Collection Appeals Workstreams.
[x] Examination Appeals Workstreams; and
14. Keynote Address
[x] IRS efforts to help taxpayers and tax professionals navigate a challenging 2022 tax filing season;
(U) (F) The IRS Commissioner will discuss current issues affecting tax administration, IRS programs and services, and future agency initiatives. At the conclusion of this webinar, you will have a better understanding of:
[x] the latest initiatives to improve services online, over the phone and in multiple languages;
[x] IRS's progress in implementing the Taxpayer First Act, including initial work being done by the new Taxpayer Experience Office.
[x] efforts to improve tax compliance to ensure fairness for all taxpayers; and
15. Looking to Tax Year 2022: American Rescue Plan Tax Changes to the Earned Income Tax Credit and Other Child-Related Credits
[x] explore the eligibility rules for the EITC, CTC, ACTC, ODC and CDCC for 2022 returns; and
(U) (F) Some parts of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 expired after 2021. This webinar will explore the rules for the earned income tax credit (EITC), child tax credit (CTC), additional child tax credit (ACTC), credit for other dependents (ODC), and the child and dependent care credit (CDCC) for tax year 2022 returns. It will also explain additional resources, training and tools available at no charge to tax professionals through IRS' online Tax Return Preparer Toolkit. In this webinar, we will:
[x] Share IRS's refundable credits online resources for paid preparers.
16. Professional Responsibility Obligations When Practicing Before the IRS: OPR and Circular 230
(E) (F) This webinar will introduce Circular 230 and the Office of Professional Responsibility, define who is a "practitioner" and the obligations practitioners have to their clients and the IRS, and highlight key provisions of Circular 230 such as due diligence, competency, best practices including recordkeeping and data security, and personal tax compliance. By the end of this webinar, you will be able to:
(Also presented in Spanish; See #30)
[x] identify your role as a practitioner;
[x] recognize key provision of Circular 230, including personal tax compliance; and
[x] identify your obligations to your clients and the IRS;
[x] learn best practices regarding recordkeeping and data security.
**Note: this class is also offered in Spanish (#30). Attending both webinars #16 and #30 will result in only one CE credit**
17. Professional Responsibility: Procedures to Ensure Compliance in Times of Change – Advanced Level
[x] explain the OPR's authority to regulate practice before the IRS and determine practitioners' "fitness to practice;"
(E) (F) This webinar will provide an overview of common practice issues affecting those in the business of being a tax practitioner -- either as a solo practitioner or in a firm of many practitioners. It will cover procedures that should be in place to ensure compliance with Circular 230 as well as best practices for running a practice during times of change. By the end of this webinar, you will be able to:
[x] identify critical practice standards;
[x] recognize when you have a conflict of interest and how to respond when your client has not complied or made an error;
[x] ensure due diligence and competence;
[x] avoid discipline for personal incompetence or disreputable conduct issues; and
[x] protect confidential information.
18. Promoter Issues
[x] describe the role of the Office of Promoter Investigations in stopping promoter activity; and
(T) (F) This presentation will focus on highlighting promoter activity and present information on the new Office of Promoter Investigations. By the end of this presentation, you will be able to:
[x] identify the steps the IRS is taking to address abusive tax promotions.
19. Representing Taxpayers That Disagree With Information Reports (i.e., Forms W-2, 1099, K-1)
(T) (F) More and more information reported by taxpayers on their tax returns is compiled by third parties. This panel will review the procedures for memorializing disagreements with third party information reports (i.e., the Form W-2, Form 1099, Form K-1) from the tax return through trial. At the conclusion of this webinar, the attendees will know what procedures are available to assist a taxpayer that disagrees with a third-party information return. Presented by the American Bar Association Section of Taxation, www.americanbar.org/groups/taxation.
20. Retirement Plans: Avoid These Pitfalls When Managing Your Small Employer Plan
[x] mistakes we see on our examinations of one-participant 401(k) plans;
(T) (F) Learn about the pitfalls to avoid when setting up and managing a small employer retirement plan. We'll discuss some of the common mistakes many small employers make in their retirement plan and resources to help you fix or avoid those mistakes. You'll also learn about:
[x] how to keep your plan document up to date;
[x] how related businesses you own affect your retirement plan;
[x] when employees become eligible for contributions;
[x] common mistakes to avoid in your retirement plan, including SEP and SIMPLE IRA-based plans; and
[x] why SARSEPs are so difficult to keep straight.
21. A Simple Approach and Overview to Virtual Currency
[x] define virtual currency, aka cryptocurrency;
(T) (F) Cryptocurrency is a decentralized digital currency otherwise known as virtual currency. The term "cryptocurrency" generates countless amounts of uncertainty and anxiety among tax professionals. The language single-handedly strikes apprehension among us. This course will provide you with the confidence to deal with cryptocurrency and will enlighten tax pros on this crazy language. So, join us in deciphering the mystery of virtual currency. You'll learn the ensuing plus much more:
[x] demonstrate types of transactions;
[x] examine and translate crypto's vocabulary;
[x] differentiate modes of "wallet;"
[x] discuss common cryptocurrency tax events;
[x] analyze IRS notices, revenue rulings, FAQs concerning crypto;
[x] inspect the 12 tax principles;
[x] clarify the provisions of new infrastructure bill;
[x] assess any FinCEN regulations;
[x] critique recent Chief Counsel Advices';
[x] identify and discuss Form 8938 requirements;
[x] establish an engagement letter for our tax practices.
[x] formulate best practices concerning virtual currency; and
Presented by the National Society of Accountants, www.nsacct.org.
22. Tax Credits for Individuals Residing Outside the United States
Credit. After completing this webinar, you will be able to:
(T) (F) U.S. individuals living outside the United States (including those residing in U.S. territories) may, if they meet the requirements, be eligible for certain tax credits. In this webinar, you will learn how to determine which credits your clients may be eligible for and whether they meet the requirements to claim that credit. This webinar will include information on credits such as the Earned Income Credit, the Child Tax and Additional Child Tax Credits, the American Opportunity Credit and the Recovery Rebate
[x] identify the credits that may be claimed by individuals residing outside the United States;
[x] state which form or schedule must be used to claim these credits.
[x] explain the requirements for claiming these credits; and
23. Tax Law Changes for TY2022
(U) (F) This presentation will provide a general overview of the 2023 filing season tax law changes, as illustrated by the impact on tax forms, instructions and publications. By the end of this presentation, participants will have knowledge of:
(Also presented in Spanish; See #31)
[x] major income tax changes for individual taxpayers for tax year 2022;
[x] major tax form changes from 2021 to 2022;
[x] major employment tax changes for tax year 2022;
[x] new tax forms for tax year 2022; and
[x] tax products available for limited English proficiency (LEP) taxpayers.
**Note: this class is also offered in Spanish (#31). Attending both webinars #23 and #31 will result in only one CE credit**
24. Tax Professional Data Breaches and How Tax Pros Can Protect Themselves (Also presented in Spanish; See #32)
[x] identify spear-phishing emails that target tax professionals;
(T) (F) This webinar focuses on recent spear-phishing scams targeting tax professionals during the 2022 filing season, including real-life examples of actual tax-related, spearphishing emails. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
[x] report tax related spear-phishing scams;
[x] report a tax professional data breach.
[x] protect yourself from becoming a victim of a phishing scam and data breach; and
**Note: this class is also offered in Spanish (#32). Attending both webinars #24 and #32 will result in only one CE credit**
25. Tax-Exempt Organizations, Charities and Nonprofits Update
[x] determine your tax-exempt organization's electronic filing requirements;
(T) (F) In this webinar, you'll learn about the electronic filing requirements for taxexempt organizations, including the new electronic Form 1024. We'll also discuss how you can use the Tax-Exempt Organization Search (TEOS) tool to access information about an organization's tax-exempt status and filings. You'll also learn how to:
[x] file the updated electronic Form 1024 on Pay.gov;
[x] obtain copies of a tax-exempt organization's forms, notices and letters; and
[x] use TEOS to access information about an organization's tax-exempt status and filings;
[x] find educational information on IRS.gov to help you obtain and maintain taxexempt status.
26. Temporary Changes to the Collection Notice Process to Help Taxpayers and Practitioners
[x] explain key important temporary measures that the IRS has put in place within the collection process as a result of the pandemic, including both taxpayer relief measures and backlog resolution;
(U) (F) This presentation will be a high-level discussion of what SB/SE Collection has done in pausing certain notices and making temporary changes to certain aspects of the notice process to help the IRS overcome backlogs. By the end of this presentation, you will be able to:
[x] identify what those temporary measures mean for a taxpayer both now and going forward;
[x] list the ways a taxpayer may make a payment to the IRS.
[x] describe self-help tools available to taxpayers to assist in proactively resolving their account during the time the temporary measures discussed previously are in place; and
27. Understanding and Combating Return Preparer Fraud
[x] understanding how IRS-Criminal Investigation is combating refund fraud;
(T) (F) This webinar will provide an overview of our approach to investigating alleged fraudulent return preparers including summary statistics about our efforts and results. We will discuss emerging issues and look at recently adjudicated investigations. Learning objectives include:
[x] an overview of the approach to investigating alleged fraudulent return preparers; and
[x] understanding the three compliance areas of refund fraud: Return Preparer Program, Questionable Refund Program and Identity Theft.
28. Understanding the New Reporting Rules for Pass-Through Returns – Schedules K-2 and K-3
[x] obtain an overview of the requirements to file these schedules;
(T) (F) This webinar focuses on the requirement to complete Schedules K-2 and K-3 for pass-through returns and the required information to be included in them. These schedules must be filed by all pass-through entities that have items of international tax relevance, including entities with foreign partners and international activities, investments, owners or income. By the end of this webinar, you will be able to:
[x] identify items of international relevance;
[x] review penalties for non-compliance and related transitional penalty relief (Notice 2021-39); and
[x] review transitional relief (IR-2022-38) and determine qualification for same;
[x] assist your clients in assembling the necessary information for proper completion of the schedules.
Presented by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, www.aicpa.org.
Webinars in Spanish
29. Inmersión Profunda en Delitos Cibernéticos Emergentes y el Cumplimiento de Impuestos en Criptomonedas
[x] Comprender y responder a un compromiso de correo electrónico comercial y/o violación de datos
(Deeper Dive into Emerging Cyber Crimes and Crypto Tax Compliance; See #6) (T) (F) A medida que su empresa aumenta su protección contra las amenazas cibernéticas, los delincuentes aumentan sus esfuerzos para obtener acceso a sus datos. Ausculte lo que puede hacer para ayudar a protegerse contra el fraude de impuestos y esta nueva ola de ciberdelincuentes. La investigación criminal del IRS cubrirá lo que se está haciendo para combatir las áreas emergentes de fraude de reembolso y delito cibernético. Juntos, podemos ayudar a proteger los datos de los clientes y su confianza en el sistema fiscal. Los objetivos de aprendizaje incluyen:
[x] Identificar qué es la Dark Web y cómo se utiliza para el delito cibernético y el robo de identidad
[x] Comprender los esfuerzos del IRS-Investigación Criminal para combatir a los ciberdelincuentes y las actividades ilícitas.
[x] Reconocer los términos generales y la información relativa a la moneda virtual
**Note: this class is also offered in English (#6). Attending both webinars #6 and #29 will result in only one CE credit**
30. Obligaciones de Responsabilidad Profesional al practicar delante del IRS: OPR y la Circular 230
(E) (F) Este seminario proveerá una introducción a la Circular 230 y a la Oficina de Responsabilidad Profesional, definirá quien es un "practicante" y las obligaciones que los preparadores tienen con sus clientes y el IRS, también acentuará puntos claves de partes de la Circular 230 como diligencia, competencia, mejores prácticas incluyendo el guardar documentos, y seguridad de datos, mas estar al día con los impuestos personales. Al final de este seminario, usted podrá identificar su papel como practicante, sus obligaciones con sus clientes y el IRS, reconocer la provisión clave de la Circular 230, incluyendo estar al día con sus impuestos personales y aprender las mejores prácticas de guardar documentos y seguridad de los datos.
(Professional Responsibility Obligations When Practicing Before the IRS: OPR and Circular 230; See #16)
**Note: this class is also offered in English (#16). Attending both webinars #16 and #30 will result in only one CE credit**
31. Cambios en la ley tributaria para el año tributario 2022
(U) (F) Esta presentación brindará una sobrevista general sobre los cambios tributarios para la temporada de impuestos de 2023, ilustrará el impacto sobre los formularios, instrucciones y publicaciones de impuestos. Al final de esta presentación, los participantes sabrán aplicar estos cambios principales sobre:
(Tax Law Changes for TY2022; See #23)
[x] individuos en el año fiscal 2022
[x] en los formularios de impuestos de 2021 al 2022
[x] el impuesto de nómina por el año fiscal 2022
[x] los nuevos formularios de impuestos para el año fiscal 2022
[x] los productos fiscales disponibles para contribuyentes con dominio limitado del inglés (LEP)
**Note: this class is also offered in English (#23). Attending both webinars #23 and #31 will result in only one CE credit**
32. Filtración de información de profesionales de impuestos y cómo los profesionales de impuestos pueden protegerse a sí mismos (Tax Professional Data Breaches and How Tax Pros Can Protect Themselves; See #24)
[x] Identificar correos electrónicos de pesca que se dirigen a profesionales de impuestos
(T) (F) La sesión se enfoca en las recientes estafas de correos electrónicos de pesca dirigidas a profesionales de impuestos durante la temporada de presentación de impuestos de 2022, incluidos ejemplos de vida real de correos electrónicos de pesca relacionados con impuestos. Al final de esta lección, usted logrará:
[x] Reportar estafas de pesca relacionadas con impuestos
[x] Reportar una filtración de información de profesionales de impuestos
[x] Protegerse de ser víctima de una estafa de pesca y una filtración de información
**Note: this class is also offered in English (#24). Attending both webinars #24 and #32 will result in only one CE credit**
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Who Can Guarantee Russian Security?
And What Makes Putin Insecure?
Lawrence Freedman 4 hr ago
President Macron's observation early this month that once the war is over Russia will need to be offered security guarantees was greeted with incredulity. Russia is the country attempting to conquer another, not the other way round. It is the aggressor not the aggrieved. Because of past Macron statements, such as last June's urging that Russia not be 'humiliated', he has fuelled suspicions among the more hawkish NATO states, as well as Kyiv, that he is inclined to be far too conciliatory to Moscow. To be fair to Macron in the same speech he made it clear that he fully understands that Kyiv has to take the lead in any peace negotiations. On 13 December he again stated that 'It is up to Ukraine, a victim of this aggression, to decide on the conditions for a just and lasting peace.'
There is an issue to be addressed about how relations with Russia are to be managed in the future. Macron is not alone in worrying that Russia is too large and powerful a https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
country to be ignored. German Chancellor Scholz has also spoken of the need to restore cooperative relations, to go back to the prewar 'peace order' even though this may not be possible with Putin in charge. In the unlikely event that Putin renounces armed aggression and accepts that on the other side of its borders 'there are open-minded societies, open societies, democracies', then, suggests Scholz, 'all questions of common security' could be resolved. There are some big 'ifs' here.
Security Guarantees and Alliances
In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War great effort went into developing what was commonly described as a 'security architecture'. It began in late 1990 with a big conference in Paris, and involved a number of institutional innovations. The loftiest principles of international order were reaffirmed along with the warmest aspirations for cordial and harmonious relations. Thereafter there was no shortage of opportunities to talk and resolve disputes.
From the Russian perspective the big issue was what to do about NATO, especially as it attracted its erstwhile allies from the Warsaw Pact and even some former Soviet republics. From the NATO perspective the big issue was Russia, and whether it could be reconciled to its reduced international standing. To manage the inevitable tensions in 1997 NATO and Russia signed what was described as the 'Founding Act' to govern their future relationships. It oozes with optimism and good will, so makes for painful reading now.
'NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries. They share the goal of overcoming the vestiges of earlier confrontation and competition and of strengthening mutual trust and cooperation. The present Act reaffirms the determination of NATO and Russia to give concrete substance to their shared commitment to build a stable, peaceful and undivided Europe, whole and free, to the benefit of all its peoples.'
To this end they promised to refrain 'from the threat or use of force against each other as well as against any other state, its sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence.' The Founding Act has not yet been repudiated, although some have argued that it should be.
https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Similar language can be employed in the future but recent experience will provide few grounds for taking it seriously. There is no point in solemn undertakings not to aggress. They have already been made – for example in the Charter of the United Nations, and their regular reaffirmation has not prevented their neglect.
It is precisely because of the difficulty of relying on such such undertakings that the issues of security guarantees arises. Security guarantees are best understood as insurance policies for small powers. They are promises by a large power, or group of powers, to come to the aid of small powers if attacked. They are at the heart of any alliance – an attack on one will be treated as an attack on all. Like all insurance policies and guarantees, however, there are let-out clauses. If the small power has been unduly provocative, or attacked first, then the guarantee might be invalidated. There might be other extenuating circumstances, for example another ongoing military conflict, that makes it hard to honour the commitment. A security guarantee is therefore a second best policy, better than nothing but not as good as building up national defences to cope with all eventualities.
It is second best because there is always the suspicion that the guarantor will renege. After all, promising to go to war even if your country has not been attacked directly is a big step. It requires confidence and trust, based on shared values and interests and long relationships. It requires more than treaty signature. Ukraine is conscious of these issues, not only because it is suffering because it is not part of NATO, but because it was promised security in 1994 when it agreed to hand back to Russia the nuclear missiles that had been based on its territory during the Soviet years. It is worth noting the language of the Budapest memorandum. In it the US, UK and Russia:
'reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations;'
And
'reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.'
The first of these is the stronger, leaving little wiggle room, and a commitment that has been crudely violated by Russia (justified by Moscow on the grounds of the illegitimacy of the government in Kyiv). The second is more of a 'security guarantee' and as such quite weak. It required taking the issue of aggression to the UN, which of course the US and UK did, only to be faced with a Russian veto. The ultimate failure of this agreement lies in reports that cruise missiles handed over to Russia have been used (minus their nuclear warheads) in the attacks on Ukraine's critical infrastructure.
This is the backdrop to regular demands from Kyiv that it be offered serious security guarantees in the future to give it some confidence that its current ordeal will not be repeated. These will have to come either directly from the US and other NATO members, or through full membership of the alliance. NATO provides the gold standard for security guarantees. There is no alliance to compare. It has 30 member states, and two more (Finland and Sweden) going through the process of joining. The advantage can be seen by comparing Russia's readiness to aggress against neighbouring Georgia and Ukraine with its caution in comparable disputes with the Baltic states. NATO has seventy years of experience and working practices, an integrated military command with a permanent headquarters, the backing of the world's strongest power, and an active secretariat and regular summits.
It offers, in its Article V, this security guarantee:
'if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.'
But note that while there is a presumption that action will be taken there is no automaticity. Members states have the option of deeming it necessary to do nothing at all. Other alliances have their own get-out clauses or requirements to do little more than deliberate about next steps. There are no cast iron security guarantees.
https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
While NATO can repeat past promises – still honoured – not to invade Russia it is not going to offer Russia a security guarantee as traditionally understood. At any rate, in principle Russia already has security guarantees through its own alliance - the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). This attempts to replicate for the supposedly more Russophile parts of the former Soviet Union what NATO does for Europe. Its members are Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The CSTO's Article 4 is even equivalent to NATO's Article V, by which an aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all.
The only collective action ever taken, which was brief, came at start of this year to help Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev put down anti-government riots. After Armenia's war with Azerbaijan in 2022, Russia contributed in 2020 a peace-keeping mission, which was removed earlier this year when Azerbaijan launched a new offensive (using weapons purchased from other CSTO members), as Russian forces were needed in Ukraine. Azerbaijan, along with Georgia and Uzbekistan, was once a member of the CSTO but has left.
Although member states are expected to refrain from attacking each other, they do. There were armed clashes last September because of a border dispute between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. This was why the ironically-named Indestructible Brotherhood2022 exercises, which were scheduled to begin in Kyrgyzstan on 10 October, involving Serbia, Syria, and Uzbekistan in addition to the six members, were cancelled. After an awkward CSTO summit from 10 to 14 October in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, there was another even more awkward meeting in Yerevan, Armenia's capital, early in November. When Putin arrived he was greeted with protestors demanding that Armenia leave the CSTO because of Russia's failure to come to the country's aid. Armenia refused to sign the final communique for this reason.
None of the CSTO's members get evident benefits from the organisation. Other than Belarus, which has become a client state of Russia, Putin gained no support for his war. Despite the help provided at the start of the year, Tokayev told Putin directly this June that he would not recognise the Russian-sponsored Donetsk and Luhansk 'Peoples Republics' in Ukraine, as a result of which Putin halted oil exports to Kazakhstan and suspended transit via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium - until Moscow saw that Tokayev was seeking help from the US. Meanwhile the Kazakh leader has been https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
welcoming international companies squeezed out of Russia because of sanctions, and most recently Russian men escaping mobilisation. The Central Asians are now looking more to China for support, while the United States and France is stepping up their activity in the region. Early in November Macron met with Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, and then late in the month he hosted Tokayev, fresh from his 81.3% victory in a snap election.
One of the highlights of the CSTO October summit was provided by Emomali Rahmon, dictator of Tajikistan. As his fellow Central Asian leaders looked on, Rahmon berated Putin for the arrogant way that Russia treated its small neighbours, exploiting their natural resources without giving much in return:
'We host your military bases, we do everything you ask for, we really try to be what you pretend to be to us "strategic partners." But we are never being treated like strategic partners! No offence, but we want to be respected!
So not only are there security guarantees and security guarantees, there are also alliances and alliances. If Russia does not get much additional security out of its own alliance, can NATO be reasonably be expected to provide more?
What is Security?
This leads on to a further, more philosophical, question. What exactly is the 'security' being guaranteed? 'Security' is one of those concepts that is used casually, assuming an agreed meaning, yet once unpacked some fundamental issues soon appear. The classical 'realist' view of security, the one that informs most discussions of alliances and security guarantees, starts with a view of the international system that is inherently anarchic. Because the system has no supreme authority capable of enforcing its laws individual states must take responsibility for their own security. As they do so they invariably threaten others, not because they intend to do so but because the capabilities necessary to protect their security make others feel vulnerable.
This is captured by the idea of the 'security dilemma', which points to states acting defensively yet still appearing offensive to others, and so on to misapprehensions about each other's strategies leading to a vicious cycle, with arms racing and mutualfl https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
insecurity. In this ways, wars might be caused not only by genuine conflicts of interest over territory or resources but because an underlying conflict has been aggravated by each party preparing for the worst.
This framework for thinking about security is very influential. The risk of a vicious cycle encourages calls for high-level summits, improved diplomatic communications, and arms control agreements. It was reflected in many of the moves made to ease NATORussia relations during the 1990s, including the 1997 Founding Act. Unfortunately, as tensions rose these mechanisms for managing conflict gradually fell away or were disregarded.
NATO enlargement has been presented as a classic example of the security dilemma at work, and features in many explanations for the origins of the war. On this view it was NATO's gradual accumulation of members after 1991 that caused alarm in Moscow. The prospect of Ukrainian membership was the last straw. The beneficiaries of enlargement obviously do not think this was some geopolitical error. Given Russia's behaviour it is not hard to understand why states wanted to join NATO. At any rate, what has bothered Russia most has not been so much NATO acquiring new members (it professed itself indifferent to Finland and Sweden joining) but specifically Ukrainian membership, even though since 2008 has largely been no more than a theoretical possibility.
Of course whether or not we believe that NATO poses an objective threat, Russia might nonetheless feel threatened. Security combines a physical condition with a state of mind. Dictionary definitions of security refer on the one hand to being 'the activities involved in protecting a country, building or person against attack, danger, etc.' and on the other to 'the state of feeling happy and safe from danger or worry'. Threats to a state are interpreted by those in charge and they decide how happy and safe a country should feel. The more authoritarian the system the more the issue becomes one of what makes the supreme leader insecure, which might be anything that threatens their personal position. If supreme leaders are paranoid, as they often are, this adds to what might prompt a feeling of insecurity. The desire of dictators to be left alone to do their dictating as they wish is why they cling to the principle of 'non-interference in internal affairs' as a vital principle in international affairs.
Putin's Paranoia
https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
What would it take to make Putin feel secure? I was recently reminded by a friend of one of the best essays about Putinism published last March in Foreign Policy by the liberal theorist Paul Berman. Berman sees in Putin the latest attempt to create a resilient Russian state, following precedents set by the Tsars and the Soviets. He describes a view which amounts 'to a species of climate paranoia':
'This is a fear that warm principles of liberal philosophy and republican practices from the West, drifting eastward, will collide with the icy clouds of the Russian winter, and violent storms will break out, and nothing will survive. It is, in short, a belief that dangers to the Russian state are external and ideological, instead of internal and structural.'
According to Berman, Putin's problem, compared with his predecessors, is a lack of language to describe the threat. The Tsars had their 'mystical and Orthodox royalism' while the Soviets had the principles of communism, 'majestic and universal' pointing the way to human progress for the entire world. By contrast Putinism lacks a philosophical doctrine, making 'do with whatever ideas are floating about, grabbing one idea and another and tying them with a knot.' Thus from communism he draws on antiNazism, but the neo-Nazi manifestations in Ukraine have been too miniscule for his purposes. He mainly goes back to more ancient traditions and the orthodox church. He wants this to be a holy war, one between the forces of light and darkness. As Bruno Tertrais has observed this leads back to 19th Century Nihilism, in which the violence is redemptive and purifying.
Here is Putin in full flow on 30 September speaking of the 'dictatorship of the Western elites' and how the 'complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a "religion in reverse" – pure Satanism.' Invocations of Satanism are now routine. Former President Medvedev, who admittedly has gone increasingly batty, spoke in November of a sacred fight against Satanism. The aim of the war was to 'stop the supreme ruler of Hell, whatever name he uses - Satan, Lucifer or Iblis,' [Iblis is the Islamic counterpart of Satan] adding that the fight was against 'crazy Nazi drug addicts' in Ukraine backed by Westerners who had 'saliva running down their chins from degeneracy.'fi
https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Russian media has stories of 'misanthropic cults, who make sacrifices and commit ritual murders' and Ukrainian soldiers in occult goat masks. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, picking up a common theme, links Satanism with gay marriage: 'Satanic democracy is when children are taken from traditional families and transferred to same-sex families… I see degradation and Satanism in this.' In his latest substack, Nick Cohen, considers a new homophobic law, enacted by Putin on 5 December, that makes it an offence for Russians to promote or 'praise' LGBTQ+ relationships, or suggest that they are 'normal.'
Trying to find a way to turn guarantees to be protected against Satanism into treaty language would obviously be something of a stretch. It is also difficult to know how serious the Putinists take this (although it's the sort of thing that could get a sympathetic hearing on Fox News). The point, however, is not the content of the ideological message as much as the fact that political and social trends in other countries can be presented as a security threat. Even if Russia's ideological compass was being set at something less mediaeval the issue would still be there. Ukraine threatened Russia because of the potential contagion effect of the 'Orange' revolution of 2004 and the EuroMaidan movement of 2014. To understand the sources of conflict these factors cannot be ignored.
All this illuminates the limitations of 'realism', at least in its most reductive form as a theory of international relations, as an aid to understanding the origins of this conflict and what to do about it. Because realism concentrates on power relations between states, the only aspect of Putin's tergiversations that are considered relevant by realists are those that complain about NATO's enlargement. All the rest are disregarded. But not only is the threat of a full-scale invasion across the border already dealt with by existing commitments and past assurances, the security threats that might matter most to Russia go well beyond this
It does no harm to start thinking about a post-war security order but not if this thinking is wishful and assumes a possible return to the status quo ante bellum. Perhaps we can imagine a forward-looking grand peace conference like the 1815 Congress of Vienna, or 1919 Versailles Conference, or the post- Cold-War Paris summit of 1990 coming at some point after a cease-fire. We might also imagine a post-Putin leadership willing and able to mend fences with the West. But a lot of imagination is required here.
https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Consider Dmitri Trenin, once tasked with explaining Russian policy to the West, who now finds solace in the possibility that the war can overcome 'primitive materialism and lack of faith.' Sam Greene, in his substack, quotes Trenin's latest offering:
'There is no way back. To be fair, there is in theory a road to capitulation, but even that would not return Russia to the 20th of February, or even to 2013. That would be a route to national catastrophe, to the likelihood of chaos and the unconditional loss of sovereignty. If we want not only to avoid that kind of scenario, but to arrive at aqualitatively better level of interaction with the outside world, then our common direction of motion can only be forward. The immutable condition of success is the resolution of the Ukraine problem.'
Either way the future is grim - the chaos following defeat or the wanton destruction envisaged in the forward March of Putin's Russia. But Trenin now assumes 'a fundamental break between the West and Russia, eviscerating any genuine Western constituency for cooperation with Russia and mobilizing Western states and societies to ensure that Russia's ability to threaten its neighbors is removed.'
Sam is unsure how much other members of the Russian elite are prepared to embrace this grim prospect, but even if it is rejected it is a reminder of what a bitter legacy this war will leave. The West will expect Russia to come to terms with what it has done to Ukraine, which will be painful, if there is to be any return to 'normal' relations, to accept that this war was its choice and that it must respond positively to demands for reparations and war crimes trials. If they do not, and these issues stay unresolved, sanctions will continue and resentments will linger.
Putin's insecurity might start with anxiety about his personal future, but he has extended this into a vision for Russia that involves a permanent struggle with the West and its liberalism. There is little NATO can do about this vision except to ensure Russia's defeat in Ukraine. Trenin's bleak logic works both ways. There is no turning back for either side. Putin's future and that of his inner circle is a matter for the Russian elite. The fragmentation of the Russian Federation is not, despite allegations, desired by Western governments in that this would be a source of yet more upset and instability. By and large they would prefer that Russia held together – but again this is not up to them. Moscow's decision to use outlying regions as a source of military recruits to pursue a https://samf.substack.com/p/who-can-guarantee-russian-security?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
10/12
catastrophic war means that it will have to cope with the consequences. Whether or not an alternative liberal and democratic vision for Russia can develop in the future, upon which any more stable European security order depends, will also be up to Russians. The West can help if there is something to work with for the consequences of continued chaos and anger will be dire, but the first requirement will be a different sort of leader in the Kremlin, with a strong enough political base to confront the harsh reality of Russia's situation. In the end the biggest threats to Russian security do not lie outside its borders but inside its capital.
Comment is Freed is a reader-supported publication. We are making Lawrence's posts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine free to read but if you find the pieces valuable and can afford to subscribe we would welcome the support. A monthly subscription is £3.50 and an annual one is £35. It includes four subscriber only posts a month.
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5 Comments
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11/12
Michael Wild 2 hr ago
This is an eminently sensible and grim read. There clearly can be no lasting peace and security while Putin is in power and his successor would need to do a lot before s/he could gain the trust of Russia's near abroad. On present indications there is no reason at all to expect such a leader won't share the same world view or in any case would lack the desire to face the ugly reality that it will never have another empire in the foreseeable future. The only good news is that Russia's war machine has proven vastly less competent than thought, it has sustained grievous losses and its economy looks unlikely to allow it to be built into anything like what it was in Feb 2022.
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Bill Gilmour 27 min ago
To quote you, "The West will expect Russia to come to terms with what it has done to Ukraine, which will be painful, if there is to be any return to 'normal' relations, to accept that this war was its choice and that it must respond positively to demands for reparations and war crimes trials."
It is very hard to see any Russian Government and/or a majority of the people agreeing to pay to replace the buildings and infrastructure that are being destroyed or for the personal injury and loss of life, they are now inflicting or allowing any Russians to be tried for war crimes, either within Russia or abroad.
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12/12
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1 DANIEL BERKO, State Bar No. 94912
2 3 CARLOS JATO, State Bar No. 282710 firstname.lastname@example.org LAW OFFICES OF DANIEL BERKO
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Facsimile: 415.474.3748
Attorneys for Plaintiffs and NANCY RHEESTON
DORIS OLIVARES, CATHERINE HEPSLEY,
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO DIVISION
DORIS OLIVARES, CATHERINE HEPSLEY, and NANCY RHEESTON, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated,
Case No. 3:11-CV-02610-JCS
Plaintiffs,
-vs-
BATH & BODY WORKS, LLC, and DOES 1 THROUGH 60, inclusive.
Defendants.
Case No. 3:11-cv-02610-JCS
[Proposed] Order Granting Final Approval of Class Action Settlement And Final Judgment
Dockets.Justia.com
[PROPOSED] AMENDED ORDER GRANTING FINAL APPROVAL OF CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENT AND FINAL JUDGMENT
CLASS ACTION
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FINAL APPROVAL ORDER
On April 20, 2011, Representative Plaintiff Doris Olivares, individually and on behalf of a purported class of similarly situated individuals, filed a Class Action Complaint naming Defendant Bath & Body Works, LLC, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Mateo. On June 1, 2011, Defendant removed the case to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. On September 19, 2011, Plaintiff filed a First Amended Complaint adding Catherine Hepsley and Nancy Rheeston as Representative Plaintiffs. That action is known as Doris Olivares, et al. v. Bath & Body Works, LLC, Case No. 3:11-cv-02610-JCS. The Class Action Complaint asserts claims against Defendant under: (a) §201 et seq. of the Fair Labor Standards Act, California IWC Wage Order 7-2001, and §§ 510 and 1198 of the California Labor Code for an alleged failure to pay overtime; (b) §§ 201- 203 of the California Labor Code for an alleged failure to pay wages in a timely manner upon termination; (c) § 226 of the California Labor Code for an alleged failure to provide accurate itemized wage statements; (d) §§ 17200 et seq. of the California Bus. and Prof. Code for alleged unlawful and unfair business practices; (e) the Labor Code Private Attorney's General Act of 2004, pursuant to California Labor Code sections 2698, et seq.; and (f) Article XV, §1 of the California Constitution. Defendant denied all of Plaintiffs' allegations and denied liability on all claims.
On May 8, 2012, the Parties participated in a mediation in California before the Honorable Edward Panelli (Ret.), a former justice of the Supreme Court of the State of California and an experienced mediator with the national organization JAMS. At the conclusion of the mediation, the Parties reached a settlement subject to Court approval as represented in the Stipulation of Class Action Settlement and Release (the "Stipulation") that was filed previously with this Court.
On March 1, 2013, this Court conducted a Final Settlement Fairness Hearing pursuant to Rule 23(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and this Court's previous Order Granting Plaintiffs' Motion for Preliminary Approval of Class Action Settlement (the "Preliminary Approval Order") entered herein on October 29, 2012. Due and adequate notice having been given to the Settlement Class as required in said Preliminary Approval Order, with no objection having been made by any member of the Settlement Class to the proposed settlement, and the Court having
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considered all papers filed and proceedings had herein and otherwise being fully informed in the matter, and good cause appearing therefore:
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED:
1. For the reasons set forth in the Preliminary Approval Order and in the transcript of the proceedings of the Preliminary Approval hearing, which are adopted and incorporated herein by reference, this Court finds that the applicable requirements of Rule 23(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have been satisfied with respect to the Class and the proposed Settlement. The Court hereby makes final its earlier provisional certification of the Class, as set forth in the Preliminary Approval Order.
2. This Final Approval Order hereby adopts and incorporates by reference the terms and conditions of the Parties' Stipulation, together with the definitions of terms used and contained therein.
3. The Court finds that it has jurisdiction over the subject matter of the Class Action and over all parties to the Class Action, including all members of the Settlement Class.
4. The Class Notice given to the Class Members fully and accurately informed the Class Members of all material elements of the proposed Settlement and of their opportunity to object to or comment thereon; was the best notice practicable under the circumstances; was valid, due, and sufficient notice to all Class Members; and complied fully with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the United States Constitution, due process, and other applicable law. The Class Notice fairly and adequately described the Settlement and provided Class Members adequate instructions and a variety of means to obtain additional information. A full opportunity has been afforded to the Class Members to participate in the Final Settlement Fairness Hearing. Accordingly, the Court determines that all Class Members who did not timely and properly execute a request for exclusion are bound by this Order and Judgment.
5. The Court has considered all relevant factors for determining the fairness of the settlement and has concluded that all such factors weigh in favor of granting final approval. In particular, the Court finds that the Settlement was reached following meaningful discovery and
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investigation conducted by Class Counsel; that the Settlement is the result of serious, informed, adversarial, and arm's-length negotiations between the Parties; and that the terms of the Settlement are in all respects fair, adequate, and reasonable. In so finding, the Court has considered all of the evidence presented, including evidence regarding the strength of the Plaintiffs' case; the risk, expense, and complexity of the claims presented; the likely duration of further litigation; the amount offered in Settlement; the extent of investigation and discovery completed; and the experience and views of Class Counsel. The Court finds that there were no objections to the Settlement by Class Members. Accordingly, the Court hereby approves the Settlement and expressly finds that said Settlement is, in all respects, fair, reasonable, adequate, and in the best interests of the entire Settlement Class. The Court hereby directs implementation of all terms, conditions, and provisions of the Stipulation except for the cy pres beneficiary which shall be Dress for Success Worldwide, a registered non-profit organization, located at 32 East 31 st Street, 7 th Floor, New York, NY 10016.
6. The Court hereby makes final its earlier approval of Class Counsel, as set forth in the Preliminary Approval Order. Attorneys' fees to Class Counsel in the amount of $429,000.00 and costs of $17,500.00, as compensation for all attorney time spent on this matter from its inception, including all work related to this case and all costs, is hereby approved as fair and reasonable. No other costs or fees relief shall be awarded, either against Defendant or any other of the Released Parties, as defined in the Stipulation.
7. The Court hereby makes final its earlier approval of Representative Plaintiffs Doris Olivares, Catherine Hepsley, and Nancy Rheeston as Class Representatives, as set forth in the Preliminary Approval Order. Based on their unique contribution to the class and risk incurred, the Court finds an enhancement payment of $7,500.00 for each of the Representative Plaintiffs is appropriate, proper, and reasonable and is therefore approved.
8. The Court herby approves a payment by Defendant of $5,000.00, pursuant to California Labor Code section 2698, et seq., the California Private Attorneys General Act
Case No. 3:11-cv-02610-JCS
1 2 ("PAGA"), with Seventy Five Percent (75%) of which, $3,750.00, is to be paid to the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency.
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9. Entry of this Final Approval Order and Judgment shall constitute a full and complete bar against the Settlement Class (including those Class Members who are former employees of Defendant and who failed to complete and/or timely return a claim for monetary recovery to the Claims Administrator as specified in the Stipulation and Preliminary Approval Order), as to all the claims released by the Stipulation, and shall constitute res judicata and collateral estoppel with respect to any and all such prior, current, or future released claims.
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10. The Court further confirms and finds that nothing contained in the Stipulation, the Preliminary Approval Order, this Final Approval Order and Judgment, or any other Order entered in this action shall in any way or manner constitute an admission or determination of liability by or against Defendant, or any other Released Parties with respect to any of the claims and causes of action asserted by the Settlement Class or any member thereof, and shall not be offered in evidence in any action or proceeding against Defendant, or any other Released Parties in any court, administrative agency, or other tribunal for any purpose whatsoever, other than to the extent necessary to enforce the provisions of the Stipulation or this Order and Judgment.
11. By operation of the entry of this Final Approval Order and Judgment, as of the Effective Date, the Parties and Settlement Class Members are ordered to perform their respective duties and obligations under the Stipulation.
12. If the Settlement does not become final and effective in accord with the terms of the Stipulation, then this Final Approval Order and Judgment shall be rendered null and void and shall be vacated and, in such event, all orders entered, including but not limited to all releases delivered in connection herewith, shall be null and void.
13. The Court shall have continuing jurisdiction over the construction, interpretation, implementation, and enforcement of the Stipulation in accordance with its terms, and over the administration and distribution of the Settlement proceeds.
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JUDGMENT
In accordance with, and for the reasons stated in the Final Approval Order, judgment shall be entered whereby Representative Plaintiffs and all Settlement Class Members shall take nothing from Defendant, except as expressly set forth in the Stipulation, which was previously filed, as part of Plaintiffs' Motion for Preliminary Approval of the Class Action Settlement.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
03/14
Dated: ___________, 2013
6/06/2012 13974732
Case No. 3:11-cv-02610-JCS
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Deep Learning based Prediction of EEG Motor Imagery of Stroke Patients' for Neuro-Rehabilitation Application
Haider Raza ∗ , Anirban Chowdhury ∗ , Saugat Bhattacharyya †
† School of Computing, Eng & Intel. Sys, Ulster University, Derry Londonderry, Northern Ireland, UK {firstname.lastname@example.org
∗ School of Computer Science and Electronics Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, England, UK {h.raza, email@example.com
Abstract—Due to the non-stationary nature of electroencephalography (EEG) signals, a Brain-computer Interfacing (BCI) system requires frequent calibration. This leads to intersession inconsistency which is one of the main reason that impedes the widespread adoption of non-invasive BCI for realworld applications, especially in rehabilitation and medicine. Domain adaptation and deep learning-based techniques have gained relevance in designing calibration-free BCIs to solve this issue. EEGNet is one such deep net architecture that has been successful in performing inter-subject classification, albeit on data from healthy participants. This is the first paper, which tests the performance of EEGNet on data obtained from 10 hemiparetic stroke patients while performing left and right motor imagery tasks. Results obtained on implementing EEGNet have been promising and it has comparably good performance as from expensive feature engineering-based approaches for both withinsubject and cross-subject classification. The less dependency on feature engineering techniques and the ability to extract generalized features for inter-subject classification makes EEGNet a promising deep-learning architecture for developing practically feasible solutions for BCI based neuro-rehabilitation applications.
need re-calibration due to the non-stationary nature of the EEG signals leading to inter-session inconsistency [10]. BCIs are often used for neuro-rehabilitation and for developing control and communication systems for patients suffering from various neurological disorders [11], [12]. Often the problem is exacerbated due to the presence of varying brain lesions among the users. With regards to neuro-rehabilitation especially, the time-consuming calibration process leads to user frustration and a lack of motivation, which can hinder the recovery process. Previous attempts to solve this problem involved 1) attempting to discover globally relevant EEG features [13], 2) the use of adaptive EEG classifiers [8], and 3) the use of reinforcement learning techniques [14].
I. INTRODUCTION
Machine learning methods have attained significant progress in many knowledge mining areas including classification, regression, and clustering [1]. However, it is still challenging to bring these technologies outside the laboratory due to the divergence in the data distributions between training and testing stages (i.e. domains) [2]. A common assumption in machine learning is that the training and testing data are drawn from the same distribution or feature space [3]. However, this assumption is often violated - we often operate in nonstationary environments. The shift in the joint distribution between training and testing domains is known as a dataset shift [4]–[6].
Major victims of such dataset shift are applications based on Brain-computer Interfaces (BCI) dealing with Electroencephalography (EEG) data [7], [8]. Such applications are often hindered by the need for repeated calibration of the BCI system for each individual participant due to large intersubject variability in the EEG signal [9]. Even when different sessions on the same participant are considered, BCI systems
Transfer learning is often implemented by transferring stationary and/or discriminative information invariant across the subjects [15], [16]. Apart from globally relevant feature representation, other approaches to transfer learning involve ensemble learning [17], [18] and domain adaptation of classifiers [19]. A variant of the popularly used common spatial pattern (CSP) based spatial filtering, called composite CSP, proposed by Kang and colleagues, was one of the earliest efforts of inter-subject transfer learning using EEG signals [20]. Another variant of CSP called stationary subspace CSP (ssCSP) proposed by Samek and colleagues focuses on transferring stationary information from various subjects and learning a stationary subspace of the CSP matrix [21]. They showed that such an approach not only leads to better performance for inter-subject classification but also relevant to the neurophysiological changes in the brain. However, a study conducted on a large number of subjects showed that the method of using second-order baseline reduces the intersubject variability and performs better than other popular CSP based methods for subject independent BCI without calibration [22]. As no feedback is provided during the calibration phase, the naive BCI users often find it less motivating. This degrades the quality of the recorded signal during the calibration stage making it less relevant during the feedback.
Recently, following the success of deep learning-based algorithms in image processing applications inroads have been made in the field of biomedical engineering, especially in the classification of brain signals, where reliable and stable performance is still a challenge after more than two decades of research. Lu and colleagues proposed a deep belief network method using restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) for motor imagery (MI) classification [23]. Different architectures of deep convolutional neural network (CNNs) have also been explored for decoding EEG signals [24]–[26]. A CNN with stacked autoencoders (SAEs) has been shown to achieve better classification accuracy on BCI competition IV-2b dataset than the traditional classification approaches [27], [28]. However, none of these deep learning-based decoders addressed the issue of inter-subject transfer learning in BCI. Some recent studies [29]–[32] dealt with the problem of inter-subject transfer learning for EEG classification with limited success. Notably, the CNN architecture EEGNet proposed by Lawhern and colleagues [30] has shown the potential to be generalised across different BCI paradigms including sensorimotor rhythm (SMR). The performance of EEGNet-8,2 was found to be similar to the state-of-the-art FBCSP method [33] for withinsubject classification of MI training data. For inter-subject classification, the EEGNet-8,2 slightly outperformed FBCSP, although the difference is not significant and the overall accuracy was low. However, an important advantage of using EEGNet over traditional methods is that EEGNet learns directly from the raw data, which bypasses the requirement for feature engineering. Previously, the performance of the BCI system majorly depends upon the extracted features. Thus, even if the performance of EEGNet is similar to FBCSP it is worth using if it could avoid the need for subject-specific tuning of the classifier and learn the features automatically from raw data. From our past experience of using BCI for neurorehabilitation [12], [34], we realised the need for calibrationfree BCI as the stroke patients are the most susceptible to get frustrated during repeated calibration. We have previously used covariate shift adaptation technique [11] to adapt the EEG classifier according to the shift in data distribution and tested its feasibility on stroke patients. However, such a technique is still heavily dependent on the training data for initial parameter generation and not suitable for the calibration-free BCI system. The promising results of EEGNet on healthy subjects' data motivate us to further test its feasibility on stroke patients data for inter-subject decoding in order to realise calibration-free BCI for neuro-rehabilitation. Here, we present the performance of EEGNet on 10 hemiparetic stroke patients data for the intersubject decoding of left-hand vs. right-hand MI [11]. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first implementation of any CNN based architecture on patients' EEG data for MI classification.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we describe the dataset and modified EEGNet architecture implemented on this patient dataset. Parameters setting and results of EEGNet under two conditions: 1) within-subject classification and 2) cross-subject classification are shown in Section III. A discussion on the findings and its significance are presented in Section IV, followed by conclusion in Section V.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
A. Dataset
We have used a dataset recorded from patients first reported in our previous research [11]. The experimental protocol and training/testing timing diagram are illustrated in Fig 1 and Fig 2, respectively. It involves a traditional sensory-motor rhythm (SMR) architecture consisting of two different phases. The first phase is the data acquisition without providing any feedback and data collected from this phase was used to train a classifier. The second phase is an online BCI that provides neurofeedback on the basis of the classifier output. Data acquisition during the first phase has two runs of 40 trials and each run takes about 7 min and 30 s to complete, which is followed by one feedback run of 40 trials. In each run, the trials are equally distributed i.e., 20 trials of right-hand class and 20 trials of left-hand class. The gap between the end of phase one (i.e. training) and phase two (i.e. testing) is 16 min, which is feasible in rehabilitation settings as patients may lose attention and get tired in long runs of experiments. It is to be noted that during the original experiment the classifier was built on the common-spatial pattern (CSP) based features and retrained during the online neuro-feedback using covariate-shiftdetection (CSD) technique as shown in Fig. 1. While in this paper the data is analysed offline to evaluate the performance of EEGNet.
B. EEGNet Architecture
The EEG-based BCI system is implemented by using a compact CNN for single-trial classification (i.e. EEGNet [35]). In EEGNet, depthwise and separable convolutions were combined to construct an EEG-specific network that summarizes
Fig. 3: EEGNet architecture in cross-patient settings.
a few well-known EEG feature extraction methods such as optimal spatial filter with the filter bank. It also reduces the number of trainable parameters for the deep predictive model when compared with existing CNN-based EEG classification methods. For comparative evaluation, it's single-trial classification accuracy is compared with adaptive and non-adaptive methods [11].
EEGNet is a compact CNN architecture, which can be applied in different BCI paradigms such as sensory-motor rhythm (SMR), P300 visual evoked potentials, error-related negativity responses (ERN), and movement-related cortical potentials (MRCP). One of the advantages of EEGNet is that it is trainable on a limited amount of data acquired during the calibration phase and can produce separable features. We have slightly modified the EEGNet model-based on the requirements of our dataset. For EEG trials, data were collected at 512 Hz sampling rate, having 12 channels. For each trials, we had used MI-related epochs of 3 s for analysis in this study. A model summary of EEGNet in cross-patient settings can be found in 3. The architecture of the model is defined as follows:
1) Block 1: combination of Conv2D and DepthwiseConv2D: In block 1, starting with input layer there are two convolution steps: first, 2D convolution filter followed by batch normalisation; second, depthwise convolution followed by batch normalisation. One of the advantages in using depth- wise convolution is that it helped in reducing the number of trainable parameters to fit a deep predictive model. Notably, as an advantage, depth-wise convolution is not fully-connected to all previous feature maps, which makes lesser parameters to fit. Here in the case of EEG, combined Conv2D and depthwiseConv2D provided a direct way to learn spatial filters for each temporal filter. A depth parameter controlled the number of spatial filters to learn for each feature map. This combination is inspired by the filter-bank common spatial pattern (FBCSP) algorithm, where the spatio-temporal features were prepared during the learning process.
2) Block 2: separable convolution: In block 2, after receiving inputs from block 1, a depth-wise convolution was followed by point-wise convolution. There are two main advantages of using separable convolutions. First, it reduces the number of parameters to fit; and second, principally separating the relationship with and across feature map by learning a kernel and summarising each feature map individually by optimally merging the output. In other words, this method separates learning on how to summarise individual feature maps in time using depth-wise convolution and learns how to optimally combine feature maps using point-wise convolution. This method represents different feature maps at different time-scales and combines the output afterwards.
3) Block 3: classification: In block 3, the features are passed to a softmax/sigmoid function. The softmax function is used here because EEGNet is a multi-class classification model. However, our data consisting of binary classes should give the same results as softmax is a generalization of sigmoid for a larger number of classes [36].
The next section presents the results for two different cases: 1) within-subject: is a type of experimental design in which a predictive model is trained and tested on data of each subject, albeit acquired at different run/session of recording. 2) crosssubject: is a type of experimental design in which the subjects are divided into two groups. The first group that consists of data from 9 subjects are used to train a predictive model while the second group is made of data from remaining subjects (i.e., 10th in this study) that are used to evaluate the performance of the model. In cross-subject, the procedure is repeated 10 times, so each subject get a chance to be selected for performance evaluation.
III. RESULTS
A. Parameters setting
A description of the setting parameters is given as follows: a) EEG dataset is stored in a 3D format (N , C, T ), where N is the number of trials, C is the number of channels, and T is the time samples). b) The EEG data were band-pass filtered from 8 Hz as a lower cut-off to the variable limit as a parameter to be selected for upper cut-off comprising of [24, 30, 40] Hz. c) Model parameters: In block 1, 2D convolution filter of size (1,flt size), where generally it is recommended to use a filter length that equals to half the sampling rate because it captures the information from 2 Hz and above. In our study, we have evaluated the results on three different kernel lengths
(a) 100 epochs of training
(b) 300 epochs of training
(c) 500 epochs of training
Fig. 5: Comparison of the cross subject average classification accuracy under different parameters: epochs = [100, 300, 500]; dropout = [025, 0.5], and kernel length = [32, 64, 128]
(flt size = [32, 64,128]) (i.e. temporal filter); depth-wise convolution of size (C,1), where C is number of channels (i.e. C = 12) to learn the spatial filter with depth parameter D controls the number of spatial filters to learn for each feature map. In block 2, separable convolution is used (i.e. depth-wise convolution) of size (1,16). d) Fitting parameters: the models was fitted using 'adam' optimizer and minimized by 'categorical crossentropy' function with number of epochs (i.e. epochs = [100, 300, 500]). The codes were executed on Google Colab [37] environment, where Tesla K80 GPU is freely available. Deep learning Tensorflow [38] and Keras API [39] were used to create the learning model.
B. Within-subject classification
Table I compares the performance of EEGNet with adaptive and non-adaptive methods [11]. The EEGNet was trained for a different number of epochs during the training and interestingly, the testing accuracy gradually improved with an increase in the number of epochs. We performed grid search and obtained a set of best parameter (i.e. freq [8-24], dropout = 0.25, and flt size (i.e. kernel length = 64 for 100 epochs of training and kernel length = 32 for 300 and 500 epochs of training)). The average test classification accuracy under different number of training epochs is given as follows: 1) 100 epochs of training: test accuracy 66.75±15.90%; 2) 300 epochs of training: test accuracy 68.50±15.86%; and 3) 500
epochs of training: test accuracy 70.25±16.56%. In [11], with non-adaptive classifier (EEG-NAC), the average classification accuracy is 70.25%, which is same as the performance of EEGNet with 500 epochs of training. In the case of adaptive classifier [11], the EEGNet has 5% less average accuracy. It is important to note that in adaptive classifier [11], the feedback trigger time instant (FTTI) was selected for each patient individually. However, in EEGNet, the raw data was given as input and data were in the range [8-24] Hz. The result obtained using grid search is illustrated in Fig 4 using a heatmap, where the x-axis is for flt size (i.e. kernel length) and the y-axis is for dropout. Fig 4(a), (b) and (c) shows the average test accuracy with 100, 300 and 500 epochs of training, respectively. The training and validation performance for the subjects with 500 epochs are illustrated in Fig 6, where the parameters are as follows: freq [8-24], dropout = 0.5, and flt size (i.e. kernel length = 32).
C. Cross-subject classification
Cross-subject classification results are shown in Table II. In cross-subject analysis, an increased number of epochs in training did not help in performance improvement. Here, we had performed grid search in a similar fashion to withinsubject settings to get the best set of parameters. The average test classification accuracy under different number of training epochs are given as follows: 1) 100 epochs of training: test
TABLE I: Within Subject Classification Accuracy with the following parameter: Frequency: [8-24] Hz, dropout: 0.25, kernel length = 64 for 100 epochs of training and kernel length = 32 for 300 and 500 epochs of training.
| Subject | EEG-NAC (%) | EEG-NAC (%) | Test Acc (%) | Test Acc (%) | Test Acc (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epochs | | | 100 | 300 | 500 |
| S01 | 70.00 | 72.50 | 67.5 | 67.5 | 67.5 |
| S02 | 67.50 | 72.50 | 75 | 92.5 | 92.5 |
| S03 | 75.00 | 82.50 | 50 | 50 | 52.5 |
| S04 | 65.00 | 72.50 | 57.5 | 52.5 | 67.5 |
| S05 | 75.00 | 77.50 | 60 | 57.5 | 60 |
| S06 | 67.50 | 72.50 | 67.5 | 75 | 75 |
| S07 | 67.50 | 75.00 | 97.5 | 82.5 | 92.5 |
| S08 | 72.50 | 75.00 | 50 | 65 | 52.5 |
| S09 | 72.50 | 82.50 | 55 | 52.5 | 52.5 |
| S10 | 70.00 | 75.00 | 87.5 | 90 | 90 |
| Mean | 70.25 | 75.75 | 66.75 | 68.5 | 70.25 |
| Std | 3.43 | 3.92 | 15.9 | 15.86 | 16.56 |
TABLE II: Cross-Subject Classification Accuracy. The parameter of are given as follows: 1) 100 epochs Frequency: [824] Hz, dropout: 0.25, Kernel Length = 32; 2) 300 epochs: Frequency: [8-24] Hz, dropout: 0.25, Kernel Length = 128; and 3) 500 epochs: Frequency: [8-24] Hz, dropout: 0.5, Kernel Length = 32.
IV. DISCUSSION
| Subject | Test Acc (%) | Test Acc (%) | Test Acc (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Epochs | 100 | 300 | 500 |
| S01 | 77.5 | 75 | 75 |
| S02 | 85 | 80 | 80 |
| S03 | 72.5 | 65 | 75 |
| S04 | 75 | 67.5 | 75 |
| S05 | 77.5 | 77.5 | 75 |
| S06 | 55 | 45 | 47.5 |
| S07 | 57.5 | 57.5 | 50 |
| S08 | 57.5 | 67.5 | 57.5 |
| S09 | 72.5 | 75 | 60 |
| S10 | 67.5 | 60 | 50 |
| Mean | 69.75 | 67 | 64.5 |
| Std | 11.89 | 10.72 | 12.73 |
accuracy 69.75±11.89% with freq [8-24], dropout = 0.25, and flt size (i.e. kernel length = 32) ; 2) 300 epochs of training: test accuracy 67.00±10.72% with freq [8-24], dropout = 0.25, and flt size (i.e. kernel length = 128); and 3) 500 epochs of training: test accuracy 64.50±12.73% with freq [8-24], dropout = 0.5, and flt size (i.e. kernel length = 32). The result obtained using grid search is illustrated in Fig 5 using a heatmap, where the x-axis is flt size (i.e. kernel length) and the y-axis is a dropout. Fig 5(a), (b) and (c) reports the average test accuracy with 100, 300 and 500 epochs of training, respectively.
In the original EEGNet paper [30] the within subject classification accuracy for 4-class motor imagery classification on BCI Competition IV-2a data was roughly 67.25%. As our data comprises of two-classes,we had expected a much higher within-subject classification accuracy than 70.25% (with 500 epochs). However, there are two facts to be considered which may have impeded the classification accuracy. First of all, unlike the original BCI Competition IV-2a which is recorded on healthy individuals, we have used stroke patient's data. As it is a well-known fact that brain-lesions seriously alters the dynamics of the EEG signals and hence adds more nonstationarity in the data distribution over the trials. Therefore, we may not expect a performance equivalent to a healthy subjects' dataset. The second factor is that unlike the original EEGNet paper [30], we have reported our results on test data rather than cross-validated results on the training data. For the cross-subject analysis the classification accuracy of nearly 40% reported in [30] was not optimistic. However, in our paper the cross-subject performance of 67% was closer to the withinsubject performance of 70.25%. The promises obtained from the cross-subject results has improved the chances of realising a calibration-free BCI for neuro-rehabilitation applications. In such a scenario, the data recorded by other patients and/or the data recorded by the same patient on previous days can be used as a training dataset and the patient can receive BCI based neuro-feedback right from the start of the trial. This may reduce the level of frustration and tiredness in the patients and boost their motivation towards therapeutic task.
Another important study worth comparing with is the study by Taber and colleagues [27]. They had used CNN for classification of MI EEG data provided by BCI Competition IV-2b. The average classification accuracy achieved in [27] was 72.4%, while in our case it is 70.25%. However, in [27] features were pre-constructed using time-frequency plots in the form of an image before providing it into the CNN. In contrast to that, the EEGNet architecture [30] used in this paper uses
raw data as inputs to the CNN and lets CNN generate its own features. Thus one advantage of using EEGNet over timefrequency based approach is that we can skip the feature engineering part to save computational cost. This may help in designing real-time continuous prediction based neurofeedback BCI systems using CNN, which is subjected to be validated in future works. Another important point to note is that unlike BCI Competition IV-2b, the dataset used here is a stroke patients' dataset, which is subjected to be affected by more non-stationarity in trial to trial data distribution. Therefore, a difference of 2.15% can be attributed to lower signal quality, although no significant (p−value<0.05) difference is found in performance using a two-sample t-test. Moreover, a cross subject analysis was not provided in [27], while in this paper we have provided the cross-subject analysis along with the within-subject results.
The performance of EEGNet for cross-subject prediction also outperformed the multi-variate empirical mode decomposition (MEMD) based filtering technique. The MEMD results for cross-subject classification reported in [40] showed the average classification accuracy of 61.75% on BCI-competition IV-2a data, while the average cross-subject classification accuracy achieved using EEGNet is 69.75%. It is important to note that the 69.75% cross-subject accuracy using EEGNet is achieved on patient data, while 61.75% accuracy using
MEMD was on healthy subjects' data. This further reinforces the efficacy of EEGNet for cross-subject classification.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have shown the efficacy of a popular CNN based architecture, EEGNet, for classifying the stroke patients motor imagery EEG data for the first time. Results show that EEGNet can achieve satisfactory levels of accuracy for classifying stroke patients data, which is comparable to the performance on healthy subjects data for within-subject prediction. Moreover, for cross-subject prediction, it outperformed traditional MEMD based approach and the performance was even better than the healthy individuals' data. Thus, the study can have an impact on how we will be designing the BCI systems for neuro-rehabilitation in the future, paving the way for feature agnostic and calibration-free BCI systems, which is an important challenge in practically usable BCI design. Transfer learning in neuro-rehabilitation is still an open challenge due to limited open datasets.
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Buskro Quantum Print System
§ BUSKRO, LTD
CATEGORY: Address/Barcode Printers
PRODUCT: Inkjet Systems
COMPANY: BUSKRO LTD., 1738 Orangebrook Court – Unit # 1, Pickering, ON L1W 3G8 Canada. Contact: Michelle Sanz / Shawn Caldwell Email: email@example.com Phone: 888-8BUSKRO or 905-839-6018.
QUANTUM 4C PRINTHEAD: BUSKRO has expanded its suite of color inkjet printers to include a Quantum colour printer:The Quantum 4C printer. The Quantum 4C printer, employing 4 separate colour print modules (C,M,Y,K) and supported with Compose IQ colour management software is capable of printing variable images at high-speed in single pass mode on either cut-sheet or web-fed materials . With up to 600 x 1200 DPI resolution, a vertical print swath of 4.25" (108mm), and Bosch UV-curable inks, extremely crisp and vibrant colour images are produced on a variety of flat substrates including paper, plastics, and packaging materials. To limit ink migration and drop spread, the 4C model comes with an optional LED curing lamp kit to "pin" the UV curable ink.
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QUANTUM PRINTHEAD: BUSKRO has added additional printer models to its line of Quantum Print System products. The Quantum printer
Address/Barcode Printers
is a wide-swath, high resolution piezo-DOD inkjet printer which combines a series of print modules (4.25" – 108mm) carefully constructed and stitched together to deliver seamless, high-quality images at the elevated speeds up to 3.39 m/s (660 fpm) required of most commercial printing jobs from simple addresses to PDF-based page printing. The Quantum printer produces a clean, crisp image and comes in three models: 4260 - 4.25" (108mm), 8560 - 8.50" (216mm), and 12760 - 12.75" (324mm) with resolutions up to 600 X 1200 DPI. The Buskro print controller can combine and support a number of these print models up to a total of 17" (432mm) of vertical image coverage and with its "TRUEFLOW" active ink management system, the Quantum is able to print the most demanding high-duty images while achieving and sustaining high print speeds.
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BK705 Controller
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See Buskro's listing in the Addressing Accessories, Document Software; Inserter Mailing Systens; and Tabbing Systems section.
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4
ENTRANCE ANTIPHON: The Lord became my protector. He brought me out to a place of freedom; he saved me because he delighted in me. (Ps 17:19-20)
Alleluia, alleluia! Open our hearts, O Lord, to accept the words of your Son. Alleluia!
A reading from the Book of Sirach (27:4-7) When a sieve is shaken, the refuse remains; so a man's filth remains in his thoughts. The kiln tests the potter's vessels; so the test of a man is in his reasoning. The fruit discloses the cultivation of a tree; so the expression of a thought discloses the cultivation of a man's mind. Do not praise a man before you hear him reason, for this is the test of men.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Responsorial Psalm:
Response: Response: It is good to give you thanks, O Lord.
It is good to give thanks to the Lord to make music to your name, O Most High, to proclaim your love in the morning and your truth in the watches of the night. R/
The just will flourish like the palm tree and grow like a Lebanon cedar. R/
Planted in the house of the Lord they will flourish in the courts of our God, still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green, to proclaim that the Lord is just. In him, my rock, there is no wrong. R/
A reading from the First Letter of St Paul to the Corinthians (15:54-58) When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Entrance Gather us in
Offertory
Communion
Our Supper Invitation
Take of my bread and eat, drink my new wine. Take of my life and live, branch of my vine. Let me befriend you now; eat take your fill. Don't be afraid to dream; love has its will.
Take of my bread and eat, drink my new wine. Be a sweet nourishment to good friends of mine. Let me befriend you now; eat, take your fill. Share with your people, that love has its will.
Take of my bread and eat, drink my new wine. Take of my life and live, branch of my vine.
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Luke (6:39-45) Jesus told a parable to his disciples: "Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but every one when he is fully taught will be like his teacher. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye. "For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks The Gospel of the Lord.
COMMUNION ANTIPHON: I will sing to the Lord who has been bountiful with me, sing psalms to the name of the Lord Most High. (Ps 12:6)
Final
We are Called:
Where Charity and Love Prevail
Where charity and love prevail, there God is ever found; Brought here together by Christ's love, by love are we thus bound. With grateful joy and holy fear God's charity we learn; Let us with heart and mind and soul now love God in return.
Forgive we now each other's faults as we our faults confess;
And let us love each other well in Christian holiness.
Let strife among us be unknown, let all contention cease;
Be God's the glory that we seek, be ours God’s holy peace.
Let us recall that in our midst dwells God's begotten Son; As members of his body joined, we are in Christ made one.
No race or creed can love exclude, if honored be God's name; Our family embraces all whose Father is the same.
Come! live in the light! Shine with the joy and the love of the Lord! We are called to be light for the kingdom, to live in the freedom of the city of God!
Refrain:
We are called to act with justice. We are called to love tenderly. We are called to serve one another, to walk humbly with God.
Come! Open your heart! Show your mercy to all those in fear! We are called to be hope for the hopeless, so all hatred and blindness will be no more!
Here in this place new light is streaming, Now is the darkness vanished away, See in this space our fears and our dreamings Brought here to You in the light of this day.
Gather us in the lost and forsaken, Gather us in the blind and the lame; Call to us now and we shall awaken, We shall arise at the sound of our name.
We are the young our lives are a mystery, we are the old who yearn for your face. We have been sung throughout all of history, Called to be light to the whole human race.
Gather us in the rich and the haughty Gather us in the proud and the strong, Give us a heart so meek and so lowly, Give us the courage to enter the song.
Here we will take the wine and the water,
Here we will take the bread of new birth,
Here you shall call your sons and your daughters,
Call us anew to be salt for the earth.
Give us to drink the wine of compassion, Give us to eat the bread that is you; Nourish us well and teach us to fashion, lives that are holy and hearts that are true.
Weekly Parish Newsletter Bollettino Parrocchiale Settimanale
8th SUNDAY in ORDINARY TIME "Year C" 3rd March 2019 Volume XIII - Issue 5th
The Parish Community of St. Brigid and St. Mark 378 Nicholson Street — North Fitzroy 3068 VIC
Phone No: 03 9489 6777 firstname.lastname@example.org
We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people, the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which we stand. We pay our respects to them for their care of the land. May we walk gently on this land.
8 Sunday in Ordinary Time.
th
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT:
HONOR YOUR FATHER AND
YOUR MOTHER
460. What are the duties of parents toward their children? (2221-2231) Parents, in virtue of their participation in the fatherhood of God, have the first responsibility for the education of their children and they are the first heralds of the faith for them. They have the duty to love and respect their children as persons and as children of God and to provide, as far as is possible, for their
461. How are parents to educate their children in the Christian faith? (2252-2253) Parents do this mainly by example, prayer, family catechesis and participation in the life of the Church.
Ottava Domenica dell'Anno QUARTO COMANDAMENTO: ONORA TUO PADRE E TUA MADRE 460. Quali sono i doveri dei genitori verso i figli? (2221-2231) Partecipi della paternità divina, i genitori sono per i figli i primi responsabili dell'educazione e i primi annunciatori della fede. Essi hanno il dovere di amare e di rispettare i figli come persone e come figli di Dio, e di provvedere, per quanto possibile, ai loro bisogni materiali e spirituali, scegliendo per loro una scuola adeguata e aiutandoli con prudenti consigli nella scelta della profes-
physical and spiritual needs. They should select for them a suitable school and help them with prudent counsel in the choice of their profession and their state of life. In particular they have the mission of educating their children in the Christian faith.
462. Are family bonds an absolute good? (2232-2233) Family ties are important but not absolute, because the first vocation of a Christian is to follow Jesus and love him: "He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37). Parents must support with joy their children's choice to follow Jesus in whatever state of life, even in the consecrated life or the priestly ministry.
463. How should authority be exercised in the various spheres of civil society? (2234-2237;2254) Authority should always be exercised as a service, respecting fundamental human rights, a just hierarchy of values, laws, distributive justice, and the principle of subsidiarity. All those who exercise authority should seek the interests of the community before their own interest and allow their decisions to be inspired by the truth about God, about man and about the world.
sione e dello stato di vita. In particolare hanno la missione di educarli alla fede cristiana.
461. Come i genitori educano i loro figli alla fede cristiana? (2252-2253) Principalmente con l'esempio, la preghiera, la catechesi familiare e la partecipazione alla vita ecclesiale.
462. I legami familiari sono un bene assoluto? (2232-2233) I vincoli familiari, sebbene importanti, non sono assoluti perché la prima vocazione del cristiano è di seguire Gesù, amandolo: «Chi ama il padre o la madre più di me, non è degno di me; chi ama la figlia o il figlio più di me, non è degno di me» (Mt 10,37). I genitori devono favorire con gioia la sequela di Gesù da parte dei loro figli, in ogni stato di vita, anche nella vita consacrata o nel ministero sacerdotale.
464. Quali sono i doveri dei cittadini nei confronti delle autorità civili? (2238-2241;2255) Coloro che sono sottomessi all'autorità devono considerare i loro superiori come rappresentanti di Dio, offrendo loro leale collaborazione per il buon funzionamento della vita pubblica e sociale. Ciò comporta l'amore e il servizio della patria, il diritto e il dovere di voto, il versamento delle imposte, la difesa del paese e il diritto a una critica costruttiva.
463. Come va esercitata l'autorità nei vari ambiti della società civile? (2234-2237;2254) Va sempre esercitata come un servizio, rispettando i diritti fondamentali dell'uomo, una giusta gerarchia dei valori, le leggi, la giustizia distributiva e il principio di sussidiarietà. Ognuno, nell'esercizio dell'autorità, deve ricercare l'interesse della comunità anziché il proprio, e deve ispirare le sue decisioni alla verità su Dio, sull'uomo e sul mondo.
464. What are the duties of citizens in regard to civil authorities? (2238-2241;22550) Those subject to authority should regard those in authority as representatives of God and offer their loyal collaboration for the right functioning of public and social life. This collaboration includes love and service of one's homeland, the right and duty to vote, payment of taxes, the defense of one's country, and the right to exercise constructive criticism.
465. Quando il cittadino non deve obbedire alle autorità civili? (2242-2243;2256) Il cittadino non deve in coscienza obbedire quando le leggi delle autorità civili si oppongono alle esigenze dell'ordine morale: «Bisogna obbedire a Dio piuttosto che agli uomini» (At 5,29).
465. When is a citizen forbidden to obey civil authorities? (22422243;2256) A citizen is obliged in conscience not to obey the laws of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order: "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts of the Apostles 5:29).
The Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo - Scalabrinans - www. Scalabrini. org Ministering to the Parish and Migrants in St. Brigid since 1959
Our Parish is committed to the safety, wellbeing and dignity of all children and vulnerable adults.
| 2 | Liturgical Calendar and activities | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day of the Week | | Liturgical Celebration | Intention St. Mark | Intention St. Brigid | Parish Activity |
| SATURDAY/ SABATO 2nd March 2019 Vigil Year “C” 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time | | “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?" | | 6.00pm St. John Paul II Carmelina CAFARELLA 7.00pm Spanish Mass | Baptism Celebration for: Isabella & Matthew McVICAR Congratulations! |
| SUNDAY/DOMENICA 3rd March 2019 Year “C” 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time | | "Puó forse un cieco guidare un altro cieco? Non cadranno tutte e due in un fosso?" | 8.30am 10.00am Portuguese Mass | 9.45am Ermando IARUSSI 11.00am Peter BILIC Alfredo e Antonietta BERNAR Concetta LAMBERTI Giovanni VIGLIAROLO | Baptism Celebration for: Joshua & Tobias BACKHOUSE ---------------------------------------------------------- Wedding Celebration for: Koraly SYMEOU & Giovanni FASONE Congratulations! |
| Monday/Lunedí 4th March 2019 Sirach 17:24-29; Mk 10:17-27 | | Responsorial Psalm Let the just exult an rejoice in the Lord. | 8.00am | 9.15am Ermando IARUSSI 7.00pm Pippo INTAGLIATA | |
| Tuesday/Martedí 5th March 2019 Sirach 35: 1-12; Mk 10:28-31 | | Responsorial Psalm To the upright I will show the saving power of God. | 8.00am | 9.15am Ermando IARUSSI | |
| Wednesday/Mercoledí 6th March 2019 ASH WEDNESDAY Joel 2:12-18; Cor 5:20 - 6:2; Mt 6:1-6,16-18 | | Responsorial Psalm Perdonaci, Signore: abbiamo peccato. Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned. | 8.00am Cristoforo FIORE - Giuseppina CALANDRA 7.30pm Portuguese Mass | 9.15am Ash Wednesday Ermando IARUSSI 6.30pm Spanish Mass 7.30pm Ash Wednesday (Filipino Chaplaincy | 7.30pm Mass & Novena in Honour to Our Lady of Perpetual Help |
| Thursday/Giovedí 7th March 2019 Deut 30:15-20; Lk 9:22-25 | | Responsorial Psalm Happy are they who hope in the Lord. | 8.00am | 9.15am Ermando IARUSSI | |
| Friday/Venerdí 8th March 2019 Is 58: 1-9; Mt 9:14-15 | | Responsorial Psalm A broken, humble heart, O God, will not scorn. | 8.00am | 9.15am Ermando IARUSSI | |
Project Compassion Sunday 3 rd March 2019 Please take home a Project Compassion box and/or a set of donation envelopes and support Caritas Australia this Lenten season themed "Give Lent 100%". You are empowering communities with hope and helping those in great need to shape a better future for themselves, their families and their communities. Lives change when we all give 100%.You can donate through Parish boxes and envelopes, or by phoning 1800 024 413 or visiting www.caritas.org.au/
CARITAS AUSTRALIA - PROGETTO COMPASSIONE 2019 "Dare alla Quaresima 100%"
Durante questo tempo di Quaresima, siamo tutti invitati ad aprire il nostro cuore aiutando altri meno fortunati di noi con la nostra preghiera e la nostra offerta. Le bustine e scatole sono disponibili sui tavoli all'entrata della chiesa. Prendetele e portatele indietro con la vostra offerta durante la settimana santa. Grazie!
| Parish News… Notizie di casa nostra... | | | | | | | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liturgy of the Word 9th & 10th March 2019 | 6.00pm Vigil St. Brigid | 8.30am St. Mark | 9.45am St. Brigid’s | 11.00am St. Brigid | Offertory Procession | Church Cleaning | |
| I Reading | M. De Souza | G. Piantella | R. Omenihu | E. Mascia | B. Rigoni / M. Villani | L. Ferraro | |
| Responsorial Psalm | M. De Souza | G. Piantella | J. Smith | M. Lauria | P. Elkins / S. Atherton | | |
| II Reading | M. De Souza | G. Piantella | N. Omenihu | L. Colosimo | P. La Marca / T. Bozzetto | | |
HOME MASSES DURING LENT
VIA CRUCIS Every Friday during Lent Stations of the Cross at 7.00pm in Church followed by confessions. ---------------------------------
Would you like to offer your home for an evening mass during Lent and invite neighbours, friends and relatives to attend in preparation for Easter? If interested, please give your name to Fr. Savino. MESSE IN CASA DURANTE LA QUARESIMA
MASSES - ASH WEDNESDAY 6 March 2019
STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Durante il tempo di Quaresima, ogni Venerdì sera in chiesa alle 7.00pm
Plenary Council Prayer
Vorresti offrire la tua casa, e invitare I vicini, amici e parenti a partecipare alla Messa in casa in preparazione per Pasqua? Se siete interessati, per favore date il vostro nome a P Savino
'The Missionary Sisters of St Peter Claver will hold their Annual Mission Concert on Sunday 31 March at the St Peter Claver Hall, 154 Cotham Road, Kew commencing 2.00pm. Admission is free - a collection will be taken during the concert. Proceeds will go to assist Sr Donatus Kilole of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Mother of Christ working in the diocese of Nairobi, Kenya, in the very remote village of Timau.' See programme at the entrance.
Free Wills Seminar As life changes has your Will been updated to keep pace with your new circumstances. It's easy to be caught up with the immediacy of life. To learn more about these aspects please join us. Malcolm Campbell, Principal of Nicholas O'Donohue (expert in Estate Law) will provide clear and real life examples. Date: Wednesday 20 March Location: St Vincent's Hospital, Michael Chamberlain Theatre, Building E, Aikenhead WingTime: 12.00 - 1.30 pm Bookings are essential please contact email@example.com or 9231 3365. www.stvfoundation.org.au/willseminar
Ingresso:
Offertorio:
NOI CREDIAMO IN TE
Noi crediamo in te, o Signor, noi speriamo in te, o Signor, noi amiamo te, o Signor, tu ci ascolti, o Signor.
Sei con noi, Signor,
nella gioia tu sei con noi, sei con noi:
nel dolore tu sei con noi, tu per sempre sei con noi.
C'è chi prega, Signor: vieni a noi.
C'è chi soffre, Signor:
C'è chi spera, Signor:
vieni a noi.
vieni a noi.
O Signore, vieni a noi.
A TE NOSTRO PADRE
A te, nostro Padre e nostro Signor, pane e vino oggi noi t'offriam sull'altar.
Grano, diverrai vivo Pane del cielo Cibo per nutrire l'alma fedel. Rit.:
Vino, diverrai vivo Sangue l’arsura del cuor.
di Cristo, fonte che disseta
Rit.:
Salga fino a te ed a te sia l’ostia che
gradita t’offriam in tutta
umiltà. Rit.:
Come, Holy Spirit of Pentecost. Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land. O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council. Give us the grace to see your face in one another and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road. Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth. Give us ears to listen humbly to each other and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying. Lead your Church into a hope-filled future, that we may live the joy of the Gospel. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age. Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us. St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.
```
8.00am St. Mark's - Bi-lingual 9.15am St. Brigid's - Bi-lingual 6.30pm St. Brigid's - Spanish 7.30pm St. Brigid's - Filipino 7.30pm St. Mark's - Portuguese MESSE - 6 Marzo - MERCOLEDÌ delle CENERI 8.00am San Marco - Bi-lingual 9.15am Santa Brigida - Italiano 6.30pm Santa Brigida - Spagnolo 7.30pm St. Brigid's - Filipino 7.30pm San Marco - Portoghese
```
Lenten Men's Retreat: Overcoming Temptation & Addiction
The Dominican Friars invite young men (aged 18-40) Where: St. Dominic's Priory, 816 Riversdale Rd, Camberwell When: Mar 8 at 5:00pm – Mar 10 at 3pm Cost: The retreat cost is $50 and includes all meals. Places are strictly limited and RSVP is essential by Mar 6 (email Br Sebastian on firstname.lastname@example.org)
St. Brigid & St. Mark Collections Amen.
1st Collection $510 - 00
2nd Collection $280 - 00
Envelopes $180 - 00
Comunione: DOV'É CARITÁ E AMORE
Dov'é caritá e amore, qui c'é Dio
Fine: DELL'AURORA TU SORGI PIÙ BELLA
Ci ha riuniti tutti insieme, Cristo amore: godiamo esultanti nel Signore! Temiamo e amiamo il Dio vivente, e amiamoci tra noi con cuore sincero.
Noi formiamo, qui riuniti, un solo corpo: evitiamo di dividerci tra noi: vIa le lotte maligne, via le liti, e regni in mezzo a noi Cristo, Dio.
Chi non ama resta sempre nella notte e dall'ombra della morte non risorge; ma se noi camminiamo nell'amore, noi saremo veri figli della luce.
Nell'amore di colui che ci ha salvati, rinnovati dallo Spirito del Padre, tutti uniti sentiamoci fratelli, e la gioia diffondiamo sulla terra.
Imploriamo con fiducia il Padre Santo perché doni ai nostri giorni la sua pace: ogni popolo dimentichi rancori, ed il mondo si rinnovi nell'amore.
Dell'aurora Tu sorgi più bella, coi tuoi raggi, a far lieta la terra, e fra gli astri che il cielo rinserra non vi è stella più bella di Te.
Bella Tu sei qual sole Bianca più della luna, e le stelle le più belle non son belle al par di Te.
Gli occhi tuoi son più belli del mare.
La tua fronte ha il colore del giglio,
Le tue gote, baciate dal Figlio, e le labbra son fior.
son due rose,
T'incoronano dodici stelle. Al tuo piè piegan l'ali del vento Della luna s'incurva l'argento Il tuo manto ha il colore del ciel.
|
BMC Research Notes
BioMedCentral
Short Report
Open Access
Optimization and comparison of different methods for RNA isolation for cDNA library construction from the reindeer lichen Cladonia rangiferina
Sini Junttila, Kean-Jin Lim and Stephen Rudd*
Address: Centre for Biotechnology, Tykistökatu 6 A, 20520 Turku, Finland
Email: Sini Junttila - firstname.lastname@example.org; Kean-Jin Lim - email@example.com; Stephen Rudd* - firstname.lastname@example.org
* Corresponding author
Published: 5 October 2009
BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:204 doi:10.1186/1756-0500-2-204
This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/2/204
© 2009 Rudd et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background: The reindeer lichen is the product of a mutualistic relationship between a fungus and an algae. Lichen demonstrate a remarkable capacity to tolerate dehydration. This tolerance is driven by a variety of biochemical processes and the accumulation of specific secondary metabolites that may be of relevance to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and agriculture industries. These protective metabolites hinder in vitro enzymatic reactions required in cDNA synthesis. Along with the low concentrations of RNA present within lichen tissues, the process of creating a cDNA library is technically challenging.
Findings: An evaluation of existing commercial and published protocols for RNA extraction from plant or fungal tissues has been performed and experimental conditions have been optimised to balance the need for the highest quality total ribonucleotides and the constraints of budget, time and human resources.
Conclusion: We present a protocol that balances inexpensive RNA extraction methods with commercial RNA clean-up kits to yield sufficient RNA for cDNA library construction. Evaluation of the protocol and the construction of, and sampling from, a cDNA library is used to demonstrate the suitability of the RNA extraction method for expressed sequence tag production.
Background
Lichen are formed as a product of the symbiotic relationship between a fungus and its photosynthetic partner, which can be either an algae or a cyanobacterium [1]. The fungus, or mycobiont, forms a three-dimensional vegetative structure called a thallus, within which the photosynthetic partners, or photobionts, are located. The algal cells comprise only approximately 7% of the total thallus volume [2].
This increases to about 46% for the ascomycete fungi and thus the processes of lichenisation are critical to the understanding of both ascomycete relationships and the evolution of mechanisms for the control and maintenance of plant-fungal interactions. An estimated 100 species of algae from 40 genera are reported to form lichen symbioses [3].
Approximately one-fifth of fungal species form obligate symbiotic associations with green algae or cyanobacteria.
The molecular nature of the symbiosis is still under discussion; some researchers observe a controlled parasitism of the photobiont by the mycobiont [1], while others see a more mutualistic relationship [4].
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Received: 29 June 2009 Accepted: 5 October 2009
Regardless of the nature of the relationship, lichens inhabit some of the harshest climates on earth, and have demonstrated a capacity to at least survive the more challenging extremes of space [5]. Lichen are poikilohydric and lack the ability to actively control the water content within their thalli; they have as a consequence evolved physiological mechanisms to tolerate frequent cycles of desiccation and wetting. Their remarkable ability to survive even anhydrobiosis allow lichen species to flourish, albeit slowly, in some of the driest ecological niches. The anhydrobiotic state is driven by the accumulation of specific metabolites and polysaccharides that limit the damage caused by desiccation, and maintain sufficient physiological integrity that such damage can be repaired upon rewetting [6,7]. The characterisation of these molecular mechanisms has potential agronomic value, but there are few resources available that may facilitate the characterisation of these processes. Genetic resources have been established for the systematic study and classification of lichen, (reviewed in [3]). Lichens have not yet been investigated within a genomics context, and there is little in the way of genome sequence data available for any lichen species.
The availability of methods for the purification of high quality ribonucleic acids (RNA) is essential for studies aimed at constructing cDNA libraries or performing arraybased hybridisations where microgram quantities of concentrated and chemically pure mRNA may be required. RNA isolation in lichen is complicated by the abundance of protective secondary metabolites and polysaccharides, chemicals known to interfere with RNA isolation protocols that lower both the yield and quality of the extracted total RNA [8]. In addition slow growing lichen tissues contain modest concentrations of mRNA, and as a result a larger mass of starting tissue, and multiple extraction steps are required to purify sufficient RNA.
It is the aim of our research to develop genomic resources for the fructicose lichen, Cladonia rangiferina. We have evaluated and optimised a process for RNA isolation from the secondary metabolite rich tissues of Cladonia rangiferina that balance the needs of sample purity for downstream library construction, cost and labour requirements.
Methods
Sample collection and pre-treatment
Clumps of Cladonia rangiferina were collected from the island of Kuusisto in Kaarina, Finland. The lichen was cleaned and stored desiccated at -20°C as this has been found to be the best way to store lichen samples [9]. Prior to RNA isolation the dry lichen material was weighed and rewetted with tap water overnight. The samples were powdered in liquid nitrogen using mortar and pestle.
Sigma Spectrum Plant Total RNA kit
RNA extraction was performed according to the manufacturer's instructions (Sigma Aldrich, USA). The amount of starting tissue used was 100 mg of lichen tissue.
TRIzol reagent
An extraction procedure was modified from the manufacturer's (Invitrogen, USA)
instructions by adding an additional chloroform extraction step after the first chloroform extraction and replacing the isopropanol precipitation with ethanol precipitation at -80°C for 2 hours. Different lichen tissue/ TRIzol reagent ratios were evaluated with 1 g of lichen tissue in a 15 ml volume of TRIzol reagent being optimal.
Dong & Dunstan
The extraction protocol was modified from [10] by replacing the LiCl precipitation with ethanol precipitation at 80°C for 2 hours. 1 g of lichen tissue was added to 15 ml of extraction buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl pH 8.0, 300 mM NaCl, 5 mM EDTA, 2% SDS, 0.5% polyvinylpyrrolidone MW 360 000) added with 0.5 mM aurintricarboxylic acid and 14.3 mM β-mercaptoethanol. After a 10-minute incubation at 65°C and centrifugation, 0.7 ml of 3 M potassium acetate (pH 4.8) was added to the supernatant followed by incubation on ice for 30 minutes and centrifugation. The supernatant was precipitated with ethanol instead of LiCl, dissolved in water and extracted once with phenol and twice with phenol-chloroform-isoamylalcohol (24:23:1). The RNA was precipitated with ethanol and dissolved in water.
CTAB + RNeasy Midi kit
The CTAB protocol was modified from Gooding, et al [11], who had modified the pine tree RNA extraction method [12]. 1 g of lichen tissue was added to 10 ml of pre-warmed (65°C) extraction buffer (2% CTAB, 2% polyvinylpyrrolidone MW 40 000, 200 mM Tri-HCl pH 8.0, 25 mM EDTA, 2 M NaCl, 0.5 g/l spermidine) added with 2% β-mercaptoethanol. The mixture was extracted twice with phenol-chloroform (1:1) and the supernatant was added to an equal volume of NTES buffer (1 M NaCl, 0.5% SDS, 10 mM, Tris-HCl pH 8.0, 1 mM EDTA) and chloroform (1:1). The RNA was precipitated with ethanol and dissolved in water. The extracted total RNA was cleaned using the RNeasy Midi Kit (Qiagen, Germany) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Approximately 20 samples were pooled into one clean-up column.
Quality assessments
The extracted total RNA samples were stored at -80°C and concentrations were measured spectrophotometrically in Tris-EDTA buffer solution using the NanoDrop instru-
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ment (NanoDrop Technologies, Wilmington, USA). The purity of the total RNA was assessed using the A 260/280 and A 260/230 ratios given by NanoDrop. Quality was also inspected visually following gel electrophoresis of denatured RNAs.
cDNA library construction
mRNA was isolated from the total RNA with Nucleo-Trap mRNA kit (Macherey-Nagel, Duren, Germany). A phage cDNA library was constructed from the mRNA using the ZAP-cDNA ® Gigapack ® III Gold Cloning (#200450) cDNA library synthesis kit (Stratagene, La Jolla, USA) according to manufacturer's instructions. Size fractionation was achieved using gel electrophoresis. Gel slices corresponding of between 500-1000 bp and 1000-3000 bp in size were excised and gel purified cDNA was cloned into a phage library. cDNA library clones were sequenced on an ABI PRISM 3130xl Genetic Analyzer capillary DNA sequencer following a BigDye v3.1 (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, USA) labelling reaction.
Sequence analysis
Computational analysis of the raw sequence data was performed using the openSputnik sequence analysis platform [13]. BLASTX [14] was used to compare the Cladonia sequences to the NCBI non-redundant protein sequence database [15]. BLASTX matches were filtered using an arbitrary cutoff of 1e-10 and sequences were assigned as plant or fungal homologs using the NCBI Taxonomy [16] mappings and custom scripts implemented in the R statistical language.
Results
Evaluation of competing methods for RNA isolation efficiency
We evaluated a panel of four robust methods (Sigma Spectrum kit, TRIzol reagent, Dong and Dunstan and CTAB) that yielded varying quantities of total RNA. The CTAB method was supplemented with a further RNA puri- fication with a commercial RNA cleaning kit to yield a fifth method. The yield and purity of the extracted total RNA from these five RNA isolation procedures is presented in table 1.
The Sigma Spectrum plant total RNA kit produces highquality total RNA with a good yield and a hands-on time of 30-45 minutes. The biggest drawback of the method is the limited amount of starting tissue (100 mg) that can be used per column. To obtain the needed 1000 μg of total RNA for the subsequent mRNA isolation for cDNA library construction, over 30 g of lichen tissue is required. This represents at least 300 extractions, which renders the method both time-consuming and prohibitively expensive.
With TRIzol reagent and Dong & Dunstan method the yield is superior to the other methods, but the purity of the extracted total RNA is insufficient. The A 260/230 ratios are low and indicate the presence of polysaccharides and/ or secondary metabolites. Modifying the TRIzol procedure by adding a second chloroform extraction step and replacing the isopropanol precipitation with ethanol precipitation slightly improved the A 260/280 ratio while the yield remained similar. LiCl precipitation step was omitted from CTAB method and replaced with ethanol precipitation in Dong & Dunstan method as this step radically reduced the RNA yield. When the RNA extracted using the TRIzol reagent or Dong & Dunstan method was further purified with RNeasy clean-up kit, superior A 260/280 and A 260/230 ratios were obtained. When resolved by gel electrophoresis, the RNA extracted with TRIzol reagent appeared to be of better quality than that extracted according to Dong & Dunstan method (results not shown). TRIzol reagent is expensive, thus the projected volumes required would support the application of a more cost effective RNA extraction protocol as the Dong & Dunstan method appears to yield RNA of insufficient quality.
Table 1: A comparison of different RNA isolation procedures
Shown is the method along with average nucleotide yield from starting material (μg/g) and the standard deviation from at least six extractions. The A 260/280 and A 260/230 ratios provide insight as to the quality of the resultant nucleotides - an extraction of sufficient quality for cDNA library construction should have ratio quality values of approximately 2.0. Also shown are estimates of time (h) and costs (Euro) required for the extraction of 1 mg of total RNA - this is a typically required amount for mRNA purification for cDNA library synthesis or for genome resequencing techniques.
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The CTAB method alone yields approximately half the amount of RNA compared to TRIzol reagent or Dong & Dunstan method, but with supplementary RNeasy cleanup the A 260/280 and A 260/230 ratios were suitable. Expensive chemicals are not required for the CTAB method, it can easily be scaled up if needed, with a hands-on time of around 4 hours for six samples. Total RNA extracted using the CTAB method contained considerable genomic DNA contamination. After purification with the RNeasy cleanup kit, which includes a DNase I treatment, the DNA contamination was no longer visible following denaturing gel electrophoresis (figure 1), but there was a marked decrease in RNA yield following the step. Although this combined method is labour intensive and uses much time, cost is a driving factor. The complete protocol is summarised in the Appendix.
A total of 1024 μg of total RNA from six CTAB+RNeasy RNA isolations were pooled, and the pooled ribonucleotides were used for construction of a phage cDNA library. Library titres of 2.4 × 10 6 and 3.1 × 10 6 PFU/ml for the 500-1000 bp and 1000-3000 bp fractions respectively were measured. The cDNA inserts of one 96 well plate from each size fractionated library were sequenced on a
capillary DNA sequencer. The size of the lichen cDNA library sequences ranged between 200 and 800 bp (data not shown), with the majority of sequences falling in the range of 200 to 500 bp. BLASTX [14] analysis of the clustered consensus sequence following vector masking and CAP3 [17] EST clustering revealed that 70/170 (41%) of sequences match known sequences within the NCBI nonredundant protein sequence database (Additional file 1). Of these, 19 appear to match sequences of only fungal origin using the arbitrary expectation value of 1e-10. Four sequences appear to match plant sequences, but not fungal sequences. The sequence collection has been deposited in the dbEST database of expressed sequence tags under the GenBank accessions GH717691 - GH717859.
Discussion
Little research has been performed on lichen at the molecular biological level and the available molecular resources for lichen species are focused towards taxonomic systematics and on the evolution of lichens. We have compared and optimised five different methods for extracting total RNA from Cladonia rangiferina.
The secondary metabolites present in lichen tissues interfere with conventional RNA extraction procedures and in the subsequent first strand cDNA synthesis. Using the mRNA from a standard RNA isolation/mRNA purification in cDNA library construction has resulted in disappointing titre counts (results not shown). It is essential, and ultimately cost-effective, to combine a conventional RNA isolation method with a commercial RNA clean-up kit to produce sufficiently clean RNA. Conventional methods allow for the amount of starting tissue to be scaled up as needed, such that impure total RNA can be extracted in large quantities. The conventional procedure best suited for lichen RNA isolation appears to be the CTAB method. The remaining polysaccharides and secondary metabolites are effectively removed in the following clean-up step, resulting in high quality total RNA with A 260/280 and A 260/230 ratios >2.
The overall yield from the optimised CTAB method with subsequent sample clean-up is less than 10 μg of total RNA per gram of starting tissue. This is much lower than the amount of RNA extracted from other model organisms, or the measured yields from the other methods (table 1). The RNA yield is lower than the commercial extraction kit, but is also less expensive. Extracting high quality total RNA from slow growing organisms with their low RNA concentrations is complicated. The need for aggressive cleaning of a first "dirty" RNA extraction leads to a dramatic decrease in yield, but at least the increase in quality renders the material usable within contemporary genomics workflows that include library construction and cDNA sequencing.
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Conclusion
While there is undoubtedly scope for the further improvement of RNA yields from lichen using inexpensive methods, we have shown a simple approach for the extraction of RNA of sufficiently high quality for reverse transcription and cDNA library construction. The total RNA extracted in this fashion has successfully been used for cDNA library construction and the quality of the resulting sequences has been validated and has yielded the first reindeer lichen ESTs. The commercial extraction kit and our preferred CTAB - clean-up method are both equally demanding in terms of hands-on laboratory time, and future improvements could be made to reduce this.
A preliminary analysis of these first ESTs reveals that there is an expected bias towards sequences of a fungal origin, although sequences more related to algal or plant species are also observed (Additional file 1). The many apparently novel sequences suggests that the transcriptome sampling of lichens may be used to identify novel genes and may be used to characterise the molecular mechanisms that allow lichens to survive some of the harshest environments.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
SJ conducted the experiments and drafted the manuscript. KJL conducted cDNA library construction. SR performed the EST sequence analysis and drafted the manuscript.
Appendix
Abbreviated protocol for the two step CTAB - RNA cleanup protocol for RNA extraction from Cladonia rangiferina
1. Grind 1 g of lichen tissue in liquid nitrogen with mortar and pestle
2. Add 10 ml of prewarmed (65°C) extraction buffer (2% CTAB, 2% polyvinylpyrrolidone MW 40 000, 200 mM Tri-HCl pH 8.0, 25 mM EDTA, 2 M NaCl, 0.5 g/l spermidine) with 2% β-mercaptoethanol
3. Extract twice with phenol-chloroform (1:1)
4. Add equal volume of NTES buffer (1 M NaCl, 0.5% SDS, 10 mM, Tris-HCl pH 8.0, 1 mM EDTA) and chloroform (1:1) to the supernatant
5. Precipitate RNA with ethanol and dissolve in water
Clean RNA using QIAgen RNeasy columns according to manufacturer's instructions
Additional material
Additional file 1
Cladonia rangiferina unigene sequences with a BLASTX match. The collated results from the Cladonia rangiferina unigene sequences having BLASTX matches against protein sequences in the NCBI NonRedundant protein sequence database exceeding the arbitrary expectation value of 1e10. For each sequence is shown the NCBI accession and species of origin for the best matching sequence and the number of distinct plant, and fungal species (satisfying the 1e-10 expectation value threshold) matched. This can be used to identify tentative fungal and plant-specific sequences. The sequences flagged with a '*' appear fungal specific, while sequences flagged with the '†' have plant or algal sequence matches and no fungal matches, but may also match sequences of animal, protist or bacterial origin. Click here for file
[http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/supplementary/17560500-2-204-S1.XLS]
Acknowledgements
The work was funded by Academy of Finland (project number FI-2960501). We thank Soili Stenroos for helpful discussions as to selection of lichen material and Arto Puolasmaa for his invaluable assistance in field work.
References
1. Ahmadjian V: The lichen symbiosis. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 1993.
2. Collins CR, Farrar JF: Structural resistance to mass transfer in the lichen Xanthoria parietina. New Phytologist 1978, 81:71-83.
3. DePriest PT: Early molecular investigations of lichen-forming symbionts: 1986-2001. Annual Review of Microbiology 2004, 58:273-301.
4. Hawksworth DL, Kirk PM, Sutton BC, Pegler DN: Dictionary of the fungi. Wallingford: CAB; 1995.
5. Sancho L, de la Torre R, Horneck G, Ascaso C, de Los Rios A, Pintado A, Wierzchos J, Schuster M: Lichens survive in space: results from the 2005 LICHENS experiment. Astrobiology 2007, 7(3):443-454.
6. Huneck S: The significance of lichens and their metabolites. Naturwissenschaften 1999, 86(12):559-570.
7. Kranner I: Glutathione status correlates with different degrees of desiccation tolerance in three lichens. New Phytologist 2002, 154(2):451-460.
8. Logemann J, Schell J, Willmitzer L: Improved method for the isolation of RNA from plant tissues. Anal Biochem 1987, 163(1):16-20.
9. Honegger R: The impact of different long-term storage conditions on the viability of lichen-forming ascomycetes and their green algal photobiont, Trebouxia spp. Plant Biology 2003, 5(3):324-330.
10. Dong J, Dunstan DI: A reliable method for extraction of RNA from various conifer tissues. Plant Cell Reports 1996, 15:516-521.
11. Gooding PS, Bird C, Robinson SP: Polyphenol oxidase activity
and gene expression in the fruit of Goldfinger bananas (AAAB, FHIA-01). INFOMUSA 2001, 10(2):17-22.
12. Chang S, Puryear J, Cairney J: A simple method for isolating RNA from pine trees. Plant Molecular Biology Reporter 1993, 11:113-116.
13. Rudd S: openSputnik--a database to ESTablish comparative plant genomics using unsaturated sequence collections. Nucleic Acids Res 2005:D622-627.
14. Altschul S, Gish W, Miller W, Myers E, Lipman D: Basic local alignment search tool. J Mol Biol 1990, 215(3):403-410.
15. Benson DA, Karsch-Mizrachi I, Lipman DJ, Ostell J, Wheeler DL: GenBank. Nucleic Acids Res 2008:D25-30.
16. Wheeler DL, Barrett T, Benson DA, Bryant SH, Canese K, Chetvernin V, Church DM, Dicuccio M, Edgar R, Federhen S, et al.: Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Nucleic Acids Res 2008:D13-21.
17. Huang X, Madan A: CAP3: A DNA sequence assembly program. Genome Res 1999, 9(9):868-877.
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Tears of Heaven
Tears of Heaven
By
RobRoy McCandless
Wild Child Publishing.com Culver City, California
Tears of Heaven
Tears of Heaven Copyright © 2013 by RobRoy McCandless Cover illustration by Tinker Productions For information on the cover art, please contact email@example.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Editor: S.R.Howen
ISBN:
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Wild Child Publishing.com P.O. Box 4897 Culver City, CA 90231-4897
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Tears of Heaven
Acknowledgements
No work of fiction is ever conceived in a vacuum. I'm grateful to take this opportunity to express my deepest and humblest gratitude to those who have been instrumental in the successful completion of this book. First, I'm indebted to my dear wife who gave me the laptop on which the first drafts of this story were written, and kept telling me I would be published even as the rejections kept coming. My mother and father, who have always encouraged my writing. My brother, who answered my questions on Latin. My Train Family, who patiently listened to my ramblings. The FAOBM group, who provide the best color commentary. Finally, to my editor and writing mentor, without whom I'd still be using crayons and recycled printer paper.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Porter, Tristan and Xavier. The angels in my life.
Chapter One Variation Under Nature
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.
They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:4
June 14, 223 BCE
She stood tall, proud, strong, beautiful, wearing only heavy shackles, in the warm sun. A bright sheen of sweat made her olive skin glisten and sparkle. She was almost completely devoid of hair, a point that Aeschylus, the slavemaster and auctioneer, was demonstrating even now. He ordered her to lift her arms and open her legs so that all could inspect this fine specimen of femininity.
Damascus, Dami to his friends, didn't know all the tricks of the slave trade, but hair could be removed, paints and tinctures could be used to hide scars and wash over the average. So the features of the slave girl didn't particularly strike him.
Still, there was something about her, something that reminded him of . . .
Carefully and casually, so as to not draw attention, he hefted his money pouch tied to his broad leather belt, and opposite his short sword. He weighed its likely worth against the likely worth of the girl and knew he was already outbid.
"Aeolus," he whispered to the man next to him. The short, stocky man didn't turn away from the bidding, but he
4
did cock his curly head to one side to let Dami know he listened. "How much have you?"
"For her?" Aeolus shrugged. "You'd have to pay me."
Aeolus laughed at his own joke, which to Dami always sounded like a cross between a cough and a bark.
"Come now, how much?"
"Look at her," Aeolus said, as he unfolded one arm from across his broad chest and gestured with his thick-fingered hand. "She has no hips, at least not enough for one or two babes, and her breasts are not even a half handful. A child will starve trying to suckle. There's no meat on her, and what there is looks to be field muscle. She has nothing to give a growing child warmth. She's not worth a shekel for birthing."
"I don't want her to give children," Dami replied.
"What good is a slave girl except for children? Oh sure, you love them at your whim, but when they grow older, what's the point? If they haven't given you daughters to marry or sell, and sons to make you immortal, you're just wasting your seed."
"Pah," Dami replied, now slightly annoyed. "You have no soul, man."
"Sold it," Aeolus replied, with another barking laugh. "Kept getting in the way. Got a good price for it too."
"And drank it on a single cup of vinegar-wine," Dami retorted. "Come now, Aeolus, I know you won well on the horses last night, and you've been lucky at the dice cups all week. You're carrying half my profits."
"I'd have all your profits, if you could hold your drink," Aeolus replied. "But I don't mean to part with any of them until that plump little thing comes up; she'll bear five or ten babes with ease, and not a one will ever starve. And I mean to have me a horse as well, so stop asking."
"Fifteen shekels?" Aeschylus cried in mock exasperation. "Is that all I'm bid on the fine, the fair Water Lily? Come now, she will keep your bed warm at night, and during the day too." He turned her around and slapped her rump. "See, firm and ready for the right man to set his plow. Now what am I bid? Give me good bids for Water Lily!"
"Seventeen," a voice cried out.
"Nineteen," another replied.
Dami caught sight of the girl again. Where most slaves cowered, watched the crowd and followed the voices, to see what manner of men might own them, this girl didn't seem to pay any attention to the process. She held her head high and haughty, and except for the chains at wrist and ankle, she looked for all the world as if she owned the place. As if she didn't care a whit that there wasn't a stitch of clothing to cover her, or that she even needed it to be out in public.
Heavy chains, too, Dami noted.
"What would a sailor do with a horse?" Dami asked, but Aeolus ignored him. "Her name is Water Lily. That's a good omen for sailors."
"Twenty shekels," a new voice sang out.
"Aeolus . . ." Dami began again.
"Zeus's left ball!" Aeolus swore. "Stop your crying. You sound like a mewling calf." He pulled his leather money bag free from his belt and shoved it hard into Dami's stomach. Dami grunted, half in surprise and half in jest.
"There's thirty shekels in there," Aeolus said. "See that I get something back."
"Aeolus . . ." Dami began with a huge grin painted on his face.
"Shut up," Aeolus cut him off. "You owe me it all back and interest, may the gods feast on your liver."
6
He began to make his way through the crowd in mock disgust. "'What would a sailor do with a horse?' Blightbitten, mewling, whining . . ."
Dami smiled at Aeolus' retreating form.
Horses.
I'll never give it over for horses, Dami thought. Smelly beasts, no good for sailing men.
"Twenty-four," a now familiar voice raised the last bid. Dami looked over to see Dreskin, the butcher, shoot a nervous look at Aeschylus and back at the girl.
He's in over his head, Dami thought. He got caught up in the bidding, and now he's hoping someone will outbid him and save him the coin.
There was silence for a time, and Dami, an old hand at such auctions, held his breath. In his chest, his heart hammered as he prepared to save Dreskin and win the girl in one move. He stroked his chin as if he was considering a bid, and watched Dreskin. Sure enough, as the silence deepened and Aeschylus waited with a practiced patience, Dreskin began to look around him, desperation clear in his eyes.
"Twenty-five," Dami shouted. Dreskin deflated in relief.
Aeschylus looked to Dreskin to see if he would enter another bid, and Dreskin put on an impressive show of considering the slave girl.
She's no good for breeding, Dami thought at Dreskin. Come on, give over.
"Turn her around again," Dreskin requested, and Aeschylus motioned for the girl to turn. At first, she didn't move, but Aeschylus placed his hand on his waist where his short whip was shoved into his belt, and she began to turn around slowly.
Dreskin stroked his bearded chin, but Dami wasn't worried. Dreskin was obviously relieved, and probably for the same reasons that Aeolus hadn't wanted the girl. Now
Dami had to be patient, look disinterested in whether Dreskin raised the bid or not, as if the girl was another piece of chattel up on the block.
Finally Dreskin shook his head at Aeschylus.
"No?" Aeschylus asked the small crowd. "No more? She may not have much, but they say that hard women birth hard sons. Sons that will tend your goods, and fight in coming wars. No, none? Come, come good men."
Twenty-five shekels was a months' pay for some of these men, it was two months for others. No one was going to risk that much money on a girl so skinny and proud. It would take too much time and effort for her to learn her place and act the proper slave.
"None," Aeschylus said, and paused. "None. None. The deal is done!"
He raised up his hands, dropped them both to point at Dami and then pointed to a table where Aeschylus' moneychanger sat. Dami gave a slight bow of his head, and began to move through the men who still looked up to the slaver's block. Aeschylus motioned, and a Nubian, easily a head taller and a stone heavier than Dami, came forward and took the girl by the chains.
Dami approached the table. The man sitting there looked up.
"Twenty-five shekels," the man said, as he began to tally. "It's another shekel if you want her robed, and another three if you want to keep the chains."
He looked up at Dami, as the Nubian brought the girl toward them, still naked and glistening in the sun. The moneychanger leaned forward and motioned Dami to come closer.
"This one," he said. "I suggest you keep the chains. I'll give you a good price for them. They were made for her special."
"Ha," Dami laughed. "How much trouble can one slip of a girl be?"
"I jest not, good sir," the moneychanger replied. "The chains are twice as heavy as Aeschylus uses, and that includes the men for laborers. Why would he waste good iron on a girl?"
Dami paused at that. The initial offer he'd considered to be a ploy to separate more of his money, and Aeolus', from the pouch. The Nubian slave-guard brought the girl to a stop near the table, but he kept at arm's length from her.
The girl caught his gaze, and bright hatred of him glowed there. Not of him personally. She gave the same look to every man who dared to meet her eyes. No, she was . . . angry.
Angry enough to kill? Dami wondered. Don't drop anchor in a port you can't get back out of.
"Two shekels for the iron and the robe," Dami responded without taking his gaze from the girl, "and you deliver her to my ship."
"The iron alone . . ."
"You said yourself that the iron is more than you would use for even the men," Dami responded. "They won't serve you future use."
"Fine, four shekels for robe, irons and delivery," the man replied.
"Two shekels, twelve," Dami replied.
"Three shekels, and I'll see the robe isn't flea-ridden."
"Done," Dami replied. "But if I see a single flea . . ."
"Do you need it counted for you?" the moneychanger interrupted, eager to get past the implied threats and move on with the business.
"No thanks," Dami replied with a grin. "I probably couldn't afford the fee."
Tears of Heaven
And you might be able to really cheat me, Dami thought. Men who couldn't read and couldn't count were always at a disadvantage against those who could. It was simple enough to miss a few numbers, or slip an extra coin or three out of the mix.
He opened his pouch first, and emptied seven shekels onto the table. Then he dug into Aeolus' pouch and counted out twenty-one more. The moneychanger weighed each coin against one of his own, then deposited them into an ironbound hardwood box.
"What ship?" the moneychanger asked.
"The Wavedancer," Dami replied. "She's berthed off the Sumar quarter."
The moneychanger gestured to the Nubian, and the big, dark skinned man moved off with the girl.
Dami pulled an extra shekel from Aeolus' pouch and placed it on the table. His finger held the coin firmly against the rough wood.
"A nice robe," Dami suggested, "and she's there before sunset?"
The moneychanger looked up at Dami, down at the shekel and over toward where Aeschylus was extolling the virtues of his latest piece of flesh. He reached out and took the shekel, sliding it into his tunic.
"A pleasure, sir." The moneychanger nodded. "A pleasure."
* * * *
November 2, Present Day
"Throne be damned," the rogue hissed.
The fight was not going well. Del should have brought Marrin. Ahadiel had told her to bring Marrin, but that only made certain that she wouldn't.
Del gasped as the rogue landed a solid punch into her stomach and ribs. The air whooshed from her lungs. He followed with a stab of his fingers into her right arm. Coldfilled pain suffused her shoulder and caused it to spasm painfully. She spun away, awkwardly. Her right arm felt like it had been shattered, pulverized into pudding, useless as gelatin. The cold-forged iron spike she'd been holding dropped from useless fingers and clattered to the floor. The rogue looked at her with brutal menace in his eyes and flame licking around the lids.
It would have been a good trick.
If only it was a trick.
The flames were all too real.
Fortunately, Del didn't suffer from the same fears that mortals contended with. A rogue divinity hissing heresy and spouting fire, literal fire, around his eyes would have left a mortal quivering in terror until the Last Judgment.
She'd seen it happen.
"Leave now, little half-breed," the rogue said. His voice had a sibilance that surrounded her, whispering in both of her ears intimately. "Leave, and I will not kill you. Stay, and I will make your pain a torture. I will see you last for days upon days, and I promise you abuses you could not dream."
Del said nothing.
People think they want to meet an angel, but they really don't. The awful truth is that meeting an angel is the scariest, most life-altering moment of any mortal's short existence. Angels have always had their voices raised in songs of praise and their wings dipped in rivers of blood. When the Throne needs a mortal slain, or an army felled, an angel is sent. When a city or nation needs to be leveled, and the ground sown with salt for a thousand years, an angel is the destroyer.
Flood, fire, famine, disease, pestilence and death are conjured through an angel.
Angels should be a human's worst nightmare embodied.
Rogues were an order of magnitude worse. An angel was a messenger of destruction, operating under orders from the Throne. Rogues had no direction, no channel for their power. They sought only dominion through the most direct means possible.
"Go, little girl," the rogue gestured with his right arm, the one where she'd managed to drive a spike through his wrist.
It would have been stupid to engage the rogue, or really any opponent, in conversation. Witty banter was for the movies. Errol Flynn and John Wayne could while away the hours as they faced a bad guy and spouted catchy one-liners.
In the really real world, Del knew better than to take time out of her busy schedule.
She still held a second cold-forged iron spike in her left hand. She wanted to drop it and reach for her last SIG Sauer .45 behind her back. Most melee weapons against a rogue were nearly useless. Unless it was the right weapon. She shifted her grip, stepped into the rogue with speed no mortal could, and stabbed with enough power to lift the rogue off its feet. Rogues might be strong, but the laws of physics were stronger. The foot-long spike punched into the rogue's left shoulder and only her fist on the weapon stopped it.
The Host takes care of their own.
Even if they have to hire it done.
When the rogue landed, he immediately lashed out with inhuman strength, and this time Del was thrown off her feet. She held onto the spike caught in the rogue's arm, and her own shoulder jerked painfully. Not for the first time, she wished she was even the lowest form of immortal.
A mere angel could shrug off the pain that now threatened to overwhelm her.
One of the higher choirs, a Principality or even a Grigori .
. .
Pain washed over her vision and bright red sparks danced in front of her eyes. When she thought her shoulder would come clear of its socket, the rogue gave ground. It wasn't much, and even in her current state, Del wasn't certain it would be enough, but it would have to do. She clumsily seated her feet on the ground, uncertain of the positioning, gripped the spike firmly, and threw all her weight backward. She thought that she would bend in half before the rogue was thrown. His body slammed hard enough into the floor that ceramic tiles popped and shattered, cutting around them like shrapnel.
She didn't waste the time she'd gained. Del dropped her knee down hard on the rogue's chest and caved it in. The rogue's eyes went from slightly stunned to pain-filled and angry. The Host may not have mastered, or had even an understanding, of most emotions, but anger, righteous or otherwise, was right up their alley.
Her right arm hung useless, but since her left was dominant, it didn't matter. She jerked the cold-forged iron spike free of the rogue's shoulder and slid forward on his chest, so that his head rested between her knees, while the balance of her weight rested on his shoulders and immobilized his arms. Her more than powerful thighs clamped down on his jaws and seized his head.
In any other context she would have thought they were doing a porn scene.
In this context, she almost wished she were doing a porn scene. It would have been less painful, except to her dignity.
There were things even Del wouldn't do for money.
His arms flailed, powerful but useless. He tried to claw at her, to gash huge bloody rends in her legs. All he could manage was to tear the floor with ear-shrieking scratches. Now, desperation entered the mix in his eyes.
Desperation was something only a few divinities truly understood.
About one in three knew it intimately, and every one of them was a rogue.
"Omnia glorium Solii," she spoke the words as she brought the cold-forged iron spike up above her head. She couldn't help but say them. They were automatic, a natural force, like gravity. All for the glory of the Throne.
She brought the spike down, hard and fast, slamming it between her knees. It went into the rogue's right eye, destroying the chakram, out through the back of his skull, through the ceramic floor and stopped two inches into the concrete. The rogue's head was pinned to the house's foundation.
Whoa, Del thought, and shuddered from the force she'd exerted.
"It is finished," she intoned aloud, the words flowed out of her without conscious effort.
Power flowed out from the rogue's body into the air and the earth, and partly into her. Power, like a strong wind danced all around her, grabbing at her clothing and her hair. She rolled off the rogue, and pushed herself away awkwardly with her feet, until her back met a wall. Then she stared, cradled her injured right arm, and gasped for breath.
There was no lightning show or gaping black hole in the floor with the cries of the damned reaching out of Hell itself. Those, Marrin often observed, were only mortal theatrics, a way to visually comprehend the inconceivable. Mortals always had a tough time with intangible concepts. Lust was often mistaken for love; visual beauty was equated with
internal worth, and wealth with wisdom. Death was a skeleton wearing a robe and carrying a scythe.
What did a skeleton need with clothes?
The release of power abated. An almost peaceful silence, in a strange contrast to the titanic fight, replaced it. She glanced at the room, which might have been a kitchen. Holes the size and shape of flying bodies could be seen in almost every wall of the abandoned house. Del was amazed the building, condemned for some time now, still stood after the beating she and the rogue had dished out to each other. Perhaps, it was a testament to the builder who might have believed or hoped his work would stand and serve forever.
The Fallen proved that nothing does.
.
Thirty seconds had passed since she drove the spike into the rogue's head and destroyed the necessary chakram She'd destroyed some of the house's foundation as well. In that time, the rogue changed from a fierce creature the size and shape of Andre the Giant to a representative of the Lollipop Guild.
Not one of the larger reps either.
The rogue's body grew smaller and smaller, more compact, squat and less recognizable. Now, it was the size of a basketball, now, the size of a grapefruit, now, a walnut. Smaller and smaller, until Del could only make out a dust mote that contracted further still.
Then, with a pop no louder than Orville Redenbacher's best, even that vanished.
The iron spike clattered to the ground and steamed slightly.
She left it there. By morning it would crumble into dust.
"Why would anyone want to meet an angel?" Del asked the emptiness.
She pulled her two SIG .45s from the rubble of the house, checked their loads, and returned them to her shoulder holsters. Carefully, she made her way to the waiting Jeep Cherokee, and managed to open the door on the first try. It took a little longer to start the Jeep with her left hand, longer than she liked. The sirens were definitely headed in her direction.
Using her left hand, she put the Jeep in gear, switched the lights on, and pulled calmly away from house. Just another day at the office. She caught a brief glimpse of her own face as she looked in the rearview mirror and paused to inspect the damage.
"Burn," she swore.
Most people thought that she was of Asian descent, but most people were wrong. The epicanthic slant to her eyes and her dark hair supported that conclusion, but that was where the similarities ended. Del dyed her hair from its shockingly snowy white to its current dark brown. Her eyes were a blazing blue that lovers commented on constantly to the point of annoyance, and her skin was almost dark enough to place her as African. Also, she was taller than an average woman, and much taller than almost any Asian woman she'd ever met. Over the last two centuries the mortals had started to catch up to her. Better diet, easier living and access to greater breeding selection had seen to that.
Evolution at its finest.
She glanced again in the mirror and sighed. Her nose was probably broken, and at least one eye would be puffy for the next couple of days until her body healed. Bruises were starting to darken around her throat that matched the rogue's fingers, print for print. It still amazed her that internal injuries, really anything major, would be healed within hours, or days at worst, while external, superficial and completely aesthetic injuries might take days or even weeks.
It was as if her body mocked her for being a half-breed, and made certain she remembered it at every opportunity. A final glance confirmed that the bruise to her eye was growing and would be swollen and black by the morning.
"Damn."
She didn't notice Ahadiel until she was stopped at a red light.
"You may put away your weapon," Ahadiel said. His gaze was focused on hers, and the same uncomfortable shiver trickled through her spine as she looked into his pupil-less depths. Deep, dark blue that swirled the longer she stared.
Ahadiel was near perfect. He was dark-skinned, a color that always reminded her of a Hershey's chocolate bar. His was well-formed and looked as if he worked out every day, though Del knew he didn't. Even had he needed to, his duties would have prevented it. He was half a head taller and a good hundred or more pounds heavier. His head looked close-shaved, but he had no need for a razor, a haircut, or even a shower and deodorant. He looked exactly the same today as he had two hundred years ago, and exactly as he would two hundred from now.
Right down to the half-smile which always seemed to signify that he was in on a joke the rest of the world would never know.
Weapon? she thought. Her mind locked down on the thought, and she looked down at her left hand.
She was obviously more exhausted than she realized.
The SIG was cradled in her left hand and cupped by her lap. It was aimed directly at Ahadiel's nose, her finger curled around the trigger. She didn't remember thumbing the safety off, but as she changed the focus of her eyes she could see that it was. Slowly, calmly, she thumbed the safety back on and slid the SIG back under her right arm.
"I wish you would just call," she said. The rush of exertion overcame her, and she slumped back into her seat. She needed sleep and nothing more strenuous than lifting a glass of absinthe. In her current state, her right arm wouldn't be able to manage even that.
"That . . . technology," Ahadiel said the word with as much scorn as she'd ever heard from him, "does not work for the divine."
"Exactly," Del replied. Although the same problem affected her as well. There was something in their make-up, those crafted by the Throne and their offspring, that caused phones to give nothing but a feedback loop of ear-piercing static. It didn't matter if it was an analog landline or a digital satellite mobile. If Del put her ear to the thing, she'd be as deaf as Quasimodo for a good hour.
"I came to offer you my touch," Ahadiel said. He lifted perfect fingers toward her.
For a moment, she hesitated. Ahadiel was more than simply a beautiful creature. He was perfect. His skin was flawless, and his body the epitome of trained and toned, without being muscle-bound and cumbersome. She could admit to herself that there was an attraction, if only physical, for her. But that was not what Ahadiel meant.
"Don't," she said the word with as much command as she could muster, pleased that her voice didn't crack. The blood in her veins lit on fire as she spoke the syllable. Her body reacted to the thought of another conflict, though she didn't have enough energy left to fight.
Ahadiel looked from her hand to his, closed his fingers and dropped it to his lap. Two perfect chocolate hands, almost good enough to eat. If he'd been mortal, she'd have been well past tempted by now.
"I trust the rogue is banished?" Ahadiel asked, though it sounded more of a statement.
"Have I ever failed?" Del replied. Her voice was tired again as some of the heat in her blood ebbed away.
"Yes," Ahadiel replied. "You have, and on more than one occasion."
"Rhetorical question."
"Such questions do not make sense to me. You have failed, otherwise why broach the subject?"
"Go to Hell."
Ahadiel smiled, broadly, with perfect, brilliantly white teeth, the color they try to make them in toothpaste commercials.
"You asked," his voice trailed off and his face lit up with his smile. "Where is young Marrin?"
Del almost laughed. The idea that Marrin could be called young was ludicrous. It was like calling Mt. Everest short, or the Grand Canyon shallow. While he was younger than Del, it was only by a thousand years or so. In a lifespan such as theirs, that meant that he was the college-age nephew to her recently graduated, and now working in New York, auntie.
But it was not the same for Ahadiel.
To him, who had seen the First Light of the Creation, all things that did not date within a millennium of the Beginning were "young." He counted his age in eons, epochs.
"I sent him out for milk," Del replied, and let the sarcasm show plainly in her voice.
"You would likely not be in this state if he had come with," Ahadiel responded, almost mothering in his chiding.
Del wasn't certain if it was the adult-like tone or the slow manner of his speech that annoyed her most.
Behind them, a horn honked its annoyance. Del looked up. The traffic light was green, and she pressed the accelerator harder than she should have. Ahadiel slammed into his seat. She smiled to herself, glad to see him thrown even a little off by the sudden movement. It reminded her that while the Throne might be infallible, Its servants were not.
"The Throne is pleased with your recent successes," Ahadiel began again.
"Aren't we all," Del replied. "I even cleaned my room and did all my homework. Do I get an ice cream?"
"We would like to offer you another job."
He said the statement simply, almost as if he was asking her to take a left at the next light. As if she would accept and that would be the end of it.
"By 'you', I'm guessing you mean 'you guys' or the more proper 'y'all'?"
"You have been more . . . successful since Marrin joined you," Ahadiel replied.
"I don't like him."
"Yes, you do. You like him very much. You like him because, in this vast world, he is one of the few you can call kin. You like him because he is younger, and in some ways less mature, less experienced than you. You like that because it gives you the opportunity to teach. You like to teach your skills. It has given you a sense of self and of generation, something forbidden you. Also . . ."
"Fine, fine," Del interrupted. "I like him. It's you I hate."
"That is, at least, more honest, if not more accurate," Ahadiel responded with that same, slow, paced voice. "So, you will take Marrin for the job."
"I haven't said I will take the job. I haven't even recovered from this job," she said, as realization hit her. "That's why you offered your touch, isn't it? The job has to be done now, doesn't it?"
Del slammed on the brakes and pulled the Jeep to the curb, jerking both of them when she stopped abruptly. Horns sounded all around them, but Del paid them no heed.
"Goddamnit, Ahadiel!" she yelled and slammed her good hand against the steering wheel hard enough to bend the plastic and the metal underneath. Ahadiel actually winced at the blasphemy, as if Del had slapped him. His smile disappeared and his gaze narrowed and hardened.
"Calm yourself, Omedelia bar-Azazel," Ahadiel warned, the words sounded like a growl. "If you grow angry you become . . . unreasonable. I assure you that I can be most . . . unpleasant if you persist."
The play of power in his voice trickled over her skin like cold spring water. Gooseflesh followed as the syllables reverberated in her ears. The feeling was similar, and at the same time completely opposite, from the power of the rogue as it spoke to her; like water so hot, or so cold, that initially the senses can't discern the difference. It, also, was not a pleasant sound, but the rogue's voice was like that of a bully, and one who is not afraid to fight, but wants to fight to prove himself. Ahadiel's voice was like that of a parent who is about to lose patience with a disobedient child.
A disobedient child warned many times.
But Del had faced the anger of divinities before, faced them and lived.
"My name," she said slowly, carefully, almost in mockery of Ahadiel, "is Del."
It was a small distinction, but one she clung to. Ahadiel looked at her for several quiet moments. His hard gaze met hers with an intensity she had rarely seen.
Slowly, so slowly, like the melting of ice, he smiled. The moonlight lit up his dark skin so that it glowed. The absolute beauty of the divinity sitting in her Jeep struck her to her core. What felt like an electric current passed through her, and she shook. The vibration travelled from her center, out to her arms and legs, and down to her fingers and toes. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted and gave her a warm shiver. An instant longing rose in her, the mix of lust and love for the creature, unbidden and unchecked. Everything about him was wonderful, was perfect, was worthy of her love, was worthy of her body. He was the embodiment of her deepest desires made flesh and presented to her. She wanted to unwrap him, and started to move toward him to do so.
Something interrupted her movement. The seatbelt, doing its job, held her outstreached arm six inches from his shoulder.
That obstacle allowed her mind to reassert itself. Not much, but enough that she could make the attempt to clamp down on her runaway emotions.
She struggled to keep herself from unclipping the belt and falling forward in abasement before the power, before the Power. The need to acknowledge this, to worship its Source in the most basic of ways nearly overwhelmed her. This was the feeling that many great men and women had felt before her, the near rapture of presence that a servant of the Throne could bring to bear.
Bring to bear, and use to command.
Mortals were, almost without exception, unable to resist. Queens and kings, emperors, and the mighty, had all fallen to their knees, to their faces, and made themselves humble in this Power's presence while they writhed on their bellies in the dust. Some mortals even longed for the sensation, the engulfing, mind-numbing, ego-shattering experience that would bring them a step or two closer to their version of deity.
But those who had felt the Power knew it for the scariest moment in their short lives. The loss of self, the loss of will and control, was something that could break all but the strongest or the most humble. It would reveal the soft core of a great man, or the hard steel of a small child. It was the true understanding of being infinitely small within an infinitely vast universe. A universe that was ordered and controlled, but was so large and complex that even the simplest rules could barely be grasped. It held a full-length mirror up to the soul, and the walls came tumbling down.
The hand of the Throne was truly a mighty force.
Burn all angels, Del thought, and the momentary rebellion helped steel her mind.
"You are strong, for a mortal," Ahadiel said slowly, and Del felt the weight of his Voice. His gaze moved across her skin from her smallest toes to the ends of her black hair. It was as if she were naked to the inch, fleshless, and he saw her soul, bare, exposed, fragile.
The desire he invoked made her want to be naked and to bear her soul to him.
Almost.
It wasn't much, but it was enough.
Her experience with the divine and her heritage hadn't made her immune, not by a cannon shot. It did, though, help her resist. As a big man might be able to take a bite from a rattlesnake and not suffer more than a day's worth of weakness, so too Del could absorb the power that radiated from Ahadiel, and hold her soul just outside his total influence.
Ahadiel hit a light switch and the feeling left her.
She shuddered as if cold and could still feel the ghost fingers on her arms, legs, chest, back and face. A lover's caress from only moments before. She could even feel them inside her, deep, as if Ahadiel still touched her on a level no mortal could ever reach. A level no mortal could even know except for the presence of the Divine.
She closed her eyes, ignored the instant warning her mind cried out, and focused on breathing. Slowly, in through her nose, then even more slowly out through her mouth. She counted, paused, and counted again, as she'd been taught.
In a few more moments, when she regained her composure, she opened her eyes to find Ahadiel smiling at her with that same in-joke smile.
"You are one of the strongest," Ahadiel complimented her.
"If you ever do that again . . ." Del began, but wasn't certain what threat she would actually be able to follow through with. Ahadiel, cocked his head to one side and looked curiously at her, as if he too wondered what she would say.
He was amused.
"If you wish me to work for you, you will not do that again," Del said lamely. It didn't feel like much of a threat. The Throne could hire any gun it wanted, and had on occasions when she refused the job or couldn't finish it. But, after a few months or a few years, even a few decades, they always came back to her. In the end, she still owed Ahadiel, and they both knew it. Plus, she had a singular advantage over most of her competition.
She and Marrin both.
Ahadiel nodded slowly and reached into his jacket. Warning bells went off instantly. Del pulled the SIG again, smoothly, effortlessly, as if it leapt from the shoulder holster into her waiting hand.
This time she remembered thumbing the safety off.
The sudden movement caused Ahadiel to stop. He went completely and utterly still. Not even breath stirred in him. It was an impressive trick that Del had only seen a few times. Usually, it preceded an equally impressive display of swift and unstoppable violence. Her gaze caught on the black leather strap over Ahadiel's right shoulder that she hadn't noticed until now. Whether it was a pool cue case, an architect's blueprint tube, or even a musician's instrument case, Del didn't know and didn't care. Ahadiel and his kind never went anywhere without a blade. Even the Fallen had their edges. To Del, the weapons were appropriate in the hands of immortals, as if the use of modern tools of war were improper, anachronistic.
"Do you really think . . ." he began, then shook his head. "You do, do you not? But you would. Your paranoia has kept you alive."
"It's only paranoia if no one is out to get you," Del said automatically, her focus never moving from her target. The gun in her hand didn't waver.
"It is," Ahadield said, "too . . . confined to wield a blade in this carriage."
That didn't assuage Del's concern. Even without a sword, Ahadiel was stronger than any mortal. He was stronger than Del, or Marrin, or almost any combination thereof. He could bench press her Jeep for warm-ups, and he was well within grabbing distance. If he got his hands on her . . .
Time and a place, Del told herself. Time and a place.
Ahadiel wasn't here to kill her, or one of them would already be dead.
She nodded and allowed him to pull an archaic, soft leather bi-fold from his pocket and place it on the dash. It was about eight inches by four inches of tooled leather worked in an obscure pattern that may or may not have meaning. A clasp that was certainly of the purest silver and leather tie-down completed the archaic look of the thing.
Del stared at it as if it were a serpent.
"The fee is standard," Ahadiel said. "It will include exclusion from the List for an additional five years."
The List.
Capital "L."
He didn't need to say more.
She nodded slowly but kept the SIG trained on his head. Briefly, she imagined emptying the magazine into that perfect face and watching it explode. There would be no blood or brain matter, only flesh and the smell of fresh flowers. It appealed to her darker nature in a way that no mortal could understand.
"I see what you are thinking, Omedelia," Ahadiel said calmly. "Though spent and injured, the battle-lust is still strong in you, as it was in your . . ."
He let the thought trail off, but Del finished it for him.
"As it was in my father."
"As it was in your father," Ahadiel said. Del wasn't certain if he was capable of pity or remorse, but his voice managed to convey the emotions. She closed her eyes a second time, but no warning bells went off in her head now. Without looking, she thumbed the safety on and holstered the SIG.
"Is everything on the dash?" she asked.
"Not quite," Ahadiel replied.
Del's eyes snapped open and locked on Ahadiel's, only to stare into the endless black depths.
"The Throne does not want any . . . issues with this task," Ahadiel said without any prompting.
"I work with Marrin only," Del replied. "You know that. Even that is a concession."
"Not this time, Omedelia," Ahadiel replied.
"My name," she said, "is Del."
Ahadiel looked at her and gave a partial shrug . Perhaps he'd been among the mortals for too long.
"Not this time," he repeated in exactly the same tone of voice. "The importance is too great, and I understand you need the . . . fee."
"Burn," Del replied again, but she didn't mean it this time. "Burn in Hell."
"Hell is not tangible. I could no more burn there than freeze," Ahadiel replied. "I will leave you with the packet. But understand, if you do not take this . . . this job, the Throne will never offer you another extension from the List."
"You wouldn't," Del replied, astonished. If there was a tale of a servant of the Throne lying, she didn't know it. Rogues and other Fallen, certainly. They rebelled against everything and lies were a small consolation for the price of that rebellion.
But a servant?
Whether it was out of loyalty, or simply the manner of their creation, Del didn't know. She'd met a few who could play on perspectives, so that the truth heard was not the full truth. The truth depended on other knowledge. But an outand-out lie was outside her experience.
Ahadiel had told the truth.
No more jobs. No more exclusion.
What did she have? Maybe twenty years saved up? Maybe thirty? Money wasn't a problem, but if she turned from hunter to prey . . . There wasn't a safe hole on, off, or under the Earth. She might hide for a year, perhaps two, if the Throne didn't consider her a high enough priority.
If her name didn't appear at the top of the List.
But only a few days measured by a life as long as hers. A death sentence and a last meal.
Another gun, or a pair, or perhaps she would rate an entire team, would appear and she would be finished. Oh, she would fight, to be certain, but as the mark, all the Throne truly needed was to point. Maybe not for the first assassin, or even the third, but the Throne would have her.
The Throne had always had her.
"I would not Del," Ahadiel replied. "I like you, though you lack respect and should know better. This comes directly from the Throne. You are probably the best at this work, which is why you have enjoyed exclusion. The Throne knows that you can be replaced, even if it is inconvenient to do so."
"Replaced?" Del asked. "Replaced by who?"
Ahadiel didn't respond. He looked down at his hands folded in his lap, then up at her eyes. He turned to open the door to the Jeep and gave her the perfect shot at his back if she wanted it. She focused on the spot where his neck met his shoulders, where nine rounds would tear his head free, and her finger tightened on the trigger. Ahadiel pulled the door handle and cracked the door and paused.
Shoot him, spike him and finish him, her mind screamed. You've done it before!
It would be so easy.
What worked for a rogue, worked for the Loyal. Destroy the chakram beneath the eyes and he would be banished from the Earth for a generation.
Ahadiel opened the door and a brief cold wind blew at the leather tie of the bi-fold on the dash. The motion was caught in her periphery, and her stare flicked to it for the barest of moments. When she looked back, the Jeep's door slammed shut.
Without even a flutter of his long-coat, Ahadiel was gone.
Chapter Two Struggle for Existence
We saw the Nephilim there. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.
Numbers 13:33
June 14, 223 BCE
"Twenty-nine shekels?" Aeolus made a furious face but he wasn't truly angry with Dami. He needed to yell and rail against his friend from time to time, and this was the perfect moment.
He had, after all, handed his captain the money.
"Twenty-nine," Aeolus continued. "Great Mars' nipple, twenty-nine shekels. There aren't two of her under that robe, are there?"
The girl stood at the bottom of the gang plank, now covered in a rough, but serviceable, brown robe. Her chains were still attached, so the robe was more or less wrapped around her. She clinked with every move.
"Bring her aboard," Dami cried to the big Nubian. He looked up to where Dami and Aeolus stood, then down at the moving water under the dock. Wavedancer bobbed ever so slightly up and down to the rhythms of the ocean.
"No," the Nubian responded. "No ship."
Dami looked to Aeolus and shrugged.
"Are all Nubian's afraid of a little water?" Dami asked.
"Clearly he's heard of you," Aeolus scowled.
Dami moved easily toward the gangplank, his body swayed with the slight motions of the ship. It was an easy task after so many years spent on the sea, but to the rare traveler, it often proved difficult, if not impossible, to master. Dami smiled as he made his way down, careful to keep the railing in easy reach should he need it. A little lost pride was nothing compared to a short fall into vastly cold waters.
"I'll take her," Dami told the Nubian, and he visibly relaxed. Dami held out a fist of small coins, not even a quarter shekel. The Nubian gave Dami a small bow and made the coins disappear.
"You listen, Sahib," the Nubian said. "You listen to Rajeef. This one," he indicated the girl, "she no woman. She has parts, but she no woman. Maskin xul."
Dami nodded.
"My thanks for your concern," Dami replied.
"Maskin xul," the Nubian warned again. "You heed and you live, Sahib."
The Nubian made another small bow, turned and was lost in the crowds on the docks.
Dami turned to the girl and again, his breath was taken away for a moment. Even clothed in the rough robe, she was still a sight. The gaze of her pale eyes locked onto his with an intensity that almost made him reach for his short sword. Then he chided himself for a fool.
She's a woman, Dami thought. Not a big one at that, and she's in chains. What could she possibly do?
"Do you have a name?" Dami asked.
"Do you?" the girl replied, her tongue all acid.
"Aeschylus called you Water Lily, but I doubt that's your real name," Dami said.
"And I doubt Whoreson is yours, but that's what everyone seems to call you."
Anger flashed in Dami briefly, but he was too used to the jibes of Aeolus and the other sailors to take it to heart. Instead, he looked calmly at her and met her cool gaze with his own. It was an old trick, one he'd learned years ago when training dogs. If a man could stare down a dog, when the dog turned their gaze away first, the man would establish dominance. The dog would associate the man's scent from then on with that of the dominant.
This slave girl was no dog, but she was still a slave, bought and paid for. He wouldn't vie for dominance with her at every turn.
The silence deepened, and Dami shifted lightly from one foot to the other. The girl continued to meet his stare almost without a blink. She stood as if rooted to the spot, and her gaze never wavered. The sun had almost finished its decent, and it cast an eerie red light on the both of them.
"Oh, bring her aboard, for the love of the gods," Aeolus interrupted, and both Dami and the girl turned to the booming voice of the sailor.
* * * *
"Put this on," Dami said, and laid out a clean tunic and leggings. The girl raised her hands to him, and the chains clinked as she looked from the shackles to Dami and back again.
"No, no," Dami said. "You tell me your name, and I'll consider removing some of your irons."
"Why don't you beat me and get it over with," the girl responded. "Or do you lack the stones to hit a woman?"
"No," Dami replied with a smile. "I have the stones."
"You'd hit a woman?"
"If a woman hits me, I will hit her back," Dami replied. "If a woman pulls a knife, I will stab her, and if she pulls a sword, I'll gut her like a fish."
"Whoreson."
"More true than you know," Dami replied. "Now, put this on so you don't freeze to death. The nights on a boat can be mighty cold, especially if you're not used to it. The water steals the heat from the air, and Neptune's chilly breath can give you a night cough."
Dami looked around the small storage room that stood off from his own cabin. He'd cleared the old flotsam out, and a pallet stuffed with fresh hay laid down. Two smallish portholes would let in enough light to see during the day, but right now provided none whatsoever. Dami opened a ring that was stapled into the wall and secured the lantern he held there.
He checked it twice to be certain.
Fire aboard ship was practically a death sentence to most crews. Dami had seen it in the past. An oil lantern left unattended in the wind, a candle that wasn't properly secured to its staple, or a dozen other foolish, absent-minded mistakes that set flame to dry timbers and oiled sailcloth and left a ruined hulk surrounded by drowned corpses.
If only there was a way to get light without the heat; a safe way to make the darkness bright and not risk fire. Some magic that would keep the ship safe and secure.
Dami sighed, checked the ring and staple one more time, and turned back to the girl.
"Put that on, and make certain the lantern is out before you leave," Dami said sternly. "No one will be able to get to you here if a fire starts. You'll either burn, or drown, and one is as bad as the other."
He didn't wait for her reply. He turned on his heel and left the small storage room.
"Zeus' left ball," he cursed under his breath.
"Married this morning and already wish you were dead," Aeolus chuckled. "Serves you well and right."
From a cabinet, Dami pulled two wooden cups and a clay jug wrapped in hemp line. He poured a draught into each and passed the second cup to Aeolus.
"She could drive a man to drink," Dami said and downed his cup.
"Aye," Aeolus said. "But so long as you're buying the wine, who cares?" He sipped at his own cup, then looked up at Dami with appreciation. "This is Athenian."
"The last of it too," Dami replied. He filled his cup again, and this time slowly sipped the contents.
"This almost makes up for the money I lost to you."
"You haven't lost it. I always pay my debts."
"An unprofitable philosophy," Aeolus noted.
"That's why I keep you around," Dami replied and his grin returned. "Otherwise I'd owe the usurers in every port."
"Aye, aye you would, and don't think I won't keep reminding you."
"Here, have some more to drink," Dami said with a nod of self-assurance. "You'll forget."
There was a loud pounding at the door to the small cabin, and the two men looked toward the sound.
"Paetur?"
"Aye, Captain," the man replied on the other side of the door.
"Come in, lad, come in," Dami said.
A tall, thin, wiry man with a touch of grey in his beard swaggered into the room. His eyes were oddly different colors. One was pale blue and the other deep brown. Some men thought it an ill-omen and refused to sail with him. But he had a mind for numbers and an uncanny ability to recall, down to the yard, the measure or the dram, exactly what was in their holds. He held a thin clay tablet in a wooden frame, with Phoenician chicken scratch that only he, Dami and Aeolus could read. It was the cargo list for what they'd shipped and taken aboard. He passed the still wet clay to Aeolus.
"Kiskus has taken his cargo, and we've started to load the stocks from Abadnai," Paetur said. "The water skins are full, and we have provisions for three to four weeks, depending."
"Excellent," Aeolus said, and held his hand out for the clay tablet.
"Paetur," Dami asked. "You didn't stock those nasty dried apricots again, did you?"
Paetur looked to Aeolus, then back to his captain before he shrugged and nodded.
"Scurvy, Captain," Paetur said by way of explanation. "Unlike other crews, we've only had two or three cases, and those have been from men who didn't eat the apricots."
"You sound like a Socratic," Dami chided softly. "Scurvy is a plague of the gods, sent to those who don't perform the proper sacrifices. Besides, you know what happened to Socrates."
"He rose in fame and renown, and is recognized as the first, best source of insight into questions of truth?" Paetur chided.
"Talked himself to death," Dami replied with a laugh.
"Llyrd?" Aeolus asked as he scanned over the tablet in his hand. "Where did we find two-hundred gallons of llyrd?"
"There were Tartars looking for horseflesh," Paetur replied. "I traded them copper and some silver. About half what we can sell the llyrd for without much effort."
"Romans will pay plenty," Aeolus said without looking up. "We can get three or four times the profit there."
"Wavedancer doesn't port at the peninsula," Dami said.
"Why, Dami?" Aeolus asked. Dami looked from Paetur to Aeolus.
"You know why," he replied.
"Pirates? Again with the god-cursed pirates?" Aeolus said. His fist thumped heavily against the table for emphasis. "The Roman fleet has them at bay."
"Yes, yes," Dami replied. "At bay around the peninsula, but in open water Wavedancer doesn't have the draft or the sail. Those Cilician pirates aren't known for letting crews go. They take the stores, burn the ship and sell the crew for slaves. Not a pleasant way to retire."
"Risk, Dami," Aeolus said, his voice incredulous. "Risk much to gain much. That llyrd will pay for the trip twice over, our crew can winter Wavedancer somewhere nice, Carthage, for instance. Or perhaps even Rhodes. We'd be able to take on spices and silks from there, and we'd be rolling in the silver this time next year."
"No, Aeolus," Dami replied. "I'll not put Wavedancer and the crew at risk for profits. I leave that to devils-maycare like Barthus. You want to tempt Hades and Poseidon in the same toss, feel free. Wavedancer sails to friendly ports whose navy protects the trade lanes. If Rome isn't careful, they'll end up dried up and deserted. I hear their grain barges from Egypt were all taken last season."
"Damn, back to Greece again?" Aeolus said.
"There's nothing wrong with the Greek isles. We have good contacts, in safe ports and . . ."
"And we only get cheated a little?" Aeolus interrupted.
Dami turned to Paetur and gestured with the inventory tablet. "Say something, will you? Or hit him. Before I do!"
"The captain is right," Paetur said to Aeolus without a look at Dami. "The risks do increase with the profits. Probably ten-fold. Perhaps I was wrong to take on the llyrd and mount the three new Iberian oxybeles fore and aft. I'd heard that llyrd was selling for hard gold, sistersii and not talents, and the Cilicians weren't good with flames in their sails."
Iberian oxybeles? Those are damn big crossbows. Dami's thoughts danced. Flames in their sails? We'd talked about them, and how to run the pirates that surround Rome, but I didn't give the order for new . . .
He let the thought die as he looked from Paetur to Aeolus. The only other crew aboard Wavedancer who could order such a purchase was Aeolus. The whole plot was laid out before him. Paetur found the Tartars, who only barely knew what their stock was worth, and didn't care so much as long as they could get horses. Aeolus knew where the best deals were to be found in any of the major or minor trade-ports, and they both would have known that Dami didn't want to run the pirates.
It was a clever ploy, and one in which he'd been outmaneuvered. Both his senior crewmen had as much pointed the rudder toward the peninsula, and tied it in place. Damn the rocks, shoals, shallow ground, gods, and all the pirates in the world.
"This is mutiny," Dami said, forcing his face into a frown. "You know that, right?"
"Mutiny is such a harsh word," Aeolus replied. "Think of it as a return on your investments."
"Investments? I have no investments," Dami responded.
"Yes, exactly," Paetur joined in. "So twice nothing is still nothing, and if we don't break through the pirates, that's what you'll have."
"Why is this sounding worse and worse all the time?"
"Because given the chance, you'd pay twice as much for half the quality."
Dami put his hands on his head, then threw them open in mock pleading.
"Oh, ye gods, why have you abandoned me?" he asked. "Why do you cast me to the feet of brigands who steal my money, pirate my ship, and sell me to the slave traders?"
Tears of Heaven
Aeolus cupped his hands, creating an echo in his voice, and said, "Because you are the greatest fool that the gods love."
"And a whoreson to boot," Paetur added.
Dami lowered his hands and looked at his two friends.
"We have pitch?" he asked. "We have blunt and barbed broad heads for the bows? I won't even ask if the keel was sounded as I asked."
"All is ready," Aeolus replied. "I sounded the keel myself, and the rudder has new rigging. We'll have to make do with the old cloth for the sails, but it's only been up for two or three seasons. It will hold a while yet."
"Fine, fine," Dami said. "You know I don't love you anymore."
"You don't love me any less, either," Aeolus replied with his bark of a laugh.
November 3, Present Day
Del awoke to a shaft of harsh sunlight that knifed from the ceiling directly into her eyes. It shattered what would have been a perfectly dark room, made "bright" and "cheerful" and "open" by the sunroof. As she peered blearily away from the terrible brightness, a brief moment of disorientation was replaced by the realization that she lay where she'd fallen on the floor last night. She tried to roll over and the dull aches throughout her body flashed into angry pain as every muscle screamed its abuse.
Something thumped and splashed liquid onto the rug. Her hand sought and found the now half empty bottle of Spanish absinthe.
"Burn," she swore, but her heart wasn't in it.
Where she didn't ache, her body tingled or throbbed from lack of blood flow. Numb and abused, every sinew was strained and pulled taut.
She made it to her knees before she saw the man.
Though her mind was still fogged with sleep, her body was trained, and before she was fully aware, the two SIG .45s were in her hands and aimed at him. He sat very still on her couch, not more than five feet from where she now knelt on the over-large Persian rug stained with expensive and illegal alcohol. The smell was nauseating as she moved from passed-out flat to hyper aware shooter's kneel.
She kept both guns trained on the man, but such a position was mostly for effect. A double-hand hold, straightthumbs on one gun would give her the proper support she needed to aim and shoot quickly and consistently. A gun in each hand gave support to neither and made it impossible to sight. But it looked damned impressive.
"What does the other guy look like?" the man said calmly, his voice deep and husky.
He remained very still.
When Del didn't respond, his mouth pulled back to reveal a perfect smile and what must have been capped teeth. No mortal had such white teeth naturally. The smile that played on his face was only slightly marred by a momentary lapse of nervousness when his eyes focused for a blink on the two SIGs.
He hadn't expected her to move so fast.
That was good.
His extreme confidence already annoyed her.
He seemed of average height, a little shorter than her, but it was hard to tell with him sitting. He weighed perhaps oneeighty or one-ninety. He looked Persian, though whether Turkish or some variant, she couldn't tell. He had black hair, close cropped, yet stylish. In each ear, he sported a golden hoop. An additional diamond stud was thrust through the top of his right ear, and glittered from the inside of the lobe. He wore blue jeans with a tight, dark shirt tucked in that showed he probably could bench press Del for warm-ups. An unbuttoned suit jacket covered him in a manner that suggested he knew his tailor's entire family on a first name basis. The shoes were a medium tan and looked comfortably expensive. She couldn't tell if he had a watch on or not, but there was the bulge of some concealed weapon under his left arm and a slight but telltale bulge of a second concealed weapon on the inside of his left ankle.
Neither weapon was easy to make out, which meant that his tailor was very, very good at his work.
It also meant that the man was very, very financially set. Well cut clothes that could also hide firearms were never cheap.
"Who the hell are you?"
"I heard you were good, but that seems an exaggeration." He began to move forward on the couch and Del tensed.
"Don't," she said, her fingers already tight on the triggers. The man instantly froze.
"I've been sitting here for the past half-hour . . ."
"Don't say, 'If I wanted you dead, you would be.' It'll annoy me," Del interrupted. "It's your mistake to leave me alive. Annoying further isn't in your best interest at this point."
The man looked taken aback, and the nervousness returned underneath his perfect smile.
"I asked, who are you?" Del said. Several locks of her hair fell around her face, but with the two guns in her fists she couldn't move them back into place.
"And I was going to explain," he said, "that if you'd bothered to read your brief, which you dropped on the floor, you would know." The smile was still perfect, but the eyes were no longer as warm.
Del didn't care. He could sit on her couch and look daggers at her until the Rapture; it wouldn't change the fact that she held the guns.
"Can I move now?" the man asked.
Del nodded. "Slowly," she ordered. "I don't take kindly to strangers who break and enter without an invitation."
He arched an eyebrow. "And what about those with an invitation."
The warmth returned to his eyes, and his gaze ran up and down her body. She wasn't uncomfortable with his looks, and his obvious intentions, but she was annoyed. He was being coy and didn't respect her . . . though, given her state, she could hardly blame him.
Or perhaps she looked better than she felt. She smiled back, and had the sudden urge to find a mirror and some cosmetics fast. It was a compulsion that she would rather have done without. A compulsion born of her breeding, and so, out of her control.
Damn you, Father, she thought.
The Throne had beat her to that.
"If I shoot you in your right arm, can you still use the left to draw?" she asked. The smile never slipped from her face.
His smile became forced, and he stopped moving. His gaze found hers and locked, now hard and unyielding. At the least, the man could distinguish a legitimate threat when he heard one.
"Yes," he replied. "I'm equally proficient with either hand."
"Good," Del said and nodded. "Now understand. This entire loft is soundproofed. If a Howitzer went off up here, no one would hear it. If you don't start giving me some answers soon, I'm going to put a rather large bullet through your right shoulder."
"Hollow-point?" he asked.
She looked over his clothes again to be sure, but couldn't detect the trace outline of body armor. Even the extra-thin stuff they had started marketing to bodyguards and high powered executives should have been apparent to her trained eyes.
Though at this range, it would't matter.
Either the man was certifiably insane, or he was entirely too confident.
"Burn. Are you serious?" Del replied. "Are you actually thinking of getting into a pissing match while I have two guns on you?"
"You drew first," he said simply. "I haven't made any aggressive movements . . . yet."
The threat in his voice was plain, and she almost shot him right then.
He had broken into her apartment. She was justified in killing him. The police weren't going to care how welldressed a corpse he was with all the concealed weapons.
Breaking and entering, a tear or two, perhaps a few hours of telling the same story to fifteen different officers and then the coroner would pack him up, and she'd toast him over dinner.
"Black Talon," Del answered at last. The lie was easy enough, and nearly true. She owned Black Talon and had used it in the past. It was illegal in most states, and almost as illegal as the depleted uranium loads she also kept.
It was certainly illegal in Michigan.
It just wasn't in either SIG.
"The hell you say," he replied, and the shock was obvious.
"At this range, I figure you'd never use your arm again."
"Not if I'm fast enough," he replied.
"You aren't."
Del almost thought the man would rush her. She centered her vision on the man's chest and sighted the guns to the target. Three shots there would stop anyone, and she had twenty-two leveled at him. At this range, unless he was better than he looked, she couldn't miss.
Del was one of the best, and she wouldn't risk running into that many bullets.
He couldn't be that much better than her . . . could he?
Ahadiel said she could be replaced. Was this the man Ahadiel meant? Was he that good? So much so that the Throne would consider Del expendable?
What in hell is your game? she thought.
The muscles between her shoulders tensed, and her knee grew number by the moment. If he didn't decide soon, she'd have to decide for both of them.
Her way was going to be much bloodier.
Her finger began to squeeze on the trigger.
"Since this is such a nice couch," the man said, "I would hate to get blood on it. Yours or mine."
He smiled in a way that Del didn't like at all, but he sat back, spread his arms on the back of the couch and remained that way, unmoving.
"Don't make me ask a third time who you are," Del said softly, letting a practiced amount of menace into her voice. It was generally enough to frighten any mortal on the wrong end of her guns into submission.
Not all, but most, which was good enough for her.
"I have to move in order to answer your question. Is that all right?"
Her finger squeezed a little tighter on the two-pound trigger even as her legs started to protest their position, sending shots of pain through her knees and thighs. Was he good enough to take her?
Burn it, Del thought.
She adjusted her aim, and something in her look must have told him what she intended. His body tensed even as she squeezed the trigger fully. The report from the SIG was enough to deafen anyone in the room and left a slight ringing in her ears. Smoke from the powder drifted lazily upward in a stream of sunlight from a well-aimed hole, blackened slightly around the edges.
The man looked from the hole in the couch to Del, his gaze filled with anger and enough fear to please Del no end.
The hole was only an inch from where his left bicep rested on the back cushions.
"Jesus Christ on a burning pogo-stick," the man yelled. "What the rutting hell is wrong with your head?"
"I really liked that couch too," Del said conversationally. "I had it custom made."
Del jerked with more motion than required to emphasize that her guns were trained back on the man, and was even more pleased to see him stiffen, adrenaline likely pumped in his veins with no release. Either he hadn't believed she would actually shoot, or he wasn't that much better than her.
She wasn't about to take a chance on which.
"Go ahead and move," Del said at last. "But your story better be damn, damn good, or I'll be paying the fine William & Sonoma folk plenty to build a replacement. Blood stains leather."
His gaze met hers and searched for a moment, but Del held herself firm. She ignored the shooting pains and alternate numbness in her legs, and waited for him to make up his mind.
Either way, things would play out as she wanted.
Whoever held the guns generally made the rules.
The man moved his right hand off the back of the couch and into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, slowly and carefully he pulled out a familiar looking leather bi-fold. The silver clasp and leather tie down looked untouched, but with such items there was no way to be certain. Normally, Del wouldn't have been concerned, but if this man was not a man . . . if he was Nephilim . . .
Del returned the SIG in her right hand to its holster under her left arm, all the while careful not to look away from the man.
"Drop it to the floor and kick it across the room," she said.
This time there was no argument.
He nodded and dropped the bi-fold. With the toe of his expensive shoe, he shoved it. It moved easily across the Persian rug but jerked to a halt when it hit the hardwood floor.
Now, Del stood. She rose as smooth and graceful as she felt, which wasn't very much. Her eyes stayed focused on the man, gun still trained on his shoulder. She took the two steps to the bi-fold, stooped and found it with her right hand without her focus leaving the target. She moved to one of the overstuffed high backed chairs that matched the couch and sat down. Her gun hand rested on one of the arms of the chair, with the barrel still pointed at the man.
While both of her hands were trained almost equally in the use of weapons, in all other things, her left hand was dominant. She could juggle razors in either hand, but ask her to write "Del was here" with her right hand and it would come out as chicken scratch.
Awkwardly, she loosened the tie and flipped the bi-fold open.
A number of documents attached to black and white photos sat inside. She pushed these aside until she found the one that looked like the man sitting in front of her. The document was written out by hand, in a firm, easily read script that wasn't in any "known" language. Easily read for her.
There were men and women who would give their left arm to see the words, let alone know what they said. But this was not a language that could be learned.
Either you were born with the ability, or you weren't. Del was.
It was part of why these bi-folds hadn't gone out of use when human knowledge started to catch up with the history of the Throne. Codes, ciphers and languages could all be broken. But a language that required a genetic predisposition to see, let alone read, was the perfect codex for passing information.
Another gift from her father.
Bastard, Del thought. But that wasn't true.
Her father had known who created him.
She rifled through the hand-written report, a basic dossier from the Throne. His official name was Jaccob Smalls, though, like Del, he had many legal aliases and many
AKAs, enough that she skipped down the file until she found his parentage.
"Lugh?" she said as she caught site of the name, and peered at the man in front of her, no longer certain about him. "As in the High King of . . ."
"Yes," Jaccob interrupted. "It's nice to see you're well read. But, as you're probably aware, it's far more complicated. I'd rather not talk about him, if you don't mind."
She nodded, and almost smiled smugly before she caught herself.
"Can you put the guns away now?" he asked.
For the third time, Del almost shot him. Some of it was out of spite. Some of it was a mean streak made a mile wide by her having to deal with Ahadiel, and now Jaccob. But some of it was because she had pulled her guns on two people in the last twelve hours and hadn't shot either of them. Del was a big believer in not drawing a weapon unless she was going to use it. Thanks to her father, she was very capable of using almost any weapon in Creation, and probably anything removed from Creation as well.
But mostly, Jaccob was too damn sure of himself, and Del really wanted to wipe that arrogant smile off his handsome face.
"How did you get in here?" she asked instead.
"The door was open," he said with a shrug. "You were passed out on the floor. I must admit, it wasn't the best impression to give a new partner."
"We're not partners," Del retorted, acid dripping from her voice. "I have a partner already. I'm forced to work with you, but let's understand something. I already don't like you and this isn't Lethal Weapon. We aren't going to become best friends. I'm never going to come over for a barbecue, and I don't want to look at pictures of your kids. We have a job to do. After that, you can go back to your tailor and buy a new suit and matching shoes. Okay?"
"If I say yes, will you put away the gun?"
"Make me happy, and I won't shoot you."
"Do you want me on my knees as well? Should I wear a collar?"
Del sighed heavily.
"Don't take offense, Smalls. Just get out. No, don't say anything. Get your expensive ass off my couch and get the hell out of my apartment."
Jaccob looked at her a moment, and Del saw the steel enter his eyes. She 'd pushed him too far, and she knew it.
It was another gift of hers, one she acquired all on her own.
"Lethal Weapon, fine. I'm not your friend, and I don't want to be," Jaccob replied. "I'm your contact, your guide, and your resource for Salt Lake City. You don't like me? That suits me. I don't burning like you either. But this disrespect and bitter anger routine is played out. You want to rutting hate yourself, your parents and everyone around you? Knock yourself out. But burning don't point a gun at me and expect me to like it."
He rose smoothly from the couch, ignored Del and her guns at his back, and strode to the door. Del followed him, at a discreet distance, the SIG still trained on his back, but no longer ready to shoot him. He paused at the door but didn't turn around.
"We have a busy day," he said. "I'll be back in three hours. Make sure the other one is with you when I get here." He sniffed in her direction, "And take a shower."
He started to walk through the door.
"This time, knock," Del said to his retreating form, "and if the door doesn't open, don't come in." She grabbed the metal door and slammed it hard behind him. Wood in a wood frame would have shattered. But Del was also a big believer in reinforced metal doors in a metal frames attached to reinforced metal studs, inside her reinforced, soundproofed walls.
Was it too much?
Some things she'd learned from experience.
She turned the three deadbolt locks in succession from the top corner of the door to the middle, the bottom corners, and finally the three along the hinge-side of the door. It was overcautious, since anyone who could get through the first three deadbolts probably wouldn't have much trouble with the hinge-side. But it effectively made a solid barrier against most determined intruders and Jehovah's Witnesses.
Being an assassin for the Throne didn't really leave her a lot of time to discuss the 144,000 mortals already eager to get back there first.
Nothing said "no, thank you" like the turn-click of six deadbolts.
Once the door was secured, Del holstered her SIG and slid down the door until she sat on the floor. She leaned the back of her head against the cool metal of the door and closed her eyes. She must have been more tired than she'd thought to not at least close the door, let alone lock it.
Was he lying? Is he the replacement? The concern was real, but the questions had no answers.
Now that the perceived crisis was over, she could once again feel every bruise and scrape that ran over her body from the previous night. She was fortunate that she wasn't mortal, or she may have suffered a concussion and worse. Going toe-to-toe with a rogue was a lot like trying to armwrestle a steamroller.
They don't know the rules and they don't stop.
Attacks that would leave a mortal in a pool of their own blood barely phased a rogue divinity.
The Throne turned out high-quality products, even if they did rebel.
Her body healed faster than a mortal's; it was capable of taking more punishment, and could stand up to greater amounts of exposure to heat, cold and pain. All gifts from her father. But she felt very mortal right now. Even the few hours of sleep she had caught, after she passed out on the floor, hadn't helped much.
And now Jaccob.
What will Marrin think of our new guide? she wondered.
The word sent a chill through her. It spoke of trust and reliance that she'd long ago given up as detrimental to her continued existence. Ahadiel knew this, and so the Throne knew it as well.
But the Throne didn't care what Del liked or didn't like.
The Throne's interdiction made abundantly clear, likes or dislikes, failure or success, she existed so long as she was useful.
She opened her eyes and looked down at the leather bifold still in her hand. She viewed the photos and the handwritten reports like a 1940s spy thriller. She took a deep breath, let out an audible sigh, and started to look at the documents more closely. In her mind she figured she had about an hour to familiarize herself with the assignment, perhaps she would need another hour to shower, dress, and clean her weapons.
Weapons first, she thought. Weapons and a drink.
She pushed herself to her feet and walked around the couch, paused and put a hand on the new black-rimmed hole through the brushed burgundy leather. Her finger couldn't push into the entrance hole, and apparently the bullet had hit something solid inside the couch's interior, as there was no exit hole.
"That was not bright, Del," she told herself. "Not bright at all."
Leaving the couch, she moved through what served as the dining room and casually dropped the bi-fold on the table, before she entered the kitchen proper.
The apartment was really an overlarge, clichéd loft on the top floor of what should have been a condemned building. She'd bought the entire top south side of the complex, and removed all the walls except for the areas designated as the bathroom, the two bedrooms and her weapons closet. It was far more room than she needed, but it ensured that she had the space for her personal training needs, gear, and a small army if necessary.
It also reduced the number of hiding places for an intruder to use.
As Del entered the kitchen area, she grabbed a tumbler from the rack and another triangular bottle of sickly green fluid from the adjoining cabinet. She poured a half measure of the green liquid into the glass and began to swirl it around inside, pausing now and again to hold the glass to her nose and inhale.
When did she acquire the habit of drinking absinthe? Part of a fad sometime in the late 18 th , early 19 th century? No, Del'd drank it long before then. She'd been in good company at one time with her consumption. Paul Verlaine, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and Pablo Picasso had all partaken of the Green Goddess. But the good came with the bad, and that stupid drunk Jean Lanfray stabbed absinthe in the back on his way into the crime books.
Absinthe, like Black Talon ammunition, was now mostly illegal.
Illegal because of fools and those who listened to them.
She was surprised the mortals hadn't banned Twinkies after a similar line of defense pointed to them as the cause for a death. As if mortal lives were worth so much.
Slowly, she spun the liquid around the glass. It clung and receded from the rim like fingers drawing down the surface. She shipped it from Spain a crate at a time. Sometimes U.S. Customs stopped the shipment and sometimes they didn't. She wasn't certain it was worth a hundred dollars a bottle, and not for the first time wondered about her strange obsession with the only liqueur to ever be uniformly banned by almost every world nation.
Perhaps it appealed because it was banned, or perhaps because of the bad reputation.
She drank a half bottle every night, and three or four when the mood took her.
The mood took her more and more often.
Slowly, she tilted the glass, and let the sweet liquid slide over her tongue as it started a long, warm journey down her throat. The alcohol hit her first. Then the more potent ingredients started to make her fingers and toes tingle. After a moment, the sensation passed. Her body worked too fast for most mind altering substances to have a lasting effect. The downside was that it took a particularly potent alcohol or drug to drown her sorrows.
Potent enough that her system suffered even worse.
But working for the Throne ensured that, even at a hundred dollars a bottle, she could keep herself in absinthe for life.
Del opened a second cabinet and pulled out a rectangular hardwood box. She moved back to the dining area and set the box and the absinthe down on the table. She'd never been one to use the dining table for anything but work, but it seemed inappropriate to not have one.
Norman Rockwell swore by them, and that was good enough for Del.
Opening the box, she pulled out an oil-stained, though waterproofed, cloth that covered a good section of the table. She put one of her three SIG .45s on the cloth. The other two she would rather have loaded, dirty and not need them, than broken down, cleaned and useless.
She took a seat and began to break down the first SIG in preparation for cleaning.
As her hands moved in accustomed patterns, she sipped slowly at her drink and wondered about Jaccob. In her mind, he looked capable. From what little she read in his dossier, he was reasonably competent. But he had always been in the employ of the Throne, and that kept him exempt from the list.
Del always fought against complete obedience to the Throne.
Not the wisest choice, but it was her choice, and that made the difference.
Marrin would like him, she was sure.
He liked everyone, and vice-versa. At times, it drove her mad. They could hardly go to the store, or any other public place, and not be greeted warmly by someone Del had never seen before and likely wouldn't see again. How he found the time and the energy to maintain such vast and varied relationships was beyond her. The number of people she considered warm acquaintances could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and still have room to spare.
Her friends would take half as many digits.
She finished the first SIG, slid the magazine home and pulled the slide back to chamber the first round. She thumbed the safety on and replaced the SIG in its shoulder holster under her left arm. Confidently, she picked up the next SIG, dropped the magazine onto the table. She cleared the chamber, caught the round in the air and replaced it in the magazine.
In comparison with mortals, who bred and birthed like rabbits, there were only a few like her, half-breeds born of disobedience and lust. At their peak, the Nephilim might have numbered in the thousands.
But only at their peak.
Now, the few who remained were forbidden to reproduce.
Forbidden to seek fame or glory.
Forbidden to stand out in any capacity that the Throne didn't order.
They grew sparser with the passage of each century.
She finished the second SIG and slid it back home under her right arm, feeling better with the comforting weight of the two guns balanced in their familiar places. She picked up the third SIG, the one with the scratch that marred its matte black barrel. She ran her finger over the scar where the titanium barrel was exposed. For a brief moment, she thought about repairing the damage, but it would take a good 24 hours to set permanently, and she didn't want to be one gun down.
"Not if we're traveling to Utah," she said to herself in confirmation.
"We're going to Utah?" Marrin said.
Del shook herself but didn't move. That, in itself, struck her almost to the core. She would pull a gun on almost anyone else, no matter how well she knew them, but she didn't even jerk at Marrin's silent entry. Her lack of action scared her.
No, scared wasn't a strong enough word.
It frightened her just short of terror.
"Stop coming through the back door," Del responded.
"The front door was locked, and I thought you might be sleeping after last night."
"I wish," Del replied. "But what good is a secret back door if you're always using it?"
Marrin was at least seven feet tall, with long dirty-blond hair that ran almost to his waist, but was pulled tight against his head and gathered at the nape of his neck in, of all things, a multi-colored scrunchy. He wore a green hooded pullover and loose khaki pants tucked into the tops of black combat boots. Over everything, he wore a London Fog long coat that was specially made for his height. The coat stopped at his ankles. In one hand he carried a plastic grocery bag; the other held a gallon of milk.
"You really bought milk?" Del asked.
Marrin looked from her to the milk container and back again.
"Have I missed something?"
"Ahadiel asked where you were, I told him you were out buying milk. I didn't know I was right."
"Ahadiel came here?"
"No, he manifested in my Jeep."
"Should I ask?"
"No," she said with a sigh as she finished cleaning the last SIG. The debris from the chemical discharges and the dust acquired from her last battle were gone. She moved an oiled brush one last time over the moving parts, slipped a magazine into the stock, and snapped the chamber closed and slid the weapon into the holster at the small of her back.
"That bad, huh?" Marrin asked.
He moved into the kitchen and started to put away the groceries. When he returned, he held a tumbler filled to the brim with absinthe. He set it down hard on the table, the alcohol sloshed over the edge and spilled onto the table top.
"Burning hell, Marrin?" Del said, as she tried to push back the chair. Marrin grabbed the back of the chair and shoved her into the table. The combination momentarily pinned her. The spilled absinthe ran toward her, and started to drip.
"Aren't you thirsty?" Marrin asked. "Had a long night? Or a long morning? How about you just woke up? What's the excuse for a 9 a.m. happy hour?"
"Marrin, I'm not in the mood."
"Good, there's another reason to drink this poison," he said, the sarcasm plain in his voice.
"Marrin . . ."
"Well, drink up, Del," he said and held the back of the chair with one hand and picked up the tumbler. He shoved it into her face, and spilled more down her front, pressing the crystal tumbler painfully to her lips.
"Damnit, Marrin," she said as she pushed his arm away, meeting resistance.
"No, damn you, Del," Marrin yelled. "We've talked about this, we agreed . . ."
"You talked about this," Del yelled back. "You agreed. I nodded and smiled. It was the easiest way to get you off my back. I stopped the needles, so this is all I have left."
Marrin growled, a low, deep sound that emanated from his core. He thrust the tumbler in his hand back toward her face.
That's enough, she thought. She grabbed the table in both hands and shoved, sending it skittering across the floor, leaving trails in the hardwood. It stopped several feet from the nearest wall, giving her plenty of room to stand. She rose, grabbed Marrin's wrist, twisted and the crystal tumbler shattered with a splash on the hardwood floor. Marrin twisted back. Marrin's strength was impressive, easily a match for her own. He slipped his wrist free of her grip, reversed his hand to grab her wrist, then stepped slightly behind Del and pushed her arm up behind her back. He shoved her forward roughly, and she was forced to take several steps until her thighs smashed against the side of the table. She found herself bent over the table, with Marrin's full weight behind her, the front of his thighs pressed against the back of hers.
"Fine," Marrin said, and pushed her arm a little further. "I agreed. So here's how it's going to go . . ."
Del hooked her leg around Marrin's ankle, pulled with her foot, and twisted her body at the same time. Marrin was unprepared for the movement. He started to spin and fall at the same time. Rather than hold Del's arm and break or dislocate it, he let go. Del counted on this. She smiled as she completed her twist and brought her fist into Marrin's stomach, thrusting him down hard against the floor
The air whooshed from Marrin's lungs, and he grunted.
Del dropped a knee into his stomach for good measure, because she was angry. The second blow landed harder than the first, but there was no air to knock from him. His face crinkled in a grimace of pain. She grabbed Marrin's throat, curling her fingers around his windpipe as she brought her face close to his.
"Do you see what just happened?" Del asked. Marrin's bugged eyes streamed tears as he tried to regain focus and gasp for air. She laid the lightest kiss on his cheek. "You weren't willing to commit. You lost."
Something hard shoved into her left kidney and she grunted. She didn't have to look to know that Marrin had pulled his gun.
She squeezed his throat, and the soft flesh yielded to the pressure.
Marin, in response, managed to cock the hammer with his thumb.
Del didn't know why, but even on an automatic, where it wasn't necessary, that sound was scary. Even to her, having heard it uncountable times in similar situations, still it traced unwanted lines down her spine. The hairs on her neck rose and her hearing tunnelled, waiting to hear the sound of the hammer fall.
She calculated how hard she would have to squeeze and how hard Marrin would have to squeeze.
She released Marrin's throat and rose smoothly to her feet.
"I teach, you preach," she admonished. "I don't think we're ready to switch."
"Apparently not," Marrin said and coughed.
Del moved to the table and began to pull it back into place.
Marrin stood and rubbed at his throat while he stared at her.
"Speak," Del told him, "I pray you, speak."
"Would you have killed me?"
"Some teacher I would be, eh? And some preacher you would be if I didn't listen, at least in part." She picked up the pieces of broken glass and moved into the kitchen.
"But would you?"
Del looked up and met his ice-blue eyes with her own, almost identical.
"Yes," Del responded, and dropped the glass fragments into the trash.
"But we're friends."
"We know each other," she corrected. "We're friendly."
"I saved your life!"
"Good of you to recall it," Del said back sarcastically. "And I could have taken yours. Even?"
Marrin looked at her as if he searched her face for some sign of jest.
He found none.
"You'd kill me?" Marrin sighed resignedly. "We've fought together. The bond of battle. I've proved my loyalty . . ."
"Loyalty?" Del interrupted. "Loyalty? From a Nephilim? That's rich. That's tonic for the soul sold from the back of a traveling wagon! Do you have anything that will cure all my ills and improve my lifespan, while making me rich and happy with lustrous hair?"
"I'm no mountebank," Marrin said, hurt in his voice.
"No, Maid Marrin, you're not. But the last circle of Hell is reserved for traitors, since loyalty is so easily broken. Should I give examples? Brutus, Benedict, Judas . . ."
"The Nephilim are not traitors."
"Traitors. Children of traitors. It's the same to the Throne."
"So what's the recourse? Stand as a single fortress, alone in the night? What is life without love, what is love without trust, and trust without loyalty? Easily broken? Of course it is. Such beauty is always fragile, and can only be protected by constant investment. Investment from both."
"Pah-shaw," she said and waved her hand dismissively. "Pretty words. Keep your loyalty. Keep your beauty and keep your investment. I prefer mutual funds."
Marrin searched her face again, and this time smiled.
"No you don't," he said slowly, softly, his voiced tempered and sincere. "Your walls are high and thick, well-guarded. But all mortals, all of the Throne's creatures seek love, faith and hope. We are made to love, to have faith, and to believe in something bigger than ourselves. The Throne gives us choice as well. Choice to break hearts, break faith, and betray hope. You have the need, as the smallest child needs her mother."
"Do you really think me so naïve, Maid Marrin? We are not creations of the Throne. We are a mistake. We are the biggest 'oops' in cosmic history. A joke on your precious loyalty. Our parents ignored their duties, and we are the misbegotten result. The Throne has never embraced us, or why would the Interdiction and the List be held over our necks like a guillotine's blade?"
"Really?" Marrin argued. "Really? Do you truly believe that the Throne doesn't know every spark before it was clothed with flesh? That the Throne didn't personally place the light within your life?"
"The Throne was otherwise occupied while our parents played at being mortals and foreswore their appointed tasks to screw their brains out. Not that I blame them too much for wanting a little nookie. It's hypocritical of the Throne to give them the equipment but not a license to operate, and then ticket them for every moving violation in the book."
She paused, with a wry smile. "Our . . . spark was part of an automated line, some assembly required. The Throne is senile. Only after, when we began to appear as giants among the precious, fragile mortals did the Throne realize the error. We pay for the sins of our parents, or we die in the attempt. The Throne doesn't care which."
Marrin shook his head sadly.
"You're wrong, Del. The Throne loves . . ."
"Shut up," Del yelled. "Shut up or I will shut you up."
Marrin smiled, but he closed his mouth.
"Know this, Marrin-bar-Enkidu. Never forget this. I will kill you. If the time comes for any reason, any reason at all, I will pull the trigger and send you back to the Throne. It doesn't matter whether you've played the part of Ephialtes or Leonidas, Brutus or Marc Antony. I will spill your loyal blood and walk away from your corpse. Do you understand?"
Marrin still smiled, his eyes alight.
"I said, do you understand?"
"Yes, Del. I understand."
The smile remained, which disconcerted her, but she chose to ignore it.
"Good," she sighed, and breathed deeply as if she'd been in a fight and finally won where she'd thought to lose. Her hand pressed against the heavy wooden table and supported her weight.
"But you should also understand," Marrin said, his voice still quiet and warm. "It does matter. Reject your true self all you want. You can only be what you are."
"The unwanted bitch of an outcast bastard?" Del frowned and looked down at the shattered remains of the tumbler. "Good thing I started life with a chance at the White House, eh Maid Marrin?"
Marrin smiled back and moved into the kitchen.
"You know, I hate when you call me Maid Marrin," he said as he put away more groceries.
"It hadn't occurred to me," Del lied.
She sat back down at the table, and picked up Ahadiel's bi-fold. Slowly, she read each report and reviewed the indicated pictures. Marrin cleaned the floor, brought her food on a plate and a glass of ice cold water. Del was never certain how he was able to get the water so cold without icecubes. Marrin hated ice in his drinks. He said he didn't like to strain liquid refreshment. He also didn't like straws unless he ate fast food, and then he needed two.
And they say I'm broken, Del chuckled at the thought.
After a rough hour, she stood, and drained the last of the water.
"You should read these," Del indicated the papers and photos scattered across the table top. She walked out of the kitchen and into her bedroom without waiting for Marrin's response.
A four-poster king-size bed, with a tangle of sheets that hadn't been properly made in at least a month, dominated the room. Even though Marrin offered to clean the room,
Del had forbidden him entrance. She could hardly keep him out of the rest of the place, but her bedroom was sacrosanct.
It was her only refuge since he'd moved in on orders from Ahadiel.
Del walked to the two huge walk-in closets along the wall. The first closet held rows of clothes, carefully hung on cedar hangers, and neatly arranged. Most of the clothing was dark in coloring, black or variations. She did have an entire section devoted to more "feminine" fashion that she tried to avoid like the Black Plague. It was straight animosity toward the "gifts" bestowed on her father by the Throne. She was driven, compelled to buy these things, and she longed to wear them. It was in her nature, like hair color or breathing, but she fought her own desire. A small victory, every time she put on black BDUs.
She took victories where she could find them.
On the floor, scattered pell-mell, were various discarded pieces that formed a jungle of cloth that might have daunted even Ponce de Leon, though she doubted it. Driven by the tales of El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth, more than any other mortal before or after him, he'd bordered on the wrong side of obsessive.
The fool.
The rich, famous, and now dead fool.
Much good all that fame and fortune did you, Frenchy, Del thought.
She moved to the second closet and stood for a moment looking over the contents. This was Del's self-dubbed War Room. On the right, she stored various boxes of ammunition, mostly for her favored SIG. The stores included jacketed hollow-points, spider-split, standard solid, and her semi-legal Black Talon and equally illegal armor piercing. There was also a small stack of about a dozen spare magazines. On the left, several rifles of different makes were housed in individual cases and placed on separate shelves. Rifle ammunition sat next to the weapon's case in a neat stack of boxes. Each rifle had a loaded magazine with a chambered round and a second magazine stored inside the case.
Del would rather buy new magazines every six months than be caught without a loaded weapon when she needed it.
One half of the back of the closet had a clothing bar that sagged a little under the weight of three bulletproof vests. The other half of the closet held a large gilded box with a slanted top. The top was a split lid, like the double doors to her closets. A faint glow peaked through the seams of the box, as if it housed its own light.
She groaned as she unclasped her shoulder holster and shrugged out of the harness. She hung it next to the ammunition and pulled out the spent magazines. She reloaded each magazine and returned them to the harness. Walking back out of the War Room, she stood again before the other closet and began to strip off her dirty clothing. The pants were salvageable. They needed a good wash, but would survive. The shirt was beyond ruined and instead of tossing it on the pile on the floor, she tossed it near a trash can that was already home to a collection of crumpled McDonald's drive-thru sacks.
She picked up the SIG and holster that normally rode at the small of her back and moved from the bedroom to the bathroom. She set the SIG on the edge of her Japanese-style standing tub and turned on the hot water faucet. In minutes, the room filled with thick steam and Del sank gratefully into the tub. Her tortured muscles relaxed in the near-scalding water. She dunked a large washcloth into the hot water, placed it over her face and sunk down until only her head remained above the water.
The job that Ahadiel gave them was a fairly standard hunt-and-kill. The only trouble this time there was not one but three rogues.
Agrat, Astarte and Jenoa.
Agrat and Astarte were female.
Female rogues were always worse than the males, always harder to deal with. Only the Throne knew why for certain. They could be more vicious, more cunning, more strategic. Certainly, female rogues were more manipulative. Not always, but enough that Del was even more unhappy about the assignment.
Agrat, Astarte and Jenoa.
Three rogues, two females, one male and all of them working together.
Not good, Del, she thought.
But the fun didn't stop there. The rogues and the children were in Salt Lake City.
She sighed, and her fingers moved unconsciously across her stomach to find the long, almost straight scar above her left hip. Then up to a set of three, round, puckered scars under her left arm. She could never quite reach the crisscross scar beneath her right shoulder. They were the mementos of the last three times she'd been to the land of Brigham Young. Fifteen years ago, after her last trip, she began refusing any assignments that would take her back, no matter how simple. There was something about a bastion of religious zealotry that made everything harder, more dangerous.
Or maybe it was just Salt Lake City.
Three rogues, a guide she didn't like, and all wrapped up in her least favorite city.
"Burning Mormons," Del said, her voice muffled through the washcloth. She breathed deep, let out an exaggerated sigh and got to the business of taking a long, hot bath.
"Burning angels."
Tears of Heaven
|
SECOND PARTY OPINION (SPO)
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
Pfleiderer 22 March 2021
VERIFICATION PARAMETERS
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
CONTENTS
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Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
SCOPE OF WORK
Pfleiderer ( or "the issuer") commissioned ISS ESG to assist with its Sustainability-Linked Securities by assessing three core elements to determine the sustainability quality of the instrument:
1. The sustainability credibility of the KPIs selected and Sustainability Performance Targets (SPTs) calibrated – whether the KPIs selected are core, relevant and material to the issuer's business model and sector, and whether the associated target are ambitious.
2. Pfleiderer's Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework (March 2021 version) and structural components of the transaction – benchmarked against the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles (SLBPs), and Sustainability-Linked Loan Principles (SLLPs).
3. Sustainability-Linked Securities link to Pfleiderer's sustainability strategy – drawing on Pfleiderer's overall sustainability profile and related objectives.
PFLEIDERER BUSINESSES OVERVIEW
Pfleiderer is a manufacturer of wood products, supplying furniture boards, kitchen worktops, HPL laminates and artificial walls to the furniture industry, the interior industry and construction. The company's customers include major furniture manufacturers in Poland and the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), and other small and medium furniture companies.
The company operates sites in Arnsberg, Baruth, Gütersloh, Leutkirch and Neumarkt, where it employs around 2,000 people. It combines the product ranges of Duropal and Thermopal.
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| | SECTION | EVALUATION SUMMARY1 |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1.1: Carbon footprint KPI selection and SPT calibration | | KPI selection: Material to issuer’s business model and sustainability profile |
| | | Sustainability Performance Target (SPT) calibration: |
| | | • Ambitious against the issuer’s past performance |
| | | • Ambitous against the issuer’s sectorial peer group |
| | | • Ambitious against Paris Climate Goals and in line with 1.5°C decarbonization |
| | | pathway |
| | | The KPI selected is core, relevant and material to the issuer’s business model and consistent |
| | | with its sustainability strategy. It is appropriately measurable, quantifiable, externally |
| | | verifiable and benchmarkable. It covers a material scope of the operations and activities of |
| | | Pfleiderer. |
| | | The SPT is ambitious against the company’s past performance as the reduction target keeps a |
| | | linear decrease until 2025. Furthermore, ISS ESG finds that the SPT is ambitious compared to |
| | | companies in the Furniture and Fittings sector in terms of defining a GHG emissions reduction |
| | | target as it is one of the few companies to have established a GHG reduction target and |
| | | belongs to the top 3 most ambitious target set by the sector in terms of average yearly |
| | | reduction rate. Compared with the benchmark provided by the issuer and obtained through |
| | | engagement with the Science Based Initiative, the issuer’s SPT is aligned with the Paris Climate |
| | | Goals and a 1.5°C decarbonization pathway. The target is set in a clear timeline, is |
| | | benchmarkable and supported by a clear strategy and action plan. |
| Part 1.2: Percentage of recycled wood used KPI selection and SPT calibration | | KPI selection: Material to issuer’s business model and sustainability profile |
| | | Sustainability Performance Target (SPT) calibration: |
| | | • Ambitious against the issuer’s past performance |
| | | • Ambitious against the issuer’s sectorial peer group |
| | | • The SPT is not benchmarkable as there are currently no existing |
| | | international standards for this KPI |
| | | The KPI selected is core, relevant and material to the issuer’s business model and consistent |
| | | with its sustainability strategy. It is appropriately measurable, quantifiable, externally |
| | | verifiable but difficult to benchmark due to the lack of peer disclosures and international |
| | | standards. This limitation cannot be attributed to the issuer. It covers a material scope of the |
| | | operations and activities of Pfleiderer. |
| | | The SPT is ambitious against the company’s past performance. The company sets its target in |
| | | a linear way, with a 2% increase per year, which shows a well defined path to achieving the |
| | | 50% goal by 2025. Moreover, the target is set in a clear timeline, and supported by a clear |
| | | strategy and action plan. Furthermore, the target is ambitious compared to Furniture and |
| | | Fittings sector practices in terms of defining target to increase use of recycled materials. No |
| | | conclusion of the ambition of the target against international target is possible due to the lack |
| | | of international target, which cannot be attributed to the issuer. |
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Part 2:
Aligned with ICMA SLBPs and LMA SLLPs
Alignment with the SLBPs and SLLPs
Part 3:
Link to issuer's sustainability strategy
The Issuer has defined a formal framework for its Sustainability-Linked Securities regarding the selection of KPIs, calibration of Sustainability Performance Targets (SPTs), sustainabilitylinked securities characteristics, reporting and verification. The framework is in line with the ICMA SLBPs and LMA SLLPs.
Consistent with issuer's sustainability strategy
According to ISS ESG indicative assessment 2 , the company currently shows a moderate sustainability performance. For the four key ESG issues identified by ISS ESG as relevant to Pfleiderer based on the Furniture and Fittings sector's main ESG challenges, the company has put in place measures and policies to address risks, even if further efforts could help strengthening the ESG performance.
The KPIs selected by the issuer are related to climate change and sustainable use of resources. Climate change has been defined as one of the key priorities of the issuer in terms of sustainability strategy and ISS ESG finds that this is a material sustainability topic for the issuer. ISS ESG finds that this issuance contributes to the issuer's sustainability strategy thanks to the KPIs' clear link to the key sustainability priorities of the issuer and due to ambitious SPTs against company's past performance, peer group, and targets aligned with the Paris Climate Goals.
1 Pfleiderer is not part of the ISS ESG Corporate Rating Coverage Universe. The assessment of the ESG performance and strategy of the company has been conducted by an ISS ESG analyst for the Furniture and Fittings sector. Please note that, while the assessment methodology is derived from the ISS ESG Corporate Rating methodology, the conclusion of the assessment should be considered as indicative only and differs from a full Corporate Rating. 2 Ibid
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ISS ESG SPO ASSESSMENT
The issuer selected two KPIs for the purposes of its Sustainability-Linked Financial Instruments.
PART 1.1. CARBON FOOTPRINT - KPI SELECTION & SPT CALIBRATION
1.1.1. KPI selection
KPI selected by the issuer
FROM ISSUER'S FRAMEWORK 3
KPI 1: CARBON FOOTPRINT
* KPI: Greenhouse gas emissions scope 1 and 2 (in tCO2e) emitted by Pfleiderer West 4
* Rationale: Reducing GHG emissions is a key component of the company's strategy to mitigate climate change and address the climate crisis. In the search for the efficiency of its processes, Pfleiderer has already managed to considerably reduce the emissions associated with its production. More than 90% of electricity and thermal energy produced by the group is already coming from renewable sources. Pfleiderer is committed to Paris Agreement to limiting global warming to 1.5°C and to the required 21% CO2 reduction in a five years' time horizon based on the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) pathways.
* Scope: The KPI covers 85% of Pfleiderer activities.
* Calculation methodology: Pfleiderer used its GHG emissions inventory methodology, that was built following the guides, guidelines and calculation tools of the World Resources Institute Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol.
* External verification: Pfleiderer's GHG emissions inventory has been reported and verified by a third-party verification provider since 2018.
Materiality and relevance
Climate change mitigation is considered a key ESG issue faced by the Furniture and Fittings sector according to key ESG standards 5 for reporting and ISS ESG assessment. Companies of this sector are highly energy-intense, namely in the process of producing wood-based products such as laminates, High Pressure Laminates (HPL) elements used for internal and external furniture and fittings, but also as construction materials for buildings.
ISS ESG finds that climate change mitigation and the KPI selected by the issuer, related to carbon emission footprint is:
* Relevant to Pfeiderer business as its industry is highly GHG-emitting, and exposed to climate change mitigation solutions (e.g. renewable energy source, recycled wood used for production, carbon sequestration).
3 This table is displayed by the issuer in its Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework and have been copied over in this report by ISS ESG for clarity.
4 Pfleiderer West represents the core of Pleiderer business and generated more than 85% of its 2020 revenues.
5 Key ESG Standards include SASB and TCFD, among others.
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* Core to the issuer's business as climate change mitigation reduction measures will impact its key processes and operations (e.g. energy efficiency in production of laminates and HPL).
* Material to Pfleiderer business model from an ESG perspective as it is one of the key ESG issues faced by the Furniture and Fittings industry and has the scope of the KPI covers 85% of the total operations of Pfleiderer in terms of revenue. Moreover, coupled with the KPI targetting increased recycled wood use, Pfleiderer can have material impact on the issue.
1.1.3. Consistency with overall company's sustainability strategy
Pfleiderer has identified climate change mitigation as one of its key ESG priorities. Over the years, the company has devoted significant resources to reduce the use of fossil fuels, and consequently reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Currently, 94% of all its produced electrical and thermal energy stems from biomass fuels, and only our 6% back-up supply comes from natural gas. Utilising state-ofthe-art cogeneration plants and biomass boilers has helped the issuer to reduce its CO2 emissions in its CHP plants by 26% over the last 7 years.
The issueris committed to investing further into the reduction of CO2 emissions across its sites. As a first step, Pfleiderer targets to reduce Scope 1+2 emission by 21% by 2025. In addition to this commitment, Pfleiderer will expand its actions across the value chain to include Scope 3 emissions. With this holistic approach, the issuer will further reduce its CO2 emissions in waste / wastewater treatment, consumed materials, and travelling-related emissions. Finally, Pfleiderer is committed to compensate the remaining gap in Scope 1+2 through ETS allowances, supporting forestation projects in the Amazon, or similar compensation activities.
Pfleiderer is a member of the initiative Klimaschutz Holzindustrie 6 . The initiative has set itself the goal of making the wood industry climate-friendly and sustainable - the participants are committed to the guidelines for sustainable and climate-friendly development.
ISS ESG finds that the KPI selected by the issuer is consistent with the overall company's sustainability strategy.
Measurability
* Material scope and perimeter: The KPI selected covers about 85% of the operations and activities of the issuer. Furthermore, the KPI captures GHG emissions scopes 1 and 2 which are considered by the issuer the most relevant for the sector, representing about 79% of total emissions.
* Quantifiable: The KPI selected is measurable and quantifiable. Greenhouse gas emissions (tCO2e) (scopes 1, 2) is a widely disclosed KPI and standardized in the market. The issuer's GHG emissions inventory methodology follows the guides, guidelines and calculation tools of the World Resources Institute Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol.
* Externally verifiable: The KPI selected is externally verifiable thanks to the reporting protocol mentioned above. The issuer has GHG emission data for the 2018, 2019, and 2020, which has been verified by a third-party verification provider. The issuer also commits to get
6 https://www.klimaschutzholzindustrie.de/
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a third-party verification of the KPI considered under this transaction until the SPT target year.
* Benchmarkable: By referring to commonly acknowledged GHG accounting standard protocol, the KPI is easily comparable with the data reported by other companies and with international targets such as the Paris Agreement. Benchmarking of the SPT in relation with this KPI has been analysed in section 1.2.
Opinion on KPI selection: ISS ESG finds that KPI 1 is core, relevant and material to the issuer's business model and consistent with its sustainability strategy. It is appropriately measurable, quantifiable, externally verifiable and benchmarkable. It covers a material scope of the operations and activities of Pfleiderer.
1.2. Calibration of SPT
SPT set by the issuer
FROM ISSUER'S FRAMEWORK 7
* Sustainability Performance Target: Greenhouse gas emissions scope 1 and 2 (in tCO2e) emitted by Pfleiderer West 8 as defined below:
* Sustainability Performance Target Trigger: is calculated as the tonnes of CO2 emitted (scope 1 and 2) by Pfleiderer West
* Sustainability Performance Target Observation Date: December 31 2022 (intermediate target), December 31, 2025
* 2020 Baseline: 220,164 tCO2
* Improvement from baseline: – 21%
* Factors that support the achievement of the target: Pfleiderer's goal is to improve the energy efficiency and overall GHG footprint of its activities by implementing a plant by plant transition from grey energy to full green energy by way of purchasing Scandinavian hydro-power certificates. A planned transition strategy has been shared on a confidential basis with ISS ESG.
* Risks to the target: Equipment failure, among other operational factors could lead to an increase of its overall carbon footprint
| (in tCO2e) | 2022MTP | 2025MTP |
|---|---|---|
| Carbon Footprint | 201,670 | |
| Abs. decrease | -18,493 | -46,234 |
| % decrease | -8.4% | -21.0% |
7 This table is displayed by the issuer in its Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework and have been copied over in this report by ISS ESG for clarity.
8 Pfleiderer West represents the core of Pleiderer business and generated more than 85% of its 2020 revenues.
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Ambition
Against company's past performance
Pfleiderer set the SPT to reduce its GHG emissions (scopes 1 and 2) equal to or less than 173.930 tCO2e by 2025. This equates to an estimated reduction of 21% in 5 years, from 2020 baseline year to 2025 target year. Moreover, the issuer has defined an intermediate target towards 2022 aiming to reduce its GHG emissions (scopes 1 and 2) equal to or less than 201.670 tCO2e, which equates to an estimated reduction 8.4% from the 2020 baseline.
Pfleiderer's carbon reduction target, from the 2020 baseline to the 2025 target shows a yearly average reduction of 4.2%, while Pfleiderer reduction rate between 2018 and 2020 has been steeper, of 12% and 8% respectively. This is due to an improved renewable energy mix in Germany throughout the last three years, and future uncertainty about the increase of renewable installations.
Various factors could put the achievement of this target at risk, including operational risks such as equipment failure, inbound and/or outbound logistics constraints, supply deficiency from critical suppliers, change in demand, amongst other factors.
In this context and compared to the baseline year, the SPT set by Pfleiderer is perceived by ISS ESG as ambitious against the company's past performance. The gradual decrease and an intermediary target further enhance the robustness of Pfleiderer's strategy.
Against company's sectorial peers
ISS ESG conducted a benchmarking of the SPT set by Pfleiderer against 46 Furnitures and Fittings peer group of listed companies derived from the ISS ESG Universe.
In terms of target set, Pfleiderer is one of 12 companies in its industry to have a set a GHG emission reduction target and one of the only nine companies to have set a target covering both Scopes 1 and 2 GHG emissions. It thus belongs to the top 20% tier of its sector in terms of existence of such targets. No company in the
peer group has defined GHG emissions reduction targets covering scope 3 GHG emissions.
Among the companies that have set targets in a comparable scope (covering absolute GHG emissions Scopes 1+2), Pfleiderer's average yearly reduction target is in a similar order of magnitude than the two most ambitious targets defined by competitors (see table below). It must be noted however that only 1 other company (competitor 1) in the peer group has set Science Based Targets certified by the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi), and thus align with best market practices.
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| | | PEER GROUP’S TARGET FOR GHG EMISSION REDUCTION | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Companies | Location | | | Absolute reduction | Coverage | | Yearly weighted |
| | | | | target | | | average reduction |
| Pfleiderer | Germany | | Yes, towards 2025 | | Scope 1&2, 85% of operations | | |
| Competitor 1 | USA | | Yes, towards 2025 | | | Scope 1&2, 100% of | |
| | | | | | | operations | |
| Competitor 2 | USA | | Yes, towards 2020 | | Scope 1&2, more than 80% of operations | | |
| Competitor 3 | Brazil | | Yes, towards 2025 | | | Only Scope 1, 100% of | |
| | | | | | | operation | |
Given the limited number of companies having set such target, and the fact only one other company has set a target comparable to Pfleiderer (competitor 1), ISS ESG concludes that the SPT set by the issuer is ambitious compared to companies in the Furniture and Fittings sector in terms of defining a GHG emissions reduction target. The SPT belongs to the top 3 most ambitious targets defined by companies in their peer group. This is based on a weighted yearly reduction rate, thus not accounting for the actual volume of GHG emissions which could see Pfleiderer's target being the most ambitious compared to the peer group.
Against international targets
Paris agreement
Pfleiderer used the Science Based Target Initiative Absolute Contraction Approach to benchmark its SPT against the Paris Climate Goals. The Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi) is a collaboration between Carbon Disclosure Project, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute and the World Wide Fund for Nature, derived from Beyond 2°C Scenario (B2DS) developed by the International Energy Agency (IEA) as part of its publication, Energy Technology Perspectives (ETP) 2017 (IEA, 2017).
According to the engagement conducted by Pfleiderer with the SBTi, the minimum absolute GHG emissions reduction level for scopes 1 and 2 are the following for Furniture and Fittings sector companies to align with the above-listed decarbonization pathways:
* 2.5% of annual linear reduction required to align with a well-below a 2°C decarbonization pathway
* 4% of annual linear reduction required to align with a 1.5°C decarbonization pathway
Based on this information provided by the issuer, ISS ESG conducted a comparison between Pfleiderer's past performance for baseline year 2020 and SPT for 2025 with the two rates indicated as a guideline for alignment with decarbonization pathways on the basis of Pfleiderer's GHG emission reduction on scopes 1 and 2. The yearly reduction rate of Pfleiderer target is in fact 4.2%.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
Compared with the credible benchmark provided by the issuer, ISS ESG concludes that the issuer's SPT is aligned with the Paris Climate Goals and with a 1.5°C decarbonization pathway.
UN Sustainable Development Goals
In addition, ISS ESG, using a proprietary methodology, assessed that the SPT achievement would have a positive contribution to the SDG 13 "Climate action".
Measurability & comparability
* Historical data: The issuer provided yearly GHG emissions footprint data verified by a thirdparty verification provider since 2018 which aligns with the SLBP of providing historical data for previous 3 years.
* Benchmarkable: By referring to commonly acknowledged GHG accounting protocols, the KPI is easily comparable with the data reported by other companies and other benchmarks.
* Timeline: The issuer defined a precise timeline related to the SPT achievement, including the target observation date, the trigger event and the frequency of SPTs measurement.
Supporting strategy and action plan
The issuer will take into account various operational measures with the objective to improve the energy efficiency and overall GHG footprint of its activities by implementing a plant by plant transition from grey energy to full green energy by way of purchasing Scandinavian hydra-power certificates.
A planned transition strategy has been shared on a confidential basis with ISS ESG.
Opinion on SPT calibration: ISS ESG finds that the SPT calibrated by Pfleiderer is ambitious against the company's past performance as the reduction target keeps a linear decrease until 2025. Furthermore, ISS ESG finds that the SPT is ambitious compared to companies in the Furniture and Fittings sector in terms of defining a GHG emissions reduction target as it is one of the few companies to have established a GHG reduction target and belongs to the top 3 most ambitious target set by the sector in terms of average yearly reduction rate. Compared with the benchmark provided by the issuer and obtained through engagement with the Science Based Initiative, the issuer's SPT is aligned with the Paris Climate Goals and a 1.5°C decarbonization pathway. The target is set in a clear timeline, is benchmarkable and supported by a clear strategy and action plan.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
PART 1.2: RECYCLED WOOD USED - KPI SELECTION & SPT CALIBRATION
1.2.1 KPI selection
KPI selected by the issuer
FROM ISSUER'S FRAMEWORK 9
KPI 1: PERCENTAGE OF RECYCLED WOOD USED
* KPI: Percentage of recycled wood used (post-consumer material and internal rejects)
* Rationale: Reducing the use of "fresh" wood in its production is fundamental to helping preserve and protect natural resources. These investments also help increase Pfleiderer's firm-levels of material cost efficiency. Historically, the company has already managed to materially increase the use of post-consumer recycled wood within its production and it intends to further progress on that path.
* Scope: This KPI covers 100% of wood-based activities of Pfleiderer.
* Calculation methodology: Pfleiderer will calculate the KPI #1 as the tonnes of recycled wood used (post-consumer material and internal rejects) divided by the tonnes of total woods used (i.e. the sum of pre- and post-consumer recycled and fresh wood)
* External verification: Pfleiderer has been reporting this KPI starting in 2018. The issuer has not received any third-party on historic data, but commits to get a third-party verification of the KPI considered under this transaction until the SPT target year.
Materiality and relevance
Sustainable sourcing, safe and environmentally friendly production processes, overexploitation of nature and the consequences on climate change is considered a key ESG issue faced by the Furniture and Fittings sector according to ISS ESG assessment. Companies in this sector are highly dependant on raw materials, namely in the process of producing wood-based products such as laminates, High Pressure Laminates (HPL) elements used for internal and external furniture and fittings, but also as construction materials for buildings.
ISS ESG finds that the percentage of recycled wood used KPI selected by the issuer is:
* Relevant to Pfleiderer's business as its industry is highly reliant on wood for the production of laminates, and HPL elements and exposed to circular economy solutions (e.g. use of recycled wood).
* Core to the issuer's business as the increase of recycled wood used will impact key processes and operations as the use of wood applies to all Pfeiderer's operations.
* Material to Pfleiderer from an ESG perspective as it is one of the key ESG issues faced by the Furniture and Fittings industry and as the KPI covers 100% of the operations of the issuer. Hence Pfleiderer can have material impact on circular economy and sustainable sourcing.
9 This table is displayed by the issuer in its Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework and have been copied over in this report by ISS ESG for clarity.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
Consistency with overall company's sustainability strategy
Pfleiderer has a longstanding commitment related to sustainability, especially regarding its woodbased production. Pfleiderer recognised years ago that cascade utilisation and recycling management are the only economic models that can guarantee sustainable production of high-quality wood products in the future.
The company has brought its wood mix to consist of ~15% fresh wood fractions, and even then are usually by-products such as thinning and residual wood. The remainder comprises ~45% pre-consumer recycled material such as sawmill residues, and ~40% post-consumer recycled material such as processed waste wood.
Regarding its wood sourcing, the company uses material from sustainable forestry and partners without exception. Starting in 2007, it has consistently achieved certification according to FSC® (FSC® license code: FSC-C011773) and PEFC (PEFC/04-32-0828).
This also means that the following types of wood are not procured:
* Wood from illegal logging
* Wood from areas in which cultural and civil rights are violated
* Wood from forests which due to poor forest management are classified as endangered, and are under special protection
* Wood produced from the conversion of natural forests into plantations or non-forest uses
* Wood from forests that have been grown from genetically modified tree species
* Wood from areas in which one of the ILO basic principles is violated, as defined in the ILO eclaration on fundamental rights at work from 1998
The approximately 5 million tonnes of wood processed by Pfleiderer annually come from sustainably managed and certified forests, within a maximum proximity to its plants of 200 kilometers.
The definition of a recycled wood use KPI is consistent with Pfleiderer's strategy of increasing the use of recycled wood in its production process, especially post-consumer material and internal rejects, helping preserve and protect natural resources and also help increase its firm-levels of material cost efficiency.
ISS ESG finds that the KPI selected by the issuer is consistent with the overall company's sustainability strategy.
Measurability
* Material scope and perimeter: The KPI selected covers 100% of the issuer's operations.
* Quantifiable: The KPI selected is measurable and quantifiable. The issuer defines recycled wood as post-consumer material and internal rejects, and defines a methodology to calculate the percentage of recycled wood used as the tonnes of recycled wood used (postconsumer material and internal rejects) divided by the tonnes of total woods used (i.e. the sum of pre- and post-consumer recycled and fresh wood).
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
* Externally verifiable: The KPI selected is externally verifiable, but the past performance on this KPI has not been verified by a third-party. The issuer commits to get a third-party verification of its calculation of the KPI considered under this transaction.
* Benchmarkable: This KPI is comparable, but complicate to benchmark due to the lack of international standards and targets. Also, the KPI is not commonly reported by companies of the Furniture and Fittings sector. Benchmarking of the SPT in relation with this KPI has been analysed in section 2.
Opinion on KPI selection: ISS ESG finds that the KPI selected is core, relevant and material to the issuer's business model and consistent with its sustainability strategy. It is appropriately measurable, quantifiable, externally verifiable but difficult to benchmark due to the lack of peer disclosures and international standards. This limitation cannot be attributed to the issuer. It covers a material scope of the operations and activities of Pfleiderer.
1.2.2. Calibration of SPT
SPT set by the issuer
FROM ISSUER'S FRAMEWORK 10
* Sustainability Performance Target: Increasing the proportion of recycled wood used in its overall production to 44% (669.3 kilo tonnes) by intermediate target year 2022, and 50% (772.8 kilo tonnes) by 2025
* Sustainability Performance Target Trigger: is calculated as follows: the tonnes of recycled wood (post-consumer material and internal rejects) used divided by the tonnes of total woods used (i.e. the sum of recycled and fresh wood)
* Sustainability Performance Target Observation Date: December 31 2022 (intermediate target), and December 31, 2025
* 2020 Baseline: 40.3% (545.5 kilo tonnes)
* Improvement from baseline: + 9.7 percentage points
* Factors that support the achievement of the target: Increasing the use of post-consumer recycled wood (and therefore the percentage in our production) is fully embedded in the company's strategy and improves profitability.
* Risks to the target:
o The post-consumer recycled wood used is also linked to the recycling plant capacity - this could therefore create a bottleneck in the event of a surge in demand, forcing the company to use fresh wood instead of recycled wood; in case of demand surge, the target is considered achieved if the absolute amount of recycling wood is used regardless the %-ratio
o As some of its products cannot be produced using recycled wood, there is a risk that, subject to the demand, the percentage of recycled wood used will decrease because of the increasing demand of products that are made of fresh wood only
10 This table is displayed by the issuer in its Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework and have been copied over in this report by ISS ESG for clarity.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
Ambition
Against company's past performance
Pfleiderer sets the SPT to increase the share of recycled wood used (defined as post-consumer material and internal rejects) in its total operation to reach 50% in FY 2025. This equates to an increase of +9.7% by December 2025 compared to the 2020 baseline.
The company provided past performance data starting from 2018, as can be seen in the table below.
Moreover, the company set its target in a linear way, with a 2% yearly average increase, which shows a well defined path to achieving the 50% goal by 2025. Past performance would indicate a similar or major increase between years, with the exception of 2020, which was possibly influenced by the macro-economic and demand shift due to the COVID 19 pandemic.
Achieving this target represents a clear increase of recycled wood percentage relative to the baseline year and past performance of the company.
While some macro-economic factors and trends will support the achievement of this target, e.g. increased customers awareness on and willingness to act upon sustainable material use and climate change mitigation, and the sustainability strategy of the issuer pointing at the continued increase of both certified "fresh" material and recycled wood, some other factors will likely pose challenges for Pfleiderer to systemically achieve the SPT set by 2025. The main factor relates to the demand, both due to quantity of demand and type of demand, which could push the company to use "fresh" material instead of recycled wood.
In this context and compared to the baseline year, the SPT set by Pfleiderer on its total operations is perceived by ISS ESG as ambitious against the company's past performance.
Against company's sectorial peers
Recycled wood share in total material use is not commonly reported by companies in the Furniture and Fittings sector. Pfleiderer set its target independently, without relying on peers comparison.
ISS ESG compared the target set by the issuer with other targets set by the peer group related to use of recycled material, not considering wood solely. ISS ESG believes that the comparision Pfleiderer's target against use of recycled material targets set by companies in peer group remains insightful as Pfleiderer's production relies mainly on wood.
In terms of target set, Pfleiderer is one of five companies in its industry to have set a target to increase use of recycled materials in production processes. The target set by Pfleiderer is the most ambitious among the peer group in terms of yearly average increase of use of recycled material and of target year performance.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
ISS ESG concludes that the SPT set by the issuer is ambitious compared to Furniture and Fittings sector practices in terms of defining target to increase use of recycled materials.
Against international targets
Pfleiderer did not benchmark its SPT against any international targets. This is due to the lack of relevant standards guiding companies in establishing thresholds for the use of recycled wood in their operations.
Nonetheless, Pfleiderer has obtained relevant sustainability certifications for its products, including the Nordic Swan, Blue Angel, and Cradle-to-Cradle labels. Regarding wood sourcing specifically, the company has consistently achieved certification according to FSC and PEFC, even though the percentage of certified wood not clear. While these certifications do not take into account any measurements for recycled wood usage, they show ambition to follow best market practices regarding wood based products.
No conclusion of the ambition of the target against international target is possible due to the lack of international target.
Measurability & comparability
* Historical data: The issuer has provided historical data for the past three years, but has not received any third-party on historic data. It commits to get a third-party verification of the KPI considered under this transaction until the SPT target year.
* Benchmarkable: This KPI is comparable, but complicate to benchmark due to the lack of international standards and targets. Also, the KPI is not very commonly reported by companies of the Furniture and Fittings sector. This limitation cannot be attributed to the issuer.
* Timeline: The issuer defined a precise timeline related to the SPT achievement, including the target observation date, the trigger event and the frequency of SPTs measurement.
Supporting strategy and action plan
Pfleiderer will further enhance its technologies and develop new processes to be set up along the entire value-added chain, to support the increased use of recycled wood.
Pfleiderer applies the "cascade use" within its recycling management which can guarantee sustainable production of high-quality wood products in the future. This is why it has and will keep implementing intelligent wood cycles at its production sites. Sawing residues from the sawmill and recycled wood are collected at its locations and prepared for further processing. In the production process, new wood-based panels are created.
The cascade use primarily helps to relieve the burden on sustainable forestry and save resources through the multiple processing of wood – the added value thus increases by a factor of 4 to 9.
Opinion on SPT calibration: ISS ESG finds that the SPT calibrated by Pfleiderer is ambitious against the company's past performance. The company sets its target in a linear way, with a 2% yearly average increase, which shows a well defined path to achieving the 50% goal by 2025. Moreover, The target is
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
set in a clear timeline, and supported by a clear strategy and action plan. Furthermore, the target is ambitious compared to Furniture and Fittings sector practices in terms of defining target to increase use of recycled materials. No conclusion of the ambition of the target against international target is possible due to the lack of international target, which cannot be attributed to the issuer.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
PART 2: ALIGNMENT WITH ICMA SUSTAINABILITY-LINKED BOND PRINCIPLES
Rationale for Framework
FROM ISSUER'S FRAMEWORK
Pfleiderer understands the positive role that it can play in combating the climate crisis by providing climate change mitigation through reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions, and protecting natural resources by increasing the proportion of recycled wood in its products. As such, the company intends to issue Sustainability-Linked Securities ("SLSs"), which may include Sustainability-Linked Bonds ("SLBs"), Sustainability-Linked Loans (SLLs) or any other Sustainability-Linked instruments (Commercial Paper, derivatives instruments, etc.). This approach links Pfleiderer's sustainability strategy with its funding policy incentivizing the achievement of pre-determined Sustainability Performance Targets (SPTs) - leveraging ambitious timelines to achieve sustainability performance that is relevant, core and material to its business. The framework provides a high-level approach to its Sustainability-Linked Securities and investors should refer to relevant documentation for any securities transactions.
Opinion: ISS ESG considers the Rationale for Issuance description provided by Pfleiderer as aligned with the SLBPs and SLLPs.
2.1. Selection of KPI
ISS ESG conducted a detailed analysis of the sustainability credibility of KPI selection available in section 1 of this report.
Opinion: ISS ESG considers the Selection of KPIs as per the description provided by Pfleiderer as aligned with the SLBPs and SLLPs:
* KPI 1 (Carbon footprint) is core, relevant and material to the issuer's business model and consistent with its sustainability strategy. It is appropriately measurable, quantifiable, externally verifiable and benchmarkable. It covers a material scope of the operations and activities of Pfleiderer.
* KPI 2 (Percentage of recycled wood used) is core, relevant and material to the issuer's business model and consistent with its sustainability strategy. It is appropriately measurable, quantifiable, externally verifiable but difficult to benchmark due to the lack of peer disclosures and international standards. This limitation cannot be attributed to the issuer. It covers a material scope of the operations and activities of Pfleiderer.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
2.2. Calibration of Sustainability Performance Target (SPT)
ISS ESG conducted a detailed analysis of the sustainability credibility of SPT is available in section 1 of this report.
Opinion: ISS ESG considers the Calibration of Sustainability Performance Target (SPT) description provided by Pfleiderer as aligned with the SLBPs and SLLPs:
* SPT 1 (Carbon footprint) is ambitious against the company's past performance as the reduction target keeps a linear decrease until 2025. Furthermore, ISS ESG finds that the SPT is ambitious compared to companies in the Furniture and Fittings sector in terms of defining a GHG emissions reduction target as it is one of the few companies to have established a GHG reduction target and belongs to the top 3 most ambitious target set by the sector in terms of average yearly reduction rate. Compared with the benchmark provided by the issuer and obtained through engagement with the Science Based Initiative, the issuer's SPT is aligned with the Paris Climate Goals and a 1.5°C decarbonization pathway. The target is set in a clear timeline, is benchmarkable and supported by a clear strategy and action plan.
* SPT 2 (Percentage of recycled wood used) is ambitious against the company's past performance. The company sets its target in a linear way, with a 2% increase per year, which shows a well defined path to achieving the 50% goal by 2025. Moreover, The target is set in a clear timeline, and supported by a clear strategy and action plan. Furthermore, the target is ambitious compared to Furniture and Fittings sector practices in terms of defining target to increase use of recycled materials. No conclusion of the ambition of the target against international target is possible due to the lack of international target, which cannot be attributed to the issuer.
2.3. Sustainability-Linked Securities Characteristics
FROM ISSUER'S FRAMEWORK
The proceeds of Pfleiderer's Sustainability-Linked instruments (covering bonds, loans or any other type of financing instruments) will be used for general corporate purposes. Its Sustainability-Linked Securities have a sustainability-linked feature that will result in a coupon adjustment if its performance does not achieve the stated Sustainability Performance Targets.
Pfleiderer's Sustainability-Linked instruments could have different structures, as stated below, so the company encourage investors to read this Framework in conjunction to the relevant instrument's legal documentation:
KPI #1 and KPI #2 will have independent step up:
* If KPI #1 does not meet its SPT: coupon step up of 12.5bps
* If KPI #2 does not meet its SPT: coupon step up of 12.5bps
Opinion: ISS ESG considers the Sustainability-Linked Securities Characteristics description provided by Pfleiderer as aligned with the SLBPs and SLLPs. The issuer describes the potential variation of the
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
Sustainability- Linked Securities financial or structural characteristics and defined clearly the KPI and SPT, including calculations methodology.
2.4. Reporting
FROM ISSUER'S FRAMEWORK
Pfleiderer's various SPTs will be reported by the group at least on an annual basis on its website, Annual or Sustainability Reports.
Reporting may include:
* Up-to-date information on the performance of the selected KPI, including the baseline where relevant;
* A verification assurance report relative to the SPT outlining the performance against the SPT and the related impact, and timing of such impact, on a financial instrument performance; and
* Any relevant information enabling investors to monitor the progress of the SPT.
Information may also include when feasible and possible:
* Qualitative or quantitative explanation of the contribution of the main factors, including M&A activities, behind the evolution of the performance/KPI on an annual basis;
* Illustration of the positive sustainability impacts of the performance improvement; and/or
* Any re-assessments of KPIs and/or restatement of the SPT and/or pro-forma adjustments of baselines or KPI scope, if relevant.
Opinion: ISS ESG considers the Reporting description provided by Pfleiderer as aligned with the SLBPs and SLLPs. This will be made publicly available annually and include valuable information, as described above.
2.5. Verification
FROM ISSUER'S FRAMEWORK
Pfleiderer's performance of its various KPIs, according to the relevant SPTs at the relevant reference date, will be verified by an External Verifier. "External Verifier" means qualified provider of third-party assurance or attestation services (e.g. auditing firm) appointed by the Issuer to review the Issuer's relevant KPIs and SPTs.
Pfleiderer's Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework has been reviewed by ISS ESG who provided a second party opinion, confirming the alignment with the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles (SLBP) administered by the ICMA, and Sustainability-Linked Loan Principles (SLLP), administered by LMA.
Additional KPIs/SPTs may be added over time and other SPTs, for the various KPIs mentioned above, will be added over time.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
Opinion: ISS ESG considers the Verification description provided by Pfleiderer as aligned with the SLBPs and SLLPs. The issuer plans on having the performance values of the SPT published and verified at the 2022 and 2025 target years. This will outline the performance against the SPT, the related impact and timing of such impact on the securities financial characteristics.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
PART 3: LINK TO PFLEIDERER'S SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY
Pfleiderer is not part of the ISS ESG Corporate Rating Coverage Universe. The below assessment of the ESG performance and strategy of the company has been conducted by an ISS ESG analyst for the Furniture and Fittings sector. Please note that, while the assessment methodology is derived from the ISS ESG Corporate Rating methodology, the below assessment should be considered as indicative only and differs from a full Corporate Rating.
Key ESG issues of the industry:
Key Challenges faced by companies in term of sustainability management in this sector are displayed the following:
* Design for environment
* Sustainable sourcing
* Safe and environmentally friendly production processes
* Customer health and safety
Indicative ESG risk and performance assessment
Pfleiderer is a manufacturer of wood products, supplying furniture boards, kitchen worktops, HPL laminates and artificial walls to the furniture industry, the interior industry and construction. The company's customers include major furniture manufacturers in Poland and the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), and other small and medium furniture companies.
So far, most of Pfleiderer's ESG-relevant data and information have been available only for Pfleiderer Deutschland GmbH, representing its Core West operation (hereafter: Pfleiderer Deutschland). This subsidiary demonstrates an overall comprehensive approach to health and safety, environment, and energy management via an integrated management system certified to ISO 45001, ISO 14001, and ISO 50001 implemented at all its production plants. Further, Pfleiderer Deutschland has been striving to improve the material efficiency of its production processes through using recycled materials such as sawdust and sawing residues as well as waste wood for both manufacturing and energy generation. The subsidiary has also obtained relevant sustainable certifications for some of its product ranges, including the Blue Angel, Nordic Swan, and Cradle-to-Cradle labels, which certify its products' positive impacts on the environment. With regard to sustainable sourcing, the subsidiary has made a commitment to avoid procuring wood from controversial origins, such as from illegal harvesting and areas where genetically modified trees are planted. Pfleiderer Deutschland has also achieved FSC and PEFC certifications for its production plants in Germany. However, as these certifications rather cover aspects such as chain of custody, controlled wood, and sourcing of reclaimed materials, they do not
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
directly show how much of the wood materials used by the company actually come from forests that are certified according to a sustainability standard.
In terms of substances of concern and product safety, the subsidiary has reduced the amount of certain chemicals, e.g., formaldehyde, conservative agents, and organic solvents, in its manufacturing processes. However, a comprehensive action plan with targets and progress reports for reducing or phasing out substances of concern still seems to be missing, and the company does not publish safety data sheets to inform customers of risks related to its products' materials. Also, eco-efficiency related data, including energy and water use consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste generation, is not available.
As all the above-mentioned measures apply to Pfleiderer Deutschland only, it remains unclear whether the same practices are implemented at the company's Core East operations in Poland.
Indicative product portfolio assessment
Social impact of the product portfolio: Pfleiderer's product portfolio does not have any positive or negative social impact on the achievement of global sustainability goals.
Environmental impact of the product portfolio: Pfleiderer has integrated recycled materials into its manufacturing as well as obtained relevant sustainability certifications for its products, including the Nordic Swan, Blue Angel, and Cradle-to-Cradle labels. These products have a positive impact on optimizing material use and thus contribute towards SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production. However, the revenue share of such products is estimated to be rather low. It seems that only a small share of wood used in the company's products originates from FSC-certified forests, which would positively impact sustainable agriculture and forestry, relating to SDGs 2: Zero Hunger and 15; Life on Land.
Controversy risk assessment
Based on a review of controversies in the period of 1 January 2019 – 9 March 2021, the greatest risk reported against companies operating in the Furniture and Fittings sector relate to activities that may have adverse impacts on the environment and human rights. This is closely followed by the failure to respect labor rights. The top three issues that have been reported against companies within the industry are as follows: alleged failure to prevent deforestation/illegal logging, failure to assess environmental impacts and poor stakeholder consultation. This is closely followed by the alleged failure to respect indigenous rights, failure to mitigate climate change impacts and failure to prevent air pollution.
There is no indication of Pfleiderer being involved in the above mentioned controversies.
Additional comments
The assessment is based on data and information of Pfleiderer Deutschland GmbH, a subsidiary representing the Core West operation of the Pfleiderer Group. Additional data and information of Pfleiderer Polska sp. z.o.o., representing the group's Core East operation in Poland, if available, could benefit the rating.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
Issuer's commitment to address climate change 11
| KPI SELECTED | SUSTAINABILITY OBJECTIVES FOR | KEY ESG INDUSTRY |
|---|---|---|
| | THE ISSUER | CHALLENGES |
| Percentage or recycled wood used in operation | | |
| GHG emissions reduction | | |
Opinion: ISS ESG finds that the proposed issuance is consistent with the issuer's sustainability strategy thanks to KPIs related to the key sustainability priorities of the issuer and to an ambitious SPT.
11 Please note that this part is not extracted from ISS ESG Indicative Corporate Assessment. This assessment has been conducted with the Project Team based on Pfleiderer's press release and external commitment publicly available.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
DISCLAIMER
1. Validity of the SPO: As long as Pfleiderer's Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework and benchmarks for the Sustainability Performance target(s) remain unchanged
2. ISS ESG uses a scientifically based rating concept to analyse and evaluate the environmental and social performance of companies and countries. In doing so, we adhere to the highest quality standards which are customary in responsibility research worldwide. In addition, we create a Second Party Opinion (SPO) on bonds based on data from the issuer.
3. We would, however, point out that we do not warrant that the information presented in this SPO is complete, accurate or up to date. Any liability on the part of ISS ESG in connection with the use of these SPO, the information provided in them and the use thereof shall be excluded. In particular, we point out that the verification of the compliance with the selection criteria is based solely on random samples and documents submitted by the issuer.
4. All statements of opinion and value judgements given by us do not in any way constitute purchase or investment recommendations. In particular, the SPO is no assessment of the economic profitability and credit worthiness of a bond but refers exclusively to the social and environmental criteria mentioned above.
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Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
ANNEX 1: Methodology
Alignment of the concept set for transactions against the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles, as administered by ICMA
ISS ESG reviewed the Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework of Pfleiderer, as well as the concept and processes for issuance against the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles administered by the ICMA. Those principles are voluntary process guidelines that outline best practices for financial instruments to incorporate forward-looking ESG outcomes and promote integrity in the development of the Sustainability-Linked Bond market by clarifying the approach for issuance.
ISS ESG reviewed the alignment of the concept of the Pfleiderer's issuance with mandatory and necessary requirements as per the Appendix II - SLB Disclosure Data Checklist of those principles, and with encouraged practices as suggested by the core content of the Principles.
Analysis of the KPI selection and associated SPT
In line with the voluntary guidance provided by the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles, ISS ESG conducted an in-depth analysis of the sustainability credibility of the KPI selected and associated SPT. ISS ESG analysed if the KPI selected is core, relevant and material to the issuer's business model and consistent with its sustainability strategy thanks to its long-standing expertise in evaluating corporate sustainability performance and strategy. ISS ESG also reviewed if the KPI is appropriately measurable by referring to key GHG reporting protocols and against acknowledged benchmarks.
ISS ESG analysed the ambition of the SPT against Pfleiderer's own past performance (according to Pfleiderer's reported data), against Furniture and Fittings peers (as per ISS ESG Peer Universe and data) and the UN SDGs (according the ISS ESG proprietary methodology). Finally, ISS ESG evaluated the measurability & comparability of the SPT, and the supporting strategy and action plan of Pfleiderer.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
ANNEX 2: Quality management processes
SCOPE
Pfleiderer commissioned ISS ESG to compile a Sustainability-Linked Financing SPO. The Second Party Opinion process includes verifying whether the Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework aligns with the ICMA Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles and to assess the sustainability credentials of its Sustainability-Linked Securities, as well as the issuer's sustainability strategy.
CRITERIA
Relevant Standards for this Second Party Opinion
Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles, administered by the ICMA
ISSUER'S RESPONSIBILITY
Pfleiderer's responsibility was to provide information and documentation on:
Framework
Rationale and supporting calculations and methodologies for KPI selection and SPT setting
Documentation of ESG strategy, policies and measures implemented by Pfleiderer
ISS ESG's VERIFICATION PROCESS
ISS ESG is one of the world's leading independent environmental, social and governance (ESG) research, analysis and rating houses. The company has been actively involved in the sustainable capital markets for over 25 years. Since 2014, ISS ESG has built up a reputation as a highly-reputed thought leader in the green and social bond market and has become one of the first CBI approved verifiers.
ISS ESG has conducted this independent Second Party Opinion of the Sustainability-Linked Securities to be issued by Pfleiderer based on ISS ESG methodology and in line with the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles administered by the ICMA.
The engagement with Pfleiderer took place in February and March 2021.
ISS ESG's BUSINESS PRACTICES
ISS has conducted this verification in strict compliance with the ISS Code of Ethics, which lays out detailed requirements in integrity, transparency, professional competence and due care, professional behaviour and objectivity for the ISS business and team members. It is designed to ensure that the verification is conducted independently and without any conflicts of interest with other parts of the ISS Group.
Sustainability Quality of the Issuer and Sustainability-Linked Securities
About ISS ESG SPO
ISS ESG is one of the world's leading rating agencies in the field of sustainable investment. The agency analyses companies and countries regarding their environmental and social performance.
As part of our Sustainable (Green & Social) Bond Services, we provide support for companies and institutions issuing sustainable bonds, advise them on the selection of categories of projects to be financed and help them to define ambitious criteria.
We assess alignment with external principles (e.g. the ICMA Green / Social Bond Principles), analyse the sustainability quality of the assets and review the sustainability performance of the issuer themselves. Following these three steps, we draw up an independent SPO so that investors are as well informed as possible about the quality of the bond / loan from a sustainability perspective.
Learn more: https://www.isscorporatesolutions.com/solutions/esg-solutions/green-bond-services/
For Information about SPO services, contact:
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SPO Business Manager EMEA/APAC
email@example.com
+44.20.3192.5760
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Project team
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RELEVANT HACCP CHARTS: Purchase, Storage, Preparation, Cooling
CROSS CONTAMINATION PREVENTION HOUSE RULES
What is Cross Contamination?
Cross contamination occurs when harmful bacteria are transferred from contaminated food to uncontaminated food.
How does Cross Contamination occur?
* By Direct Cross Contamination – contact between raw food and ready-to-eat food during transport, storage or preparation
* By Indirect Cross Contamination - spread of bacteria from raw food to ready-to-eat food via food handlers, equipment or surfaces. For example, indirect cross contamination can occur via refrigerator door handles, knives, chopping boards, work surfaces, chefs' cloths or cleaning cloths.
Why is it important to prevent Cross Contamination?
Cross contamination has frequently been found to be the cause of food poisoning outbreaks. Bacteria in contaminated food are not visible to the naked eye and do not cause noticeable food spoilage or affect taste, smell or texture.
Importantly, ready-to-eat food must be protected from cross contamination at all times. This is because there are no further controls to protect your customers from the risk of food poisoning, once contamination has taken place.
The risk of E. coli O157 cross contamination must be considered and controlled in any food business where both raw foods and ready-to-eat foods are handled. Major E. coli O157 outbreaks occurred in Scotland in 1996 and Wales in 2005 and were attributed to poor food handling practices which led to cross contamination.
E. coli O157 is a particularly dangerous organism because:
* it can lead to serious untreatable illness and even death
* it is reported to have a very low infective dose (less than 100 bacteria can cause illness)
* it has the ability to survive refrigeration, freezing and environments which have a low pH or reduced water activity.
These CookSafe procedures will also help control cross contamination risks from other food poisoning bacteria such as Campylobacter and Salmonella.
Which foods provide the main sources of Cross Contamination?
The following raw foods or ingredients present a potential source of cross contamination and should be handled with care:
* Raw meat such as beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey and game
* Other raw foods such as fish, shellfish and eggs
* Vegetables and fruit that have not been labelled as ready-to-eat and especially vegetables that are visibly dirty. Please see the table below for further information on fruit and vegetables.
In addition, water supplied to food businesses must be fit for human consumption.
on the final use. You should decide if certain foods are to be treated as raw or ready-to-eat, this will be dependent
PERSONAL HYGIENE
How can I prevent Cross Contamination from occurring in my business?
Think SAFE. Use the acronym SAFE to help you think about how you can separate raw and readyto-eat foods and prevent cross contamination. SAFE stands for Staff, Areas, Food and Equipment and should be considered at each step in your process. Further information is available in the BEST PRACTICE table, found later in this sub section.
How can I apply SAFE thinking to my business?
Stage 1 – Think about the raw food coming into your business.
* Who handles it?
* Where is it received?
* Where is it stored?
* Where is it prepared?
* Is it kept separate from ready-to-eat food?
* What equipment and utensils does it come into contact with?
Stage 2 – Introduce Permanent Physical Separation
Stage 3 – Train all staff to think SAFE
What if I can't manage to introduce Permanent Physical Separation in my business?
Permanent Physical Separation of Staff, Areas, Food and Equipment is the safest way of preventing cross contamination. However, if you are unable to fully implement Permanent Separation, you should consider Temporary Separation measures. These measures may be applied to Staff or Areas, singly or in combination, but will not be appropriate for Food and Equipment. For example you may allow staff to handle raw and then ready-to-eat foods with controls, but still have a Permanent Raw Food Area.
| Staff | Restrict raw food handling to specific staff at specific times and make sure that the Personal Hygiene House Rules are followed at all times. |
|---|---|
| Areas | Identify a Temporary Raw Food Area for preparing raw food. The Temporary Raw Food Area should only be used for raw food at pre- arranged times. Never allow any food to come into direct contact with the work surfaces in your Temporary Raw Food Area – e.g. always use chopping boards. This area may then be used for handling ready-to-eat foods – but only after careful cleaning and disinfection (refer to the Cleaning House Rules for further information). |
| Food | Always keep raw food separate from ready-to-eat food. |
| Equipment | The dual use of equipment for both raw food and then for ready-to-eat food is dangerous. Separate equipment is the only safe option. |
IMPORTANT
The safety of Temporary Separation measures can only be relied upon if cleaning and disinfection practices and regular, rigorous hand-washing are strictly adhered to at all times. If you find it difficult to introduce either Permanent or Temporary Separation to your operation you should consider the following options:
* Check to see if additional space can be found elsewhere in the premises or consider changing your existing layout to improve Physical Separation
* Reduce raw food handling by ordering prepared meats such as sliced steaks, diced meats, boneless chicken and prepared vegetables
* Reduce raw food handling by purchasing pre-cooked meats and pre-washed ready-to-use vegetables
* Review your menu in order to reduce the raw foods being brought into your premises
* Simplify your menu to reduce raw food handling at peak times
* Scale down your operation in order to enable safe handling of foods.
Contact your Enforcement Officer for advice and guidance
The table on the next page looks at each process step and shows you how to introduce Physical Separation in the Best Practice column. If you are unable to do this the Good Practice column gives you alternative options. Try to have the majority of your procedures following Best Practice.
PERSONAL HYGIENE
GUIDANCE ON INTRODUCING CROSS CONTAMINATION CONTROLS
(Think SAFE. TRY TO HAVE MOST OF YOUR PROCEDURES FOLLOWING BEST PRACTICE)
| Process Step | BEST PRACTICE |
|---|---|
| Delivery | • Arrange for raw foods to be delivered separately from ready-to-eat foods • Where possible, use the delivery vehicle thermograph to monitor temperatures • Designate a member of staff to handle raw foods only • Identify a Permanent Raw Food Area to receive and, where necessary, unwrap raw foods. Then take raw food directly to the raw food storage and dispose of wrapping materials safely. |
Cook
| Process Step | BEST PRACTICE | GOOD PRACTICE where Best Practice is not feasible |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | • Designate a separate raw meat refrigerator/ chill, freezer and use separate colour coded or otherwise identifiable lidded containers • Designate separate ready- to-eat food refrigerator/chill • Designate a separate storage area for unwashed, raw vegetables and fruit, which is away from visibly dirty vegetables, e.g. do not store salad foods with dirty potatoes. | • If a refrigerator/chill or freezer is of a sufficient size, it can be used to store raw meat and ready-to-eat food at the same time. The raw meat must be placed in a designated permanent, identifiable and physically separate area. Remember: In shared storage, raw foods must be stored on the bottom shelves and always below ready-to-eat foods • In shared storage unwashed raw vegetables and fruit must be stored separately from ready-to-eat foods. Remember: When using shared storage there will be a greater requirement for hand washing and cleaning/disinfection to prevent cross contamination between raw and ready- to-eat foods • The outside surfaces of food containers must be disinfected before being placed in shared storage. Always use separate colour-coded (or otherwise identifiable) lidded containers for raw foods. Remember: It is not acceptable to use a container for raw food and then re-use it for ready-to-eat food. |
Note 1: Once vegetables are washed (and if necessary peeled) they can be stored as ready-to-eat.
Note 2: Unless the label states that the product is ready-to-eat, you must assume that it will require to be washed (and if necessary peeled) prior to consumption.
Food Safety Assurance SystemIssue 1.2, May 2012
Safe
PERSONAL HYGIENE
| Process Step | BEST PRACTICE |
|---|---|
| Preparation | • Designate a Permanent Raw Food Area within your kitchen: −− All raw food must be handled in this area −− Only raw food must be handled in this area −− Defrost raw food in the raw food refrigerator −− Designate separate staff for handling raw food only Note: Unless the label states that the product is ready-to- eat, you must assume that it will require to be washed (and if necessary peeled) prior to consumption. • Designate a permanent sink for raw food preparation • Use separate colour coded/easily identifiable equipment and utensils for handling raw foods, e.g. knives, tongs, chopping boards, spoons, storage containers and cling film. |
Note: Bean sprouts not labelled ready-to-eat will require thorough cooking before consumption.
Additional Guidance on Cooking and Cooling
* Organise staff, workspace and flow of foods to ensure total separation between raw and readyto-eat foods during cooking and cooling
* Never cool food in the raw food area
* Utensils used for handling raw food at the start of the cooking process e.g. ladles, spoons, and spatulas should be used in such a way that there is no risk of cross contamination between raw food and ready-to-eat food
* A probe thermometer used for monitoring cooking temperatures must be identifiable for use for ready-to-eat food only.
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO NOW
To effectively manage the Cross Contamination Prevention part of your HACCP based system and using the information for guidance, go to the end of this sub section and write a list of House Rules covering Cross Contamination Prevention.
Here is an example of how you could write your House Rules:
Describe:
• Control Measures and Critical Limits (where applicable)
• Monitoring including frequency
Storage
Refrigerated Storage
Raw meat is always stored in dedicated containers with red lids in
the separate raw food refrigerator.
Ready-to-eat food is always stored in the separate ready-to-eat
refrigerator.
Fruit and vegetables not labelled as ready-to-eat are stored on the
bottom shelf of the ready-to-eat refrigerator in separate identifiable
boxes. These foods will be washed (and if necessary peeled) before
being treated as ready-to eat.
Visibly dirty potatoes stored in a container in the dry goods store
away from all other foods.
Shared Frozen Storage
Ready-to-eat food is stored on the top shelf.
Raw meat is stored in containers with red lids, below the ready-to
eat shelf.
Monitoring
Research evidence has shown that cross contamination is very difficult to control in a catering environment. The easiest and most reliable way to prevent cross contamination is through Physical Separation. Much of the monitoring of cross contamination prevention will rely on visual checking. This can be made easier by using colour coded/identifiable equipment and disposable plastic aprons for raw food handling. Once you have completed your House Rules for Cross Contamination Prevention, you must then monitor their use. Keep a record of the monitoring using the Weekly Record.
Corrective Action
You must ensure that cross contamination controls are implemented at all times. If for example you see that ready-to-eat food is being prepared in the Permanent Raw Food Area, it is considered a serious incident and your corrective action would be to dispose of the food; clean and disinfect the surfaces and equipment; retrain staff; record the problem and action taken to ensure it is not repeated in the Weekly Record and Training House Rules.
PERSONAL HYGIENE
All records of monitoring and corrective action taken should be kept for an appropriate period of time to demonstrate that your system is working effectively.
Action Plan
Once you have completed all your House Rules, remember to update your Action Plan.
The Cross Contamination Prevention House Rules are an essential component of your HACCP based system and must be kept up to date at all times. Your House Rules need to be written to accurately reflect how you run your business and be readily understood by all of your food handling employees.
CROSS CONTAMINATION PREVENTION HOUSE RULES
Think SAFE Enter a statement of your Cross Contamination Prevention House Rules in the table below:
Describe:
* Control Measures and Critical Limits (where applicable)
* Monitoring including frequency
Delivery
Storage
Including where any defrosting is carried out
Preparation
Cooking/Cooling
Monitoring/checking and any other appropriate records used by your business
Signed ............................................. Position in the business ................................................ Date .....................................
The Cross Contamination Prevention House Rules are an essential component of your HACCP based system and must be kept up to date at all times.
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A Public Forum/Regular Session of the Wayland School Committee was held on Monday, January 7, 2013, at 7:00 P.M. in the Large Hearing Room of the Wayland Town Building.
Present were:
Barb Fletcher, Chair Beth Butler, Vice Chair Malcolm Astley Ellen Grieco (arrived at 7:16 p.m.) Shawn Kinney
Also:
Paul Stein
Superintendent of Schools
Brad J. Crozier Assistant Superintendent
Marlene M. Dodyk Director of Student Services
Geoffrey S. MacDonald Business Administrator
Also: Brian Jones, Loker Principal & WSCP Director Mabel Reid Wallace, METCO Director
Chair Barb Fletcher convened the Public Forum/Regular Session at 7:08 P.M.
1. Public Forum:
Paul Stein presented an overview of the three budgets (without reviewing the cuts that are built into them) that he presented on December 17, 2012. They are the Superintendent's Recommended Budget, the FinCom Allocation Budget, and the 10% Reduction Budget, which are all based from the Maintenance of Effort Budget. He invited the public to access his Power Point Presentation, the Budget Book, the FY10-FY12 actuals, and the Munis Budgets on the Wayland Public Schools website.
Barb Fletcher reviewed the School Committee Budget Schedule and the discussion topics for the next few weeks.
Public Comments re: the Budget:
- Jeff Dieffenbach commented that it was important to talk about the Maintenance of Effort Budget, as well as a budget that might expand our program. He stated that this year, in a non-override year, the town's finances are very good, even when residents are facing different financial challenges. He commented that there has been a great deal of support for the school budget, and there is not a lot of movement to support the proposed cuts in the budget. Jeff recommended ways to expand the program, and also asked the School Committee to advocate for more.
- Donna Bouchard asked the School Committee to consider looking into areas that do not directly impact the students. She recommended that the Committee look into the consolidation of the town's facilities and finances to find some efficiencies in the budget. She commented that teachers should not be cut, as well as the WHS Business Program.
- Tom Sciacca commented that there is very little actual data correlating class sizes with educational outcomes. In one study, he said the earliest grades are most important and asked why two elementary teachers' positions were proposed to be cut. Paul Stein responded to Mr. Sciacca.
- Louis Jurist thanked Paul Stein and the administrators for the clear, concise presentation of the budget and the budget booklet. He stated that the School Committee has done a good job containing expenses and maintaining excellence over the past 6 or 7 years since the last override. He also commented on the cost per student in Wayland compared to peer districts, and that the quality and value of the schools must be maintained, as most town residents would agree. Louis asked the Committee to add items back into the
budget and reconsider cutting teaching positions and other personnel items. Louis also commented on the athletic program in terms of raising athletic fees rather than cutting some sports programs.
- Annette Lewis commented on the cost per student in terms of not paying for field maintenance, nurses, and benefits. Barb Fletcher responded. Annette also commented that it is important to keep the education system strong, important to have classroom teachers for the students, but it is also important not to overtax the elderly residents. She commended Dr. Stein for his first two budget proposals, but asked the School Committee not to consider the Maintenance of Effort budget.
2. Comments and Written Statements from the Public:
Tom Sciacca commented on union negotiations, specifically the COLA and referenced an article that reported the average national median income dropped 4.1% in 2009 and 1.5% last year. He pointed out that, depending on union negotiations, the union could be asking for more than the workforce in general.
3. Receive Results of Student Activity Accounts Audit:
Geoff MacDonald reviewed with the School Committee the audit done for the FY11 and FY12 student activity accounts conducted by Melanson & Heath. They were done based upon the agreed upon procedures as outlined in their report. There were three major components: 1) reconciliation of cash balances in checkbook and bank statements, 2) review of compliance with the School Committee's adopted procedures, and 3) review of supporting documentation for a randomly selected sample of payments.
Geoff noted that the Principals' Discretionary Accounts were closed in FY11, and the Student Activity Accounts, which are legally authorized, continue to operate under the approved School Committee guidelines that were in place for ten years until they could be revised and implemented this past summer for FY13.
Geoff gave a brief overview of the report, in which areas covered included Maintain Complete Accounting Systems, Account Reconciliations, Receipts Documentation, Support for Disbursements, Activities with Deficit Spending and Valid Student Activity Accounts.
Geoff also noted that Melanson & Heath has not provided the specific degree of transaction detail that they tested, but would if requested. Thus, Geoff has requested this information. Geoff also recommended to the School Committee that they consider having the Student Activity Accounts included in the forensic audit.
Geoff answered questions from the School Committee. They also discussed additional workloads for staff as a result of the new procedures in place.
4. Operating Budget Work Session:
The School Committee discussed the revolving accounts and offsets. Barb also referred to a list of questions pertaining to the revolving accounts that the School Committee members developed and answered by Geoff MacDonald.
Mabel Reid Wallace, METCO Director, and Brian Jones, WSCP Director and Loker School principal, were available to answer any questions from the School Committee.
The Committee discussed the instrumental music program in terms of lowering the offset, given the revenue that has been received this year and prior years.
As a follow up, the Committee also discussed voting the appropriate statute for seven revolving accounts. Geoff will seek legal counsel in terms of applying each account to the correct statute. Barb will also send to the School Committee the link for the Conflict of Interest form for their completion.
The School Committee also discussed fees, as there will be no changes in fees as noted in the Superintendent's Recommended Budget. Paul, however, noted that the School Committee previously approved changes in building use fees.
Shawn Kinney agreed with a previous public comment in terms of going up on athletic fees, rather than cutting coaches or a particular sport. Barb noted that she has asked Justice Smith for a spreadsheet in which costs are defined by sport for Thursday's meeting.
Transportation fees were discussed and will be explored further. Paul commented that transportation has been the biggest unexpected cost increase in the Maintenance of Effort budget.
Malcolm Astley reminded Committee members of an upcoming Suburban Coalition where these issues will be discussed in light of reduced state aid.
Barb reviewed the schedule of topics for budget work sessions moving forward. A discussion ensued regarding the cuts having the least impact in the classroom that were recommended by the Superintendent from the Maintenance of Effort Budget. Ellen asked if these cuts could be prioritized and discussed within the budget schedule going forward. Paul suggested that the School Committee, while going through deliberations, produce a list of priorities that are being considered for reinstatement within one of the budgets, which would be followed by a discussion nearing the end of the process. The Committee discussed preparation for the next meeting on January 10.
Barb has drafted an article regarding the budget for the Town Crier, which she will bring to the next meeting for the Committee's input.
5. Consent Agenda:
(a) Approval of Accounts Payables & Payroll Warrants
- Wayland Public Schools Accounts Payable warrant, dated 1/7/2013, in the amount of $416,872.59
- Wayland Public Schools Payroll warrant, dated 12/27/2012, in the amount of $1,174,966.38
(b) Approval of Minutes
- Regular Session of December 17, 2012, as amended
(c) Acceptance of Gifts
- Donations to the METCO Program (Appeal Letter)
o 1 in the amount of $3,800
o 1 in the amount of $1,000
o 1 in the amount of $500
o 1 in the amount of $450
o 1 in the amount of $400
o 1 in the amount of $300
o 2 in the amount of $250
- A donation in the amount of $2,000 from The Katie Lynch Foundation to the Just Like Me Program for the purpose of further educating K-12 Wayland students about people with disabilities.
Upon a motion duly made by Malcolm Astley, seconded by Beth Butler, the School Committee voted unanimously (5-0) to approve the Consent Agenda, but not including the Regular Session minutes.
Upon a motion duly made by Malcolm Astley, seconded by Beth Butler, the School Committee voted (4-1) (Shawn Kinney abstained) to approve the Regular Session minutes of December 17, 2012, as amended.
6. Superintendent's Report:
Paul Stein commented that he is continuing to work on security issues in the schools, as John Moynihan is consulting with public safety officials and industry experts to discuss security cameras, locks, etc. John Moynihan will present his recommendations to the School Committee at a future meeting. Paul also stated that Administrative Council will be discussing other security issues at their meetings.
Paul acknowledged Geoff MacDonald's work, particularly with the transportation system, and acknowledged that several adjustments resulted in improvements in bus routes.
Paul commented on the high energy at the schools, which included holiday concerts before the holiday break and the current art project at Loker School.
Paul informed the School Committee that he will be asking for their approval at Thursday's meeting to use funds from the Gossels Fund for Academic Excellence for the prospect of online learning at the high school.
7. Follow-up and Future Agenda Items:
(a) Update re: Audit/Review of School Accounts:
The School Committee received the draft RFP from Powers & Sullivan. They will discuss this RFP at a future meeting. The School Committee discussed what the next steps are and how to move forward in the process.
Shawn Kinney will contact Rebecca Chasen to ask her to review the report and advise the School Committee. Chris Riley also received the report and will also report back to the School Committee.
(b) Superintendent Evaluation Procedure:
Beth Butler asked that this topic be put on a future meeting agenda prior to the next meeting of the Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee.
Paul commented that in consulting with other superintendents and his administrators, it has become clear that not every element or every indicator has to contain evidence. However, Paul stated that much discussion continues to take place on this subject.
Malcolm Astley commented that the Subcommittee has settled on 7 elements that relate well to Paul's goals.
Year-End Commentary for Town Crier: At the editor's request to all Boards and the Superintendent, Barb wrote a year-end commentary for the Town
(c)
Crier. She handed out the article to the School Committee.
8. Comments from the Public:
Cecily Kiefer commented that if changes to fees are being considered in an effort to avoid cuts to programs, the impact on families based on the number of children be considered, too.
Louis Jurist commented on the sports program and the athletic fees and suggested ways to approach this issue. In his opinion, he stated that it is not equitable to place a value on one student's participation on a team vs. another team, as the measurement used is not accurate and cited those areas. Louis commented on what he called "tiered" fees. He asked the School Committee to increase the athletic fees before recommending cutting sports programs.
Tom Sciacca disagreed with the previous comments, as he feels that different sports have different teaching values. He commented on the elements that make up the difference between the Superintendent's Recommended Budget and the FinCom Budget and feels that there should be more emphasis on the fundamentals in the elementary schools. Tom referred to an article in which it states that American children are falling behind because elementary children have not been taught to write, resulting in the lack of critical thinking once they reach high school.
Malcolm Astley commented that if studies in terms of American children falling behind are available, he would be interested in reading them, although he disagrees with the reference.
9. Executive Session:
Upon a motion duly made by Shawn Kinney, seconded by Ellen Grieco, the School Committee voted unanimously (5-0) to convene in Executive Session at 9:00 P.M. to discuss strategy with respect to Collective Bargaining for all school unions (WTA, WESA, Custodial and Food Service), as set forth in M.G.L. Chapter 30A, Section 21 (a) (3), as such a discussion in open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the School Committee and an Executive Session is necessary to protect the bargaining position of the School Committee. The Chair announced that the School Committee will reconvene in Open Session following Executive Session for adjournment purposes only. A roll call vote was taken as follows:
10. Adjournment:
Upon a motion duly made by Ellen Grieco, seconded by Malcolm Astley, the School Committee voted unanimously (5-0) to adjourn the Regular Session at 10:35 P.M.
Respectfully submitted,
Paul Stein, Clerk Wayland School Committee
Observers:
See attached list.
Corresponding Documentation:
1. Regular Session Minutes of December 17, 2012
2. Payroll and Accounts Payable Warrants
3. Report from Melanson Heath & Company re: Student Activity Accounts
4. Handout re: Barb Fletcher's response to Town Crier Editor for an Article
5. Q & A re: School Fees
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2008 IN REVIEW: EVERY RULE HAS AN EXCEPTION
The year 2008 was a remarkable year in the capital markets. The S&P 500 Index, which posted its worst year since 1931, was only one of many disappointments, as virtually all risky asset classes produced breathtaking losses. Hedge funds failed to hedge (not to mention that one fund had pulled a $50 billion fraud for the ages). The strategies of many of the best active stock pickers of the past two decades massively underperformed the plunging indices. Confi dence in anything—for institutions and individuals alike—vanished. More than anything else, 2008 proved to be the exception to many of the investment "rules" once thought to be cast in stone. In this issue we review this extraordinary period through the dual lenses of our global tactical asset allocation (GTAA) and Fundamental Index ® strategy focus areas with an eye toward the future.
Global Tactical Asset Allocation
The challenges and opportunities facing asset allocators were self-evident in 2008. Over the past 12 months, most asset classes experienced their worst returns ever or, for those with a long enough history, since the Great Depression years of the 1930s. Indeed, this misfortune fell on 10 of the 16 key asset classes we closely follow.
Within this overall dreadful 12-month stretch were three distinct subperiods as shown in Figure 1: the conventional bear market of January through August, the "take no prisoners" market of September and October, and the "sorting through the carnage" market of November and December.
In Stage One, the fi rst eight months of 2008, in contrast to the later blood-lett ing, fully 7 of the 16 asset classes managed to post positive returns. Among those that escaped losses were Treasury Infl ationProtected Securities (TIPS), emerging market bonds, commodities, and core bonds. None of the equity categories produced positive returns; losses ranged from –3% to –22%. An equally weighted portfolio of these 16 assets classes would have returned –2.2%—a loss but hardly a debilitating impairment of capital.
Then came Stage Two, the September/ October 2008 crash, which changed the
Source: Research Affi liates continued on page two
picture drastically. Simply put, these two months were a Take-No-Prisoners market. All 16 asset classes fell. That had not happened before in any single month, let alone any twomonth span in the past 20 years. Furthermore, the losses were astonishing: 13 of the 16 asset classes lost more than 10%, and half lost more than 20%! For 12 of the 16 asset classes, their performance was the worst two-month stretch of performance in the past 20 years or more. From TIPS to emerging market equity, asset classes were devastated. The benefi ts of diversifi cation and relative value decisions were a no-show.
This lockstep free fall had a remarkable eff ect on most asset allocation strategies. Students of Markowitz's effi cient frontier can tell you that the diversifi cation eff ect is mathematically captured through the correlation coeffi cient. In the 20 years ending 2007, the average crosscorrelation of the 16 asset classes was 0.27. 1 In 2008, the average more than doubled; for the year, these assets were highly correlated at 0.58. 2 And, during the take-no-prisoners market, the correlation oft en seemed to approach 1.00!
But September/October opened up the door to recoveries in November/December 2008. Crises bring opportunities. Indeed, the global meltdown of fall 2008 produced, in our opinion, severe price dislocations in several markets. Many areas of the bond market sold off more relative to their historic risk profi les than equities did. Markets that were "four sigma events" for stocks were "eight sigma events" in other markets. Some categories appeared to be pricing a deep depression, whereas equities were pricing only a moderate recession. Consider the following:
Emerging Market Bonds • . On October 24, 2008, the spread off ered by emerging market bonds over U.S. Treasuries was 9.6%—the widest spread since the 11.6% witnessed in the Long-Term Capital Management sell-off of August 1998. What makes this immense risk premium remarkable is that the asset class is now 60.3% investment grade, whereas back in 1998 it was only 10.8% investment grade! 3
Convertibles • . Driven by the severe unwinding of the entire convertible arbitrage hedge fund strategy, the Merrill Lynch Convertible All Qualities Bond Index fell more than the S&P 500 during the September/ October implosion. Granted, the conversion features were essentially worthless, but these securities are still bonds that carry all of the benefi ts of being higher in the pecking order in the capital structure!
TIPS • . By the end of October 2008, the 20-year TIPS yield was 1.39% lower than the nominal 20-year Treasury yield on October 27, implying an annual infl ation of 1.39% for the next two decades. Such a level of infl ation has not been seen since 1926–1945, an era encompassing fi ve years on the gold standard, followed by the Great Depression and World War II!
1As a barometer, consider that the average correlation of the S&P 500 with the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index (the two asset classes most frequently used to offset each other) has been 0.25 since 1976.
2A correlation of 0.58 is virtually identical to the historical correlation between the MSCI EAFE and S&P 500 since 1970 (0.59).
3This spread was calculated as the difference between the Merrill Lynch USD Emerging Market Sovereign Plus Index and the U.S. fi ve-year (constant-maturity) T-note. Investment-grade percentages are based on the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Bond Index, courtesy of PIMCO.
Following these wild mispricings, as the deleveraging took a pause long enough for investors to reassess relative value, we did indeed see many asset classes recover handsomely in November/December 2008. Eight of the 16 asset classes produced gains, which would have caused an equally weighted portfolio to produce a gain of 1.5%. Interestingly, this rebound was not led by the stock market. The S&P 500 actually fi nished 12th out of the 16 asset classes during Stage Three.
A model-driven GTAA strategy is designed to capitalize on the opportunities created by these types of price dislocations. Institutional investment committ ees aren't equipped to make the necessary asset allocation decisions. The contrarian strategy—moving into distressed assets when they are most feared—runs counter to human emotions and confronts people with the dreaded "maverick risk." These issues are particularly problematical when outof-mainstream "niche" asset classes are involved. These classes are typically the fi rst to be abandoned in a period of market duress. Perhaps this is why diversifi ed portfolios tend to outperform as the economy comes out of periods of severe market stress. Figure 2 displays the returns of the 16-asset-class portfolio (equally weighted) compared with the returns of a traditional 60% S&P 500/40% Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond portfolio in the three years subsequent to three fi nancial crises of the past 20 years.
We think 2008 has provided several key lessons on asset allocation. First and foremost, 2008 taught us that extrapolating historical return characteristics, even very long term characteristics, is dangerous. Every rule has an exception. However, to let the massive meltdown in September and October 2008 serve as a primary guide to our future decisions would be equally dangerous; this market was nothing if not extraordinary. Rising correlations may be part of an increasingly intertwined
Sources: Short-term bonds (Merrill Lynch US Corporate & Government 1-3 Year); core bonds (Lehman Brothers US Aggregate Bond); long-term U.S. Treasury bonds (LB US Treasury Long); long-term corporate credit (LB US Long Credit); high-yield corporate bonds (LB US Corporate High Yield); fl oating-rate notes (Credit Suisse Leveraged Loan); emerging market bonds (JPM EMBI + Composite); emerging market local currency (JPM ELMI + Composite; convertible bonds (ML Convertible Bonds All Qualities); Treasury Infl ation-Protected Securities (LB Global Infl ation Linked US TIPS); REITs (FTSE NAREIT All REITs); commodities (DJ AIG Commodity TR); U.S. large-capitalization equity ( S&P 500); U.S. small-cap equity (Russell 2000); developed ex-U.S. country equity (MSCI EAFE TR); and emerging market equity (MSCI Emerging Markets).
2
global fi nancial community, but a doubling of the average cross-correlation is extreme and unsustainable. Furthermore, the three-stage analysis shows that active asset allocation provided opportunities before and aft er a dreadful stretch in the market. We think this characteristic will continue: Assets will be repriced to deliver a "fair" return for the corresponding risk. That truism combined with a wealth of low-hanging fruit bodes well for advocates of GTAA.
The Fundamental Index Approach
The Fundamental Index approach produced mixed results vis-à-vis capitalization-weighted indexes in 2008. The published FTSE RAFI ® series witnessed relative performance successes (there were no absolute victories in 2008!) in Japan, Australia, Canada, international small companies, and the emerging markets. However, since the launch of the RAFI methodology was commercialized in late 2005, 2008 marked the fi rst and only calendar year of shortfall, albeit slight, by a global all country RAFI strategy relative to a global, all country cap-weighted index. The RAFI strategy posted a decline of –42.5% versus the MSCI All Country World Index of –41.9%, a slight shortfall of 0.6 percentage points, following outperformance of 6.0% and 2.0% in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Combining the entire post-2005 experience, the global, all country Fundamental Index strategy has outperformed the MSCI World by a very respectable 1.8% annualized over three years. 4
Unquestionably, the largest drag on the global Fundamental Index strategy was the U.S. market. There will always be exceptions to the rule—outliers in statistical speak. Last year, that outlier was the United States. The FTSE RAFI US 1000 Index trailed the S&P 500 by nearly 3 percentage points. As we have commented, the Fundamental Index approach typically enjoys a tailwind boosting performance when value stocks are winning in the market. Thus, many followers of the Fundamental Index strategy were surprised by the U.S. shortfall, because value stocks seemed to outperform in 2008. The Russell 1000 Value Index outperformed the Russell 1000 Growth Index by 159 basis points. However, many observers would disagree with the notion that 2008 was a value year. As shown in Figure 3, the S&P/Citigroup Growth and Value Indexes showed the opposite—the S&P 500/Citigroup Value underperformed the Growth index by 430 basis points. 5 Combining the two series, we fi nd that 2008 was probably a down year—or at best a fl at year—for value stocks relative to growth stocks in the United States.
The lack of a sizable value premium in the nasty 2008 equity sell-off is highly unusual over the past 30 years. In Figure 4, we outline all of the S&P 500 down markets greater than 15% since 1979. Value won handily in the markets of the early 1980s and 2000–2002 while also outperforming in the crash of 1987. Value stocks have performed bett er in past bear markets because they enter the periods with cheaper valuations whereas the growth shares are "priced for perfection." 6 As the economic
4Performance through August 2008 represents Research Affi liates simulated results. Performance for September 2008 through December 2008 is that of the FTSE RAFI All-World 3000 Index.
5A possible explanation for these differences is the rebalancing methodologies used by the three cap-weighted
index providers. Frank Russell Company rebalances at the end of June; S&P/Citigroup in December. 6Note that in past bear markets, most of the outperformance by the value stocks happened in the second half of the bear market. This fact invites a provocative question: Is the bear market of 2007–2008 over?
Source: Research Affi liates picture worsens, growth shares have historically suff ered more because of the greater revision to future expectations for them. (In the mini sell-off of 1998, growth slightly outperformed value, but that bear market never took hold; it was over before many of us returned from our summer vacations!) In this latest bear market, we fi nd for the fi rst time in a sustained bear market in the past 30 years, that value's performance versus growth is virtually fl at.
We believe the major reason that 2008 bucked the trend toward a clear outperformance by value in a down market is "distress." Value stocks are cheaper for a reason: They have issues, warts, and problems. Normally, as the economy heads south, these problems don't prove to be a hindrance to value performance because an expectation of problems is built into the value stocks' prices. When the outlook turns from recessionary to depressionary, however, the fl oor under the cheap valuations caves in. Investors' primary question turns from "how long will it take for the company or industry to turn around?" to "how long will it exist?"
Source: Research Affi liates
3
More to the point, investors stop asking, "What's the return on our money?" and start asking, "Will we ever see a return of our money?" With these questions circulating, any security giving off a whiff of distress— in the form of high debt levels, liquidity issues, and so on—begins to sell off regardless of its relative price. 7
Table 1 provides an attribution of returns based on deciles of the price-to-book ratio (P/B), which often serves as a proxy for the continuum from value to growth. Consistent with our expectations, the FTSE RAFI US 1000 was considerably underweighted in the most expensive stocks in the large-cap universe (7.9% versus 13.8%). This is a natural outcome from weighting stocks based upon today's size, not expectations of how large they will be in 5 or 10 years. Just like previous bear markets, these high priced growth stocks got hammered (down 42.7% in the Russell 1000) as a softening economy rapidly altered expectations. The RAFI strategy earned excess returns for having less exposure and better stock selection. However, the RAFI strategy promptly gave up this premium and then some on the flip side of the spectrum. The fear of distress caused the cheapest stocks to do even worse than the most expensive. Thus, the RAFI strategy entered 2008 with a larger exposure to the bottom two deciles of P/B. Looking at the 10th decile (stocks priced below 1.1x's book value as of December 31, 2007), the FTSE RAFI US 1000 strategy had a 6.6% exposure to these stocks versus the Russell's 4.4% exposure. This small delta was magnified enormously when this batch of stocks finished with declines averaging more than 65%.
The fear of distress, and its effect, is also clearly seen in the role of industry/sector "detractors" in the FTSE RAFI US 1000 relative performance. The U.S. automobile industry was the poster child for distress (it detracted 57 basis points from the FTSE RAFI US 1000 net performance) toward the end of 2008, but this sector represented a rather small holding in both the RAFI and Russell indices. The financial sector held a much larger cumulative position in the FTSE RAFI US 1000 (with a beginning weight of 18.7%) and in the Russell 1000 (17.5%), and it went through a crisis in which many companies' ongoing viability was cast into doubt. The small overweight in financials in the FTSE RAFI US 1000 was the primary detractor in the RAFI index underperformance in the U.S. large company
7Indeed, we can venture back to the depressionary 1930s to see value shares underperforming growth in a severe down market. The Frank Russell Company indices don't extend this far back but Gene Fama and Ken French constructed the Fama–French Large Cap Growth and Value time series to illustrate style performance during this stretch.
market. As we stated in August, 8 the current upheaval in this sector bodes well for future RAFI performance for two reasons. First, most financial stocks are priced to reflect the most dire of outcomes, meaning that if they simply avoid the worst-case scenarios they could provide outsize performance. Second, every failure of a financial firm reduces competition and gives the survivors more pricing power.
One other factor, which we'll focus on in an upcoming RAFI Fundamentals, is the interplay between relative performance and relative valuation multiples. Intuition tells us that buying whatever has recently performed best is folly, and that whatever has plunged is (at least) more attractive than it once was. If we assume mean reversion holds, a strategy that allocates greater amounts to yesterday's laggards but only suffers a fraction of their performance shortfall would seem to be well positioned for price reversals and deliver the goods over a full market cycle.
Many observers may miss the fact that the RAFI strategy performed very nearly well enough outside the United States, particularly in emerging markets, to offset the shortfall in the United States. Indeed, the Fundamental Index concept trailed on a global, all country basis by a scant 60 basis points, after winning handily in 2006 and 2007—all of which occurred after the publication of our methodology and commercial indexes. We believe a 60 basis point global shortfall to capitalization weighting for 2008 is well within the range of expected outcomes in a volatile market like the current one. A prudent fiduciary maintains a longterm view and avoids making snap judgments based on short-term trends. Looking at the RAFI approach's performance over a long period of time, we are pleased to see that the cumulative outperformance remains.
Conclusion
The collective psyche of investors did a 180 in the past 12 months from a greed-induced spring bubble in commodities to the panic-driven selling of "Everything but Treasuries" in the fall. With the books finally closed on 2008, investors can finally take a breath and evaluate the dramatically altered landscape of the capital markets. This assessment will reveal a host of opportunities. The massive meltdown in virtually
8See the August 2008 issue of RAFI Fundamentals, "The Anti-Bubble Bursts."
Table 1. 2008 Return Attribution by Price/Book Deciles
Source: Research Affi liates.
4
all risky asset classes has led many to offer healthy looking forward returns for the first time in years— in some cases, careers. Ignoring the scars caused by the fall, a systematic and model-driven GTAA process scrutinizes this newly golden opportunity set.
The selling of distressed equities has led many companies' prices to deviate wildly from their economic footprint, exactly the kind of environment that provides att ractive prospects for the Fundamental Index approach. Low hanging asset class fruit and an index methodology that capitalizes on the severe mispricings in today's equity market? Over the long term, investors keen on achieving sustainable investment success would be well served to embrace both. And that's a rule we can live with.
Performance Update
| TOTAL RETURN AS OF 12/31/08 | BLOOMBERG TICKER | YTD | 12 MONTH | ANNUALIZED 3 YEAR | ANNUALIZED 5 YEAR | ANNUALIZED 10 YEAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FTSE RAFI® 1000 IndexA | FR10XTR | -39.99% | -39.99% | -9.55% | -2.04% | 2.17% |
| S&P 500B Russell 1000C | SPTR RU10INTR | -37.00% | -37.00% -37.60% | -8.36% -8.66% | -2.19% -2.04% | -1.38% -1.09% |
| | | -37.60% | | | | |
| FTSE RAFI® US 1500 IndexD | FR15USTR | -38.28% | -38.28% | -10.04% | -0.57% | 7.28% |
| Russell 2000E | RU20INTR | -33.79% | -33.79% | -8.29% | -0.93% | 3.02% |
| FTSE RAFI® Developed ex US 1000 IndexF | FRX1XTR | -43.89% | -43.89% | -6.02% | 3.25% | 5.10% |
| MSCI EAFEG FTSE All World Series Developed ex USH | GDDUEAFE FTS5DXUS | -43.06% | -43.06% -43.33% | -6.92% -6.36% | 2.10% 2.65% | 1.18% 2.07% |
| | | -43.33% | | | | |
| FTSE RAFI® Developed ex US Mid SmallI | FRSDXUS | -42.36% | -42.36% | -9.97% | 2.14% | 4.91% |
| MSCI EAFE SmallJ | GCUDEAFE | -46.78% | -46.78% | -13.45% | 1.51% | 3.12% |
| FTSE RAFI® Emerging MarketsK | FREM | -49.27% | -49.27% | 1.14% | 14.43% | 13.67% |
| MSCI Emerging MarketsL | MXEF | -54.48% | -54.48% | -7.07% | 5.07% | 6.61% |
| FTSE RAFI® CanadaM | FRCANTR | -43.94% | -43.94% | -5.80% | 5.65% | 9.59% |
| S&P/TSX 60N | TX60AR | -43.96% | -43.96% | -4.52% | 6.90% | 4.97% |
| FTSE RAFI® Australia IndexO | FRAUSTR | -48.02% | -48.02% | -4.09% | 5.26% | 10.02% |
| S&P/ASX 200 IndexP | AS51 | -52.81% | -52.81% | -9.12% | 1.11% | 4.66% |
| FTSE RAFI® JapanQ | FRJPNTR | -26.25% | -26.25% | -7.94% | 2.76% | 0.54% |
| MSCI JapanR | GDDUJN | -29.11% | -29.11% | -10.27% | 1.03% | -4.59% |
| FTSE RAFI® UK IndexS | FRGBRTR | -50.10% | -50.10% | -9.49% | -0.79% | 1.34% |
| MSCI UKT | GDDUUK | -48.32% | -48.32% | -9.88% | -1.24% | -2.47% |
Defi nition of Indices: (A) The FTSE RAFI ® 1000 comprises the 1000 largest companies selected and weighted using our Fundamental Index methodology; (B) The S&P 500 Index is an unmanaged market index that focuses on the large-cap segment of the U.S. equities market; (C) The Russell 1000 Index is a market-capitalization-weighted benchmark index made up of the 1,000 highest-ranking U.S. stocks in the Russell 3000; (D) The FTSE RAFI ® 1500 comprises the 1001st to 1500th largest companies selected and weighted using our Fundamental Index methodology; (E) The Russell 2000 is a market-capitalization weighted benchmark index made up of the 2,000 smallest U.S. companies in the Russell 3000; (F) The FTSE RAFI ® Developed ex US 1000 Index comprises the largest 1000 non US-listed companies by fundamental value, selected from the constituents of the FTSE Developed ex US Index; (G) MSCI EAFE (Morgan Stanley Capital International Europe, Australasia, Far East) is an unmanaged index of issuers in countries of Europe, Australia, and the Far East represented in U.S. dollars; and (H) The FTSE All World ex-US Index comprises Large and Mid-Cap stocks providing coverage of Developed and Emerging Markets excluding the United States. It is not possible to invest directly in any of the indexes above; (I) The FTSE RAFI ® Developed ex US Mid Small Index tracks the performance of small- and mid-cap equities of companies domiciled in developed international markets (excluding the United States), selected based on the following four fundamental measures of fi rm size: book value, cash fl ow, sales, and dividends. The equities with the highest fundamental strength are weighted according to their fundamental scores. The Fundamentals Weighted ® portfolio is rebalanced and reconstituted annually. Performance represents price return only; (J) The MSCI EAFE Small Cap Index targets 40% of the eligible small-cap universe (companies with market capitalization ranging from US$200 to US$1,500 million) in each industry group of each country in the MSCI EAFI Index; (K) The FTSE RAFI ® Emerging Markets Index comprises the largest 350 companies selected and weighted using the Fundamental Index ® methodology; (L) The MSCI Emerging Markets Index is an unmanaged, free-fl oat-adjusted cap-weighted index designed to measure equity market performance of emerging markets; (M) The FTSE RAFI ® Canada Index comprises the Canadian stocks represented among the constituents of the FTSE RAFI ® Global ex US 1000 Index, which in turn comprises the 1,000 non-U.S.-listed companies with the largest fundamental value, selected from the constituents of the FTSE Developed ex US Index; (N) The S&P/Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) 60 is a cap-weighted index consisting of 60 of the largest and most liquid (heavily traded) stocks listed on the TSX, usually domestic or multinational industry leaders; (O) The FTSE RAFI ® Australia Index comprises the Australian stocks represented among the constituents of the FTSE RAFI ® Global ex US 1000 Index, which in turn comprises the 1,000 non-U.S.-listed companies with the largest fundamental value, selected from the constituents of the FTSE Developed ex US Index; (P) The S&P/ASX 200 Index, representing approximately 78% of the Australian equity market, is a free-fl oat-adjusted, cap-weighted index; (Q) The FTSE RAFI ® Japan Index comprises the Japanese stocks represented among the constituents of the FTSE RAFI ® Global ex US 1000 Index, which in turn comprises the 1,000 non-U.S.-listed companies with the largest fundamental value, selected from the constituents of the FTSE Developed ex US Index; (R) The MSCI Japan Index is an unmanaged, free-fl oat-adjusted cap-weighted index that aims to capture 85% of the publicly available total market capitalization of the Japanese equity market; (S) The FTSE RAFI ® UK Index comprises the U.K. stocks represented among the constituents of the FTSE RAFI ® Global ex US 1000 Index, which in turn comprises the 1,000 non-U.S.-listed companies with the largest fundamental value, selected from the constituents of the FTSE Developed ex US Index; (T) The MSCI UK Index is an unmanaged, free-fl oat-adjusted cap-weighted index that aims to capture 85% of the publicly available total market capitalization of the British equity market
Note: Annualized 9 year for: FTSE RAFI Developed ex US Mid Small, FTSE RAFI Emerging Markets, FTSE RAFI Canada, FTSE RAFI Japan, and FTSE RAFI UK.
Source: Based on price data from Bloomberg.
5
|
Avr Microcontroller And Embedded Systems Solution
Build safety-critical and memory-safe stand-alone and networked embedded systems Key Features Know how C++ works and compares to other languages used for embedded development Create advanced GUIs for embedded devices to design an attractive and functional UI Integrate proven strategies into your design for optimum hardware performance Book Description C++ is a great choice for embedded development, most notably, because it does not add any bloat, extends maintainability, and offers many advantages over different programming languages. Hands-On Embedded Programming with C++17 will show you how C++ can be used to build robust and concurrent systems that leverage the available hardware resources. Starting with a primer on embedded programming and the latest features of C++17, the book takes you through various facets of good programming. You'll learn how to use the concurrency, memory management, and functional programming features of C++ to build embedded systems. You will understand how to integrate your systems with external peripherals and efficient ways of working with drivers. This book will also guide you in testing and optimizing code for better performance and implementing useful design patterns. As an
additional benefit, you will see how to work with Qt, the popular GUI library used for building embedded systems. By the end of the book, you will have gained the confidence to use C++ for embedded programming. What you will learn Choose the correct type of embedded platform to use for a project Develop drivers for OS-based embedded systems Use concurrency and memory management with various microcontroller units (MCUs) Debug and test cross-platform code with Linux Implement an infotainment system using a Linux-based single board computer Extend an existing embedded system with a Qt-based GUI Communicate with the FPGA side of a hybrid FPGA/SoC system Who this book is for If you want to start developing effective embedded programs in C++, then this book is for you. Good knowledge of C++ language constructs is required to understand the topics covered in the book. No knowledge of embedded systems is assumed.
A thorough revision that provides a clear understanding of the basic principles of microcontrollers using C programming and PIC18F assembly language This book presents the fundamental concepts of assembly language programming and interfacing techniques associated with typical microcontrollers. As part of the second edition's revisions, PIC18F assembly language and C programming are provided in separate sections so
that these topics can be covered independent of each other if desired. This extensively updated edition includes a number of fundamental topics. Characteristics and principles common to typical microcontrollers are emphasized. Interfacing techniques associated with a basic microcontroller such as the PIC18F are demonstrated from chip level via examples using the simplest possible devices, such as switches, LEDs, Seven-Segment displays, and the hexadecimal keyboard. In addition, interfacing the PIC18F with other devices such as LCD displays, ADC, and DAC is also included. Furthermore, topics such as CCP (Capture, Compare, PWM) and Serial I/O using C along with simple examples are also provided. Microcontroller Theory and Applications with the PIC18F, 2nd Edition is a comprehensive and self-contained book that emphasizes characteristics and principles common to typical microcontrollers. In addition, the text: Includes increased coverage of C language programming with the PIC18F I/O and interfacing techniques Provides a more detailed explanation of PIC18F timers, PWM, and Serial I/O using C Illustrates C interfacing techniques through the use of numerous examples, most of which have been implemented successfully in the laboratory This new edition of Microcontroller Theory and Applications with the PIC18F is excellent as a text for undergraduate level students of electrical/computer
engineering and computer science.
This book is about a state of the art tool, Flowcode(r), and how you can use Flowcode to develop microcontroller applications. The book starts very simply with a tutorial project and step-by-step instructions. As you go along the projects increase in difficulty and the new concepts are explained. Each project has a clear description of both hardware and software with pictures and diagrams, which explain not just how things are done but also why. All sources are available for free download. Since Flowcode is a high level language the intricacies of microcontroller programming are hidden from view. For that reason it doesn't make much difference
Embedded Software Development With C offers both an effectual reference for professionals and researchers, and a valuable learning tool for students by laying the groundwork for a solid foundation in the hardware and software aspects of embedded systems development. Key features include a resource for the fundamentals of embedded systems design and development with an emphasis on software, an exploration of the 8051 microcontroller as it pertains to embedded systems, comprehensive tutorial materials for instructors to provide students with labs of varying lengths and levels of difficulty, and supporting website including all sample codes, software tools and links to additional online references.
whether the program is meant for a PIC, AVR or ARM microcontroller. On a high level the programs for these microcontrollers, although vastly different in internal structure, are identical. For that reason this book is on microcontroller application design in general, not just for one type of microcontroller. If you don't own the microcontroller described in a project you can usually convert it to another microcontroller quite easily. E-blocks(r) will be used as hardware for the projects in this book. This way the hardware can be put together quickly and reliably. Fully tested units simply connect together using connectors or short flat ribbon cables to form completed projects. This book covers 45 exciting and fun projects for beginners and experts such as: timer; secret doorbell; cell phone remote control; youth deterrent; GPS tracking; pulse width modulated motor control; persistence of vision; sound activated switch; CAN bus; Internet webserver and much more. You can use it as a projects book, and build the projects for your own use. Or you can use it as a study guide to learn more about microcontroller systems engineering and the PIC, AVR and ARM microcontrollers.
The AVR microcontroller from Atmel (now Microchip) is one of the most widely used 8-bit microcontrollers. Arduino Uno is based on AVR microcontroller. It is inexpensive and widely available around the world. This book combines the two. In this book, the
authors use a step-by-step and systematic approach to show the programming of the AVR chip. Examples in both Assembly language and C show how to program many of the AVR features, such as timers, serial communication, ADC, SPI, I2C, and PWM. The text is organized into two parts: 1) The first 6 chapters use Assembly language programming to examine the internal architecture of the AVR. 2) Chapters 7-18 uses both Assembly and C to show the AVR peripherals and I/O interfacing to real-world devices such as LCD, motor, and sensor. The first edition of this book published by Pearson used ATmega32. It is still available for purchase from Amazon. This new edition is based on Atmega328 and the Arduino Uno board. The appendices, source codes, tutorials and support materials for both books are available on the following websites: http:
//www.NicerLand.com/ and http: //www.MicroDigitalEd.com/AVR/AVR_books.htm In Practical AVR Microcontrollers, you'll learn how to use the AVR microcontroller to make your own nifty projects and gadgets. You'll start off with the basics in part one: setting up your development environment and learning how the "naked" AVR differs from the Arduino. Then you'll gain experience by building a few simple gizmos and learning how everything can be interconnected. In part two, we really get into the goodies: projects! Each project will show you exactly what software and hardware you
need, and will provide enough detail that you can adapt it to your own needs and parts availability. Some of the projects you'll make: An illuminated secret panel A hallway lighting system with a waterfall effect A crazy lightshow Visual effects gizmos like a Moire wheel and shadow puppets In addition, you'll design and implement some home automation projects, including working with wired and wireless setups. Along the way, you'll design a useable home automation protocol and look at a variety of hardware setups. Whether you're new to electronics, or you just want to see what you can do with an AVR outside of an Arduino, Practical AVR Microcontrollers is the book for you.
Authored by two of the leading authorities in the field, this guide offers readers the knowledge and skills needed to achieve proficiency with embedded software.
The PIC microcontroller from Microchip is one of the most widely used 8-bit microcontrollers in the world. In this book, the authors use a step-by-step and systematic approach to show the programming of the PIC18 chip. Examples in both Assembly language and C show how to program many of the PIC18 features such as timers, serial communication, ADC, and SPI.
This textbook provides practicing scientists and engineers an advanced treatment of the Atmel AVR microcontroller. This book is intended as a follow-on to a previously published
book, titled Atmel AVR Microcontroller Primer: Programming and Interfacing. Some of the content from this earlier text is retained for completeness. This book will emphasize advanced programming and interfacing skills. We focus on system level design consisting of several interacting microcontroller subsystems. The first chapter discusses the system design process. Our approach is to provide the skills to quickly get up to speed to operate the internationally popular Atmel AVR microcontroller line by developing systems level design skills. We use the Atmel ATmega164 as a representative sample of the AVR line. The knowledge you gain on this microcontroller can be easily translated to every other microcontroller in the AVR line. In succeeding chapters, we cover the main subsystems aboard the microcontroller, providing a short theory section followed by a description of the related microcontroller subsystem with accompanying software for the subsystem. We then provide advanced examples exercising some of the features discussed. In all examples, we use the C programming language. The code provided can be readily adapted to the wide variety of compilers available for the Atmel AVR microcontroller line. We also include a chapter describing how to interface the microcontroller to a wide variety of input and output devices. The book concludes with several detailed system level design examples employing the Atmel AVR microcontroller. Table of Contents: Embedded Systems Design / Atmel AVR Architecture Overview / Serial Communication Subsystem / Analog to Digital Conversion (ADC) / Interrupt Subsystem / Timing Subsystem / Atmel AVR Operating Parameters and Interfacing / System Level Design For courses in Embedded System Design, Microcontroller's Software and Hardware, Microprocessor Interfacing, Microprocessor Assembly Language Programming, Peripheral Interfacing, Senior Project Design, Embedded Page 8/24
System programming with C. The AVR Microcontroller and Embedded Systems: Using Assembly and C features a stepby-step approach in covering both Assembly and C language programming of the AVR family of Microcontrollers. It offers a systematic approach in programming and interfacing of the AVR with LCD, keyboard, ADC, DAC, Sensors, Serial Ports, Timers, DC and Stepper Motors, Opto-isolators, and RTC. Both Assembly and C languages are used in all the peripherals programming. In the first 6 chapters, Assembly language is used to cover the AVR architecture and starting with chapter 7, both Assembly and C languages are used to show the peripherals programming and interfacing. Offering comprehensive, cutting-edge coverage, THE ATMEL AVR MICROCONTROLLER: MEGA AND XMEGA IN ASSEMBLY AND C delivers a systematic introduction to the popular Atmel 8-bit AVR microcontroller with an emphasis on the MEGA and XMEGA subfamilies. It begins with a concise and complete introduction to the assembly language programming before progressing to a review of C language syntax that helps with programming the AVR microcontroller. Emphasis is placed on a wide variety of peripheral functions useful in embedded system design. Vivid examples demonstrate the applications of each peripheral function, which are programmed using both the assembly and C languages. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
This textbook provides practicing scientists and engineers an advanced treatment of the Atmel AVR microcontroller. This book is intended as a follow on to a previously published book, titled "Atmel AVR Microcontroller Primer: Programming and Interfacing." Some of the content from this earlier text is retained for completeness. This book will emphasize advanced programming and interfacing skills. We focus on Page 9/24
system level design consisting of several interacting microcontroller subsystems. The first chapter discusses the system design process. Our approach is to provide the skills to quickly get up to speed to operate the internationally popular Atmel AVR microcontroller line by developing systems level design skills. We use the Atmel ATmega164 as a representative sample of the AVR line. The knowledge you gain on this microcontroller can be easily translated to every other microcontroller in the AVR line. In succeeding chapters, we cover the main subsystems aboard the microcontroller, providing a short theory section followed by a description of the related microcontroller subsystem with accompanying software for the subsystem. We then provide advanced examples exercising some of the features discussed. In all examples, we use the C programming language. The code provided can be readily adapted to the wide variety of compilers available for the Atmel AVR microcontroller line. We also include a chapter describing how to interface the microcontroller to a wide variety of input and output devices. The book concludes with several detailed system level design examples employing the Atmel AVR microcontroller. An introduction to the engineering principles of embedded systems, with a focus on modeling, design, and analysis of cyber-physical systems. The most visible use of computers and software is processing information for human consumption. The vast majority of computers in use, however, are much less visible. They run the engine, brakes, seatbelts, airbag, and audio system in your car. They digitally encode your voice and construct a radio signal to send it from your cell phone to a base station. They command robots on a factory floor, power generation in a power plant, processes in a chemical plant, and traffic lights in a city. These less visible computers are called embedded systems, and the software they run is called embedded software. The principal Page 10/24
challenges in designing and analyzing embedded systems stem from their interaction with physical processes. This book takes a cyber-physical approach to embedded systems, introducing the engineering concepts underlying embedded systems as a technology and as a subject of study. The focus is on modeling, design, and analysis of cyber-physical systems, which integrate computation, networking, and physical processes. The second edition offers two new chapters, several new exercises, and other improvements. The book can be used as a textbook at the advanced undergraduate or introductory graduate level and as a professional reference for practicing engineers and computer scientists. Readers should have some familiarity with machine structures, computer programming, basic discrete mathematics and algorithms, and signals and systems. This book provides practicing scientists and engineers a tutorial on the fundamental concepts and use of microcontrollers. Today, microcontrollers, or single integrated circuit (chip) computers, play critical roles in almost all instrumentation and control systems. Most existing books arewritten for undergraduate and graduate students taking an electrical and/or computer engineering course. Furthermore, these texts have beenwritten with a particular model of microcontroller as the target discussion. These textbooks also require a requisite knowledge of digital design fundamentals. This textbook presents the fundamental concepts common to all microcontrollers. Our goals are to present the over–arching theory of microcontroller operation and to provide a detailed discussion on constituent subsystems available in most microcontrollers. With such goals, we envision that the theory discussed in this book can be readily applied to a wide variety of microcontroller technologies, allowing practicing scientists and engineers to become acquainted with basic concepts prior to beginning a design involving a specific Page 11/24
microcontroller. We have found that the fundamental principles of a given microcontroller are easily transferred to other controllers. Although this is a relatively small book, it is packed with useful information for quickly coming up to speed on microcontroller concepts.
This textbook provides practicing scientists and engineers a primer on the Atmel AVR microcontroller. In this second edition we highlight the popular ATmega164 microcontroller and other pin-for-pin controllers in the family with a complement of flash memory up to 128 kbytes. The second edition also adds a chapter on embedded system design fundamentals and provides extended examples on two different autonomous robots. Our approach is to provide the fundamental skills to quickly get up and operating with this internationally popular microcontroller. We cover the main subsystems aboard the ATmega164, providing a short theory section followed by a description of the related microcontroller subsystem with accompanying hardware and software to
This text focuses on software development for embedded controllers using the C language. This book is built on Atmel® AVR architecture and implementation, and features the CodeVisionAVR compiler, as well as other powerful, yet inexpensive, development tools. This book is suitable as a handbook for those desiring to learn the AVR processors or as a text for college-level microcontroller courses. Included with the book is a CDROM containing samples all of the example programs from the book as well as an evaluation version of the CodeVisionAVR C Compiler and IDE. Features intermediate and advanced projects that demonstrate the capabilities of Atmel AVR series microcontrollers.
exercise the subsystem. In all examples, we use the C programming language. We include a detailed chapter describing how to interface the microcontroller to a wide variety of input and output devices and conclude with several system level examples. Table of Contents: Atmel AVR Architecture Overview / Serial Communication Subsystem / Analog-to-Digital Conversion / Interrupt Subsystem / Timing Subsystem / Atmel AVR Operating Parameters and Interfacing / Embedded Systems Design The AVR RISC Microcontroller Handbook is a comprehensive guide to designing with Atmel's new controller family, which is designed to offer high speed and low power consumption at a lower cost. The main text is divided into three sections: hardware, which covers all internal peripherals; software, which covers programming and the instruction set; and tools, which explains using Atmel's Assembler and Simulator (available on the Web) as well as IAR's C compiler. Practical guide for advanced hobbyists or design professionals Development tools and code available on the Web
This book comprehensively covers the three main areas of the subject: concepts, design and programming. Information on the applications of the embedded/realtime systems are woven into almost every aspect discussed which of course is inevitable. Hardware architecture and the various hardware platforms, design & development, operating systems, programming in Linux and RTLinux, navigation systems and protocol converter are discussed extensively. Special emphasis is given to embedded database and Java applications, and
embedded software development. · Introduction to Embedded Systems· Architecture of Embedded Systems· Programming for Embedded Systems· The Process of Embedded System Development· Hardware Platforms· Communication Interfaces· Embedded/RealTime Operating System Concepts· Overview of Embedded/Real-Time Operating Systems· Target Image Creation· Representative Embedded Systems· Programming in Linux· Programming in RTLinux· Development of Navigation System· Development of Protocol Converter· Embedded Database Application· Mobile Java Applications· Embedded Software Development on 89C51 Micro-Controller Platform· Embedded Software Development on AVR MicroController Platform· Embedded Systems Applications Using Intel StrongARM Platform· Future Trends Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. How to take charge of the newest, most versatile microcontrollers around, Atmel's AVR RISC chip family (with CD-ROM) This readerfriendly guide shows you how to take charge of the newest, most versatile microcontrollers around, Atmel's AVR RISC chip family. Inside, Electronics World writer and astronomy instrumentation developer Dhananjay V. Gadre walks you from first meeting these exciting new computers-on-a-chip all the way through design and ready-to-launch products.
Atmel's AVR microcontrollers are the chips that power Arduino, and are the go-to chip for many hobbyist and
hardware hacking projects. In this book you'll set aside the layers of abstraction provided by the Arduino environment and learn how to program AVR microcontrollers directly. In doing so, you'll get closer to the chip and you'll be able to squeeze more power and features out of it. Each chapter of this book is centered around projects that incorporate that particular microcontroller topic. Each project includes schematics, code, and illustrations of a working project. Program a range of AVR chips Extend and re-use other people's code and circuits Interface with USB, I2C, and SPI peripheral devices Learn to access the full range of power and speed of the microcontroller Build projects including Cylon Eyes, a Square-Wave Organ, an AM Radio, a Passive Light-Sensor Alarm, Temperature Logger, and more Understand what's happening behind the scenes even when using the Arduino IDE Wireless networking is poised to have a massive impact on communications, and the 802.11 standard is to wireless networking what Ethernet is to wired networking. There are already over 50 million devices using the dominant IEEE 802.11 (essentially wireless Ethernet) standard, with astronomical growth predicted over the next 10 years. New applications are emerging every day, with wireless capability being embedded in everything from electric meters to hospital patient tracking systems to security devices. This practical reference guides readers through the wireless technology forest, giving them the knowledge, the hardware and the software necessary to design a wireless embedded device rapidly, inexpensively, and
effectively. Using off-the-shelf microcontrollers from Microchip and Atmel, the author provides step-by-step instructions for designing the hardware and firmware for a fully operational wireless networking device. The book gives a thorough introduction to 802.11 technology and puts it into perspective against the other wireless standard options. Just enough theory and mathematics is provided to give the depth of understanding needed for practical design work. The book thoroughly covers: * Laptop wireless Ethernet card introduction and theory *Introduction to CompactFlash-to-microcontroller interfacing * Implementing the laptop wireless Ethernet card in an embedded environment Covers the hottest new embedded market area- wireless networking Shows designers how to save money and time by using microcontrollers in their embedded wireless designs instead of expensive, complex prefab boards The AVR Microcontroller and Embedded Systems: Using Assembly and C features a step-by-step approach in covering both Assembly and C language programming of the AVR family of Microcontrollers. It offers a systematic approach in programming and interfacing of the AVR with LCD, keyboard, ADC, DAC, Sensors, Serial Ports, Timers, DC and Stepper Motors, Opto-isolators, and RTC. Both Assembly and C languages are used in all the peripherals programming. In the first 6 chapters, Assembly language is used to cover the AVR architecture and starting with chapter 7, both Assembly and C languages are used to show the peripherals programming and interfacing.
For courses in 8051 Microcontrollers and Embedded
Systems The 8051 Microprocessor: A Systems Approach emphasizes the programming and interfacing of the 8051. Using a systematic, step-by-step approach, the text covers various aspects of 8051, including C and Assembly language programming and interfacing. Throughout each chapter, examples, sample programs, and sectional reviews clarify the concepts and offer students an opportunity to learn by doing. Atmel's AVR microcontrollers are the go-to chip for many hobbyists and hardware hacking projects. In this book, PROGRAMMING AND INTERFACING ATMEL'S AVRS, you will learn how to program and interface using three of Atmel's microcontrollers--the ATtiny13, the ATmega328, and the ATmega32. The book begins with the binary number system and move into programming in assembly, then C and C++. Very little prior engineering knowledge is assumed. You'll work step-by-step through sections on connecting to devices such as DC motors, servos, steppers, touch pads, GPS sensors, temperature sensors, accelerometers, and more. Get started working with Atmel's AVRs today, with PROGRAMMING AND INTERFACING ATMEL'S AVRS. A family of internationally popular microcontrollers, the Atmel AVR microcontroller series is a low-cost hardware development platform suitable for an educational environment. Until now, no text focused on the assembly language programming of these microcontrollers. Through detailed coverage of assembly language programming
The AVR Microcontroller and Embedded SystemsUsing Assemby and CThe Avr Microcontroller and Embedded Systems Using Assembly and CUsing Arduino Uno and Atmel Studio principles and technique
Many electrical and computer engineering projects involve
some kind of embedded system in which a microcontroller sits at the center as the primary source of control. The recently-developed Arduino development platform includes an inexpensive hardware development board hosting an eight-bit ATMEL ATmega-family processor and a Java-based softwaredevelopment environment. These features allow an embedded systems beginner the ability to focus their attention on learning how to write embedded software instead of wasting time overcoming the engineering CAD tools learning curve. The goal of this text is to introduce fundamental methods for creating embedded software in general, with a focus on ANSI C. The Arduino development platform provides a great means for accomplishing this task. As such, this work presents embedded software development using 100% ANSI C for the Arduino's ATmega328P processor. We deviate from using the Arduino-specific Wiring libraries in an attempt to provide the most general embedded methods. In this way, the reader will acquire essential knowledge necessary for work on future projects involving other processors. Particular attention is paid to the notorious issue of using C pointers in order to gain direct access to microprocessor registers, which ultimately allow control over all peripheral interfacing. Table of Contents: Introduction / ANSI C / Introduction to Arduino / Embedded Debugging / ATmega328P Architecture / General-Purpose Input/Output / Timer Ports / Analog Input Ports / Interrupt Processing / Serial Communications / Assembly Language / Non-volatile Memory Preface Introduction The Classical Period: Nineteenth Century Sociology Auguste Comte (1798-1857) on Women in Positivist Society Harriett Martineau (1802-1876) on American Women Bebel, August (1840-1913) on Women and Socialism Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) on the Division of Labor and Interests in Marriage Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) on the Rights and Status of Women Lester Frank Ward (1841-1913) Page 18/24
on the Condition of Women Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964)
on the Voices of Women Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) on Dress as Pecuniary Culture The Progressive Era: Early Twentieth Century Sociology Georg Simmel (1858-1918) on Conflict between Men and Women Mary Roberts (Smith) Coolidge (1860-1945) on the Socialization of Girls Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1932) on the Woman of Genius Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) on the Economics of Private Household Work Leta Stetter Hollingworth (1886-1939) on Compelling Women to Bear Children Alexandra Kolontai (1873-1952) on Women and Class Edith Abbott (1876-1957) on Women in Industry 1920s and 1930s: Institutionalizing the Discipline, Defining the Canon Du Bois, W. E. B. (1868-1963) on the "Damnation" of Women Edward Alsworth Ross (1866-1951) on Masculinism Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1932) on Husbands and Wives Robert E. Park (1864-1944) and Ernest W. Burgess (1886-1966) On Sex Differences William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) on Women's Natural Roles Sophonisba P. Breckinridge (1866-1948) on Women as Workers and Citizens Margaret Mead (1901-1978) on the Cultural Basis of Sex Difference Willard Walter Waller (1899-1945) on Rating and Dating The 1940s: Questions about Women's New Roles Edward Alsworth Ross (1866-1951) on Sex Conflict Alva Myrdal (1902-1986) on Women's Conflicting Roles Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) on Sex in the United StatesSocial Structure Joseph Kirk Folsom (1893-1960) on Wives' Changing Roles Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) on Democracy and Race, an American Dilemma Mirra Komarovsky (1905-1998) on Cultural Contradictions of Sex Roles Robert Staughton Lynd (1892-1970) on Changes in Sex Roles The 1950s: Questioning the Paradigm Viola Klein (1908-1971) on the Feminine Stereotype Mirra Komarovsky (1905-1998), Functional Analysis of Sex Roles Helen Mayer Hacker on Page 19/24
Women as a Minority Group William H. Whyte (1917-1999) on the Corporate Wife Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales on the Functions of Sex Roles Alva Myrdal (1902-1986) and Viola Klein (1908-1971) on Women's Two Roles Helen Mayer Hacker on the New Burdens of Masculinity Interested in developing embedded systems? Since they don't tolerate inefficiency, these systems require a disciplined approach to programming. This easy-to-read guide helps you cultivate a host of good development practices, based on classic software design patterns and new patterns unique to embedded programming. Learn how to build system architecture for processors, not operating systems, and discover specific techniques for dealing with hardware difficulties and manufacturing requirements. Written by an expert who's created embedded systems ranging from urban surveillance and DNA scanners to children's toys, this book is ideal for intermediate and experienced programmers, no matter what platform you use. Optimize your system to reduce cost and increase performance Develop an architecture that makes your software robust in resourceconstrained environments Explore sensors, motors, and other I/O devices Do more with less: reduce RAM consumption, code space, processor cycles, and power consumption Learn how to update embedded code directly in the processor Discover how to implement complex mathematics on small processors Understand what interviewers look for when you apply for an embedded systems job "Making Embedded Systems is the book for a C programmer who wants to enter the fun (and lucrative) world of embedded systems. It's very well written—entertaining, even—and filled with clear illustrations." —Jack Ganssle, author and embedded system expert.
This textbook provides practicing scientists and engineers a primer on the Microchip AVR® microcontroller. The revised Page 20/24
title of this book reflects the 2016 Microchip Technology acquisition of Atmel Corporation. In this third edition we highlight the popular ATmega164 microcontroller and other pin-for-pin controllers in the family with a complement of flash memory up to 128 KB. The third edition also provides an update on Atmel Studio, programming with a USB pod, the gcc compiler, the ImageCraft JumpStart C for AVR compiler, the Two-Wire Interface (TWI), and multiple examples at both the subsystem and system level. Our approach is to provide readers with the fundamental skills to quickly set up and operate with this internationally popular microcontroller. We cover the main subsystems aboard the ATmega164, providing a short theory section followed by a description of the related microcontroller subsystem with accompanying hardware and software to operate the subsystem. In all examples, we use the C programming language. We include a detailed chapter describing how to interface the microcontroller to a wide variety of input and output devices and conclude with several system level examples including a special effects light-emitting diode cube, autonomous robots, a multi-function weather station, and a motor speed control system.
This book is about the Arduino microcontroller and the Arduino concept. The visionary Arduino team of Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino, and David Mellis launched a new innovation in microcontroller hardware in 2005, the concept of open source hardware. Their approach was to openly share details of microcontrollerbased hardware design platforms to stimulate the sharing of ideas and promote innovation. This concept has been popular in the software world for many years. This book is intended for a wide variety of audiences including students of the fine arts, middle and senior high school students, engineering design students, and practicing scientists and engineers. To Page 21/24
meet this wide audience, the book has been divided into sections to satisfy the need of each reader. The book contains many software and hardware examples to assist the reader in developing a wide variety of systems. The book covers two different Arduino products: the Arduino UNO R3 equipped with the Atmel ATmega328 and the Arduino Mega 2560 equipped with the Atmel ATmega2560. The third edition has been updated with the latest on these two processing boards, changes to the Arduino Development Environment and multiple extended examples.
This textbook serves as an introduction to the subject of embedded systems design, using microcontrollers as core components. It develops concepts from the ground up, covering the development of embedded systems technology, architectural and organizational aspects of controllers and systems, processor models, and peripheral devices. Since microprocessor-based embedded systems tightly blend hardware and software components in a single application, the book also introduces the subjects of data representation formats, data operations, and programming styles. The practical component of the book is tailored around the architecture of a widely used Texas Instrument's microcontroller, the MSP430 and a companion web site offers for download an experimenter's kit and lab manual, along with Powerpoint slides and solutions for instructors. For courses in Embedded System Design, Microcontroller's Software and Hardware, Microprocessor Interfacing, Microprocessor Assembly Language Programming, Peripheral Interfacing, Senior Project Design, Embedded System programming with C. The AVR Microcontroller and Embedded Systems: Using Assembly and C features a stepby-step approach in covering both Assembly and C language programming of the AVR family of Microcontrollers. It offers a systematic approach in programming and interfacing of the Page 22/24
AVR with LCD, keyboard, ADC, DAC, Sensors, Serial Ports,
Timers, DC and Stepper Motors, Opto-isolators, and RTC. Both Assembly and C languages are used in all the peripherals programming. In the first 6 chapters, Assembly language is used to cover the AVR architecture and starting with chapter 7, both Assembly and C languages are used to show the peripherals programming and interfacing. How can we build bridges from the digital world of the Internet to the analog world that surrounds us? By bringing accessibility to embedded components such as sensors and microcontrollers, JavaScript and Node.js might shape the world of physical computing as they did for web browsers. This practical guide shows hardware and software engineers, makers, and web developers how to talk in JavaScript with a variety of hardware platforms. Authors Patrick Mulder and Kelsey Breseman also delve into the basics of microcontrollers, single-board computers, and other hardware components. Use JavaScript to program microcontrollers with Arduino and Espruino Prototype IoT devices with the Tessel 2 development platform Learn about electronic input and output components, including sensors Connect microcontrollers to the Internet with the Particle Photon toolchain Run Node.js on single-board computers such as Raspberry Pi and Intel Edison Talk to embedded devices with Node.js libraries such as Johnny-Five, and remotely control the devices with Bluetooth Use MQTT as a message broker to connect devices across networks Explore ways to use robots as building blocks for shared experiences Why Atmel ARM? The AVR is the most popular 8-bit microcontroller designed and marketed by the Atmel (now part of Microchip). Due to the popularity of ARM architecture, many semiconductor design companies are adopting the ARM as the CPU of choice in all their designs. This is the case with Atmel ARM. The Atmel SAM D is a Cortex M0+ Page 23/24
Copyright : www.treca.org
Where To Download Avr Microcontroller And Embedded Systems Solution
chip. A major feature of the Atmel SAM D is its lower power consumption which makes it an ideal microcontroller for use in designing low power devices with IoT. It is an attempt to "bring Atmel AVR Ease-of-Use to ARM Cortex M0+ Based Microcontrollers." Why this book? We have a very popular AVR book widely used by many universities. This book attempts to help students and practicing engineers to move from AVR to ARM programming. It shows programming for interfacing of Atmel ARM SAM D to LCD, Serial COM port, DC motor, stepper motor, sensors, and graphics LCD. It also covers the detailed programming of Interrupts, ADC, DAC, and Timer features of Atmel ARM SAM D21 chip. All the programs in this book are tested using the SAM D21 trainer board with Keil and Atmel Studio IDE compiler. It must be noted that while Arduino Uno uses the Atmel 8-bit AVR microcontroller, the Arduino Zero uses the Atmel ARM SAMD21 chip. See our website: www.MicroDigitalEd.com Copyright: 848a0d6ece7d8c3febe3cb452c22ebe7
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Charter Township of Ironwood Planning Commission
Special Meeting/ Public Hearing November 11, 2016
Call to Order of Special Meeting: 6:00 p.m. Pledge of Allegiance.
Roll Call: Darrin Kimbler-Vice Chair, Joe Kafczynski, Steve Boyd, Joe Rohde, Bob Lynn, Jason Hofstede-Chairman, and Sandy Lahtinen – Secretary
Absent: None
Also Present: Joe R. Pisco, Kevin Schneller, Tom Schneller, LeRoy Johnson, Jim Rooni
Public Comment: Hofstede apologized for meeting on a Friday night but explained that was the only date that worked. Lahtinen reminded audience that there is a sign in sheet for people that would like to speak. There should be two. If there’s just one, anyone on that sheet can speak. Just one. No public comment from audience.
Additions to Agenda: None
Approval of Agenda: Motion by Lynn, supported by Kimbler to accept the agenda as
presented. All in favor. Motion carried.
PURPOSE OF PUBLIC HEARING:
Consider:
Consider the Rezoning Request of Leonard W. Rooni Estate property
Petition to rezone two parcels being 03- 01-536-800 and 03-01-536-200 consisting of 25.85 plus acres in section 13 from commercial to industrial. The property sits between highway US-2 on the south and Bluffview Rd. on the north E5782 E. Highway 2
(See attached information from Zoning Administrator LeRoy Johnson)
PUBLIC HEARING:
OPEN PUBLIC HEARING:
A motion to open the public hearing made by Kafczynski supported by Rohde to enter into Public Hearing. Roll Call Vote:
Yea: Kafczynski, Boyd, Rohde, Hofstede, Lynn, Kimbler, Lahtinen
Nay: None
Absent: None
Abstain: None
Correspondence from Zoning Administrator: Thank you. I sent you all sort of a shortened letter in regard to this rezone. (attached). The rezone is to change the commercially zoned two parcels (applicant Jim Rooni), to industrial. The applicant is Jim Rooni and he is here tonight and he will be given a chance to explain his reasons for the change. Presently there are no properties in the township that are zoned industrial. We have it in the zoning ordinance but there are none that are zoned at this time. The zoning ordinance for industrial allows six (6) permitted uses for the industrial and they do not need permission to use the property in that way and there are also nine (9) special uses (heavy industrial or manufacturing.) In evaluating a rezone one looks at whether or not if there's consistency, compatibility, and capability. Those are the three (3) things that we as a planning commission would look at in the request. The consistency portion of it sort of deals with the Master Plan (2012) and any other things that we have in the master plan. In this case it envisions changes within the Commercial District and describes it as the corridor of mixed use (8.2), which includes light industrial. So the Master plan sort of quotes sides with this in allowing industrial. Our neighbors to the East, Bessemer township, they have what is called a M2 District. They have the exact same envision so that properties to the East from outside the Charter Township of Ironwood allows the very same. To the west is still Commercial, if you look at the little map that I gave you in regards to the Master Plan, the Master Plan sort of envisions some industrial use to the West side of Section 12 road. Future use. So again, it's in the same general area, and it's envisioning as having industrial use in there. (See map of industrial.) Capabilites, the parcel has electric power on site/well/septic/ municipal water supply that runs along highway US2, and of course it does have access to a four (4) lane highway, a class A highway
Boyd: Are there any limitations as to the size of the septic system?
Johnson: No, not at this time. Anything that's going to go in there would have to come in with another site plan to us and at that time those things would be taken care of. We're looking at to make a rezone, we have to look at the industrial zone because all of the uses within the industrial zone would be open to the person that owns the property. The six (6) uses that are by right, I sort of looked at being light industrial, and the other ones are by special use permit are the more heavy industrial uses so that there's a second step that has to come into play. They would have to come before the PC one more time if it's not a regular or within those six (6) uses. Other than that I've given you a lot of information (attached), and what I'm saying now is that our Master Plan sort of allows this sort of change and it's envisioning it for the future so there is no problem there and the property size, I guess I didn't go into that yet, the main property is large enough so that the acreage is there so that there's a buffer especially to the North and South, there's really nothing there at this time so it can be buffered, I've gone through the property, there's pretty much a tree line on the North side so there's a natural buffer there, there are some mounds that also buffer to the south for any sound that would come into play depending on the industrial use that would be going into that property. Other than that, if you have any questions, otherwise I'm done. I think at this time you should give Mr. Rooni an opportunity to speak and then you can ask residents after.
Correspondence from Residents: (Written Material to be ready by secretary)-None
Rooni – First of all, I feel like I should thank LeRoy for all the information that you supplied and I tried to fill out the application supplement to meet all these consistencies, etc. But I want to sum it up this way as right now there's two (2) people working in there and my sister's and I have managed the property and we're looking at a future for that property. And it's being used industrial now, my Dad built it for industrial in 1967. And we're looking at the Master Plan and looking at what we're doing now and we're currently doing a non-conforming use of it which is industrial. We're thinking at some point we've got to sell it. Obviously we want to cooperate with the township with the future of this property. We'd like to sell it, we've had people talk to us about it. Not only that, people have talked to us about it, we'd like to get more jobs in there. Currently got Webster well drilling in there, we'd like to keep them in there. We feel the property could support two or three businesses if it's light businesses. But we looked at this corridor of mixed use, and we looked at that offers some light industrial, but if we find somebody that wants to use it like it's been used, even with Webster Well drilling, I don't know that they would fit the light industrial. And you know we looked at you have these meetings four (4) times a year and if buyers may want to move faster and we also talked to people that have mild interest in it and they say "what's it zoned for", We feel we want to invite somebody who has a similar use, to not be afraid to move in there. For us we know, who knows who wants to buy it but we're thinking if you look at the convergence of all the highways that come to Ironwood, the six (6) highways coming from WI, three (3) upper MI highways running parallel to Iwd. We're just hoping we can attract a satellite business or some business that wants that US2 access to come to the area. So we're going to take a good look at what businesses we might invite to the area. And we think with the continued use as is is the most likely to invite a business as opposed to saying that this is commercial and they could possibly be light industrial. And as far as the electricity, it's three (3) phase power, three (3) phase power doesn't sell to a Dairy Queen. And the final point is, I would say that Ironwood Township through the years has done some rezoning where they went down the US 2 Corridor and said this would be mixed use. At that point, I think my father's property may have been an oversight as his is pretty far back and he does have industrial use so I think the old thing, it's kind of grandfathered in in a sense. Those are industrial buildings so not only does it have 3 phase power, there's fourteen (14) foot doors, sixteen (16) foot ceilings, and it's just not the place where you're going to put a restaurant and it's just not visible from the highway. And it's kind of wetlands pretty much all around it, it's kind of isolated back there. So anyway, those are, and there are even more points that I tried to include on the application that we feel that it's kind of natural. To relook at this, with now that this property is exposed to the Planning Commission, we feel that in 2005 or whenever the State of MI said now we gotta look at things it didn't make sense for the township to say here's a 1000 foot corridor but had we invited you in at that time and said, you know, 650 feet back here is some industrial activity.
Boyd – Can you give some examples of this, that would not be allowed in the commercial, that would be allowed with what you're proposing.
Rooni – For the best summary of that is businesses probably that would need a fourteen (14) foot garage door, light industrial is car repair,the master plan industrial would be truck repair. And again when I talk about the highways coming through and what business you could attract there would probably be one small business that provided truck repair, that would make more sense than auto repair.
Kimbler – I guess we have a regular meeting next month, why the hurry I guess, why spend the extra money to move it forward in just one month , the public hearing now instead of December.
Rooni – Better question is, why did I wait so long. You know I've really wanted to get this moving, my sister's and I started on this and did not expect this to be a hurdle. I'd like to expose this property to as many interests as possible, especially outside the immediate area. Obviously if someone in the area wanted to develop a business there it'd be wonderful but so I talked to several commercial brokers, just to get a feel for what's out there and a couple came back and said, "How's it zoned," and to be honest I had one company that I thought would have been great for the area which was a welding company and they were in there temporarily, loved the property, and I sensed that they may have a long term interest so I asked them, because they had big equipment and were serving the pipeline through the UP and they said what is the ordinance in there and LeRoy first came back, it was about 8 months ago, and I think the ordinance has become more defined and improved since. They must have looked at the ordinace and felt it wasn't friendly to them and they weren't going to say that, and I'm not saying the ordinances were too strict but it made me look at the fact that my Dad had an industrial use but the township didn't have zoning for industrial use.
Kimbler – was one of your potential buyers the Medical Marijuana company? The reason I asked is that the new Marijuana laws specifies they can only be located in two (2) districts. Agriculture or industrial. We had a gentleman at our last meeting in September who said that he was talking with property owners in the township. If that could be a use in the industrial zone and the township hasn't had a chance to look at the new law. It's kind of concerning to me that a company could come in there that the neighbors don't necessarily appreciate it, without knowing in advance.
Rooni – I've never been approached or would never even think of that one. We're a local company. If it's a local company it's somebody
Rooni – We've looked strictly at, were a local company, but if it's a local company it'd be somebody that'd have to repair their trucks. ???200 ft. highway, 6 to 700 ft. back, compare apples to app, 200 feet highway frontage, 600 ft. back, have buildings, grandfathered in, 3 phase power, this site fits. Two (2) acres on highway, commercial only, access to buildings is
Boyd – LeRoy, with the changes requested, would we have to look at changing some of the surrounding lands? Different from spot zoning? So, it would not be rezoned, but there would be special use permits for those uses? Do it on an annual basis? Will it pass on to the owners.
Johnson -The petition is just for that property. No one else, since I've been here has requested to change from commercial to industrial. It's not a spot zoning, plus the MP allows for some of these changes and the neighbors on either side at this point the neighbors on the West side would probably have to ask for the same thing, a rezone of their property. But one thing, I have discussed with Mr. Rooni was to add special uses within the Comm. Dist. Which primarily and as I looked at it I never informed him but would be the permitted uses in the industrial district as a special use. Then, if there's any other property owners in that area, they then too could take advantage and apply for a special use permit and it could tumble into everybody having light industrial at that time. Not annual basis, one time, it'll pass on with the owners.
Kimbler – we'd have to amend our zoning ord. to allow that.
Johnson – yes.
Rooni – and that falls into the issue of why so late. My sisters and I actually got some professional consultation on exactly that. Going back to why I interjected that thought about a potential buyer. Is Iwd. Township going to be friendly to me coming in, using the welding company as an example, there's no industrial at all, there's a meeting in 3 months, what is there now, LeRoy mentioned 6 potential ones, none of them seemed friendly to like a welder with equipment coming in and out so we would rather get this moving now and have this meeting maybe rather than having 4, with potential of is this going to meet the board's idea. We just felt, let's go with your MP to be in sync and if a business comes in you do the site proposal or whatever reviews you have available in your MP. And we've been told by a commercial broker that it should be something that's going to be inviting. Should we find somebody from Thunder Bay who does commerce in the Lake Superior area. Are they gonna come here and set up a satellite plant? A broker is not going to tell them, lets drive 8 hours on a hope and prayer that the board will allow. They want to see the Master Plan, will Iwd. Twsp. Welcome this business, so we don't want to lose a potential buyer like that.
Lahtinen- I have to ask this, you said it's surrounded by wetlands. You realize, with the wetlands, that DEQ permits would have to be obtained depending on the business or how close to the wetlands you are?
Rooni – That land, my dad happened to be very familiar, him and some business partners went in there and they went in there because they knew there was some good high ground in there and they did haul in loads to level it off and they improved it as an industrial site. And right to the point if you're talking about industrial sites the Gogebic County Road Commission was looking at that property as a suitable site. The whole point is that is that it is an industrial site, built that way, but the wetlands, there's some on the 25 acres, there's a little bit of interruption, you can see the ponds and there's a couple of corners that might not be buildable but otherwise that's a high ground industrial site.
Lynn- Mr. Chairman, I'd be kind of interested to know how other property owners in that area feel about this. I see Tom Schnellers here tonight if he has opinions he might want to contribute.
Schneller – Lots of them. Thank you. I don't have a problem with a truck shop. I'd have a huge problem with a medical marijuana facility. Don't even have a problem with a blacktop plant setting up there. I'm kind of concerned with there are no other neighbors here. I was under the impression that if you are a surrounding land owner, the township should be sending us certified letters saying this is going on, we didn't get that, so I kind of question if this hearing is even valid, and my concern is that other people might be interested with what's going on here. I've read the Master Plan, Leroy did a good job of covering that but if you it here I'll be coming here tomorrow and asking that all my property be rezoned on the highway. And you know the original intent is commercial, commercial is retail, and it's a whole different mix here. And if you give it to him, I'm going to want it on mine, cuz it's only fair and I don't think that's the direction that we want US 2 to go in. Other better uses for it, he is set back from the highway, I like that, but to give him a blanket for industrial use, you could have a lot of stuff in there that's going to bother a lot of people. I like the idea that's it's tucked back there, but if somebody's going to build a 20 thousand foot sawmill back there and it's going to make noise and that could be a problem. Um…light commercial gets pretty wide open and that's where light manufacturing is a concern of mine. Do I build a motel right next door to it and there's a noise issue, is it going to limit that. We own the property right across the street, depending on what it is, what kind of truck traffic are we dealing with. We looked at the property across the street for a Motel the first thing MDOT says you're going to put three (3) lanes in there. Alright, I don't know if you're going to get three (3) lanes in there at that entrance because of the wetlands, so I think there's a lot of questions here. You know, back in 2010, there was , change for a reason. I don't know what the reasoning was for those people, but you know you talk about grandfathered in and it's no different than farms out in the township, and if they're sold they can't be farms without special use. Alright, we've got mixed use all over the township. The enforcement is, I mean you're making jokes about the blight, you know I can't drive down the road at night without counting 20 buildings that have to be torn down so we keep making all these rules, we don't have the time to enforce them and if you do enforce them all you guys would be strung up so we haven't come out with a timeline in the township to say that in five years all junk cars in the township are going to be gone so this is just a perfect example of when you start picking and choosing of what you're going to allow here, people are going to come back and say well you allowed him to do that. This building's been here since 1967, my buildings been there since 1967, well we want that to be a residential area now so we want that gone. So I guess what I'm saying, nothing against Mr. Rooni, I'm sure his Dad's intent was to have a concrete plant there forever, it would have been grandfathered in but here we are and like I said a mechanics shop, if you approved it to that, absolutely no problem. Give an open zoning on that, a big concern of mine is the adjoining neighbor.
Rooni – a couple of responses. Yeah, there's a 200 foot highway. When we talk about your property, I saw what you're saying, but my dad's property is 6 to 700 feet back but you make a point, you say 200 feet, 125 in, so apples to apples, yeah, there's 200 feet of highway frontage for the road coming in otherwise, the reason I'm saying is that I'm 600 feet back and I have buildings there that were industrial buildings, I mean the grandfathered in thing I don't think can be ignored and that my sister's and I have kept them up and my Dad's built them and there's 3 phase power in there, it's not that very site has this because this site fits. Now, if you look at my plan, I go into these details as to why this site is unique. Now if you were to say well let's take that two acres that come in from the highway, and that'll be commercial only, that's fine. Needing access to those buildings is very important. And again, Leroy mentioned the neighbors in Bessemer township and we go a little down the road and Tom has got a similar business in I'm assuming it's trucks, he's got a road coming off the highway right near his real estate and he's got his buildings there similar to what my dad has and maybe even closer to the highway and if he were selling his property I don't know how Bessemer township looks at it but I would think it would be hard for Bessemer township to say, No, we don't want you to sell it for truck repair , we want a different thing in there.
Kimbler – I believe you're sincere. The only hang up I have on this is we don't know what would go in there and that may open up a whole can of worms with the neighbors. Once you sell the property, it could be turned around and sold again and we have little way to regulate that because it's already been zoned and they have that blanket, that open check there. And for rezoning I'd like there to be a purpose, a building, you know a company coming in with a plan. Just to have that as a selling point for the property, I don't know if that's doing the township any good because we may be back here in 6 months with the new owner and the neighbors up in arms as it's creating a lot of problems or potential problems.
Rooni – So, you're saying, you see I'm saying is that this is tucked away. It's been there, Industrial for this long, but you're saying the Master Plan, I mean in your MP you say you allow storage, and food processing, and I don't know about medical marijuana but where do you want these types of businesses?
Kimbler – I think we don't want the types of business, we just want the business to be present when we approve.
Rooni – So this is my point. My sisters and I are trying to invite potential buyers for satellite operation here. And we've got to show them that Ironwood Township has no place, and you've got many square miles, but there's no place where you're saying you'll take an industrial business. And that is a very unwelcoming thing. To have a guy from Thunder Bay to come down to entertain possibly setting up in Ironwood and there's not one acre of industrial, how am I going to convince him that this is a board that you want to talk to.
Schneller – That's a tough call though. There's a number of lots still available in Ironwood Ironwood's Industrial Park/Bessemer that have sewer and water to them, you know they're already there. Whether you guys were on the board when this all happened in the days of Tom Christensen. Ok, where are we really going, are we going to have Industry in Ironwood Township. And at that time the Tax free zones started popping up. I think we still have one tax free zone at the airport, and that's where our industrial was supposed to be built. So it wasn't ignored. This township didn't jump on that bandwagon and put in roads/o sewer/water where
Iwd./Bessemer/even Wakefield did it. It's not like you guys were behind eight (8) ball on industrial buildings. Yeah, I just want to reiterate, I don't have a problem of a specific use ok, if it's a truck garage, great, go for it. But it's too wide open, the way it's worded.
Rooni- It's what the Master Plan, Bessemer might have it, Ironwood might have it but we have an existing facility that could attract a satellite operation and by the way, just recently I talked with a food distributer and I'm inviting them, two of them in the Midwest, would you want a terminal at the end to unhook your trailers. My point is that my sister's and I are sitting on what is potentially a natural industrial park, already existing, and we're offering to market it. Originally when I called LeRoy and asked for the ordinances I said LeRoy do you think you could help us find a buyer. By the way, I talked to CEO of food company and he told me, he gave me a tour of his food facility and he said the reason I'm here is the county came to me and said ,would I set up here and bring my jobs, and I said no, I looked at it and I can't afford it. And the county invited bankers and put together a plan and he's there now. This is the same guy he told me Jim, I understand you're going to talk to the Ironwood Township board and I'm just telling you what my county did. And I mentioned it to Leroy and I have no intention of asking Ironwood Township to work with us because I'm planning to do this on my own, I will hire consultants and solicit professional advice but I'm saying that my sisters and I are sitting on a natural industrial park that the twsp. Can do nothing but benefit and we're going to put in the work. I'm not even thinking of offering tax incentives, I'm interested in Tax base going up for Iwd. Twshp. I mean, I'm on the same page, I feel that the tax rolls are in line with Ironwood Twshp. Now, obviously we're interested in selling our property but if we can bring jobs in and a good company, or more than one company, I feel there's a lot of potential.
Kimbler – LeRoy brought up something early in the conversation of amending the commercial district to include industrial district uses as special uses. That would cover a lot of what you're talking about. But first people would have to come into the PC to get a special use permit. That gives the township a little bit of oversight on what's going in there. Would that be amendable that would open up some of the stuff from rezoning it industrial.
Rooni – Back to why am I pushing forward. I've tried to analyze both with LeRoy's help and professional help and we got it between a rock and a hard place that even though I bring up this you meet every 3 months and my buyer, I don't who that is and what their timetable is and maybe we need to have a special meeting for that but beyond that in convenience of time, I want to be able to tell the buyer that Iwd. township welcomes new jobs. I don't have to tell him that there's tax incentives and all sorts of grandiose interests, I just want to say ,I can't say there's not one (1) industrial acre in Ironwood Township but they want an industrial company. We're gonna lose what could be a good potential buyer, this whole thing about my dad has an industrial site with US2 access, but Irwd. Township does not 1 acre industrial zoning, Even though my Dad had an industrial site. I'm a little concerned that that may have turned off the welding company, I'm not using that, it's just my personal observation, it went silent after reading, you know I sent them the zoning maps and whatever
Boyd- But I think what we're concerned about is that we wouldn't want to surprise the neighbors by something else coming in there. LeRoy, When you're talking about special permits, making it industrial in that area is it possible to do that and be more specific to weed out something that would be obnoxious to the neighbors.
Johnson- you could put in the actual uses. You could say light industrial and list each and every one that would be allowed by special use permit. Even I suggested the permitted uses in the industrial district. We could have a special use in a commercial district and that would open it up to any other property owners of the highway within that area if they wanted a special use permit it's one stop shopping because you only have to stop here.
Boyd – I understand you want to sell the property and the more options available the more people would be interested. We're concerned about exactly what would go in there as well as the resonating effect on the surrounding properties. Which options would extend to the Commercial District. You don't own the 700 feet, that lands a buffer. Correct. So someone else could do something else with that.
Boyd – But what Mr. Schneller was saying about Establishing precedent? Then other people along the corridor would come through? Will that be a problem with this precedent?
Johnson – No, they have that right to petition for it, that's what Mr. Rooni has done now, we discussed this in length, I sort of tried to convince him to go with the special use but that was his decision and……
Rooni – Well, I'm going to make a comment on that. And I'm going to use an example, Tom's got a similar truck repair business. I can see that he deserves a little attention if that person comes in and says I have 10,000 ft. of 14 ft. garage doors I'm on that guy's side. I'd say Yeah, that's precedent, you can't have that guy knock his down and build a restaurant
Boyd- No, but what we're talking here is different but giving you special use is not predicated on buildings already there. They're there and that's a fact but a special use is not really relevant if there's a building there or not.
Johnson – What it does is add within the commercial district, what you want, and I'm sure you're prefacing the permitted uses within the industrial district, aren't you.
Rooni – These are the permitted uses for the industrial. I think the real stickler was the corridor or mixed use, that it will allow auto or light use.
Johnson – If you're looking at the Permitted uses of the industrial district does that show what you want. That's the premise that we're working on. 1-6 those are permitted uses.
Kimbler –The Master Plan was just a guideline to write our zoning ordinance. The Master plan is forward thinking ,25 years. A-F would become special use. Would not have to come before township to get a permit.
Rooni- Well then, 1 of 6, veterinarian, building supply yard, these are 6 permitted uses. These are for the industrial Don't want to use Dairy Queen as an example.
Lahtinen- LeRoy, I have a question, where does it say light industrial in the zoning?
Johnson – it's in the Master Plan.
Johnson – The first 6 are called use of rite, in other words you don't have to come in, all you have to do is supply the site plan
Rooni – But my understanding is if I had a potential buyer and they wanted a special use they would come to you for that. And as I recall that is something that made sense and somebody has got to feel invited and going to be welcomed
Rooni – so this permitted uses on industrial, you're saying we wouldn't do it that way.
Kimbler – well if we were to amend the zoning ordinance to allow these special uses in commercial district as to rezoning as an industrial district those A-F would become special uses and they would have to get a permit. A special use permit at that point before the commission.
Rooni – so in other words, in someone was interested in putting one of these 6, they have a business, and they said that spot would be good, and I would say whoa, whoa, not so fast, we've got to meet with the board I'm in a spot where it can't be that uninviting where as in a Comm. Use I don't picture and I don't want to use the word Dairy Queen because there's other Comm. Uses but what I'm saying is that there's Being that far off the highway is just not going to attract Comm. Business. When I'm talking with these food distributors I can't think of commercial businesses that I would talk to that would want to be 600 feet off the highway. That's my only point is the mentality is that somebody that would seriously need that property would got to feel invited. That the township, or Gogebic County wants those jobs and is going to be welcomed. That's the fine line where we're working here.
Johnson – allowing those 6, those additional uses in that commercial district would sort of double…
Schneller – any developer has to deal with the zoning and it's a pain no matter where you are…. You gotta look at the big picture, he sells the land to somebody and the food service thing didn't work out and he happens to buy the 10 or 20 acres in front and he mows down trees, and then you've got this industrial island in the US 2 corridor. And is that really what you want. That's a big question mark, we're doing this for today, not 20 or 30 years down the road. I like the idea of making special uses on the property but then I would suggest that for everything in the green up there. But do you guys really want to do that as that's a huge change to your master plan.
Rooni – It is 650 off the corridor and it is an island out there and as far as people coming, zoning, no , I'll give you another example of a commercial broker that has a potential of a good client, I just got lucky enough to hit this co and he said in your area, would they be interested? And I said I would talk to them. Do you have it listed with a commercial realtor, and I said no, not a chance, and he said we need to list it with a comm. Realtor because my client is not going to take time and then find out it's sold wrong. Client has to know before he commits. I have a guy that drives 140 miles to look at my Dad's property, to potentially get it out there on the market. And he says how is it zoned and I say well I'm working with that now and I said it's commercial and it should be industrial, and he looks around and says that shouldn't be a problem. I can tell this guy sells a lot of property and there wasn't going to be any suspense about it. And if I go back to him and say it's commercial it's just not going to present the way the property presents. There's certain things we have to know before my clients going to move and again this is much closer in Thunder Bay. But the feedback I'm getting is that Commercial Business feels like ready to go, doesn't set a precedent, grandfathered in, we have to get industrial jobs for commercial jobs to operate, no surprise to neighbors, bewildered buyers . To sum it up, everything that's been talked about across the board but I'm running very late in doing this, we've put a lot of thought into this, and the thought is that we have to have a business feel like things are ready to go and the Twsp. Is welcoming this. And again, if Iwd. Twsp. had industrial acreage here and there it would be more inviting, but the fact is that there's none and the fact that there's such hesitation, that I have to say, we can find out in 3 months or whatever it is, all those things together put it in a position where I had to be here tonight. Saying this is an isolated case, it doesn't set a precedent, this is grandfathered in, no different than the City of Iwd. having all this industrial property, I see the city having and then there's junkyards and whatever else and I understand that and I understand the zoning but the fact is that we have to get the industrial jobs in here first before we can get the commercial property to develop. And I wish we had more than 700 feet off but there's the a barrier and buffer and it is isolated and it's never been a surprise to the neighbors since 1967 when there's been some trucking and repair going on there.
Boyd- I understand what you're saying, you want to sell the property and obviously the more options available the better to sell, which makes sense. We're concerned as far as what would go in there as well as the resonating effect on surrounding properties. But you want it beyond the Comm. District.
Rooni – Correct. Then again, they're all fair statements but I'm not looking for options as much as we're looking for a business that needs 14 foot garage doors and access to the highway and to utilize the buildings already present and also the land, again there's the welding company was in and out of there with equipment that was heading in every direction that we've got the 5 highways all funneling into Ironwood and that's where the market is. It's options of Iwd. being a western gateway to the UP. Once you're 700 feet off the highway, I'm not going to be talking to Dairy Queen.
Boyd – You don't own the 700 feet off the highway, so somebody else could do something with that.
Rooni - Correct
Johnson – I tried to steer Mr. Rooni into a special use permit within the commercial use basically because of the special uses within the industrial district that one could request. Some are not manufacturing, waste storage facilities, junkyards, lumberyards, incineration or dumping of garbage, etc. I don't feel that that's what appropriate for that district, that area, so if we change it to industrial and that's why I wanna try to steer him into staying commercial and adding permitted uses of industrial but by going to Industrial you are opening the door up to those special uses. And I think that was my problem with it
Kimbler- Look, you're less than a mile, ½ mile up wind from the hospital and so some of these things, you know would definitely not be compatible with there's people for example, air quality, My concern on this whole thing is not having a use established
Rooni – LeRoy, you're saying these special uses are automatic
Johnson – Not automatic but they're allowed, they're allowed with a special use permit, in that area my thought is that's why I tried to steer you to stay within the commercial realm and add light industrial uses that would be compatible in that area
Rooni – if these were acceptable to market as and these are not, because the answer is no, I'm not looking to market to any of and of these special uses
Johnson – well that's the question we posed to you and you said no you wanted industrial but there's a possibility of moving those permitted uses as a special use in the commercial district and you said no
Kimbler – My concern is, you may not be marketing to those special uses but the next owner could
Rooni- Again, LeRoy, as I recall, the special uses about commercial. As I recall it was Solar/cremation/display signs, there were about 4 or 5 things that were not relevant. I never understood this to be part of my market plan
Johnson – What I said is that we would put in light industrial uses and that was a possibility
Rooni- Permitted industrial uses would be allowed with spec. use permit, that would include auto repair, not truck repair
Kimbler – auto repair is already in
Johnson-If I can be honest with you, you are giving me and perhaps the board a warning that special uses to go in there, that's why I suggested to go with the permitted uses within the commercial district and not the special heavy uses that are also tied to the industrial
Rooni – I don't mean to do that, I never understood it that way but what you're saying is that permitted industrial uses would be associated with my Dad's property by special use within the permitted district which is not how it reads right now, then that was my issue
Johnson- I told you could ask for the rezoning or you could ask that special uses be added to the commercial district
Rooni – what special uses? Lite industrial. I've never seen these six associated with my Dad's property, are you saying these six permitted uses would be a part of my Dad's property?
Johnson- light industrial, primarily the first six are sort of light industrial, that's why I'm saying that you were looking at the special uses in the industrial as your primary. I sort of think that's what was being offered.
Kimbler- Amended zoning to allow six (6) uses, in a commercial district, just use a special use permit to do it, which your Dad's property is now zoned a commercial district, so we wuldn't require rezoning to do those six (6) uses, just a special permit to do it.
Rooni – Now we're back to the come on down from Thunder Bay and time it right so that we're at one of the board meetings. We don't have an industrial district but they'll probably want your business to come in. Maybe I did understand that part but again the existing with light industrial,, and then the special uses to the light industrial, again it gets a little confusing but maybe I did understand it at one time but I get back to this fine line of a potential satellite company welcome or not? And the answer is maybe, I have a commercial broker, standing on the property and he says is this industrial, it's an embarrassment to say that no, it's commercial. Shocking to a reasonable person that you could be not able to sell that to somebody whose business needs some garage space.
Kimbler – it's always going to be maybe
Hofstede- To me this whole situation kind of parallels with another situation with someone who wanted to spot zone their property. It seems like it would be a reasonable use in their area, according to the MP, but we won't spot zone so it's easier for you to sell your property. We would need to rezone that whole area in order for you to rezone industrial.
Rooni – what area?
Hofstede- the whole corridor
Rooni – you'd have to rezone the whole corridor?
Hofstede – I don't think anybody on this board wants to do any spot zoing.
Rooni – I missed the corridor part
Hofstede – if we would rezone the whole corridor as industrial in the future then you would market it as industrial. Right now it's not industrial so you can't marked it as industrial. Whether it should be or not, it's not, so that's how we have to proceed.
Rooni – that's why I'm here, because it's not.
Hofstede – I understand but I'm saying that I don't think anybody on this board wants to do any spot zoning. And that's what were here for is to rezone your property. That's what this meeting is for. We understand your argument, we understand your dilemma, at least I do, it seems like some other people do as well, but that's your predicament, it's not made by the township. Rooni – it is in a sense that – Hofstede, no, that's what your property is zoned at, as of, I don't know, that's what it's zoned now. Rooni – what was it zoned when my father built it (2010), Hofstede- I couldn't tell you, I wasn't here but I'm telling you what it's zoned as now.
Rooni – my point is that, 2010, what was it zoned
Hofstede, you can't go back 50 years because 50 years it wasn't
Kimbler – can't look at the past, have to look at the future.
Rooni – non-conforming use and it's grandfathered in
Hofstede – that's for the owner, not for a future owner, if you change ownership, the grandfathered use does not go with the new owner because we have to rezone the whole corridor.
Schneller – Let me give you an example of a real estate broker, looking around. Right now the Bolich farm on Junet road, gets sold, it cannot be a farm without a special use permit. It's been a farm there for 100 years. Can't sell it as a farm without a special use permit. That's zoning, like it or not.
Rooni – if the township felt that it made sense to have the farm there, how do you go about it.
Hofstede- I think we're giving you the option. We're giving you the way to accomplish what you want to do without spot zoning. And because you want to market it as industrial light, that makes a lot of sense, but It's not industrial, it's commercial. The property is zoned as commercial. Whether it's grandfathered in that way or not, that's for the owner that has the property right now. And that's what this meeting is for tonight, to decide whether we're going to rezone your property.
Johnson – And the board has to do what is best for the township. That's first and foremost. Personal desires, changing zoning, is and can't be a good reason to change it. That's why I told you that a Special use to light industrial within the commercial district would be more acceptable than to change the whole district to industrial and allow extra special uses to come into play. That's what the board has to look at. The neighbors then, I don't know if they would want those Special Uses to come into play. To change the zoning to industrial they do come into play. So what the board is looking for and I waslooking for is some assurances that it's gonna be a light industrial use. And you do that by adding it to the commercial district as a special use at least and then you come before the PC to get the Special use . That's what I tried to get you to do and you made your final decision. We're not against industrial, no we're not, we're looking to getting not the highest and best use of the property for you, but the highest and best use for the township. It's their obligation.
Rooni – I understand that and believe it or not, I'm also looking for best use of township. If you recall my opening comments LeRoy, I Want to work with you – how can we do this? Everything everyone is saying is fair. I worked with you for five or six months and every time I brought it up there's probably a, better way or more compatible, to everybody, that's acceptable. But the point here is, I'm not asking you to sell it. What I'm getting to is I have to tell someone that's looking at this property and Iwd. Twsp. has no industrial acres and it's a combination of this stuff. Iwd. Township may approve your use and they're saying we want to use it like Webster well drilling is using it now. And I'm saying is I don't know if you can do that and that's the fine line that if Webster
Johnson – Webster is a commercial business. That's considered commercial. He's not manufacturing on site, he's out well drilling somewhere else.
Kimbler- Does he charge sales tax when he drills a hole. That's considered a retail operation.
Rooni – Tom do you charge sales tax,
Schneller – no, in delivering gravel, if we manufacture gravel we pay sales tax
Rooni – not when you deliver gravel, it's a fine line. If Tom Schneller or Ruotsala wanted to move their business in the township, I think that's considered industrial. No sales tax, what's fair is fair. I don't want to be hard headed but this is where I have a hard time with commercial.
Rooni- would Ruotsala or Schneller be approved telling a commercial broker that's what to do
Public Comment (as called upon from Public Comment Sign-in List): No additional comments
CLOSE PUBLIC HEARING:
A motion to close the Public Hearing at 7:17 p.m. and reconvene the Special Meeting made by Kimbler supported by Lynn Roll Call Vote:
Yea: Kafczynski, Boyd, Rohde, Hofstede, Lynn, Kimbler ,Lahtinen
Nay: None
Absent: None
Abstain: None
CONSIDER:
Kaczynski- I was just wondering are there a lot of wetlands there? And land going to Section 12 Road. There's quite a bit of them there.
Hoefstede – Not his property, but between his and the highway.
Rooni – you've got a stream coming along there so it's not in his property but the lower
Lynn- As I recall, the othmmer side of Section 12 road, there is wetlands, Walmart originally looked at that but the wetland issue came up where they had to go across the road.
A motion by Lynn supported by Kimbler to not recommend the rezoning of two parcels being 03-01-536-800 and 03-01-536-200 consisting of 25.85 plus acres in section 13 from commercial to industrial. Yea being to not recommend
CONDITIONS:
______________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________
Yea: Kafczynski, Boyd, Rohde, Hofstede, Lynn, Kimbler Lahtinen
Nay: None
Absent: None
Abstain: None
Motion carried.
Public Comment: A citizen commented as a footnote on wetlands. Wetlands aren’t the end of the world, ok. You can fill them in with permission, and you can move them, with permission, and you can move streams with permission. So just to kinda hear that you guys were hung up on wetlands. Don’t be, from a developers standpoint, yeah there’s all sorts of bells & whistles you have to get through it. We’ve done some. You guys aren’t wetland people, you’re zoning.
Adjournment: A motion made by Kimbler supported by Boyd to adjourn Special Meeting/Public Hearing at 7:22 p.m. All in favor. Motion carried.
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Chairperson
Secretary
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| Site details | | Site Code | GTLAA08 / HS33 | | | | | | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | Address | Barbaraville | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | Area | 0.62ha | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | Current land use | Predominantly brownfield | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | Proposed land | Housing Site (Gypsy and Traveller) | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | use | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | Existing drainage features | | An unnamed drain goes into culvert just upstream of the site, turning from a southerly to south-easterly direction under the site, until it re-emerges on the southern side of the A414. The drain flows in a south-easterly direction to join the River Lea approximately 350m from the site. | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | Fluvial | | | Proportion of site at risk | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | FZ3b | | FZ3a | | | | FZ2 | | | | FZ1 |
| | | | 0% | | 0% | | | | 0% | | | | 100% | |
| | | | Available data: The site is not located within the Environment Agency’s FZs 2 or 3 as the catchment is <3km2. Due to the potential risk from the unmodelled watercourse/ culvert, it will need to be modelled at the planning application stage, including an assessment of blockage to the culvert on the upstream boundary. The surface water mapping can provide an indication of risk for strategic purposes. | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | Proportion of site at risk (RoFfSW) | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | 30-year | | | | 100-year | | | | 1,000-year | | |
| | | | 6% | | | | 18% | | | | 35% | | | |
| | | | | Max depths (m) (out of bank) | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | 0.30-0.60 | | | | 0.30-0.60 | | | | 0.90-1.20 | | | |
| | | | | Max velocity (m/s) (out of bank) | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | 0.00-0.25 | | | | 0.25-0.50 (negligible) | | | | 1.00-2.00 (negligible) | | | |
| | | | | Max hazard rating (out of bank) | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | Danger for some | | | | Danger for most | | | | Danger for most | | | |
| Site details | | Site Code | GTLAA08 / HS33 | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | Address | Barbaraville | | | |
| | | Area | 0.62ha | | | |
| | | Current land use | Predominantly brownfield | | | |
| | | Proposed land | Housing Site (Gypsy and Traveller) | | | |
| | | use | | | | |
| | | | Description of surface water flow paths: Surface water flooding impacts the south-western portion of the site, with flooding in all return periods, following the topographic depression of the drain. Access routes from the eastern portion of the site have the potential to be restricted within the 1,000-year event only. There is some additional impact from the 100 and 1,000-year events along the whole southern boundary of the site. Looking at the 100-year surface water event in the interactive mapping, the hazard for this event is mainly ‘Danger for some’ with isolated areas of ‘Danger for most’, which is also the case in the 1,000-year event. The area of the deepest surface water is in the south-west of the site, where depths reach 0.30-0.60m. The velocities in the 30-year and 100-year events are fairly low, mainly 0.00-0.25m/s, with small, isolated areas of higher velocities in the 100-year event, There are some higher velocities in the 1,000-year event, in the south-west of the site along the south- eastern site boundary. Developers should steer development away from the west of the site where the risk is greatest. | | | |
| | | Reservoir | The site is not shown to be at risk of reservoir flooding from the available online maps. | | | |
| | | Flood history | The Environment Agency’s historic flood map shows no history of flooding at the site. | | | |
| Flood risk management infrastructure | Defences | | Defence Type | | Standard of | Condition |
| | | | | | Protection | |
| | | | - | - | | - |
| | | | This site is not protected by any formal flood defences. | | | |
| | Residual risk | | In a site-specific assessment (FRA), if a new hydraulic model is created to assess risk from the drain, it is recommended to test the impact of blockage, given the culvert entrance is just upstream of the site. A blockage could cause water to spill into the site. | | | |
| | | Flood warning | The site is not covered by the EA’s Flood Warning Service. | | | |
| Site details | | Site Code |
|---|---|---|
| | | Address |
| | | Area |
| | | Current land use |
| | | Proposed land |
| | | use |
| Climate Change | Implications for the site | |
| Requirements for drainage control and impact mitigation | Broad scale assessment of possible SuDS | |
| Site details | | Site Code |
|---|---|---|
| | | Address |
| | | Area |
| | | Current land use |
| | | Proposed land |
| | | use |
| NPPF and planning implications | Exception Test requirements | |
Requirements and guidance for sitespecific Flood Risk Assessment
Flood Risk Assessment:
* At the planning application stage, a site-specific Flood Risk Assessment will be required if any development is located within Flood Zones 2 or 3 or is greater than one hectare. Other sources of flooding should also be considered.
* Any FRA should be carried out in line with the National Planning Policy Framework; Flood Risk and Coastal Change Planning Practice Guidance; Welwyn Hatfield Council's Local Plan policies, and the LLFA's SUDS guidance and Policy Statement.
* All sources of flooding, particularly the risk of surface water and groundwater flooding, should be considered as part of a site-specific flood risk assessment.
* Consultation with the Local Authority, Local Lead Flood Authority and the Environment Agency should be undertaken at an early stage.
* The development should be designed using a sequential approach. Development should be steered away from areas of fluvial flood risk and surface water flow routes, preserving these spaces as green infrastructure. Development must be in line with Table 3: flood risk vulnerability and flood zone compatibility of the NPPG.
Guidance for site design and making development safe:
* The surface water risk needs to be accommodated and development should not exacerbate risk on site or elsewhere.
* Due to the potential risk from the unmodelled watercourse/ culvert, it will need to be modelled at the planning application stage, including an assessment of blockage to the culvert on the upstream boundary. Due to the vulnerability of the development and the small size of the site compared with the number of pitches planned, flood modelling will need to be undertaken, which may affect the capacity of the site.
* Given the vulnerable nature of development, consideration should be given to a sequential approach to site layout steering development away from areas at greatest risk.
* The developer will need to show, through an FRA, that future users of the development will not be placed in danger from flood hazards throughout its lifetime. It is for the applicant to show that the development meets the objectives of the NPPF's policy on flood risk. For example, how the operation of any mitigation measures can be safeguarded and maintained effectively through the lifetime of the development. (Para 048 Flood Risk and Coastal Change PPG).
* Safe access and egress will need to be demonstrated in the 1 in 100year plus climate change fluvial and rainfall events, using the depth, velocity and hazard outputs. Raising of access routes must not impact on surface water flow routes. Consideration should be given to the siting of access points with respect to areas of surface water flood risk.
* Resilience measures will be required if buildings are situated in the flood risk area. Raising Finished Floor Levels above the design event may remove the need for resilience measures, and given the site contains vulnerable properties, wider consideration may need to be given to the risk of the structures themselves being more affected.
* New or re-development should adopt source control SuDS techniques to reduce the risk of frequent low impact flooding due to postdevelopment runoff. Assessment for runoff should include allowance for climate change effects.
* The risk from surface water flow routes should be quantified as part of a site-specific FRA, including a drainage strategy, to ensure that runoff from the development is not increased by placing development across any ephemeral surface water flow routes. A drainage strategy should help inform site layout and design to ensure there is no increase in runoff beyond the current greenfield rates.
* Due to the vulnerable nature of this potential development, mitigation methods and site-specific SuDS should be considered at the FRA stage, which may result in a reduced capacity of the site.
* Betterment on the existing site runoff rate should be sought to ensure that there is no increase in surface water flood risk elsewhere. Ideally, surface water runoff should be fully attenuated to the greenfield rate.
| Site details | | Site Code | GTLAA08 / HS33 |
|---|---|---|---|
| | | Address | Barbaraville |
| | | Area | 0.62ha |
| | | Current land use | Predominantly brownfield |
| | | Proposed land | Housing Site (Gypsy and Traveller) |
| | | use | |
| | | | • Developers should refer to Hertfordshire County Council’s SuDS Design Guidance, SuDS Policy Statement and the Level 1 SFRA for information on SuDS. • New development must seek opportunities to reduce overall level of flood risk at the site, for example by: o Reducing volume and rate of runoff o Relocating development to zones with lower flood risk o Creating space for flooding. |
| | Mapping Information | | |
| Flood Zones | Flood Zones | | There are no Flood Zones at this site, due to the presence of smaller drains. The impact of these drains may need to be assessed at site-specific assessment stage to confirm if any risk. |
| | Climate change | | No Flood Zones or modelling at the site, hence no climate change outputs. Climate change should be considered at the site-specific assessment stage. |
| | Fluvial depth, velocity and hazard | | The impact of these drains may need to be assessed at site-specific assessment stage to confirm if any risk. |
| | mapping | | |
| Surface Water | Surface Water | | The Risk of Flooding from Surface Water has been used to define areas at risk from surface water flooding. This dataset is not suitable for identifying whether an individual property will flood. It is based on the confidence in the modelling at that location; because of the way the mapping has been produced and is indicative, the maps are not appropriate to act as the ‘sole evidence’ for any specific planning or regulatory decision or assessment of risk in relation to flooding without further supporting studies or evidence. Please consult all layers and outputs provided on the RoFfSW mapping for further details. |
| | Surface water depth, velocity and | | The surface water depth, velocity and hazard mapping for the 1 in 100-year event (considered to be medium risk) is taken Environment Agency’s Risk of Flooding from Surface Water. |
| | hazard mapping | | |
|
Download File Self Reflection Paper Ideas Free Download Pdf
A Rhetoric of Reflection Oct 15 2021 Reflection in writing studies is now entering a third generation. Dating from the 1970s, the first generation of reflection focused on identifying and describing internal cognitive processes assumed to be part of composing. The second generation, operating in both classroom and assessment scenes in the 1990s, developed mechanisms for externalizing reflection, making it visible and thus explicitly available to help writers. Now, a third generation of work in reflection is emerging. As mapped by the contributors to A Rhetoric of Reflection, this iteration of research and practice is taking up new questions in new sites of activity and with new theories. It comprises attention to transfer of writing knowledge and practice, teaching and assessment, portfolios, linguistic and cultural
difference, and various media, including print and digital. It conceptualizes conversation as a primary reflective medium, both inside and outside the classroom and for individuals and collectives, and articulates the role that different genres play in hosting reflection. Perhaps most important in the work of this third generation is the identification and increasing appreciation of the epistemic value of reflection, of its ability to help make new meanings, and of its rhetorical power—for both scholars and students.
Contributors: Anne Beaufort, Kara Taczak, Liane Robertson, Michael Neal, Heather Ostman, Cathy Leaker, Bruce Horner, Asao B. Inoue, Tyler Richmond, J. Elizabeth Clark, Naomi Silver, Christina Russell McDonald, Pamela Flash, Kevin Roozen, Jeff Sommers, Doug Hesse Handbook of Counselor Preparation Nov 23 2019 This definitive single-volume guide is the first of its kind on teaching and developing counselor educator programs that embrace
constructivist and developmental theory. Leading scholars and experts offer practical advice on teaching courses in every area of counseling practice. As a result, the book is ideal for current and future counselor educators and supervisors as well as faculty in other helping professions. The authors seek to inspire educators to empower and involve, to risk "losing control" over subject matter, to hear student voices, to pose dilemmas, and to challenge their own assumptions in the presence of their students using constructivist, developmental, and experiential thinking and strategies.
But Can I Start a Sentence with "But"? Oct 27 2022 For more than fifteen years, the manuscript editing department of the Press has overseen online publication of the monthly "Chicago Manual of Style" Q&A, choosing interesting questions from a steady stream of publishing-related queries from "Manual" users and providing thoughtful and/or humorous answers in a smart, direct, and occasionally cheeky voice. More than 28,000 followers have signed up to receive e-mail notification when new Q& A content is posted monthly, and the site receives well
over half a million visitors annually. "But Can I Start a Sentence with But ? "culls from the extensive Q&A archive a small collection of the most helpful and humorous of the postings and provides a brief foreword and chapter introductions. The material is organized into seven chapters that cover matters of editorial style, capitalization, punctuation, grammar and usage, citation and quotation, formatting and other non-language issues, and a final chapter of miscellaneous items. Together they offer an informative and amusing read for editors, other publishing professionals, and language lovers of all stripes."
Mindset Mathematics: Visualizing and Investigating Big Ideas, Grade 7 Sep 14 2021 Engage students in mathematics using growth mindset techniques The most challenging parts of teaching mathematics are engaging students and helping them understand the connections between mathematics concepts. In this volume, you'll find a collection of low floor, high ceiling tasks that will help you do just that, by looking at the big ideas at the seventh-grade level through visualization, play, and investigation. During their work with tens of thousands of teachers, authors Jo Boaler, Jen Munson, and Cathy Williams heard the same message—that they want to incorporate more brain science into their math instruction, but they need guidance in the techniques that work best to get across the concepts they needed to teach. So the authors designed Mindset Mathematics around the principle of active student engagement, with tasks that reflect the latest brain science on learning. Open, creative, and visual math tasks have been shown to
improve student test scores, and more importantly change their relationship with mathematics and start believing in their own potential. The tasks in Mindset Mathematics reflect the lessons from brain science that: There is no such thing as a math person - anyone can learn mathematics to high levels. Mistakes, struggle and challenge are the most important times for brain growth. Speed is unimportant in mathematics. Mathematics is a visual and beautiful subject, and our brains want to think visually about mathematics. With engaging questions, open-ended tasks, and four-color visuals that will
help kids get excited about mathematics, Mindset Mathematics is organized around nine big ideas which emphasize the connections within the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and can be used with any current curriculum. We, the Students and Teachers Feb 07 2021 Provides practical applications of democratic teaching for classes in history/social studies education, multicultural and social justice education, community service and civic engagement, and education and public policy. We, the Students and
Teachers shows history and social studies educators how to make school classrooms into democratic spaces for teaching and learning. The book offers practical strategies and lesson ideas for transforming democratic theory into instructional practice. It stresses the importance of students and teachers working together to create community and change. The book serves as an essential text for history and social studies teaching methods courses as well as professional development and inservice programs for history and social studies teachers at all grade levels. The key to the excellent
potential of this book is its assertion that democratic teaching can be linked to content, especially historical content, not just to a generic notion of student-centered instruction. The theory-to-practice emphasis is very explicit, as is the emphasis on the voices of the teachers and students who participated in the research. The book also takes a highly creative approach to its topic that I find very refreshing. Elizabeth Washington, University of Florida This is an important book. Maloy and LaRoche reveal the challenges that face historians as we grapple with
increasingly fraught public and political perceptions of our discipline. Their strategies for reconstituting the classroom as a laboratory for instilling democratic values and practices are both ingenious and practical. Dane Morrison, author of True Yankees: Sea Captains, the South Seas, and the Discovery of American Identity Introduction to Critical Reflection and Action for Teacher Researchers May 30 2020 Introduction to Critical Reflection and Action for Teacher Researchers provides crucial direction for educators looking to improve their
teaching and maximise learning. While many students can grasp the basic elements of researching their practice and can write about practitioner research, some need guidance and assistance to reflect meaningfully on their teaching practice so as to articulate their educational values. This book provides this guidance. By exploring how to engage in an authentic, practical and personalised framework, the book encourages critical reflection and action on educational practice. Moving through the process of reflecting on practice, engaging in critical thinking and planning and
taking action, it helps the reader to subsequently generate educational theory from their own personal learning. Examples from the authors' experiences illustrate the issues raised in each section, with 'Pause and Reflect' activities, guidelines for conducting a research project and annotated further reading available for every chapter. Introduction to Critical Reflection and Action for Teacher Researchers is based on the idea that reflection is in itself a deliberate action and something we must live - it is key to understanding our
practice and is a core component of action research. This book is a valuable guide for teachers, trainee teachers and researchers interested in reflecting on and enhancing their teaching practice.
Pursuit of Liberation Sep 21 2019 The authors of this volume collectively demonstrate the importance of critical servicelearning in this historic moment as we participate in, and witness ongoing struggles for justice around the world. The contributors of this volume offer guidance to educators and scholars alike who are interested in designing, participating in,
and studying the potential of alliances formed through critical service-learning. The volume emphasizes theoretical and historical foundations of critical servicelearning, pressing questions facing the field, exploration of outcomes of, and ongoing challenges for the pedagogy, and design features and larger scale models of critical service-learning that can be implemented across the educational landscape of elementary, secondary, and higher education. ENDORSEMENTS: "This volume in the Advances in Service-Learning Research series does not disappoint.
Emily Nemeth and Ashley Patterson have amassed an amazing team of authors who take readers on a rewarding journey across diverse cultural communities and educational contexts, revealing the limitations of traditional servicelearning approaches in addressing issues of racial injustice. Readers of this volume will gain a greater understanding of the rapidly evolving and maturing nature of higher education servicelearning pedagogy and the need to adopt more critical perspectives in the study and practice of service-learning." — Andrew Furco,
University of
Minnesota "Pursuit of Liberation, conceived and written during tumultuous times in the United States, offers hope for the possibility of social justice and liberation in educational spaces. The modern-day brutal lynching of George Floyd, an African American man by a white police officer, and the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the horridness and inhumanity of a country that advertises itself as a beacon of equity and inclusion. This volume is a reminder that social justice and liberation require vigilance. The editors, Professors Nemeth and Patterson, persuade us to understand
that the work of inclusion and liberation in education is complex, multidisciplinary, continuous, and iterative. Most importantly, they convincingly assert that communities and educational institutions need to take bold steps toward a more just, hopeful, and loving world through critical service learning." — Shirley MthethwaSommers, University of Mpumalanga New Essentials of Unification Thought: HeadWing Thought Oct 03 2020 Unification Thought is the philosophy derived from the Divine Principle of the Reverend Sun
Myung Moon. It is a powerful key that is capable of solving any problem, no matter how difficult it might be. This Thought presents a new view of life, of the world, of the universe and God's work in history. It is a principle of integration that can bring different religious doctrines and philosophies into unity, while preserving their diverse characteristics. International Development Dec 05 2020 How can we lay the foundation for a more just and peaceful world? How can we prevent communications from fracturing and societies from tearing themselves apart? How should
we prioritise economic, social and cultural demands for resources and opportunities? This book answers these questions, and presents a view of development 'in practice'. Written by experts in the field, the book covers a range of contemporary developments, as well as providing coverage of the theory and practice of international development. The book: · Covers a range of contemporary topics such as global security, new technologies, ethics and learning and participation · Has chapters on Global Health and Development in Practice, Environmentally
Sustainable Development in Practice and Corruption and Development · Features learning objectives, summaries, reading lists and questions for discussion · Works as a practice-driven text packed with case studies Global in perspective and full of everything you need to know, this is your go-to book for your studies in International Development. Portfolio Building Activities in Social Media Dec 17 2021 Featuring 125 realworld activities across various social media platforms! Portfolio Building Activities in Social Media shows students how to communicate on social media professionally and strategically by giving them handson experiences with real-world challenges. From brand analyses to budget assignments to pitch activities, this practical exercise guide offers students multiple opportunities to create and build their portfolio of work. Designed to be used with Freberg's Social Media for Strategic Communication, but flexible enough to bundle with any PR textbook, these exercises are useful to any professor looking to incorporate more activities around social media and digital brand development. INSTRUCTORS: Your students save
when you bundle Portfolio Building Activities in Social Media, Second Edition with Freberg′s core text, Social Media for Strategic Communication, Second Edition. Order using bundle ISBN 978-1-0718-6142-4. Visit the author's blog at http://karenfreberg. com/blog/ to get tips for teaching the course, industry related news, &
more! Against European Integration Jun 23 2022 This book gives a complex description and discussion of today's populist attacks against the European Union (EU) following the financial crisis of 2008, which opened the floodgates of dissatisfaction, and
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of the failures of the EU to pacify the neighbourhood in the South and North, especially in Ukraine, and the rising hostile outside enemies of the EU, including Russia and Turkey, bad relationships with Trump's America, the uncertainty of NATO, and the emergence of a new rival, China, that enters into the Central European edge of the EU. The author explores strategies for coping with, and emerging from, this existential crisis and ends with the alternative plans and possibilities for the future of the eurozone. This will be an invaluable resource for understanding the crisis of the EU,
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Improving Learner Reflection for TESOL Feb 25 2020 Presenting comprehensive research conducted with learners and educators in a range of settings, this volume showcases selfreflection as a powerful tool to enhance student learning. The text builds on empirical insights to illustrate how language
professionals can foster critical selfreflection amongst learners of English as an additional language. This text uses ecologically sensitive practitioner research that addresses issues of both practical and pedagogical significance in the fields of TESOL, language teaching and learning, and teacher education. By synthesizing interdisciplinary research and theory, chapters show how various types of selfreflection—includin g guided and nonguided; group and individual forms; and written, oral, and technologymediated reflection—can promote autonomous, self-
regulated learning amongst students at various levels. Whilst offering readers a strong grounding in the theoretical and empirical knowledge that supports selfreflection, the volume gives constant attention is given to praxis, with a focus on effective pedagogical strategies and tools needed to implement, encourage, and evaluate critical learner reflection in readers' own teaching or research. This volume will be a critical resource for language-teaching professionals interested in critical learner reflection, including in-service, preservice, and teacher educators in the field of TESOL. Scholars and researchers in the fields of applied linguistics and language education more broadly will find this volume valuable.
The Social Cancer Aug 13 2021 Filipino national hero Jose Rizal wrote The Social Cancer in Berlin in 1887. Upon his return to his country, he was summoned to the palace by the Governor General because of the subversive ideas his book had inspired in the nation. Rizal wrote of his consequent persecution by the church: "My book made a lot of noise; everywhere, I am asked about it. They wanted to anathematize me ['to excommunicate me'] because of it ... I am considered a German spy, an agent of Bismarck, they say I am a Protestant, a freemason, a sorcerer, a damned soul and evil. It is whispered that I want to draw plans, that I have a foreign passport and that I wander through the streets by night ..."
Teaching Epidemiology Jan 26 2020 Teaching epidemiology requires skill and knowledge, combined with a clear teaching strategy and good pedagogic skills. The general advice is simple: if you are not an expert on a topic, try to enrich your background
knowledge before you start teaching. Teaching Epidemiology, third edition helps you to do this, and by providing the world-expert teacher's advice on how best to structure teaching gives a unique insight in to what has worked in their hands. The book will help you plan your own tailored teaching program. The book is a guide to new teachers in the field at two levels; those teaching basic courses for undergraduates, and those teaching more advanced courses for students at postgraduate level. Each chapter provides key concepts and a list of key references.
Subject specific methodology and disease specific issues (from cancer to genetic epidemiology) are dealt with in details. There is also a focused chapter on the principles and practice of computer-assisted learning. Beginning a Career in Academia Dec 29 2022 This practical guide prepares graduate students of color for their first job in academia and offers strategies for succeeding in the early years of a tenure-track position. Through the voices of faculty who have experienced the rigors of the job search and a career in academia,
Beginning a Career in Academia offers advice for graduate students of color on how to transition from graduate school to an academic position. This inclusive volume shares perspectives that vary based on gender, racial, ethnic, generational, and disciplinary backgrounds, giving readers an opportunity to reflect on successful strategies for career readiness and for dealing with marginalization. The authors provide recommendations and tips to enhance the job search, identify campus fit, prepare for the interview and negotiation process, address dynamics
of of racial and gender politics, find work-life balance, and demystify the promotion and tenure process. This must-read provides candid advice and mentorship for any graduate students of color embarking on a carreer in academe.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Nov 28 2022 The Principles of the Philosophy of the Expansive and Contractive Forces; Or, An Inquiry Into the Principles of Modern Philosophy Nov 04 2020 Locke's Science of Knowledge Jun 11 2021 John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding begins with a clear statement of an
epistemological goal: to explain the limits of human knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. The actual text of the Essay, in stark contrast, takes a long and seemingly meandering path before returning to that goal at the Essay's end—one with many detours through questions in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. Over time, Locke scholarship has come to focus on Locke's contributions to these parts of philosophy. In Locke's Science of Knowledge, Priselac refocuses on the Essay's epistemological thread, arguing that the Essay is unified from beginning to end around its compositional theory of ideas and the active role Locke gives the mind in constructing its thoughts. To support the plausibility and demonstrate the value of this interpretation, Priselac argues that—contrary to its reputation as being at best sloppy and at worst outright inconsistent—Locke 's discussion of skepticism and account of knowledge of the external world fits neatly within the Essay's epistemology. To Kill a Mockingbird Jul 12 2021 Voted America's BestLoved Novel in PBS's The Great
American Read
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prizewinning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heartwrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of- age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.
The Moral Class Book, Or the Law of Morals; Derived from the Created Universe, and from Revealed Religion. Intended for Schools Apr 09 2021 The Dial Mar 08 2021 The Memory Keeper's Daughter Jun 30 2020 A #1 New York Times bestseller by Kim Edwards, The
Memory Keeper's
Daughter is a brilliantly crafted novel of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love Kim Edwards's stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the
secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century—in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that winter night long ago. A family drama, The Memory Keeper's Daughter explores every mother's silent fear: What would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? It is also an astonishing tale of love and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long- buried secrets are
finally uncovered. Handbook of Research on Learning Outcomes and Opportunities in the Digital Age Oct 23 2019 Education and learning opportunities bring about the potential for individual and national advancement. As learners move away from traditional scholarly media and toward technologybased education, students gain an advantage with technology in learning about their world and how to interact with modern society. The Handbook of Research on Learning Outcomes and Opportunities in the Digital Age provides expert research relating to recent technological advancements, technology and learning assessments, and the effects of technology on learning environments, making it a crucial reference source for researchers, scholars, and professors in various fields.
Shaping Online Spaces Through Online Humanities Curricula Feb 19 2022 The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic plunged large numbers of students and faculty across the world into online learning with little to no warning or experience. This leaves a ripe situation to assess how far online learning has come,
what pitfalls people have experienced, what new insights have emerged, and new thoughts for future development. Shaping Online Spaces Through Online Humanities Curricula reexamines online learning best practices in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The text highlights successes and failures and suggests future ideas to produce excellent online education in humanities disciplines. Covering topics such as adult education, multicultural literature, and virtual learning environments, this premier reference source is a dynamic resource for administrators and educators of both K-12 and higher education, preservice teachers, teacher educators, government officials, instructional designers, librarians, researchers, and academicians.
New national framework mathematics Dec
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contained lesson plan' for each of the units in the pupil books. Managers Not MBAs Apr 21 2022 A professor of management studies at McGill University discusses the role of MBA programs in shaping, or failing to shape, good managers, offering advice on how to improve academic business education. Educational Technology Beyond Content Nov 16 2021 This book is the outcome of a research symposium sponsored by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology [AECT]. Consisting of twenty-four chapters, including an introduction and
conclusion, it argues that informational content should not be the main element of education, and that to provide more for learners, it is necessary to go beyond content and address other skills and capabilities. It also discusses the false premise that learning is complete when the information is known, not when learners seek more: their own directions, answers, and ideas. The authors assert that the ability to synthesize, solve problems and generate ideas is not based on specific content, although education often focuses solely on teaching content. Further,
they state that content can be separated from the learning process and that instructional design and educational technology must be about the skills, habits, and beliefs to be learned. A Practice Beyond
Cultural Humility Aug 25 2022 A Practice Beyond Cultural Humility offers specific guidance to support students and practitioners in providing on-going, culturally-attuned professional care. The book introduces a multicultural diversity-training model named the ORCA-Stance, an intentional practice which brings together four core components: Openness, Respect,
Curiosity, and
Accountability. Drawing from an array of influences, it showcases work with common clinical populations in a variety of contexts, from private practice to international organizations. Each clinical chapter offers a brief review of information relevant to the population discussed, followed by a case study using the ORCAStance, and a summary of recommended best practices. In each case, the practice of the ORCA-Stance is shown to allow relationships to become more culturally sensitive and, therefore, more effective. A Practice Beyond Cultural Humility provides practical examples, research, and wisdom that can be applied in day-to-day clinical work and will be valuable reading for a wide-range of mental health students and clinicians who seek to continue their professional development.
Stochastic Processes and Related Topics
Sep 02 2020 In the last twenty years extensive research has been devoted to a better understanding of the stable and other closely related infinitely divisible mod els. Stamatis Cambanis, a distinguished educator and researcher, played a special leadership role in the development of these research efforts, particu larly related to stable processes from the early seventies until his untimely death in April '95. This commemorative volume consists of a collection of research articles devoted to reviewing the state of the art of this and other rapidly developing research and to explore new directions of research in these fields. The volume is a tribute to the Life and Work of Stamatis by his students, friends, and colleagues whose personal and professional lives he has deeply touched through his generous insights and dedication to his profession. Before the idea of
this volume was conceived, two conferences were held in the memory of Stamatis. The first was organized by the University of Athens and the Athens University of Economics and was held in Athens during December 18-19, 1995. The second was a significant part of a Spe cial IMS meeting held at the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during October 17-19, 1996. It is the selfless effort of sev eral people that brought about these conferences. We believe that this is an appropriate place to acknowledge their effort; and on behalf of all the participants, we extend sincere
thanks to all these persons. The European Commission in Turbulent Times Mar 20 2022 Die Europäische Union durchlebt turbulente Zeiten. Die Auswirkungen der Banken- und Staatsschuldenkrise n, die aktuellen Migrationsbewegun gen sowie der Austritt Großbritanniens sind nur einige der Herausforderungen , die den Zusammenhalt der Europäischen Union gegenwärtig auf eine harte Probe stellen. Vor diesem Hintergrund analysieren die Wissenschaftlerinne n und Wissenschaftler in diesem Band die Europäische Kommission. Ziel ist eine
Bestandaufnahme und Neubewertung ihrer Rolle im politischen System der EU, ihrer internen Organisationsstrukt uren und Prozesse sowie ihrer Politikgestaltungsund Implementationsfun ktionen. Der Band kommt dabei zu dem Ergebnis, dass die Kommission trotz der zahlreichen Herausforderungen nach wie vor entscheidenden Einfluss auf das Integrationsgesche hen hat. Die Gründe dafür liegen dabei sowohl in den absichtsvollen Entscheidungen der Mitgliedsstaaten, als auch im politischen Aktivismus der Kommission selbst. Mit Beiträgen von
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wessels, Marieke Eckhardt, Prof. Dr. Andreas Maurer, Michael C. Wolf, Dr. Christian Adam, Prof. Dr. Miriam Hartlapp, Dipl.-Jur. Robert Böttner, Prof. Dr. Ingeborg Tömmel, Prof. Dr. Sandra Eckert, Prof. Dr. Michèle Knodt, Prof. Dr. Marc Ringel, Prof. Dr. Hussein Kassim, Prof. Dr. Sara Connolly, Prof. Dr. Michael W. Bauer, Dr. Jörn Ege, Stefan Becker, M.A..
Mindset Mathematics: Visualizing and Investigating Big Ideas, Grade 8 May 22 2022 Engage students in mathematics using growth mindset techniques The most challenging parts of teaching mathematics are engaging students
and helping them understand the connections between mathematics concepts. In this volume, you'll find a collection of low floor, high ceiling tasks that will help you do just that, by looking at the big ideas at the eighthgrade level through visualization, play, and investigation. During their work with tens of thousands of teachers, authors Jo Boaler, Jen Munson, and Cathy Williams heard the same message—that they want to incorporate more brain science into their math instruction, but they need guidance in the techniques that work best to get across the concepts they needed to teach. So
the authors designed Mindset Mathematics around the principle of active student engagement, with tasks that reflect the latest brain science on learning. Open, creative, and visual math tasks have been shown to improve student test scores, and more importantly change their relationship with mathematics and start believing in their own potential. The tasks in Mindset Mathematics reflect the lessons from brain science that: There is no such thing as a math person - anyone can learn mathematics to high levels. Mistakes, struggle and challenge are the most important times for brain growth. Speed is unimportant in mathematics. Mathematics is a visual and beautiful subject, and our brains want to think visually about mathematics. With engaging questions, open-ended tasks, and four-color visuals that will help kids get excited about mathematics, Mindset Mathematics is organized around nine big ideas which emphasize the connections within the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and can be used with any current curriculum.
Big Ideas for Small Mathematicians May 10 2021
Introducing sophisticated mathematical ideas like fractals and infinity, these hands-on activity books present concepts to children using interactive and comprehensible methods. With intriguing projects that cover a wide range of math content and skills, these are ideal resources for elementary school mathematics enrichment programs, regular classroom instruction, and home-school programs. Reproducible activity sheets lead students through a process of engaged inquiry with plenty of helpful tips along the way. A list of useful terms
specific to each activity encourages teachers and parents to introduce students to the vocabulary of math. Projects in this first of the two Big Ideas books include Straw Structures, where children get handson experience with measurement and 3-D visualization; Kaleidoscopes, in which students use geometry to build a mathematical toy; and Crawling Around the Mbius Strip, where kids build a physical example of infinity. Incorporating Foreign Language Content in Humanities Courses Aug 01 2020 Incorporating Foreign Language Content in Humanities Courses introduces innovative ways to
integrate aspects of foreign language study into courses containing humanities concepts. The edited collection offers case studies from various universities and across multiple languages. It serves as a useful guide to all foreign language faculty with any language expertise (as well as others interested in promoting foreign languages) for the adaptation and development of their own curricula. Infusing foreign language content into English-taught humanities courses helps promote languages as practical and relevant to students. It will be of interest to language educators, including teachers, teachers-intraining, teacher educators, and administrators.
A Journal of
Personal Exploration, Reflection and Discovery Mar 28 2020 As high tech as the world of personal communication is, it still relies on the written word to transfer thoughts and ideas. Writing a sentence solidifies a thought as well as records it so to be available for review in the future. Significant Sentences provides exercises facilitating the combination of your personal spirit, quiet reflection and your past experiences to come together and
produce sentence that is recorded or `saved'. Using paper and pencil, keystroke and screen or even your smart phone, use Significant Sentences as a personal journal or a way to reach out using social media tools like Facebook. Blog or tweet your moments of discovery. How we write and transmit ideas is vastly changing but it still comes down to words conveying thoughts and emotions. These exercises can serve as a connection between teacher and student, speaker and audience, cyber audience or soul to soul. By sharing stories and ideas about your interpersonal life
electronically or on paper, the individual may discover hidden writing talents, a gift for poetry, blogging or tweeting. Your reflections may become a poem, song or school essay. The variety and quantity of questions in each exercise are designed to spur the writer on by providing some starting point and giving some direction. Significant Sentences can be the catalyst for internal retrospection. Writing can reveal the negative as well as the positive. That is the cathartic joy and challenge. Facing those negatives or seeing them more clearly
can be exactly what you need to conquer them. Trust yourself that good can be derived from recording your thoughts and reflections, and the connection with the self is the key to personal enlightenment. May you find hidden treasures and truth within? Teaching Gender and Sex in Contemporary America Jan 06 2021 This book provides innovative pedagogy, theory, and strategies for college and university professors who seek effective methods and materials for teaching about gender and sex to today's students. It provides thoughtful
reflections on the new struggles and opportunities instructors face in teaching gender and sex during what has been called the "postfeminist era." Building off its predecessor: Teaching Race and Anti-Racism in Contemporary America, this book offers complementary classroom exercises for teachers, that foster active and collaborative learning. Through reflecting on the gendered dimensions of the current political, economic, and cultural climate, as well as presenting novel lesson plans and classroom activities, Teaching Gender and Sex in Contemporary
America is a valuable resource for educators. Mathematical Problem Solving and New Information Technologies Apr 28 2020 A strong and fluent competency in mathematics is a necessary condition for scientific, technological and economic progress. However, it is widely recognized that problem solving, reasoning, and thinking processes are critical areas in which students' performance lags far behind what should be expected and desired. Mathematics is indeed an important subject, but is also important to be able to use it in
extra-mathematical contexts. Thinking strictly in terms of mathematics or thinking in terms of its relations with the real world involve quite different processes and issues. This book includes the revised papers presented at the NATO ARW "Information Technology and Mathematical Problem Solving Research", held in April 1991, in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, which focused on the implications of computerized learning environments and cognitive psychology research for these mathematical activities. In recent years, several committees,
professional associations, and distinguished individuals throughout the world have put forward proposals to renew mathematics curricula, all emphasizing the importance of problem solving. In order to be successful, these reforming intentions require a theory-driven research base. But mathematics problem solving may be considered a "chaotic field" in which progress has been quite slow. The Humble Essay Sep 26 2022 THE HUMBLE ESSAY presents the basics of formal writing with an informal style that college students are not only willing but
able to read. The first half of this expanded third edition presents a close look at what the college essay is. The second half presents a process that shows students how to educate themselves about a topic, develop an idea worth sharing, and then present that ideas effectively.
Twenty-One Genres and How to Write Them Aug 21 2019 In this classroom-tested approach to writing, Brock Dethier teaches readers how to analyze and write twenty-one genres that students are likely to encounter in college and beyond. This practical, studentfriendly, taskoriented text confidently guides writers through step-by-step processes, reducing the anxiety commonly associated with writing tasks. In the first section, Dethier efficiently presents each genre, providing models; a description of the genres' purpose, context, and discourse; and suggestions for writing activities or "moves" that writers can use to get words on the page and accomplish their writing tasks. The second section explains these moves, over two hundred of them, in chapters ranging from "Solve Your Process Problems" and "Discover" to "Revise" and
"Present."
Applicable to any writing task or genre, these moves help students overcome writing blocks and develop a piece of writing from the first glimmers of an idea to its presentation. This approach to managing the complexity and challenge of writing in college strives to be useful, flexible,
eclectic, and brief—a valuable resource for students learning to negotiate unfamiliar writing situations.
corsonlearning.com
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SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER
1001 East 52nd Street Kansas City, MO 64110
Phone: 816-523-5115
Fax: 816-333-0082
www.sfx-kc.org
P AS TO R AL S T AF F
Pastor
Fr. Stephen Yavorsky, S.J., 816-381-9162 or firstname.lastname@example.org Parochial Vicar
Fr. Bob Hagan, S.J., 816-501-3288 or email@example.com
Business Manager
Ann Sheridan, 816-381-9165 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Pastoral Associate, Faith Formation
Mariann McCormally, 816-381-9163 or email@example.com
Pastoral Associate, Justice & Life
Sue Robb, 816-381-9167 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Pastoral Associate, Liturgy & Music
Pat Woodrum, 816-381-9164 or email@example.com
Facilities
R E Jackson, 816-381-9166 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Administrative Assistant
Peggy Beaven Calia, 816-381-9161 or email@example.com
P AS TO R AL C O U N C I L
Teresa Cott - Chair, 816-868-8587 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Steve Bruns
Ron Grebowiec Edwin Locke
Joan McMahon Christine Rankin Jason Roberts
Cindy Taylor John Veal Katie Wiehl
FIN AN C E C O U N C I L
Kaler Bole - Chair , email@example.com
Jane Coakley Brian Lappin
Dorna Edgar Swan Brian Sullivan
The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph and the Jesuits USA Central and Southern Province are committed to combating sexual abuse in the Church. If you are a victim of sexual abuse, or if you observe or suspect sexual abuse:
1. Call the Missouri Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-392-3738 (if the victim is currently under the age of 18), and
2. Contact your local law enforcement agency or call 911, and
3. After reporting to these civil and law enforcement authorities, report suspected sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult to the Diocesan Ombudsman, Jenifer Valenti, at 816-812-2500 or firstname.lastname@example.org, if the abuse involves a priest, deacon, employee or volunteer of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.
The Diocese has a sincere commitment to providing care and healing resources to victims of sexual abuse and their families. Please contact Victim Advocate Kathleen Chastain at 816-392-0011 or email@example.com for more information.
In addition, if the abuse involves a Jesuit please contact Carol Zarinelli Brescia, MSW, LCSW at (314) 915-7168 or firstname.lastname@example.org. Both phone and email are confidential.
M AS S S C HE D U LE
Tuesday through Friday
7:00am and 12:00pm
Saturday
4:00pm
Sunday
8:00am and 10:30am
(6:00pm University Student Liturgy during Fall & Spring semesters)
Sunday School (ages 2, 3 & 4) during 10:30am Sunday Liturgy
Children's Liturgy of the Word during 10:30am Sunday Liturgy
Mariann McCormally 816-381-9163
S AC R AM E N T O F R E C O N C I L I A T I O N
Saturday
3:00-3:45pm (or by appointment)
EUCH AR IS TI C AD O R AT I O N
Thursday
12:30pm to 2:00pm
S AC R AM E N T A L P R E P AR AT I O N
Infant Baptism, First Eucharist, First Reconciliation,
Confirmation, Adult Catechumenate (RCIA)
Mariann McCormally 816-381-9163
Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Eucharist to Homebound
or Hospitalized
Fr. Stephen Yavorsky, S.J. 816-381-9162
Fr. Bob Hagan, S.J.
816-501-3288
Marriage
Fr. Bob Hagan, S.J.
816-501-3288
————————————————————————————
O TH E R AC TI VI T I E S
Centering Prayer Group
3rd Monday Monthly
Choir Practice
Pat Woodrum
Community Garden
Peg Hornsby
Cub Scouts
Steve Livingston
Food Pantry
Justice & Life
Steve Bruns
Ignatian Spirituality
Stephanie Hudson
SFX-Adult Faith Formation
Karen Stigers
SFX-Sister Parish
Jim Bell
SFX-Sustainability
Cindy Schmidt
Wednesday, 7:30–9:00pm
816-381-9164
765-748-4135 or email@example.com
Every other Saturday, 10–11:30am
816-444-6721
By Appointment
816-381-9174
3rd Sunday Monthly
816-804-6097 or firstname.lastname@example.org
816-381-9168
1st Tuesday Monthly
913-262-8994
Monthly
913-449-7505
Monthly
816-914-9498
SFX-VIS Social Concerns
Monthly
————————————————————————————
B UL LE TIN DE ADL INE Monday at 12:00noon NOTE: For holiday bulletins, submit at least 5 days earlier.
2ND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Our Mission
St. Francis Xavier Parish is a Roman Catholic, Jesuit community of faith called together by God to experience Jesus Christ in His Word, in the sacraments of the Church, and in each other. We, as the body of Christ, joined in Baptism and inspired by the grace of the Holy Spirit, enrich our faith through prayer and worship, spiritual formation, intellectual rigor, diversity of membership, hospitality and fellowship, attention to family life, and concern for social justice. Guided by the spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola, we strive to use our many gifts for the greater glory of God.
SFX Announcements
Food Pantry Needs December 15/16
St. Francis Xavier collections week of November 26—Dec 2, 2018
Offertory (cash and checks)
$8,095.55
Online offertory (SFX WeShare)
$1,995.40
Combined-All Offertory
$10,090.95
Thank you for your generosity.
Music & Liturgy
Second Collection – Retirement Fund for Religious December 8/9 Help support the retirement and healthcare needs of senior members of religious communities.
Justice & Life
Clerical Abuse Group
Join us at 9:00am next Sunday, December 16 as we continue our discussion about how to respond to the Clerical Abuse scandal and cover-up in our diocese and in our church. Carrie Cooper and Kathleen Chastain from the Office of Child and Youth Protection (OCYP) will be here to talk to us and support us in our next steps to be a parish that is actively responding to this issue. Depending on the size of the group, we will either meet in the Romero Room or Xavier Hall. For more information, please contact Sue at email@example.com. Interested and concerned parishioners from other parishes are welcome to attend.
Christmas Basket Project
WOW! What an amazing response we have had! Thank you so much for all you've provided. This week is the final push to give our friends and neighbors a wonderful Christmas dinner. Join us on Tuesday, December 11 from 6:00-7:15pm as we bag 1800 pounds of produce, generously donated by Chartwells, the company that supplies RU's food. If you can't make that, we will be distributing meals and spreading holiday cheer on Thursday, December 13 from 12:15-3:30pm. Thank you again for your generosity. Please pray for good health, prosperity, and justice for our friends and neighbors as they enter the new year.
RIM (Refugee, Immigrant, and Migrant) Committee Meets January 19
Are you interested in being a part of a grassroots endeavor for immigrant children? The RIM Committee met last week and heard from Meaghan Fanning from Jewish Vocational Services. She shared the work she does with immigrants in the Northeast, especially children. There is a strong need for art and cooking programs. If you would like to explore this ministry opportunity to provide art or cooking classes for children, please contact Sue at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Next week is our monthly food pantry collection. We are in need of razors, assorted cereals, side dishes (noodles, potatoes, etc.), and fruit cups. We can always use toilet paper, diapers, and wipes. Many thanks for your generosity!
Stan Kenton Concert
You have one more chance to be part of the 1 st Annual Stan Kenton Christmas concert experience which is a benefit for Habitat for Humanity. Take an hour next Sunday, December 16 at 2:00pm and head to Johnson County Community College's Polsky Theater to hear the music of Stan Kenton. The concert is FREE, and is a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity, so donations are most welcome! Go to the SFX J & L Committee's Facebook page or YouTube and preview the great music you will hear. Tell your friends!
Christmas Basket Gift Cards
If you purchased a $20 Walmart gift card for our neighbors who are receiving Christmas baskets, please drop it in the collection basket when you're at Mass or bring it to the parish office. Many thanks for your generous support.
Mark Your Calendar!
Are you involved in any aspect of the Justice & Life Ministry here at SFX or do you want to make a New Year's resolution to get involved? If you answered yes to either of those, mark your calendar for January 4, 2019 and plan to attend our J & L Appreciation Dinner and Planning Meeting in Xavier Hall from 6:009:00pm. We will share a meal and reflect on our ministry's strengths and areas of growth as we plan for the coming year.
Greening your Christmas Holidays – Wrap Your Gifts In An Eco-Friendly Way
- Buy gift wrap made from recycled materials.
- Make your own gift wrap from cloth and other materials.
- Save wrapping paper from gifts you receive to use next year.
- Reuse boxes for shipping and gifts, rather than buying new ones.
- Recycle wrapping paper (if allowed by your recycling service) and boxes rather than throwing them away.
Faith Formation
HSYouth Group Encuentro Project DEPOSIT DUE
Young people planning on participating in the July 6-13, 2019 service/immersion trip to El Paso, Texas must register and pay a $150 non-refundable deposit by December 14. Contact Mariann email@example.com 816-381-9163 for more information.
DECEMBER 9, 2018
Christmas Eve 4:00 Family Mass
Save the Date
We need YOU, young people and adults! To help make our celebration complete we need: greeters, ushers, candle-bearers, giftbearers, lectors, Eucharistic ministers, altar servers and SINGERS! FYI, our Intergenerational Choir will rehearse on the Sundays of December immediately following the 10:30 Mass. For more information or to volunteer contact Mariann (816-381-9163).
Blue Christmas
Monday, December 10, 7:00 pm, SFX Chapel
The holidays can be a hard time for those of us dealing with the death of a loved one, facing life after divorce or separation, coping with the loss of a job, living with illness, disability, or diminishment. Others of us just feel sad because of the suffering of our brothers and sisters and the injustice we see in our church and our world. Many of us are blue at Christmas. SFX joins an increasing number of churches creating a sacred space to reflect on and accept where we really are and holding on tight to our faith in a good God. Join us! For more information contact Mariann at firstname.lastname@example.org or 816-381-9163.
High School Youth Group Christmas Social
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
5:30-8:00 pm
SFX BVM Room (below the Chapel)
Join us for dinner, cookie decorating and "Elf." For more information or to rsvp contact Mariann McCormally email@example.com 816-381-9163.
Soul Food Tuesday
Tuesdays, 11:00-11:55 AM (dismissed in time for those who wish to attend 12:00 Noon Mass)
The Romero Room
Participation in this study/prayer group is OPEN. One does not need to commit to attending every week. The "content" of each block will be determined in consultation with the participants. Our next block is December 11, 18. We will be reading, discussing and praying about The Infancy Narratives of Scripture: What Does Baby Jesus have to Teach Us? For more information and/or to register to participate, please contact Mariann McCormally (firstname.lastname@example.org 816-381-9163).
St. Francis Xavier, Kansas City's Jesuit Parish, is Hosting a LIVE VIDEO CONFERENCE with Jesuit FR. JAMES MARTIN, SJ
"Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, Sensitivity"
Thursday, January 31, 2019
7:00 - 8:00 PM (doors open at 6:00 PM)
Arrupe Hall Auditorium
Rockhurst University (campus entrance at 54 th and Troost). This is a public event. No cost. All are Welcome. We at SFX want to be a church "where God's inclusive love is proclaimed."
Please register your attendance by Monday, January 28 by contacting Mariann McCormally email@example.com 816-3819163. Childcare for ages 2-12 will be provided at SFX. Contact Mariann to reserve your child's spot.
French Toast Breakfast
January 27, 2019
Xavier Hall
Help our High School Youth raise funds for their summer service/ immersion trip to work with Father Rafael's Encuentro Project in El Paso, Texas. A delicious way to support a good cause!
Rosary Intention for November - December
Mary, we pray this holy rosary for all immigrants and refugees in our country and in the entire world. We remember that Joseph took you and Jesus to Egypt in order to escape the murderous wrath of Herod! We ask that through your intercession, these men, women, and children will be able to remain together as families, be taken care of body, mind, and soul, and find safe homes. We pray that our government agencies be inspired and that the organizations of caregivers and legal representatives be empowered to accomplish these goals.
The Kansas City Catholic Football League (KCCFL)
is looking to include more players within the KC Metro. The League is open to all boys of the diocese in 4th through 8th grades and there are no tryouts as teams are formed with geography in mind. The goal is to provide the boys with football fundamentals in a fun, Christian environment and a chance to learn some powerful life lessons through football. Most importantly, "we put a big emphasis on playing the game in the safest manner possible." For more information, contact Kevin Stone at firstname.lastname@example.org or 816.309.3251.
General Announcements
Precious Blood Renewal Center
2120 Saint Gaspar Way, Liberty, MO 64068
Navigating Through the Holidays While Grieving led by spiritual directors, Fr. Ron Will, CPPS and Kathy Keary. Gain support from others and learn practical ways to create new traditions as you navigate through this difficult terrain while honoring your loved one. Wednesday, December 12th, 7:00 - 8:30pm. Register by December 10th at email@example.com or 816.415.3745. Free will offering accepted.
Darkness and Light: Living the Mystery led by Fr. Joe Nassal, CPPS, Friday, December 21, 6:00 - 8:00pm. The Winter Solstice reveals a rhythm of life that teaches patience and nurtures hope as we wait for the coming of the Light. A meditative walk to the labyrinth with luminary to light our path and a simple soup supper will be included. Suggested donation: $20.00. Scholarship funds are available. Register by December 16 at firstname.lastname@example.org or 816.415.3745.
Coffee and Silence
Sophia Spirituality Center, 751 South 8 th Street, Atchison, KS, Thursday, December 13, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
We offer our space for private retreat times on days when we have no groups scheduled. Come for a morning or a day. Spend time in silence. Walk our beautiful grounds. Visit Saint Scholastica Chapel. Coffee is provided. Call 913.360.6173 or visit the website at www.sophiaspiritualitycenter.org. Donations accepted.
Liturgical Ministers
Mass Intentions
"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."
― C.S. Lewis
Calendar
Rest in Peace
Ray Shatto, husband of parishioner Diane Shatto, died November 27 after a brief illness. His funeral is December 15, 11:00 am, at St. Elizabeth's.
Mass Readings
One Sentence Sermon
The heart is happiest when it beats for others.
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SUMITOMO CHEMICAL INDIA LIMITED
CIN: U24110MH2000PLC124224 Registered Office: Building No. 1, Ground Floor, Shant Manor Co-Op Housing Society Limited, Chakravarti Ashok 'X' Road, Kandivli (East), Mumbai - 400101 Corporate office: 13/14 Aradhana Industrial Development Corporation, Near Virwani Industrial Estate, Goregaon East, Mumbai - 400063
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE EQUITY SHAREHOLDERS OF THE COMPANY
STATUTORY ADVERTISEMENT ISSUED IN COMPLIANCE OF SEBI CIRCULAR NO. CFD/DIL3/CIR/2017/21 DATED MARCH 10, 2017 (AS AMENDED) ISSUED UNDER SECTION 11 OF THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE BOARD OF INDIA ACT, 1992 READ WITH SUB-RULE (7) OF RULE 19 OF THE SECURITIES CONTRACTS (REGULATION) RULES, 1957 ISSUED BY THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE BOARD OF INDIA, ADDRESSED TO ALL THE STOCK EXCHANGES
(A) Name and address of its registered office of the Company:
Sumitomo Chemical India Limited ('Company' or 'SCIL' or 'Transferee Company') was incorporated as a private company under the name of 'Sumitomo Chemical India Private Limited' on February 15, 2000 with the Registrar of Companies, Mumbai ("ROC"). Pursuant to a fresh Certificate of Incorporation dated November 24, 2018 issued by the ROC, the name of the Company was changed to 'Sumitomo Chemical India Limited'. Its registered office is situated at Building No. 1, Ground Floor, Shant Manor Co-op Housing Society Ltd Chakravarti Ashok 'X' Road, Kandivli (East), Mumbai - 400101.
(B) Details of change of name and/or object clause: Change of name:
Fiscal year Particulars
2000
2018
Sumitomo Chemical India Limited (formerly known as Sumitomo Chemical India Private
Limited) was incorporated on February 15, 2000
On November 24, 2018, the Company was converted into public limited company and accordingly the name of the Company was changed to Sumitomo Chemical India Limited
Change of main object clause of Memorandum of Association of the Company in last 10 years:
Date of Shareholders' Particulars
Resolution
"1. To carry on in India or elsewhere the business to manufacture, produce, process, compound, mix, pack, formulate, condense, distill, rectify, sterilize, pasteurize, steam, evaporate, vaporize, cool, filter, commercialize, develop, treat, cure, refine, extract, operate, manipulate, prepare, purify, protect, preserve, disinfect, turn to account, or otherwise deal in, and to act as broker, agent, wholesalers, retailers, traders, dealers, factors stockist, distributor, consultant, collaborator, buyer, seller, exporter, importer, job worker, vendor, contractor or supplier of, all types of organic, inorganic, industrial, laboratory, photographic, fine, biological, pathological, pharmaceutical and other chemicals including, but not limited to, those meant for crop protection, agricultural, horticultural, arboricultural, general pest control and other allied activities; compounds, drugs, formulations, preparations, acids, solvents, oils, solutions, derivatives, fluids, products, by- products, residues, catalysts, reagents, mixtures, concentrates, lumps, powders, granules and allied items and to do all necessary acts and things incidental for the attainment of the above object including facilitating the formation of subsidiaries and joint ventures in India and entering into strategic alliances, distribution arrangements, marketing arrangements, consulting arrangements, research arrangements and/or licensing arrangements, by directly investing or otherwise in the field of basic chemicals, fine chemicals, organic and inorganic chemicals, agro-chemicals, specialty chemicals, environmental health chemical products, feed additives and other vitamin products, pharmaceuticals, plastic, petroleum products and/or any of their intermediates, subject where applicable to necessary Government and Reserve Bank of India approvals.
2. To manufacture, buy, sell, import, export, or otherwise deal in organic and nonorganic fertilizers and manures; pesticides, rodenticides, insecticides, fungicides, weedicides, bio-pesticides, plant growth regulators and enhancers, fumigants, preservatives and any and all such products and preparations by whatever name called for crop protection, agriculture, horticulture, arboriculture and allied purposes and for preservation of food-grains.
October 26, 2018
The main object clause of the Company was amended, the revised object clause
is as follows:
products of all kinds and seeds, and to undertake services including those by use of genetic engineering, gene technology, cell hybridization, microorganisms, genetic manipulation, recombinant DNA and other means of biotechnology and to deal in, manufacture, process, trade, purchase, sell, export, import, store, refrigerate, pack and repack all types and kinds of materials required for production using biotechnology including genetically engineered cells or organisms and to process, store, purchase, sell, import, export, pack and repack goods produced by using biotechnology.
4. To carry on business as inventors, researchers and developers, to conduct, promote and commission research and development in connection with the activities of the Company and its undertakings, to establish and maintain research and development stations, technology centers, computer complexes, laboratories, workshops, testing and proving grounds, and establishments and to exploit and turn to account, the results of any research and development carried out by or for it."
(C) Capital structure- pre and post scheme of amalgamation:
| Particulars | Pre scheme | Post scheme |
|---|---|---|
| Authorised Share Capital | ` 4,940,000,000/- (Rupees Four Hundred Ninety-Four Crore Only) divided into 494,000,000 (Forty-Nine Crore Forty Lakhs) equity shares of ` 10/- (Rupees Ten) each | ` 5,000,000,000/- (Rupees Five Hundred Crore Only) divided into 500,000,000 (Fifty Crore) equity shares of ` 10/- (Rupees Ten) each |
| Issued, Subscribed and Paid-up Share Capital | ` 2,745,880,950/- (Rupees Two Hundred Seventy-Four Crore Fifty-Eight Lakhs Eighty Thousand Nine Hundred and Fifty Only) divided into 274,588,095 (Twenty-Seven Crore Forty-Five Lakhs Eighty-Eight Thousand and Ninety-Five) equity shares of ` 10/- (Rupees Ten only) each, fully paid-up. | ` 4,991,457,360/- (Rupees Four Hundred Ninety-Nine Crore Fourteen Lakhs Fifty-Seven Thousand Three Hundred and Sixty Only) divided into 499,145,736 (Forty-Nine Crore Ninety-One Lakhs Forty-Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty-Six) equity shares of face value of ` 10/- (Rupees Ten only) each, fully paid-up. |
3. To apply scientific and engineering principles to processing of materials by biological agents to produce or manufacture medicines, pharmaceutical
(D) Shareholding pattern giving details of the shareholding of promoter group and group companies in SCIL
1
(c)
2
(c)
| Category & Name of the shareholders | PAN | Nos. of shareholders | No. of fully paid up equity shares held | Partly paid- up equity shares held | No. of shares underlying Depository Receipts | Total nos. shares held | Shareholding % calculated as per SCRR, 1957 As a % of (A+B+C2) | Number of Voting Rights held in each class of securities | | | | No. of Shares Underlying Outstanding convertible securities (including Warrants) | Shareholding, as a % assuming full conversion of convertible securities (as a percentage of diluted share capital) | Number of Locked in shares | | Number of Shares pledged or otherwise encumbered | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | | | | | No of Voting Rights | | | Total as a % of (A+B+C) | | | No. (a) | As a % of total Shares held(b) | No. (a) | As a % of total Shares held(b) |
| | | | | | | | | Class eg: X | Class eg: y | Total | | | | | | | |
| (I) | (II) | (III) | (IV) | (V) | (VI) | (VII) = (IV)+(V)+ (VI) | (VIII) As a % of (A+B+C2) | (IX) | | | | (X) | (XI)= (VII)+(X) As a % of (A+B+C2) | (XII) | | (XIII) | |
| Indian | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Individuals/Hindu Undivided Family | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Central Government/ State Government(s) | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Financial Institutions/Banks | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Any Other (Specify) | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sub Total (A)(1) | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Foreign | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Individuals (Non-Resident Individuals/Foreign Individuals) | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Government | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Institutions | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Foreign Portfolio Investor | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Any Other (Specify) | | 7 | 400825870 | 0 | 0 | 400825870 | 80.30 | 400825870 | 0 | 400825870 | 80.30 | 0.00 | 80.30 | 374359302 | 93.397 | 0 | 0 |
| Bodies Corporate | | 7 | 400825870 | 0 | 0 | 400825870 | 80.30 | 400825870 | 0 | 400825870 | 80.30 | 0.00 | 80.30 | 374359302 | 93.397 | 0 | 0 |
| Sumitomo Chemical Co. Ltd. (including nominees, refer note 1) | | 6 | 400825868 | 0 | 0 | 400825868 | 80.30 | 400825868 | 0 | 400825868 | 80.30 | 0.00 | 80.30 | 374359300 | 93.397 | 0 | 0 |
| SC Environmental Science Company Limited (through nominee, refer note 1) | | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.00 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 2 | 100.00 | 0 | 0 |
| Sub Total (A)(2) | | 7 | 400825870 | 0 | 0 | 400825870 | 80.30 | 400825870 | 0 | 400825870 | 80.30 | 0.00 | 80.30 | 374359302 | 93.397 | 0 | 0 |
| Total Shareholding Of Promoter And Promoter Group (A)=(A)(1)+(A)(2) | | 7 | 400825870 | 0 | 0 | 400825870 | 80.30 | 400825870 | 0 | 400825870 | 80.30 | 0.00 | 80.30 | 374359302 | 93.397 | 0 | 0 |
Number of equity shares held in
dematerialised form
(XIV)
400825870
400825870
400825868
400825870
400825870
Note:
1. Please note that a public limited company is required to have a minimum of seven members as per the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013. For meeting this requirement prior to Scheme, the registered ownership of five (5) equity shares of the Company held by Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited was held through five (5) nominee individual shareholders. The beneficial ownership of the aforesaid 5 shares continues with Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited. Further, two (2) equity shares of the Company held by SC Environmental Science Company Limited, Japan are held through a nominee individual shareholder.
2. In compliance of SEBI Circular no. CFD/DIL3/CIR/2017/21 dated March 10, 2017 and circular no. CFD/DIL3/CIR/2018/2 dated Jan 3, 2018, as amended, the company has locked in the entire pre-merger share capital, in following manner:
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited, Japan (including shares held through five nominee individual shareholders)* | 40,08,25,868 | 9,98,29,148 | 28th February 2023 | Up to 3 years from date of listing of shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | 17,47,58,945 | 28th February 2021 | Up to 1 year from date of listing of shares |
| SC Environmental Science Company Limited (shares held through nominee individual shareholder) | 2 | 2 | 28th February 2021 | Up to 1 year from date of listing of shares |
*Further, 9,97,71,207 equity shares of the Company held by Promoters are under lock-in in compliance with the in-principle approval letter of BSE dated December 19, 2019.
3. The Company has submitted an undertaking dated December 19, 2019 with BSE, stating that the shares held by the Promoter and Promoter Group to the extent of 75% of total equity shares of the Company representing 37,43,59,302 equity shares, shall be locked in until (i) Registrar of Companies ("ROC") processes and approves
Form INC-28 filed by the Company (ii) the Company subsequently files form PAS 3 with the RoC for the issue and allotment of the equity shares of the Company pursuant to the Scheme and the same is approved by RoC. It is hereby clarified that upon
(i) the RoC processing and approving Form INC-28 and the Company subsequently filing e-form PAS 3 pursuant to the Scheme and the same being approved by RoC, and
(ii) the Company receiving a no-objection letter from BSE post completion of the actions mentioned in clause (i) above, for trading of securities of the Company held by Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited ("SCC") and release of lock-in of the above referred 9,97,71,207 equity shares, only 27,45,88,095 equity shares of the Company held by SCC along with Promoter Group shall be subject to a lock-in to the extent, as provided under the SEBI Circular No. CFD/DIL2/CIR/2017/21 dated March 10, 2017, as amended from time to time, that has not already expired.
(E) Names of the ten largest shareholders:
(G) Business and its management:
The Company is primarily engaged in manufacture and sale of agricultural pesticides, household insecticides and animal nutrition products. Excel Crop Care Limited ('ECC' or 'Transferor Company') was incorporated on March 21, 1964 and registered with the Registrar of Companies, Mumbai. ECC got listed on BSE Limited ("BSE") and National Stock Exchange of India Limited ("NSE") in the year 2003 pursuant to a demerger of the agricultural inputs portfolio of Excel Industries Limited with the strength of three manufacturing units at Bhavnagar, Gajod and Silvassa. Pursuant to the Scheme, ECC stands merged with the Company with effect from the Appointed Date of April 01, 2018.
Management:
| SNo. | Name | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dr. Mukul Govindji Asher | Chairman and Independent Director |
| 2 | Chetan Shantilal Shah | Managing Director |
| 3 | Bhupendranath Bhargava | Independent Director |
| 4 | Tadashi Katayama | Non-executive Director |
| 5 | Preeti Gautam Mehta | Independent woman Director |
| 6 | Hiroyoshi Mukai | Non-executive Director |
| 7 | Sushil Champaklal Marfatia | Executive Director |
| 8 | Ninad Dwarkanath Gupte | Non-executive Director |
| 9 | Pravin D. Desai | Company Secretary |
| 10 | Anil Nawal | Chief Financial Officer |
| Sr No. | Name of the Shareholder | Number of Equity Shares | Percentage of Equity Share capital (%) | Interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited (including the shares held through the nominee individual shareholders - refer note) | 400,825,868 | 80.30% | Promoter |
| 2 | Life Insurance Corporation of India | 18,369,460 | 3.68% | - |
| 3 | Emerald Company Private Limited | 4,098,054 | 0.82% | - |
| 4 | Ratnabali Securities Private Limited | 3,956,503 | 0.79% | - |
| 5 | Carbon Finance Limited | 2,151,333 | 0.43% | - |
| 6 | Mount Intra Finance Pvt. Ltd | 1,573,885 | 0.32% | - |
| 7 | Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority Ministry of Corporate Affairs | 1,557,253 | 0.31% | - |
| 8 | Dhunseri Ventures Limited | 1,335,460 | 0.27% | - |
| 9 | Custodian (Special Court) A/C Rina S Mehta/ Sudhir S Mehta | 1,230,681 | 0.25% | - |
| 10 | Angela Mercantiles Pvt Ltd | 1,136,178 | 0.23% | - |
Note: Please note that a public limited company is required to have a minimum of seven members as per the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013. For meeting this requirement prior to the amalgamation under the Scheme, the registered ownership of five (5) equity shares of the Company held by Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited was held through five (5) nominee individual shareholders. The five (5) nominee shareholders continue to hold the registered ownership and the beneficial ownership of the aforesaid 5 shares continues with Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited.
(F) Details of promoter:
Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited ("SCC"), having address at 27-1, Shinkawa 2- Chome Chuo-ku, Tokyo Japan is the promoter as well as holding company of SCIL. It was incorporated, as a company limited by shares, on June 1, 1925 in Japan under the applicable laws of Japan. It was originally founded in 1913 but was only registered on June 1, 1925. The Japanese name of SCC was changed from Sumitomo Kagaku Kogyo Kabushikigaisha to Sumitomo Kagaku Kabushikigaisha and the same was registered on October 5, 2004.
Prior to the Scheme becoming effective, it held 27,45,88,093 equity shares of the Company (including shares held through five (5) nominee individual shareholders) amounting to 99.99% of its shareholding.
SCC primarily operates in five sectors, namely, (i) petrochemicals & plastics; (ii) energy & functional materials; (iii) IT-related chemicals; (iv) health and crop sciences and (v) pharmaceuticals. It is a
professionally managed company and its operations are overseen by its board of directors.
(H) Reason for the amalgamation:
The scheme of amalgamation approved by the Hon'ble National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai Bench ("Scheme") provides for the amalgamation of ECC/the Transferor Company with SCIL/the Transferee Company pursuant to Sections 230 to 232 other applicable provisions of the Companies Act, 2013, with the view to achieve the following benefits:
(i) Consolidation of businesses presently carried on by the Transferor and Transferee Company, which shall create greater operational synergies and efficiencies at multiple levels of business operations and shall provide significant impetus to their growth;
(ii) Merger shall result in consolidation of major India operations under one platform which is expected to get undivided attention from the parent company and thereby leveraging capability of the merged entity which in turn will allow the merged entity to undertake future expansion strategies and to tap bigger opportunities; (iii) Creation of value for shareholders of the Companies and other stakeholders, by way of creation of a large asset base, facilitating access to better financial resources, stronger consolidated revenue and profitability, diversification in product portfolio and thereby reducing business risks;
(iv) Pooling of assets, proprietary information, personnel, financial, managerial and technical resources of the Companies, thereby contributing to the future growth of the merged entity;
1
(v) Consolidating the shareholding and thereby eliminating administrative duplications and consequently reducing the administrative costs of maintaining separate companies;
(vi) The Transferor Company and the Transferee Company operate businesses that complement each other and therefore, can be conveniently combined for mutual benefit of the shareholders of the Companies;
(vii) The Scheme is in the beneficial interest of all the stakeholders and the shareholders of both the Companies.
(I) Financial Statements of the Company for the previous three years prior to the date of listing: Balance Sheet:
(`in million)
| Particulars | As at 31 March 2019 (Consolidated) (note 1) | As at 31 March 2018 (Consolidated- restated) (note 1) | As at 31 March 2017 (Standalone) (note 3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| I. ASSETS | | | |
| (1) Non-current assets | | | |
| (a) Property, Plant and Equipment | 2,771.65 | 2,647.87 | 525.37 |
| (b) Capital work-in-progress | 31.86 | 44.52 | 74.04 |
| (c) Other Intangible assets | 21.35 | 19.32 | - |
| (d) Intangible assets under development | 48.72 | 42.58 | - |
| (e) Financial Assets | | | |
| i. Investments | 1.41 | 1.43 | 3,766.64 |
| ii. Loans | 78.46 | 72.58 | 34.41 |
| (f) Non- current tax assets (net) | 188.18 | 248.22 | 105.56 |
| (g) Other non-current assets | 43.90 | 50.56 | 7.12 |
| Total non-current assets | 3,185.53 | 3,127.08 | 4,513.14 |
| (2) Current Assets | | | |
| (a) Inventories | 6,805.83 | 6,092.62 | 2,775.86 |
| (b) Financial Assets | | | |
| (i) Trade receivables | 6,710.13 | 5,517.60 | 2,199.08 |
| (ii) Cash and cash equivalents | 504.64 | 735.46 | 379.90 |
| (iii)Bank balances other than cash and cash equivalents mentioned above in (ii) above | 8.86 | 7.78 | 0.07 |
| (iv) Loans | 33.45 | 36.62 | 24.02 |
|---|---|---|---|
| (v) Other financial assets | 170.18 | 103.67 | 15.25 |
| (c) Other current assets | 1,181.05 | 963.05 | 301.02 |
| Total Current Assets | 15,414.14 | 13,456.80 | 5,695.20 |
| TOTAL ASSETS | 18,599.67 | 16,583.88 | 10,208.34 |
| II. EQUITY AND LIABILITIES | | | |
| (1) Equity | | | |
| (a) Equity share capital (note 4) | 2,745.88 | 2,745.88 | 2,745.88 |
| (b) Other equity | 7,738.08 | 6,794.15 | 4,581.64 |
| Total Equity | 10,483.96 | 9,540.03 | 7,327.52 |
| (2) Liabilities | | | |
| Non-current liabilities | | | |
| (a) Provisions | 156.42 | 127.10 | 18.39 |
| (b) Deferred tax liabilities (net) | 145.92 | 180.74 | |
| (c) Other non-current tax liabilities (net) | 52.15 | 17.43 | 17.55 |
| Total Non-current liabilities | 354.49 | 325.27 | 35.94 |
| Current liabilities | | | |
| (a) Financial liabilities | | | |
| (i) Borrowings | 197.45 | 101.46 | - |
| (ii) Trade payables | | | |
| (A) total outstanding dues of micro enterprises and small enterprises | 195.10 | 129.11 | 43.15 |
| (B) total outstanding dues of creditors other than micro enterprises and small enterprises | 5,772.46 | 5,143.45 | 1,623.85 |
| (iii)Other financial liabilities | 632.02 | 555.51 | 839.89 |
| (b) Other current liabilities | 870.83 | 700.54 | 278.75 |
| (c) Provisions | 25.78 | 22.93 | 5.44 |
| (d) Current Tax liabilities | 67.58 | 65.58 | 53.80 |
| Total Current liabilities | 7,761.22 | 6,718.58 | 2,844.88 |
| Total Liabilities | 8,115.71 | 7,043.85 | 2,880.82 |
| TOTAL EQUITY AND LIABILITIES | 18,599.67 | 16,583.88 | 10,208.34 |
(`in million)
Consolidated Statement of Changes in Equity:
| Particulars | For the year ended | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| | 31 March 2019 (Consolidated) | 31 March 2018 (Consolidated - restated) | 31 March 2017 (Standalone) |
| Revenue | | | |
| I Revenue from Operations | 22,117.43 | 19,616.73 | 8,638.58 |
| II Other income | 277.62 | 304.68 | 106.32 |
| III Total Income (I +II) | 22,395.05 | 19,921.41 | 8,744.90 |
| IV Expenses | | | |
| Cost of materials consumed | 13,288.10 | 10,770.08 | 3,971.48 |
| Purchase of stock-in-trade | 2,286.24 | 2,082.74 | 1,778.72 |
| Changes in inventories of finished goods, work-in-progress and stock-in-trade | (984.81) | (465.79) | (438.32) |
| Excise duty | - | 487.92 | 653.41 |
| Employee benefits expense | 1,615.26 | 1,475.47 | 587.36 |
| Finance costs | 36.50 | 28.36 | 9.62 |
| Depreciation and amortisation expense | 278.04 | 237.31 | 69.47 |
| Other expenses | 3,277.28 | 3,095.66 | 1,049.57 |
| Total Expenses (IV) | 19,796.61 | 17,711.75 | 7,681.31 |
| V Profit before Tax (III -IV) | 2,598.44 | 2,209.66 | 1,063.59 |
| VI Tax expense: | | | |
| 1. Current Tax | 945.96 | 798.85 | 399.30 |
| 2. Adjustment of tax relating to earlier years | 27.86 | (15.78) | 27.65 |
| 3. Deferred Tax credit | (33.35) | (24.59) | (0.74) |
| Total Tax Expenses (VI) | 940.47 | 758.48 | 426.21 |
| VII Profit for the Year (V-VI) | 1,657.97 | 1,451.18 | 637.38 |
| VIII Other comprehensive income | | | |
| A. Items that will not be reclassified to Profit or Loss | | | |
| Fair valuation of investments | - | - | 992.50 |
| Remeasurements of defined benefit liability | 2.23 | 33.67 | (17.07) |
| Income tax related to items that will not be reclassified to profit or loss | | | |
| Remeasurements of defined benefit liability | 1.47 | 0.35 | 5.71 |
| | 3.70 | 34.02 | 981.14 |
| B. Items that will be reclassified to Profit or Loss | | | |
| Exchange difference arising on translation of foreign operations | (2.69) | 16.54 | - |
| Total other comprehensive income for the year (VIII) | 1.01 | 50.56 | 981.14 |
| IX Total comprehensive income for the year (VII +VIII) | 1,658.98 | 1,501.74 | 1,618.52 |
| X Earnings per equity share (Face value of ` 10 each) | | | |
| Basic and diluted earnings per share (`) | 3.32 | 2.91 | 2.46 |
(
(
`
`
in million)
in million)
| Other equity | Reserves & Surplus | | | | Other comprehensive income | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | General Reserve | Securities Premium | Share Pending Issuance | Retained earnings | Equity instruments through other comprehensive income | Foreign Currency Translation reserve | Total Other equity |
| Balance as at 1 April 2016 before adjustments | - | - | - | 630.68 | - | - | 630.68 |
| Ind As Adjustments | - | - | - | (18.23) | 0.07 | - | (18.16) |
| Changes in accounting policy/prior period errors | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Balance as at 1 April 2016 after adjustments | - | - | - | 612.45 | 0.07 | - | 612.52 |
| Profit for the year | - | - | - | 637.38 | - | - | 637.38 |
| Other comprehensive income for the year (net of tax) | - | - | - | (11.36) | 992.50 | - | 981.14 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total comprehensive income for the year | - | - | - | 626.02 | 992.50 | - | 1,618.52 |
| Issue of share capital | - | 2,350.60 | - | - | - | - | 2,350.60 |
| Balance as at 31 March 2017 | - | 2,350.60 | - | 1,238.47 | 992.57 | - | 4,581.64 |
| Balance as at 1 April 2017 (Note 6) | 3,981.58 | 2,350.60 | 2,245.58 | 1,670.23 | - | 7.86 | 10,255.85 |
| Consideration in excess of the carrying value of the net assets (including the reserves) | (4,963.44) | - | - | - | - | - | (4,963.44) |
| Balance as at 1 April 2017 | (981.86) | 2,350.60 | 2,245.58 | 1,670.23 | - | 7.86 | 5,292.41 |
| Profit for the year | - | - | - | 1,451.18 | - | - | 1,451.18 |
| Other comprehensive income for the year (net of tax) | - | - | - | 34.02 | - | 16.54 | 50.56 |
| Total comprehensive income for the year | - | - | - | 1,485.20 | - | 16.54 | 1,501.74 |
| Transfer to General Reserve | 700.00 | - | - | (700.00) | - | - | - |
| Balance as at 31 March 2018 | (281.86) | 2,350.60 | 2,245.58 | 2,455.43 | - | 24.40 | 6,794.15 |
| Profit for the year | - | - | - | 1,657.97 | - | - | 1,657.97 |
| Other comprehensive income for the year (net of tax) | - | - | - | 3.70 | - | (2.69) | 1.01 |
| Total comprehensive income for the year | - | - | - | 1,661.67 | - | (2.69) | 1,658.98 |
| Transfer to General Reserve | 800.00 | - | - | (800.00) | - | - | - |
| Dividend on equity shares for the year | - | - | - | (590.53) | - | - | (590.53) |
| Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) | - | - | - | (124.52) | - | - | (124.52) |
Notes for Balance Sheet, Statement for Profit and loss and Consolidated Statement of Changes in Equity:
1. Figures as at March 31, 2019 and March 31, 2018 are as per Ind-AS. Figures as at March 31, 2018 are the restated numbers based on the comparative information as disclosed in the Annual Report of SCIL for the financial year 2018-19.
2. The shareholders may refer the information memorandum for the standalone financials statement of SCIL for financial year 2017-18 (without giving effect of merger). The Information Memorandum would be made available on www.sumichem.co.in, www.bseindia.com and www.nseindia.com.
3. Information presented above in relation to March 31, 2017 is based on comparative information as disclosed in the financial statements for the year ended March 31, 2018
4. The Equity Share Capital of the Company as on March 31, 2019 does not include the equity shares allotted pursuant to the Scheme to the shareholders of ECC, as the same have been allotted on October 7, 2019
5. Our Company did not have any subsidiaries till March 31, 2018. Accordingly, the requirement of consolidated financial statements was not applicable. Pursuant to implementation of the Scheme, the subsidiaries of erstwhile Excel Crop Care Limited (Transferor Company) became the subsidiaries of our Company, the same have consolidated in the financial statements as at March 31, 2019 including for disclosure of the comparative information for the last financial year 2017-18.
6. Information presented above in relation to opening balances as at April 1, 2017 onwards, in the statement of changes in equity, is based on information as disclosed in the consolidated financial statements for the year ended March 31, 2019 of SCIL.
Statement of Cash Flows:
(`in million)
| Particulars | 31 March 2019 (Consolidated) | 31 March 2018 (Consolidated- restated) | 31 March 2017 (Standalone) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. Cash flow from operating activities | | | |
| Profit before tax | 2,598.44 | 2,209.66 | 1,063.59 |
| Adjustments for: | | | |
| Depreciation and amortization Expense | 278.04 | 237.31 | 69.47 |
| CSR expenses adjusted in opening stock | - | - | (0.18) |
| Bad Debts written Off | 12.04 | 30.57 | - |
| Provision for Doubtful Debts/Write back | 72.54 | 39.48 | 14.92 |
| Excess Provisions in respect of earlier years written back (net) | (200.74) | (243.50) | - |
| (Profit) on sale/disposal of property, plant and equipment | (2.17) | (1.35) | 8.04 |
| Property, plant and equipment & Intangible Assets written off | 0.61 | 24.33 | - |
| Interest Income | (37.26) | (29.49) | (44.56) |
| Measurement of Investments at Fair Value through Profit & Loss | 0.02 | (0.03) | - |
| Dividend Income | (0.92) | (7.90) | - |
| Interest Expenses | 36.50 | 28.36 | 9.62 |
| Unrealised Exchange differences (net) | 27.61 | 18.22 | 0.24 |
| Interest on income tax refund | - | | 0.98 |
| Acquisition cost of investment | - | - | 45.01 |
| Amortization of premium on forward exchange contract | - | - | 0.75 |
| MTM on forward contract | - | - | 1.41 |
| Operating cash flow before working capital changes | 2,784.71 | 2,305.66 | 1,169.29 |
| Working capital adjustments | | | |
| (Increase)/Decrease in Trade Receivables | (315.30) | (360.25) | (408.26) |
| (Increase)/Decrease in Inventories | (1,794.24) | (1,871.95) | (423.99) |
| (Increase)/Decrease in Other Non Current Assets and Current Assets | (278.70) | (354.48) | (2.57) |
| (Increase)/Decrease in Long Term & Short Term Loans | 3.22 | 91.13 | (191.55) |
| Increase/(Decrease) in Trade Payables | 1,037.76 | 1,153.96 | (166.64) |
| Increase/(Decrease) in Long Term and Short Term Provisions | 45.72 | 19.59 | (21.63) |
| Increase/(Decrease) in Other Non Current and Other Current Liabilities | 174.96 | 321.87 | 190.00 |
| Cash generated from operating activities | 1,658.13 | 1,305.52 | 144.65 |
| Income taxes paid (net) | (881.28) | (831.11) | (353.12) |
| Net cash flows generated from operating activities (A) | 776.85 | 474.41 | (208.47) |
| B. Cash flow from investing activities | | | |
| Purchase of property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets | (397.33) | (434.05) | (123.38) |
| Proceeds from sale of property, plant and equipment | 7.70 | 3.28 | 4.14 |
| Purchase/(Sale) of Investments (net) | (0.01) | (2.85) | (2,772.94) |
| Proceeds/(Investments) in dividend accounts, net | (1.07) | 1.27 | - |
| Interest received | 36.81 | 28.01 | 43.07 |
| Dividend received | 0.92 | 7.90 | - |
| Loan given | (0.21) | - | - |
| Deposit with banks (net) | - | - | 0.01 |
| Acquisition cost of investment | - | - | (45.01) |
| Net cash flows used in investing activities (B) | (353.19) | (396.44) | (2894.11) |
|---|---|---|---|
| C. Cash flow from financing activities | | | |
| Proceeds of short-term borrowings (net) | 95.99 | 101.46 | - - |
| Interest paid | (36.50) | (28.36) | (5.69) |
| Dividend Paid | (589.46) | (1.27) | - |
| Tax on distributed Profits | (124.51) | - | - |
| Proceeds from issue of equity share capital | - | - | 2,766.64 |
| Net cash flows generated from/(used in) from financing activities (C) | (654.48) | 71.83 | 2,760.95 |
| Net increase/(decrease) in cash and cash equivalents (A + B + C) | (230.82) | 149.81 | (341.63) |
| Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year | 735.46 | 585.65 | 721.53 |
| Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year | 504.64 | 735.46 | 379.90 |
Notes:
1. The above Cash Flow Statement has been prepared under the 'Indirect Method' as set out in the Ind AS 7, 'Statement of Cash Flows'.
2. Cash comprises cash on hand, Current Accounts and deposits with banks. Cash equivalents are short-term balances (with an original maturity of three months or less from the date of acquisition), highly liquid investments that are readily convertible into known amounts of cash and which are subject to insignificant risk of changes in value The Information presented above in relation to the financial year ended March 31,2017 is based on comparative information as disclosed in the financial statements for the year ended March 31, 2018.
3. The Hon'ble National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai Bench ("Hon'ble NCLT") vide its order dated 27 th June, 2019 ("NCLT order") has sanctioned the Scheme of Amalgamation (Merger by absorption) of Excel Crop Care Limited ("the Transferor Company" or "ECC") with Sumitomo Chemical India Limited ("the Transferee Company" or "SCIL" or "the Company") under Section 230 to 232 and other applicable provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 ("Scheme"). The certified copy of the Order was received by the Company on 22 nd August 2019.
4. The amendment to Ind AS 7 required entities to provide disclosures to evaluate changes in liabilities arising from financing activities, including both changes arising from cash flows and non-cash changes. Accordingly, the following disclosure has been given below:
(The shareholders may refer the information memorandum for the notes to the consolidated and standalone financial statement of the financial year 2018-19 and notes to the financial statement of the previous financial years i.e. FY 2017-18 and FY 2016-17. The Information Memorandum would be made available on www.sumichem.co.in, www.bseindia.com and www.nseindia.com. The annual report of the Company for financial year 2018-19 is also available on our website www.sumichem.co.in.)
(J) Latest Audited Financial Statements of the Company for the interim period of six months ending on 30 September 2019:
Balance Sheet for the six months ending as at 30 September 2019:
(`in million)
1. The Equity Share Capital of the Company as on Sep 30, 2019 does not include the equity shares
| Particulars | As at 30 September 2019 | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| I. ASSETS | Notes to Consolidated Financial statements | Consolidated | Standalone |
| (1) Non-current assets | | | |
| a)Property, Plant and Equipment | 3 | 2837.24 | 2,836.22 |
| b)Capital work-in-progress | | 44.62 | 44.62 |
| c) Right - of - use Assets | 4 | 309.40 | 309.40 |
| d)Other Intangible assets | 5 | 15.98 | 15.98 |
| e)Intangible assets under development | | 48.74 | 48.74 |
| f) Investment in subsidiaries | | - | 7.61 |
| g)Financial Assets | | | |
| i. Investments | 6 | 1.34 | 1.34 |
| ii. Loans | 7 | 85.52 | 85.52 |
| h)Non- current tax assets (net) | | 195.09 | 190.85 |
| i) Other non-current assets | 8 | 52.81 | 52.81 |
| Total non-current assets | | 3590.74 | 3,593.09 |
| (2) Current Assets | | | |
| a)Inventories | 9 | 5467.00 | 5,463.71 |
| b)Financial Assets | | | |
| i. Investments | 10 | 687.50 | 687.50 |
| ii. Trade receivables | 11 | 10389.63 | 10,369.65 |
| iii.Cash and cash equivalents | 12a | 926.17 | 818.43 |
| iv. Bank balances other than cash and cash equivalents mentioned above in (iii) above | 12b | 8.92 | 8.92 |
| v. Loans | 13 | 47.92 | 47.93 |
| vi.Other financial assets | 14 | 111.81 | 111.81 |
| c) Other current assets | 15 | 418.78 | 418.78 |
| Total Current Assets | | 18057.73 | 17,926.73 |
| TOTAL ASSETS | | 21648.47 | 21,519.82 |
| II. EQUITY AND LIABILITIES | | | |
| (1) Equity | | | |
| (a) Equity share capital (refer note 1) | 16 | 2745.88 | 2,745.88 |
| (b) Other equity | 17 | 9402.40 | 9,277.94 |
| Total Equity | | 12148.28 | 12,023.82 |
| (2) Liabilities | | | |
| Non-current liabilities | | | |
| (a) Financial Liabilities | | | |
| - Lease Liabilities | 18 | 178.28 | 178.28 |
| (b) Provisions | 19 | 166.61 | 166.61 |
| (c) Deferred tax liabilities (net) | 32C | 15.34 | 15.34 |
| (d) Other non-current tax liabilities (net) | | 57.79 | 57.79 |
| Total Non-current liabilities | | 418.02 | 418.02 |
| Current liabilities | | | |
| (a) Financial liabilities | | | |
| (i) Trade payables | | | |
| (A) total outstanding dues of micro enterprises and small enterprises | 20 | 85.66 | 85.66 |
| (B) total outstanding dues of creditors other than micro enterprises and small enterprises | 20 | 7508.53 | 7,506.90 |
| (ii) Lease Liabilities | 21 | 138.66 | 138.66 |
| (iii) Other financial liabilities | 22 | 647.29 | 647.29 |
| (b) Other current liabilities | 23 | 386.22 | 383.66 |
| (c) Provisions | 24 | 49.75 | 49.75 |
| (d) Current Tax liabilities | | 266.06 | 266.06 |
| Total Current liabilities | | 9082.17 | 9,077.98 |
| Total Liabilities | | 9500.19 | 9,496.00 |
| TOTAL EQUITY AND LIABILITIES | | 21648.47 | 21,519.8 |
allotted pursuant to the Scheme as the same have been allotted on October 7, 2019
2
Statement of Profit and Losses for the six months ended 30 September 2019:
| Total comprehensive income for the period | - | - | - | 1,812.58 | 1,812.58 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dividend on equity shares for the year | - | - | - | (115.45) | (115.45) |
| Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) | - | - | - | (26.42) | (26.42) |
Statement of Cash Flows for the six months ended 30 September 2019:
Statement of Changes in Equity for the six months ended 30 September 2019:
| Particulars | For the six months ended on 30 September 2019 | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| | Notes to Consolidated Financial statements | Consolidated | Standalone |
| Revenue | | | |
| I. Revenue from Operations | 25 | 14545.22 | 14,537.37 |
| II. Other income | 26 | 58.07 | 59.07 |
| III. Total Income (I. +II.) | | 14603.29 | 14,596.44 |
| IV. Expenses | | | |
| Cost of materials consumed | 27 | 7180.52 | 7,180.53 |
| Purchase of stock-in-trade | | 1123.47 | 1,118.28 |
| Changes in inventories of finished goods, work-in-progress and stock-in-trade | 28 | 1310.65 | 1,306.72 |
| Employee benefits expense | 29 | 882.07 | 876.16 |
| Finance costs | 30 | 29.61 | 29.61 |
| Depreciation and amortisation expense | 3,4 & 5 | 182.93 | 182.79 |
| Other expenses | 31 | 1652.00 | 1,653.55 |
| Total Expenses (IV) | | 12361.25 | 12,347.64 |
| V. Profit before Tax (III. -IV) | | 2242.04 | 2,248.80 |
| VI. Tax expense: | | | |
| 1. Current Tax | | 592.84 | 592.84 |
| 2. Adjustment of tax relating to earlier years | | (31.42) | (31.42) |
| | 32A | | |
| 3. Deferred Tax credit | | (130.49) | (130.49) |
| Total Tax Expenses (VI.) | | 430.93 | 430.93 |
| VII. Profit for the Year (V.-VI.) | | 1811.11 | 1,817.87 |
| VIII. Other comprehensive income | | | |
| A. Items that will not be reclassified to Profit or Loss | | | |
| Remeasurements of defined benefit liability/(Asset) | | (5.39) | (5.39) |
| Income tax related to items that will not be reclassified to profit or loss | | | |
| Remeasurements of defined benefit liability | | 0.10 | 0.10 |
| B. Items that will be reclassified to Profit or Loss | | | |
| Exchange difference arising on translation of foreign operations | | 0.44 | - |
| Total other comprehensive income for the year (VIII.) | | (4.85) | (5.29) |
| IX. Total comprehensive income for the year (VII. +VIII.) | | 1806.26 | 1,812.58 |
| X. Earnings per equity share (Face value of ` 10 each) | | | |
| Basic and diluted earnings per share | 33 | 3.63 | 3.64 |
(`in million)
| Share Capital | Notes to Consolidated Financial statements | Consolidated | Standalone |
|---|---|---|---|
| As at 31 March, 2018 | 16 | 2745.88 | 2745.88 |
| Changes in equity share capital during the year | | - | - |
| As at 31 March, 2019 | 16 | 2745.88 | 2745.88 |
| Changes in equity share capital during the period | | - | - |
| As at 30 September 2019 | 16 | 2745.88 | 2745.88 |
Other Equity
Interim Consolidated Financial Statements
| Particulars | For the six months ended 30 September 2019 | |
|---|---|---|
| | Consolidated | Standalone |
| A. Cash flow from operating activities | | |
| Profit before tax | 2242.04 | 2,248.80 |
| Adjustments for: | | |
| Depreciation and amortisation Expense | 182.93 | 182.79 |
| Bad Debts written Off | 2.42 | 2.42 |
| Provision for Doubtful Debts/Write back | 39.02 | 40.00 |
| Sundry credit Balance written back | (14.38) | (14.38) |
| (Profit) on sale/disposal of property, plant and equipment | (0.24) | (0.24) |
| Property, plant and equipment & Intangible Assets written off | 1.20 | 1.20 |
| Interest Income | (24.12) | (24.12) |
| Measurement of Investment at Fair Value through Profit & Loss | 0.06 | 0.06 |
| Dividend Income | (5.04) | (5.04) |
| Interest Expenses | 29.61 | 29.61 |
| Unrealised Exchange differences (net) | (1.26) | (1.70) |
| Operating cash flow before working capital changes | 2452.24 | 2,459.40 |
| Working capital adjustments | | |
| (Increase) in Trade Receivables | (3692.46) | (3,694.19) |
| Decrease in Inventories | 1338.83 | 1,336.67 |
| Decrease in Other Non Current Assets and Current Assets | 762.98 | 762.92 |
| Decrease in other Non Current Financial and Current Financial Assets | 64.50 | 63.98 |
| (Increase) in Long Term & Short Term Loans | (5.65) | (5.65) |
| Increase in Trade Payables | 1589.37 | 1,590.96 |
| Increase in Long Term and Short Term Provisions | 28.77 | 28.77 |
| (Decrease) in other Non Current Financial and Current Financial Liabilities | (21.49) | (22.27) |
| (Decrease) in other Non Current and Current Liabilities | (484.61) | (485.33) |
| Cash generated from operating activities | 2032.48 | 2,035.26 |
| Income taxes paid (net) | (364.20) | (363.05) |
| Net cash flows generated from operating activities (A) | 1668.28 | 1,672.21 |
| B. Cash flow from investing activities | | |
| Purchase of property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets | (222.24) | (222.15) |
| Proceeds from Sale of property, plant and equipment | 1.87 | 1.87 |
| (Purchase)/Sale of Investments (net) | (687.49) | (687.50) |
| Interest received | 24.16 | 24.12 |
| Dividend received | 5.04 | 5.04 |
| Bank Balances not considered as Cash & Cash equivalents (Net) | (0.06) | (0.06) |
| Loan Recovered | 0.91 | 0.88 |
| Net cash flows used in investing activities (B) | (877.81) | (877.80) |
| C. Cash flow from financing activities | | |
| (Repayment)/Proceeds of short term borrowings (net) | (197.45) | (197.45) |
| Interest paid | (29.61) | (29.61) |
| Dividend Paid | (115.46) | (115.39) |
| Tax on distributed Profits | (26.42) | (26.42) |
| Net cash flows generated from/(used in) from financing activities (C) | (368.94) | (368.87) |
| Net increase/(decrease) in cash and cash equivalents (A + B + C) | 421.53 | 425.54 |
| Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year | 504.64 | 392.89 |
| Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year (refer 12a) | 926.17 | 818.43 |
Notes:
1. The above Cash Flow Statement has been prepared under the 'Indirect Method' as set out in the Ind AS 7, 'Statement of Cash Flows'
2. Hon'ble National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai Bench ("Hon'ble NCLT") vide its order dated on 27th June 2019, ("NCLT order") has sanctioned the Scheme of Amalgamation (Merger by absorption) of Excel Crop Care Limited ("the Transferor Company" or "ECCL") have merged with the Sumitomo Chemical India Limited ("the Transferee Company" or "SCIL" or "the Company") under Section 230 to 232 and other applicable provisions of the Companies Act, 2013. The certified copy of the order was received by the Company on 22 nd August 2019.
(The advertisement covers notes to interim consolidated financial statement for the six-month period ended 30 September 2019. The shareholders may refer the information memorandum for the notes to the interim standalone financial statement for the six-month period ended 30 September 2019. The Information Memorandum would be made available on www.sumichem.co.in, www.bseindia.com and www.nseindia.com.)
Notes to Interim Consolidated Financial Statements for the six month period ended 30 September 2019 (Currency: Indian Rupees in million)
1 Corporate information
Sumitomo Chemical India Limited ('SCIL' or 'the Company') was incorporated originally on February 15, 2000 and converted from Private Limited to Public Limited w.e.f. 24th November 2018. SCIL is a subsidiary of Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited, Japan ('SCCL'). The Company is primarily engaged in manufacturing and sales of Household Insecticides, Agricultural Pesticides, Public Health Insecticides and Animal Nutrition Products. The Consolidated financial statements comprise the Company and its subsidiaries (referred to collectively as 'the Group')
Hon'ble National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai Bench ("Hon'ble NCLT") vide its order dated 27 th June, 2019 ("NCLT order") has sanctioned the Scheme of Amalgamation (Merger by absorption) of Excel Crop Care Limited ("the Transferor Company" or "ECCL") with Sumitomo Chemical India Limited ("the Transferee Company" or "SCIL" or "the Company") under Section 230 to 232 and other applicable provisions of the Companies Act, 2013. The certified copy of the Order was received by the Company on 22 nd August 2019 (Refer note 43).
2 Basis of Preparation, Measurement and Significant Accounting Policies
2.1 Basis of Preparation and Measurement
a) Basis of preparation
These interim consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with the recognition and measurement principles of Indian Accounting Standard (Ind-AS) 34 "Interim Financial Reporting" as specified under Section 133 of the Companies Act, 2013 ('the Act') read with Companies (Indian Accounting Standards) Rules, 2015 as subsequently amended and other relevant provisions of the Act. The Group has not presented the corresponding figures for the previous period in these interim consolidated financial statements as these have been prepared for inclusion in the financial information section of the Information Memorandum to be filed with the stock exchange(s). These interim consolidated financial statements are not the statutory consolidated financial statements of the company. The financial statements are presented in millions of Indian rupees rounded off to two decimal places, except per share information, unless otherwise stated.
The interim consolidated financial statements of the Group were approved for issue in accordance with the resolution of the Board of Directors on 20 December, 2019.
The list of subsidiary companies considered for consolidation together with proportion of shareholding held by the Group is as follows:
3
| Other equity | Reserves & Surplus | | | | Other comprehensive income | Total Other equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | General Reserve | Securities Premium | Share Pending Issuance (refer note 43) | Retained earnings | Foreign Currency Translation reserve | |
| Balance as at 1 April 2018 | (281.86) | 2350.60 | 2245.58 | 2455.43 | 24.40 | 6794.15 |
| Profit for the year | - | - | - | 1657.97 | - | 1657.97 |
| Other comprehensive income for the year (net of tax) | - | - | - | 3.70 | (2.69) | 1.01 |
| Total comprehensive income for the year | - | - | - | 1661.67 | (2.69) | 1658.98 |
| Transfer to General Reserve | 800.00 | - | - | (800.00) | - | - |
| Dividend on equity shares for the year | - | - | - | (590.53) | - | (590.53) |
| Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) | - | - | - | (124.52) | - | (124.52) |
| Balance at 31 March 2019 | 518.14 | 2350.60 | 2245.58 | 2602.05 | 21.71 | 7738.08 |
| Profit for the period | - | - | - | 1811.11 | - | 1811.11 |
| Other comprehensive income for the period (net of tax) | - | - | - | (5.29) | 0.44 | (4.85) |
| Total comprehensive income for the period | - | - | - | 1805.82 | 0.44 | 1806.26 |
| Dividend on equity shares for the year | - | - | - | (115.52) | - | (115.52) |
| Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) | - | - | - | (26.42) | - | (26.42) |
Refer note 17B of the notes to interim consolidated financial statements given below for nature and purpose of reserves.
Other Equity
| Interim Standalone Financial Statements | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Other equity | Reserves & Surplus | | | | Total Other equity |
| | General Reserve | Securities Premium | Share Pending Issuance | Retained earnings | |
| Balance as at 1 April 2018 | (282.19) | 2350.60 | 2245.58 | 2,334.57 | 6,648.56 |
| Profit for the year | - | - | - | 1,670.02 | 1,670.02 |
| Other comprehensive income for the year (net of tax) | - | - | - | 3.70 | 3.70 |
| Total comprehensive income for the year | - | - | - | 1,673.72 | 1,673.72 |
| Transfer to General Reserve | 800.00 | - | - | (800.00) | - |
| Dividend on equity shares for the year | - | - | - | (590.53) | (590.53) |
| Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) | - | - | - | (124.52) | (124.52) |
| Balance at 31 March 2019 | 517.81 | 2350.60 | 2245.58 | 2,493.24 | 7,607.23 |
| Profit for the period | - | - | - | 1,817.87 | 1,817.87 |
| Other comprehensive income for the period (net of tax) | - | - | - | (5.29) | (5.29) |
c)
| Name of Subsidiaries | Country of Incorporation | As at 30 September |
|---|---|---|
| Excel Crop Care (Europe) NV | Belgium | 100% |
| Excel Crop Care (Africa) Limited | Tanzania | 99.94% |
Current-non-current classification:
All assets and liabilities have been classified as current or non-current as per the Group's normal operating cycle and other criteria set out in the Schedule III to the Companies Act, 2013. Based on the nature of products and the time taken between acquisition of assets for processing and their realization in cash and cash equivalents, the Group has ascertained its operating cycle as twelve months for the purpose of the classification of assets and liabilities into current and non current.
a. An asset shall be classified as current when it satisfies any of the following criteria:
i) it is expected to be realized in, or is intended for sale or consumption in, the Group's normal operating cycle;
ii) it is held primarily for the purpose of being traded;
iii) it is expected to be realized within twelve months after the reporting date; or
iv) it is Cash or cash equivalent unless it is restricted from being exchanged or used to settle a liability for at least twelve months after the reporting date.
Current assets include the current portion of non-current financial assets.
b. All assets other than current assets shall be classified as non-current.
c. A liability shall be classified as current when it satisfies any of the following criteria:
i) it is expected to be settled in the Group's normal operating cycle;
ii) it is held primarily for the purpose of being traded;
iii) it is due to be settled within twelve months after the reporting date; or
iv) the Group does not have an unconditional right to defer settlement of the liability for at least twelve months after the reporting date.
Current liabilities include the current portion of non-current financial liabilities.
b) Basis of measurement
These interim consolidated financial statement have been prepared on a historical cost basis, except for the following assets and liabilities which have been measured at fair value:
i) Certain financial assets and liabilities (including derivative instruments) measured at fair value (refer accounting policy regarding financial instruments - 2.4 (n)),
ii) Defined benefit plans - plan assets/(liability) and share based payments measured at fair value (Refer note 38)
Principles of consolidation
The Company consolidates all the entities which are controlled by it. The Company establishes control when, it has the power over the entity, is exposed or has rights to variable return from its involvement with the entity and has the ability to affect the entity's returns by using its power over relevant activities of the entity.
Entities controlled by the Company are consolidated from the date control commences until the date control ceases.
All inter-company transactions, balances and income and expenses are eliminated in full on consolidation.
Changes in the Company's interests in subsidiaries that do not result in a loss of control are accounted as equity transactions. The carrying amount of the Company's interest and no controlling interest are adjusted to reflect the change in their relative interest in the subsidiaries. Any difference between the amount at which the non-controlling interest are adjusted and the fair value of the consideration paid or received is recognized directly in equity and attributed to shareholders of the Company.
2.2 Key Accounting Estimates, judgments and assumptions
The preparation of these interim consolidated financial statements in conformity with Ind AS requires use of estimates and assumptions for some items, which might have an effect on their recognition and measurement in the consolidated Balance Sheet and Statement of Profit and Loss. The management believes that the estimates used in preparation of these interim consolidated financial statements are prudent and reasonable. Future results could differ due to these estimates and the differences between the actual results and the estimates are recognised in the periods in which the results are known/materialize.
The areas involving critical estimates or judgments are:
i. Property, plant and equipment & Intangible assets.
Determination of the estimated useful lives of tangible and intangible assets and the assessment as to which components of the cost may be capitalized. Useful lives of tangible assets are based on the life prescribed in Schedule II of the Companies Act, 2013. (Note 2.4(c))
ii. Discounting of long-term financial instruments :
All financial instruments are required to be measured at fair value on initial recognition. In case of financial instruments which are required to be subsequently measured at amortised cost, interest is accrued using the effective interest method.
iii. Fair value of financial instruments :
Derivatives are carried at fair value. Derivatives includes Foreign currency forward contracts, fair value of which, is determined using the fair value reports provided by respective merchant bankers. (Note 2.3)
iv. Impairment of Financial and Non Financial Asset:
Impairment of financial and Non-financial assets (Note 2.4 (d) for Financial assets and (Note 2.4 (o)) for Non financial assets)
v. Recognition and measurement of provisions and contingencies :
The recognition and measurement of other provisions are based on the assessment of the probability of an outflow of resources, and on past experience and circumstances known at the balance sheet date. The actual outflow of resources at a future date may therefore vary from the figure included in other provisions. Refer 2.4 (j))
vi. Recognition and measurement of defined benefit obligations :
Key actuarial assumptions include discount rate, trends in salary escalation and vested future benefits and life expectancy. (Refer 2.4(f))
2.3 Measurement of fair values
The Group's accounting policies and disclosures require the measurement of fair values for financial instruments.
The Group has an established control framework with respect to the measurement of fair values. The management regularly reviews significant unobservable inputs and valuation adjustments. If third party information, such as broker quotes or pricing services, is used to measure fair values, then the management assesses the evidence obtained from the third parties to support the conclusion that such valuations meet the requirements of Ind AS, including the level in the fair value hierarchy in which such valuations should be classified.
When measuring the fair value of a financial asset or a financial liability, the Group uses observable market data as far as possible. Fair values are categorised into different levels in a fair value hierarchy based on the inputs used in the valuation techniques as follows.
Level 1: quoted prices (unadjusted) in active markets for identical assets or liabilities.
Level 2: inputs other than quoted prices included in Level 1 that are observable for the asset or liability, either directly (i.e. as prices) or indirectly (i.e. derived from prices).
Level 3: inputs for the asset or liability that are not based on observable market data (unobservable inputs).
If the inputs used to measure the fair value of an asset or a liability fall into different levels of the fair value hierarchy, then the fair value measurement is categorised in its entirety in the same level of the fair value hierarchy as the lowest level input that is significant to the entire measurement. The group recognises transfers between levels of the fair value hierarchy at the end of the reporting period during which the change has occurred (Refer note 36 for information on detailed disclosures pertaining to measurement of fair values).
2.4 Statement of significant accounting policies
a. Property, plant and equipment
Recognition and measurement:
Items of property, plant and equipment, other than Freehold land, are measured at cost less accumulated depreciation and accumulated impairment losses, if any. Freehold land is carried at cost and is not depreciated.
The cost of an item of property, plant and equipment comprises:
a) its purchase price, including import duties and all purchase applicable taxes, after deducting trade discounts and rebates.
b) any directly attributable cost of bringing the asset to its location and condition necessary for it to be capable of operating in the manner intended by management.
c) the estimated costs of dismantling and removing the item and restoring the site on which it is located.
Income and expenses related to the incidental operations, not necessary to bring the item to the location and condition necessary for it to be capable of operating in the manner intended by management, are recognised in profit or loss.
If significant parts of an item of property, plant and equipment have different useful lives, then they are accounted and depreciated for as separate items (major components) of property, plant and equipment.
2)
Any gain or loss on derecognition of an item of property, plant and equipment is recognised in the Statement of Profit and Loss.
Capital work-in-progress in respect of assets which are not ready for their intended use are carried at cost, comprising of direct costs and related incidental expenses
Subsequent expenditure:
Subsequent costs are included in the assets carrying amount or recognized as a separate asset, as appropriate only if it is probable that the future economic benefits associated with the item will flow to the Group and that the cost of the item can be reliably measured. The carrying amount of any component accounted for as a separate asset is derecognized when replaced. All other repairs and maintenance are charged to profit and loss during the reporting period in which they are incurred.
b. Intangible assets
The cost of an intangible asset comprises of its purchase price, including any import duties and other taxes (other than those subsequently recoverable from the taxing authorities), and any directly attributable expenditure on making the asset ready for its intended use.
Technical know-how fees for new product development is amortised over the period not exceeding five years from the date of agreement with supplier of technology.
The estimated useful life of the intangible assets and the amortisation period are reviewed at the end of each financial year and the amortisation period is revised to reflect the changed pattern, if any.
Gains or losses arising from derecognition of an intangible asset are measured as the difference between the net disposal proceeds and the carrying amount of the asset and are recognized in the
Statement of Profit or Loss when the asset is derecognized.
c. Depreciation and amortisation
Depreciation is provided, under the Straight Line Method, pro rata to the period of use, based on useful lives specified in Schedule II to the Act, except for the following items where useful lives estimated by the management based on internal technical assessment, past trends and expected operational lives differ from those provided in Schedule II of the Act:
Leasehold land and leasehold improvements are amortised over the term of lease.
The key assets and related lives are:
Assets costing less than INR 5,000/- are fully depreciated in the year of purchase.
Amortisation in respect of all the intangible assets is provided on straight line method over the useful lives of assets.
d Impairment
The carrying values of assets at each Balance Sheet date are reviewed for impairment if any indication of impairment exists.
If the carrying amount of the assets exceed the estimated recoverable amount, an impairment is recognized for such excess amount. The impairment loss is recognized as an expense in the Statement of Profit and Loss, unless the asset is carried at revalued amount, in which case any impairment loss of the revalued asset is treated as a revaluation decrease to the extent a revaluation reserve is available for that asset.
The recoverable amount is the greater of the net selling price and their value in use. Value in use is arrived at by discounting the future cash flows to their present value based on an appropriate discount factor.
When there is indication that an impairment loss recognized for an asset (other than a revalued asset) in earlier accounting periods no longer exists or may have decreased, such reversal of impairment loss is recognized in the Statement of Profit and Loss, to the extent the amount was previously charged to the Statement of Profit and Loss. In case of revalued assets such reversal is not recognized.
e Inventories
Inventories are valued at the lower of cost and net realizable value. Net realizable value is the estimated selling price in the ordinary course of business, less estimated costs of completion and the estimated costs necessary to make the sale.
i) Raw materials and packing materials, components, stores and spares: Cost is determined on a moving weighted average basis. Stores and spares which do not meet the definition of property, plant and equipment are accounted as inventory.
ii) Work-in-progress and finished goods: Cost includes direct materials and labor and a proportion of manufacturing overheads based on normal operating capacity and other cost bringing the inventories at their present condition and location. Cost is determined on weighted average basis.
iii) Traded products: Cost includes cost of purchase and other costs incurred in bringing the inventories their present location and condition. Cost is determined on moving weighted average basis.
f Employee benefits
1) Short-term employee benefits
Defined contribution plans
The Group makes contribution towards provident fund, pension fund, superannuation fund and employee's state insurance contribution to a defined contribution retirement benefit plan for qualifying employees. Both the employee and the Group makes monthly contribution equal to a specified percentage of the covered employee's salary or a fixed monthly contribution. The monthly contributions payable by the Group are charged to the Interim Consolidated Statement of Profit and Loss as incurred.
Defined benefit plans
A defined benefit plan is a post-employment benefit plan other than a defined contribution plan. The Group's net obligation in respect of defined benefit plans is calculated separately for each plan by estimating the amount of future benefit that employees have earned in the current and prior periods, discounting that amount and deducting the fair value of any plan assets.
The calculation of defined benefit obligations is performed annually by a qualified actuary using the projected unit credit method. When the calculation results in a potential asset for the Group, the recognised asset is limited to the present value of economic benefits available in the form of any future refunds from the plan or reductions in future contributions to the plan. To calculate the present value of economic benefits, consideration is given to any applicable minimum funding requirements.
Remeasurement of the net defined benefit liability, which comprise actuarial gains and losses, the return on plan assets (excluding interest) and the effect of the asset ceiling (if any, excluding interest), are recognised immediately in other comprehensive income (OCI). Net interest expense (income) on the net defined liability (assets) is computed by applying the discount rate, used to measure the defined benefit obligation at the beginning of the annual period to the then-net defined liability (asset) after taking into account any changes as a result of contribution and benefit payments during the year. Net interest expense and other expenses related to gratuity benefit scheme are recognised in profit or loss.
When the benefits of a plan are changed or when a plan is curtailed, the resulting change in benefit that relates to past service or the gain or loss on curtailment is recognised immediately in profit or loss. The Group recognises gains and losses on the settlement of a defined benefit plan when the settlement occurs.
Short-term employee benefits
The undiscounted amount of short-term employee benefits expected to be paid in exchange for the services rendered by the employees is recognised during the period when the employee renders the service.
Other long-term benefits
Compensated absences which are not expected to occur within twelve months after the end of the period in which the employees renders the related services are recognised as a liability at the present value of the defined benefit obligation at the balance sheet date. Provision in respect of leave encashment benefits has been made based on actuarial valuation carried out by an independent actuary at the balance sheet date using Projected unit cost method.
g Foreign currency transactions
i.
Functional and Presentation currency The Group's interim consolidated financial statements are prepared in Indian Rupees (INR) which is also the Group's functional currency.
ii. Initial recognition
Foreign currency transactions are recorded on initial recognition in the functional currency using the exchange rate between the functional currency and the foreign currency at the date
of the transaction.
iii. Subsequent measurement
Monetary assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currencies are translated into the functional currency at the exchange rate at the reporting date. Non-monetary assets and liabilities that are measured at fair value in a foreign currency are translated into the functional currency at the exchange rate when the fair value was determined. Foreign currency differences are generally recognised in profit or loss. Non-monetary items that are measured based on historical cost in a foreign currency are not translated.
In respect of non-monetary items, where a gain or loss is recognized in other comprehensive income as required by other Ind AS, the exchange component of that gain or loss is also recognized in other comprehensive income.
iv. Group Companies
On consolidation, the assets and liabilities of foreign operations are translated into INR at the rate of exchange prevailing at the reporting date and their Interim Consolidated Statement of Profit and Loss are translated at average rate during the year. The exchange differences arising on translation for consolidation are recognized in other comprehensive income.
When a foreign operation is disposed of in its entirety or partially such that control, significant influence or joint control is lost, the cumulative amount of exchange differences related to that foreign operations recognized in OCI is reclassified to Interim Consolidated Statement of Profit and Loss as part of the gain or loss on disposal.
h Income taxes
Tax expense for the period comprises of current tax and deferred tax charge or credit. It is recognised in profit or loss except to the extent that it relates items recognised directly in equity or in OCI.
Current taxes
Current tax comprises the expected tax payable or receivable on the taxable income or loss for the period and any adjustment to the tax payable or receivable in respect of previous years. The amount of current tax reflects the best estimate of the tax amount expected to be paid or received after considering the uncertainty, if any, related to income taxes. It is measured using tax rates (and tax laws) enacted or substantively enacted by the reporting date. For the purpose of computing income taxes management has applied the annual effective tax rate on to the profit before tax for the period ended 30 September 2019.
Current tax assets and current tax liabilities are offset only if there is a legally enforceable right to set off the recognised amounts, and it is intended to realise the asset and settle the liability on a net basis or simultaneously.
Deferred taxes
Deferred tax is recognised in respect of temporary differences between the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities for financial reporting purposes and the corresponding amounts used for taxation purposes. Deferred tax is also recognised in respect of carried forward tax losses and tax credits. Deferred tax is not recognised for:
- temporary differences arising on the initial recognition of assets or liabilities in a transaction that is not a business combination and that affects neither accounting nor taxable profit or loss at the time of the transaction;
- taxable temporary differences arising on the initial recognition of goodwill.
Deferred tax assets are recognised to the extent that it is probable that future taxable profits will be available against which they can be used. The existence of unused tax losses is strong evidence that future taxable profit may not be available. Therefore, in case of a history of recent losses, the Group recognises a deferred tax asset only to the extent that it has sufficient taxable temporary differences or there is convincing other evidence that sufficient taxable profit will be available against which such deferred tax asset can be realised. Deferred tax assets - unrecognised or recognised, are reviewed at each reporting date and are recognised/reduced to the extent that it is probable/ no longer probable respectively that the related tax benefit will be realised.
Deferred tax is measured at the tax rates that are expected to apply to the period when the asset is realised or the liability is settled, based on the laws that have been enacted or substantively enacted by the reporting date.
The measurement of deferred tax reflects the tax consequences that would follow from the manner in which the Group expects, at the reporting date, to recover or settle the carrying amount of its assets and liabilities.
Deferred tax assets and liabilities are offset only if:
a) The Group has a legally enforceable right to set off current tax assets against current tax liabilities; and
b) The deferred tax assets and the deferred tax liabilities relate to income taxes levied by the same taxation authority on the same taxable entity.
i Earnings per share
The basic earnings per equity share ('EPS') is computed by dividing the net profit or loss for the period attributable to the equity shareholders by the weighted average number of equity shares outstanding during the reporting period. Diluted EPS is computed by dividing the net profit attributable to the equity shareholders for the year by the weighted average number of equity and dilutive equity equivalent shares outstanding during the year, except where the results would be anti-dilutive.
j
Provisions and contingencies
The Group creates a provision when there is present obligation as a result of a past event that probably requires an outflow of resources embodying economic benefits and a reliable estimate can be made of the amount of the obligation. A disclosure for a contingent liability is made when there is a possible obligation or a present obligation that may, but probably will not, require an outflow of resources. When there is a possible obligation or a present obligation in respect of which the likelihood of outflow of resources is remote, no provision or disclosure is made. Provisions are reviewed at each Balance Sheet date and adjusted to reflect the current best estimate.
If the effect of the time value of money is material, provisions are discounted using a current pre-tax rate that reflects, when appropriate, the risks specific to the liability. When discounting is used, the increase in the provision due to the passage of time is recognised as a finance cost.
k Research and development
Research costs are expensed as incurred. Development expenditure incurred on an individual project is carried forward when its future recoverability can reasonably be regarded as assured. Any expenditure carried forward is amortised over the period expected future sales from the related project, not exceeding ten years.
l Cash and cash equivalents
In Cash flow statement, cash and cash equivalents includes cash in hand, bank balances, term deposits with banks and other short term highly liquid investments with original maturities within three months or less.
m Revenue Recognition
i. Sale of goods
Revenue from sale of goods is recognised when control of the products being sold is transferred to the customers and when there are no longer any unfulfilled obligations. The Performance Obligations in the contracts are fulfilled at the time of dispatch, delivery or upon formal customer acceptance depending on customer terms.
Revenue is measured at transaction price, after deduction of any trade discounts, volume rebates and any taxes or duties collected on behalf of the government such as goods and services tax, etc. Accumulated experience is used to estimate the provision for such discounts and rebates. Revenue is only recognised to the extent that it is highly probable a significant reversal will not occur. Our customers have the contractual right to return goods only when authorised by the Group. An estimate is made of goods that will be returned and a liability is recognised for this amount using a best estimate based on accumulated experience.
ii. Other income
a. Interest income is recognized on a time proportion basis taking into account the amount outstanding and the effective rate of interest.
b. Revenue in respect of insurance/other claims, Interest etc., is recognised only when it is reasonably certain that the ultimate collection will be made.
c. Dividend income is recognised in profit or loss on the date on which right to receive the payment is established.
iii. Sale of services
Revenue from services contracts are recognized pro-rata over the period of the contract as and when services are rendered and are net of service tax.
n Financial Instruments
A financial instrument is any contract that gives rise to a financial asset of one entity and a financial liability or equity instrument of another entity. Financial instruments also include derivative contracts such as foreign currency foreign exchange forward contracts.
i. Financial assets
Classification
The Group classifies financial assets as subsequently measured at amortised cost, fair value through other comprehensive income or fair value through profit or loss on the basis of its business model for managing the financial assets and the contractual cash flow characteristics of the financial asset.
Initial recognition and measurement
All financial assets are recognised initially at fair value plus, in the case of financial assets not recorded at fair value through profit or loss, transaction costs that are attributable to the acquisition
4
of the financial asset. Purchases or sales of financial assets that require delivery of assets within a time frame established by regulation or convention in the market place (regular way trades) are recognised on the trade date, i.e., the date that the Group commits to purchase or sell the asset.
Debt instruments at amortised cost
A 'debt instrument' is measured at the amortised cost if both the following conditions are met:
a) The asset is held within a business model whose objective is to hold assets for collecting contractual cash flows, and
b) Contractual terms of the asset give rise on specified dates to cash flows that are solely payments of principal and interest (SPPI) on the principal amount outstanding.
After initial measurement, such financial assets are subsequently measured at amortised cost using the effective interest rate (EIR) method. Amortised cost is calculated by taking into account any discount or premium on acquisition and fees or costs that are an integral part of the EIR. The EIR amortisation is included in finance income in the profit or loss. The losses arising from impairment are recognised in the profit or loss. This category generally applies to trade and other receivables.
Impairment of financial assets
Financial assets of the Group comprise of trade receivable and other receivables consisting of debt instruments e.g., loans, debt securities, deposits, and bank balance. Trade and other receivables are recognised initially at fair value and subsequently measured at amortised cost using the effective interest method, less provision for impairment. An impairment loss for trade and other receivables is established when there is objective evidence that the Group will not be able to collect all amounts due according to the original terms of the receivables. Impairment losses if any, are recognised in Interim Consolidated Statement of Profit or Loss for the period.
Equity Investments:
All equity investments are measured at fair value. Equity instruments, which are held for trading are classified as at FVTPL. For equity instruments other than held for trading, the Group has exercised irrevocable option to recognise in other comprehensive income subsequent changes in the fair value.
Equity instruments included within the FVTPL category are measured at fair value with all changes recognized in the Statement of Profit and Loss.
ii. Financial liabilities
Classification
The Group classifies all financial liabilities as subsequently measured at amortised cost, except for financial liabilities at fair value through profit or loss. Such liabilities, including derivatives which are liabilities, shall be subsequently measured at fair value.
Initial recognition and measurement
All financial liabilities are recognised initially at fair value and, in the case of loans and borrowings and payables, net of directly attributable and incremental transaction cost. Amortised cost is calculated by taking into account any discount or premium on acquisition and fees or costs that are an integral part of the EIR. The EIR amortisation is included as finance costs in the Consolidated statement of profit and loss. The Group's financial liabilities include trade and other payables, loans and borrowings including bank overdrafts, financial guarantee contracts and derivative financial instruments.
Derecognition
A financial liability is derecognised when the obligation under the liability is discharged or cancelled or expires. When an existing financial liability is replaced by another from the same lender on substantially different terms, or the terms of an existing liability are substantially modified, such an exchange or modification is treated as the derecognition of the original liability and the recognition of a new liability. The difference in the respective carrying amounts is recognised in the Interim Consolidated Statement of Profit and Loss.
Derivative financial instruments
The Group uses derivative financial instruments, such as forward currency contracts, to hedge its foreign currency risks. Such derivative financial instruments are initially recognised at fair value on the date on which a derivative contract is entered into and are subsequently re-measured at fair value. Derivatives are carried as financial assets when the fair value is positive and as financial liabilities when the fair value is negative. Any gains or losses arising from changes in the fair value of derivatives are taken directly to Interim Consolidated Statement of Profit and Loss.
Offsetting of financial instruments
Financial assets and financial liabilities are offset and the net amount is reported in the Interim Consolidated Balance Sheet if there is a currently enforceable legal right to offset the recognised amounts and there is an intention to settle on a net basis, to realise the assets and settle the liabilities simultaneously.
o Impairment of non-financial assets
The carrying values of assets/cash generating units at each balance sheet date are reviewed for impairment if any indication of impairment exists. If the carrying amount of the assets exceed the estimated recoverable amount, an impairment is recognised for such excess amount.
The recoverable amount is the greater of the net selling price and their value in use. Value in use is arrived at by discounting the future cash flows to their present value based on an appropriate discount factor.
When there is indication that an impairment loss recognised for an asset (other than a revalued asset) in earlier accounting periods which no longer exists or may have decreased, such reversal of impairment loss is recognised in the interim consolidated statement of profit and loss, to the extent the amount was previously charged to the statement of profit and loss. In case of revalued assets, such reversal is not recognised.
p Borrowing Cost
Borrowing costs include interest, amortization of ancillary costs incurred and exchange differences arising from foreign currency borrowings to the extent they are regarded as an adjustment to the interest cost. Cost in connection with the borrowing of funds to the extent not directly related to the acquisition of qualifying assets are charged to the Consolidated Statement of profit and loss over the tenure of the loan. Borrowing costs, allocated to and utilised for qualifying assets, pertaining to the period from commencement of activities relating to construction/development of the qualifying asset up to the date of capitalisation of such asset are added to the cost of the assets. Capitalisation of borrowing costs is suspended and charged to the interim consolidated Statement of profit and loss during extended periods when active development activity on the qualifying assets is interrupted.
q Dividend
The Group recognises a liability for any dividend declared but not distributed at the end of the reporting period, when the distribution is authorised and the distribution is no longer at the discretion of the Group on or before the end of the reporting period. As per Corporate laws in India, a distribution in the nature of final dividend is authorized when it is approved by the shareholders. A corresponding amount is recognized directly in equity.
r. Leases
The Group evaluates if an arrangement qualifies to be a lease as per the requirements of Ind AS 116. Identification of a lease requires significant judgment. The Group uses significant judgment in assessing the lease term (including anticipated renewals) and the applicable discount rate.
The Group determines the lease term as the non-cancellable period of a lease, together with both periods covered by an option to extend the lease if the Group is reasonably certain to exercise that option; and periods covered by an option to terminate the lease if the Group is reasonably certain not to exercise that option. In assessing whether the Group is reasonably certain to exercise an option to extend a lease, or not to exercise an option to terminate a lease, it considers all relevant facts and circumstances that create an economic incentive for the Group to exercise the option to extend the lease, or not to exercise the option to terminate the lease. The Group revises the lease term if there is a change in the non-cancellable period of a lease.
The discount rate is generally based on the incremental borrowing rate specific to the lease being evaluated or for a portfolio of lease with similar characteristics.
s. Segmental reporting
The Operating Segment is the level at which discrete financial information is available. Business segments are identified considering:
a. the nature of product and services
b. the differing risks and returns
c. the internal organisation and management structure, and
d. the internal financial reporting systems
Revenue and expenses directly attributable to segments are reported under each reportable segment. Exceptional items and other expenses which are not attributable or allocable to segments are disclosed as unallocable. Assets and liabilities that are directly attributable or allocable to segments are disclosed under each reportable segment. Assets and liabilities that are directly attributable or allocable to segments are disclosed under each reportable segment. All other assets and liabilities are disclosed as unallocable.
t. Common control business combinations
Business combinations arising from transfers of interests in entities that are under the control of the shareholder that controls the Company are accounted for as if the acquisition had occurred at the beginning of the earliest comparative period presented or, if later, at the date that common control was established; for this purpose comparatives are revised. The assets and liabilities acquired are recognised at their carrying amounts. The identity of the reserves is preserved and they appear in the Consolidated financial statements of the Group in the same form in which they appeared in the Interim Consolidated financial statements of the acquired entity. The difference, if any, between the consideration and the amount of share capital of the acquired entity is transferred in capital reserve.
Note 3: Property, plant and equipment
Note 12b : Bank balances other than cash and cash equivalents
* These balances are not available for use by the Group as they represent corresponding unclaimed dividend liabilities.
Note 13 : Current loans
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Security deposits | |
| Considered good - Unsecured | 24.69 |
| Security deposits which have significant increase in credit risk | - |
| Security deposits - credit impaired | 2.71 |
| Less: Provision for doubtful security deposits | (2.71) |
| Loans to employees | |
| Considered good - Unsecured | 16.79 |
| Loans to employees which have significant increase in credit risk | - |
| Loans to employees - credit impaired | 0.43 |
| Less: Provision for doubtful loans | (0.43) |
| Earnest money deposit | 5.25 |
| Others | 1.19 |
| Other receivables | |
| Total | 47.92 |
| Particulars | Gross Block | | | | Accumulated Depreciation | | | | Net Block |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | As at 1 April 2019 | Additions | Disposals | As at 30 September 2019 | As at 1 April 2019 | Charge for the period | Deduction during the period | As at 30 September 2019 | As at 30 September 2019 |
| Land - Freehold | 117.62 | - | - | 117.62 | - | - | - | - | 117.62 |
| Leasehold land | 163.41 | - | - | 163.41 | 7.38 | 1.23 | - | 8.61 | 154.80 |
| Factory road | 3.17 | 0.32 | - | 3.49 | 1.62 | 0.28 | - | 1.90 | 1.59 |
| Buildings | 678.78 | 9.67 | - | 688.45 | 88.85 | 22.44 | - | 111.29 | 577.16 |
| Plant & Machinery | 2,093.40 | 156.72 | 0.73 | 2,249.39 | 387.91 | 92.56 | 0.38 | 480.09 | 1,769.30 |
| Furniture and fixtures | 54.67 | 2.83 | - | 57.50 | 22.74 | 3.16 | - | 25.90 | 31.60 |
| Vehicles | 79.30 | 6.10 | 3.07 | 82.33 | 21.08 | 6.72 | 1.82 | 25.98 | 56.35 |
| Office equipments | 61.74 | 2.63 | 0.48 | 63.89 | 22.52 | 4.34 | 0.45 | 26.41 | 37.48 |
| Leasehold improvements | 8.46 | 20.75 | - | 29.21 | 7.01 | 1.07 | - | 8.08 | 21.13 |
| Electrical installations | 71.40 | - | - | 71.40 | 23.65 | - | - | 23.65 | 47.75 |
| Laboratory equipments | 31.47 | - | - | 31.47 | 9.01 | - | - | 9.01 | 22.46 |
Note 4: Right - of - use assets
| Particulars | Gross Block | | | | Accumulated Depreciation | | | | Net Block |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | As at 1 April 2019 | Additions | Disposals | As at 30 September 2019 | As at 1 April 2019 | Charge for the year | Deduction during the period | As at 30 September 2019 | As at 30 September 2019 |
| Building | - | 298.48 | - | 298.48 | - | 39.23 | - | 39.23 | 259.25 |
| Vehicles | - | 55.95 | - | 55.95 | - | 5.80 | - | 5.80 | 50.15 |
| | - | 354.43 | - | 354.43 | - | 45.03 | - | 45.03 | 309.40 |
Note 14 : Other current financial assets
Note 5: Other Intangible assets
| | As at 1 April 2019 | Additions | Disposals | As at 30 September 2019 | As at 1 April 2019 | Charge for the period | Deduction during the period | As at 30 September 2019 | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data registration expenses | 66.89 | - | - | 66.89 | 48.92 | 5.22 | - | 54.14 | 12.75 |
| Software/License and Registration | 12.3 | 0.73 | - | 13.03 | 8.92 | 0.88 | - | 9.8 | 3.23 |
| Technical Know-how | 9.45 | - | - | 9.45 | 9.45 | - | - | 9.45 | - |
Note 15 : Other current assets
Note 6: Non current investments
Note 16: Share Capital
Number of shares
As at 30
September 2019
494,000,000
494,000,000
274,588,095
Authorised
Equity shares of` 10 each
Issued, subscribed and paid-up:
Equity shares of ` 10 each, fully paid-up
Amount
As at 30
September 2019
4,940.00
4,940.00
2,745.88
274,588,095
2,745.88
a) Reconciliation of number of shares outstanding at the beginning and end of the year
| | Number |
|---|---|
| Equity shares | |
| At the commencement of the year | 274,588,095 |
| Equity shares issued during the year | - |
b) Particulars of shareholders holding more than 5% of a class of shares
| Name of shareholder | Relationship | |
|---|---|---|
| | | No. of Shares |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited, Japan | Holding Company | 274,588,093 |
| | | Numbers | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| | | As at 30 September 2019 | As at 30 September 2019 |
| A | Investments at Fair value through Profit or loss | | |
| | Investments in Equity Instruments | | |
| | Investments in Other entities (Quoted) | | |
| | Tata Steel Limited Face Value of ` 10 each fully paid-up | 393 | 0.14 |
| | Tata Steel Limited Face Value of ` 10 each partly paid-up | 27 | - |
| | Investments in Other entities (Unquoted) | | |
| | Investment in co-operative societies | 9132 | 1.17 |
| B | Investments stated at Amortised cost | | |
| | Investments in Government securities (Unquoted) | | |
| | National Saving Certificates Face Value ` 0.03 million | | 0.03 |
| | Total | | 1.34 |
| | Aggregate Market Value of Quoted Investments | | 0.14 |
| | Aggregate amount of Quoted Investments | | 0.14 |
| | Aggregate amount of Unquoted Investments | | 1.20 |
| | Aggregate amount of impairment in value of investments | | - |
Note 7: Non current loans
| Security deposits | 78.54 |
|---|---|
| Loans to employees | 6.98 |
| Total | 85.52 |
| Sub-classification of Loans: | |
| Loan Receivables considered good- Secured | - |
| Loan Receivables considered good- Unsecured | 85.52 |
| Loan Receivables which have significant increase in Credit Risk | - |
| Loan Receivables - credit impaired | - |
c) Particulars of shares held by holding company and fellow subsidiary
| | | No. of Shares |
|---|---|---|
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited, Japan* | Holding Company | 274,588,093 |
| SC Environmental Science Co. Ltd, Japan | Fellow Subsidiary | 2 |
| | | 274,588,095 |
Note 8 : Other non-current assets
*Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited, Japan is beneficial owner of five shares of the Company and have nominated five shareholders for each such share.
| Capital advances | 50.79 |
|---|---|
| Prepaid expenses | 2.02 |
| Total | 52.81 |
Note 9 : Inventories
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Raw Materials | 1,928.46 |
| Work-in-progress | 182.91 |
| Finished Goods | 2,736.69 |
| Stock-in-Trade | 367.54 |
| Containers and Packing Materials | 224.67 |
| Stores and Spares (including Fuel) | 26.73 |
| Total | 5,467.00 |
Note 10 : Current Investments
| Investment carried at fair value through Profit and Loss account | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Mutual fund | 687.5 |
d) Terms/rights attached to equity shares
The Company has a single class of equity shares. Accordingly, all equity shares rank equally with regard to dividends and share in the Company's residual assets. The equity shares are entitled to receive dividend as declared from time to time. The voting rights of an equity shareholder are in proportion to its share of the paid-up equity capital of the Company. Voting rights cannot be exercised in respect of shares on which any call or other sums presently payable have not been paid. On winding up of the company, the holders of equity shares will be entitled to receive the residual assets of the company, remaining after distribution of all preferential amounts in proportion to the number of equity shares held.
e)
f)
The above disclosures, are without giving effect to the further issuance of equity shares. Also, the authorised share capital of the Group will be increased by the authorised share capital of ECCL
pursuant to the Scheme of Amalgamation. (Refer note 43).
Dividend on Equity Share declared and paid during the period 01 April 2019 to 30 September 2019
| | 01 April 2019 to 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Interim dividend paid on 274,588,095 shares @ ` 0.22 per share on equity shares of ` 10 each | 60.41 |
| Dividend distribution tax on interim dividend above | 12.42 |
| Interim dividend paid on 11,005,630 shares @ ` 6.25 per share on equity shares of ` 5 each | 55.04 |
| Dividend distribution tax on interim dividend above | 14 |
Note 11: Trade Receivable
141.87
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Trade Receivables considered good- Unsecured | 10,389.63 |
| Trade Receivables – credit impaired | 399.50 |
| | 10,789.13 |
| Less: Allowance for expected credit loss | 399.50 |
Note: There are no outstanding trade receivables which resulted into significant increase in credit risk apart from receivables which are impaired and provided. Refer note 36 for information about credit risk and marker risk of trade receivables.
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Balance with banks : | |
| In current account | 675.71 |
| In deposit accounts (with original maturity of less than three months) | 250.00 |
| Cash on hand | 0.46 |
| Total | 926.17 |
| Dividend on equity shares not recognised as liability | |
|---|---|
| Proposed Final dividend on 499,145,376 shares @ ` 0.20 per share on equity shares of ` 10 each | 99.83 |
| Dividend distribution tax on final dividend | 20.52 |
| | 120.35 |
Note 17: Other equity
A. Summary of Other equity balance
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| General reserve | 518.14 |
| Securities premium | 2,350.60 |
| Foreign Currency Translation Reserve | |
| Balance as per last financial statements | 21.71 |
| Add/(Less) : Exchange difference during the year on account of net investments in Non-integral foreign operations | 0.44 |
| Closing balance | 22.15 |
|---|---|
| Share pending issuance (Refer note 43) | 2,245.58 |
| Retained earnings | |
| Balance at the beginning of the period | 2,602.05 |
| Additions during the year: | |
| Profit for the period | 1,811.11 |
| Other comprehensive income for the period, net of tax | (5.29) |
| Reductions during the year: | |
| Dividends | (115.52) |
| Income Tax on dividend | (26.42) |
| Net surplus of retained earnings | 4,265.93 |
B. Nature and purpose of each reserves
1. General Reserve
The General Reserve comprises of transfer of profits from retained earnings for appropriation purposes. The reserve can be distributed/utilised by the Company in accordance with the Companies Act, 2013.
Securities Premium
The amount received in excess of face value of the equity shares is recognised in Securities Premium.
The Securities Premium is utilised in accordance with the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013.
Share pending issuance
Share pending issuance represents shares to be issued for pursuant to merger of Excel Crop Care
Limited with the Company (Refer note 43).
4. Retained Earnings
Retained earnings are the profits that the Company has earned till date, less any transfers to general reserve, dividends or other distributions paid to shareholders.
Note 18 : Non-current lease liabilities
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Liability towards lease asset | 178.28 |
| | 178.28 |
Note 19 : Non current provisions
| Provision for employee benefits | |
|---|---|
| Compensated absences | 159.32 |
| Gratuity (Refer note 38) | 7.29 |
| Total | 166.61 |
Note 20 : Trade payables
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Due to micro enterprises and small enterprises (Refer note 40) | 85.66 |
| Due to others | 7,508.53 |
| Total | 7,594.19 |
Note 21: Current lease liabilities
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Liability towards lease asset | 138.66 |
Note 22: Other current financial liabilities
Salary, wages and bonus payable
Security and trade deposits
Unclaimed dividend
Derivative financial liabilities - forward contracts
Total
As at 30 September 2019
328.01
304.10
8.84
6.34
647.29
Note 23: Other current liabilities
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Contract liabilities (advance received from customers) | 143.22 |
| Statutory dues (including provident fund, tax deducted at source and others) | 195.47 |
| Other payables | 47.53 |
| Total | 386.22 |
Note 24: Current provisions
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Provision for employee benefits | |
| Compensated absences | 28.23 |
| Gratuity (Refer note 38) | 21.52 |
| Total | 49.75 |
Note 25: Revenue from Operations
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| A. Sale of products | 14,432.62 |
| B. Sale of services | 0.88 |
| C. Other operating revenue | |
| a) Export incentives | 95.93 |
| b) Miscellaneous receipts | 15.79 |
| Total | 14,545.22 |
a. Revenue information
| Revenue by product categories | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Agro Chemicals | 13,210.18 |
| Industrial Chemical | 1,125.54 |
| Public Health | 96.90 |
b. Reconciliation of the amount of revenue recognised in the Interim consolidated Statement of Profit and Loss with the contracted price
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Revenue as per contracted price | 16,771.65 |
| Rebates/Discounts | (2,009.96) |
| Sales returns | (329.07) |
| Revenue from contract with customers | 14,432.62 |
c. Contract Balances
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Trade receivables (Note 11) | 10,389.63 |
| Contract assets (Note 15) | 9.67 |
Note: Contract assets represents right to receive the inventory (on estimated sales returns) and contract
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Interest income | |
| On national savings certificates and bank deposit carried at amortised cost | 23.59 |
5
(Contd.)
2.
3.
| On interest income on security deposits | 0.57 |
|---|---|
| Dividend income | |
| On mutual fund investments | 3.80 |
| Other non operating income | |
| Rent received | 0.05 |
| Excess provision no longer required written back | 14.38 |
| Miscellaneous income | 15.68 |
Note 27: Cost of materials consumed
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Raw materials consumed | |
| Opening Inventory | 1,888.79 |
| Add: Purchases (Net) | 6,407.38 |
| | 8,296.17 |
| Less: Closing Inventory | 1,928.46 |
| | 6,367.71 |
| Containers and packing materials consumed | |
| Opening Inventory | 295.72 |
| Add: Purchases (Net) | 741.76 |
| | 1,037.48 |
| Less: Closing Inventory | 224.67 |
| | 812.81 |
| Total cost of materials consumed | 7,180.52 |
(ii) Deferred Tax related to items recognised in other comprehensive income
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| On remeasurements of the defined benefit plans | 0.1 |
B. Reconciliation of effective tax rate
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Profit before tax | 2,242.04 |
| Statutory Income Tax Rate | 25.168% |
| Expected Income tax Expenses | 564.28 |
| Tax effect of: | |
| Others (Including Impact of change in rate) | (101.93) |
| Tax expense as per profit or loss | 462.35 |
| Adjustment in respect of current income tax of previous year | (31.42) |
The Group elected to exercise the option permitted under section 115BAA of the Income-tax Act, 1961 as introduced by the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2019 for the purpose of this interim consolidated financial statements. Accordingly, the Group has recognized Provision for Income Tax for the six months ended 30 September 2019 and re-measured its Deferred Tax Liabilities basis the rate prescribed in the said section. The full impact of this change has been recognized in the Statement of Profit & Loss for the period ended 30 September 2019.
C. The major components of deferred tax (liabilities)/assets arising on account of temporary differences are as follows:
Note 28: Changes in inventories of finished goods, work in progress and stock-in-trade
| Opening Inventories : | |
|---|---|
| Work in progress | 331.37 |
| Finished goods | 4,231.58 |
| Stock-in-Trade | 34.85 |
| Less: Closing Inventories: | |
| Work in progress (Refer note 9) | 182.91 |
| Finished goods (Refer note 9) | 2,736.69 |
| Stock-in-Trade (Refer note 9) | 367.55 |
| Changes In Inventories: | |
| Work in progress | 148.46 |
| Finished goods | 1,494.89 |
| Stock-in-Trade | (332.70) |
Note 29 : Employee benefits expense
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Salaries, wages and bonus etc. | 777.97 |
| Contribution to provident and other funds (Refer note 38) | 46.62 |
| Gratuity expense (Refer note 38) | 13.84 |
| Staff welfare expenses | 43.64 |
| Depreciation | (403.57) | 92.74 | - | (310.83) | - | (310.83) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provision for doubtful debts and advances | 127.36 | (23.04) | - | 104.32 | 104.32 | - |
| Fair value gain/(loss) on investments | (0.01) | 0.01 | - | - | - | - |
| Expenses allowable for tax purposes when paid | 90.95 | (21.62) | 0.10 | 69.43 | 69.43 | - |
| Amortisation of expenses u/s 35 DD | - | 69.97 | - | 69.97 | 69.97 | - |
| Other temporary differences | 39.34 | 12.43 | - | 51.77 | 51.77 | - |
| Deferred tax liabilities (net) | (145.93) | 130.49 | 0.10 | (15.34) | 295.49 | (310.83) |
The Group offsets tax assets and liabilities if and only if it has a legally enforceable right to set off current tax assets and current tax liabilities and the deferred tax assets and deferred tax liabilities relate to income taxes levied by the same tax authority.
The Group does not have any intention to dispose of its freehold and leasehold land in the foreseeable future, therefore, deferred tax asset on indexation benefit in relation to these assets has not been recognized. The Group elected to exercise the option permitted under section 115BAA of the Income-tax Act, 1961 as introduced by the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2019. Accordingly, the Group has recognized Provision for Income Tax for the six months ended 30 September 2019 and re-measured its Deferred Tax Liabilities basis the rate prescribed in the said section. The full impact of this change has been recognized in the Statement of Profit & Loss for the period ended 30 September 2019.
Note 33 : Earnings per share (EPS)
Basic EPS amounts are calculated by dividing the profit for the year attributable to owners of the Group by the weighted average number of equity shares outstanding during the period.
For the purpose of calculating diluted earnings per share, the net profit for the period attributable to equity shareholders and the weighted average number of shares outstanding during the period is adjusted for the effects of all dilutive potential equity shares. There are no dilutive impacts, therefore Basic EPS and Diluted EPS is same.
Note 30 : Finance costs
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Interest on leased liabilities | 16.83 |
| Others | 12.78 |
Note 31 : Other expenses
| | For the period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Other expenses | |
| Processing/Sub-contracting charges | 142.00 |
| Contract and labour charges | 105.28 |
| Carriage and freight | 176.19 |
| Power and fuel | 138.14 |
| Stores and spares consumed | 31.54 |
| Repairs and maintenance | |
| Buildings | 2.94 |
| Plant and equipment | 81.48 |
| Others | 25.65 |
| Rent | 40.79 |
| Rates and taxes | 0.05 |
| Insurance | 22.22 |
| Travelling and conveyance | 157.93 |
| Sales promotion and advertisement | 299.56 |
| Donations | 0.87 |
| Commission | 37.44 |
| Corporate social responsibility (Refer note 41) | 21.47 |
| Provision for doubtful debts | 39.02 |
| Bad debts written off | 2.42 |
| Directors sitting fees | 0.41 |
| Property, plant and equipment written off | 1.20 |
| Exchange difference (net) | 22.91 |
| Research and development | 4.37 |
| Product testing expenses | 21.40 |
| Communication expenses | 9.59 |
| Legal and professional fees | 50.70 |
| Bank charges | 8.25 |
| Payment to auditors | 3.51 |
| Security charges | 9.81 |
| Net loss on sale of property, plant and equipment | - |
| Merger related cost | 40.59 |
| Miscellaneous expenses | 154.27 |
| | 1,652.00 |
Note 32 : Income taxes
A. The major components of Income tax expenses for the year is as under:
(i) Income tax recognized in the Statement of Profit and Loss:
| | Period ended 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Sale of Goods (Net of rebate and discount) | |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited | 462.03 |
| Sumitomo Chemical Asia Pte Limited | 0.90 |
| Agrocel Industries Private Limited | 13.24 |
| Transchem Agritech | 0.09 |
| Sale of Services | |
| Agrocel Industries Private Limited | 1.48 |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited | 0.88 |
| Purchase of Goods | |
| Agrocel Industries Private Limited | 296.02 |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited | 1,242.58 |
| Valent BioSciences LLC | 364.88 |
| Mycorrhizal Applications, LLC | 42.59 |
| Transpek Industry Ltd | 0.23 |
| Purchase of Services | |
| Sumitomo Chemical Do Brazil Representacoes Ltda (Brazil) | 5.46 |
| Kanga & Company | 0.31 |
| Commission Income | |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited | 0.98 |
| Miscellaneous Income - Technical Service | |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited | 9.81 |
| Reimbursement of expenses (net) | |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited | 15.13 |
| Valent BioSciences LLC | (5.09) |
| Sumitomo Chemical Asia Pte Limited | 6.31 |
| Mycorrhizal Applications, LLC | (5.09) |
| Commission Expense | |
| Excel Crop Care (Africa) Limited | 9.51 |
| Contribution to Funds | |
| Excel Crop Care Superannuation Trust | 8.41 |
| Advances paid | |
| Excel Crop Care Gratuity Trust | 5.22 |
| Dividend Received | |
| Excel Crop Care (Africa) Limited | 1.24 |
| Dividend paid | |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited, Japan | 91.35 |
| Remuneration | |
| Chetan Shah | 15.45 |
| Ninad D Gupte | 10.43 |
| Akira Harada | 0.59 |
| Sushil Marfatia | 10.85 |
| Kiyoshi Takayama | 8.30 |
| Hisayuki Hoshi | 3.68 |
| Anil Nawal | 5.48 |
| Pravin D Desai | 4.26 |
| Rasika Kulkarni | 0.99 |
| Retainership fees | |
| Ninad Gupte | 2.19 |
Note 34: Capital Management
The Group's policy is to maintain a strong capital base so as to maintain creditor and market confidence and to sustain future development of the business. Management monitors the return on capital as well as the level of dividends to ordinary shareholders.
For the purpose of the Group's capital management, capital includes issued capital and all other equity reserves attributable to the equity shareholders of the Group. The primary objective of the Group when managing capital is to safeguard its ability to continue as a going concern.
The Group has adequate cash and bank balances. The Group monitors its capital by a careful scrutiny of the cash and bank balances, and a regular assessment of any debt requirements.
Note 35: Related Party disclosures
A)
Names of the related parties where control exists irrespective of whether transactions have occurred or not:
(1) Holding Company
Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited, Japan
(2) Post Employment Benefit Plans entity
Excel Crop Care Gratuity Trust
Excel Crop Care Superannuation Trust
Names of other related parties with whom transactions have taken place during the period:
(1) Fellow Subsidiaries
Valent BioSciences LLC - USA (Previously Known as Valent Biosciences Corporation)
Sumitomo Chemical Do Brazil Representacoes Ltda (Brazil)
Sumitomo Chemical Asia Pte Limited - Singapore (Previously known as Sumitomo Chemical
(Asia Pacific) Pte Limited - Singapore)
Mycorrhizal Applications, LLC - USA
SC Environmental Science Co Ltd, Japan
(2) Key Management Personnel
(i) Executive Directors
Chetan Shah (Managing Director)
Kiyoshi Takayama (Executive Director - Planning and Coordination Office)
Akira Harada - (Executive Director) (resigned w.e.f. 10 May 2019)
Sushil Marfatia (Executive Director)
Hisayuki Hoshi (Whole time Director) (10 May 2019 to 31 August 2019)
(ii) Non Executive Directors
Dr. Mukul G. Asher
B. V. Bhargava
Tadashi Katayama
Preeti Mehta
Dipesh K Shroff
Ninad D Gupte (Joint Managing Director upto 31 August 2019)
(iii) Chief Financial Officer
Anil Nawal
(iv) Company Secretary
Pravin D Desai
Rasika Kulkarni (resigned w.e.f. 31 August 2019)
(v) Relatives of Key Management Personnel
Mrs. Minoti Ninad Gupte (Wife of Ninad Gupte)
(vi) Enterprises controlled by key management personnel and their relatives:
Agrocel Industries Private Limited
Transchem Agritech Limited
Transpek Industry Limited
Kanga & Company
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Trade Receivables | |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited | 93.80 |
| Agrocel Industries Private Limited | 8.59 |
| Trade Payables | |
| Agrocel Industries Private Limited | 36.05 |
| Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited | 1,420.86 |
| Valent BioSciences LLC | 361.61 |
| Mycorrhizal Applications, LLC | 42.59 |
| Transpek Industry Ltd | 0.07 |
| Advance from Customer | |
Disclosures of transactions between the Group and the Related parties and the status of outstanding
Outstanding as at 30 September 2019:
Terms and conditions of transactions with related parties
All Related Party Transactions entered during the period were in ordinary course of the business and are on arm's length basis.
For the period ended 30 September, 2019, the Group has not recorded any impairment of receivables relating to amounts owed by related parties. This assessment is undertaken each financial year through examining the financial position of the related party and the market in which the related party operates.
The above remuneration to Key Management personnel compensation excludes provision for gratuity and compensated absences, since these are provided on the basis of an actuarial valuation of the Group's liability to all its employees.
Note 36: Financial Instruments
A. Accounting classification and fair values
Carrying amounts and fair values of financial assets and financial liabilities, including their levels in the fair value hierarchy, are presented below. It does not include the fair value information for financial assets and financial liabilities not measured at fair value if the carrying amount is a reasonable approximation of fair value.
| | Carrying amount/Fair Value | | | | Fair value Hierarchy | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| As at 30 September 2019 | FVTPL | FVTOCI | Amortised Cost | Total | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Total |
| Financial assets | | | | | | | | |
| Non-current | | | | | | | | |
| Investments | | | | | | | | |
| Equity Instruments in Tata Steel Limited | 0.14 | - | - | 0.14 | 0.14 | - | - | 0.14 |
| Equity instrument in Co-operative Societies | 1.17 | - | - | 1.17 | - | 1.17 | - | 1.17 |
| Government Securities | - | - | 0.03 | 0.03 | - | - | - | - |
| Loans | - | - | 85.52 | 85.52 | - | - | - | - |
| Current | | | | | | | | |
| Investment in mutual fund | 687.50 | - | - | 687.50 | 687.50 | | | 687.50 |
| Trade receivables | - | - | 10,389.63 | 10,389.63 | - | - | - | - |
| Cash and cash equivalents | - | - | 926.17 | 926.17 | - | - | - | - |
| Other bank balances | - | - | 8.92 | 8.92 | - | - | - | - |
| Loans | - | - | 47.92 | 47.92 | - | - | - | - |
| Derivative Assets | 11.93 | - | - | 11.93 | - | 11.93 | - | 11.93 |
| Export incentives receivable | - | - | 87.29 | 87.29 | - | - | - | - |
| Other financial assets | - | - | 12.59 | 12.59 | - | - | - | - |
| | 700.74 | - | 11,558.07 | 12,258.81 | 687.64 | 13.10 | - | 700.74 |
(Contd.)
B)
6
| | Carrying amount/Fair Value | | | | Fair value Hierarchy | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| As at 30 September 2019 | FVTPL | FVTOCI | Amortised Cost | Total | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Total |
| Financial liabilities | | | | | | | | |
| Non current | | | | | | | | |
| Liability towards lease asset | | | 178.28 | 178.28 | | | | |
| Current | | | | | | | | |
| Trade payables | - | - | 7,594.19 | 7,594.19 | - | - | - | - |
| Liability towards lease asset | | | 138.66 | 138.66 | | | | |
| Derivative liabilities | 6.34 | - | - | 6.34 | - | 6.34 | - | 6.34 |
| Other financial liabilities | - | - | 640.95 | 640.95 | - | - | - | - |
| | 6.34 | - | 8,552.08 | 8,558.42 | - | 6.34 | - | 6.34 |
The carrying amounts for current borrowings, cash and bank balances, trade and other receivables and trade payables approximate their respective fair values as the impact of discounting is not expected to be material.
Level 1: Level 1 hierarchy includes financial instruments measured using quoted prices.
Level 2: The fair value of financial instruments that are not traded in an active market is determined using valuation techniques which maximise the use of observable market data and rely as little as possible on entity specific estimates. If all significant inputs required to fair value an instrument are observable, the instrument is included in level 2.
Level 3: If one or more of the significant inputs is not based on observable market data, the instrument is included in level 3. This is the case for unlisted equity securities included in level 3.
B. Measurement of fair values
Valuation techniques and significant unobservable inputs
The following tables show the valuation techniques used in measuring Level 2 and Level 3 fair values, as well as the significant unobservable inputs used.
Financial instruments measured at fair value
| Type | Valuation technique | Significant unobservable inputs | Inter-relationship between significant unobservable inputsand fair value measurement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forward contracts for foreign exchange contracts | Market comparison technique: The fair values are based on broker quotes. Similar contracts are traded in an active market and the quotes reflect the actual transactions in similar instruments. | Not applicable | Not applicable |
C. Financial risk management
The activities of the Group exposes it to a number of financial risks namely market risk, credit risk and liquidity risk. The Group seeks to minimize the potential impact of unpredictability of the financial markets on its financial performance.
The Group's board of directors has overall responsibility for the establishment and oversight of the Group's risk management framework. The board of directors is responsible for developing and monitoring the Group's risk management policies.
The Group's risk management policies are established to identify and analyse the risks faced by the Group, to set appropriate risk limits and controls and to monitor risks and adherence to limits. Risk management policies and systems are reviewed regularly to reflect changes in market conditions and the Group's activities. The Group, through its training and management standards and procedures, aims to maintain a disciplined and constructive control environment in which all employees understand their roles and obligations.
a. Management of Credit risk
Credit risk refers to the risk of default on its obligations by a counter party to the Group resulting in a financial loss to the Group. The Group is exposed to credit risk from its operating activities (trade receivables) and investment securities.
Credit risk is managed through credit approvals, establishing credit limits and continuously monitoring the creditworthiness of customers to which the Group grants credit terms in the normal course of business. The Group establishes an allowance for doubtful debts and impairment that represents its estimate of incurred losses in respect of trade and other receivables and investments.
The Group's exposure to credit risk is influenced mainly by the individual characteristics of each customer. The demographics of the customer, including the default risk of the industry and country in which the customer operates, also has an influence on credit risk assessment. The Group has no concentration of credit risk as the customer base is widely distributed.
Summary of the ageing for trade receivables are as follows:
Expected credit loss assessment for customers as at 30 September 19
The Group allocates each exposure to a credit risk grade based on a variety of data that is determined to be predictive of the risk of loss (e.g. timeliness of payments, available press information etc.) and applying experienced credit judgement.
Exposures to customers outstanding at the end of each reporting period are reviewed by the Group to determine incurred and expected credit losses. Historical trends of impairment of trade receivables do not reflect any significant credit losses. Given that the macro economic indicators affecting customers of the Group have not undergone any substantial change, the Group expects the historical trend of minimal credit losses to continue.
The movement in the allowance for impairment in respect of trade and other receivables during the period was as follows.
| Balance as at April 1, 2018 | 337.19 |
|---|---|
| Add: Impairment loss recognised/(reversed) | 69.45 |
| Less: Amounts written off | - |
| Balance as at 31 March 2019 | 406.64 |
| Add: Impairment loss recognized | (7.14) |
| Less: Amounts written off | - |
Balance as at 30 September 2019
399.50
The impairment loss at September 30, 2019 related to several customers that have defaulted on their payments to the Group and are not expected to be able to pay their outstanding balances, mainly due to economic circumstances.
Investments
The Group limits its exposure to credit risk by investing in liquid securities and only with counterparties that have a good credit rating. The Group does not expect any losses from non-performance by these counter-parties, and does not have any significant concentration of exposures to specific industry sectors or specific country risks.
Other than trade and other receivables, the Group has no other financial assets that are past due but not impaired.
b. Liquidity risk
Liquidity risk is the risk that the Group will encounter difficulty in meeting the obligations associated with its financial liabilities that are settled by delivering cash or another financial asset. The Group’s
approach to managing liquidity is to ensure, as far as possible, that it will have sufficient liquidity to meet its liabilities when they are due, under both normal and stressed conditions, without incurring
unacceptable losses or risking damage to the Group's reputation.
The Group has an established liquidity risk management framework for managing its short term, medium term and long term funding and liquidity management requirements. The Group's exposure to liquidity risk arises primarily from mismatches of the maturities of financial assets and liabilities. The Group manages the liquidity risk by maintaining adequate funds in cash and cash equivalents. The Group also has adequate credit facilities sanctioned with banks to ensure that there is sufficient cash to meet all its normal operating commitments in a timely and cost-effective manner.
| 30 September 2019 | | | Contractual cash flows | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Particulars | Carrying amount | Total | Upto 1 year | 1-5 years | More than 5 years |
| Current liabilities | | | | | |
| Trade Payables | 7,594.19 | 7,594.19 | 7,594.19 | - | - |
| Liability towards lease asset | 138.66 | 138.66 | 138.66 | | |
| Other Financial Liabilities | 640.95 | 640.95 | 640.95 | - | - |
| Derivative financial liabilities | | | | | |
| Current liabilities | | | | | |
| Forward Exchange Contracts | 6.34 | 6.34 | 6.34 | - | - |
c. Market risk
Market risk is the risk that the fair value or future cash flows of a financial instrument will fluctuate because of changes in market prices. Market risk comprises of three types of risks: interest rate risk, price risk and currency rate risk. Financial instruments affected by market risk includes borrowings, foreign currency receivables/payables, investments and derivative financial instruments. The Group has international trade operations and is exposed to a variety of market risks, including currency and interest rate risks.
i) Currency risk
Currency risk is the risk that the fair value or future cash flows of a financial instrument will fluctuate because of changes in foreign exchange rates. The Group has foreign currency trade payables and receivables and is therefore exposed to foreign exchange risk. The Group mitigates the foreign exchange risk by setting appropriate exposure limits, periodic monitoring of the exposures and hedging exposures using derivative financial instruments like foreign exchange forward contracts. The exchange rates have been volatile in the recent years and may continue to be volatile in the future. Hence the operating results and financials of the Group may be impacted due to volatility of the rupee against foreign currencies.
Exposure to currency risk (Exposure in different currencies converted to functional currency i.e. INR) The currency profile of financial assets and financial liabilities as at 30 September 2019 are as below:
| | 30-Sep-19 | 30-Sep-19 |
|---|---|---|
| | USD | EURO |
| Financial assets | | |
| Cash and cash equivalents | 2.11 | 100.70 |
| Trade and other receivables | 845.97 | 26.51 |
| | 848.08 | 127.21 |
| Financial liabilities | | |
| Trade and other payables | 1,240.31 | 0.67 |
| | 1,240.31 | 0.67 |
| Net statement of financial position exposure | (392.23) | 126.54 |
| Forward exchange contracts - Sell | 644.91 | 4.56 |
| Forward exchange contracts - Buy | (1,289.15) | - |
Sensitivity analysis
A reasonably possible strengthening (weakening) of the Indian Rupee against US Dollars and EURO would have affected the measurement of financial instruments denominated in US dollars and EURO and affected the profit and loss by the amounts shown below. This analysis assumes that all other variables, in particular interest rates, remain constant and ignores any impact of forecast sales and purchases.
| Effect in INR | |
|---|---|
| | Strengthening |
| 30 September 2019 | |
| 1% movement | |
| USD | 10.36 |
| EUR | (1.31) |
| Others | 0.12 |
ii) Interest rate risk
Interest rate risk can be either fair value interest rate risk or cash flow interest rate risk. Fair value interest rate risk is the risk of changes in fair values of fixed interest bearing investments because of fluctuations in the interest rates. Cash flow interest rate risk is the risk that the future cash flows of floating interest bearing investments will fluctuate because of fluctuations in the interest rates. Interest rate risk is the risk that the fair value or future cash flows of a financial instrument will fluctuate because of changes in market interest rates. The Group does not have any exposure to interest rate risks since its borrowings and investments are all in fixed rate instruments.
Note 37: Segment Information
A. General Information
(a) Factors used to identify the entity's reportable segments, including the basis of organisation For management purposes, The Group is organised into business units based on its products and services and three reportable segments, as follows:
* Industrial Chemicals
* Agro Chemicals
* Public Health Chemicals
B. Information about reportable segments
C. Geographic information
| 30 September 2019 | | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Particulars | Industrial Chemicals | Agro Chemicals | Public Health Chemicals |
| Revenue | | | |
| Operating revenue | 1,125.54 | 13,210.18 | 96.90 |
| Other income | 6.68 | 105.92 | - |
| Total segment revenue | 1,132.22 | 13,316.10 | 96.90 |
| Unallocated revenue | | | |
| Total revenue | 1,132.22 | 13,316.10 | 96.90 |
| Segment results | 121.27 | 2,213.25 | 42.50 |
| Unallocated corporate expenses | - | - | - |
| Profit/(loss) before interest and finance charges and tax | 121.27 | 2,213.25 | 42.50 |
| Finance costs | - | - | - |
| Profit/(loss) after interest and finance charges and before tax | 121.27 | 2,213.25 | 42.50 |
| Tax expenses | - | - | - |
| - Current tax | - | - | - |
| - Previous Year Adjustments | - | - | - |
| - Deferred tax (credit) | - | - | - |
| Profit/(loss) for the year | | | |
| Segment assets | 495.74 | 17,383.27 | 178.59 |
| Unallocated corporate assets | - | - | - |
| Total assets | 495.74 | 17,383.27 | 178.59 |
| Segment liabilities | 742.19 | 8,475.74 | 230.03 |
| Unallocated corporate liabilities | - | - | - |
| Total liabilities Capital expenditure | 742.19 2.15 | 8,475.74 196.87 | 230.03 - |
| Unallocated corporate capital expenditure | - | - | - |
| Total capital expenditure | 2.15 | 196.87 | - |
| Depreciation and amortization | 16.23 | 162.65 | 0.39 |
| Unallocated depreciation and amortization | - | - | - |
| Total depreciation and amortization | - | - | - |
Further, the Group has considered the export operations as a separately identifiable geographic segment due to operations in the Japan and other countries. The Group has identified secondary segments based on geographic locations and has reported India and outside India as geographic segments as below: Segment revenue Period ended
Exposure to liquidity risk
The following are the remaining contractual maturities of financial liabilities at the reporting date. The amounts are gross and undiscounted.
| 30 September 2019 | | | Contractual cash flows | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Particulars | Carrying amount | Total | Upto 1 year | 1-5 years | More than 5 years |
| Non-derivative financial liabilities | | | | | |
| Non current liabilities | | | | | |
| Liability towards lease asset | 178.28 | 178.28 | 178.28 | | |
| India | 12,582.06 |
|---|---|
| Outside India | 1,963.16 |
| Total revenue | 14,545.22 |
| Segment assets* | Period ended 30 September 2019 |
| India | 3,487.90 |
| Outside India | - |
| Total assets | 3,487.90 |
*Non-current assets are excluding financial instruments and deferred tax assets.
7
D. Information about major customers
Revenues from no single external customer represented more than 10% of the Group's total revenues.
Note 38: Employee benefits
The Group contributes to the following post-employment plans in India.
(A) Defined Contribution Plans:
I) Provident Fund is a defined contribution scheme established under a State Plan.
II) Superannuation Fund is a defined contribution scheme. The scheme is funded with an insurance
Group in the form of a qualifying insurance policy.
III) Contribution to Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC)
Current service cost included under the head Contribution to Provident Fund and other funds in Note 29 'Employee benefits expense':
| | 30 Sep 2019 |
|---|---|
| Provident Fund and Family Pension Fund | 30.61 |
| Superannuation Fund | 8.41 |
| ESIC | 0.21 |
| Other funds | 6.86 |
(B) Defined Benefit Plan:
Gratuity Plan is classified as a defined benefit plan as the Group's obligation is to provide agreed benefit plan to members. Actuarial and investment risks are borne by the Group.
The most recent actuarial valuation of plan assets and the present value of the defined benefit obligation for gratuity was carried out as at 30 September 2019. The present value of the defined benefit obligations and the related current service cost and past service cost, were measured using the Projected Unit Credit Method.
| Defined benefit obligation | (366.09) |
|---|---|
| Fair value of plan assets | 337.28 |
| Net defined benefit (obligation)/assets | (28.81) |
i. Movement in net defined benefit (asset) liability
The following table shows a reconciliation from the opening balances to the closing balances for net defined benefit (asset) liability and its components
The components of defined benefit plan cost are as follows:
| | Defined benefit obligation | Fair value of plan assets | Net defined benefit (asset) liability |
|---|---|---|---|
| | 30 September 2019 | 30 September 2019 | 30 September 2019 |
| Opening balance | 340.35 | 330.77 | 9.58 |
| Included in profit or loss: | | | |
| Current service cost | 13.91 | - | 13.91 |
| Interest cost (income) | 12.15 | 12.22 | (0.07) |
| Sub-total included in Statement of Profit and Loss | | | 13.84 |
| | 366.41 | 342.99 | 23.42 |
| Included in OCI | | | |
| Remeasurement loss (gain): | | | |
| Actuarial loss (gain) arising from: | | | |
| Financial assumptions | 7.58 | - | 7.58 |
| Demographic Adjustment | 0.19 | | 0.19 |
| Experience adjustment | (2.68) | - | (2.68) |
| Return on plan assets excluding interest income | - | (0.30) | 0.30 |
| Sub-total included in OCI | | | 5.39 |
| | 371.50 | 342.69 | 28.81 |
| Other | | | |
| Contributions paid by the employer | - | | |
| Benefits paid | (5.41) | (5.41) | |
| Closing balance | 366.09 | 337.28 | 28.81 |
| Particulars | 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Recognised in Profit or Loss | |
| Current service cost | 13.90 |
| Net interest cost | (0.07) |
| Past service cost | - |
| Expected return on plan assets | - |
| Total | 13.83 |
| Recognised in Other Comprehensive Income | |
ii. Plan assets
Plan assets comprise the following
| | 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Insurer Managed Funds (Life Insurance Corporation of India) | 100% |
iii. Actuarial assumptions
The following were the key actuarial assumptions at the reporting date (expressed as weighted averages).
| Discount rate | 7.05%-7.10% |
|---|---|
| Future salary growth | 8%-10% for the next 1 year & 8%-9.75% thereafter |
| Mortality rate | Indian Assured Lives Mortality (2012-14) Table |
iv. Sensitivity analysis
Reasonably possible changes at the reporting date to one of the relevant actuarial assumptions, holding other assumptions constant, would have affected the defined benefit obligation by the amounts shown below:
Sensitivity analysis is performed by varying a single parameter while keeping all the other parameters unchanged.
| | Increase |
|---|---|
| Discount rate (0.50% movement) | 16.16 |
| Future salary growth (0.50% movement) | 16.97 |
Sensitivity analysis fails to focus on the interrelationship between underlying parameters.
Hence, the results may vary if two or more variables are changed simultaneously.
The method used does not indicate anything about the likelihood of change in any parameter and the extent of the change if any.
v. Expected future cash flows
The expected future cash flows in respect of gratuity as at 30 September 2019 were as follows
| Up to 1 year | 53.77 |
|---|---|
| Between 1-2 years | 19.92 |
| Between 2-6 years | 70.29 |
| 6 to 10+ years | 180.83 |
(C) Other long-term employee benefits:
Compensated absences are payable to employees at the rate of daily salary for each day of accumulated leave on death or on resignation or upon retirement. The charge towards compensated absences for the year ended 30 September 2019 based on actuarial valuation using the projected accrued benefit method is ` 20.92 millions.
Note 39: Contingent liabilities and Commitments
A)
Contingent liabilities v) VAT/Sales Tax 2.59 vi) GST 0.79 The Group's pending litigations comprise of claims against the Group primarily by the customers and proceedings pending with tax authorities. The Group has reviewed all its pending litigations and proceedings and has adequately provided for where provisions are required and disclosed contingent liabilities where applicable, in its financial statements. The Group does not expect the outcome of these proceedings to have a materially adverse effect on the financial statements. Future cash outflows/ uncertainties, if any, in respect of above are determinable only on receipt of judgments/decisions pending with various forums/authorities.
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| a. Claims against the Group not acknowledged as debts | 153.21 |
| b. Demand raised by authorities against which the Group has filed an appeal | |
| i) Income Tax | 80.05 |
| ii) Excise duty | 0.73 |
| iii) Service tax | 16.11 |
| iv) Customs Duty | 6.51 |
| v) VAT/Sales Tax | 2.59 |
It is not practicable for the Group to estimate the timings of cash outflows, if any, in respect of the above pending resolution of the respective proceedings as it is determinable only on receipt of judgements/ decisions pending with various forums/authorities.
The Group does not expect any reimbursements in respect of the above contingent liabilities. There has been a Supreme Court (SC) judgement dated 28th February 2019, relating to components of salary structure that need to be taken into account while computing the contribution to provident fund under the EPF Act. There are interpretative aspects related to the Judgement including the effective date of application. The Group will continue to assess any further developments in this matter for the implications on financial statements, if any.
B) Commitments
| | As at 30 September 2019 |
|---|---|
| Estimated value of contracts in capital account remaining to be executed and not provided for (net of capital advances) | 47.4 |
Note 40: Total outstanding dues of micro enterprises and small enterprises (as per the intimation received from vendors)
Note 41 : Corporate Social Responsibility
The Group has spent ` 21.45 million towards various schemes of Corporate Social Responsibility as prescribed under section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013. The details are:
| (a) Gross amount required to be spent by the Group during the year | | |
|---|---|---|
| (b) Amount Spent during the period ended 30 September 2019 | In cash/ payable | Yet to be paid in Cash |
| | 30 September 2019 | 30 September 2019 |
| (i) Construction/acquisition of any assets | - | - |
(ii) On purpose other than (i) above 10.14 11.31 21.45 Note 42: The Group has a process whereby periodically all long-term contracts (including derivative contracts) are assessed for material foreseeable losses. At the period end, the Group has reviewed and ensured that adequate provision as required under any law/accounting standards for material foreseeable losses on such long-term contracts (including derivative contracts) has been made in the books of accounts.
Note 43: Merger with Excel Crop Care Limited
Pursuant to the scheme of amalgamation (the Scheme) sanctioned by the Hon'ble National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai Bench on 22 August 2019, Excel Crop Care Limited ('ECCL') have merged with the Company. The appointed date for the Scheme is 01 April 2018. The Scheme has become effective post filing of e-form INC-28, on 31 August 2019 with the Registrar of Company/Ministry of Corporate Affairs. ECCL was a fellow subsidiary of the Company and was engaged in the business of agro chemicals. The amalgamation is intended to drive simplification by bringing both Companies on to a common platform in various processes such as legal, secretarial, accounting and controls and there by enabling to conduct the company's business more efficiently.
Since the above transaction qualify as common control business combination under Ind AS 103 on "Business Combinations", the same has been accounted using 'pooling of interest' method (in accordance with the approved scheme) with effect from 1 April 2017. The Financial Statements in respect of previous period have been restated from the earliest period presented. The entire business and whole undertaking of ECCL including all its assets and liabilities are transferred and vested in the Company on a going concern basis so as to become the assets and liabilities of the Group.
Also as per the Scheme, followings effects have been considered in the books of accounts of the Group: i. Existing equity shares of ` 5 each ( post adjustment of shares held by the Company) of ECCL stands cancelled and will be replaced by 22,45,57,641 equity shares of ` 10 each, which will be issued to shareholders of ECCL in share swap ratio of 51:2 equity share of the company for each equity share
held by shareholders of ECCL.
ii. As per the scheme, the authorised share capital of ECCL shall be combined with the authorised share capital of the Company. The Company and ECCL has filed INC-28 with the Registrar of Companies, Mumbai ("ROC") on 31 August 2019. The Form INC-28 filed by ECCL was approved by ROC. However, the form INC-28 filed by the Company is still pending in the ROC system, accordingly the authorised share capital is not increase as at 30 September 2019.
Note 44 : Subsequent Events
There are no significant subsequent events that would require adjustments or disclosures in the financial statements as on the Balance Sheet date.
Note 45: On 21st June, 2019, Gujarat Pollution Control Board ("GPCB") issued a notice to ECCL, which has amalgamated with the Company, instructing it to close manufacturing operations of its Bhavnagar Plant. The notice was caused because GPCB had found, in a plot of land adjacent to the manufacturing site, waste which was associated to a product which has been discontinued over 20 years back. ECCL submitted an action plan to GPCB for scientific disposal of waste and agreed to undertake other remedial measures. Based on the action plan submitted and its implementation, GPCB has temporarily withdrawn its Closure Order. As the last leg of the action plan, The Company is in the process of disposing of treated soil from the plot of land as per GPCB norms. Once such disposal is complete, the Company will approach GPCB for revocation of the Closure Order on permanent basis. In the meantime, the manufacturing operations of the Bhavnagar plant are being carried on uninterrupted.
Note 46 : Information for Interim Consolidated Financials Statements pursuant to Schedule III of the Companies Act, 2013.
30 September 2019
TOTAL 100.00% 12,148.20 100.00% 1,811.11 100.00% (4.85) 100.00% 1,806.26 (K) There are no audit qualifications in the financial statements of the Company in the financial statements for the last three years. Further, there is no change in the accounting policies in the last three years.
| Name of the entity | Net Assets | | Share in profit or (loss) | | OCI | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | As % of consolidated net assets | Amount | As % of consolidated profit or (loss) | Amount | As % of consolidated OCI | Amount | As % of consolidated Total Com- prehensive Income |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| Parent - Sumitomo Chemical India Limited | 98.98% | 12,023.79 | 100.39% | 1,818.10 | 100.00% | (4.85) | 100.39% |
| Subsidiaries | | | | | | | |
| Foreign | | | | | | | |
| 1. Excel Crop Care (Europe) LLC | 0.86% | 104.26 | -0.20% | (3.61) | 0.00% | - | -0.20% |
| 2. Excel Crop Care (Africa) Limited | 0.23% | 28.40 | -0.02% | (0.41) | 0.00% | - | -0.02% |
| Adjustment arising out of consolidation | -0.07% | (8.25) | -0.16% | (2.97) | 0.00% | | -0.16% |
| Particulars | 1. Valent BioSciences LLC (previously known as Valent Biosciences Corporation) | 2. Mycorrhizal Applications, LLC | 3. SumikaAgro Manufacturing Co. Ltd |
|---|---|---|---|
| Location | U.S.A | U.S.A | Japan |
| Listed/ Unlisted | Unlisted | Unlisted | Unlisted |
| Date of foundation/ Incorporation | January, 2000 | December, 1996 | November, 1973 |
| Major Business Fields | R&D, manufacturing and sales of biorational products | Manufacturing and sales of microorganism-based crop enhancement products | Manufacturing and sales of crop protection products, household insecticides and fertilizers |
| Direct/ indirect subsidiary of the promoter of SCIL (i.e. SCC) | Indirect Subsidiary | Indirect Subsidiary | Direct Subsidiary |
| Standalone financial information based on financial statements for the year ended March 31, 2019 | | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Currency | | Million USD | | Million USD | | Million JPY | |
| Equity Share Capital (issued and paid-up) | | 129.30 | | 40.5 | | 802 | |
| Reserves and Surplus | | 121.00 | | (6.00) | | 1,091.19 | |
| Net Worth | | 250.30 | | 34.5 | | 1,893.19 | |
| Total Assets | | 449.70 | | 40.30 | | 5,305.65 | |
| Total liabilities | | 199.40 | | 5.80 | | 3,412.46 | |
| Total income/ turnover from operations | | 25.40 | | (2.20) | | 9,633.52 | |
| Earnings before interest tax and amortization (EBITA) | | 24.40 | | (2.20) | | 636.32 | |
| Net Profit/(Loss) after tax | | 18.25 | | (1.40) | | 112.65 | |
| Particulars | 4. Sumitomo Chemical Asia Pte Limited (formerly known as Sumitomo Chemical (Asia Pacific) Pte Limited- Singapore) | | 5. Sumitomo Chemical Do Brasil Representacoes Ltda | | 6. SCA South Asia Petrochemical Pvt Limited | | 7. SC Environmental Science Co. Ltd |
| Location | Singapore | | Brazil | | India | | Japan |
| Listed/ Unlisted | Unlisted | | Unlisted | | Unlisted | | Unlisted |
| Date of foundation/ Incorporation | July, 1990 | | June, 1975 | | 20-Apr-09 | | 6-Dec-89 |
| Major Business Fields | Trading of petrochemical products, Health and crop science products and manufacturing of solution styrene- butadiene rubber. | | Development, promotion and sales of crop protection chemicals, feed additives and household & public hygiene insecticides | | The company was set up to act as an agent of Sumitomo Chemical Asia Pte Ltd to handle the marketing of polymers resins manufactured by Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Company into India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The company undertakes commercial activities like making the offer, negotiation of selling prices (within a certain range) and contract terms. | | R&D, manufacturing and sales of products for environmental hygiene, such as insecticides, insect repellents, and fungicides. |
| Direct/ indirect subsidiary of the promoter of SCIL (i.e. SCC) | Direct Subsidiary | | Direct Subsidiary | | Indirect Subsidiary | | Direct Subsidiary |
| Stake held by SCC or its subsidiaries in Group Companies of SCIL | 100% | | 100% | | 100% | | 100% |
| Standalone financial information based on financial statements for the year ended | March 31, 2019 | | December 31, 2018 | | March 31, 2019 | | |
| Currency | Million US$ | | Million BRL | | Million INR | | Million JPY |
| Equity Share Capital (issued and paid-up) | 150.57 | | 1.38 | | 5.00 | | 20.00 |
| Reserves and Surplus | (30.41) | | 81.37 | | 76.23 | | 1,665.69 |
| Net Worth | 120.15 | | 82.75 | | 81.23 | | 1,685.69 |
| Total Assets | 632.54 | | 651.87 | | 88,94 | | 5,706.74 |
| Total liabilities | 512.38 | | 569.12 | | 7.71 | | 4,021.05 |
| Total income/ turnover from operations | 2,600.76 | | 671.95 | | 56.00 | | 8,864.74 |
| Earnings before interest tax and amortization (EBITA) | 15.83 | | 16.14 | | 35.55 | | 698.05 |
| Net Profit/(Loss) after tax | (1.72) | | (3.03) | | 25.59 | | 358.86 |
period ending on September 30, 2019. For details, please refer the information memorandum. The Information Memorandum would be made available on www.sumichem.co.in, www.bseindia.com and www.nseindia.com.
Outstanding Tax litigation of the Transferee Company
| Sr. No. | Nature of Tax | No. of Cases pending |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Direct Tax | 13 |
| 2 | Indirect Tax | 10 |
Litigation involving the Transferor Company*
Other Litigation involving the Transferor Company*
| Sr. No. | Court/Authority/ Claimant | Amount Involved (in INR) | Brief Details | Present Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Competition Commission of India (“CCI”) | 2,91,70,000 | An order was passed by CCI imposing a penalty on ECC alleging cartel and bid rigging. ECC filed an appeal against the CCI order before the erstwhile Competition Appellate Tribunal (“COMPAT”). The COMPAT reduced the penalty amount from ` 63,90,00,000 to ` 2,91,70,000, against which the CCI filed an appeal before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the order reducing the penalty, pursuant to which ECC made the penalty payment. A notice was issued by CCI to ECC demanding the recovery of the interest amount accumulated on the penalty amount of ` 2,91,70,000. Pursuant to a writ filed before the High Court of Delhi, a stay has been imposed on the recovery notice. | Pending |
| 2 | Food Corporation of India (“FCI”) | 12,14,68,475 | A legal notice was issued by FCI against ECC demanding compensation for the alleged losses suffered by them in relation to the tenders released for purchasing Aluminium Phosphide tablets for the period 2009-10 and 2011-12. A compensation appeal has also been filed by the FCI against ECC before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, New Delhi. | Pending |
| 3 | Gujarat Pollution Control Board (“GPCB”) | Nil | GPCB issued a notice for closure of ECC’s Bhavnagar factory alleging the presence of certain waste material in a plot of land adjacent to the factory premises and directed ECC to undertake certain remediation measures. ECC/the Company has carried out the remedial measures. GPCB has directed the Company to dispose the treated soil within a period of six months, which the Company has done. The Company is in the process of making an application to GPCB for permanent revocation of the closure notice. | The manu- facturing operations at the Bhavnagar plant are being carried on uninte- rruptedly. |
| 4 | Supreme Court of India | Nil | A public interest litigation was filed before the Supreme Court of India seeking a ban on manufacture, sale and use of ‘Endosulfan’ - product which ECC used to manufacture and which was banned by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court disposed the litigation directing the state governments of Karnataka and Kerala to pay compensation to alleged victims affected by ‘Endosulfan’. The Supreme Court also stated that the state governments can recover the compensation amounts from the Union Government or the industry, if permitted by law. | ECC has not received any claims in to relation the matter |
| 5 | Sessions Court, Amritsar | 500,000 | A case was filed by the National Khad Store for the dishonour of a cheque issued by a deceased employee of a third-party contractor engaged by ECC. The case has been filed against the legal heirs of the deceased and ECC has been made a party under the assumption that there may be certain pending dues to be paid by ECC to the deceased. | Pending |
| 6 | Pashchim Gujarat Vij Company Limited (“PGVCL”) | 64,78,759.33 | A show cause notice was issued by PGVCL demanding the sum of ` 64,78,759.33 for granting power factor rebate and extra high voltage rebate. ECC moved the High Court of Gujarat seeking to stay the show cause notice and obtained a stay order. The High Court of Gujarat directed ECC to file a complaint before the consumer dispute redressal forum of PGVCL. Simultaneously, ECC also filed an appeal with the Electricity Ombudsman, Ahmedabad. The Ombudsman dismissed the application. Against the Order of the Ombudsman, ECC filed SCA 13795 of 2015 before the High Court. | Pending |
| Sl. No | Category | Total No. of Cases | Amount Involved (in INR) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Misbranding of products | 33 | Nil |
| 2 | Dishonour of Cheques | 17 | 17,232,529 |
| 3 | Motor Vehicles Claim | 5 | 1,28,65,000 |
| 4 | Consumer Disputes | 1 | 1,15,000 |
| 5 | Legal Metrology | 1 | 50,000 |
Outstanding Tax Litigation of the Transferor Company*
(M) Outstanding litigations and defaults of the transferee entity, promoters, directors or any of the group companies:
Litigation proceedings involving the Transferee Company:
Legal Metrology: Our Company has received notices and complaints issued by the Department of Legal Metrology in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. There are 12 (twelve) such matters pending against the Company under the provisions of the Legal Metrology Act, 2000. The Company has paid a cumulative compounding fee of ` 4,50,000 in some of these matters.
Misbranded Products: Our Company is involved in 88 (eighty-eight) cases relating to misbranding of products under the Insecticides Act, 1968 and the Fertilizer Control Order, 1985. Majority of these matters are in relation to the content of the active ingredient being lesser than the permissible limits prescribed under the Insecticides Act, 1968. The Company has been asked to explain to the concerned authority the reasons for the same and to send samples of the concerned products for reanalysis by any government approved lab.
Consumer Complaints: Our Company has received 56 (fifty-six) complaints under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. The matters have been filed before various consumer forums for the alleged loss suffered on account of using the products manufactured by the Company. The total claim amount involved in these matters is ` 1,39,37,400.
Other pending litigation against the Company
| S. No | Court/Authority/ Claimant | Amount Involved (in INR) | Brief Details | Present Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rainbow Marketing Agency | 9,95,000 | A case was filed for recovery of commission payment for non-compliance with anti- bribery laws and policy by Rainbow Marketing Agency | Pending |
| 2 | Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Latur | 50,000 (No fault liability) | The complaint was filed against our Company for a motor accident claim. However, our Company is not liable to pay. The insurance company has been directed to pay the no fault liability. | Matter kept for framing of issues |
| 3 | Directorate of Revenue Intelligence | Deposit of INR 2,06,32,044 | Complaint was filed against the Company in relation to custom duty on import of raw material under the Customs Act, 1962. The Company had filed its reply on 30th March 2018 and attended the personal hearing before the Custom Appellate Authority. | Awaiting order of the Custom Appellate Authority |
| 4 | Santokh Singh | Pending salary and dues | Complaint filed by Santokh Singh, an ex-employee of the Company claiming pending salary and dues | Pending |
| 5 | Gujarat Pollution Control Board | Deposit of INR 25,00,000 | Gujarat Pollution Control Board issued a notice against the Company and 43 other industrial units for complying with the National Green Tribunal Order dated January 11, 2019 (“Order”). Our Company deposited the amount pursuant to the Order. However, a petition has been filed before the Supreme Court by the Vapi Industrial Association for a stay of the Order. | Pending |
Disciplinary actions against our Promoter in the past three years:
Civil penalty for an amount of approximately USD 15,000 levied by U.S. Environmental/Protection Agency (an authority in United States of America), has been paid by SCC for alleged noncompliance with Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
Litigation proceedings involving our Directors:
There are no pending litigation proceedings involving our Directors except the following: Mr. Chetan Shantilal Shah, Managing Director had received a demand notice dated March 22, 2014 under Section 156 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 demanding a sum of INR 58,71,730 for the assessment year 2011-12. The matter is pending adjudication.
Outstanding dues to small scale undertakings
The outstanding dues owed to small scale creditors by our Company as on September 30, 2019 is
INR 85.66 million as per the interim standalone financial statements of the Company for the six-month
8
| Sl.No. | Nature of Tax | No. of pending cases | Amount demanded against which an appeal has been filed (in INR) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Direct Tax | 7 | 3,21,96,000 |
*(i) Pursuant to the Scheme, any suit, appeal or other proceeding by or against the Transferor Company pending and/or arising at the Appointed Date, as and from the Effective Date shall not abate or be discontinued by anything contained in this Scheme but shall be continued and enforced by or against the Transferee Company, as the case may be, in the manner and to the same extent as would or might have been continued, prosecuted and enforced by or against the Transferor Company as if this Scheme had not been made. (ii) In case of any litigation initiated by the Transferor Company, the name of the Transferee Entity shall be substituted and deemed to be the party thereto, and any payment and expenses shall be the liability of the Transferee Company.
Disciplinary actions/litigations involving group companies of the Company:
7
| # | Name of group companies | Litigation and disciplinary actions |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Valent BioSciences LLC (previously known as Valent Biosciences Corporation) | |
| 2 | Mycorrhizal Applications, LLC | |
| 3 | Sumika Agro Manufacturing Co. Ltd | |
| 4 | Sumitomo Chemical Asia Pte Limited (previously known as Sumitomo Chemical (Asia Pacific) Pte Limited- Singapore) | |
| 5 | SCA South Asia Petrochemical Pvt Limited | |
| 6 | SC Environmental Science Co. Ltd | |
Sumitomo Chemical Do Brasil Representacoes Ltda
(N) Particulars of high, low and average prices of the shares of the listed transferor entity (ECC) during the preceding three years:
| Particulars | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | | | |
| BSE | 3,824.85 | 4,800.00 | 2,120.00 |
| NSE | 3,830.00 | 4,922.40 | 2,121.65 |
| Low | | | |
| BSE | 2,491.45 | 2,001.00 | 1,630.00 |
| NSE | 2,490.00 | 2,000.30 | 1,654.20 |
| Average (refer note) | | | |
| BSE | 3,208.77 | 3,518.00 | 1,797.93 |
| NSE | 3,214.64 | 3,519.74 | 1,797.89 |
(Note: The average stock price of Transferor company is the simple average of closing prices for all trading days of a particular year)
(O) There is no material development after the date of the balance sheet dated September 30, 2019 (P) Pursuant to the Scheme, the shares of the Company will be listed on BSE and NSE. The Company received in-principle approval from NSE and BSE on December 10, 2019 and December 19, 2019 respectively. Further, SEBI granted relaxation from the applicability of Rule 19(2)(b) of the Securities Contract (Regulations) Rules, 1957 vide their letter dated January 22, 2020.
For further details, please refer to the Information Memorandum which would be made available on www.sumichem.co.in, www.bseindia.com and www.nseindia.com.
For and on behalf of the Board of Directors of
Sumitomo Chemical India Limited
Sd/-
Sushil Marfatia
Director
Date : January 22, 2020
Place : Mumbai
(Contd.)
PRESSMAN
|
Cinematic Unisystem Jorune
Almost all of the existing rules-sets for Jorune are highly complex and detailed. While that sort of gaming works for many people, I'm a highly immersive gamer who is also a fan of systems that aren't too rules-heavy (Cinematic Unisystem, and New World of Darkness being my current favorites). So, here's my take on what a non-rules-heavy version of Jorune would look like.
John Snead May 2006
Required Books 2nd or 3rd Edition Jorune, Angel
General Notes on Changes & Species
I am altering various features of the background to allow it to make more sense (to me at least) and for personal preference. Highest on the list of changes is that humanity was seriously into genetic engineering (as can already be seen with the various biotec creations), including human and animal genetic engineering. As a result, the Salu/Acubon were deliberately created as an aquatic human variant. These creatures can all breathe both salt and fresh water (although the dominant salt and fresh water groups, have very different cultures) and I am ignoring the foolishness about them losing the ability to breathe water if they are out of it too long. They can both breathe both water and air whenever they want to, because their bodies were designed to do so.
Also, in this version of Jorune, the Iscin Races were originally created on Earth, where they had limited rights, much like Cordwainer Smith's "underpeople". Iscin was a human biologist who brought a large group of these three species along, to see how they would adapt to an alien world. When human civilization collapsed, he taught them too be free, and the rest of their history is as written. Blount do not exist (being a fairly silly idea IMHO), and Bronth are do not look like bears – they look like gorillas, because they are a gorilla-derived species. It only makes sense to me that the first uplifted animal would be a higher primate. They are large, hulking, and furred like a gorilla.
Unlike the rest of the species that were created before colonization, the Boccord and Muadra were human mutations that occurred on Jorune, approximately 1,500 years ago. There is one other change that occurred as the result of the massive human genetic engineering – humans and all human created races were altered so that they aged half as fast and are immune to most diseases. Since this is universal among Terran life, these benefits are free. As a result, humans live (on average) for 120 years, and if they had our level of medical technology, they would live for 160 years. Notable aging effects such as grey hair, wrinkles, or physical limitation do not occur until the character is around 90. In addition, Terran life cannot have Intelligence or Constitution scores below 2, since the genetic traits that lead to such low scores were edited out of all of the colonists, including all of the Iscin Races.
As for the rest of the races – the Ramian, Corastin, & Thriddle were brought along as Lamori slaves, while the Cleash were their partners (who brought along the Scarmis as their slaves). Croid are a Corastin mutation and Thivin were created as an experiment by the Lamori, in an attempt to create a Lamori-related species with access to Isho. The result was successful, but the several thousand Thivin that were created were all stored in Lamori nanostasis until 800 years ago, when the nanostasis containers failed and several thousand Thivin were released in the Ramian land of Voligire. Here, they were treated as slaves, until 300 a few thousand of the 10s of thousands now alive, fled through a warp into Burdoth.
Skill List
Acrobatics
Animal Handling (new, includes riding)
Art
Brawling (was Kung Fu)
Crafts (new)
Crime
Doctor
Drive/Pilot
Earth-tec (new, includes both earth-tec and bio-tec)
Entertainments (new, Sports + gambling)
Getting Medieval
Gun Fu
Influence
Isho Lore (was Occultism, includes Isho Weather and using Shanthic devices)
Knowledge
Languages
Mr. Fix-it (conventional tech)
Notice
Sailing
Science
Survival (new)
Wild Card
Isho Qualities and Dysha Weaving
Isho 4-point/Level Quality
Isho is a variable Quality that costs 4 points/Level and allows the character to weave dyshas of any color he knows that are at or under this level. Only Bronth, Crugar, Muadra, Shanthas, Thivin, Thriddle, and Woffen can learn this Quality. Characters who possess levels in this Quality must also possess at least as many levels in either Tra-Sense or Signature Skills.
Signature Skills 2-point/Level Quality
This Quality allows the character to use Isho signature skills. Any creature that is not Isholess can learn up to 2 levels in this Quality. Only Boccord, Bronth, Salu, and Shanthas can learn this Quality at levels 3-5. This ability allows the character to sense and identify creatures by their isho signature. Characters can also project fake isho signatures, which can fool nature Jorune life into thinking the character is another creature entirely, as well as being able tot mask signatures, which can make the character invisible to native Jorune life. Signature skills also allow Interference, which allows the character to disrupt dyshas (both orbs and bolts) used on the character.
Rolls to use Signature skills to sense other creatures use Signature Skill + Notice. Rolls to use Signature Skills to alter Signatures uses Signature Skills x 2, and roll to interfere with a Dysha use Signature Skill along (not doubled). Rolls for Fake and Masked signatures are resisted by the creatures Perception + Notice. Rolling as many or more Success Levels as the creatures means that the character has fooled the creature. False and Masked signatures never fool Shanthas unless the character rolls three more Success Levels than the Shantha did.
Interference
To interfere with a dysha, the character must roll as many Success Levels with the interference attempt as the attacker rolls with the dysha. Rolling fewer Success Levels can still reduce the damage caused by the dysha. Interference counts as a defensive action.
| Level | Range | Notice+ |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 20 m | Species |
| 2 | 40 m | Species + identify dysha being prepared |
| 3 | 80 m | Species + dysha |
| 4 | 120 m | Species, dysha, & general mood |
+ Does not work on isholess creatures
Tra Sense 1-point/level Quality
This Quality allows the character to use Tra-Sense. Only Crugar, Muadra, Salu, Shanthas, Thivin, and Thriddle can learn this Quality at levels 3-5. Any creature that is not Isholess can learn up to 2 levels of this Quality.
Treat Tra Sense as a separate sense, with each level in Isho: Tra Sense giving the character one point in this sense. Rolls to use Tra Sense use Tra Sense + Notice. Tra Sense allows the character to see both creatures and the landscape using TraSense, but until the Tra-Sense is acute (Level 4 & 5) the resolution is very poor and only the roughest shapes can be seen. At Level 4 & 5, the character can navigate both indoors and outdoors using only Tra-Sense, but the character cannot resolve creatures as more than humanoid (or other-shaped) blobs of the appropriate size. Individuals cannot be recognized, and recognizing species (as opposed to merely knowing that the creature is a humanoid of roughly human size) requires at least 3 Success Levels on the Tra Sense + Notice roll.
Also, use the following guidelines:
| 1 | 20 m | Powerful Jorune creatures (Shanthas, Dar Corondon…) & large Isho constructs |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 40 m | Isho 3-5 creatures |
| 3 | 80 m | Isho 1-2 creatures |
| 4 | 120 m | Zero Isho creatures (like humans) |
Color Attunement 1-point innate Quality
This quality allows the character to learn to weave dyshas of this appropriate color. However, in order to do this, the character must also possess a least one level of the Isho Quality, as well as the associated Color Knowledge Quality. Characters can only purchase Color Knowledge for Colors that they already possess Color Attunement for. Characters with one or more levels in the Isho Quality can gain additional levels of Color Attunement in play, but this requires extensive roleplaying, making deals with Shanthas, and 3 XP.
Color Knowledge 3-point Quality
Color Knowledge allows the character to cast dyshas of that color, within the limits of the character's Isho level. A character must possess the Color Attunement Quality with a particular Color in order to purchase Color Knowledge. Also, casting dyshas always requires the character to have the appropriate level of the Isho Quality.
Isholess 2-point Quality
This creature can never learn any Isho skills and has no connection to isho. As a result, they are difficult to detect with tra-sense and signature skills cannot be used to identify them. In addition, they are immune to the following dyshas that directly affect the isho currents found in all Terran and Jorune life: Alter Emotions, Craze, Faint, Faint Touch, Healer, Naull Reading, and Read Isho Traces.
Other New Qualities
Extra Arms 3-point Quality
Having extra arms gives the character +1 to Brawling and Getting Medieval rolls when wielding multiple weapons. This Quality does not allow the character to make additional attacks.
Extra Legs 2-point Quality
Having four legs add +5 to Speed. Also, if one leg is disabled, the character can still move normally, with only a -2 penalty to Speed.
Increased or Decreased Speed 1-point Quality or -1-point Drawback
Increase or decrease the character's speed by +3 or -3 (to a minimum of 2).
Large Size 4-point Quality
Increase height by 25% (7-8 feet on the average), and multiply weight by 1.75. Add +2 to Strength (2), one level of Hard to Kill (1), and +10 to Life Points (1).
Leaping 1-point Quality
Leaping allows the character to leap (Angel p. 115) as if his Strength was 2 levels higher.
Very Large Size 8-point Quality
Increase height by 50% (8-9 feet on the average), and multiply weight by 3. Add +5 to Strength (5), two levels of Hard to Kill (2), and +20 to Life Points (2).
Species Qualities
Basic descriptions of these species can be found here: http://www.jorune.org/races.html
New Derived Characteristic (borrowed from the Witchcraft RPG)
Speed = Con + Dex. Speed x 2 = movement in miles per hour. Speed = movement in yards per second.
PC species
The following species are available as PCs.
Note: Bronth can purchase up to 4 levels in both Isho & Signature Skills. Crugar, Thivin, and Woffen can all purchase up to 4 levels in both Isho & Tra sense. Salu can purchase up to 4 levels in both Signature Skills and Tra Sense. Boccord can purchase up to 5 levels in Signature Skills. Muadra can purchase up to 5 levels in both Isho & Tra sense.
Boccord 7-point Quality
Large Size (4), 1 level of signature skills (2), +1 Con (1).
Bronth 10-point Quality
Acute Smell (2), Large Size (4), Color Attunement: desti & ebba (2), 1-point armor (1), +1 Con (1), +1 Per (1), minority (-1).
Corastin 12-point Quality
Very Large Size (8), +1 Con (1), Small natural weapons (1), 3-point armor (3), minority (-1), -1 Agility (-1), Intelligence over 3 costs like Intelligence over 5 for normal humans (-1), Isholess (2).
Crugar 6 or 7-point Quality
Acute Hearing (2), Acute Smell (2), Impaired Sight (-2), Night Vision (2), +1 Dex (1), +1 Per (1) Natural weapons (1), Leaping (1), Color Attunement: desti (1), Minority (-2, -1 for Cygra)
Muadra 10-point Quality
-5 life points (-1), 1 level of Isho: dysha use + tra sense (5), Strength over 3 costs like Strength over 5 for normal humans (-1), minority, Color Attunement: all (7), +1 Will (1).
Salu 7-point Quality
Aquatic (3), 1 level of Isho: signature skills + tra sense (3), +1 Con (1)
Thivin 9-point Quality
Double normal healing rate (1), Resistance: disease and poison (1), 1 level of Isho: dysha use + tra sense (5), Color Attunement: launtra (1), Night Vision (2), Covetous (-1), -5 life points (-1), Strength over 3 costs like Strength over 5 for normal humans (-1), +1 Dex (1), +1 Per (1)
Woffen 7-point Quality
Acute + Enhanced Smell (5), +1 Dex (1), +1 Per (1), Color Attunement: ebba (1), Minority (-1)
NPC Species
The following species are only available as NPCs
Cleash 17-point Quality
Large Size (4), -2 Strength (-2), +1 Con (1), +1 Per (1), Isholess (2), 3-point armor (3), 2 extra arms (3), create capsules (4), Control Scarmis (4), -3 Speed (-1), -2 most Acrobatics rolls, including stealth (-2).
Croid 13-point Quality
Very Large S(6), +2 Strength: total +7 (2), +2 Con (2), One level of Hard to Kill: total 3 (1), Small natural weapons (1), 3-point armor (3), considered little better than animals (-2), -1 Agility (-1), Intelligence over 1 costs like Intelligence over 5 for normal humans (-2), Perception over 3 costs like Perception over 5 for normal humans (-1), Isholess (2).
Ramian 16-point Quality
Large Size (4), One level of Hard to Kill: total 2 (1), +1 Con (1), +2 Dex (2), +2 Per (2), 2-point armor (2), Fast reaction time (2), heal 1 LP/day w/o shirm-eh limilate (-1), Isholess (2), +3 Speed (1).
Scarmis
2-point armor (2), 4 legs (2), +1 Per (1), Willpower over 3 costs like Willpower over 5 for normal humans (-1), Isholess (2), Fire sticky goo with a 20 ft range* (2), Subject to Cleash control with no save (-5), -2 to all stealth rolls (-1).
* Scarmis goo temporarily blinds opponents if the Scarmis scores 3+ Success Levels on the attack roll.
Shantha 53-point Quality
Acute tra sense (2), Large Size (4), 5 level of Isho: dysha use + signature skills + tra sense (35), Color Attunement: all (7), +1 Int (2), +1 Dex (1), +1 Con (1), +1 Per (1)
Thriddle 8-point Quality
Acute Vision (2), 1 level of Isho: dysha use + tra sense (5), Color Attunement: all but desti (6), +2 Int (2), -1 Con, -1 Strength (-1), Strength over 3 costs like Strength over 5 for normal humans (-1), -5 life points (-1), Easily Flustered (-1), Mildly paranoid (-1), -3 Speed (-1).
Characters
Characters can choose any of the following templates.
Isho Student
20 Attributes
15 Qualities
10 Drawbacks
20 Isho Qualities
25 Skills 10 Drama Points or
Expert
20 Attributes 25 Qualities & Isho Qualities 10 Drawbacks 35 Skills 10 Drama Points or
Adventurer
25 Attributes 20 Qualities & Isho Qualities 10 Drawbacks 35 Skills 10 Drama Points
Isho Use
Dyshas
To cast a dysha of any sort, the character rolls Willpower + Isho. A single Success Level is sufficient to create any dysha, but most benefit from increased levels of success. To create a specific dysha, the character must both know the color associated with the dysha and also have an Isho score equal to or greater than the level of the dysha. For example, in order for a muadra to create a Suspension Orb dysha, she must both know the Color Ebba, and have an Isho score of 4 or higher. The maximum Isho Score is 6.
Many dyshas can be modified to have a greater or different effect. Doing this adds levels to both the dysha and to the success levels required to create it. So, if a crugar wished to create a lightning bolt dysha with the range of a rifle, it would need to both roll 2 Success Levels on the Isho + Willpower roll to create it, and to have 2 or more Levels in Isho.
Isho Depletion
Characters who use many dyshas in a short period of time reduce their ability to create additional dyshas. Characters may use a number of levels of dyshas equal to twice their Isho Score before penalties begin to accrue. Once she has used a number of levels of dyshas equal to twice her Isho Score, she has a -2 penalty to all further Dysha use. If she uses a number of levels of dyshas equal to four times her Isho score, this penalty rises to -4. Once the character has used a number of levels of dyshas equal to five times her isho score, she can no longer use dyshas until she has rested. Characters must rest for at least two hours, and during this time can perform light activity like walking or riding.
The only exception to these rules are free dyshas, which are marked with a * these dyshas may be cast without incurring penalties. However, once penalties have been incurred, use of these dyshas is penalized, and characters cannot use these dyshas while resting. In addition, use of the Warp dysha counts using as 10 levels of dyshas.
Dysha Modifiers
The following modifiers apply to all dyshas. Disguise Dysha (helps resist unweaving): +1 Level
Bolt Modifiers
Increase range from Pistol to Rifle: +1 Level
Increase damage by +2: +1 level
Orb Modifiers
Increase range from Pistol to Rifle: +2 Levels
Increase damage by +2: +1 level
Subtract 3 from unweaving: +1 level
Make orb invisible: +2 levels
Any dyshas marked with a * are especially simple to cast and may be cast an unlimited number of times without causing fatigue or Isho loss.
Unweaving
Characters can unweave dyshas if they can have Tra-Sense, one or more levels of Isho, and Color Attunement to the dysha they are attempting to unweave. A character can never attempt to unweave a dysha of a Color he is not attuned to. Unweaving is a two-step process. The character must make a Tra Sense + Notice roll to identify the dysha. This normally requires only 1 Success Level, but add 2 Success Levels to the difficulty of the attacker used a modifier to disguise the dysha. Then, the character must attempt to unweave it. To do this, he must roll Isho x 2 and score at least as many Success Levels, as the attacker had when casting the dysha. Rolling fewer Success Levels can still reduce the damage caused by the dysha. Unweaving counts as a defensive action.
Desti Dyshas
Desti dyshas are all red bolts of destructive power.
Lightning Blast: Level 1
Damage: 9 (bullet), Range: Pistol
Stiff: Level 2
Damage 5 LP, Roll Con x 2 –(5 + success levels) . If the target fails, they react as if struck by an electrical shock. Affected targets automatically drop any held item and must make a Dex x 2 –(5 + success levels) roll or fall (do not double Dex if the target is running or is on poor footing). The target is incapacitated for 1 round, and at -2 to all Dexterity rolls for the next turn.
Range: Pistol
Frost Bolt: Level 3
Damage: 14 (bullet), Range: Pistol
Lightning Strike: Level 4
Damage: 18 (bullet), Range: Pistol
Throws target 3 yards (2 for large beings corastin, thombos, or horses, 1 yard for even larger creatures).
Penetration Bolt: Level 5
Damage: 10 (bullet), Range: Pistol
Ignores all armor, cannot affect non-living targets
Du Dyshas
Du dyshas are orange orbs that impart light or heat to their target.
Orb of Light: Level 1*
The character creates a light that can be as dim as a candle or as bright as a 300watt light bulb. The light lasts for 1 hour/Success Level and can be thrown by the caster to any location within range or carried along with the caster's Isho field. Alternately, the creator can create a small flame no hotter or larger than a small kerosene lamp (2 LP damage).
Range: Pistol
Dysha Display: Level 1*
The character can make a glowing display of small, brightly colored lights. These lights can be juggled or simple ordered to move on their own, but they will not go more than two yards from their creator. Alternately, she can create small candle flames that light nearby candles (1 LP damage).
Flingers: Level 2
The character weaves up to 5 1-inch diameter orbs that each do 3 points of fire damage each. Each orb can be aimed at a different target or they can all be sent at one target. Success Levels do not increase damage with these orbs. These orbs can set flammable targets on fire. The character cannot raise the level of this orb to increase the damage, but can increase the number of orbs created.
Range: Pistol
Modifiers
Create an additional 2 orbs: +1 level
Quantum: Level 2
The character weaves a golf-ball sized orb that does 10 points of fire damage. The character cannot raise the level of this orb to increase the damage.
Range: Pistol
Blurring: Level 3
The character creates an orb around his body that blurs and distorts his image. This prevents people from recognizing him, adds +1 to all Stealth rolls, and subtracts -1/Success Level from all attempts to hit him. This orb lasts for 10 minutes.
Modifiers
Use orb on another willing subject: +1 level
Increase duration to 1 hour: +1 Level
Cast Energy: Level 4
The character weaves a golf-ball sized orb that does 16 points of fire damage.
Crater: Level 5
The caster creates an explosive orb. Anyone within 1 yard of the orb takes 24 points of bashing damage, anyone within 3 yards takes 16 points of bashing damage, and anyone within 5 yards of the orb takes 6 points of bashing damage.
Range: Pistol
Ebba Dyshas
Ebba dyshas are yellow orbs that impart force in the target.
Ping: Level 1*
This dysha creates a precisely controlled one inch in diameter pressure that pushes objects with a strength of 1.
Range: Pistol
Push: Level 1
This dysha creates a wide one foot in diameter pressure that pushes objects with a strength of 1.
Range: Pistol
Tumble: Level 2
Reduce a fall's effective distance by two yards/success level.
Power Orb: Level 2
Damage: 12 (bashing)
Range: Pistol
Levitate: Level 2
Raises the character 15 feet up and vanishes after 3 turns
Modifiers
+1 turn to duration: +1 level
5 feet lateral movement: +1 level
Carry person other than caster: +1 level
Carry multiple people: +1 level/additional person
Power Hold: Level 3
The target is immobilized by four powerful rings of force. These rings naturally dissipate after 1 minute, freeing the target. This dysha only immobilizes Corastin, horses, thombos, and other large creatures for 30 seconds, and cannot be used to immobilize larger creatures. Creatures are allowed a doubled Strength roll every turn to break free. Every two success Levels breaks one of the four rings (round down, rolling one success level has no effect). The character can roll once a turn. Until all four rings are broken, the target cannot move or act physically.
Range: Pistol
Programmed Force: Level 3
This orb works exactly like the Push dysha, except that the direction and level of force of the push is determined by the user. You could throw this orb at a bottle and cause it to scoot sideways (or any other direction) along a counter. You could also program the orb to make the bottle go 3 feet straight up and then fall. You could even program the orb so that it would bring the bottle back to your hand. The only limit on the dysha is that it can only move a single target in a single manner. Also, the orb does not perform lasting effects like the suspensor dysha, the dysha falls once it has moved its target. The total distance moved by the orb, both when it is aimed at the target and when it moves the target must not exceed the dysha's range. This orb has a strength of 1.
Range: Pistol
Suspension Orb: Level 4
This orb lifts the target one yard in the air and holds them in a sphere of solid force 10 feet in diameter. This sphere has 20 points of armor. The sphere also has a damage capacity of 20. If someone does 20 points of damage to the sphere (after subtracting the armor of 20), then the sphere will collapse, freeing the victim. Otherwise, the sphere will keep the victim captive for 30 seconds. This sphere can only capture creatures no larger than a corastin, a horse, or a thombo.
Range: Pistol
Modifiers
+15 seconds to duration: +1 level
+5 points to both armor and damage capacity: +1 level
Powerful Programmed Force: Level 4
This dysha is identical to the Programmed Force dyshas, except that it has a Strength of 3.
Range: pistol
Spinner: Level 5
This orb spins the target violently around for 5 turns. Large creatures like corastin, horses, and thombos are only spun for 1 turn. Creatures suffer a penalty to all rolls equal to number of turns they were spun. This penalty lasts for 5 minutes. Creatures that have been spun for 5 turns must make a non-doubled Strength roll to avoid dropping what they are holding in their hands. Creatures that are spun for one round may make a doubled Strength roll. Also, riders on a horse or thombo that is spun must make a Dexterity + Ride roll to avoid falling off the rider.
Range: Pistol
Modifiers
+2 turns to duration: +1 level
Constrictor: Level 5
This orb forms a ring around a target and constricts it. The ring will sever any objects less than 2 inches in diameter, and will cut most ropes and cables.
Damage: 15 (cutting)
Range: Pistol
Gobey Dyshas
Gobey dyshas are black orbs that create or destroy walls of force. Gobey shields protect against all physical attacks, including blasters, field rams, laser, and stunners. However, all dyshas can pass freely through them in either direction.
Shield: Level 1
This orb counts as a defensive action. Using it produces a large shield that protects the wearer from attacks from the direction she is facing. This shield has an armor value of 10 points. The shield lasts until the end of the turn and its duration and armor cannot be augmented.
Support: Level 1
This orb can support up to 20 kg/Success Level in an area that can be 1 - 10 feet wide and 1 – 10 feet long. It can hold a door open or closed, support a rope or a cracked plank someone is attempting to walk across. This support lasts for 1 hour.
Range: Pistol
Modifiers
Increase weight to 50 kg/Success Level: +1 Level Increase weight to 100 kg/Success Level: +2 Levels
Body Shield: Level 2
The user gains 12 points of armor. This shield lasts for 5 minutes + 1 minute/Success Level.
Modifiers
Increase armor by +3: +1 Level
Wall: Level 2
This orb forms a wall up to 100 square feet with an armor value of 40. This bubble also has a damage capacity of 40. If someone does 40 points of damage to the sphere (after subtracting the armor of 40), then the sphere will collapse. Otherwise, the wall lasts for between 5 and 7 days, depending upon the local Isho weather.
Modifiers
Increase armor and damage capacity by 10: +1 Level
Increase area by 25 square feet: +1 Level
Bubble: Level 3
This orb expands to an immobile bubble that is between 2 and 4 feet in diameter. These bubbles are always as high as they are wide. Air and dyshas can freely pass through the bubble. Characters can move through them by making a successful Strength (non-doubled) roll once a round for 2 minutes (this is slow and very tiring). Otherwise, the bubble lasts for 1 day. This bubble also has a damage capacity of 20. If someone does 20 points of damage to the sphere (after subtracting the armor of 20), then the sphere will collapse.
Modifiers
Increase armor and damage capacity by 5: +1 Level
Shield Shatter: Level 3
This orb reduces the armor and damage capacity of any shield by 20 points, doing 4 points/round. If the orb reduces the armor and damage capacity of a shield to 0, the shield instantly falls. This process generates large amounts of light and sound.
Modifiers
The affects of this orb are silent: +1 Level
Increase damage done by +10/+2 round: +1 Level
Mobile Wall: Level 4
This orb is identical to the Wall dysha, except that the creator can cause it to move at a rate of up to Willpower + Isho yards per turn. The character must be within 20 yards of the wall to order it to move. If the character focuses takes no other exact except moving and willing the wall to move, this rate of movement can be doubled. The character can order the wall to move in an direction at the basic rate of Willpower + Isho yards per turn and then cease directing it. The wall will then continue moving for the next 30 minutes, or until the character comes within 20 yards and orders it to stop.
Cage: Level 4
Prerequisite: Lightning Blast
This orb produces a bubble identical to the Bubble dysha, except that it also attacks anyone who destroys it with a Lightning Blast.
Shield Implosion: Level 5
This orb has the same affect as the Shield Shatter dysha, except that it also does 7 points of damage to everyone on the other side of the shield that is within 4 yards of the shield being destroyed. This damage occurs once per turn for all 5 turns.
Launtra Dyshas
Launtra dyshas run green isho over the target's body and do not involve the creation of either orbs or bolts.
Fire Touch: Level 1
The target's hands glow with heat for 1 turn/Success Level. Any punch does 12 points (fire) damage. This dysha also protects the target's hands from heat.
Night Eyes: Level 1*
The character gains the Night Vision quality for 1 minute/Success Level rolled
Modifiers
Use on another character: +1 level
Increase duration to 10 minutes/Success Level: +1 Level
Healer: Level 2
This causes the target to heal all current wounds at a rate of Con LP/hour for a number of hours equal to the success levels they roll. This healing is in addition to the normal daily healing the character experiences. Characters can benefit from this dysha up to twice per day. This dysha cannot be used on Isholess creatures.
Weather Shield: Level 2
This dysha consists of running isho over your body to protect you and your clothing from the elements. This dysha protects users and their gear from rain, snow, and extremes of temperature. Temperatures between 0 and 40 C do not effect the user at all (they feel like a mild 20 C day) while temperatures that are warmer or colder than this feel correspondingly milder. This dysha lasts for 1 hour/Success Level rolled and may be recast as desired.
Modifiers
Use on another character: +1 level
Faint Touch: Level 3
The touched character must make a double Constitution roll at a –(5 + success levels) penalty or fall unconscious for a number of minutes equal to the Success Levels rolled on the attack. This dysha cannot be used on Isholess creatures.
Walk on Water: Level 3
This dysha consists of running isho over and around your feet so as to spread out you weight and support you. While using this dysha you can walk safely on water or quicksand. In addition, characters using this dysha leave no tracks on snow, and their traction of ice will be increased. This dysha lasts for 10 minutes/Success Level rolled.
Modifiers
Use on another character: +1 level
Increase duration to 30 minutes/Success Level: +1 Level
Spider Grip: Level 4
The character can cling effortlessly to any surface. Only force walls and surfaces rich in ebba, such as yellow crystals, or even yellow crystal fragments in mortar are immune to this dysha. The duration of this dysha is equal to 1 minute/Success Level.
Modifiers
Use on another character: +1 level
Increase duration to 5 minutes/Success Level: +1 Level
Enhance Senses: Level 4
The character gains the Situational Awareness Quality (or doubles this bonus if they already possess it) for 1 minute/Success Level.
Modifiers
Use on another character: +1 level
Increase duration to 5 minutes/Success Level: +1 Level
Spectral Stun: Level 5
The character cups her hands and generated a blinding flash that disorients one target (or more targets if they are all within 2 yards of one another) within 5 yards. The target may use a defensive action to make a Dexterity + Notice roll to cover her eyes and turn away. Doing so is a contested roll vs. the attack. If the attack succeeds, the target gains a penalty equal to the success levels rolled on all physical actions for the next three rounds and loses 5 LP.
Shal Dyshas
Shal dyshas are blue orbs that affect the senses and nervous system of the target.
Bell: Level 1
This small orb can sense a single sound, as long as one short word to the target Range: Pistol
Calm Animal: Level 1
This dysha calms animals somewhat, making wary animals less wary and ordinary animals calm and placid. It cannot be used on animals that fear for their life or that are in combat. This dysha only works on Terran life. The duration is 15 minutes. Calm animals require 1 success level and become tame and friendly, ordinary animals require 2 success levels and become calm, wary animals require 3 success levels and become ordinary. Only one use of this orb can affect a target at a time. This dysha also gives +3 to animal handling rolls with this particular animal. This dysha cannot be used on Isholess creatures.
Range: Pistol
Modifiers
Affect Ramian, or Joruni life: +1 level
Double duration: +1 level/doubling
Change mood by two degrees (ie ordinary to tame and friendly): +2 levels
Blind: Level 2
The target becomes blind for 1 turn/Success Level.
Range: Pistol
Faint: Level 2
The target must make a double Constitution roll at a –(5 + success levels) penalty or fall unconscious for a number of minutes equal to the Success Levels rolled on the attack. This dysha cannot be used on Isholess creatures.
Range: Pistol
Alter Emotions: Level 3
The dysha allows the character to use the Emotional Influence supernatural ability (Angel, p. 51) on the target. To resist, the target can roll once/minute to resist, including a roll when the dysha first affects her. The resistance roll is Willpower (doubled) – (2+Success levels). This dysha cannot be used to affect Isholess creatures.
Modifiers
Reduce resistance by and additional -2: +1 Level Increase duration to 5 minute between rolls: +1 Levels
Message Orb: Level 3
This small orb allows you to craft full sensory message, which will be delivered to the target of the orb. This message can be up to 1 minute long. However, since it is delivered directly into the brain of the target it takes only 1 round to assimilate. Memories can be sent with this orb, but it is just as easy to send lies. It may be useful to weave this dysha as an invisible orb, since if someone does not know you are sending them a message all they will see is a Shal orb aimed for their head.
Range: Pistol
Modifiers
+1 minute of message: +1 Level
Body Freeze: Level 4
The character must make a double Constitution roll at a –(5 + success levels) penalty or be immobilized for 1 round/Success Level. This orb causes all of the target's muscles to lock and spasm for the duration, causing the target intense pain and doing 5 LP of damage. Afterwards, the target is at -2 to all rolls for 5 minute/Success Level. This orb only affects Terran-derived life.
Range: Pistol
Modifiers
Affect Ramian, or Joruni life: +1 level
Scramble: Level 4
The target makes a resisted roll with Willpower + Isho. If the attacker succeeds, the target cannot use an Isho except weaving bolts for 30 seconds/Success Level.
Range: Pistol
Craze: Level 5
This dysha throws the target into a wild epileptic fit lasting for 2 rounds/Success/Level. The target also suffers 5 LP/Success Level caused by thrashing around. This orb only affects Terran-derived life and cannot be used to affect Isholess creatures.
Range: Pistol
Modifiers
Affect Joruni life: +1 level
Drain: Level 5
The target makes a resisted roll with Willpower + Isho. If the Attacker succeeds, the target cannot use any Isho for one hour/Success Level.
Range: Pistol
Tra Dyshas
Tra dyshas affect the flow of isho. Several do not require the user weave either an orb or a bolt.
Deflector: Level 1
The character can use a defensive action to deflect an orb or bolt. Doing this requires rolling the same number of Success Levels rolled for the orb or bolt.
Naull Reading: Level 1
This dysha resembles a naull orb. The user weaves this orb and then touches it (while still holding it) to the target. The character then makes a roll:
Naull Reading Chart
This dyshas cannot be used on Isholess creatures.
Inner Ear: Level 2
The character can hear through a barrier (or simply over distance) as if his ear were located at the target location, by opening a micro-warp. The range of this listening is 1 yard/Success Level and it lasts for 30 seconds. The character does not weave or throw and orb and merely looks like they are manipulating a naull orb.
Modifiers
Perform this dysha in an undetectable fashions: +1 level
Increase duration to 5 minutes: +1 level
Increase duration to 1 hour: +2 Levels
Inner Eye: Level 2
The character can see through a barrier (or simply over distance) as if his face were located a foot or less from the target location, by opening a micro-warp. The range of this listening is 1 yard/Success Level and it lasts for 30 seconds. The character does not weave or throw and orb and merely looks like they are manipulating a naull orb.
Modifiers
Perform this dysha in an undetectable fashions: +1 level
Increase duration to 5 minutes: +1 level
Increase duration to 1 hour: +2 Levels
Read Isho Traces: Level 3
This dysha resembles a naull orb. The user weaves this orb and then touches it (while still holding it) to the target. Once the orb is in contact with the target, the user can sense the Isho pattern of anyone who has touched the target in the last 24 hours. Treat this knowledge like using Tra sense. Each bundle doubles the duration that can be read. Also, if an object has remained untouched for a significant period of time (such as earth-tec in a cryo vault) this dysha can sometimes read information about the last individual to handle this object. Isholess creatures leave no isho traces.
Reflect: Level 3
The character can use a defensive action to deflect an orb or bolt in any desired direction, including back at the attacker or at any other target. Doing this requires exceeding the number of Success Levels rolled for the orb or bolt.
Absorb: Level 4
The character can use a defensive action to absorb an orb or bolt. Doing this requires exceeding the number of Success Levels rolled for the orb or bolt. Doing this allows the character to create a single orb or bolt of the same level or lower and use it without incurring any Isho Penalty.
Create Warp: Level 5
The character creates a warp to another location. The warp lasts for 1 round/Success Level, and only a Shantha or someone with an accurate warp map of the area can tell where it leads. Kerning or firing a bolt into the warp causes it to fall if the Success Levels rolled for the bolt exceed the Success Levels rolled for the warp.
Alternately, any being capable of using tra sense can attempt to close or stabilize a warp. Closing a warp requires a roll of Isho + Isho Lore with a number of Success Levels greater than the roll to open it (or two Success Levels for natural warps), while attempting keeping it open keeps it open for 1 round/Success Level. Range: 5 yards
Weapons and Armor
Availability: C = cheap, E = Expensive, R = Restricted, L = License required (and expensive)
Melee Weapon Table
| Weapon Type | Damage | Hands | Avail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thikes | 2 x (Strength +1) | 1-handed | C |
| Shanthic Blade 1-H | 5 x Strength +1 to hit | 1-handed | E |
| Shanthic Blade 2-H | 5 x (Strength +2) +1 to hit | 2-handed | E |
Ranged Weapon Table
| Weapon | Damage | Range | Cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blaster Pistol | 20 (energy) | Pistol | 5 |
| Blaster Rifle | 25 (energy) | Rifle | 10 |
| Pulsar Pistol | 12 (energy) can fire bursts | Pistol | 30 |
| Pulsar Rifle | 16 (energy) can fire bursts | Rifle | 60 |
| Laser Pistol | 15 (bullet) | Rifle | 20 |
| Laser Rifle | 20 (bullet) | Rifle | 50 |
| Field Ram Pistol | 15 (bashing) | Pistol | 10 | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Field Ram Rifle | 20 (bashing) | Rifle | 25 | L |
| Stunner Pistol | Stun* 3 | Pistol | 30 | S |
| Stunner Rifle | Stun* 3 | Rifle | 50 | L |
| Crystal Pistol # | 10 (bullet) | Pistol/2 | 2 | C |
| Crystal Rifle # | 15 (bullet) | Pistol | 2 | C |
Energy damage: This damage doubles after armor penetration and halves armor effectiveness.
Stun*: The character must make a double Constitution roll at a –(5 + success levels) penalty or fall unconscious for a number of minutes equal to the Success Levels rolled on the attack x 5. If the target remains conscious, the stun attempt gives her a -2 penalty to all actions, including resisting another shot by a stunner. This attack also does 3 LP.
Crystal Weapons #: From Sholari #1: http://www.jorune.org/articles.html
Armor Table
| Armor Type | Armor Value | Encumbrance | Avail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leather | 3* | 0 | C |
| Mail | 8 (4)* | -2 | C |
| Thailiarian | 14 (10)* | -3 | E |
| Locurian Grunder | 9 (6)+ | -2 | E |
| Deflector Armor | 12 (8)* | -1 | R |
| Energy Repulsor Armor | 3 (12)* | 0 | R |
| Crystal Armor | 3 [8]+ | 0 | E |
Encumbrance: Subtract the listed number from both the wearer's speed and from all Acrobatics rolls or Crime rolls used for Stealth.
(x) protection vs. energy weapons [x] protection vs. dyshas
* Does not protect against damage by Shal dyshas, Faint Touch, Penetration Bolt, or Spectral Stun
+ This armor partially absorbs dyshas. Subtract -2 from all Dysha rolls to affect the wearer. Also, this armor protects against penetration bolt.
|
PNND work-plan Oct 2015 – Feb 2017 1
The following is a general outline of the PNND activities in a range of program areas including the humanitarian dimension & international humanitarian law, nuclear doctrine, other measures by nucleararmed States, building the framework for a nuclear-weapon-free world (Framework Forum, nuclear weapons convention), a UN-focused nuclear disarmament campaign (UNFOLD ZERO), domestic abolition legislation, nuclear weapon free zones, nuclear testing, nuclear weapons spending, climate/nuclear nexus, and programs in inter-parliamentary organisations.
The PNND program is implemented by the PNND Co-Presidents, Council, Members and staff in cooperation with partner organisations.
Note: As a cross-party network PNND does not endorse specific political policies. PNND facilitates parliamentary dialogue and engagement on key issues, and publicises relevant initiatives and parliamentary actions. PNND members are free to decide whether or not to support specific initiatives and actions.
A: Program
1. Humanitarian dimension and international humanitarian law
PNND will continue working with key parliamentarians to highlight the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and advance the application of IHL to nuclear weapons. This could include:
- Participation in the next international conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons (possibly in South Africa)
- Cooperation with Red Cross/Red Crescent and ICRC on promotion of IHL as an imperative to nuclear abolition;
- Promotion of the Vancouver Declaration on Law's Imperative for the Urgent Achievement of a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World;
- Parliamentary events, statements and resolutions on humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and promoting the two international joint statements on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and the humanitarian pledge;
- Cooperation with the ATOM project, Hibakusha, Marshall Islands and others impacted by nuclear tests as testimony of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons;
- Promotion of the Mexican amendment to the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute) to include the employment of nuclear weapons as a crime under the jurisdiction of the Court;
- Commemoration of the 20 th anniversary of the 1996 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons.
2. Nuclear Doctrine
PNND will continue to engage legislators and parliamentarians in key forums and opportunities to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in security doctrines. This could include:
- Initiatives concerning the removal of US sub-strategic weapons in NATO nuclear-sharing countries and the (phased) elimination of the role of nuclear weapons in NATO doctrine – through parliamentary resolutions, questions to foreign ministers, follow-up to the PNND joint parliamentary letter to President Obama, and input into the NATO and OSCE Parliamentary Assemblies, including through side events and resolution texts;
1 Adopted at the PNND Council Meeting in Prague on Oct 17, 2015. Implementation of the specific program initiatives is subject to funding and personnel resources.
- Phasing out extended nuclear deterrence in other regions, especially North-East Asia through parliamentary events, op ed pieces and engagement in security dialogues, with a particular focus on establishing a NE Asian NWFZ;
- Working with US legislators to advance the US Nuclear Posture Review commitment to lower the role of nuclear weapons to sole purpose as a step to a prohibition on use and plan for elimination;
- Working with Indian and Pakistani legislators to reduce nuclear threat postures and advance confidence building measures in South Asia. Hold a regional parliamentary conference on nuclear disarmament, perhaps hosted by the PNND Bangladesh section;
- Promoting initiatives to limit or prohibit use and threat of use as a step toward elimination. This could include a UNGA/Security Council resolution affirming illegality of targeting populated areas, adoption of no-first use or sole purpose doctrines, and negotiations for a global ban on use;
- Increasing parliamentary and diplomatic support for the de-alerting of nuclear weapons and renouncing launch-on-warning, through additional parliamentary resolutions and endorsers on key letters to the leaders of US. Russia and the nuclear umbrella allies.
3. Measures by nuclear-armed States
PNND will work with legislators from the nuclear armed States on implementation of their nuclear disarmament obligations, in cooperation with relevant partners (Global Zero, Global Security Institute and Arms Control Association). PNND will also work in international forums to highlight these obligations.
This could include:
- Engagement in P5 meetings on implementation of their agreements in the NPT Review Conferences;
- Building collaboration between French and UK legislators through the joint events and newsletter sharing;
- Events in parliaments of the nuclear armed States;
- Promotion of the Nuclear Zero cases in the International Court of Justice;
- Events/resolutions in inter-parliamentary bodies including the OSCE PA, NATO PA and IPU.
4. Building the framework – nuclear weapons convention
PNND will build support for negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention or package of agreements as recommended in the UN Secretary-General's Five Point proposal, supported by the 2010 NPT Review Conference 2 and by the resolution of the IPU 130 th Assembly, and as a way to 'fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.' 3
This could include:
- Co-organising (with Middle Powers Initiative) additional Framework Forum roundtable events;
- Promotion of the Joint Statement of Religious Leaders, Mayors and Parliamentarians for a Nuclear Weapon Free World (which calls specifically for a nuclear weapons convention);
- Participating in events and promotions of Abolition 2000 – the global network promoting a nuclear weapons convention.
5. Nuclear Abolition Forum
PNND will continue to cooperate with other partners of the Nuclear Abolition Forum to engage parliamentarians and academics in dialogue on the achievement of a nuclear weapon free world. This will include publication of the third edition of the periodical – which will focus on cooperative security and nuclear disarmament.
2 The States Parties to the NPT agreed in 2010 that "All States need to make special efforts to establish the necessary framework to achieve and maintain a world without nuclear weapons. The Conference notes the Five-Point Proposal for Nuclear Disarmament of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which proposes inter alia the consideration of negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention or a framework of separate mutually reinforcing instruments backed by a strong system of verification."
3 Primary call of the Humanitarian Pledge
6. UNFOLD ZERO
PNND will work with other UNFOLD ZERO partners to publicise and engage parliamentarians in a range of United Nations focused nuclear disarmament platforms and initiatives including:
- the UN Secretary-General's Five-Point-Proposal;
- UN General Assembly resolutions;
- UN International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons;
- A UN Open Ended Working Group;
- UN Security Council actions and debates including to follow-up UNSC 1887 4 and on non-targeting of populated areas;
- Nuclear Zero cases in the International Court of Justice.
7. Domestic legislation to abolish nuclear weapons
PNND will work with the World Future Council to further publicize exemplary legislation (such as those highlighted by the 2013 Future Policy Awards) to prohibit and criminalise nuclear weapons, and prepare the way for a nuclear-weapons-free world (including national implementation provisions of a nuclear weapons convention). This will include a focus the recommendations in the IPU/PNND Handbook to advance such legislation. It could also include the establishment of additional 'single-state nuclear weapon free zones'.
8. Nuclear Weapon Free Zones
NWFZs are instrumental in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in regions, preventing nuclear proliferation, building non-nuclear security frameworks, enhancing negative security assurances and paving the way to a nuclear-weapons-free world. PNND members and sections will advance proposals for NWFZs in the Middle East, North East Asia, Europe and the Arctic. This could include:
Middle East:
- Informing and advising parliamentarians on proposals and progress towards establishing a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction;
- Securing further endorsements of the Joint Parliamentary Statement on Establishing a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction, or drafting a new statement.
- Organising parliamentary delegations to key countries to discuss the proposal including Iran and Israel;
- Organising a parliamentary conference in the Middle East on the proposal.
North East Asia:
- Further joint meetings of PNND Japan and PNND South Korea sections to discuss ways to advance the 3+3 proposal which is being advanced by PNND members including Tatsuya Okada MP, former foreign minister;
- Securing further endorsements of the Joint Statement by Japanese and Korean Parliamentarians for Denuclearisation and Peace in North East Asia which includes the proposal for a NE Asian NWFZ;
- Organising joint events with Nautilus, RECNA, Peace Depot, PSPD, Civil Network and the Asia Pacific Leadership Network on the NE Asia NWFZ proposal;
- Organising parliamentary delegations to Beijing, Washington, Pyongyang and Moscow (some in collaboration with the Parliamentarians Network on Conflict Prevention) to build support for the proposal;
4 Adopted at the Security Council Summit, convened and chaired by President Obama on 24 September 2009, to advance nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. See http://www.un.org/press/en/2009/sc9746.doc.htm
Arctic:
- Submission of the Arctic NWFZ proposal to the Conference of Parliamentarians from the Arctic Region;
- Submission of the Arctic NWFZ proposal to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly for consideration;
- Organising (with Pugwash Canada and Pugwash Denmark) a fourth parliamentary conference on the issue (in Canada, Finland or Denmark);
Europe
- Liaise with Peace research Institute Frankfurt on the European NWFZ proposal and seek possible cooperation;
- Organise workshops at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and United Nations on the European NWFZ proposal;
- Organize a conference with key partners (Basel Peace Office, World Future Council) on the proposal.
9. Nuclear Testing and the CTBT
PNND will continue to advance the CTBT with the aim of its full ratification and entry-into-force. This will include:
- Parliamentary events on the UN International Day Against Nuclear Tests;
- Promotion of the ATOM Project (including joint events) which was launched at the PNND Assembly in 2012 to highlight the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons testing as an imperative for nuclear disarmament.
10. Nuclear weapons spending – disarmament for development
PNND will continue to be active on the issue of nuclear weapons spending including the opportunity cost in relation to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This could include:
- US legislators actions (led by PNND Co-President Ed Markey) on the US Nuclear Security Budget – to reduce the budget for development and deployment of nuclear weapons (followup to Markey's SANE Act - Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditure Act), and to ensure to ensure adequate funding for nuclear disarmament tasks.
- An event at the United Nations on military spending and the UN SDGs.
- Information to parliamentarians on the Norwegian, New Zealand and Swiss parliamentary initiatives to divest public funds from nuclear weapons corporations – to encourage other parliaments to follow suit.
- Parliamentary resolutions similar to that adopted by Bangladesh.
11. Climate/nuclear nexus
PNND will work in cooperation with the World Future Council and Peace and Planet on the climate/nuclear nexus program, highlighting the existential threats from nuclear weapons and climate change, the linkages between the two issues and initiatives for cooperation.
12. Strategic Concept for the Removal of Arms and Proliferation (SCRAP)
PNND will cooperate with SCRAP to advance initiatives and elements for general and complete disarmament with a focus on mutually supporting agreements and mechanisms. This will include SCRAP and PNND publicizing each other's initiatives and events and joint participation where appropriate.
13. Inter-parliamentary organisations
a. Inter Parliamentary Union – Parliamentary hearings
PNND will promote the resolution adopted by the IPU at its 130 th Assembly on Towards a Nuclear Weapons Free World: The Contribution of Parliaments. This could include further side-events at IPU assemblies and hearings/discussions in national parliaments on implementation of the resolution conducted jointly with IPU and the World Future Council. PNND will use in particular the PNND/IPU Handbook for Parliamentarians on Supporting Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament to assist in implementation of the IPU resolution. The handbook is currently available in English, French, Spanish and Russian, and will be released in Arabic in early 2016. PNND has just been granted Permanent Observer Status at IPU.
b. OSCE, NATO and CIS Parliamentary Assemblies
PNND will work in the OSCE, NATO and CIS Parliamentary Assemblies to raise the issue of nuclear threats and doctrines and to promote cooperative security approaches to meeting security needs. This could include joint parliamentary statements, side events and resolutions to the assemblies.
c. Other inter-parliamentary assemblies
PNND will explore possibility of action in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on nuclear disarmament including support for the UN Open Ended Working Group. This could include a side event at the January 2016 session and a resolution at the March 2016 session.
B. Organisation
1. PNND membership drive
PNND will launch a membership drive to double our membership by the next annual assembly. PNND will provide outreach materials to Co-Presidents, Council Members and partner organisations to use in recruiting additional members. PNND will establish additional sections in countries with sufficient cross-party membership.
2. General engagement of parliamentarians - updates, alerts and other education/advocacy materials
PNND will continue production of updates, alerts, facebook posts and other education/advocacy materials for parliamentarians and for individuals and civil society organisations working with parliamentarians.
- PNND, as far as resources permit, will produce general outreach information (PNND brochure and letters) in languages of all countries in which it operates.
- PNND website is in English and German. French and Spanish are under construction. PNND Japan has its own website that will be transferred soon to the main PNND website. PNND aims to maintain all these websites.
- PNND updates are published in English. Specific updates, where appropriate, can be translated into other key languages with support of PNND members, coordinators or interns.
3. PNND staffing
PNND aims to have sufficient staffing (paid and voluntary) to assist the Co-Presidents, Council and Members to implement the program. This will include staff in the main PNND offices and hosted by partner organisations where appropriate and feasible. Fundraising by PNND Co-Presidents, Council members and staff will be vital to enable this.
4. PNND Assembly
PNND organises an assembly once every 1.5-2 years in strategic/symbolic locations tied to key events in order to enable a contribution to global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament in addition to the deliberations between parliamentarians and experts attending the assembly. The venue for the PNND 2016/2017 Assembly is not yet decided.
|
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OBEDIENCE TO "Include My Mother's messages to the world with My words of direction also: biweekly, in directives to Our clergy and laity."
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AMERICAN CITIES
breathes the spirit of life at the moment of conception. No man shall take this life, for as such he is guilty and found guilty by the Eternal Father of murder!"
"That great city Babylon, that mighty city: for in one hour is thy judgment come.... And mariners ... in the sea, stood afar off and cried, seeing the place of her burning, saying: What city is like to this great city? And they cast dust upon their heads, and cried, weeping and mourning, saying: Alas! alas! that great city, wherein all were made rich, that had ships at sea, by reason of her prices: for in one hour she is made desolate." — Apocalypse 18:10,17-19
We are presenting excerpts from the treasury of heavenly messages given by Our Lord and Our Lady to their voicebox seer Veronica Lueken, from the years 1968-1994.
FORCES OF EVIL
"Your city and all of the cities of your nation and the countries of the world will receive a scourging through their children because of the laxity exercised by parents in safeguarding the morals of their children's souls.
GREAT CATASTROPHE APPROACHES CITIES
Jesus, June 2, 1979
"I ask that all unite in a crusade of prayer that the Almighty Father in Heaven will spare you and yours from the great catastrophe that will soon fall upon many. I have asked you— through the intercession of My Mother for you, I ask you as your God to listen well, for you must prepare your families for what is to soon fall upon you. The cities shall feel a great measure of the destruction. My children, My Mother has asked that you pray and retain the directions from Heaven."
SHALL BE WIPED FROM THE FACE OF YOUR EARTH
Our Lady, December 28, 1974
"Remember, My children, Sodom and Gomorrha, the great cities of sin. Your city and the cities of your country shall be wiped away—wiped from the face of your earth, so great is the sin in your cities!"
U.S. ON BRINK OF DISASTER
"Your leaders, even the highest men in your courts, now condone homosexuality, an offense to your God and all mankind. And what are the fruits of this condoning of sin? Mur-r-rders!!! Murders of the young! Bands of roaming homosexuals going throughout all of the major cities in your United States of America, the once proud country.
Our Lady, September 6, 1975
"SURELY YOU WILL REMEMBER SODOM"
"My children, the cities of earth now are polluted with sin and are cesspools of error in teaching, especially in the rearing of the young. O My children, many young children shall be taken from the earth in order to protect them from the pollution.
"My heart, as a Mother, is torn asunder because of the permissive attitudes that are allowed by the teaching fathers of My Son's Church. I hear little children of a tender age of three and four being taught immorality of word and action. O My children, the sin upon your earth is far greater than any sin in the past! Surely you will remember Sodom and the punishment that fell upon that city.
"While the peoples of earth concern themselves in materialistic pursuits, with the values leaning towards immorality, lesbianism, homosexuality—My children, I could go on and on listing for you all the manner of aberrations that man has allowed to come upon his generation."
Our Lady, June 18, 1978
GREAT DESTRUCTION IS COMING
"Prepare your households that you may not weep at the great destruction that is coming upon many cities."
"Even at night, satan roams the earth. You will cry out when your children fall, and shall they die without absolution or repentance, My children? Shall a mother's heart be torn not knowing where the soul of the child now is?
Our Lady, May 23, 1979
"THE LOURDES OF AMERICA" BACKGROUND STORY
Veronica Lueken, the seer of Bayside, was a wife and mother of five children. She went to her eternal reward on August 3rd, 1995. St. Theresa the Little Flower promised to greet her with a bouquet of red roses when she arrived in heaven.
"The state of the world at the present time has called down upon it a punishment that has been abated for a short time by the acts and sufferings of those who have given themselves as victim souls to the merciful heart of the Father. There are many, My child and My children, in the world who care for their fellow human beings. There are many who will fight to the bitter end in bringing justice to the world, in keeping the light of faith burning in the hearts of the children that can be reached by them.
"Through many earth-years the Eternal Father sent to you prophets; the Eternal Father gave you warnings of what was to come upon mankind. The days approached for the final battle between good and evil, and how many prepared for this battle, My children?
"Parents, you have now the chance and the time to right the wrong that has been done to your children. Can you in all sincerity and honesty say that you have been guiltless in the fall of your children? O parents, great suffering has been given to many, and much suffering will still be experienced in your world.
"In the cities of the United States of America there are forces of evil, dark forces working now in your schools, in your medias of entertainment; and these dark forces have entered into the highest positions of wealth and power."
Our Lady, September 28, 1977
MANY CITIES SHALL FEEL PLAGUE
"My children, you must understand that as a nation you are on now the brink of disaster. If you do not listen to My pleas, the counsel I have given you while coming to you upon earth, you will be destroyed as a nation. Countries from far off will stand on boats from your shores and weep out and cry: O whatever has happened to this beautiful country that had all the gold, the silver of the worlds, all the nations bowing to it. And now, within a few short hours, it is destr-r-royed!!!"
Our Lady appeared to Veronica in her home on April 7, 1970, informing her that She would appear on the grounds of the old St. Robert Bellarmine Church in Bayside on June 18, 1970; that vigils of prayer be held there (now temporarily held at the Vatican Pavilion Site in Flushing Meadows Park), and that full directions be given to the clergy of the parish to prepare for Our Lady's first visit there.
Our Lady also requested that a Shrine and Basilica be erected on this Her chosen Sacred Site, which is to be named "Our Lady of the Roses, Mary Help of Mothers." She promised to come on the eve of the great feast days of the Church. The Blessed Mother also instructed Veronica to disseminate the message given to her throughout the whole world.
"Your city and many cities throughout your country shall feel the plague. It is for the murders of the unborn that your city receives the plague."
Our Lady, September 13, 1975
ABORTION
Our Lady, June 2, 1979
Our Lady has requested that the Rosary be recited aloud by the crowd during the whole of the Vigil. All are requested to kneel in the presence of Jesus. The Message was repeated word for word by Veronica. Veronica also described what she saw. All has been recorded on audio tape.
"Your city and many cities and countries throughout the world will suffer for the murders of the Holy Innocents. Life, the spirit of life, is breathed—the soul placed by the Eternal Father into the body of the unborn at the precise, exact moment of conception. Do not fall prey to the fallacy there is no life until the child emerges from the womb. No! I say to you: life begins at the moment of conception. The Eternal Father
These Last Days, P.O. Box 40, Lowell, MI 49331 http://www.tldm.org 1-616-698-6448 1-800-444-MARY
"You have become a frivolous nation, condoning all manner of sin, immorality! Where shall you come to but a fast destruction.
GREAT DESTRUCTIVE ACT
"There will be a great destructive act committed in your city of New York." Our Lady, September 14, 1976
MAJOR ROLE OF NEW YORK CITY
Our Lady, October 1, 1977
"Because of the major role the city of New York plays in the world governments and the governing of your nation, the United States, My child, it is for this reason that satan chose that area for his start to bring into your country a full overthrow of Christian belief."
GREATEST PUNISHMENT
Jesus, June 18, 1976
"Your city, New York, shall be set in reserve for a punishment far greater than shall be given to any city upon your earth."
NEW YORK: THE CITY OF MURDER AND EVIL
"Your city We place as Babylon—your city, the city of murder and evil, corruption and godlessness—your city will fall!
"My child, you will be discriminated against; you will be scoffed at, for your words from My lips are not those of comfort at this time. They are words of truth of what is to befall man, for he has become a perverse generation, worse than in the time of Noe.
"Those who have remained in the light and accepted the graces given to strengthen them in these dark days will be saved. This I promise you as your Mother. My Son, and in the Father, does not wish that any be lost. Every opportunity will be given to man to prepare himself and be made ready for the trial."
Our Lady, July 25, 1973
NEW YORK CITY, BABYLON
Our Lady, April 1, 1972
"I have come to what I believe, My children, to be an oasis in a barren land, to this seat of evil—your city of Babylon. But, My children, I know within this city of evil there are many that can rise above it and reach out and save their brothers."
SHALL BE DESTROYED "We want the world to know again that there was a locution given to My child, Veronica, and it talks of this: Sodom and Gomorrah. Does this seem similar to you, My children: are you not living now among the realms of Sodom and Gomorrah? And what happened to that adulterous city? It was destroyed, just as Babylon the Great shall be destroyed, also."
Jesus, October 6, 1988
BABLYON THE GREAT WILL FALL
closer. There is a very large cloud formed over the words and the picture of the eagle. Now the cloud is floating over, and Our Lady now is coming through the cloud. And She's now bending over.
Veronica - Our Lady says: Our Lady - "Most of this message must remain secret at this time. Only part may be revealed.
Our Lady - "Yes."
"This is—Babylon the great will fall. Babylon, the master of deceit, will fall. Many good must suffer as martyrs with the bad. Babylon the great will fall! She has raised herself high above her God, and she invokes the vengeance of a just punishment. Ships will look upon her as she burns. Woefully they will shield their eyes from the sight. Babylon the great, the harlot upon nations, the harlot among nations, will fall. Babylon the great, who has led many astray, will fall."
July 15, 1973
AS NOTHING IN COMPARISON TO NEW YORK CITY
Our Lady, August 5, 1974
"I have cried, My child, many bitter tears of sorrow. It is a great remorse to know that We are watching a repetition of the terrible days of old. Sodom and Gomorrha—they were as nothing in comparison to your Babylon today! Your world and your country have accepted sin as a way of life. The young are the victims of their elders. The example is poor, and many souls will be led onto the road to eternal damnation."
SUFFERING FAR GREATER THAN EVER SEEN BEFORE
"As the evil accelerates, there will be given to the Eternal Father no other choice but to loose upon mankind the Ball of Redemption. Many will die in the great flame of the Ball of Redemption. Your earth shall go through a suffering far greater than ever seen before by mankind. All who live through this will envy those who have died."
"As in the time of Noe and the cities of sin, Sodom and Gomorrha, it fell upon the Eternal Father to cleanse this evil from your earth.
Jesus, December 27, 1975
COMET DESTROYS LARGE CITY
Oh, now as it's going through space, I see now it's going towards a very large ball. But now as I'm looking at it, the other ball is coming close to—no, it's like, it's a globe of the world. Now this ball is coming.
Veronica - Now I see coming through the sky a tremendous, huge ball. Oh, it's like a giant sun. But as it's traveling through the sky now, it seems to be turning colors—white and orange, and spinning so fast that it's like it's hurling through space. Oh, it has a tremendous heat. It feels like I'm just watching it, standing so close to it, and it's awfully hot. Oh! Oh!
they look like they've been burned, burned black.
It doesn't—I'm looking now—it's so quiet; there isn't anything there. It looks like a very large city, but there's no one there.
Now I see—everything is flattened back there. It looked like it was a city, but it's flat. And there's smoke rising, and everything looks like it was just knocked over like a stack of cards. Oh! Oh!
Now I'm looking out—I'm standing, and
Our Lady - "Look, My child, out there. The mariners are weeping."
Our Lady said:
Veronica - Mariners weeping? Now out on the water there are ships out on the sea. And I see something very strange. I see the men there. They're all holding their hands to their faces. And they look like they're actually crying. The men are crying. And then one man is saying: "But that I could have the dust to throw over my head of that once great city. Oh, Babylon the great, you have fallen!" They're all looking now onto the—over towards the land, and the land is just like it has been completely destroyed.
April 13, 1974
MARINERS WILL STAND FAR OFF AND WEEP
"I repeat, the evil spreads out like a cancer, strangling all in its web. The mariners will stand far off and weep in grief as they see you burning.* O city of Babylon, your sins have caused your destruction. Repent now or be lost forever."
"Now, My child, I will tell you one major reason why the Father sent Me to you and chose this site as a center of reparation. It is because of the murder of the young. It is because your city, your nation, has great influence throughout the world. Your example will be followed by many. But you must return the Father and restore discipline in your daily lives, or you, too, will fall to the sword.
Veronica - Our Lady is showing me the great disaster. I see large buildings. They're like a deck of cards that have fallen over. A great shaking of the earth, and the buildings are falling.
Our Lady says: Our Lady - "They are inseparable, My child."
Now written over the sky is the word "DEATH": D-E-A-T-H. And underneath it is written the word "SIN": S-I-N. Now Our Lady is looking over to the writing "DEATH, SIN."
March 18, 1974
* see Apocalypse 18:1-21
Veronica - And I see now about three-quarters of the world has turned dark, almost black. Now underneath, there are letters forming underneath the large globe. The words are: "WHAT IS TO BE." W-H-A-T "IS TO BE." Now there is a hand pointing up, a hand pointing up far above the globe. And now the finger is pointing and starting to write across the sky: "GOD": G-O-D, and a large letter "I," "IS." "GOD IS." Now the hand is pointing way over to the right side of the flagpole by the trees. Now there, it's—the finger of the hand is pointing, and it's starting to write again: "WARNING." W-A-R-N-I-NG. "TO MANKIND SOON." S-O-O-N. Now I see an eagle. There's a very large eagle in the sky; and over the eagle is written: "UNITED STATES," and under the eagle is written: "NEW YORK." Now Our Lady is appearing. She's coming
HOLY HOUR
But now as they look back, a great voice is saying: "Don't look back. Take what you have and flee!"
And now Our Lady is coming forward. Our Lady - "Watch, My child, what is to be." Veronica - Now I'm looking into a street. It's a very large city. And I see people pointing up to the sky, and they look like they are filled with terror. They're running and they're screaming. And I see mothers with children in their arms, and they're running. They're all running, but they seem to be running from the city. They're going out into the country. And I see them running. Oh!
Our Lady instructed Veronica to hold a Holy Hour each and every Sunday for the intentions of the Pope and all clergy, and in reparation for the profanation of the Lord's day. The weekly Holy Hour is held at 10:30 a.m.; the Vigils of prayer from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m.–both events at the Vatican Pavilion Site in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, borough of Queens, in the city of New York. The Apparitions continued until June 18, 1994, and a message was given every Vigil that Veronica was present.
Oh, my goodness! Oh, I see, back—if I look back I see what looks like bodies, but I can't recognize them because they look—oh,
For more information, additional copies, and a calendar of upcoming vigils, including a map, write directly to:
These Last Days, P.O. Box 40, Lowell, MI 49331 http://www.tldm.org 1-616-698-6448 1-800-444-MARY
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USONIAN JAPAN VALUE FUND
(A SUB-FUND OF SKYLINE UMBRELLA FUND ICAV - An Irish collective assetmanagement vehicle established as an umbrella fund with segregated liability between subfunds)
ANNUAL REPORT & AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
For the financial year ended 30 April 2021
Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC, the commodity pool operator of Usonian Japan Value Fund (the "Pool"), affirms that the information contained herein is the Annual Report of the Pool (the "Report") for the year ended 30 April 2021 and that, to the best of the undersigned's knowledge and belief, the information contained in the Report is accurate and complete.
By:___________________________________________
Name: Tara Ann Pari Title: Registered Principal Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC Usonian Japan Value Fund
Organisation
Registered Office of the ICAV
Davy House 49 Dawson Street Dublin 2 Ireland
Administrator, Registrar and Transfer Agent
Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Ireland) Limited Registered Office Georges Court 54-62 Townsend Street Dublin 2 Ireland
Independent Auditor
Deloitte Ireland LLP Chartered Accountants & Statutory Audit Firm Deloitte & Touche House Earlsfort Terrace Dublin 2 Ireland
Investment Manager
Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC*****
40 Rowes Wharf
Boston
Massachusetts 02110
USA
Usonian Investments LLC***** 353 N. Clark Street Suite 3501 Chicago IL 60654
Registered No: C64176
Directors of the ICAV
Tom Berrigan (Irish) (resigned 17 August 2020)* John Craddock (Irish) (resigned 2 June 2020)** Aidan Donnelly (Irish) (appointed 2 June 2020)** Robbie Kelleher (Irish) (resigned 2 June 2020)* Darragh Mooney (Irish) (appointed 2 June 2020)** Paul O'Shea (resigned 17 August 2020)*** Ruth (Patterson) Sullivan (Irish) (appointed 2 June 2020)**
Depositary
Northern Trust Fiduciary Services (Ireland) Limited
Georges Court
54-62 Townsend Street
Dublin 2
Ireland
Distributor
Davy Global Fund Management Limited**** Davy House 49 Dawson Street Dublin 2 Ireland
J&E Davy**** Davy House 49 Dawson Street Dublin 2 Ireland
Manager
Davy Global Fund Management Limited****
Davy House
49 Dawson Street
Dublin 2
Ireland
Organisation (continued)
Legal Advisors
Walkers Listing & Support Services Limited
5 th Floor
The Exchange
George's Dock
IFSC
Dublin 1
Secretary
Walkers Listing & Support Services Limited
5 th Floor
The Exchange
George's Dock
IFSC
Dublin 1
Ireland
Ireland
The Prospectus, the key investor information document, the instrument of incorporation, the annual and semi-annual reports, as well as the issue and redemption prices are available from the office of the Swiss Representative. The issue and redemption prices of the shares of each sub-fund of the ICAV is available upon request from email@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.org.
* Non Executive Director
** Independent Non Executive Director
*** Executive Director
**** Effective 12 June 2020, Davy Global Fund Management Limited replaced J&E Davy as Distributor and Fund Manager.
*****Effective 10 August 2020, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC replaced Usonian Investments LLC as investment manager of Usonian Japan Value Fund.
Background to the ICAV and the Fund
Skyline Umbrella Fund ICAV (the "ICAV") is registered in Ireland as an Irish Collective Asset-Management Vehicle under the Irish Collective Asset-Management Vehicles Act 2015. It was registered on 16 February 2016.
The ICAV was previously incorporated in Ireland as a public limited company before the conversion into an Irish Collective Asset-Management Vehicle and complied with the provisions in the Companies Act 2014 up until its conversion date. The ICAV is an umbrella fund with segregated liability between its sub-funds. The ICAV is authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland (the "Central Bank") pursuant to the provisions of the European Communities (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) Regulations 2011 ((S.I. 352 of 2011) (as amended) (the "UCITS Regulations") and the Central Bank (Supervision and Enforcement) Act 2013 (Section 48(1)) (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) Regulations 2019 (the "Central Bank UCITS Regulations").
Shares representing interests in different funds may be issued from time to time by the Directors with the prior approval of the Central Bank.
A separate portfolio of assets is maintained for each sub-fund and is invested in accordance with the investment objectives and policies applicable to that fund. Accordingly, any liability incurred on behalf of or attributable to any fund of the ICAV shall be discharged solely out of the assets of that fund.
As at 30 April 2021, fourteen funds, namely ARGA Global Equity Fund, ARGA Emerging Market Equity Fund, The GM Fund, Fortem Capital Progressive Growth Fund, Arbrook American Equities Fund, Levendi Thornbridge Defined Return Fund, Usonian Japan Value Fund, Lowes UK Defined Strategy Fund, ARGA European Equity Fund, Fortem Capital Alternative Growth Fund, Eagle Capital US Equity Value Fund, (on 5 January 2021 Eagle Capital US Equity Fund changed its name to Eagle Capital US Equity Value Fund), Fortem Capital REIT (Real Estate Index Tracking) Fund and SECOR Hedged Equity Fund were in existence. SECOR Mazu Global Equity Fund terminated on 18 March 2021, however its authorisation has not yet been revoked by the Central Bank of Ireland ("CBI"). Once deauthorisation has occurred, the Secor Mazu Global Equity Fund will cease to exist
These Financial Statements are prepared for Usonian Japan Value Fund (the "Fund") a Sub-Fund of Skyline Umbrella Fund ICAV.
The Fund was authorised by the Central Bank on 15 February 2018 and launched on 16 February 2018. The Fund can offer its investors six share classes as follows:
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Class A1 GBP Unhedged Acc Shares Class A1 GBP Unhedged Dist Shares Class A2 USD Unhedged Acc Shares Class A3 EUR Unhedged Acc Shares Class A4 CHF Unhedged Acc Shares Class A5 JPY Unhedged Acc Shares
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As at 30 April 2021, Class A1 GBP Unhedged Acc Shares, Class A1 GBP Unhedged Dist Shares, Class A2 USD Unhedged Acc Shares were in issue. The functional currency of the Fund is JPY.
Investment Objective of the Usonian Japan Value Fund
The investment objective of the Fund is to seek long term capital appreciation.
Under normal circumstances, the Fund will invest in equity securities of Japanese companies of any capitalisation industry or sector that Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC (the "Investment Manager") (Usonian Investments LLC served as the Fund's Investment Manager prior to 10 August 2020) believes are attractively valued, profitable and conservatively capitalised to reflect a strong asset base and a low debt level. The Fund's investments in equity securities may include common stock, preferred stocks and convertible preferred securities (in which preferred stocks may be converted into common stock).
While the Fund invests primarily in equity securities of Japanese issuers and issuers domiciled outside of Japan but whose securities primarily trade on Japanese exchanges, it may invest in securities of Japanese issuers on any recognised exchange or the securities of issuers located anywhere in the world, whose primary business market is Japan.
The Fund may also achieve the exposure to Japanese companies as outlined above by investing in American Depositary Receipts, European Depositary Receipts, and Global Depositary Receipts and may also obtain market exposure to Japanese companies through investment in Exchange Traded Funds.
Background to the ICAV and the Fund (continued)
Net Asset Value of the Fund
The Net Asset Value ("NAV") of the Fund was calculated in its functional currency. The NAV per share of the Fund was expressed in the currency in which the shares are designated or in such other currency as the Directors may determine either generally or in relation to a particular class or in a specific case, and was calculated by ascertaining the value of the assets of the Fund and deducting from such value the liabilities of the Fund (excluding shareholders' equity) as at the valuation point for such dealing day.
The NAV per Share of the Fund was calculated by dividing the NAV of the Fund by the number of shares in the Fund then in issue or deemed to be in issue as at the valuation point for such dealing day. In the event the shares of the Fund are further divided into classes, the NAV per class shall be determined by notionally allocating the NAV of the Fund amongst the classes making such adjustments for subscriptions, repurchases, fees, dividends accumulation or distribution of income and the expenses, liabilities or assets attributable to each such class (including the gains/(losses) on and costs of financial instruments employed for currency hedging between the currencies in which the assets of the Fund are designated and the designated currency of the class, which gains/(losses) and costs shall accrue solely to that class) and any other factor differentiating the Classes as appropriate.
The NAV of the Fund, as allocated between each class, was divided by the number of shares of the relevant class which are in issue or deemed to be in issue.
The NAV per each class of share is available from the Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Ireland) Limited (the "Administrator") and published one business day following the relevant dealing day as may be set out in the Supplement for the Fund.
Issue of Shares
Under the Instrument of Incorporation, the Directors were given authority to effect the issue of shares and to create new classes of shares (in accordance with the requirements of the Central Bank of Ireland) and have absolute discretion to accept or reject in whole or in part any application for Shares. Fractions of shares up to four decimal places may be issued.
All applications for Shares must be received by the ICAV, care of the Administrator, no later than the relevant dealing deadline (dealing days, dealing deadlines and valuation points are specified in the relevant supplement for the Fund).
The minimum initial investment amount, the minimum additional investment amount and the minimum shareholding of shares of each class of the Fund may vary and is set out in the relevant supplement. The Directors reserve the right from time to time to waive any requirements relating to the minimum initial investment amount, the minimum additional investment amount and the minimum shareholding as and when they determine at their reasonable discretion.
Repurchase of Shares
An applicant may request the repurchase of all or part of its shares of any class of the Fund. The minimum repurchase amount may vary according to the class of share.
Requests for the repurchase of shares should be made to the ICAV, care of the Administrator, in writing, by facsimile or by such other means as the Directors may (with the consent of the Administrator) prescribe from time to time (where such means are in accordance with the requirements of the Central Bank of Ireland) and must in the case of requests in writing or by facsimile quote the relevant account number, the Fund, class of share and any other information which the Administrator reasonably requires, and be signed by or on behalf of the shareholder before payment of repurchase proceeds can be made.
Background to the ICAV and the Fund (continued)
Repurchase of Shares (continued)
The Directors are entitled to limit the number of shares in the Fund repurchased on any dealing day to shares representing 10% of the total NAV of the Fund on that dealing day. In this event, the limitation will apply prorata so that all shareholders wishing to have shares of that Fund repurchased on that dealing day realise the same proportion of their repurchase request. Shares not repurchased, but which would otherwise have been repurchased, will be carried forward for repurchase on the next dealing day and will be dealt on a pro-rata basis to repurchase requests received subsequently. If requests for repurchase are carried forward, the Administrator will inform the shareholders affected.
Dividend Policy
The Directors decide the dividend policy and arrangements relating to the Fund and details are set out where applicable in the supplement. The Directors are entitled to declare dividends out of the Fund being: (i) the net income (being the accumulated revenue (consisting of all revenue accrued including interest and dividends)) less expenses and/or (ii) realised and unrealised capital gains on the disposal/valuation of investments and other funds less realised and unrealised capital losses of the relevant fund and/or (iii) as disclosed in the supplement. The Directors may satisfy any dividend due to shareholders in whole or in part by distributing to them in specie any of the assets of the Fund, and in particular any investments to which the Fund is entitled.
Usonian Japan Value Fund does not make distributions for accumulating classes of the Fund. Distributing classes of the Fund will make distributions annually or semi-annually.
The above details are in summary form only and must be read in conjunction with the detailed information contained in the prospectus and relevant supplement of the Fund.
Investment Manager's Report Usonian Japan Value Fund
Performance Summary
During the annual fiscal period from 1 May 2020 through 30 April 2021, the Fund (Class A1 GBP Unhedged Acc Shares) returned 16.0% net of fees (16.7% gross), while the Tokyo Stock Price Index (TR) returned 17.6%. Sector selection was positive while security selection detracted relative to the index. Usonian Japan Value Fund's underweight to Health Care and Utilities and overweight in Financials, Materials and Industrials were additive, but it's underweight to Information Technology and Communications Services detracted given the strong rallies in those sectors. A modest cash exposure during the period was also a drag on performance as equities rose. Security selection drove relative returns with selection in Information Technology, Materials and Healthcare detracting more than positive selection in Financials, Communications Services, Consumer Staples, and Energy contributed.
The largest single stock contributors included Kadokawa Corporation, JAFCO Group, and Toyota Industries while top detractors included Toho Holdings, Teijin Limited, and T. Hasegawa Co.
Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC June 2021
Directors' Report
The Directors of Skyline Umbrella Fund ICAV (the "ICAV") have pleasure in submitting their annual report and Audited Financial Statements of Usonian Japan Fund (the "Fund") a sub-fund of the ICAV for the financial year ended 30 April 2021 to the Shareholders. The Financial Statements of the remaining thirteen Sub-Funds have been prepared as part of the Financial Statements for the ICAV with the exception of Secor Mazu Global Equity Fund which has also been prepared separately. The Financial Statements for the ICAV are prepared on a going concern basis and the Financial Statements for SECOR Mazu Global Equity Fund are prepared on basis other than a going concern as its terminating.
Overview of the ICAV and the Fund
The Fund was authorised by the Central Bank on 15 February 2018 and launched on 16 February 2018.
Directors' Statement on Accounting Records
The Directors are responsible for ensuring that accounting records as outlined in Section 110 of the ICAV Act, 2015, are kept by Skyline Umbrella Fund ICAV. To achieve this, the Directors have employed Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Ireland) Limited (the "Administrator"). The accounting records are maintained at the Administrator's registered offices at Georges Court, 54 – 62 Townsend Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Activities and Business Review
A detailed review of the Fund's activities for the financial year ended 30 April 2021 is included in the Investment Manager's Report and significant events during the financial year are outlined in Note 22 to these financial statements.
Risk Management Objectives and Policies
The principal risks and uncertainties faced by the Fund were the investment risks associated with the portfolio of investments held by the Fund and the operational risks associated with its management and administration.
The information required under the accounting standards adopted by the Fund, International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS") as adopted by the European Union ("EU") in relation to the use by the Fund of financial instruments, the financial risk management objectives and policies of the Fund and the exposures of the Fund to market price risk, interest rate risk, currency risk, credit risk, and liquidity risk are outlined in Note 3 to these Financial Statements.
Directors' Names
The names of the persons who were directors of the ICAV at any time during the financial year are listed on page 1.
Directors' Interests in Shares of the Fund
No Director, nor the Company Secretary, had any beneficial interest in the shares of the Fund during the financial year or in the prior financial year.
Transactions Involving Directors
Other than as disclosed in Note 17 to the Financial Statements, there were no contracts or agreements of any significance in relation to the business of the Fund in which the Directors had any interest, as defined in the ICAV Act, at any time during the financial year.
Transactions with Connected Persons
The UCITS Regulations require that any transaction carried out with the Fund by a manager, depositary, investment adviser and/or associated or group companies of these ("connected persons") are carried out as if negotiated at arm's length and are in the best interests of the shareholders. The Board is satisfied that there are arrangements in place to ensure that this requirement is applied to transactions with connected persons, and that transactions with connected persons during the year complied with the requirement.
The connected persons are the Directors, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC (the "Investment Manager") (Usonian Investments LLC served as the Fund's Investment Manager prior to 10 August 2020), Northern Trust Fiduciary Services (Ireland) Limited (the "Depositary"), Northern Trust International Fund Administration Services (Ireland) Limited (the "Administrator") and / or associated or group companies.
Directors' Report (continued)
Corporate Governance Code
Irish Funds, the association for the funds industry in Ireland, has published a corporate governance code that may be adopted on a voluntary basis by Irish authorised collective investment schemes. The Board of Directors has adopted the Code, and the ICAV is in compliance with all elements of the Code during the financial year.
Results and distributions
The results of operations and distributions of the Fund for the financial year are set out in the Statement of Comprehensive Income.
Key Performance Indicators
The key performance indicators monitored for the Fund include the performance of the Fund, the level of subscriptions and redemptions and compliance with investment restrictions and risk limits. The performance of the Fund is reviewed in the Investment Manager's Report.
Brexit
The Directors have considered all potential impacts of Brexit outlined within CBI correspondence and identified via internal analysis. To date, all identified Brexit fault lines and exposures have been remediated. As Brexit negotiations remain ongoing, further contingencies are in place reflecting exposures that may or may not arise pending the outcome of exit and future trade negotiations. Following the end of the transition period, the United Kingdom ("UK") entered into a EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement with effect on 1 January 2021, permitting zero tariffs and quotas for trade in goods between the EU and UK. However, as at today's date, no substantive agreement has been reached between the EU and the UK for the provision of services between the UK and remaining Member States. As such, following the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, there is still some uncertainty as to the UK's post-withdrawal framework, and in particular as to the arrangements which will apply to its relationships with the EU and with other countries. The Directors continue to monitor the situation.
Significant Events During the Financial Year
The events which were significant for the Fund during the financial year are detailed in Note 22.
On 2 June 2020 John Craddock and Robbie Kelleher resigned as Directors of the Fund. Ruth (Patterson) Sullivan, Darragh Mooney and Aidan Donnelly were appointed as Directors on the same date.
On 12 June 2020, Davy Global Fund Management Limited was appointed as Manager.
On 17 July 2020, the Central Bank of Ireland approved a new supplement for Usonian Japan Value Fund which includes the change in Investment Manager to Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC. Effective 10 August 2020, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC replaced Usonian Investments LLC as investment manager of Usonian Japan Value Fund.
On 17 August 2020, Tom Berrigan resigned as Director of the ICAV.
On 17 November 2020 Paul O'Shea resigned as Director of the ICAV.
On 5 January 2021 and 9 March 2021 Usonian supplements and the Umbrella prospectus dated 9 March 2021 were updated.
The Usonian Japan Value Fund launched Class A2 USD Acc shares on 22 May 2020 and Class A1 GBP Unhedged Dist shares on 29 January 2021.
Directors' Report (continued)
Significant Events During the Financial Year (continued)
Financial markets have experienced significant volatility as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. The impact can be seen across all sectors and all asset classes. This is a rapidly evolving situation, both from a public health and financial markets perspective. Recent government actions in respect of restriction of movement, social distancing guidelines, and limiting certain activities have resulted in a significant fall in economic activity. As of now it is unclear as to how long these measures will be in effect for, or the ultimate impact on asset valuations but it should be noted as a significant risk to the Fund.
There have been no other events during the financial year, which, in the opinion of the Directors of the ICAV, may have had an impact on the Financial Statements for the financial year ended 30 April 2021.
Significant Subsequent Events
An announcement was made on 22 July 2021 that IQ-EQ will acquire DGFM, the Manager to Skyline. The sale is subject to regulatory approval.
Up to the date of approval of these financial statements there were no other significant subsequent events to report after the financial year ended 30 April 2021.
Employees
The ICAV had no employees during the financial year ended 30 April 2021.
Segregated Liabilities
The ICAV is an umbrella fund with segregated liabilities between sub-funds.
Future Developments
The ICAV will continue to act as an investment vehicle as set out in the Prospectus.
Independent Auditor
In accordance with Section 125 of the ICAV Act 2015, Deloitte Ireland LLP, Chartered Accountants and Registered Auditors, have expressed their willingness to continue in office as the ICAV's auditor.
Directors' Report (continued)
Statement of Directors' Responsibilities
The directors are responsible for preparing the Directors' Report and financial statements, in accordance with applicable law and regulations.
The ICAV Act requires the directors to prepare financial statements for each financial year. Under that law they have elected to prepare the financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as adopted by the EU and applicable law.
The financial statements are required to give a true and fair view of the assets, liabilities and financial position of the Fund at the end of the financial year and of the profit or loss of the Fund for the financial year. In preparing these financial statements, the directors are required to:
- select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;
- make judgments and estimates that are reasonable and prudent;
- state whether they have been prepared in accordance with IFRS as adopted by the EU; and
- prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the Fund will continue in business.
- assess the Fund's ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing as applicable, matters related to going concern; and
- use the going concern basis of accounting unless they either intend to liquidate the ICAV, to cease operations or have another reason not to do so.
The Directors are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the assets, liabilities, financial position and profit or loss of the Fund and enable them to
ensure that the financial statements comply with the ICAV Act and the Central Bank UCITS Regulations. The
Directors have general responsibility for taking such steps as are reasonably open to them to safeguard the assets of the Fund. In this regard they have entrusted the assets of the Fund to a Depositary for safe-keeping.
The Directors have general responsibility for taking such steps as are reasonably open to them to prevent and detect fraud and other irregularities. The directors are also responsible for preparing a Directors’ Report that
complies with the requirements of the ICAV Act.
On behalf of the Board
Director
Director
Date: 21 July 2021
Date: 21 July 2021
10
Report of the Depositary to the Shareholders
We, Northern Trust Fiduciary Services (Ireland) Limited, appointed Depositary to Usonian Japan Value Fund ("the Fund") provide this report solely in favour of the shareholders of the Fund for the year ended 30 April 2021 ("the Accounting Period"). This report is provided in accordance with the UCITS Regulations – European Communities (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) Regulations 2011 (SI No 352 of 2011), as amended, which implemented Directive 2009/65/EU into Irish Law ("the Regulations"). We do not, in the provision of this report, accept nor assume responsibility for any other purpose or person to whom this report is shown.
In accordance with our Depositary obligation as provided for under the Regulations, we have enquired into the conduct of the Fund for the Accounting Period and we hereby report thereon to the shareholders of the Fund as follows;
We are of the opinion that the Fund has been managed during the Accounting Period, in all material respects:
(i) In accordance with the limitations imposed on the investment and borrowing powers of the Fund by the constitutional documents and by the Regulations; and
(ii) otherwise in accordance with the provisions of the constitutional documents and the Regulations.
____________________
For and on behalf of: Northern Trust Fiduciary Services (Ireland) Limited
21 July 2021
11
INDEPENDENT AUDITOR'S REPORT TO THE SHAREHOLDERS OF USONIAN JAPAN VALUE FUND
(A SUB-FUND OF SKYLINE UMBRELLA FUND ICAV)
Report on the audit of the annual accounts
Opinion on the annual accounts of Usonian Japan Value Fund (the 'Fund')
In our opinion the annual accounts:
- give a true and fair view of the assets, liabilities and financial position of the Fund as at 30 April 2021 and of the result for the financial year then ended; and
- have been properly prepared in accordance with the relevant financial reporting framework and the applicable Regulations.
The annual accounts we have audited comprise:
- the Statement of Comprehensive Income;
- the Statement of Financial Position;
- the Statement of Cash Flows; and
- the Statement of Changes in Net Assets attributable to holders of Redeemable Participating Shares;
- the related notes 1 to 24, including a summary of significant accounting policies as set out in note 2.
The relevant financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is the Irish Collective Asset-Management Vehicles Act 2015 ("the ICAV Act") and International Financial Reporting Standards as adopted by the European Union ("IFRS") ("the relevant financial reporting framework").
The applicable regulations that have been applied in their preparation is the European Communities (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) Regulations, 2011 and Central Bank (Supervision and Enforcement) Act 2013 (Section 48(1)) (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) Regulations, 2019 ("the applicable Regulations").
Basis for opinion
We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (Ireland) (ISAs (Ireland)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are described below in the "Auditor's responsibilities for the audit of the annual accounts" section of our report.
We are independent of the Fund in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the annual accounts in Ireland, including the Ethical Standard issued by the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.
Conclusions relating to going concern
In auditing the annual accounts, we have concluded that the directors' use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the annual accounts is appropriate.
Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the Fund's ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the annual accounts are authorised for issue.
Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the directors with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.
Other information
The other information comprises the information included in the Annual Report and Audited Financial Statements, other than the annual accounts and our auditor's report thereon. The directors are responsible for the other information contained within the Annual Report and Audited Financial Statements. Our opinion on the annual accounts does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.
Deloitte Ireland LLP Chartered Accountants & Statutory Audit Firm
/Continued from previous page
INDEPENDENT AUDITOR'S REPORT TO THE SHAREHOLDERS OF USONIAN JAPAN VALUE FUND (A SUB-FUND OF SKYLINE UMBRELLA FUND ICAV)
Our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the annual accounts or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether there is a material misstatement in the annual accounts or a material misstatement of the other information. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.
We have nothing to report in this regard.
Responsibilities of directors
As explained more fully in the Statement of Directors' Responsibilitites, the directors are responsible for the preparation of annual accounts that give a true and fair view and have been properly prepared in accordance with the ICAV Act, and for such internal control as the directors determine is necessary to enable the preparation of annual accounts that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.
In preparing the annual accounts, the directors are responsible for assessing the Fund's ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the directors either intend to liquidate the Fund or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.
Auditor's responsibilities for the audit of the annual accounts
Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the annual accounts as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor's report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (Ireland) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these annual accounts.
As part of an audit in accordance with ISAs (Ireland), we exercise professional judgment and maintain professional scepticism throughout the audit. We also:
- Identify and assess the risks of material misstatement of the annual accounts, whether due to fraud or error, design and perform audit procedures responsive to those risks, and obtain audit evidence that is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion. The risk of not detecting a material misstatement resulting from fraud is higher than for one resulting from error, as fraud may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal control.
- Obtain an understanding of internal control relevant to the audit in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Fund's internal control.
- Evaluate the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates and related disclosures made by the directors.
- Conclude on the appropriateness of the directors' use of the going concern basis of accounting and, based on the audit evidence obtained, whether a material uncertainty exists related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt on the Fund's ability to continue as a going concern. If we conclude that a material uncertainty exists, we are required to draw attention in our auditor's report to the related disclosures in the annual accounts or, if such disclosures are inadequate, to modify our opinion. Our conclusions are based on the audit evidence obtained up to the date of the auditor's report. However, future events or conditions may cause the entity (or where relevant, the group) to cease to continue as a going concern.
/Continued from previous page
INDEPENDENT AUDITOR'S REPORT TO THE SHAREHOLDERS OF USONIAN JAPAN VALUE FUND (A SUB-FUND OF SKYLINE UMBRELLA FUND ICAV)
- Evaluate the overall presentation, structure and content of the annual accounts, including the disclosures, and whether the annual accounts represent the underlying transactions and events in a manner that achieves fair presentation.
We communicate with those charged with governance regarding, among other matters, the planned scope and timing of the audit and significant audit findings, including any significant deficiencies in internal control that the auditor identifies during the audit.
Report on other legal and regulatory requirements
Matters on which we are required to report by the ICAV Act and the applicable Regulations
In our opinion, the information given in the directors' report is consistent with the annual accounts and the directors' report has been prepared in accordance with the ICAV Act.
Matters on which we are required to report by exception
Based on the knowledge and understanding of the FUND and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the directors' report.
We have nothing to report in respect of the provisions in the ICAV Act which require us to report to you if, in our opinion, the disclosures of directors' remuneration specified by the ICAV Act are not made.
Opinion on other matters prescribed by the applicable Regulations
Based solely on the work undertaken in the course of the audit, we report that:
- We have obtained all the information and explanations which we consider necessary for the purposes of our audit.
- The annual accounts are in agreement with the accounting records.
- In our opinion the accounting records of the Fund were sufficient to permit the annual accounts to be readily and properly audited.
Use of our report
This report is made solely to the Fund's shareholders, as a body, in accordance with Section 120(1) (b) of the ICAV Act. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the Fund's shareholders those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor's report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the Fund and the Fund's shareholders as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.
Darren Griffin
Chartered Accountants and Statutory Audit Firm
For and on behalf of Deloitte Ireland LLP
Deloitte & Touche House, 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2
Statement of Comprehensive Income
For the financial year ended 30 April 2021
There are no recognised gains or losses arising in the financial year other than those included in the Statement of Comprehensive Income.
The accompanying notes form an integral part of the Financial Statements.
Statement of Financial Position
As at 30 April 2021
The accompanying notes form an integral part of the Financial Statements.
On Behalf of the Directors
Director:
Director:
Date: 21 July 2021
Statement of Changes in Net Assets Attributable to Holders of Redeemable Participating Shares
For the financial year ended 30 April 2021
The accompanying notes form an integral part of the Financial Statements.
Statement of Cash Flows
For the financial year ended 30 April 2021
| Cash flows from operating activities Proceeds from sale of investments Purchase of investments Interest received Dividends received Operating expenses paid Gains/(losses) from foreign currency Exchange (loss)/gain on receivables/payables Net cash from operating activities Cash flows from financing activities Interest paid Distributions Transfer under Scheme of Amalgamation Share transactions Amounts received on issue of redeemable participating shares | Year ended 30 April 2021 JPY 19,659,572,590 (18,140,826,790) 5,405 869,607,926 (242,503,155) 4,913,004 (603) |
|---|---|
| | 2,150,768,377 |
| | (7,133,636) (18,260,763) - 11,376,962,462 |
| Amounts paid on redemption of redeemable participating shares (14,620,591,142) | |
| | (3,269,023,079) |
| | (1,118,254,702) 1,735,846,134 |
| | 617,591,432 |
The accompanying notes form an integral part of the Financial Statements.
Notes to the Financial Statements
For the financial year ended 30 April 2021
1. Basis of preparation
a) Statement of compliance
The Financial Statements of Usonian Japan Value Fund (the "Fund"), a sub-fund of Skyline Umbrella Fund ICAV ("the ICAV") were prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards as adopted by the European Union ("IFRS") and interpretations adopted by the International Accounting Standards Board ("IASB"), and Irish statute comprising the Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicles Act 2015 ("the ICAV Act") and pursuant to the European Communities (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) Regulations 2011 ("the UCITS Regulations") and the Central Bank (Supervision and Enforcement) Act 2013 (Section 48(1)) (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) Regulations 2019 (the "Central Bank UCITS Regulations").
Management has made an assessment of the Fund's ability to continue as a going concern. Financial markets have been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Investment Manager has been closely following developments. The Fund holds sufficient cash and liquidity within its portfolios to be able to meet its financial obligations at a minimum for a 12-month period post signing of the financial statements. Therefore, management has concluded that the going concern basis of accounting is the most appropriate and has applied same in these financial statements.
b) Use of estimates and judgements
The Fund is a sub-fund of the ICAV for the financial year ended 30 April 2021. The Financial Statements of the remaining thirteen sub-funds of the ICAV have been prepared as part of the Financial Statements for the ICAV with the exception of SECOR Mazu Global Equity Fund which has been also prepared separately. The Directors consider the basis of preparation of each set of financial statements and they have determined that the Fund's Financial Statements as a sub-fund of the ICAV should be prepared on a going concern basis.
The preparation of Financial Statements in conformity with IFRS requires the Fund to make use of estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities at the date of the Financial Statements and the reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting period. Although these estimates are based on management's best knowledge of the amount, event or actions, actual results ultimately may differ from those estimates. The areas involving a higher degree of judgement or complexity or areas where estimates and assumptions are significant to the Financial Statements are disclosed in Note 2(b). The estimates and underlying assumptions are reviewed on an on-going basis.
c) Presentation currency
The Financial Statements are presented in Japanese Yen ("JPY") which is the Fund's functional currency and presentation currency.
2. Significant accounting policies
The Financial Statements of the Fund have been prepared on a going concern basis.
a) Financial Assets and Liabilities at fair value through profit and loss ("FVTPL")
(i) Classification
The Fund classifies investments based on the contractual cash flow characteristics of the financial assets and the Fund's business model.
A financial asset is measured at amortised cost if it meets both of the following conditions and is not designated as at FVTPL:
* The asset is held within a business model whose objective is to hold assets to collect contractual cashflows; and
* The contractual cash terms of the financial asset give rise on specified dates to cash flows that are solely payments of principal and interest on the principal amount outstanding.
2. Significant accounting policies (continued)
a) Financial Assets and Liabilities at fair value through profit and loss (continued)
(i) Classification (continued)
A debt instrument is measured at fair value through other comprehensive income ("FVTOCI") only if it meets both of the following conditions and is not designated as at FVTPL:
* The asset is held within a business model whose objective is achieved by both collecting contractual cashflows and selling financial assets: and
* The contractual terms of the financial asset give rise on specified dates to cash flows that are solely payments of principal and interest on the principal amount outstanding.
An equity instrument is measured at FVTOCI only where it is not held for trading and the Fund has made an election at initial recognition to measure it at FVTOCI.
The Fund's equity instruments are classified as FVTPL as they are held for trading. The Fund classifies its financial liabilities, other than derivatives, if any, as measured at amortised cost. Derivatives, if any, not designated in a qualifying hedge relationship are mandatorily classified at FVTPL.
(ii) Recognition and derecognition
Purchases and sales of investments are recognised on the trade date – the date on which the Fund commits to the purchase or sale of an investment. Investments are derecognised when the rights to receive cash flows from the investments have expired or the Fund has transferred all risks and rewards of ownership. Changes in unrealised gains and losses on financial assets and liabilities are recognised in the Statement of Comprehensive Income.
(iii) Measurement
Financial assets and financial liabilities at FVTPL are initially recognised at fair value. Transaction costs are expensed as incurred in profit or loss in the Statement of Comprehensive Income. Subsequent to initial recognition, all financial assets and financial liabilities at FVTPL are measured at fair value.
Financial liabilities, other than those at fair value through profit or loss, are measured at amortised cost using the effective interest rate.
IFRS 13 requires valuation to be based on a price within the bid-ask spread that is most representative of fair value and allows the use of mid-market pricing or other pricing conventions that are used by market participants as a practical expedient for fair value measurement within a bid-ask spread. The Directors are of the opinion that the last traded prices used within the valuation for its listed financial assets, financial liabilities and over-thecounter financial derivative instruments whose reference assets are listed, if any, are representative of fair value.
Realised gains or losses on disposal of financial assets at fair value through profit or loss during the financial year and unrealised gains and losses on valuation of financial assets at fair value through profit or loss held at the financial year end are dealt with in the Statement of Comprehensive Income.
(iv) Fair value measurement principles
Fair value is the price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date in the principal or, in its absence, the most advantageous market to which the Fund has access at that date. The fair value of a financial liability reflects its non-performance risk.
2. Significant accounting policies (continued)
a) Financial assets and liabilities at fair value through profit and loss (continued)
(iv) Fair value measurement principles (continued)
The fair value of financial instruments traded in active markets, such as equities and exchange traded funds, is based on quoted market prices at the Statement of Financial Position date. The quoted market price used for financial assets and liabilities held by the Fund is the current last traded price.
Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC (the "Investment Manager") (Usonian Investments LLC served as the Fund's Investment Manager prior to 10 August 2020) may pursue the Fund's investment objective by allocating the Fund's assets to other collective investment vehicles including those that are managed by the Investment Manager or one of its affiliates. The fair value of closed ended funds are derived from quoted prices listed on the stock exchange.
Fair values for unquoted equity investments are estimated, if possible, using applicable price/earnings ratios for similar listed companies adjusted to reflect the specific circumstances of the issuer.
If a quoted market price is not available on a recognised stock exchange or from a broker/dealer for nonexchange-traded financial instruments, the fair value of the instrument is estimated using valuation techniques, including use of recent arm's length market transactions, reference to the current fair value of another instrument that is substantially the same, discounted cash flow techniques, option pricing models or any other valuation technique that provides a reliable estimate of prices obtained in actual market transactions.
Realised gains and losses on investment disposals are calculated using the average cost method.
(v) Cash and cash equivalents
Cash comprises current deposits with banks. Cash equivalents are short-term highly liquid investments that are readily convertible to known amounts of cash and are subject to an insignificant risk of changes in value.
(vi) Offsetting Financial Instruments
Financial assets and financial liabilities are offset and the net amount reported in the Statement of Financial Position where there is a legally enforceable right to offset the recognised amounts and there is an intention to settle on a net basis, or realise the assets and settle the liability simultaneously.
b) Critical accounting estimates and assumptions
Management makes estimates and assumptions concerning the future. The resulting accounting estimates will, by definition, seldom equal the related actual results. The estimates and assumptions that have a significant risk of causing a material adjustment to the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities include the fair value of investments (as set out in part (a), (iii) and (iv)), and disclosed in the Statement of Financial Position and the functional currency of the ICAV.
c) Income
Bank interest income and dividend income is accounted for on an accruals basis. Interest income on fixed and floating rate securities is accounted for on an effective yield basis.
d) Fees and charges
In accordance with the Prospectus, management fees, administration fees, depositary fees, sub-custody fees and other operating expenses are charged to the Statement of Comprehensive Income on an accruals basis.
2. Significant accounting policies (continued)
e) Redeemable participating shares
Redeemable Participating Shares are redeemable at the Shareholder's option and are classified as financial liabilities.
f) Taxation
Interest income and dividend income received by the Fund may be subject to withholding tax imposed in the country of origin. Investment income is recorded gross of such taxes. Capital gains tax may be payable by the Fund for any gains. See Note 18 for further information relating to taxation.
g) Other receivables
Trades awaiting settlement are reflected in Other Receivables in the Statement of Financial Position. Please refer to Note 8 for full breakdown of Other Receivables.
h) Due to and from brokers
Amounts due from and to brokers represent receivables for securities sold and payables for securities purchased that have been contracted for but not yet settled or delivered on the Statement of Financial Position date respectively. The due from brokers balance is held for collection.
i) Foreign exchange
Foreign exchange gains and losses on financial assets and financial liabilities at fair value through profit or loss are recognised together with other changes in the fair value. Net currency gains/(losses) as set out in Note 5, are net foreign exchange gains and losses on monetary financial assets and financial liabilities other than those classified at fair value through profit or loss. Assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currencies, other than the functional currency of the Fund, have been translated at the rate of exchange ruling at 30 April 2021.
j) Transaction costs
Transaction costs are costs incurred to acquire financial assets or liabilities at fair value through profit or loss. They include fees and commissions paid to agents, advisers, brokers and dealers. Transaction costs, when incurred, are included as part of the cost of such purchases. The transaction costs that are separately identifiable are disclosed in Note 16.
k) Distributions
As stated in the "Background to the ICAV" the Directors decide the dividend policy and arrangements relating to each Fund. All distributions are recognised in the Statement of Comprehensive Income as finance costs. The Fund paid out dividends GBP119,777 or JPY 18,260,763 (30 April 2020: JPY Nil) during the year on Class A1 GBP Unhedged Dist Shares.
l) Anti-Dilution Levy
The Directors may, where there are net subscriptions or redemptions, charge an anti-dilution levy which will be calculated to cover the costs of acquiring or selling investments as a result of net subscriptions or redemptions on any dealing day, which will include any dealing spreads and commissions and will be charged in circumstances where the Directors believe it is necessary to prevent an adverse effect on the value of the assets of the Fund. There was no such adjustment for the Fund as at 30 April 2021 or 30 April 2020.
3. Financial risk management
Strategy in using financial instruments
In pursuing its investment objective and policies, the Fund is exposed to a variety of financial risks: market risk (including market price risk, interest rate risk and currency risk), credit risk, that could result in a reduction in the Fund's net assets. The Fund's overall risk management policy focuses on the unpredictability of financial markets and seeks to minimise potential adverse effects on the Fund's financial performance.
Global exposure
Under UCITS Regulations issued by the Central Bank of Ireland, the ICAV is required to employ a risk management process ("RMP") which enables it to accurately monitor and manage the global exposure to the ICAV from derivatives.
The Fund uses a methodology known as the "Commitment Approach" to measure the global exposure of the ICAV and manage any potential loss due to market risk.
The nature and extent of the financial instruments outstanding at the reporting date and the policies employed by the ICAV to manage these risks are discussed below.
a) Market price risk
Market price risk is the risk that the fair value of future cash flows of a financial instrument will fluctuate because of changes in market prices. Market price is defined as the prevailing price at which the financial instruments held by the Fund may be sold within a public arena. It is the estimated amount for which an investment should exchange between a willing buyer and a willing seller in an arms-length transaction wherein the parties had each acted knowledgeably, prudently, and without compulsion. The Fund's securities and financial derivative instruments if any are susceptible to market price fluctuations arising from uncertainties about the future performance of each specific security held or to which exposure is obtained by the Funds, future market conditions in general and future economic and political events.
The Board of Directors manage the market price risks inherent in the investment portfolios by ensuring full, regular and timely access to relevant information from the Investment Manager. The Board of Directors meets regularly and at each meeting reviews investment performance and overall market positions. They monitor the Investment Manager's compliance with the Fund's investment objectives.
If the market price of equities had increased by 5% at 30 April 2021, and if all other variables were held constant, then this would have increased net assets attributable to holders of redeemable participating shares of the Fund by approximately JPY 2,108,823,147 (30 April 2020: JPY 1,684,139,907).
Conversely, if the market price of equities had decreased by 5%, then this would have decreased net assets attributable to holders of redeemable shares of the Fund by an equal and opposite amount, if all other variables had remained constant.
b) Interest rate risk
The Fund does not hold interest bearing securities. Therefore, the Fund has no exposure to interest rate risk and consequently, no sensitivity analysis for interest rate risk has been carried out.
3. Financial risk management (continued)
c) Currency risk
Currency risk is the risk that the fair value or future cash flows of a financial instrument will fluctuate because of changes in foreign exchange rates.
The Fund is exposed to currency risk as the assets are held in a range of currencies other than the Fund's functional currency. The Fund may hedge their foreign currency risks through forward foreign currency contracts. Additionally, circumstances may also arise in which hedging transactions undertaken by the Fund may reduce currency gains which would otherwise accrue where no such hedging transactions were undertaken by the Fund.
In accordance with the Fund's policy, the Investment Manager monitors the Fund's currency positions on a daily basis and the Board of Directors review the details on a quarterly basis.
The table below and overleaf set out the foreign exchange ("FX") exposure of the assets and liabilities, by currency, in relation to the Fund.
30 April 2021
If the JPY exchange rate at 30 April 2021 had increased by 5% with all other variables held constant, this would have decreased Net Assets Attributable to Holders of Redeemable Participating Shares of the Fund by approximately JPY 2,149,157,985 (30 April 2020: JPY 1,794,693,981). Conversely, if the JPY exchange rate had decreased by 5%, this would have increased Net Assets Attributable to Holders of Redeemable Participating Shares of the Fund by an equal and opposite amount, all other variables remaining constant.
3. Financial risk management (continued)
d) Credit risk
The Fund takes on exposure to credit risk, which is the risk that a counterparty will default by failing to meet its obligations in accordance with agreed terms. The Fund will be exposed to a credit risk on parties with whom it trades, and will also bear the risk of settlement default.
The Fund minimises its credit risk through dealing with counterparties and credit institutions holding cash and interest bearing financial assets which are offered by investment-grade rated companies.
As at 30 April 2021 and 30 April 2020, the Fund does not hold debt securities. Therefore, this Fund has no exposure to credit risk.
Northern Trust Fiduciary Services (Ireland) Limited ("NTFSIL") is the appointed Depositary ("Depositary") of the Fund, responsible for the safe-keeping of assets. NTFSIL has appointed The Northern Trust Company ("TNTC") as its global sub-custodian. Both NTFSIL and TNTC are wholly owned subsidiaries of Northern Trust Corporation ("NTC"). As at year-end date 30 April 2021, NTC had a long term credit rating from Standard & Poor's of A+ (30 April 2020: A+).
TNTC (as global sub-custodian of NTFSIL) does not appoint external sub-custodians within the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia. However, in all other markets, TNTC appoints local external sub-custodians. NTFSIL, in the discharge of its depositary duties, verifies the Fund's ownership of Other Assets, (as defined under Other Assets, Art 22(5) of UCITS V Directive 2014/91/EU), by assessing whether the Fund holds the ownership based on information or documents provided by the Fund or where available, on external evidence.
TNTC, in the discharge of its delegated depositary duties, holds in custody (i) all financial instruments that may be registered in a financial instruments account opened on the books of TNTC and (ii) all financial instruments that can be physically delivered to TNTC. TNTC ensures all financial instruments (held in a financial instruments account on the books of TNTC) are held in segregated accounts in the name of the Fund, clearly identifiable as belonging to the Fund, and distinct and separately from the proprietary assets of TNTC, NTFSIL and NTC.
In addition TNTC, as banker, holds cash of the Fund's on deposit. Such cash is held on the Statement of Financial Position of TNTC. In the event of insolvency of TNTC, in accordance with standard banking practice, the Fund will rank as an unsecured creditor of TNTC in respect of any cash deposits.
Insolvency of NTFSIL and or one of its agents or affiliates may cause the Fund's rights with respect to its assets to be delayed. The Investment Manager manages risk by monitoring the credit quality and financial position of the Depositary and such risk is further managed by the Depositary monitoring the credit quality and financial positions of sub-custodian appointments.
e) Liquidity risk
Liquidity risk is the risk that an entity will encounter difficulty in meeting obligations associated with financial liabilities. The Fund is exposed to daily cash redemptions of redeemable participating shares. The Fund generally retains a portion of its assets in cash, which is available to satisfy redemptions. The Fund invests the proportion of its assets in investments that are traded in an active market and can be readily disposed, it invests the majority of its assets in investments not actively traded on a stock exchange. The Fund's listed securities are considered readily realisable as they are listed on a stock exchange.
The Central Bank of Ireland Regulations, the Fund's prospectus and supplements give guidance to the Investment Managers as to the maximum amount of the Fund's resources that should be invested in any one holding.
3. Financial risk management (continued)
e) Liquidity risk (continued)
In accordance with the Fund's policy, the Investment Manager monitors the Fund's liquidity positions on a daily basis, and the Board of Directors review these on a quarterly basis. There were no material changes to the Fund's policies and processes for managing liquidity risk and the methods used to measure risk since the prior financial year end.
The tables below analyses the Fund's financial liabilities into relevant maturity groupings based on the remaining period at the reporting date to the contractual maturity date. The amounts in the tables are the contractual undiscounted cash flows. Balances due within twelve months equal their carrying balances as the impact of discounting is not significant.
f) Concentration risk
The Fund may have a relatively high percentage of assets in a single or small number of issuers and may have fewer holdings than other funds. As a result, a decline in the value of an investment in a single issuer could cause the Fund's overall value to decline to a greater degree than if the Fund held a more diverse portfolio.
3. Financial risk management (continued)
Fair value hierarchy disclosure
Fair value hierarchy disclosure
IFRS 13 'Fair Value Measurement: Disclosures' requires disclosure relating to the fair value hierarchy in which fair value measurements are categorised for assets and liabilities in the Statement of Financial Position.
The disclosures are based on a three-level fair value hierarchy for the inputs used in valuation techniques to measure fair value. The fair value of financial assets and financial liabilities traded in an active market (such as trading securities) are based on quoted market prices at the close of trading on the year-end date. The quoted market price used for financial assets held by the Fund is the last traded price as a practical expedient for fair value.
A financial instrument is regarded as quoted in an active market if the quoted prices are readily and regularly available from an exchange, dealer, broker, industry group, pricing service, or regulatory agency, and those prices represent actual and regularly occurring market transactions on an arm's length basis.
The fair value of financial assets and financial liabilities that are not traded in an active market is determined by using valuation techniques. The Fund uses a variety of methods and make assumptions that are based on market conditions existing at the year-end date. The Fund classifies fair value measurements using a fair value hierarchy that reflects the significance of the inputs used in making the measurements. The fair value hierarchy has the following levels:
* Quoted prices (unadjusted) in active markets for identical assets or liabilities (level 1).
* Inputs other than quoted prices included within level 1 that are observable for the asset or liability, either directly (that is, as prices) or indirectly (that is, derived from prices) (level 2).
* Inputs for the asset or liability that are not based on observable market data (that is, unobservable inputs) (level 3).
The following table analyses within the fair value hierarchy the Fund's investments at fair value at 30 April 2021 and 30 April 2020.
Other Financial Assets and Liabilities
At the 30 April 2021 and 30 April 2020, cash and cash equivalents are considered to be classified as level 1 within the fair value hierarchy.
All other financial assets and liabilities, other than investments at fair value, whose carrying amounts approximate to fair value have been considered to be classified within Level 2 of the fair value hierarchy.
4. Operating Income
5. Net gains/(losses) on financial assets and liabilities at fair value through profit or loss
6. Operating Expenses
Refer to Note 14 for further details on the Fund's expenses.
7. Cash and cash equivalents
| | As at As at 30 April 2021 30 April 2020 JPY JPY 8,561,039 6,043,099 1,620,553 922,251 675,169 682,522 4,917,431 3,342,618 4,946,395 1,670,285 522,791 108,149 1,612,773 1,458,189 500,354 - 41,501,774 15,907,168 3,612,479 2,599,427 438,897 264,828 68,909,655 32,998,536 | |
|---|---|---|
| Accrued administration fees Accrued audit fees Accrued bank interest Accrued sub-custody fees Accrued distributor fee Accrued financial reporting fee Accrued general expenses Accrued financial regulator levy Accrued investment management fee Accrued depositary fee Accrued VAT fee | | |
| | 68,909,655 | 32,998,536 |
10. Share capital
The authorised Share capital of the Fund is 2 subscriber shares ("Subscriber Shares") of €1 each and 1,000,000,000,000 Shares of no par value initially designated as unclassified shares and available for issue as shares.
The issued share capital of the ICAV is €2 represented by 2 subscriber shares issued for the purpose of incorporation of the ICAV at an issue price of €1.
The right of holders of any shares to participate in the assets of the ICAV is limited to the assets (if any) of the Fund relating to such shares. If the realised net assets of any fund are insufficient to pay any amounts due on the relevant shares in full in accordance with the Supplement, the relevant shareholders will have no further right of payment in respect of such shares or any claim against any other fund or any other assets of the ICAV. Each shareholder's right to any return of capital or income on the shares is subject to the Prospectus, the relevant Supplement generally.
10. Share capital (continued)
* Class A2 USD Acc shares launched on 22 May 2020.
** Class A1 GBP Unhedged Dist shares launched on 29 January 2021.
11. Net Asset Value
* Class A2 USD Acc shares launched on 22 May 2020.
** Class A1 GBP Unhedged Dist shares launched on 29 January 2021.
12. Auditor remuneration
The remuneration (excluding VAT) for all work carried out by the statutory audit firm in respect of the financial period is as follows:
| Year ended Year ended 30 April 2021 30 April 2020 EUR EUR | |
|---|---|
| Statutory audit of the Fund Other assurance services Tax advisory services Other non-audit services | 10,000 6,000 - - - - - - 10,000 6,000 |
There was no out of pocket expenses charged to the Fund for the year ended 30 April 2021(30 Apr 2020: JPY Nil).
13. Reconciliation of net asset value in accordance with IFRS
At 30 April 2021, an adjustment was required to the financial statements. This was required as the Prospectus requires formation expenses to be amortised over the first 60 months but IFRS requires formation expenses to be expensed as incurred. This adjustment was for the purposes of the year-end financial statements only and did not affect the daily reported dealing NAV. The NAV of the Fund has been adjusted by the formation expenses written off in accordance with IFRS. Formation expenses and late deals are reflected in the original reported NAV for the Fund and the NAV is also adjusted for material late trades as and when such timing differences arise.
The following is the reconciliation detail as at 30 April 2021:
14. Fees
Investment management fees
There are three active share class on the Fund, Class A1 GBP Acc Shares, Class A2 USD Acc Shares and Class A1 GBP Unhedged Dist Shares.
Effective 10 August 2020, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC ("GMO") replaced Usonian Investments LLC as investment manager of Usonian Japan Value Fund.
Under the provisions of the Investment Management Agreement, the ICAV paid Usonian Investments LLC the Investment Manager a fee of 0.56% of the Net Asset Value. The Investment management fee charged by Usonian Investments LLC amounted to JPY 68,299,917 (30 Apr 2020: JPY 219,183,939).
14. Fees (continued)
Investment management fees (continued)
Under the provisions of the Investment Management Agreement, the Fund will pay GMO a fee of 0.56% of the NAV for both the Class A1 GBP Acc Shares and Class A2 USD Acc Shares shareclasses and 0.80% of the NAV for Class A1 GBP Unhedged Dist Shares. The Investment management fee charged by GMO amounted to JPY 150,936,871 (30 Apr 2020: JPY Nil).
The Fund will also reimburse the Investment Manager at normal commercial rates for its reasonable out-ofpocket expenses. The Investment Manager may from time to time and at its sole discretion decide to pay rebates/retrocessions to shareholders or to the Fund.
Please refer to the 'Other Expenses' section of this note for further detail on the expense limitation that is in place.
Management fee
Davy Global Fund Management Limited, in its role as Manager and Global Distributor of the Fund, will be entitled to receive out of the assets of the Fund an annual fee which will not exceed 0.04% of the net assets of the Fund (plus VAT, if any) subject to a minimum annual fee of €55,000.
Performance fee
No performance fees were charged on the active share classes of the Fund.
Administration fee
The Administrator shall be entitled to receive out of the assets of the Fund an annual administration fee as detailed below subject to a minimum annual charge of €40,000 payable at least quarterly in arrears.
| Assets | Percentage fee |
|---|---|
| €0 - €100 million | 0.06% |
| €100 million to €200 million | 0.05% |
| €200 million to €300 million | 0.04% |
| >€300 million | 0.025% |
Depositary and sub-custody fee
The Depositary shall be entitled to receive out of the assets of the Fund an annual depositary fee as set out below of the NAV of the Fund subject to an annual minimum fee of €10,000 which shall accrue monthly and be payable quarterly in arrears. In addition the Depositary will be entitled to receive from the Fund sub custody fees charged at normal commercial rate, including safekeeping and transaction fees. The Depositary will further be entitled to be reimbursed by the Fund for reasonable costs and expenses at normal commercial rates incurred by the Depositary in the performance of its duties as Depositary of the Fund.
| €0 - €100 million |
|---|
| €100 million to €200 million |
| >€200 million |
14. Fees (continued)
Distributor fee
J&E Davy, in its role as distributor of the Fund, was entitled to receive out of the assets of the Fund an annual fee which did not exceed 0.04% of the net assets of the Fund (plus VAT, if any) subject to a minimum annual fee of €55,000. Effective 12 June 2020, Davy Global Fund Management Limited replaced J&E Davy as Distributor and Manager. Please refer to the 'Management fee' section of this note for the annual fee of Davy Global Fund Management Limited.
Other expenses
There is an expense limitation in place for the Fund of 110 basis points, comprising of 56-80 basis points applicable to the management fee and 30 basis points for general expenses.
15. Transaction costs
Transaction costs are incremental costs that are directly attributable to the acquisition, issue or disposal of a financial asset or liability. An incremental cost is one that would not have been incurred if the entity had not acquired, issued or disposed of the financial instrument.
The Fund incurred transaction costs of JPY 20,301,227 during the financial year (30 April 2020: JPY 19,381,710).
16. Use of financial derivative instruments
The Fund does not currently utilise financial derivative instruments ("FDI") but is entitled to do so subject to the UCITS Regulations and the Central Bank UCITS Regulations, the Fund may utilise FDI.
If and when the Fund utilises FDI such use will be limited to forward currency exchange contracts in order to hedge currency foreign exchange risks arising for hedged classes of shares of the Fund. No such hedged classes of shares have been issued to date.
The leverage exposure of the Fund through the use of FDIs will not exceed 100% of the Fund's Net Asset Value.
17. Related party transactions
IAS 24 "Related Party Disclosures" requires the disclosure of information relating to material transactions with persons who are deemed to be related to the reporting entity.
Investment manager
Related Persons include the Investment Manager of the Fund.
The fees charged by the Investment Manager to the Fund for the financial year ended 30 April 2021 were JPY 219,236,788 (30 April 2020: JPY 219,183,939) of which JPY 41,501,774 (30 April 2020: JPY 15,907,168) was payable at the financial year end. Refer to Note 14 for further breakdown of the Investment Managment fee.
Directors
Paul O'Shea (resigned as Director of the ICAV on 17 November 2020) and Tom Berrigan (resigned as Director of the ICAV on 17 August 2020) are Directors of Davy Global Fund Management Limited, the Manager and the Distributor.
None of the Directors hold shares in the Fund at 30 April 2021 (30 April 2020: Nil).
There were no Director fees charged to the Fund during the year ended 30 April 2021 (30 April 2020: JPY Nil).
18. Taxation
The ICAV is an investment undertaking as defined in Section 739B of the Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997. The ICAV will not be liable to Irish tax in respect of its income and gains, other than on the occurrence of a chargeable event with respect to Irish resident shareholders.
Generally a chargeable event arises on any distribution, redemption, repurchase, cancellation, transfer of shares by an Irish resident shareholder or on the ending of a "Relevant Period". A "Relevant Period" being an eight year period beginning with the acquisition of the shares by the Irish resident Shareholder and each subsequent period of eight years beginning immediately after the preceding Relevant Period.
A gain on a chargeable event does not arise in respect of:
(i) a shareholder who is not Irish resident and not ordinarily resident in Ireland at the time of the chargeable event provided the necessary signed statutory declarations are held by the ICAV; or
(ii) certain exempted Irish resident investors who have provided the ICAV with the necessary signed statutory declaration; or
(iii) any transactions in relation to shares held in a recognised clearing system as designated by order of the Revenue Commissioners of Ireland; or
(iv) an exchange of shares representing one sub-fund for another sub-fund of the ICAV; or
(v) an exchange of shares arising on a qualifying amalgamation or reconstruction of the ICAV with another ICAV; or
(vi) certain exchanges of shares between spouses and former spouses.
In the absence of an appropriate declaration, the ICAV will be liable to Irish tax on the occurrence of a chargeable event. There were no chargeable events during the financial year under review.
Capital gains, dividends, and interest received by the ICAV may be subject to withholding taxes imposed by the country of origin and such taxes may not be recoverable by the ICAV or its shareholders.
19. Soft commission arrangements
There were no soft commission arrangements affecting this Fund during the financial year ended 30 April 2021 (30 April 2020: Nil).
20. Contingent liability
As at the financial year end date, the Directors were not aware of any existing or contingent liability of the Fund (30 April 2020: Nil).
21. Exchange rates
The following exchange rates were used to convert financial assets and financial liabilities to the functional currency of the Fund at 30 April 2021 and 30 April 2020:
22. Significant Events During the Financial Year
The Usonian Japan Value Fund launched Class A2 USD Acc shares on 22 May 2020 and Class A1 GBP Unhedged Dist shares on 29 January 2021.
On 2 June 2020 John Craddock and Robbie Kelleher resigned as Directors of the Fund. Ruth (Patterson) Sullivan, Darragh Mooney and Aidan Donnelly were appointed as Directors on the same date.
On 12 June 2020, Davy Global Fund Management Limited was appointed as Manager.
On 17 July 2020, the Central Bank of Ireland approved a new supplement for Usonian Japan Value Fund which includes the change in Investment Manager to Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC. Effective 10 August 2020, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC replaced Usonian Investments LLC as investment manager of Usonian Japan Value Fund.
On 17 August 2020, Tom Berrigan resigned as Director of the ICAV.
On 17 November 2020, Paul O'Shea resigned as Director of the ICAV.
On 5 January 2021 and 9 March 2021 Usonian supplements and the Umbrella prospectus dated 9 March 2021 were updated.
Financial markets have experienced significant volatility as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. The impact can be seen across all sectors and all asset classes. This is a rapidly evolving situation, both from a public health and financial markets perspective. Recent government actions in respect of restriction of movement, social distancing guidelines, and limiting certain activities have resulted in a significant fall in economic activity. As of now it is unclear as to how long these measures will be in effect for, or the ultimate impact on asset valuations but it should be noted as a significant risk to the Fund.
There have been no other significant events during the financial year, which, in the opinion of the Directors of the ICAV, may have had an impact on the Financial Statements for the financial year ended 30 April 2021.
23. Significant subsequent events
An announcement was made on 22 July 2021 that IQ-EQ will acquire DGFM, the Manager to Skyline. The sale is subject to regulatory approval.
Up to the date of approval of these financial statements there were no other significant subsequent events other than the above to report after the financial year ended 30 April 2021.
24. Approval of financial statements
The Financial Statements were approved by the Directors on 21 July 2021.
Schedule of Investments
As at 30 April 2021
Schedule of Investments (continued)
As at 30 April 2021
Schedule of Investments (continued)
As at 30 April 2021
*All cash holdings are held with The Northern Trust Company.
Schedule of Total Expense Ratios for the financial year ended 30 April 2021 (Unaudited)
| | TER % |
|---|---|
| Class A1 GBP Acc Shares Class A2 USD Acc Shares | |
Usonian Japan Value Fund
Schedule of Portfolio Changes (Unaudited)
For the financial year ended 30 April 2021
Largest Purchases
Cost
Usonian Japan Value Fund
Schedule of Portfolio Changes (Unaudited) (continued)
For the financial year ended 30 April 2021
Largest Sales
Proceeds
| 780,100 Kinden Corp Com NPV 476,800 Yokogawa Electric Corp Com NPV 107,200 Toyota Industries Corp Com NPV 249,700 Kadokawa Corp Com NPV 1,041,800 Kenedix Inc NPV 211,700 Gunze Ltd Com NPV 139,400 Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co Ltd Com NPV | |
|---|---|
| 357,600 | Asics Corp Com NPV |
As required by the Central Bank UCITS regulations, the above data represents those purchases / sales transactions exceeding 1% of the total value of purchases / sales during the year. Where the number of purchases / sales transactions exceeding 1% of the total value of purchases / sales for the year is less than 20, then a minimum of 20 purchases / sales will be disclosed.
Appendix I
UCITS V Remuneration (Unaudited)
Skyline Umbrella Fund ICAV - Remuneration
Skyline Umbrella Fund ICAV is an ICAV with no employees, other than the Board of Directors. The following sub funds were in operation for the full financial year ARGA Global Equity Fund, ARGA Emerging Market Equity Fund, The GM Fund, Fortem Capital Progressive Growth, Levendi Thornbridge Defined Return Fund, Arbrook American Equities Fund, Usonian Japan Value Fund, Lowes UK Defined Strategy Fund, ARGA European Equity Fund, Fortem Capital Alternative Growth Fund, Eagle Capital US Equity Fund, and Fortem Capital REIT Fund. SECOR Mazu Global Equity Fund terminated on 18 March 2021. SECOR Hedged Equity Fund launched on 27 April 2021. Separate financial statements are presented for SECOR Mazu Global Equity Fund and for Usonian Japan Value Fund.
Remuneration paid by the Manager, Davy Global Fund Management, to identified staff is as follows:
The total remuneration for the identified staff of the Manager in relation to the activities for Skyline and its relevant sub funds is EUR 1,428,323. This was allocated as fixed 80% and variable 20%. The average number of identified staff engaged during the year was 14. These are the latest available remuneration figures for the year ended 31 December 2020.
There are three Non-Executive Directors of the ICAV, two of whom are independent, with the two independent non-executive Directors receiving an annual fixed fee and no variable fee – these fees are paid by Davy Global Fund Management directly and are not charged to the ICAVs sub-funds. No remuneration was paid to persons who are assigned Designated Person Management functions for Skyline Umbrella Fund ICAV.
Remuneration Policy of the ICAV
Under the UCITS Directive, the ICAV is required to establish and apply remuneration policies and practices for its Identified Staff that are consistent with and promote sound and effective risk management and that neither encourage risk-taking which is inconsistent with the risk profiles, rules or instruments of incorporation of the ICAV nor impair compliance with the ICAV's duty to act in the best interests of its shareholders. In accordance with Article 14(b)(1) of the UCITS Directive (as inserted by the UCITS V Directive), the ICAV must comply with the principles regarding remuneration applicable to its Identified Staff in a way and to the extent that is appropriate to the ICAV's size, internal organisation and the nature, scope and complexity of its activities. Details of the remuneration policy of the ICAV including, but not limited to, a description of how remuneration and benefits are calculated, the identity of persons responsible for awarding the remuneration and benefits including the composition of the remuneration committee, where such a committee exists, is available at www.davygfm.com/funds-factsheets/management-company-services/ireland/skyline.html and a paper copy will be made available to investors free of charge upon request.
Remuneration Code
The UCITS V provisions, which became effective on 18 March 2016, require the ICAV to establish and apply remuneration policies and practices that promote sound and effective risk management, and do not encourage risk taking which is inconsistent with the risk profile of the ICAV. The Investment Manager has a business model, policies and procedures which by their nature do not promote excessive risk taking and take account of the nature, scale and complexity of the Investment Manager and the ICAV.
To that effect, the Investment Manager has implemented a Remuneration Policy. The purpose of the Investment Manager's remuneration policy is to seek to ensure that the remuneration arrangements of "identified staff":
(i) are consistent and promote sound and effective risk management and do not encourage risk-taking which is inconsistent with the risk profile, rules or instruments of incorporation of the Investment Manager or any fund which the Investment Manager is the manager of; and
(ii) are consistent with the Investment Manager's business strategy, objectives, values and interests and include measures to avoid conflicts of interest.
|
Water and conflict
Making water delivery conflict-sensitive in Uganda
Acknowledgements
This report is an edited version of four separate reports prepared for Saferworld by Katie Harris, as part of a detailed process of documenting lessons learned from a project by Saferworld, CECORE, REDROC and YODEO on 'Building civil society capacity to enable conflict-sensitive development in Uganda'. It was edited and revised by Hesta Groenewald (Conflict Adviser, Saferworld, and project manager of this project) and Sonia Rai (Advocacy and Communications Co-ordinator, Saferworld).
COVER PHOTO: Women and children at a water point in Kasese district, Western Uganda; KATIE HARRIS.
Contents
Water and conflict
Making water delivery conflict-sensitive in Uganda
CECORE, REDROC, SAFERWORLD, YODEO
AUGUST 2008
Executive summary
Promoting development is a complex process involving many different players and often new resources, which impact on the lives of beneficiaries both in predictable and unpredictable ways. These can inadvertently contribute to divisions or fuel violence – particularly in environments already affected by conflict. Conflict-sensitive approaches to development aim to maximise the potential positive impact of development and minimise the potential for fuelling conflict.
This report documents how two development projects in Uganda became more conflictsensitive, and as a result, brought many benefits to the recipient communities. It highlights the experience and lessons learned from promoting conflict-sensitive development in two water projects (Kasese district,Western Uganda and Arua district in the West Nile region), and seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of how these approaches can be used by development actors.
The process involved two district-based civil society organisations accompanying local government authorities in the installation of two different types of water provision – a gravity flow scheme and a water borehole – as well as broader work on promoting conflict sensitivity with civil society and in civil society/district policy dialogue.
Taking a conflict-sensitive approach to the gravity flow scheme in Kasese district resulted in a revision of initial plans for the scheme after the local NGO partner (REDROC), the District Water Office (DWO) and the beneficiary communities worked together to identify existing divisions and how the water scheme could help reduce these. Likewise in Arua, this approach helped to solve issues relating to land ownership and the borehole location by working through the issues with the local NGO partner (YODEO), the communities and the DWO. It also supported beneficiaries of the borehole to proactively address potential conflict issues, including how best to ensure peaceful borehole operation and maintenance.
Undertaking these projects in a conflict-sensitive way clearly brought many benefits. Beneficiaries greatly appreciated the opportunity to discuss issues dividing them and to agree on ways in which the water projects could most benefit everybody. District officials felt that the quality of beneficiary participation was much increased and that a conflict-sensitive approach helped them identify and solve problems proactively. The relationship between beneficiaries and those responsible for services became more consultative and transparent and increased the number of feedback mechanisms.
While neither of these communities appear to be at immediate risk of larger-scale violent conflict, the process clearly helped strengthen their ownership of the water projects and their ability to influence decision-making affecting them. They were also better able to identify particular individuals or structures that could address any conflicts that may arise. In this way, it strengthened their ability to manage conflicts non-violently while maximising the effectiveness of the water interventions which were intended to benefit them.
Furthermore, the broader work undertaken in each district to introduce conflict-sensitive approaches to a range of civil society organisations has resulted in several of them successfully starting to integrate conflict sensitivity into their work. Both district local governments have also taken a number of important steps to ensure that conflict-sensitive development is taken forward in water and other district planning processes and projects.
The lessons learned from this project clearly indicate a need for more practical work on implementing conflict-sensitive approaches within different sectors, and developing a more sophisticated understanding of how best to adapt conflict-sensitive development to different levels and types of conflict. Saferworld and partners hope that this report will support broader sharing of experiences on these issues.
The project work was undertaken by Saferworld and three civil society partners in Uganda: the Center for Conflict Resolution (CECORE); the Rwenzori Development and Research Centre (REDROC) and the Youth Development Organisation (YODEO).
1
Introduction
Promoting development is a complex process, involving many different actors and impacting on the lives of beneficiaries in predictable and unpredictable ways. Development programmes bring additional resources into cities or rural communities, introduce additional social services and in many cases, change power relations in the community by creating service management structures or targeting certain people or groups over others. For this reason, it has been increasingly recognised that development is inherently political and that, when it occurs in societies suffering from conflict, it can impact on conflict dynamics, often unintentionally.
Conflict-sensitive approaches (CSA) to development aim to promote more thorough thinking on the intended and unintended impact of development interventions on conflict dynamics in beneficiary societies. Conflict sensitivity starts with a thorough conflict analysis to understand the history, the causes of conflict, the actors and relationships driving or mitigating conflict, and the dynamics between these different factors. Based on the conflict analysis, any interventions should attempt to strengthen those factors or relationships promoting cohesion and the non-violent management of conflict. They should also avoid strengthening those factors or relationships that drive conflict.
Conflict is a normal part of any society and requires mechanisms and processes that enable competing interests to be managed constructively and non-violently. However, in many societies, conflict is allowed to escalate into violence, creating serious divisions and undermining development.
Water delivery is one of the most prioritised development sectors, due to the centrality of water to so many aspects of people's lives, from daily health and sanitation to a range of livelihood activities, including subsistence farming, cattle keeping, fishing, and industrial uses.As such, access to water can be contentious and can feed into other conflict dynamics, such as disputes over land or grazing.
This report looks at an example of CSA in water projects in Uganda.
Recognising its importance to poverty reduction and development, the water sector in Uganda is well-funded. In the late 1990s, water service delivery officially changed from supply-driven to demand-driven, resulting in greater emphasis on decentralised service delivery and requiring water users – and those in need of access to water – to lobby for investments to be made in their areas.While decentralised service delivery offers important opportunities for more appropriately addressing people's needs and promoting local-level accountability for services, it also assumes sufficient capacity within local service provision institutions to actually deliver these services. Furthermore, shifting the responsibility to users to request the services they need, assumes that communities have access to all the information they need about services and what they can demand. It also presumes that they are in fact able to mobilise and demand these services. Some of the challenges of this approach are highlighted in the rest of this report.
Saferworld has been working with civil society partners in Uganda to apply existing approaches to conflict-sensitive development to the water sector, linking decentralised service delivery at the district level to national level sector policies and strategies. Over the course of a two-year project, Saferworld worked with the Center for Conflict Resolution (CECORE) at the national level, the Rwenzori Development and Research Centre (REDROC) in Kasese district in Western Uganda and the Youth Development Organisation (YODEO) in Arua district in the North-West. Both districts had experienced conflict in the past, although the likelihood of renewed, large-scale violence there is now much reduced. Lessons learned from the district level work were used to influence policy and practice at the national sector level and beyond.
In each district, work was undertaken with district local government, local civil society organisations and beneficiary communities to apply a conflict-sensitive approach in practice. In Kasese, the mountainous terrain is well-suited to gravity flow schemes, whereby a system of pipes and taps are installed, drawing on a particular water source higher up in the mountains. Saferworld, CECORE and REDROC therefore accompanied a water gravity flow scheme for the Mahango and Rukoki areas of Kasese.Arua is more water-stressed, despite the presence of a branch of the Nile river. Boreholes are often used in Arua as a way to provide water to rural communities. Saferworld, CECORE and YODEO therefore accompanied a borehole project in Aroi sub-county.
Another aspect of the district level work has been capacity-building on conflict-sensitive development, mainly targeted at civil society, but also involving district local government. This component of the district level work was a key aim of the project and in recognition of the important role that local civil society play in supporting and facilitating local service delivery.
This report documents the process of the district accompaniment and capacity-building work, and outlines the main lessons learned from it.
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Conflict-sensitive approaches and their benefits
Conflict-sensitive approaches to development and humanitarian assistance were born out of a realisation that external interventions can inadvertently contribute to conflict dynamics, thus at best not meeting its objectives, or at worst aggravating a conflict situation on the ground. Initial reflections on this focused mainly on situations of violent conflict. But given what we know about different stages of conflict and the possibility for conflict to become latent (i.e. move away from visible violent conflict), without it being resolved, there is also a recognition that conflict-sensitive approaches may be needed even in the absence of openly violent conflict.
A girl carries water in NorthEastern Uganda, a region that has suffered a history of violent conflict
EUAN DENHOLME IRIN,
Experience from this project has shown that applying conflict sensitivity to the water projects in Arua and Kasese clearly generated benefits in terms of:
■ higher quality beneficiary participation
■ beneficiaries themselves appreciating the opportunity to discuss what issues divide them and how planned interventions could mitigate or aggravate these
■ increased opportunity for feedback and influence of the interventions by beneficiaries
■ increased understanding by outsiders (district authorities, private sector actors and CSOs) of beneficiary communities, and the actors and dynamics that influence them
■ increased sense of responsibility on the side of the service providers about the impact they could potentially have through the decisions they make and the way they work.
In the particular local areas where the project worked, the risk of violent conflict at a broader, inter-group level turned out to be quite low (even though individual level conflict was a clear risk). However, these communities lived in districts which had suffered serious violent conflict in the past and some unresolved conflict causes still appeared to be present. Given the tendency for violent conflict to re-emerge in societies that had experienced it previously, some attention to conflict potential is probably justified.
Applying conflict-sensitive approaches in this context is therefore perhaps more about preventing re-emergence of larger-scale future violence, by strengthening people's resilience to resolve (non-violently) any disputes or tensions that may arise – including those linked to development interventions – and thus also reducing the possibility of them being mobilised by anybody seeking to incite violent conflict.
In terms of promoting development, conflict sensitivity can help to ensure that the benefits of development interventions are realised instead of being undermined by disputes and tensions among beneficiaries, or between them and others. In this way, service delivery becomes more efficient, but also more accountable, as constant monitoring of beneficiary feedback and the impact of the service delivery (and the way it is being delivered) is central to conflict sensitivity. Other mainstream development approaches also seek to promote principles of accountability, participation, ownership and transparency, but even participatory approaches could be conflict-insensitive if the nature of the participation is discriminatory or manipulated by certain individuals with harmful agendas.
However, were these same water projects undertaken in areas with more pronounced (and possibly violent) tensions within or between beneficiary groups, conflict-blind development or service delivery could have easily hastened such tensions towards more violence. This appears to be one of the reasons why for instance water provision in Karamoja – an area of North-Eastern Uganda affected by pastoralist conflicts – is affected by so many problems. 1 In such volatile situations, the same steps for integrating conflict sensitivity that were taken in Arua and Kasese (outlined below) may have been appropriate, but with some significant
A man at a water point in North-Eastern Uganda KATIE HARRIS
modifications in terms of approach, timing etc. For example, if a new water point was constructed to serve two communities who are sporadically in violent conflict with each other, community consultations would have to be a much more in-depth process, perhaps involving many meetings with each community separately before bringing them together into a joint meeting. The 'step'is still the same, i.e. consulting communities, but the way in which it is done needs to be adapted to the fact that serious divisions and violence exist between these groups.
When applying CSA therefore it is important to recognise the types and levels of violent conflict affecting communities as well as what they are able to influence. For example, a more local-level conflict could be within the power of local groups to start addressing, but they may have no or little influence over a larger macro-level conflict (e.g. like the macro conflicts in Sri Lanka or Somalia). This will influence their understanding of what aspects of conflict are being addressed through CSA.
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Case studies on conflictsensitive development accompaniment
Kasese case study
Kasese background
Kasese district in Western Uganda shares a border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and belongs to a region with a history of armed conflict and displacement. Underlying most of these conflicts were animosities and rivalries between different ethnic groups wanting self-governance in one form or another. These tensions over ethnicity are still relevant today, playing out in local politics, influencing the relationship between the district and central government, and informing attitudes when people compete for access to natural resources.
In the 1960s, tensions between the two largest groups in the region, the Batoro and Bakonzo, peaked over the position of the Bakonzo within the larger administrative unit of the Toro kingdom. The kingdom was socially, economically and politically dominated by the Batoro, and the Bakonzo and other groups felt marginalised and under-represented with limited access to jobs and resources. The Rwenzururu Movement sought to counter this through a violent rebellion in which many people were displaced. The rebellion resulted in the region being divided into five districts along ethnic lines, and in 1974, Kasese was formed with a Bakonzo-majority population. The Banyabindi and Basongora comprise the two other large groups in the district.
However, despite the creation of smaller districts, the region remains deeply divided. Many of today's tensions over competing for access to resources and rights between the Batoro, Bakonzo and other ethnic groups, derive from the previously unaddressed legacies of conflict and dissatisfaction with current governance systems.Activities by external development actors, including international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), have sometimes inadvertently aggravated these divisions, highlighting the need for all interventions to be conflict-sensitive. 2
Water and conflict in Kasese
Although over three quarters of Kasese is dry land, only one third of it is legally habitable. Over 60% is taken up by nature and wildlife conservation and government projects such as prison farms, mining and irrigation farms 3 .Access to water sources is therefore limited. Competition for access to water points is further being exacerbated by the increased demand from the rising population, itself becoming a catalyst for conflict.
With only around 40% of the district having access to safe and clean water – dropping as low as 7% for populations around Lake Katwe – many development actors in the district, including Kasese District Local Government (KDLG), national and INGOs, have recognised the urgent need to construct water points. But demand far outstrips service delivery. Limited KDLG resources mean that supply is based on a prioritisation of those most in need.With the provision of water points often interpreted to be based on socio-cultural ties, this is leading to a politicisation of service delivery. This has severely affected and damaged the minority ethnic groups'perception of KDLG, in many cases inciting conflict, once again deriving from perceived, or real, marginalisation.
Conflicts often arise in Kasese as a result of competing demands on the available water sources, for example between domestic use and use for economic livelihood activities. Over 80% of the population are employed in agricultural activities, predominantly smallholders practising subsistence farming in low yield crops such as maize and cotton and animal rearing. Given that livelihood activities are closely related to ethnicity, competition over scarce resources for different uses, particularly between agriculture and cattle rearing, are therefore often played out along ethnic lines.
Where water schemes have been constructed, it is common for conflicts to be encountered:
■ over the location of the tap stands
■ from landowners wanting compensation for the destruction of crops and/or allowing access through their land
■ from a failure of Project Management Committees (PMCs) to collect user fees or carry out operation and maintenance checks
■ because of a lack of support given to beneficiary communities about how to manage the new water scheme.
Water and the Mahango and Rukoki communities
Residing in a remote part of Kasese district, in the foothills of the Rwenzori mountain range, rural communities in Mahango and Rukoki had experienced problems with access to safe water for the past 20 years.
Existing water sources such as seasonal springs and small rivers start higher up in the mountains in Mahango sub-county and serve a large surrounding area which far exceeds their capacity. On the lower parts of the mountains, Rukoki sub-county inhabitants experience serious water scarcity, relying on a single seasonal spring and a few periodic shallow wells. This forces Rukoki residents to travel up the mountain to Mahango subcounty to collect water.
However, regular disputes often occur around water points as the two communities argue who should have first access to the water. Rukoki residents believe they should because of the long distances travelled to reach the water point. In contrast, Mahango residents believe they are entitled to access the water first given the location of the source, and on the basis of how long someone has been waiting. It is estimated that the few sources available are each serving around 600 people/100 homesteads. Queues at these water points are exceptionally long and users can wait for hours to access water. For most, collecting water means leaving their village at 6am and not returning until 2pm. This can cause household conflicts and domestic violence as husbands become suspicious of their wives taking so much time to fetch the water, accusing them of adultery.
At the water points, fights frequently occur between water users and landowners on which the water sources are situated, as users are sometimes considered by landowners to be trespassing. Moreover, poor sanitation and hygiene around the water points cause users to complain and fight with the landowners.As a result, landowners'gardens and crops are often destroyed by users who lack respect for their land and who perceive the water point as a communal resource which they have the right to access. The competition for scarce water intensifies during the dry season when the rivers and springs reduce or run dry completely.
Both communities had raised the issue of water scarcity in the participatory development planning process through the local council structures 4 . For the past ten years the Rukoki sub-county had been more proactive in complaining to the district and raising their concerns, but the response has always been the same: the district does not have sufficient funds to construct a water scheme. Mahango and Rukoki are also disadvantaged as their mountainous terrain and relative remoteness from Kasese town means that any prospective scheme would be costly compared to other schemes in the district. Finally in 2005/6, KDLG included a water distribution scheme into their annual work plan and budget.
Conflict sensitivity and the Kiywebe gravity flow scheme
To help promote conflict sensitivity in the work of the KDLG District Water Office (DWO), Saferworld and partners CECORE and REDROC, together with the DWO, selected to accompany the gravity flow scheme (GFS) for the Rukoki and Mahango communities, later named the Kiywebe scheme. This GFS is huge, expecting to serve approximately 10,000 people.
Through ongoing consultations and support, Saferworld, CECORE and REDROC worked with district water officials and Rukoki and Mahango communities during every stage of planning, design and implementation to ensure that a conflict-sensitive approach to this water scheme was adopted.At the time of writing, the GFS was not yet completed, but REDROC is committed to follow the process through to completion and also monitor the subsequent operation and maintenance of the scheme.
In practice, the process of conflict-sensitising the gravity flow scheme focused mostly on understanding the dynamics and needs of the target communities and how these could be most positively addressed by the proposed scheme. Kasese-based partner, REDROC, therefore worked closely with both communities and relevant district decision-makers, as well as private sector contractors, during the implementation phase. In this way, the accompaniment process enabled many issues to be addressed that may not otherwise have been identified 5 .
The types of conflict issues that emerged in these communities were mostly about relationships within and between the communities, and the relationships with, and trust in, local government institutions and private sector contractors. If left unaddressed, some of these issues could certainly have resulted in at best, the scheme not being managed and maintained to its full potential, or at worst, being sabotaged or vandalised if one of the communities felt unhappy about its design. It is also still possible that individual level violence could occur, either in terms of domestic violence (if for example, women are blamed for any future failures in the scheme by their husbands) or if water user committees are not perceived to act responsibly and accountably.
The process and main conflict issues emerging over the course of the accompaniment of the Kiywebe scheme are outlined below.
A.
Consultations and
participatory
conflict analysis
B.
Designing and
planning:
providing feedback
and revising plans
C.
Bringing on board
other actors
D.
Monitoring and
addressing ongoing
issues
E.
Operation and
management:
setting up the best
structures and
process
A. Consultations and participatory conflict analysis
Before starting the work in Kasese, a broader analysis was conducted about the conflictgenerating issues in the district. The first step in the accompaniment process was to get to know the people in Mahango and Rukoki communities, as well as the key people from the DWO.A consultation meeting was held bringing together the two communities and DWO staff to gain a better understanding of the existing relationships and dividing issues within and between these two communities. In particular, discussions were targeted at finding out how the proposed water scheme could potentially aggravate some of these existing divisions or indeed, could contribute to strengthening links between the communities.
During the participatory conflict analysis 6 , community members, local leaders and political representatives from both Mahango and Rukoki shared issues of conflict present within their communities and expressed concerns over new conflicts that may arise because of the proposed water scheme. The analysis highlighted that the existing conflicts were mostly focussed on access to, or lack of, water sources, causing people to compete for the same water sources with no effective mechanisms to manage this constructively. During this first meeting – and reinforced in subsequent consultations – concerns were raised about the surveying and construction process of the scheme, including:
■ the exact and final position of the taps
■ fear of design changes being made without their consent
■ the lack of information and clarity about the tendering process
■ the hiring of outsiders for casual labour
■ the failure to pay local casual labourers if they were employed
■ poor quality construction.
The relationship between the Mahango and Rukoki people during these initial consultations was tense, with both communities sitting apart and not really interacting during break times. However, simply bringing the two previously segregated communities together to discuss a common problem was an achievement in itself. One of the elderly participants commented that he was amazed how REDROC and partners had managed to get the two communities to even eat the same food.
B. Designing and planning: providing feedback and revising plans
The initial consultations and conflict analysis clearly indicated some areas that needed to be monitored and followed up at different stages of the project. It was therefore important that REDROC, the DWO and the beneficiary communities were able to communicate regularly, so that decisions could be explained to the scheme beneficiaries and the latter could raise any relevant problems or complaints. In addition to the issues specifically dealt with here, it is worth noting that almost all the issues emerging from later phases of constructing the scheme, could have been foreseen and to some extent addressed or at least prepared for at this early stage.
■ Using one water source to serve a different community
The first water scheme designs from DWO used the Mahango water source to supply water to Rukoki only. Mahango community members strongly rejected these plans since they would neither benefit from the scheme nor receive any compensation – financial or through taps for Mahango residents. Having requested water infrastructure themselves, and living at the source of the water to be used for the scheme, Mahango residents felt very unhappy about the proposed scheme and threatened to refuse access to their land and cut any pipes that would be laid for the scheme.
To de-escalate this situation, local leaders were called upon to relay these complaints to KDLG. Mahango appealed for the scheme to be redesigned to include them, whilst Rukoki raised concerns about the Mahango threats to sabotage the scheme. To overcome escalating tensions, the DWO decided that both communities should benefit from the proposed scheme and the proposed map and tap stand locations were reviewed.
■ Getting clear and agreed service demands to decision-makers
During one consultation on the improved scheme, much confusion and contention was voiced from both communities. It emerged that instead of one community map 7 highlighting an agreed position for the water taps, two had been drawn up through separate participatory planning processes led by different local leaders, but covering parts of both Rukoki and Mahango communities. DWO had only been aware of one version and presented this, but the people who were not involved in this version thought that the position of the taps on the maps had been changed without their consent.
The DWO tracked down the second map and compared them in a public meeting to identify areas of similarity and, more importantly, areas of difference. The DWO agreed to reassess the water yield to determine whether it could supply a larger population and so merge the two maps to appease both groups and avoid further confrontation and escalation of tensions. The merged map was later named Kiywebe, after the source. This merger increased the cost of the project, since the project would now serve more areas, and yet a large area of Mahango sub-county was still left un-served.A compromise was reached whereby both subcounty authorities would contribute to the surveying costs of an additional scheme to cover the un-served areas of Mahango 8 . The District Water Officer saw this as a real achievement in terms of promoting positive sub-county relations 9 and very unusual for a sub-country to contribute towards a scheme that their constituents are not directly benefiting from. From a conflict perspective, this was a very positive step in terms of improving relations between the Mahango and Rukoki residents, so that water provision became a factor connecting rather than dividing 10 them.
■ Identifying and correcting mistakes
At a later consultation meeting, it was discovered that two taps – previously agreed to for Kisuka village and Mughenge trading centre – no longer appeared on the scheme design.At a subsequent meeting involving the District Water Officer, the surveyor and representatives from Mughenge and Kisuka, the latter was put down to human error and was dealt with quickly through an apology and a date arranged to survey the area. The Mughenge tap was accidentally left off when the maps were merged, and residents insisted to have it restored. Although financially and logistically difficult to incorporate a tap at this late stage, DWO went through a long and protracted process (including requesting and waiting for additional funding from central government) and included the tap.
■ Communicating decisions and changes back to beneficiaries
After incorporating these issues, the Kiywebe GFS draft design was shared amongst targeted local leaders from Mahango and Rukoki. For technical reasons, only 38 of the requested 42 taps were in the draft design and of these, a number had to be relocated but ultimately were not far from the locations requested on the community map. The Mahango local leaders felt aggrieved with the reduction of four taps – all located in Mahango – and complained furiously. The Project Designer explained that two of the taps in question were placed at a higher gradient than the water source, so were not technically viable (the other two being Mughenge trading centre and Kisuka village, which were rectified). It was strongly emphasised that the proposed design was based purely on technical data from the surveyor and local leaders were satisfied.
Copies of the draft design were sent to both the Mahango and Rukoki local leaders who actively shared this information with their communities and explained the minor changes. In Mahango, leaders spent a long time explaining the technical rationale for the omission of the two taps 11 , until people were satisfied that there was no other option.
Due to the complexity and cost of the scheme, it was decided to implement it in two phases over consecutive financial years. REDROC and the DWO identified that if beneficiaries did not fully understand the timing of the two phases of construction, it could spark conflict between them. Every opportunity was therefore used to communicate this information, including during the ground-breaking ceremony (referred to in D below), where more than 300 people from the beneficiary area were present.
These examples highlight the need and value of community consultations, without which these issues would not have been identified and addressed. Moreover, adopting a conflictsensitive approach meant that the design process needed to be flexible and the design itself revised to avoid the omissions becoming triggers for conflict before completion of construction.
C. Bringing on board other actors
The initial stages of the conflict-sensitive water project involved investing a lot of time and effort into establishing consultative and trusting relationships between the beneficiary communities and the decision-makers/service providers. However, constructing a GFS is a complex process that involves other actors – including from the private sector – and they can equally have a positive or negative impact from a conflict and peace perspective.
■ Adapting the survey process
Previous water schemes in Kasese have experienced conflict during the surveying process. To avoid this, REDROC suggested that beneficiary residents be introduced to, and work with, the surveying company. This allowed them to air their concerns, seek clarity and request additional information which provided valuable insight for the District Water Officers on preventing conflict around the survey process.
A team of five 'guides'was selected from each community to accompany the surveyor. They agreed to work on a voluntary basis, thereby laying to rest any false expectations about financial remuneration. Given the remoteness of the area and the regular movements of criminals and alleged rebel group members 12 in the DRC/Uganda border area, it was important that the surveyor did not simply roam around the area by himself, particularly since he was from Kampala and did not speak the local languages. The guides were known to the landowners, and in particular, helped to:
■ reassure landowners that the surveyor was not in any way a threat
■ assist the surveyor to understand the community map, given the inaccessible terrain
■ prevent potential corruption through private individual interaction with the surveyor
■ enable the community to better understand and keep up to date with the progress of the survey
■ accustom the surveyor to community participation in the surveying process
■ create a mechanism for the community to identify when the surveyor had failed to assess the area fully.
■ Interacting with the construction company
As with the surveying company, REDROC insisted that the construction company also be introduced to the two communities.Although the community was aware that construction would shortly be starting, it was felt that a construction company, unknown to any of the community members, arriving with heavy equipment and machinery would cause unnecessary friction – as with other water schemes in Kasese.
When the communities met with the construction company, landowners and other community members raised their queries and concerns. These included the need to hire local casual labourers for construction work and the potential for the construction company to buy local materials to construct the sedimentary and reservoir tanks – especially given that the beneficiary communities mine sand and make bricks and concrete stone. These requests were agreed to by the DWO and the construction company.
Learning from the experience with the surveyor and the construction company, the DWO realised the value of having the private sector actors themselves explain to the beneficiaries, their intentions and commitment to the scheme. Of particular significance was the fact that the contractor stated their commitment to the terms and conditions stipulated in their
contract, which reassured the beneficiaries that the quality of the construction would not be sacrificed. Therefore, a potentially conflict-generating issue, as identified by the beneficiaries at an earlier stage, was avoided.
D. Monitoring and addressing ongoing issues
Even when certain issues are identified at the beginning of an intervention, they need to be monitored throughout implementation, as new problems – or new versions of existing problems – could still arise.
Documenting the potential conflict-generating and divisive issues raised in the first consultation meeting enabled REDROC and partners, the DWO and the beneficiaries themselves to monitor how these issues were addressed (or not). It therefore became common practice for the beneficiaries to request meetings to monitor and address conflict issues that were arising.
For example, a follow-up meeting (held in September 2007) was organised to monitor conflict issues raised (during the August 2007 meeting) in relation to the ongoing construction/ hardware phase. In this example, the meeting concluded that some concerns about the hardware phase had indeed been effectively addressed, namely the use of local labour and the provision of local materials. But this could only be monitored because a mechanism was in place to track how the potential conflict-generating issues were developing and being addressed. Some of these ongoing issues are outlined below.
■ Managing land-related disputes
In addition to the disputes relating to the location of the water source, the location of the components of Kiywebe GFS was identified from the start as an important potential trigger of conflict. The issue of compensation to the landowner of the source, and to landowners where the pipes were to pass, became a recurring issue.
Despite having been addressed through community meetings, where the DWO laid out the conditions of the scheme and landowners gave their consent, individuals often changed their minds. The Terms of Reference, signed by the sub-county authorities and the DWO, specified that communities must donate the required areas of land as part of their contribution to the water scheme (as is the policy for rural water provision) and the subcounty authorities would process land agreements to confirm this arrangement. Having learned from other GFS projects in Kasese of the dangers that can occur when this fails to happen, REDROC and the DWO strongly argued for this to be implemented.As a result, both Mahango and Rukoki sub-county authorities had land agreements signed and completed prior to construction.
However, during a community meeting to monitor the hardware 13 activities, it emerged that the construction company had ceased working as a result of a landowner refusing to let them enter his land to construct the reserve tanks. The landowner insisted that he had agreed for
the source to be accessed and pipes laid, but not for a reservoir tank to be erected.
The land agreement was used to convince the landowner to allow construction to continue and as a compromise the Project Implementation Committee (PIC) agreed to provide some financial compensation (from the fees collected from prospective scheme users as 'capital contribution'to the scheme).An addendum was added to the land agreement stating that the landowner allows the reservoir tanks to be installed.A copy of this agreement was taken to the DWO and the sub-county authorities for use in the future, should a similar case arise.
The DWO and sub-county authorities learned from the experience that they need to fully explain the extent of construction that would occur on the land at the source of the scheme.
■ Dealing with politicisation of the gravity flow scheme
Local politicians sometimes claim credit for development projects to strengthen their support base. This can lead to increased tensions and potential conflict, particularly when politicians use existing divisions (e.g. ethnic, religious, political party affiliation) to mobilise political support. These dynamics emerged in Kasese.
The initial discontent of Mahango residents about the original scheme that was to exclude them, was further enflamed when certain individuals with political ambitions in the subcounty, claimed that Mahango were being discriminated against as they are predominantly Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) supporters, while Rukoki are largely National Resistance Movement Organisation (NRMO) 14 supporters.
When Kiywebe was designed, the scheme continued to be politicised as local leaders and sub-county council members from both Mahango and Rukoki claimed, and at times, publicly boasted, that they had brought the GFS to the communities on the basis of their political affiliations.
Recognising the increasing potential for conflict, REDROC and the DWO agreed that a public statement needed to be made, by someone in authority, higher than the sub-county level to de-politicise the situation.
The LC V Chairperson was identified as the only person with any real clout given that all political leaders sit within the same council under his authority. The ground-breaking ceremony that formally started the construction of the scheme, was used as a forum in which the LC V Chairperson warned local leaders, politicians and the sub-county authorities against making false claims and politicising the scheme. He emphasised that this was a KDLG-funded project for the benefit of the entire area and that is was not being constructed or funded by the politically active individuals.
E. Operation and management: setting up the best structures and process
Although the Kiywebe GFS is not yet finished, some issues around the eventual operation, management and maintenance of the scheme have already emerged. Experience shows that many problems and potential conflict issues emerge at this stage, as the realities of what the scheme brings (both positive and negative) become clear in practice.
■ Explaining and managing financial contributions to the scheme
When the DWO software team were first introduced to the Mahango and Rukoki communities, beneficiaries questioned the reasons for them paying capital contributions before being able to access water from the facility. This was interpreted as a warning sign to REDROC, the PIC and the DWO that the financial commitments of the communities may not be upheld, which could potentially lead to conflict between the aforementioned stakeholders.
To address this, a number of by-laws were formulated by the community to enhance, support and govern the operation and maintenance (O&M) of the scheme, with specific bylaws aimed at enforcing the financial payments due by users. It was also agreed that the PIC would be responsible for monitoring the conflict dynamics, specifically any tensions arising as a result of the O&M finances. The PIC would then seek to address these through the authority bestowed by their positions and to keep the DWO and REDROC informed.
With the support of the by-laws, collections towards the capital contributions began. However beneficiaries, particularly from Kabala village, soon started to question why the DWO had not identified the number of users per tap stand – given that the capital contribution is supposed to be calculated on the basis of users per tap stand. This confusion escalated to the extent that prospective users refused to contribute, at least until they saw the water flowing, suspicious that the fees charged were inaccurate.
A community meeting resolved that the DWO would identify the number of water users per tap stand. In addition, the District Water Officer, the REDROC accompaniment officer and the beneficiaries agreed to more community meetings to reiterate the rationale behind the collection of funds prior to completion of the scheme. Local leaders would set an example to the rest of the community by paying their capital contributions and encouraging others to do so too.
■ Sequencing components to ensure maximum benefit
Many of the conflicts encountered by the PIC and Tap Stand Committees (TSCs) 15 could arguably be ascribed to the DWO's failure to effectively sequence the hardware and software activities. For example, growing discontent emerged through a fear that the O&M funds could be misappropriated whilst being held by the PIC Treasurer 16 . These concerns were fuelled by the knowledge that the PIC had yet to open a bank account for the capital contributions that were being paid by prospective beneficiaries 17 .Although the PIC was collecting funds, it was due to cease at the end of the implementation phase, when O&M would be taken over by an elected Project Management Committee (PMC). The failure of the DWO to provide software activities in sequence meant that the PMC had not been formed, or roles and responsibilities clarified. Prospective users thus questioned what would happen to the funds they have contributed once the PIC ceases. This in turn was increasing people's reluctance to pay fees in advance. Despite the failure to provide adequate software support it was agreed, through encouragement from REDROC, that the DWO would assist the PIC to set up a bank account and account for the collections to date.
Similarly, inadequate sequencing meant that active community members began to enquire why the hygiene and sanitation trainings were delayed, yet they were a fundamental element to tap stand O&M 18 . It became clear that although the DWO should have hired personnel prior to construction to conduct the software activities relating to the O&M of the scheme, delays in receiving funds from central government meant this had not happened. Given that communities often take a long time to understand and act on the O&M software recommendations, these activities ideally need to occur well in advance of construction and/or completion. Moreover, the success of the PMC is believed to be greatly influenced by the level of morale within the communities, which is generally high at the beginning of a project. There is a need to target the formation of committees at this point, not during the latter stages of implementation when people become more reluctant to engage. It must also be realised that the software delays served to enhance the perception that Kiywebe GFS is a central government-owned project, as Mahango and Rukoki were unable to move forward with certain activities, such as initiating the hygiene and sanitation practices.
Inadequate sequencing and delays in conducting the software activities increased the potential for discontent.And due to the financial and budgeting mechanisms of KDLG, planning and implementation processes occur over quite a long time span, which again increases potential for misunderstanding or manipulation of information to sow divisions. If all funds were available, the Kiywebe GFS could have been completed in six to eight months instead of over a year.
Achievements in Kasese
Since the gravity flow scheme has not yet been completed, achievements of the scheme in terms of improving water access in a conflict-sensitive way, are still unknown. This section therefore focuses on achievements with the Kasese DWO and local government.
Throughout the accompaniment process REDROC attended the fortnightly DWO planning meetings to discuss the progress of Kiywebe GFS and the challenges it faced. The REDROC accompaniment officer advised the DWO on how a more conflict-sensitive process could be adopted by highlighting existing tensions, tracking conflict dynamics and identifying areas of concern to avoid potential conflict.
In addition to the DWO conducting certain, previously unplanned, activities, other achievements were:
■ The accompaniment officer became a member of the District Water and Sanitation Committee (comprised of CSOs and KDLG representatives, meeting monthly). REDROC use this forum to promote conflict sensitivity as a concept, influence the development of planning and implementation processes to be more conflict-sensitive, and where possible, advocate for the approach to be explicitly incorporated by other development actors. During 2007, the accompaniment officer was able to share the experience and lessons learned from the Kiywebe GFS during two committee meetings.
■ The accompaniment officer has since been asked by the DWO to participate in shaping the hygiene and sanitation software activities for Kiywebe GFS, to be conducted in the latter part of 2008.
■ The DWO has committed to conducting a conflict analysis prior to the development of any new schemes. By actively making conflict analyses part of their way of working, the DWO hopes to better understand the prevailing conflict dynamics within communities, track any changes and be alert to existing and emerging tensions and conflicts.
■ KDLG have incorporated conflict sensitivity as a cross-cutting issue in the latest District Development Plan (2007/8–2009/10).A district focal point person has also been nominated to lead the integration of conflict sensitivity throughout KDLG's activities. This will help maintain the momentum to implement conflict sensitivity, beyond the current project.
Challenges for the future
Taking into consideration the experiences of the Kiywebe GFS, the tensions that have arisen and the potential conflict issues that have been resolved, it is important that the DWO continue to maintain a conflict-sensitive approach throughout the remainder of the project. A number of potentially conflict-generating issues have been identified – as outlined below – that must be factored into future engagements with Mahango and Rukoki, to ensure conflicts are minimised or well-managed and sustainable peace promoted.
■ The remaining software activities need to take place as a matter of some urgency. Given the unhappiness about the collection of water user fees without a treasurer and bank account, this issue urgently needs addressing. Similarly, beneficiaries require support in the transition from the PIC to the PMC and with the introduction of other structures, such as the TSCs and Water User Committees (WUCs). Support is needed both to those elected to be members of the committees in their roles and responsibilities, and to the beneficiaries to ensure they engage with these structures and adhere to the rules and regulations set. If these structures are well set up and capacitated, they have the potential to contribute to constructive management of any potential future disputes, while ensuring the continued functioning of the GFS.
■ The sensitisation meetings focusing on sanitation and hygiene around the tap stands must take place. Requested by the beneficiary communities, and due as part of the DWO software activities, it is important that these take place soon given that construction is near complete. Furthermore, it must be ensured that common standards of sanitation and hygiene are maintained near the tap stands to avoid the risk of conflict arising if some pollute the water.
■ Concerted effort by the DWO must be put into sourcing and awarding the software contract. Although intended to be awarded in July 2007, this has yet to happen in order for software activities to be carried out. Similarly, the District Community Mobilisation Officer, who had been accompanying the software activities in Kiywebe GFS, resigned in January 2008 and has not yet been replaced. Given the lessons learned about the necessity of having continued community consultations, it is paramount that this post is filled to avoid the software work continuing to lag behind the hardware work.
■ Clear communications on the outcomes of community consultations to those who did not participate is important to retain the full benefit of consultation. Community members have suggested using radio programmes for this. Specifically, information must be disseminated to clarify the capital contributions and user fees per household, and the two-phased nature of the construction process, to reassure all beneficiaries that they are not being neglected.
■ Continued engagement and mobilisation of beneficiaries. It is important to maintain the intense mobilisation that REDROC has spearheaded so far. Given the size of the Kiywebe GFS both in terms of geographical area and coverage, and its physical isolation from the district headquarters, it is important that as many beneficiaries as possible continue to engage with the progress of the scheme – especially now they are entering the O&M phase. Both Mahango and Rukoki have become accustomed to a high level of interaction with the process and decision-making aspects of the Kiywebe GFS and it would therefore be insensitive – and against the spirit of demand-driven service delivery – for this level of community involvement to decrease. Moreover, ceasing frequent interaction with Mahango and Rukoki residents now could cause them to become suspicious of decision-making processes taking place without their knowledge and lead to resentment towards and potential conflict with the DWO.
■ It is essential that the DWO take over the role of promoting and integrating conflict sensitivity. Although REDROC will continue to work with the DWO, the district must also be able to promote conflict sensitivity independently. They must maintain their focus on identifying conflict issues and using these to influence the way they engage with communities, the processes they employ, and to ensure conflict-sensitive approaches permeate their other interventions.
Arua case study
Arua background
Arua in the West Nile Region of Uganda has been relatively stable for the past few years but, like many districts in Uganda, suffers from a turbulent past which has left a number of deep-rooted underlying conflicts without redress.
In the 1970s, conflict erupted in the region as the government of Idi Amin – who himself comes from the area – was thrown out of office by a military invasion. In response, the Former Uganda National Army was formed, which tried to overthrow the subsequent government of Milton Obote, apparently partly out of fear that Amin loyalists would be targeted. During the 1980s and 1990s,West Nile became a haven for a variety of armed groups with increased cross-border movements into Sudan and the DRC. Of most significance was the division and re-grouping that occurred within (and between) rebel groups, and the emergence of the Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) and the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF).
The Arua population has witnessed much displacement, with up to 500,000 fleeing to Sudan during the 1980s and many more living in exile in the DRC 19 . In the mid-1990s the UNRF and WNBF surfaced from their bases in Sudan and the DRC.Allegedly with financial backing from the Sudanese government, the WNBF along with other insurgencies wreaked havoc and violent unrest in which the civilian population became caught between rebel and army cross-fire. It was not until the end of the 1990s that the West Nile witnessed a sustained period of peace and security following negotiations by the government and rebel groups. This eventually led to the signing of a peace deal, including a ceasefire agreement in December 2002 20 .
The majority of Ugandan refugees have since returned to the region, but Arua district is now home to a substantial proportion of Sudanese refugees displaced as a result of rebel insurgencies in their homelands. Furthermore, there remains a constant threat from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and their movements between neighbouring Sudan and DRC. Peace talks between the Government of Uganda and the LRA have struggled and the potential for future conflict remains.
Water and conflict in Arua
The Arua District Water and Sanitation Work Plan and Budget for 2006/7–2008/9 21 claims that 63% of the district has access to safe drinking water, but acknowledges that the coverage figures are highly variable depending on geographical location.While 80% of the district benefits from relatively good drainage, areas within and around the Nile belt suffer from
poor drainage and land that is unsuitable for a variety of water technologies.Water that is accessible is not safe for drinking and is often contaminated with diseases, related, in part, to the lack of adequate sanitation provision in the district.
Further from the Nile belt, springs are seasonal and are often rendered unusable because of high salt concentrations.Arua's climate and topography – Arua is predominantly flat plateau – means that boreholes are the most viable and most widely used means of providing access to water. However, it is not uncommon for a borehole to dry up within six months of being sunk.
Today, the conflicts emerging in Arua are arguably a reflection of the district's underdevelopment and relative isolation, both physically and politically, from Kampala. Overwhelming support for the opposition FDC during the last elections seem to confirm people's distrust in or disappointment with the performance of central government.Although Arua and the West Nile in general, have benefited from some government-led and international donor development programmes, levels of development remain low. Poor service delivery and inequitable distribution of social services – associated with urban favouritism and perceived high levels of corruption in the district local government – is increasing pressure on limited resources. Moreover, even when social services are available, there is a high level of reluctance to access these as communities characterise service provision as governmentowned, rather than for their benefit and entitlement as citizens. The prime economic activities in Arua are agriculture, cattle keeping and tobacco growing, but poor farming practices and limited fertile land means that agricultural production remains low and food insecurity is rife – most people survive on one meal per day.
Given how central natural resources are to people's livelihoods, it is not surprising that many conflicts in Arua are over access to these. In particular, it is believed that 80% of the resourcebased conflicts in Arua are between refugee and host populations over access to water points as a result of the increasing number of refugee settlements without an adequate increase in water supply 22 .Agencies like the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have drilled boreholes in refugee settlement areas, but host communities have not received many new water points, and are having to continue to rely on central government resources and implementation through Arua District Local Government (ADLG) or NGOs. Moreover, where development agencies – including local and INGOs and religious groups – fund and implement water points, there is often poor co-ordination and each agency has different target groups, implementation practices, monitoring tools and evaluation criteria.
Conflict issues that often arise over water provision around and near refugee communities are:
■ perceived favouritism by host communities of the government and international actors towards the refugees – sometimes feeding into broader ethnic conflict
■ increasing populations around water points including host communities crossing to refugee settlements to access water and vice-versa
■ ineffective and unrepresentative Water Management Committees (WMCs), particularly where water points are shared between refugee and host communities
■ both the refugees and host communities claiming ownership of the water borehole. For example, refugees believe that water points were installed because of their presence, therefore they own them and they have been dismantling and taking equipment from the boreholes with them when they are resettled. This has caused widespread animosity from host communities.
Apart from refugee/host conflicts over water, other water-related conflicts also occur in Arua, including:
■ people and cattle encroaching on somebody else's land to access water
■ the use of another community's water points, without paying user fees
■ droughts which are becoming more prevalent and decreasing the yield of many water sources
■ disparities in water coverage, whether due to natural or technical reasons – this is often interpreted as deliberate marginalisation of certain groups
■ dysfunctional water points due to poor quality and inadequate financial and software investment in operation and maintenance of water facilities
■ a lack of funds or late release of funds to meet people's demands for better water provision
■ inadequate staffing, particularly for software components, resulting in hurried, simplified or abandoned community engagement with district processes prior to, during and after the completion of new water schemes
■ poor co-ordination between NGO service providers
■ domestic violence linked to the length of time it takes women to collect water and/or if no water is available in the household.
The district has recently prioritised interventions that target the development of safer water sources, improvement and promotion of sanitation/hygiene, capacity-building for DWO staff and other actors and the provision of water for production.
Water in Nyai community and Ajara village
Nyai villagers have been facing water shortage problems for over 20 years. The River Enyawu is the main source of water in the area but it is unfit for human consumption and the only springs in the near vicinity are seasonal.Water scarcity and the lack of safe drinking water have forced the Nyai community to go to the neighbouring village,Ajara, to access safe drinking water from their borehole.
BOX 1 Applying CSA to a water intervention involving conflicting host and refugee communities: an example from GOPA/GTZ in Arua
GOPA Consultants, supported by GTZ, has been implementing a Food and Nutrition Security project in the West Nile, in which they integrated specific peacebuilding aims. At the beginning of their project, GOPA, with support from CECORE, conducted a conflict analysis to identify the existing conflicts associated with resource access, utilisation and ownership. The analysis revealed that 80% of the resource-based conflicts in the region were associated with access, or lack of access, to water points. The analysis highlighted that this related particularly to the fact that agencies such as the UNHCR were supplying water points to refugee settlements but with limited or no services for host communities 23 . Furthermore, host communities were being refused access to certain water points, as they were prioritised for use by refugee populations. In retaliation, refugees were subjected to inflated prices for food and other essential items in the local market.
More localised conflict analyses around existing borehole sites provided detailed information, which in turn informed joint community dialogue meetings between refugee and host communities to identify possible ways forward. It was agreed that additional boreholes would be sunk to address the inequitable resource distribution and to relieve tension and conflicts.
In a similar exercise, GOPA identified a number of conflicts that erupted seasonally, as pastoralists moved their cattle to the nearest water source during the dry season. To address these water conflicts, GOPA erected valley tanks which can retain water for up to three months during the dry season. This has reduced the volume of livestock being moved during the dry season and significantly reduced the prevalence of conflicts in these areas.
By adopting a CSA and using a conflict analysis to inform the way they designed their interventions, GOPA learned that:
■ Refugee service-delivery programmes need to include management of the relationship with host communities.
■ Joint programme strategies that work with refugees and host communities are the most effective, creating an opportunity to incorporate peacebuilding activities.
■ Poor relations, anti-social behaviour, negative attitudes towards certain groups, verbal abuse and denial of access to services are often the visible ways of expressing underlying hidden needs, desires and perceived (or real) social injustices.
Using tools such as conflict analysis helped GOPA to better understand the dynamics that determine social behaviours and enabled GOPA to predict, and take action, to mitigate against the escalation of violence and potential conflict. These tools helped them to remain flexible and continually review their programme design, which could be amended in light of changing circumstances. In contrast, GOPA withdrew from implementing a different project that was pre-designed without implementing a conflict-sensitive approach and where unknown and unresolved conflicts within beneficiary communities were undermining the project's potential to achieve its intended objectives.
Depending on the villagers'homes, this can be up to two kilometres away and the borehole is often so crowded that upon reaching it, villagers have to queue for up to two hours to access water. The weak, elderly and/or disabled community members who cannot travel these distances, and other individuals who cannot spare this time away from their livelihood activities, often resort to using water from the River Enyawu. This poses a constant threat of contracting cholera, typhoid, worms and diarrhoea.
At the Ajara borehole, people from Nyai were often the last to be served, no matter how long they had been waiting in the queue. Priority was given to Ajara residents who were reluctant to allow 'outsiders'to access their water, particularly since Nyai inhabitants did not pay towards operation and maintenance. Often, individuals from Nyai would be sent back with empty jerry cans and told to find their own water source.At times these situations became violent.
Because of the escalating hostilities between the two communities, the Ajara borehole was intentionally locked to prevent 'outsiders'from using it, and only opened at certain points during the day. This further limited Nyai villagers'access to safe water and forced them to continue using the river.
Conflict sensitivity and the Nyai water borehole
In Arua district, Saferworld and partners CECORE and YODEO approached the DWO to identify possible projects that may benefit from integrating a conflict-sensitive approach. The construction of a borehole in Nyai village was chosen since the DWO had already approved the project, but initial consultations and software work had not yet taken place. This created an opportunity to integrate conflict sensitivity from the start.YODEO took the lead, with support from Saferworld and CECORE, on consulting and liaising with all the relevant actors involved in the construction of the borehole, as well as the beneficiaries in order to make the borehole more conflict-sensitive.
A borehole construction project has a much shorter timeframe than a gravity flow scheme – mostly only a few weeks for hardware 24 and software work. Consequently, the Arua accompaniment work took place over a much shorter timeframe and involved less distinctive (or at least much shorter) 'phases'of work than the Kasese GFS.
A.
Consultations and
participatory
conflict analysis
B.
Designing and
planning:
providing feedback
and revising plans
C.
Bringing on board
other actors
D.
Monitoring and
addressing ongoing
issues
E.
Operation and
management:
setting up the best
structures and
process
A. Consultations and participatory conflict analysis
Prior to Saferworld and partners coming on board, the Nyai community had been seeking a solution to their water problem. Initially, they asked the Ajara community how they obtained their borehole. The Ajara borehole was constructed under the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF) programme, following an application from Ajara community. Nyai residents then applied to NUSAF as well, but their application failed.
Through the decentralised 'bottom-up'development planning process, local leaders and influential elders led Nyai community through a consultation process, during which they identified the lack of access to safe water as the main barrier to their economic and social development.A formal application for a water borehole was then submitted to the DWO, who themselves identified Nyai from their own needs assessment as a water-stressed area qualifying for investment.Yet it still took more than a year 25 before the DWO informed Nyai leaders that funds were agreed to sink a borehole there.
At the start of the accompaniment project,YODEO held some consultation meetings with the DWO and met the Nyai village residents.A formal consultation meeting was then organised, bringing together the Nyai village inhabitants, the DWO,YODEO, Saferworld and CECORE, to discuss the conflict issues people faced in Nyai village and how the borehole could potentially impact on these. The DWO also informed people of the plans for construction.
Some of the initial conflict issues that emerged from these discussions and the participatory conflict analysis were:
■ There was a clear need to provide Nyai with its own water source as the conflict with Ajara community over the use of their borehole was slowly escalating.
■ Clarity was needed over the responsibilities of the Nyai community, including contributions they were expected to make to the new borehole and their role in operation and maintenance.
■ Clarity was needed over the location of the new borehole and the implications for the land owner on whose land this would be constructed.
B. Designing and planning: providing feedback and revising plans
At the start of the accompaniment process, software work had not formally started for the borehole, and the history of contact between Nyai village and the district about water had already created some negative perceptions in people's minds about district service delivery.
■ Poor communication and delayed decisions
The delay in informing the Nyai community of the outcome of their initial borehole application reinforced the community's perceptions of marginalisation and discrimination by government authorities.
It strengthened community suspicions that ADLG had little concern for their water problems and strengthened their negative attitudes towards them. But a motivated minority, led by the Parish Chief, pursued progress on their application. Despite formal procedure that communities should be informed of the fate of their applications, the Parish Chief was referred back and forth between the sub-county authorities and the DWO, and simply told to wait. It only emerged later that the sub-county was prioritising applications according to submission date, but this was never communicated to Nyai residents or leaders.
Even after the application was approved, many community members struggled to understand the processes required for qualifying for district-funded projects and did not realise that they were required to pay a capital contribution when the borehole is constructed. This caused much unhappiness among community members, particularly since NUSAF boreholes require only manual contributions, not financial ones. Many community members therefore assumed the borehole would be provided free of charge by central government or the ADLG. Of course the LC I Chairperson, the Parish Chief and the Parish Nurse who completed the application to the district, acting on community wishes to apply for water provision, knew what the terms and conditions were, but they unfortunately did not realise the importance of communicating all of this information to the rest of the Nyai inhabitants. One of the first interventions from the District Water Officer was therefore to explain that community contributions were aimed at instilling a sense of community ownership towards the water point.
■ Agreeing and establishing good conduct and local by-laws
During the pre-construction phase of water borehole projects, communities are advised by the District Water Officer to establish by-laws to ensure proper conduct of the WUC, good management of the water point and to agree penalties for those who break the rules. Although the establishment of by-laws is recommended to all communities within the DWO software activities, many communities choose not to establish them. In Arua,YODEO encouraged the DWO to promote these village-level by-laws to ensure good order around water points and so help to prevent conflicts around them.
DWO explained the benefits of the by-laws to local leaders, key influential elders and subcounty authorities which resulted in a number of community consultations to establish new by-laws. Nyai's by-laws are today enforced and upheld by the LC I Chairperson and his committee, and according to Nyai community, are well respected, since they agreed these together.
■ Dealing with confused expectations
One issue that emerged particularly strongly during the implementation of the Nyai borehole was the confusion caused by the different practices of water service delivery between the district, NUSAF and NGO service providers.Whether communities are expected to contribute to capital costs or provide manual contributions, whether land owners receive compensation or not, the training that WUCs can expect and so forth are all handled differently by different service providers. For the DWO this means that they often have to explain things repeatedly to ensure that everybody is clear about what is expected from beneficiary communities.Yet some unhappiness may remain if beneficiaries perceive the district's way of working as less beneficial to them than what other service providers would do.
C. Bringing on board other actors
Borehole construction is simpler than gravity flow schemes and therefore involves fewer actors. In Nyai village, the behaviour of the surveyor and the construction company had the potential to cause frustration and deepen mistrust of local government.
■ Explaining survey results to communities and land owners
As per the DWO guidelines, the Nyai community identified three potential sites for the borehole. However, the surveyors found all three sites unsuitable for technical reasons and identified an alternative plot on land belonging to the son of the LC I Chairman. This created a situation where people may suspect political interference in the surveying process, while not having the borehole where they requested it to be.YODEO therefore encouraged the surveyors to hold a community consultation and explain the technical rationale for the selected location. The District Water Officer also reminded them that they had been warned that if their chosen sites were not suitable, then the borehole would have to be relocated. This dialogue helped to reduce suspicions and the community agreed to allow the borehole to proceed in this alternative location.
However, the landowner – aware of compensation schemes with NUSAF-funded boreholes – did not want to agree to the borehole without financial compensation.YODEO supported the District Water Officer to re-explain the terms and conditions of district-funded projects i.e. the donation of land for free, and after working through an actor analysis,YODEO decided to target the LC I Chairman and Committee to resolve the situation.After a series of meetings the landowner was persuaded to give his consent for the benefit of the community.
■ Communicating reasons for delays
The borehole construction company – based in Kampala – failed to arrive on the day scheduled for sinking the borehole, and instead arrived one week later. Some Nyai residents became suspicious that the DWO did not intend fulfilling its commitment to construct the borehole. Nobody informed the community of the delay, and this deepened their distrust towards local government, thus missing an opportunity to improve relationships.
D. Monitoring and addressing ongoing issues
Given the short timeframe of borehole construction, most of the ongoing issues that needed to be monitored and addressed in the Arua accompaniment work, relate to the operation and maintenance of the scheme.
■
Setting up a representative Water User Committee Nyai village were particularly responsive to adopting the software guidelines on what
constitutes a representative WUC and elected a well-balanced committee. It is fairly unusual to have a female WUC chairperson, male vice-chairperson, and at least three other female members on the committee, all of whom are extremely proactive in their roles.According to community members 26 , they all agreed on electing these WUC members. People trusted those that had been chosen and felt that the Parish Nurse, who was elected WUC Chairperson, was the most educated on the link between water, sanitation, hygiene and disease, and thus most suited to the lead role.
■ Training Water User Committee members
Before the borehole was constructed, the WUC was set up and given training on operation and maintenance.WUC members have not, however, shared this knowledge with others in the community, and as a consequence, new members have since been elected onto the WUC without having received this training. There is therefore a need for follow-up training in order to avoid lack of skills to conduct effective operation and maintenance of the borehole.
It also needs to be made clear to Nyai community members that the DWO trains only a set number of pump mechanics in each sub-county, with the expectation that all communities in the area should use (and pay for) their services. Nyai residents should therefore be introduced to the mechanics in their sub-county.
■ Setting up rules and regulations for the borehole
On advice from the DWO, the WUC consulted with the Nyai community to set up a series of rules and regulations through which the borehole could best be managed. From a conflictsensitive perspective, this is an important way to proactively manage potential issues that could cause conflict around the borehole.
In Nyai, regulations were agreed about queuing, collection schedules 27 , borehole protection, sanitation around the borehole and punitive measures if rules were broken by users. The LC I Chairperson is to be the final authority in cases of repeated breeches of the regulations.
E. Operation and management: setting up the best structures and process
The issues outlined below detail some of the lessons particularly related to operation and maintenance, including some lessons gathered several months after the completion of the borehole.
■ Ensuring community ownership from the start: capital contributions
At the time of construction, Nyai residents had not yet paid the full 180,000 Ugandan Shillings (USh) 28 community contribution to the DWO. Construction was not to start prior to payment, but work on the borehole began anyway.
Because DWOs have their own spending targets to meet within the financial year, construction often continues regardless of whether communities had paid the full contributions. In some cases, communities end up paying nothing. From a conflict-sensitive perspective, although it is important to be mindful of the DWO's own annual targets, the practice of
proceeding with construction without capital contributions needs to stop. There is a danger that communities might think they can get away with not paying, which in turn contributes to the confusion about community contributions and conditions for water provision. Such a situation should serve as a warning to the DWO that community management of the borehole may not be efficient in future.
■ Caretakers of the borehole
To ensure the borehole was supervised and the WUC's rules and regulations followed, the community agreed to nominate two members as borehole caretakers. However, if misused, for instance by not unlocking the borehole at the scheduled collection times, this power has the potential to cause conflict. Having recognised that this is an avoidable source of tension, the DWO and YODEO have been working with the WUC to encourage them to instil a sense of duty in the caretakers and help them to realise how their behaviour could impact on their fellow community members. Encouragingly, the caretakers have since become informal mediators for conflicts that arise around the borehole, often about who was first in line.
The caretakers are also responsible for ensuring that only fee-payers access the borehole, according to a list given to them by the WUC. This arrangement aims in part to help avoid the potential for conflict that could erupt if fee-payers discovered that non fee-payers were accessing water. But in some cases, individuals who had not paid the WUC Treasurer would pay the caretaker instead when they wanted to use the facility. These fees went unrecorded by the WUC Treasurer and provided an opportunity for funds to be misappropriated. In Nyai, one of the caretakers began to use fees for his personal benefit and was replaced by the wife of the LC I Chairperson. In hindsight, this was deemed to be conflict-insensitive as conflicts soon emerged between her and the other women, who accused her of using the borehole out of hours, for herself and the benefit of her friends and family.YODEO brought this to the attention of the WUC Chairperson, who called a community meeting, and two new caretakers were elected.
■ Agreeing tariffs
Drawing on lessons learned from other district borehole projects, the DWO and YODEO wanted to avoid conflict caused by setting high user fees without community consultation. YODEO and the DWO advised the WUC to decide the fees collectively with the community according to their means.
Arriving at a community consensus was no easy task and discussions became heated as differences in household incomes meant that a standard fee could not be matched by all. However, the fee could not be set at the level of the poorest household, as this would make it impossible for the WUC to cover operation and maintenance costs. It was therefore agreed that some community members, including widows, would pay less.
■ Maintaining a proactive and representative Water User Committee The district officials are impressed by how well the Nyai WUC has been functioning,
particularly by continuing to meet regularly, documenting which users have paid and which not, keeping minutes of all community meetings and decisions, and responding quickly to any issues that arise before they could escalate into more serious conflicts. The District Water Officer also believes that there is particular benefit in having a woman Chairperson, as in her experience, water points where this is the case are generally cleaner and better maintained.
The WUC still needs support in some areas – as outlined elsewhere – but it appears that the efforts of the DWO and YODEO to constantly reiterate the WUC's roles and responsibilities, apply lessons from other water points where problems developed around specific issues and maintain regular contact with the Nyai WUC and community have greatly contributed to its success.
Achievements in Arua
Since the installation of the borehole, problems associated with water scarcity in Nyai have reduced and the conflicts that used to arise are not as prevalent. However, new issues have emerged throughout the process of construction and operation and maintenance.
While most community members use the borehole, a minority do not, either because they do not wish to pay the user fees or cannot afford to (and have not been given exemption). They either continue to use water from River Enyawu and seasonal springs, or simply attempt to obtain water from neighbouring villages – particularly Ajara – which antagonises the villagers and continues the aforementioned conflicts.
However, for those who do use it, there is high compliance in paying water user fees – reflecting the fact that the users are comfortable with the tariff – and a good adherence by the community to the rules and regulations set by the WUC. Community members have expressed gratitude for the borehole project and the women are particularly happy not to travel long distances for water anymore.
Improved sanitation and hygiene practices around homesteads and at the borehole seem to have contributed to a significant decrease in diarrhoea and typhoid.Although it is not yet evident, the community believe that levels of poverty are improving as more time is spent on livelihood activities rather than fetching water.
Other achievements include:
■ Improved effectiveness of the work of ADLG and the DWO. Both ADLG and DWO found the accompaniment process with YODEO and the application of conflict sensitivity to their work extremely enlightening. The District Water Officer and the Senior Engineer both reported that adopting a conflict-sensitive approach had made their interventions more effective and increased the level and quality of community participation and ownership. For example, Nyai community members have been working with the caretakers, on a rotating
voluntary basis, to help keep the borehole area clean, which the district officials have never seen done elsewhere. They also praise the WUC for being so proactive and for continuing to meet so regularly.
■ Conflict sensitivity incorporated into the standard working practices of the DWO. Thanks to the lobbying efforts of the YODEO accompaniment officer, conflict sensitivity is now managed in the same way as other mainstream issues such as HIV/AIDS, gender and the environment. The District Water Engineer has been a very proactive ambassador for CSA, ensuring his staff adopt conflict sensitivity in implementing all activities in their annual work plan and promising to incorporate conflict sensitivity into DWO community training activities.
■ The introduction of conflict sensitivity to local mechanisms of conflict mediation. Conflicts in Nyai are often managed by the LC I Chairperson and village elders. The introduction of conflict sensitivity by YODEO and the DWO in the software activities has served to strengthen these local mechanisms for dealing with conflict whilst bringing in a new structure (the WUC), specifically to deal with water-related issues.
■ The WUC dealing with broader community issues. The WUC not only deals with borehole issues but also the decisions taken within community meetings. Even though Nyai is a small community, there have been cases where individuals who do not attend meetings cause conflict by disagreeing with the decision. Encouragingly, Nyai community members play an active role in explaining the decisions made and the rationale behind them, leading to an improved understanding of the issues and more community consensus.
■ An improved understanding by the local community of local conflict issues. Nyai residents believe 29 that the community consultations and dialogue meetings held as part of the DWO software process (and supported by YODEO and partners) have helped to strengthen their ability to better understand prevailing conflict issues in their community and to identify new issues that may be emerging. In particular, discussing potential conflict issues collectively has encouraged the community to be more proactive in taking measures to prevent any escalation to violence.
■ Integration of conflict sensitivity across YODEO's work. Adopting a conflict-sensitive approach to their other areas of work has enabled YODEO to identify community members who are key to effecting change and manage conflicts in the beneficiary communities.
Challenges for the future
The experience in Nyai allowed the DWO,YODEO and other actors to test to what extent adopting a conflict-sensitive approach to providing the borehole both increased the effectiveness of the borehole and started addressing some of the issues causing conflict in/with the community. Some challenges remain:
■ Access to water remains a problem. Demand for water from the borehole is becoming too high as Nyai residents use this single water point and the volume of additional and unforeseen users from the surrounding area is also increasing.Although outside users are required to pay user fees, tensions are beginning to escalate as Nyai villagers – perceiving themselves as having priority over users from neighbouring areas – sometimes fail to access water within the given time slots. This could well repeat the pattern of previous Nyai/Ajara conflicts.
■ The need to manage community expectations. Nyai residents are surprised that the borehole did not solve all their water needs. The WUC and the LC I Chairperson now plan to appeal to the DWO for more water services that can address outstanding issues, for example, valley dams could help provide water for cattle and rainwater harvesting from rooftops could supplement household supply.While the borehole therefore improved the situation, additional interventions may be needed to address all the water needs in Nyai.
■ The community's contribution of land to the water project needs formalising. Despite initial grievances, the Chairperson's son was persuaded to agree to the borehole being on his land. However, no formal agreement has yet been signed to confirm that the land is part of the community's contribution towards the ADLG-funded borehole. Experience has shown that this could generate future problems. The sub-county authorities urgently need to draw up a legally-binding agreement confirming this, with signatures from all relevant parties.
■ Protecting the borehole. To date, the borehole has no solid fencing and is vulnerable to vandalism and to wandering cattle fouling the area. The community have erected posts around the borehole to prevent this, but have raised concerns about whether they will be able to maintain this fence. The need for constant repair to the fence is starting to cause tension between the users and the WUC.A more permanent protection structure is needed, with support from the DWO or sub-county authorities.
■ Recognising and addressing the capacity issues of the Water User Committee. A number of issues relating to the WUC's funds and training capacities need attention if the borehole is to continue to operate effectively and not cause tension.
The DWO has recognised that conflicts often arise when WUCs fail to design and implement annual O&M plans, containing estimated costs for the coming year. Once these are clearly outlined, communities can save enough money through the collection of sufficient user fees. The plans help to avoid conflicts that can result from a lack of understanding about the costs likely to be incurred or the lack of surplus funds for repairs. Currently, Nyai WUC does not have an O&M plan. This needs to be addressed urgently with support from the sub-county Health Assistant and the Community Development Officers to avoid potential for conflicts to arise in the future. In Nyai, concerns about funds for repair have already been voiced and at present, the WUC do not have any surplus funds to cover the cost of repair if the borehole malfunctions. The WUC is also responsible for carrying out minor repairs, but has not yet been trained on this.While the sub-county is responsible for major malfunctions, experience has shown that sub-counties often invest very little in borehole rehabilitation due
A woman fills her jerry cans in Moroto, North-Eastern Uganda
KATIE HARRIS
to lack of funds and differing development priorities. To avoid future conflict over inefficient operation and maintenance, the DWO and sub-county authorities need to work with the WUC and Nyai beneficiaries on a plan of action to address these issues.
■ Ongoing monitoring of the water scheme is a long-term issue and is required long after construction is completed. Water scheme malfunctions are often due to ineffective scheme management, rather than some irreparable technical problem. Nyai residents do not feel that the DWO monitoring visits are sufficient and want more routine checks to address maintenance issues early.
Currently,ADLG software staff have no written agreement or requirements to revisit water points once they are constructed and although the DWO aims to make biannual monitoring visits, in reality, they tend to only return to a water point if there is a technical problem.As a result, monitoring has become de-prioritised and there are already concerns that problems may develop due to a lack of monitoring visits.
Other WUCs in Arua have experienced a loss of motivation to hold community meetings as a means to discuss and resolve arising conflict issues, a reluctance to pay user fees and a failure to replace committee members. To avoid this happening in Nyai (and elsewhere), monitoring of software elements must be prioritised and the sub-counties in particular must be more active in fulfilling their official monitoring role as intermediaries between beneficiary communities and the DWO.
Building capacity for conflictsensitive development
Alongside the project-focused work at the district level, a number of activities were undertaken to strengthen the ability of a broader group of civil society in each district to implement and advocate for conflict-sensitive development. This included some district-level trainings, awareness-raising on conflict-sensitive development with civil society and local government actors, policy dialogue meetings with district authorities and some practical follow-up and experience-sharing. The experiences from this work are summarised below.
A training workshop on conflict-sensitive development in Arua KATIE HARRIS
Training on conflict-sensitive development
In both Kasese and Arua, training needs assessments were conducted for CSOs at the beginning of the district level work 30 in order to target and design the first training workshops appropriately. The first needs assessment targeted a wide range of CSOs in both districts to find out more about what was already being done in terms of conflict sensitivity, who was already familiar with the terms and who would be interested in learning more about it.
In Kasese, although many organisations were familiar with some type of conflict-related work, only two individuals had been introduced to the concept of conflict-sensitive approaches. Some others already had previous introductions to conflict analysis, but in general did not feel very confident that they knew how to use it.
In Arua, several of the CSOs involved in the assessment had received training in conflict resolution skills before, but only one organisation was already aware of conflict-sensitive approaches and indeed applying it in their work. 31
The first two-day training workshops therefore focused on discussing conflict-sensitive approaches in relation to other conflict-related methodologies. For instance while conflict analysis is common to most conflict-related methodologies, CSA methodologies do not generally provide skills for conflict mediation. In both districts, some training participants understood the concepts well and tried to take it forward, while others either did not understand the concepts well or struggled to get their organisations sufficiently interested. The general capacity of CSOs in Arua in terms of institutional organisation and activities was weaker than those in Kasese, which in turn was weaker than those at the national level. This necessitated some close monitoring and creative follow-up to provide appropriate inputs that CSOs could absorb and use effectively.
After almost one year of activities with CSOs in each district, a second training needs assessment and round of trainings were conducted, focusing on those CSOs who already showed some willingness to take forward CSA in their work. The findings of the second needs assessment included:
■ Some CSOs in both districts had lost the previously trained staff and therefore wanted to have a new staff member trained
■ In Kasese, several CSOs felt that, although they were more familiar with the concepts of conflict sensitivity, they still did not feel confident to conduct a comprehensive conflict analysis or use scenarios to inform their own project planning and implementation.
■ In Kasese, some organisations saw CSA solely as an avenue for funding – Saferworld/CECORE and REDROC received several requests from CSOs for funding 'to do conflict sensitivity', but not linked to anything concrete.
■ In Arua, while some CSOs made good progress on starting to apply CSA, some previously trained organisations failed to get any projects off the ground. Their knowledge of CSA thus remained theoretical with no opportunities to learn from their own practice.
■ A higher number of CSOs in Arua still felt that they did not completely understand conflict sensitivity and wanted more training on the main concepts and tools, including conflict analysis.
Given the training needs assessment, the second training workshops:
■ targeted CSOs who had attempted to implement conflict sensitivity and/or who had sufficiently established projects in which they could apply conflict sensitivity and/or influence the district authorities through their work
■ targeted CSOs where the previously trained staff member had left
■ made creative changes to the methodology of the training, such as using role plays of actual conflict issues from each district and brainstorming project approaches based on this, to assist participants'understanding of what conflict sensitivity looks like in practice.
Feedback from participants at the second training indicated a higher level of confidence that people could now apply more of the tools. This training is only the beginning and more exchanges and support will be needed to deepen these initial successes.
Sharing experiences and peer mentoring
In each district (and at the national level) informal 'CSA coalitions'were set up after the first training to provide a space where trained CSOs could share their experiences of how they were starting to apply conflict sensitivity to their own work, and also eventually as a forum for joint work on influencing the district local authorities to be more conflict-sensitive.
REDROC and YODEO acted as the lead organisations for these coalitions in each district, and were charged with following up with members and providing advice or support where possible. Lessons from the coalitions are expanded on in the sections below. During coalition meetings, organisations shared some examples of how adopting conflict sensitivity had helped them improve some of their projects (see boxes 1–4).
BOX 2 Conflict and conservation: Good Hope Foundation and Kagando Rural Development Centre in Kasese
Good Hope Foundation and Kagando Rural Development Centre are jointly implementing part of the CARE International, Rights, Equity and Protected Areas project, aimed at improving the relationship between Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP) authorities and adjacent communities. Part of this work is to demonstrate the economic value of QENP as a resource for these communities. By law 20% of the park gate fees are ring-fenced for development projects within the bordering sub-counties. Working in three sub-counties – Munkunyu, Karasandara and Nyakiyumbu – Good Hope and Kagando have established community-based monitoring groups to track the government's revenue-sharing initiative.
After receiving CSA training, Good Hope and Kagando adopted a conflict-sensitive approach to their monitoring programme with support from their partner CARE International. A conflict analysis was conducted prior to implementation to highlight the socio-cultural and resource-based conflicts impacting upon the area, which would then be factored into the programme design 32 .
Of particular importance to Good Hope and Kagando was the tendering process of KDLG's Contracts Committee, as this appeared to be completely insensitive to local conflict dynamics. The analysis revealed that once tenders had been awarded, more often than not, contractors launched straight into implementation.
Many failed to adequately introduce themselves and/or the project to the beneficiary communities, which created unnecessary tensions between the two parties as communities become highly suspicious of the contractor's potential hidden agendas. Moreover, the conflict analysis identified that the Contracts Committee (and arguably the CSOs) fails to effectively communicate the tendering process and its results to the beneficiary communities. For example, if a five million USh project has been awarded to a contracting firm, communities expect to see five million USh worth of development. In reality, a substantial portion of these funds will be deducted for tax and other purposes. A failure to communicate this to beneficiaries has resulted in conflicts between the park authorities, the contractors and beneficiary communities, as assumptions of misappropriation or corruption arise.
Having identified these conflict-generating issues, Good Hope and Kagando worked with KDLG – both with the Contracts Committee and the Environment Office – to promote a more conflictsensitive approach to the revenue-sharing initiative. It was agreed that an additional 3% would be charged to the contractor to be ring-fenced purely for software activities. These software activities would include communicating the tendering processes and details about any forthcoming project to the beneficiary communities. This mechanism has been scaled up and will shortly be implemented in all 11 sub-counties that border QENP.
The conflict analysis was also used to inform the composition of Good Hope and Kagando's community-based monitoring groups, to ensure they are representative. The analysis identified that inadequate representation of minority groups and women had, in previous programmes, led to conflict. Furthermore, the insight provided by the conflict analysis was used to create a specific set of guidelines for field staff to act as a checklist for how to be conflict-sensitive when interacting with communities.
Both Good Hope and Kagando are continuing their conflict-sensitive approach to the revenuesharing initiative by attempting to create mechanisms which will enable communities to more fully participate in the decision-making processes. This is helping to empower communities to be viewed as fundamental stakeholders in the revenue-sharing initiative, rather than purely beneficiaries.
5
Lessons learned from promoting conflict-sensitive policies and practice
The practical project-focused work in Kasese and Arua generated some interesting lessons about what conflict-sensitive development looks like in practice, supported by the capacitybuilding work aimed at broader uptake of conflict sensitivity among CSOs and district authorities. This section presents lessons from the practical accompaniment as well as the capacity-building work.
Women carrying water from a borehole in Northern Uganda
MANOCHER DEGATI, IRIN
Lessons from accompaniment processes
Conflict-sensitive approaches must be adapted to different actors and levels of working
There is a great need for skills and tools that would enable people to deal with conflict. Some of the people introduced to CSA through the project therefore saw CSA as a tool that should enable them to deal with all conflict issues that they encounter. This is beyond what CSA is designed to do.Yet, undertaking projects (or larger interventions) in a conflict-sensitive way creates opportunities for peacebuilding, while helping project managers think through the peace and conflict impact of their work. Experience from the accompaniment work clearly demonstrates how conflict sensitivity as an approach brings different benefits to different stakeholders.
a) DWO and the district local government
Due to their policy commitment to working in consultative and community-driven ways, the DWO and broader district local government in Kasese and Arua see CSA as a useful tool to improve the quality of community participation and ownership of the district-provided water and other services. In particular, they see CSA as helping them:
■ Better understand what conflicts, divisions and alliances exist in the communities. The Kasese District Water Officer commented that CSA '…softens the way you approach conflicts' 33 , meaning that crisis situations are avoided as potential conflict issues are identified and tackled from the onset. The Kasese DWO felt that adopting a CSA to Kiywebe GFS has provided a means to understand the factors that cause water schemes to fail and to identify what the DWO's role should be in minimising potential conflicts and using their interventions as a means to promote sustainable peace.
■ Better understand the local politics and how this influences communities'interactions with the district authorities
■ Identify key stakeholders in communities who can be allies for them to work with, e.g. the LC Is in communities can be powerful allies if they are on board early on in the process, but can also play a very negative role if they choose to work against the district authorities
b) Civil society organisations
CSOs active in the district-level water sector play a dual role of influencing policy while helping local government deliver services. In this respect, learning about and applying CSA is a valuable tool for CSOs to evaluate and influence district-level decision-making, policies and programmes, as well as to guide and improve their own work.
In both Kasese and Arua, CSOs and community-based organisations (CBOs) were keen to learn more about CSA as they clearly saw the benefit of this approach to increase the
effectiveness of their projects and the depth of community participation in these.
For REDROC in particular, some specific challenges emerged relating to their role as 'accompanier'to conflict-sensitise the Kiywebe GFS. Many individuals from Mahango and Rukoki communities viewed REDROC's role as mediating conflicts, listening to community problems and explaining them to the DWO and KDLG. Part of the reason for this is that, while from the perspective of REDROC and the DWO, they were applying a conflictsensitive approach to their project, from the community side they understood the role of REDROC in terms of the effects they witnessed, which were primarily the reduction (and mediation) of conflicts.
In addition, the PIC had not been established during the initial months, and as a result, the DWO took advantage of any other actors who could assist in resolving conflict issues on their behalf. But it also highlights the difficulties of distinguishing different roles, understanding expectations from all sides, and the need for handing over certain responsibilities to community members, water-related structures (like WUCs or PICs/PMCs) or the DWO.
Similarly, community expectations for the success of the Kiywebe GFS and Nyai borehole were high from the onset and needed to be managed accordingly.With these expectations came a number of misunderstandings about the ability of different stakeholders to influence and/or control the process. It was important to continually differentiate the role of REDROC,YODEO and Saferworld/CECORE as accompaniment organisations, from the role and decision-making power of the DWO.
c) Private sector actors and service providers
Private sector actors like surveyors, construction companies and borehole drilling companies provide more technical aspects of water projects. These actors are normally unaware of their impact on communities or how their hardware work relates to the software work that should be carried out with beneficiary communities.Yet their work is sometimes undermined or they are even targeted or threatened if beneficiaries are unhappy with some aspect of the water provision projects. Understanding their conflict impact can be a useful tool for such private actors to maximise their own efficiency.
In Kasese, REDROC introduced the private sector actors involved in the GFS to the concepts and overall approach of conflict sensitivity. This helped them to be more aware of how their presence and the way they work could feed into some of these local level conflict dynamics or tensions. REDROC also provided background information on Mahango and Rukoki communities and reiterated that gaining community confidence is key to facilitating their work.
The surveyors and construction companies were then willing to communicate with beneficiary communities (through introduction and feedback meetings) and to change the way they work to accommodate concerns. In Kasese, this helped make the work of the
private contractors easier and put them under greater pressure to deliver high quality work, since beneficiary communities are more aware of their obligations and monitor their work more closely. In Arua, the surveyor was also willing to meet with the beneficiary community to explain why the borehole could not be on the sites they preferred.
While they made a positive contribution in Arua and Kasese by for instance, hiring local workers and buying locally-produced materials, the overall management responsibility for these water projects did not rest with the private sector actors. Had this been the case, they may have had to take more of a lead in doing their own conflict analysis and making their work more conflict-sensitive.
d) Communities/beneficiaries at the grass-roots level
In terms of what CSA means at the local, grass-roots level, some important conclusions emerge from the experience of this project.
The first step in implementing conflict sensitivity is to undertake a participatory conflict analysis. Communities involved in the project work in Kasese appreciated the opportunity to discuss the conflict issues that existed in their societies and how this related to the GFS. They also appreciated the fact that this helped them talk through problems as well as identify areas where they had shared interest and could collaborate to the benefit of all.
At this level, it is critical that the conflict analysis is continuously monitored, updated and linked back to the water project that is being implemented in the area. In this sense, CSA is a 'project management tool'to the extent that it helps project managers focus on the peace and conflict impact of their work. But for communities as the beneficiaries – and in a demand-driven system, the initiators – of projects, conflict sensitivity brings increased or better quality participation in project decision-making and monitoring. In this way, CSA becomes a change process that can increase the power and influence of beneficiaries to ensure that the projects meet their needs and help them address their own conflicts.
This raises a number of challenges relating to: who represents 'the community'; what skills, mechanisms and processes are needed for them to build on the experience of this water project and apply it to all future social service delivery or projects in their areas; and how they will manage the shifts in power relations that this type of engagement brings.
It also highlights the need to complement this type of CSA work with strengthening the ability of beneficiary societies to solve problems in a consultative and accountable way and, where necessary, to mediate and transform negative conflict dynamics. In Kasese and Arua, emerging issues had to be resolved. In Kasese, the most serious conflict was about the design and reach of the scheme, and this conflict was actively mediated by a combination of REDROC and the DWO. In Aura the most serious conflict was about the use of the land for the borehole, and this was mediated by a combination of the land owner's father (also a local councillor) and the broader community.
The capacity for mediating conflicts could thus be provided by external or internal stakeholders, but must be sustainable. In the case of Kasese, it will not be possible for REDROC or the DWO to sustain its current high levels of engagement in the Mahango and Rukoki subcountries, so the responsibility for solving problems arising and mediating future conflicts is likely to shift wholly to either the scheme-related structures (WUCs, PMCs) or to other prominent members of those communities such as local leaders or MPs. It is of course necessary that such individuals are trusted and genuinely act for the benefit of the whole community. Currently in Arua the WUC is able to effectively resolve arising conflicts relating to the borehole and in this way, support the efforts of the local council in managing conflicts in the community.
e) Sectors vs projects
CSA has most often been adopted at the project/programme level. However, development assistance is increasingly channelled through sector-level strategies and funds, creating the need for better understanding how conflict sensitivity can be implemented at this level.
The Saferworld and partners project generated some learning about this by linking the district level work to national and sector level policies and programming. 34 The water sector was selected because water access feeds into different conflict dynamics in Uganda, and the sector is well-organised, facilitating national/district exchanges. The key lessons from taking this approach is that a sector like water and sanitation has so many components and facets to it, that in the space of such a short project, it was only possible to influence specific aspects, i.e. raising awareness of the concepts of CSA and their importance, and improving software policies and guidelines at the national level. Much more work can still be done at the national level on integrating CSA in other aspects of the sector.At the district level, the water offices became committed to integrating conflict sensitivity in practice, but broader interest was also created among other sections and the leadership of district local government .
District beneficiaries also indicated the need for conducting similar work in other sectors – particularly those relating to land. This would also support comparative processes to identify best practice in conflict-sensitive sector support.
CSA can be a tool for deepening beneficiary participation
Adopting a conflict-sensitive approach to the GFS in Kasese has resulted in a high level of mobilisation of the beneficiary communities – higher than is usual in such schemes 35 . The Kasese DWO valued REDROC and Saferworld/CECORE's involvement in the Kiywebe GFS and believed the presence of new external parties helped to revitalise many stakeholders'willingness to address issues jointly. But important lessons 36 have been learned about the difficulties of in-depth and representative beneficiary participation and how to support this in an accompaniment process.
BOX 3 CSA and information technology in agriculture: an example from Bwera Information Centre in Kasese
Bwera Information Centre (BIC) has been implementing a project which aims to strengthen the information, communication and technology capacity of its farmer groups through village information-sharing activities. The aim is to target twenty farmers in ten sub-counties to become 'progressive farmers'. They would own and manage demonstration farms that are in turn used as examples of good practice to other farmers in the area. The knowledge and skills acquired through these progressive farms are shared at the community-level through public notice boards and public pay phones.
During the initial phases of the project, BIC distributed phones and notice boards to three of the 20 farmers who would act as chairpersons to farmer groups. The intention was that the equipment would be used by all farmer groups, until the next tranche of funding for more equipment was released. However, tensions arose between the progressive farmers, the farmer groups and BIC, but it was not clear why. The CSA-trained BIC representative shared his knowledge of CSA with colleagues and they all agreed to carry out some form of conflict analysis to find out more.
An informal conflict analysis was conducted through a series of interviews and meetings with communities which revealed that political rivalry between two of the chairs was at the root of tensions. The phones were being shared on a discriminatory basis, with the chairs refusing to let some farmers use them due to their political allegiances. This created conflict between the farmers, who quarrelled as a result of their access, or lack of access, to the equipment, and between them and the chairs. Even when neither of the chairs were elected to the positions they had stood for, managing the BIC equipment, gave them some authority.
BIC subsequently provided additional equipment to the farmer groups, enabling each to have their own phone and notice board, but realised that this could potentially reinforce the segregation of the farmer groups. By adopting a conflict-sensitive approach, BIC addressed this by appointing a neutral chairperson and parish-level coalitions. BIC believe that adopting a CSA has helped them to devise alternative ways to bring these conflicting individuals together and implement their work more effectively. Moreover, it was decided that the chairs of the farmer groups had to step down from that position if they decided to stand for a political position.
A key lesson BIC learned was the need to fully understand local level conflict dynamics. At first, finding it difficult to uncover the cause of tensions, through consultations with various stakeholders and with people outside of the project, they uncovered the real truth behind the phone usage and did not stop at the chairpersons' reasons for why certain members used the phones more often. BIC also learned that, while they can still remain politically unbiased, in this case they needed to understand the local political dynamics.
In light of this experience, BIC has made a commitment to conduct participatory conflict analysis for all their new activities and to use this insight to inform programme design. More specifically, BIC plan to hold consultative meetings with beneficiary communities and farmer groups before distributing new equipment, to explain to all stakeholders the objectives and implementation schedule for the programme. Previously, they only shared these details with the Chairperson, who was responsible to communicate this information to the communities. BIC are now more aware of the risks of manipulation by individuals which can cause conflicts and plan to actively monitor this in their projects.
As a result, BIC has informed donors that the next phase of the project will be delayed by one month. This will allow BIC to disseminate information detailing the equipment to be received, the mechanisms for accessing the phones and providing trainings on operation and management of the phones, prior to distribution of the equipment. BIC hopes this will help make their programmes more conflict-sensitive, and thus more effective.
a) Reaching consensus, compromise or agreement
As experience with development methodologies such as participatory rural appraisal (PRA) has shown, gaining community consensus is near impossible – compromise must always be reached.What complicates the process of trying to achieve compromise, particularly in the case of a large scheme like the Kiywebe GFS, is that different community members will attend different community consultation meetings.As a result, consensus or compromise may be reached during one meeting, but issues (perceived to be dealt with previously) will be raised again by those who did not attend previous meetings. It is necessary therefore to reiterate the agreements and compromises of previous sessions and attempt, where possible, to use this as a starting point for further discussion.
Sufficient 'space'also needs to be created for a wide variety of community members to air their views and to address their concerns as much as possible. This is vital to avoid the risk of dissatisfied stakeholders sabotaging the scheme or using their concerns to cause wider conflict. For larger beneficiary groups in particular, an initial 'mapping'of key actors and groups may be useful to support broad participation.
b) Getting beyond the 'loud voices'
The Kasese DWO felt that the project work helped them to realise the extent of political influence that permeates community opinions, particularly of individuals involved in the upper levels of community decision-making processes, i.e. those that speak out during consultations. They have learnt there is a need to intensify mobilisation at the true grassroots-level and encourage all community members to air their views, given that they are the direct beneficiaries of water schemes and the most affected when programmes fail and/or bring about conflicts.
Using a conflict-sensitive approach has also enabled the Kasese DWO to identify and appreciate the impact of a number of weaknesses associated with their software activities. In particular, the Kasese Community Mobilisation Officer realised, and is concerned about, the level of community representation and the quality of participation within their consultative meetings. Bringing communities together for collective discussions will, unless well facilitated, result in outspoken individuals dominating the conversation. Despite being aware that the issues raised are not necessarily the concerns of the whole community, creating the right environment in which all views can be fairly aired is a challenge the DWO software staff are trying to overcome.
At the same time, the 'loud voices'can also be important allies in achieving community participation. For the Kasese DWO, conducting the actor analysis as part of the conflict analysis process has helped them realise the value of identifying, and seeking to work with key individuals who have the power to enhance community participation. For example, the District Water Officer realised the value of getting the LC I Chairperson on board from the onset, to use his influence to mobilise communities and to collaborate with him in keeping interventions as de-politicised as possible. In Arua, the LC I Chairperson has been a strong ally in the work, as he is a proactive and respected leader, and has helped address problems arising.
c) Getting to the 'right' people
While all members of a beneficiary community will potentially be affected in some way by a new water scheme or borehole, it is important to recognise that some will have a primary role or be impacted upon more significantly than others.
In particular, women are generally responsible for collecting water and making sure that there is enough water available to cater for their family's needs. The presence of new water points therefore has a potentially huge benefit for them as it may cut down the time it takes for them to fetch the water. It is therefore important to get women's views on the best location of the water points and how best to manage their use.
For example, in Kasese, in a short play performed during the ground-breaking ceremony in August 2007, a group of women demonstrated how in the past they fought and struggled to get water at the springs. Now, as they have established better relations with their neighbouring communities, the women line up and await their turn.Yet it is not always easy to have many women present at the community consultation meetings, due to the many household duties they have to perform. Some efforts therefore have to be directed towards ensuring that the consultation process includes the opinions of women and that they are able to participate – even if they are unable to attend consultation meetings. Interviews could instead be conducted at their homesteads. In Arua, the participation of women is very effective since four of the members of the WUC (including the Chairperson) are women. The Chair in particular enjoys strong and trusting relationships with most of the women in the community, and together they have strongly influenced the process.
Another important group that needs targeting is the land owners. In Kasese and Arua, problems arose relating to land and ways had to be agreed to compensate land owners, as well as agree ground rules for using the facilities.
Practical issues
All the above lessons have an impact on how one conducts any accompaniment process with a view to conflict-sensitising interventions. This section highlights a few practical lessons.
a) Timing of accompaniment work
Timing of undertaking conflict analysis and making sure it feeds into project design, implementation and monitoring is crucial to conflict-sensitising projects.
By its very nature, accompanying somebody else's project to be more conflict-sensitive is challenging in terms of the timing of the accompanied project and how it fits with the timeUsing plantain as a jerry can stopper in Kasese
KATIE HARRIS
frame of the funding received for the accompaniment work. In the case of the Kiywebe GFS, the accompaniment process was able to start more or less at the same time as the planning and design phase of the scheme, which worked well. But since the scheme will take so long to complete, the funding for the accompaniment work will end well before the completion date of the GFS, thereby potentially missing out on opportunities for further follow-up into the operation and maintenance phase of the scheme. REDROC is planning to follow this process further.
Similarly, some of the district CSOs highlighted the difficulties of integrating conflict sensitivity when they are implementing partners for district-level or INGO projects. This often means that they come on board for implementation and do not input into project design – flexibility to change ways of working or the priorities of the project are then very much reduced.
b) Financial cost of CSA
For the DWO in Kasese, adopting a conflict-sensitive approach to the Kiywebe GFS meant an increase in costs, since the scheme had to be expanded and more funds requested from central government. In this case, implementing the project in a conflict-sensitive way costs more. However, this scheme is likely to work better and be well-managed due to the quality of the process to set it up, thus potentially saving other costs in future. In Arua, adopting a conflict-sensitive approach to the Nyai borehole did not entail additional costs, but did require more time spent on consultations and software-related work.
The accompaniment work was not expensive for REDROC and YODEO, with the main costs relating to travelling to and supporting community consultations and communications with communities, the district and other actors. In Kasese the travel costs to communities were high, since a 4x4 vehicle and experienced driver was necessary for every visit.
Strengthening adoption of conflict sensitivity: some lessons
Learning new skills and applying them to one's work always requires time and a variety of inputs and support. This section presents some lessons about strengthening capacity for conflict-sensitive development in Arua and Kasese, focusing on civil society, but also including those they work with.
Whose capacity needs to be built?
Actors other than civil society
For civil society to effectively advocate for conflict sensitivity to be taken up by decisionmakers, the latter also needs some basic understanding of what CSA means. Engaging the district was thus crucial in terms of the civil society-focused aim of the work.
Trainings were provided for local government staff. In Kasese, support for this from the top district leadership was very high, resulting in some concrete successes, including a commitment to mainstream CSA and to constantly collaborate with civil society.
Similarly, brief introductions on CSA were made to relevant private sector actors.
A specific challenge in this work relates to funding mechanisms. If conflict sensitivity is not a requirement under specific grants, or if there is no flexibility within the grant to allow extra time and/or resources for conflict analysis, it is very difficult for civil society to take this forward. More work is therefore needed on getting funding agencies, including international donors and INGOs, to value CSA.
Individuals within civil society
Integrating conflict-sensitive approaches into an organisation requires both institutional and programme change. The individuals trying to implement CSA in their organisations therefore require both sufficient understanding of programming to know when and how to apply it, and sufficient decision-making authority to make it happen.
For some of the organisations trained on CSA this was the case and they made quite good progress on integrating and testing the approach. For others, it did not work so well. For example, a particular CSO in Arua sent an intern to the training and although she tried her best to raise interest within her organisation for undertaking CSA, she simply did not have the 'clout'to move it forward.
Institutional capacity of civil society
Probably the biggest challenge to the capacity-building work was the institutional strength – or the lack of it – of many CSOs in Kasese and Arua. Those who had a clear structure with clear management responsibilities were most able to manage projects effectively, and therefore most effectively integrated this approach with positive effect.
However, many organisations, particularly in Arua, were 'brief case NGOs' 37 or did not have effective institutional structures in place. This meant that they either did not have projects into which they could mainstream CSA, or even if they did, a lot of their time was taken up instead by internal conflicts and dysfunctional institutional processes. This not only undermined their efficiency as CSOs, but also set a bad example in terms of managing conflict. Given the project's focus on strengthening civil society capacity, much time and resources therefore needed to be spent on general institutional support for key organisations.
Similar challenges arose in terms of the CSA coalition.While this successfully created a space where experiences on implementing conflict sensitivity could be shared and created a support mechanism for members, the quality of the learning that can take place within the coalition depends on the ability of member organisations to extract the learning from their own work and convey it to others and of others to translate such lessons into their own work. This was a challenge to some of the coalition members.
Position and role of civil society
In the water sector, many local-level CSOs are implementing partners for projects of local government or INGOs. Given their reliance on this funding, many district-level CSOs were hesitant to provide critical feedback to those who employ them, in order to make the programmes more conflict-sensitive. The capacity-building activities therefore tried to maintain a spirit of constructive dialogue – particularly between CSOs and the district – rather than present this interaction as 'campaigning', which may be perceived more negatively.
What was useful learning for those new to CSA?
Terms and definitions in the 'conflict' field
As can be expected, CSO staff members in Arua and Kasese have heard of different definitions of 'conflict'and what it means, and the various responses to it, including prevention, mediation, resolution, transformation etc. It was therefore important to include in project activities discussions about people's different understanding of these terms – particularly 'conflict'and 'peace'– in order to situate CSA within a broader range of responses.
Participants in Arua responded particularly well to the term 'negative peace', as an idea that while there may be no large-scale violence occurring, there are latent conflict issues that could again escalate in future.Arua CSOs have found people to perceive 'peace'as negative, due to the problems that were still present, and 'negative peace'therefore matched their
experiences on the ground. Some Arua CSOs used this idea to reframe their approach to conflict in their work.
On the other hand, some participants remained confused about the terminology and continued to try and apply CSA to whatever their needs were, i.e. if they needed conflict mediation skills, they tried to use CSA to address that need. This is a perpetual challenge and requires those promoting CSA to help stakeholders identify which issues cannot be addressed through conflict-sensitive development, and how and by whom these can be addressed.
Tools for analysing and understanding conflict
Many different tools exist for doing conflict analysis and, to a lesser extent, to link the analysis to programming. But of course these tools need to be appropriate to different audiences and the purpose for which they will be used. So, for example, the Saferworld and partners Resource Pack 38 , is clearly very useful to those trying to develop an in-depth understanding of conflict sensitivity as a methodology. But for small NGOs, local communities or more technical actors like the DWO, the Pack is probably too theoretical and complex.
The experience from the project has shown that using case studies, role plays and practical examples is an excellent way for participants to feel confident about undertaking conflict analysis and implementing CSA.
In particular, participants in Arua and Kasese appreciated the fact that the conflict analysis exercises they participated in, helped them to link different types of conflict issues (social, political, economic, security), as well as plot the interaction between these issues and the actors influencing and/or affected by these conflicts. Most also said that doing the analysis in itself was a useful process – particularly the idea that one should keep asking 'why'in order to get to some of the more underlying issues. It also made them realise the need for conducting one regularly to constantly monitor changes in the context.
Some participants in Arua particularly appreciated doing an actor analysis, as they had not previously tried to understand the motivations of certain actors to enflame or address conflicts. They felt that this understanding would make their work much more efficient. For some Kasese participants, while they found doing an actor analysis useful, they also recognised the challenges of finding enough information about these actors in order to really understand their motivations and hidden agendas.
Saferworld and partners also plan to do more work on developing lists of guiding questions that can be adapted for different uses at different levels. This will seek to avoid an unthinking 'check list'approach and instead provide simple guidance to support genuine reflection and review.
How did learning about CSA help civil society organisations?
Added value of CSA to programmes
CSO participants in district activities provided feedback on what they felt the added value was of learning more about and applying conflict sensitivity:
■ Many Arua participants were able to relate insight about conflict sensitivity to projects where they had encountered difficulties. Some subsequently reviewed and revised aspects of their work. Many participants highlighted the importance of being conflict-aware from the beginning of a project to minimise the problems that may crop up later. REDROC and YODEO, and some of the other CSOs who participated in project activities, are therefore adopting CSA as an overall institutional approach across their programmes.
■ Some participants in Kasese felt that learning more about CSA has exposed how narrowly they have been defining the impact of their work, missing out on the links to conflict or peace and any unintended negative consequences.
■ Several CSO representatives felt that it was important to introduce conflict sensitivity to the beneficiary communities, to enable them to identify when they think an intervention in their area may exacerbate conflict – or indeed how best an intervention can promote peace. One suggestion from REDROC was to train 'CSA ambassadors'in each community, who could take the lead on ensuring that all future interventions in their area are conflict-sensitive.
■ Learning about conflict sensitivity had a more individual impact on some participants, who saw the principles of conflict sensitivity as applying not only applied to programming, but to the entire way an organisation works and also to them as individuals. They questioned their own biases and subjectivity that they did not previously acknowledge, and committed to be more aware of this in future, while taking responsibility for the conflict impact of their projects.
Some participants picked one or two CSA principles, like the importance of participation, and assumed that since they were already working in a participatory way, they were therefore being conflict-sensitive. However, CSA is about consistently applying a conflict lens to one's work – even participatory work can have a negative conflict impact if conflict dynamics are not well understood and for instance, only one of two conflicting groups participate in consultations.At the same time, it is worthwhile to build on similarities between CSA principles and what organisations are already doing, as it makes it easier for them to integrate CSA.
Influencing others to be conflict-sensitive
The dual approach of capacity-building on conflict sensitivity whilst influencing local government policies and programmes, provided additional learning to CSO participants in particular.
BOX 4 Realising the added value of CSA to a Participatory Rural Appraisal (RPA) programme: an example from SEFORT in Arua
SEFORT is a local organisation in Arua, which has been working with PRA methodologies for about 15 years. After participating in one of the project trainings on conflict-sensitive development and one of the dialogue meetings, the SEFORT representative decided to investigate the potential added value of CSA to their work. As SEFORT have interpreted it, PRA-based programmes deal with community-based issues in a collective manner, using a local facilitator. However, this approach does not include explicitly analysing the situation from a conflict perspective or considering the potential conflict issues that could arise. Nor does PRA seek to unpack the specific actors affecting a given context and the motivations, needs and/or power dynamics that may be influencing their behaviour. For SEFORT, CSA is an approach that has the potential to help them better understand, and plan in accordance to, the conflict context in which they work. They therefore believe adopting CSA as well will improve programme design and ultimately programme success. For SEFORT, learning about the differences between their own version of PRA, and CSA, has been a learning experience in itself. And, having been convinced of the added value of CSA, SEFORT are planning to conduct CSA trainings for the entire organisation.
Some CSO participants in Arua admitted to having never considered it necessary to understand policy-making or build relationships with local leaders or other key individuals to influence district-level programming. By sharing experiences on conflict-sensitive projects and learning more about conflict analysis and conflict-sensitive programming, they came to realise the potential benefit of such relationships to their work.
The district dialogue and awareness-raising activities, the CSA coalition meetings and their increased participation at district meetings contributed significantly to the understanding of some participants of district decision-making processes and how best to influence them. In both Arua and Kasese, district local government was enthusiastic about more CSO involvement in promoting CSA and felt that experiences from the field (that can be shared by CSOs) are crucial to informing district development plans and programme implementation.
Conclusion
The experiences outlined in this report clearly indicate the complexities of implementing conflict-sensitive development at different levels. They also highlight the importance of understanding the needs of the ultimate beneficiaries of development, and what contribution each of the actors involved in this endeavour can make to peaceful development on the ground.
This work in Uganda provides us both with some answers and with more questions about the most effective ways in which a conflict-sensitive approach can promote peaceful development and what types of conflicts it can help to address. Perhaps one way of analysing its potential is to consider how conflict sensitivity addresses different types of conflict causes. For example, adopting conflict sensitivity helped prevent triggers of violent conflict in Kasese by enlarging the scheme and approving a second one to serve all Mahango and Rukoki residents. It also helped to tackle proximate/accelerating causes of conflict by stopping the politicisation of the gravity flow scheme in Kasese which was used to escalate socio-political divisions.And it contributed to addressing structural/underlying conflict causes by improving the relationship of distrust that existed between Nyai community in Arua and the district local government through accountable and participatory service delivery.
But the areas where CSA accompaniment work took place in Arua and Kasese do not seem to be at immediate risk of large-scale violent conflict, even though undertaking CSA has clearly generated some benefit. More sharing of lessons from different types of conflict situations is needed in order to explore some of these questions in more depth.
Similarly, this project aimed to take forward thinking and practice of conflict-sensitive sector assistance – a relatively new field where a lot still needs to be learned. Saferworld is committed to continuing work on sector-related conflict sensitivity in a variety of sectors.
A boy drinks from his jerry can in Kasese
KATIE HARRIS
While this particular project is coming to an end, important policy commitments and practical steps have been taken in Arua and Kasese that sow the seeds for ongoing implementation of conflict sensitivity – both within civil society and at the district government level. It now remains for the national level sector actors to capitalise on this learning and ensure that water delivery across Uganda promotes peace while effectively addressing water needs.
Acronym list
Fund
Bibliography
Africa Peace Forum (APFO), Center for Conflict Resolution (CECORE), Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), Forum for Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER), International Alert and Saferworld, Conflict-sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian assistance and peace building. A resource pack. 2004.
Arua District Local Government, Government of Uganda, Arua District Water and Sanitation Section Annual Workplan and Budget and Three Year Development Plan 2006/7–2008/9, prepared June 2006.
CARE and Saferworld, Conflict Analysis in Kasese District: The Interface Between Queen Elizabeth National Park and Adjacent Communities, May 2007.
Gersony, Robert, The Anguish of Northern Uganda, Results of a Field-Based Assessment of the Civil Conflicts in Northern Uganda, 1997.
Kasese District Local Government, Government of Uganda, Kasese District Development Plan 2007/8–2009/10.
Omuk, Betty, Case Study – Management of resource-based conflict in refugee hosting communities, 2007, for GTZ/GOPA.
Refugee Law Project, Negotiating Peace: Resolution of Conflicts in Uganda's West Nile Region, June 2004.
Saferworld and CECORE, Water provision as a peacebuilding tool: Developing a conflict-sensitive approach to water delivery in Uganda, June 2008, available at http://www.saferworld.org.uk/publications.php/
325/water_provision_as_a_peacebuilding_tool.
Various project notes and reports from different activities between October 2006 and March 2008, as well as interview notes (see list of interviewees).
List of interviewees
Kasese
The consultant conducted a series of interviews with representatives from REDROC and the DWO, during two visits to Kasese: 10–14 March 2008 and 21–27 March 2008. These were followed up by meetings in Kampala with REDROC staff on 23 April 2008, and with telephone conversations and email communications to verify information collected within the field. Interviewees included:
■ Jackie Mbambu,Accompaniment Officer, REDROC
■ Emmanuel Sikiryabosi, Coordinator, REDROC
■
Charles Police Mugisa, Board Member, REDROC
■ Lambert Olweny, District Water Officer/KDLG Water Engineer
■ Mary Bwambale, Kagando Rural Development Centre (KARUDEC)
■ Timothy Balikenga, Information Officer, Bwera Information Centre (BIC)
■ William Nzoghu, Programme Officer, Kasese District Development Network (KADDENET)
■ Alice, Kasese District Development Network (KADDENET)
■ Paul Kamalha, Good Hope Foundation
■ Habibu, Bwera Gravity Flow Scheme and Chairperson of Mid-Western Umbrella for Water and Sanitation
■ Wilson Asaaba,Assistant Chief Administrative Officer, Kasese District Local Government
■ Representative from Mt Rwenzori Initiative for Rural Development (MIRUD)
■ Tumwine Yasin, Coordinator, National Youth Organisation for Development (NAYODE)
Arua
The consultant conducted a series of interviews with representatives from YODEO, the DWO and Nyai community, during two visits to Arua, 20–24 February 2008, and 2–6 March 2008. These were followed up by telephone conversations and email communications to verify information collected within the field. Interviewees included:
■ Gladys Adiru Drasi,Accompaniment Officer,YODEO (meetings conducted throughout the two visits)
■ Cosmos Adomati, Coordinator, BIRUDEAS
■ Mercy Letharu, District Water Officer, Software, on 22 February and 5 March 2008. Plus phone interview on 28 April 2008
■
Albert Orijabo, District Water Officer, Senior Engineer, on23February and5March.
Plus phone interview on29April2008
■ The consultant held a Community Consultation Meeting in Nyai, open to all community members in Nyai village on 21 February 2008
■ Nyai Parish Nurse/WUC Chairperson, and Parish Chief on 21 February 2008 and 23 February 2008
■ Robert Anguzu, District Development Office,Arua District Local Government
■ Samuel Eduni, Coordinator,ARIPEZU
■ Charles Waga, Coordinator, MAFORD
■ Sammy Owama, Coordinator,Arua Rural Community Development (ARCOD)
■ C Embatia, Chairman, SEFORT
■ Martin Andama, Executive Director, Participatory Initiative for Real Development (PRID)
■ Betty Omuk, Expert for Conflict Management, GOPA/GTZ
■ Kulanyi Rashidah, SNV, on 18 February 2008 (in Kampala)
Endnotes
1 A forthcoming report by Saferworld and CECORE for the sector annual review will consider some of these issues in more detail.
2 For more detail on how this plays out in some minority rights projects, see CARE and Saferworld, Conflict Analysis in Kasese District: The Interface Between Queen Elizabeth National Park and Adjacent Communities, May 2007
3 Kasese District Local Government, Kasese District Development Plan 2007/8–2009/10.
4 This begins with Local Council (LC) I at the village level, LC II at the parish level, LC III at the sub-county level, LC IV at the county level and finally LC V at the district level.
5 These were extracted from meeting notes, project activity reports and documentation on the process of accompanying the Kiywebe GFS and supplemented by interviews with the DWO/KDLG Water Engineer, Lambert Olweny on 26 March 2008.
6 Culminating in the community consultation and participatory conflict analysis meeting on 31 January 2007.
7 These are the results of bottom-up, participatory planning processes, indicating where people would like taps or other installations to be constructed.
8 The areas un-served by Kiywebe GFS were later to become served by a similar GFS named Mukole GFS.
9 Interview with DWO/KDLG Water Engineer, 26 March 2008.
10 The terminology of 'dividers' and 'connectors' was first introduced through the Do No Harm methodology. For more information, cf. www.cdainc.com.
11 And apparently even demonstrated in practice how water cannot flow uphill.
12 It is believed that there are still rebel groups or remnants of such in the DRC, who could pose future security threats to Uganda.
13 The term 'hardware' refers to actual construction, while 'software' refers to working with communities, training, consultations etc.
14 The FDC is one of the opposition political parties, while the NRMO is the ruling party.
15 Tap Stand Committees are formed for each tap stand, from members of the community who reside nearby. Their role is to monitor the O&M aspects of the tap stands and assist the PIC/PMC in collecting user fees.
16 This was identified during the 6 December 2007 community meeting to follow up on the software activities.
17 The initial capital contributions being paid were 40,000 USh per tap stand, an average of 1,000 USh per household (about 0.61 US$).
18 This was raised at the 6 December 2007 meeting to follow up on software activities.
19 Gersony, Robert, The Anguish of Northern Uganda Results of a Field-Based Assessment of the Civil Conflicts in Northern Uganda, 1997.
20 Refugee Law Project, Negotiating Peace: Resolution of Conflicts in Uganda's West Nile Region, June 2004.
21 Arua District Local Government, Government of Uganda, Arua District Water and Sanitation Section Annual Workplan and Budget and Three Year Development Plan 2006/7–2008/9, prepared June 2006.
22 Omuk, Betty. Case Study – Management of resource-based conflict in refugee hosting communities, 2007, for GTZ/GOPA.
23 Omuk (2007)
24 The hardware component of the Nyai borehole construction was 3 days' work in total, spread over 2.5 weeks.
25 According to the District Water Officer, it was one year, but according to the Parish Chief and the WUC Chair, it was 2–3 years, interviews with the District Water Officer on 22 February, 5 March and 29 April, and with the Parish Chief and WUC Chair on 21 and 23 February 2008.
26 As shared during the consultation meeting with Nyai residents on 21 February 2008
27 The agreed schedule was 7–10 am and 4–6 pm.
28 This is about US$110.
29 As shared during the consultation meeting with Nyai residents on 21 February 2008
30 This was in October 2006.
31 The GOPA/GTZ programme – see box 1
32 CARE International and Saferworld, Conflict Analysis in Kasese District: The Interface Between Queen Elizabeth National Park and Adjacent Communities, May 2007.
33 Interview with the DWO/KDLG Water Engineer, on 26 March 2008
34 Lessons from this work are not included here, but are reflected in other project publications, namely Saferworld and CECORE, Water provision as a peacebuilding tool: Developing a conflict-sensitive approach to water delivery in Uganda, June 2008, http://www.saferworld.org.uk/publications.php/325/water_provision_as_a_peacebuilding_tool and a forthcoming publication targeting the water and sanitation sector annual review process.
35 For example, over 300 people attended the ground-breaking ceremony on 24 August 2007. According to the Kasese DWO, this is much more than what they would normally see.
36 These were highlighted by the DWO/KDLG Water Engineer and Community Mobilisation Officers, interviews during the field trips in March 2008
37 The term is often used to describe 'organisations' that actually consist of one person, i.e. has very little or no organisational structures or resources (human or otherwise).
38 Africa Peace Forum (APFO), Center for Conflict Resolution (CECORE), Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), Forum for Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER), International Alert and Saferworld, Conflict-sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian assistance and peace building, A resource pack, 2004.
Profiles of organisations
The Center for Conflict Resolution (CECORE) is a not-for-profit NGO founded in 1995 to promote alternative and creative means of preventing, managing, and resolving conflict.
Rwenzori Development and Research Centre (REDROC) is a non profit making organisation which works to contribute to the improved livelihoods of the disadvantaged groups of people in the Rwenzori region.
Saferworld is an independent non-governmental organisation that works to prevent and reduce violent conflict and promote cooperative approaches to security.
We work with governments, international organisations and civil society to encourage and support effective policies and practices through advocacy, research and policy development and through supporting the actions of others.
Youth Development Organisation – Arua (YODEO – Arua) is a registered NGO aiming to promote peace and development for all the people of Arua. YODEO works in the water sector on community mobilisation and conflict-sensitive development.
Center for Conflict
Resolution (CECORE)
PO Box 5211 6th floor NIC Building Pilkington Road Kampala Uganda
Phone: +256 41 255033/234405
Fax: +256 41 255033/251922
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web: www.cecore.net
ISBN 1–904833–34–9
Development projects impact on the lives of beneficiaries both in predictable and unpredictable ways. In societies in conflict, they can inadvertently contribute to divisions or unintentionally fuel violence, or they can help address the causes of conflict.
This report documents how two water projects in Uganda became more conflict-sensitive, and as a result, brought many additional benefits to the recipient communities. It highlights the experience and lessons learned from promoting conflict-sensitive development in two water projects, and seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of how these approaches can be used by development actors in water and other sectors.
Rwenzori
Developent and
Research Centre
(REDROC)
PO Box 136 Kasese Uganda
Phone: +256 483445877
+256 77624683 +256 782315733 +256 77946324
Email: email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.org
Saferworld
UK OFFICE The Grayston Centre 28 Charles Square London N1 6HT UK
Phone: +44 (0)20 7324 4646
Fax: +44 (0)20 7324 4647
Email: email@example.com
Web: www.saferworld.org.uk
Registered charity no.1043843 A company limited by guarantee no.3015948
UGANDA OFFICE PO Box 5211 4th Floor NIC Building Pilkington Road Kampala Uganda
Phone: +256 (0)414 231 130
Youth Development Organisation – Arua (YODEO)
PO Box 539 Arua Uganda
Phone: +256 4764 21942 Email: firstname.lastname@example.org email@example.com
|
Discussion: What are the future challenges for humanitarian action?
Dr. Kristalina Georgieva, European Commissioner responsible for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, and Dr. Jakob Kellenberger, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross*
* This debate was conducted in Brussels on 4 October 2011 by Vincent Bernard, Editor-in-Chief, and Mariya Nikolova, Editorial Assistant.
doi:10.1017/S1816383112000185
Editor's Note
This edition of the Review is introduced by the reflections of two of the leading humanitarian action policy makers. In 2010, Kristalina Georgieva was named the first Commissioner of the European Union specifically appointed for humanitarian aid and crisis response. In this capacity she heads the Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection of the European Commission (ECHO), a major donor of international aid. Dr Jakob Kellenberger's second term as President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is drawing to a close, following a decade during which the principles defended by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and international humanitarian law have been severely tested. Commissioner Georgieva and President Kellenberger have met regularly to exchange views on the working files common to both organizations. The Review asked them to extend one of their interviews in order to discuss the threats and challenges facing humanitarian action. They give their respective positions on several questions of current importance, such as that of the continuum between crisis and development or the problem of coordination among humanitarian actors. Commissioner Georgieva also gives her view of humanitarian principles, including the independent financing of humanitarian action vis-á-vis the states since the adoption of the EU Lisbon Treaty and the creation of an External Action Service responsible for conducting the new European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy.
The Review: Let us begin with a question on the main challenges for humanitarian action and humanitarian actors in the years to come. Madame Commissioner, perhaps you could start by sharing your views on the trends we observe today and their impact on humanitarian action?
Kristalina Georgieva: We clearly live in a world which may be richer today but is also more fragile. We are facing an increase of the frequency and intensity of natural disasters and an increase in the complexity of conflicts and their effect on communities and countries. These two trends, unfortunately, overlap in many parts of the world. Countries that are unstable are also in areas that are vulnerable to natural disasters. The Horn of Africa is a very typical example where we have fragility caused by nature, such as recurrent droughts that affect communities. Affected countries include Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti but also, in prior years, Uganda, Niger, and Mali. Then we also have the conflict in Somalia, which makes access to people in need so much more difficult.
So what does the future look like? I very much believe that we will see conflicts continuing to tear apart societies and becoming even more difficult to resolve because of the exponential growth of populations and the very fragile lands and ecosystems in which they take place. What will make such conflicts particularly difficult is the rapid urbanization in the developing countries, including in these fragile countries. In such contexts, the urban area brings the extra danger of 'anonymity', which breaks the social fabric that sometimes – in smaller
communities – helps people stay together, especially in times of conflict. Then, on top of that, we have climate change, which is making the whole world – the poor and the rich world alike – more fragile.
We talk about these threats, but very rarely do we try to project what they mean for the humanitarian community, for the development community, for politicians. That is where I think we are falling behind the changes in the world.
I want to raise another point – and I would be very interested in President Kellenberger's reaction to it – and this is the combination of ecological fragility and population growth. I was actually quite shocked to learn that, since independence in 1960, the countries today suffering in the Horn of Africa have all increased their population by five or more times. That was a wake-up call for me. To give an example, in 1960 Bulgaria and Kenya had a similar-sized population. In fact, if I remember it correctly, Bulgaria was 56th in the global ranking, with 7.9 million people; Kenya was right after, 55th in the global ranking with 8.1 million. Today Bulgaria has a population of about 7.4 million, while Kenya has more than 40 million! All of a sudden, it hit me – I tried to imagine what my country would look like if we were 40 million people! And again, my country is more fortunate because it has a richer natural environment, whereas Kenya has a big part of its territory in arid and semi-arid lands. Then you look at Somalia, which had a population of 2.5 million in 1960. It now has a population of almost 10 million people, living in ecologically very fragile areas.
My point is that, if you take the map of the world, and you overlay on this map natural fragility, frequency of disasters, and conflicts, there would be a remarkable overlap between where conflicts take place, where natural resources are scarce, and where the ecological environment is fragile. My conclusion from this is that we have to become much more focused on thinking not only about the changes in the world but also about what they mean for us in our action.
President Kellenberger and I have talked about one of the important points that comes out of this – that we have to build more resilience. How do you build resilience? With development. This means that the humanitarian world and the community of development professionals have to come closer together.
Jakob Kellenberger: Yes, perhaps I can start with what the Commissioner just said, and I would perhaps generalize a bit. Humanitarian organizations are likely to be increasingly faced with situations where populations are under different layers of pressure: demographic pressure, economic forms of pressure, pressure from natural and technological disasters, conflict pressure, climate change pressure, and so on. I think that the number of these types of situations will increase. I also think we will see an increase in the number of situations where you have a humanitarian crisis which lasts a long time because of these different layers.
I think Somalia is a case that we all have in mind, but there are other similar situations. As far as the challenges for the humanitarian sector are concerned – I think perhaps one of the first challenges for the humanitarian organizations would be for them to be clear themselves about what they understand by 'humanitarian action'. If they were very clear about what they understand by that, this could greatly facilitate co-operation. For instance, if they understand by humanitarian action only emergency action, or emergency action and early recovery, or even also activities embracing development and social work. More common understanding of what is meant by 'humanitarian action' would be helpful for co-operation.
Regarding the challenges, the Commissioner put it in other words, but I think she meant the same thing: humanitarian organizations focusing on natural disasters and technological disasters, in order to prepare well for the future, have to invest a lot in disaster preparedness. The preparedness challenge looks a bit different for armed conflicts and other situations of violence.
We have enough proof from around the world that the humanitarian consequences of natural disasters can be very different, depending on the level of preparedness of the populations affected by these disasters. It is sufficient to think of the earthquakes that took place in 2010 in Haiti and Chile. It makes a lot of sense to invest more in preparedness and resilience. For those who are working in armed conflict and other forms of collective violence, such as the ICRC, I take it that the future will present a lot of unforeseen situations, with a lot of contexts that you could not even think about in advance. The point is to be really on the spot, if possible, and to be physically present, wherever you have a feeling your action may be needed. You have to integrate in your mind the certainty of uncertainty, and draw the right conclusions. Developing rapid deployment capacities and widening the network of your interlocutors are measures useful in any situation.
Kristalina Georgieva: Yes I agree with that.
If you look at the social resilience of countries, it very much depends on the institutions countries have: the institutions of law and order, the educational institutions, jobs opportunities. What we recognize is that, at any given time, some thirty to forty countries, because of a lack of institutional capacity, are either in a conflict, slipping into a conflict, or coming out of a conflict. So we have a significant number of countries that, at any one time, are simultaneously on that path. This translates into three major challenges for us.
First, there are, unfortunately, more places that are becoming very dangerous to work – Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq (or at least parts of Iraq) . . . Yemen, too, is slipping in this direction. Second, more often – because of the big number of fragile societies – we have an explosion of unexpected crises: consider Kyrgyzstan in 2010 and Côte d'Ivoire in 2011. Third, we have more protracted crises, some of which last for 10, 15, 20, 30 years: the occupied Palestinian territories, or the refugee inflows from Myanmar and Darfur, for example. We can go on and on. When you look at these three challenges and you look at the capacity of the humanitarian community to respond, we all have to recognize that we have to reach out to the development community and to work on social resilience, on the institutions in these countries. We also need to be able to sustain a presence that builds resilience and opportunities in these countries. All this is to say that we have a
change in the world that we have not yet translated into a change in our collective response.
Then you look at the ever more frequent occurrence of natural disasters. When I was younger, in the '60 s and '70 s, the number of registered disasters was much lower than it is today. In 1975, the year I graduated from university, there were 78 major disasters. Last year, there were 385: a five-fold increase. In the last decade, the average disaster occurrence is just below 400 per year. So, obviously, that means that the investment in preparedness and prevention for resilience to natural disasters also has to increase. Yet sometimes humanitarian organizations and professionals would say 'our job is lifesaving', and that is all. You save a life and you do not ask the next question – is this life worth living, is this life going to be at risk again tomorrow? You could also say that your job is to build this resilience and to build bridges with the development community, with those who have a longer-term perspective and look into the institutions; you could advocate with these people to focus more on linking relief, rehabilitation, and development.
Let us talk more about the 'relief–development' continuum. How can we better address transitional contexts, which are not humanitarian crises per se, but which are also not purely development contexts? How can your respective institutions contribute to an adequate and efficient response?
Kristalina Georgieva: I would make two points here. The first one is paramount for the humanitarian community operating in protracted crises' environments: there is a need to professionalize more into linking relief to rehabilitation and development, to be more open to using humanitarian means to promote sustainable results. For example, using cash-for-work programmes to help people to develop skills and generate some income from their activities so they can eventually break out of their dependency on aid; or having more flexible funding that also allows the
funding of training programmes for those who spend a large portion of their lives in camps; or promoting environmental measures because, very often, in protracted crises, the natural environment on which people depend becomes completely destroyed. For instance, humanitarian organizations working in a refugee camp put no requirements for reforestation of the area, for water resource management, for cleaning and processing the garbage because they do not have the skills or they do not feel, as President Kellenberger said, that it is their mandate. So there has to be an improved understanding of such responsibility.
Number two – and this goes to the development community – they need to be more willing to link what they do with relief efforts. I came from the development world and I am now in the humanitarian world. Both worlds look down upon each other. The humanitarian world thinks of itself as fast and says the development people are very slow. The development people think of themselves as sustainable, and they think of the humanitarians as 'fire-fighters' who do not understand longterm problems. This culture has to be changed. In this regard, we had a first highlevel dialogue on humanitarian action and development in the World Bank last September, with Mr. Robert Zoellick, 1 Ms. Valerie Amos, 2 Ms. Helen Clark, 3 Mr. Rajiv Shah, 4 myself, Mrs. Ogata, 5 and we pledged that we would make this topic of resilience a common platform and that we will systematically build these bridges. President, my colleagues asked me why I think there is this gap between humanitarian and development action. I said, 'three Cs – culture, cash, capacity'. And culture, to my mind, is critical for unlocking both cash and capacity. There is a need for a culture change in the two worlds.
Jakob Kellenberger: You know, one of the modern philosophers characterized today's world not so much as a world of 'either/or' but rather as a world of 'as well as'. I have to say that, when you see how fluid the limits have become between what you would consider a humanitarian crisis context or a transitional period or a development context, you can already see that the different actors have to become more flexible and look at the context in which they operate, in order to determine how far they go. The ICRC links relief to rehabilitation, maintaining and developing water supply systems, for example, or by delivering tools, seeds, and fertilizers.
Your point of view is interesting, Madame Commissioner. I have never seen it exactly in such terms, but we may mean the same thing. In recent years, I was asked again and again about exit strategies of humanitarians. When I asked the question about 'entry strategies' for development actors, people looked surprised and had no answer. Building bridges means for me serious work and bringing together these strategies, preferably in the field. The real challenge consists not so much in bridging the gap conceptually, but rather at the level of action. For this to happen, the actors concerned have to be present and demonstrate relevant capacities. In a world characterized by increasingly blurred lines between different forms of activities, different forms of violence, different bodies of law, etc., clear conceptual frameworks are even more important than in earlier times. The ICRC 'Strategy 2011–2014' is an example for this. All this being said, a real humanitarian organization should have the capacity to do relevant work itself in emergency
1 President of the World Bank.
2 UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.
3 Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
4 Administrator of United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
5 President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
situations. This is its core responsibility. The challenge is not to feel and to declare oneself responsible for everything, but to assume concrete responsibilities in specific areas.
I think this is my way of giving the same answer. If one really wants to link, in a decent way, post-crisis situations with pre-development situations, I think it will be very important that the humanitarians and the development agencies talk and work more together, really in terms of knowing who is capable of doing what, and who is going how far. I'll give you an example: some time ago the notion of 'early recovery' was introduced into the humanitarian/development debate. You had to position yourself with regard to this notion. To be more assertive and systematic in 'early recovery' is part of the ICRC 'Strategy 2011–2014'. This summer we felt we had to put on one page what we understood by 'early recovery' and in which type of activities the ICRC saw its value added in early recovery activities. This would help us be predictable partners for all concerned by early recovery activities – beneficiaries and donors alike. It is, for example, important to know if you can count – or not – on an organization when internally displaced persons return home. I think Commissioner Georgieva knows by now what the ICRC means when it talks about 'early recovery', and what type of action that she could expect from us. We try to make it easier for Commissioner Georgieva so that she is then able to decide what allocations she will make for humanitarian and early recovery actions in a specific context.
Kristalina Georgieva: Yes, and yet we still have to work hard to make sure that funding is available for humanitarian action – usually fast-delivery, more flexible funding can be matched with development funding that is at a similar level of speed and flexibility so that we can connect the resources in a seamless manner.
Jakob Kellenberger: We hope that Dr Georgieva will be successful in her efforts to have more flexible rules about support of projects that would clearly fall into the category of what we understand by 'early recovery'. I think it would make a lot of sense in this world where we have these fluid limits between different situations.
Kristalina Georgieva: If I can just add to that, there are some good examples already. We should not leave you with the impression that this is totally uncharted territory. There are many good examples where actions that are related to putting out the fire of a conflict contribute to rehabilitation and to development. One example is the work with war-affected children: the humanitarian community may offer a programme to provide post-trauma rehabilitation and psychological support, and then the development community could bring them into schools. With this, we not only provide immediate help to those children, but we already have a longer-term plan for them to be educated and re-integrated. Another example, perhaps less related to humanitarian work in a post-conflict situation, are the cash-for-work programmes in a post-disaster environment: in that context, the cash-for-work programme could be followed by a development programme (UNDP or somebody else), which could turn it into a much bigger activity. We have also good synergies with our development colleagues at country level, which is bringing a more effective response. In the Sahel region, for example, our support to livelihoods, notably through regional food purchases, creates an incentive for farmers to produce, and makes an important contribution to food security and nutrition. These are also important sectors for interventions by development agencies. Yet these are still the exceptions, rather than the rule, of how we work, and we need to turn them into a rule in this new world.
Jakob Kellenberger: Yes, and perhaps you would agree that the development agencies are not yet starting to enter a bit earlier into post-crisis situations. This means that humanitarians will be forced to go into early recovery and predevelopment more and more.
Kristalina Georgieva: I do agree.
International humanitarian law (IHL) is another topic very close to the ICRC, and it is also one which obviously concerns the European Union, especially since the adoption of the 'EU Guidelines on Promoting Compliance with International Humanitarian Law'. How do you see the role of IHL in future conflicts? Maybe we could start with President Kellenberger, and then, Madame Commissioner, you could tell us how you envision supporting the development of IHL in the future?
Jakob Kellenberger: At the ICRC, and I think rightly so, when we talk about IHL, we first talk about getting better implementation for existing rules. In this regard, the co-operation with the Council and the Commission of the European Union is excellent. The revised EU Guidelines of 2009 are exactly the type of measure we would wish from states, because they show that one is taking seriously the responsibility to promote the respect of IHL. I always take these Guidelines as an example in terms of what we would wish to see. Now there is even a yearly reporting requirement about the implementation of IHL, which is excellent.
Even if getting better implementation for existing rules is the priority, the development of new rules cannot be neglected in order to obtain better protection for those affected by armed conflicts. The ICRC, based on a thorough study of existing gaps in IHL, especially IHL applicable in non-international armed conflicts, has worked out proposals for development of the law. Thinking of the future, my feeling is that the humanitarian consequences of situations of violence other than
armed conflicts may become more important than the humanitarian consequences of armed conflicts. A humanitarian organization like the ICRC, while maintaining its ambition to be the reference organization for IHL, has to become more and more competent in the field of international human rights law. This is the international law reference in such different contexts as Kyrgyzstan in Summer 2010 or Mexico. Contexts of collective non-state organized armed violence below the threshold of armed conflict could become much more frequent in the future.
The notion of 'other situations of violence' has to be handled with care and explained well. It may be more closely defined to avoid misunderstandings, in particular with regard to individual
and collective armed and unarmed violence. This notion can also be abused by states in order to deny the applicability of IHL and the right, for exclusively humanitarian purposes, to be in contact with all parties to a conflict.
Kristalina Georgieva: For us, we are fortunate as Europeans that the EU Member States not only support the implementation of IHL, as it is their obligation to do so under the Geneva Conventions, but some of them are also active in promoting respect for IHL at the UN, and in other fora.
We support three types of concrete activities for the dissemination and implementation of IHL. First, we fund training programmes that can reach out to people, especially when in new types of conflicts we are faced with non-state armed groups, which usually have no clue of any law, least of all IHL. Reaching out to people who are party to a conflict is important, so that they can understand a very simple thing – that, even in the direst environment, there has to be space for humanity. We fund training in IHL through our implementing partners, in places such as Colombia, India, the border between Thailand and Myanmar, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Second, we also fund activities aimed at increasing the capacities of humanitarian workers and of those who design humanitarian policies in advocating for IHL. Over a period of one year, more than 130 people from all over the world, living in conflict or post-conflict situations (including staff from the Red Cross and
Red Crescent National Societies) have been trained in IHL. I believe that they will be able to disseminate their knowledge further. We are likewise keen to get our own staff, who work in fragile contexts, to understand the significance of being well prepared.
Third, we try to raise awareness among our partners worldwide about some of the unintended consequences of new counter-terrorism legislation and policies, which may limit or hamper training in international humanitarian law. As you know, some states have passed domestic criminal legislation prohibiting material support to listed terrorist entities. Such legislation also effectively prohibits the funding of training in IHL where such training is directed to armed groups labelled as 'terrorist'. So my staff and I are active in promoting more awareness of the risk of curtailing effective humanitarian engagement through such legal developments.
Finally I think that IHL has developed over time but the nature of conflicts has changed very rapidly, and the law may also need to be adapted to the new realities of armed conflicts. I therefore fully support the initiatives undertaken by the ICRC to strengthen and develop IHL further.
Let us discuss the principles that, according to you, should guide humanitarian action in the future. Madame Commissioner, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, how do you see your services keeping their autonomy from the External Action Service of the EU, and more generally from the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy?
Kristalina Georgieva: In fact, after the entry of the Lisbon Treaty into force, we have a stronger legal ground for the impartiality and neutrality of EU humanitarian action. We have an article in the Lisbon Treaty defining 'humanitarian aid' as a specific policy clearly distinct from foreign and security policy objectives and decision-making, and we have an institutional change that comes with the establishment of my position as Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, separate from the External Action Service.
My staff is outside the European External Action Service and my decisions on providing humanitarian assistance are driven by only two factors – need and ability to access people in need – nothing else. We are blind to political, religious, or any other considerations. This being said, we also advocate for these principles of impartiality, neutrality, and non-discrimination with our colleagues in development and our colleagues in the political arm of the EU in the External Action Service.
So we retain our operational independence and our ability to fund humanitarian organizations like the ICRC to carry out their mandate with zero interference on the way they do their job, protecting their independence as well. But we also are a strong voice for the most vulnerable people around the world and for the protection of our capacity to reach out to them.
Thank you, Madame Commissioner. President Kellenberger, would you like to react to that?
Jakob Kellenberger: Well, I wanted to say that one of the best proofs that the European Commission is so attached to the principles is the genuine support given to the ICRC, which is a credible independent, neutral and impartial organization.
Kristalina Georgieva: That ’ s very true.
Jakob Kellenberger: And why? I think because the Commissioner has seen that, in certain contexts, only if you are a credibly independent, neutral, and impartial actor, will you have access to all; if you are not – or if you are perceived as not being one – you will not have access. This being said, even if you stick to all their principles, you may be denied access. But this clearly is the exception.
In addition to being clear on the principles, you also have to deliver on your promises. You have to be explicit whether you talk about intentions (or declarations thereof) or about actions actually carried out on the ground. These are two different worlds for people in urgent need of assistance and protection. And your actions have to be relevant for them, to correspond to people's most urgent needs.
Kristalina Georgieva: Absolutely. Very often we talk about the humanitarian principles as a matter of safety and security of humanitarian workers, and this is because humanitarian workers are in the greatest danger. More people die in humanitarian action than peacekeepers, which in itself is a matter of great concern. But another big concern is access to people in need. If you want to help people who are affected by conflicts, you have to be able to get to them, and the only way to get to them is by protecting the neutrality, independence, and impartiality of what you do. We have numerous experiences. One is Yemen and the Huthi rebels in the North. My ability to talk to Huthi commanders stems only from the fact that I do not represent a political entity. I represent one simple thing, which is that humanity must retain its space, even in the most difficult environments.
In order to do so, different types of strategies for access in difficult environments have been used by my staff and implementing partners. These are quite similar to other humanitarian agencies' approaches put in place by the UK, Switzerland, the UN, or the Red Cross Movement. We develop different types, levels, and techniques of advocacy in order to increase humanitarian access. In instances where vocal advocacy is likely to be detrimental to maintaining or gaining access for implementing partners, and when, at some point, administrative or other impediments become so great that an effective, principled humanitarian intervention is no longer possible, we implement jointly with our partners strategies of remote control. But this must be compatible with principles of sound financial and operational management.
At other times, armed escorts or humanitarian air services can be used also to gain access in difficult security contexts. Our aim is to find a balance between the humanitarian imperative to intervene in situations of emergency with the need to maintain the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Our legal obligation to ensure our accountability to the European taxpayer goes hand in hand with that. We also fund a capacity-building training programme for partners so as to improve the efficiency and accountability of their own programmes and activities.
Let us now turn to the events in Libya, where ECHO 6 found itself actively engaging in co-ordination. What did this experience teach you? And more generally, what views do you both have on co-ordination of the humanitarian response as a whole? What is the right formula that we should pursue in the humanitarian world in the future?
Jakob Kellenberger: Now, this is a big passion for me! I would wish more concrete field-related co-ordination and less trivial, repetitive debate about co-ordination. We need real co-ordination, and by that I understand co-ordination that has a humanitarian value added to it. This has to happen on the ground, and those participating have to be transparent and precise on their capacities and their human resources; on where they have access, where they do not have access; on whether they are carrying out the actions themselves or delegating it to implementing agencies. I think it is indispensable to improve co-ordination but not really in the way it is often done – leading to much more costly bureaucracy – but rather in the way of having really transparent information on the relevant issues between agencies which have the capacity to act. There is a real risk of an enlarging gulf between bureaucratic and operational wings in the humanitarian sector.
Kristalina Georgieva: More often than not, in a humanitarian crisis, speed and the ability to address new and very often difficult problems are essential. So I agree with President Kellenberger that co-ordination is not for co-ordination's sake. It is for reaching more people faster, more effectively. Therefore, effective co-ordination is about skills, capabilities, and delivery, sometimes in dangerous zones. All of us strive for a 'space' – but the decision about who should be inside that space has to be based on what it is that one brings to the solution. And we have to be very honest in making an assessment.
This would differ from one situation to another but there has to be less emphasis on process and more emphasis on results, on outcome. That is important for the people we are trying to help and it is important for the credibility of the humanitarian community. In a world where needs are growing and resources are
6 ECHO stands for Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection of the European Commission.
not – hence, where we all compete for resources – we are actually making a plea for the generosity of our citizens in a difficult time. That plea can only be based on credible action. It is not good enough any more for me to say, Mr. Kellenberger, I am responsible for E1.1 billion in assistance. It is only credible if I can say that I am responsible for helping 140 million people around the world, which is the number we reached last year. But who are these people? Who can help? How? These are the questions of co-ordination that must drive us.
Madame Commissioner, this is a question directed to you. You mentioned remote-controlled operations. Can you elaborate on ECHO's stance on supporting activities in remote-controlled contexts, where there is no possibility of reaching all requirements in terms of accountability?
Kristalina Georgieva: ECHO-funded projects are often in areas where access is difficult because of security concerns or other problems. It is vital that we reach those in need even in the most difficult circumstances. We try to minimize risks through remote-control and monitoring systems. To that end, we have a field network of experts and our local implementing partners to rely upon. But we do accept whatever risks remain because, if we did not, we would in certain cases have to abandon people in need, which runs counter to our humanitarian principles and values. In Somalia, over 80% of funded operations are being implemented in Al-Shabaab-controlled areas, where, due to insecurity and limited access, partners are operating through remote management. While accepting the increased risks, we have also tried to further reduce them, for example through a rigorous selection of partners with proven high accountability.
Our final question, to both of you, concerns the evolution of the humanitarian sector. What are your reflections on its future composition (especially the rise of non-Western donors), its professionalization, and its practice?
Kristalina Georgieva: As already mentioned at the beginning of this interview, the world is changing at a pace and a magnitude that we can hardly grasp and all this affects the scale and nature of the humanitarian challenges we face nowadays. Not only has the global level of humanitarian needs gone up, but the humanitarian contexts have become more complex and difficult for reasons that we discussed earlier.
In this changing humanitarian context, the need for co-operation is vital. There is no hope for advancing a global consensus on humanitarian aid if the governance of the humanitarian system is not changed. The current system is too fragmented and divided between traditional donors and new donors, as well as between donors and humanitarian organizations. New donors tend to act outside the multilateral frameworks often dominated by Western countries. This creates an
unhealthy perception of a divide in the international community, with competing systems of norms and practices in humanitarian assistance.
A first important step forward would be to broaden the dialogue about international humanitarian action to all donors – traditional, non-traditional, and emerging ones. Developing regular high-level platforms for such dialogue would give greater legitimacy and effectiveness to the humanitarian system. And it would bring about a better shared understanding and commitment to the fundamental goals and principles that underpin humanitarian action.
Another key step would be to strengthen the co-ordination between the civil and military agencies, because armed forces are becoming increasingly involved in crisis response. The lack of understanding of each other's mandates and responsibilities often leads to the blurring of lines, endangering vital access and protection for humanitarian agencies. This is why early co-ordination and interaction among different agencies is so important. Two instruments currently exist to guide the appropriate use of military resources in humanitarian situations. These are the 'Oslo' Guidelines for Disasters, and the United Nations Military and Civil Defence Assets guidelines for complex emergencies. These make possible the use of military capabilities in certain circumstances, while avoiding opening the door to an unwelcome deployment of military assets for every emergency.
The growing number of private companies providing a myriad of services – ranging from security to the provision of assistance – has added yet another challenge. States contracting these companies should ensure appropriate accountability under international law, especially in conflict situations.
For all these reasons professionalism in the delivery of humanitarian aid is more important than ever, which is why my services insist upon maintaining a high level of professionalism and accountability in the delivery of aid. We conclude a Framework Partnership Agreement with organizations we fund, and this agreement guarantees that our partners have and maintain a high level of competence, commitment, and expertise. In addition, our reporting requirements on the
implementation of specific projects remain some of the most stringent among public donors.
Jakob Kellenberger: I believe the number of state and private actors in the humanitarian field is likely to further increase in the future. 'Humanitarian' is a good label. There are also new needs to be covered, at least in part. I do not expect this wide range of actors to become more principled. Increased competition – not so much in insecure, difficult operational contexts, but in relatively safe contexts which enjoy high political and media attention – can make some organizations more vulnerable to politicization. Such organizations may prefer to stay in a context, giving in on basic principles like independent assessment of needs and control of distributions. They may just prefer to be able to tell donors they are present instead of leaving because independent and impartial humanitarian action is no longer possible. To the extent that increased competition leads to better and more timely humanitarian action, I can only welcome it. It would be a pity, however, if donor money goes to those speaking the loudest and not to those carrying out actual humanitarian relief.
Second, Islamic relief organizations and private enterprises are likely to play a more important role in specific activities in the future, especially in Islamic contexts (as far as the former type of actor is concerned). It is generally most likely (and welcome) that local humanitarian actors will play a more important role. It is less clear what this will mean for international humanitarian organizations that are less and less operational and channel the money from donors to local humanitarian actors. Such organizations will probably be under increased pressure to explain the added humanitarian value of the money retained on the way from donors to those who carry out the action in the field.
The multi-storey construction of the humanitarian building will be increasingly challenged in a context where donors insist on added humanitarian value for their money. I presume this will be felt more in the bureaucratic wings of humanitarian organizations than in their operations.
Finally, I expect the professionalization in the humanitarian sector to progress further, not least as a consequence of new actors entering the sector with very specific skills: for example, in the field of information technology or logistics. Such developments will, however, never replace genuine humanitarian commitment.
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Short Communication
Relationship between power snatch throw and backward overhead medicine ball throw in college football players
Jeramey C. Dockery, Jerry L. Mayhew, Troy L. Williams, William F. Brechue, J. Bryan Mann, George K. Beckham
Objective: To evaluate the relationship between backward overhead medicine ball (BOMB) throw and power snatch throw (PST).
Results: Regression selected BOMB throw to estimate PST [PST (W) = 134.89 BOMB (m) – 441.6, r = 0.73, SEE = 233 W, CV% = 13.6%). Smallest worthwhile change (SWC) for the BOMB throw was 0.79 m or 5.1% to indicate meaningful improvement.
Design and Methods: NCAA Division-II college football players (n = 23; age = 21.0 ± 1.4 yrs, height = 184.6 ± 6.0 cm, weight = 105.6 ± 19.0 kg) were evaluated for 5 BOMB throws and 3 PSTs. PST was measured by an accelerometer attached to a specially designed Smith machine with a hydraulic catch system that allowed release of the bar at the top of the movement. A standard weight of 62.5 kg was used for PST in all players, with the best of 3 throws used to represent PST (1,737 ± 337 W). The BOMB test was performed using an 8-kg rubber medicine ball, with the best throw used for analysis (15.74 ± 1.88 m).
Conclusion: The higher correlation (r = 0.73, p < 0.001) between BOMB and PST than previously noted for vertical jump power (r = 0.63) supports the BOMB throw as a measure of overall power. Thus, the BOMB throw can provide a cost effective and time-saving test to assess total body explosive power. (Journal of Trainology 2020;9:50-53)
Key words: BOMB throw Anaerobic power Power prediction
INTRODUCTION
Field tests such as vertical jump have been used to estimate explosive power from jump height and body mass 5 , although this test tends to focus more on leg power. More recently, the backward overhead medicine ball (BOMB) throw has
Production of power is a paramount feature of American football with various aspects of training devoted to increasing this parameter. 1 A unique aspect of American football is that skills such as blocking and tackling involve coordinated, whole-body expression of explosive power to successfully complete the skill. Consequently, preparation training programs focus on developing both muscular strength and power. While muscular strength and power may differ, they are interrelated. 2 Upper- and lower-body resistance exercises, such as bench press and squat, typically focus on development of absolute strength with the supposition that increases will transfer to greater explosive power. 3 "Whole-body" resistance exercises, such as power clean, power snatch, and push press, focus on development of explosive power but may rely as much on motor skill as on absolute strength. 4 Regardless of the approach of any strength and conditioning program for football, the development of total body explosive power is paramount for enhancing playing effectiveness (e.g., blocking momentum, agility, sprint speed). 5,6
The BOMB throw is a multi-dimensional task that integrates both strength and power to varying degrees depending on specific characteristics of the performer such as body size, movement speed, and dynamic strength 6 . Additionally, a technical element of the BOMB throw connects the horizontal travel distance to the movement pattern and release position of the ball. Although the BOMB throw may be a multi-dimensional task, previous investigations of its validity have utilized a criterion test (e.g., vertical jump) that may not be specific enough to assess the complexity of a total-body power movement. To date, the BOMB throw has not been compared to a test of total body explosive power that contains a signifi-
Received August 27, 2020; accepted October 20, 2020
Kirksville, MO, USA (W.F.B.), University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA (J.B.M.), and California State University Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA (G.K.B.)
From Truman State University, Kirksville, MO, USA (J.C.D., J.L.M), Albany State University, Albany, GA, USA (T.L.W.), A. T. Still University,
Communicated by Takashi Abe, PhD
E-mail: email@example.com
Correspondence to: Dr. Jerry L. Mayhew, Truman State University, 2117 Pershing Building, Kirksville, MO 63501, USA.
Journal of Trainology2020;9:50-53 ©2012 The Active Aging Research Center http://trainology.org/
received increasing attention for estimating total body explosive power 6,7 . The utility of the BOMB test is its capacity to be both a measurement instrument and training device for athletes of different size and athletic ability. 6,7 The technique involves grasping the medicine ball with both hands, descending into a squat position with the medicine ball passing between and behind the knees, before initiating leg extension followed by back extension, and finishing a high pull with both arms to complete the throw. 7 The medicine ball is released at the peak of an arching movement. Ultimately, the objective is to produce maximal explosive power with assessment indicated by the horizontal distance the ball travels.
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cant technical movement pattern element to more fully understand its assessment value. The power snatch throw (PST) employs a weighted barbell with a movement pattern similar to a power clean and as such has the potential to measure whole-body power involving the entire range of motion of torso and arm extension. The movement pattern of the PST mimics that of the BOMB throw incorporating the element of skill level. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between BOMB throw and PST test in college football players.
METHODS
Each player completed BOMB throw and PST tests on the same day with test order randomized. There was a 10-minute recovery period between each test. Players were allowed several familiarization trials with each test prior to actual measurement. The BOMB test was conducted with an 8-kg rubber medicine ball, which represented an external load of 7.8 ± 1.4% of body weight. Procedures for BOMB throw have been described elsewhere. 7 Each player performed five BOMB throws with a five-minute recovery period between throws. The horizontal distance of each trial was recorded, and the best throw was used for analysis.
Twenty-three NCAA Division-II college football players volunteered to participate in this study (age = 21.0 ± 1.4 yrs, height = 184.6 ± 6.0, cm, weight = 105.4 ± 19.0 kg). Players were involved in an intensive summer resistance training program at the time of the study. The study was approved by the institutional review board for the use of human subjects, and all subjects signed a consent document in accordance with the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration.
The PST test was performed on a specially designed Smith machine with a hydraulic catch system (CORMAX, Olympic Station 1000, Morehead, MN) that allows the bar to be released at the completion of the task. The PST was begun with the bar at knee level, pulled vertically as fast as possible and released overhead at the peak of arm extension. A standard weight of 62.5 kg (60 ± 11% body weight) was used for all players. Peak power, maximal velocity, and peak force were determined during the PST test using an accelerometer (Myotest Inc, Durango, CO) attached to the support arm of the Smith machine. Players were not allowed to use wrist wraps or any grip enhancement other than chalk. The test protocol consisted of three, single repetition trials with a fiveminute recovery period between trials. Peak force, maximum velocity, and peak power were recorded for each throw and the results of the last three trials were averaged and used for analysis.
A priori analysis indicated 21 participants would be required for a correlation with a power of 0.90, an effect size = 0.60, and an alpha = 0.05. 8 Thus, the alpha level for the present analysis was set at 0.05. Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to assess the difference among trials with Bonferroni post hoc follow-up to determine differences. Trial-to-trial reliability for BOMB and PST were assessed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC3,1). Typical error of measurement (TE) was computed by dividing
51
the between trials SD by 2 . Coefficient of variation (CV%) was determined by dividing the between trials SD by the mean of selected trials. Smallest worthwhile change (SWC) was calculated as 1.95 × TE × 2 . Percent smallest worthwhile change (SWC%) was calculated by dividing the smallest worthwhile change by the mean of successive trials. All analyses were conducted using SPSS, version 26 (IBM, Chicago, IL).
RESULTS
Data for BOMB throw distance and PST peak force, maximal bar velocity, and peak power are shown in Table 1. The significant correlation between peak PST power and best BOMB throw allowed production of an acceptable prediction equation to estimate peak power [PST peak power
The final three repetitions of the BOMB throw (Figure 1) and final two repetitions of the PST throws were not significantly different (p > 0.05) (Figure 2) and had high intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC3,1= 0.961 and 0.970, respectively). Typical error of measurement was 0.33 m (CV% = 3.2%) for BOMB distance and 163 W (CV% = 13%) for PST peak power. Smallest worthwhile change (SWC) for BOMB distance was 0.94 m (SWC% = 6.0%) and 111 W (SWC% = 5.6%) for PST peak power.
Table 1 Descriptive characteristics of the participants (n = 23).
(W) = 134.9 BOMB (m) – 442 (r = 0.73, SEE = 237 W, and CV% = 13.6%] (Figure 3). Body mass was significantly related to best BOMB distance (r = 0.42, p = 0.05) and PST peak power (r = 0.43, p = 0.05). Removing the effect of body mass by partial correlation nonsignificantly reduced the correlation between BOMB and PST (r12.3= 0.67, p < 0.001). Maximal bar velocity of PST (2.12 ± 0.25 m/s) had a significant relationship with BOMB (r = 0.58, p < 0.005) (Figure 4).
22
2.75
DISCUSSION
Studies have indicated that the optimal load for expression of peak power in the clean exercise is between 70% and 90% of 1RM, 4,10,11 while peak power from a vertical jump occurs at body mass. 5 Peak power has been observed using external loads between 40% and 90% for a power clean performed from knee level, 12,13 which approximates the staring position of the present PST test. Ultimately, a relative load of 60% (±10.6%) was used during testing in the present study based on past team power clean performances. In contrast, the BOMB throw utilized an 8 kg medicine ball which represented an external load of approximately 7% of body weight. PST maximal bar velocity was positively correlated with BOMB throw while load expressed relative to body weight correlation was significantly lower and negative. It is possible the PST load used in this study may have been greater than optimum for expressing peak velocity and power in this maneuver. Previous work has shown that peak velocity and peak power occurred at 30% of maximum loads in the jump shrug. 14 It is possible that the relationship between the BOMB and PST tests might be improved if the PST load were decreased to less than 60% of body weight to more closely match the maximal bar velocity associated with BOMB throw. However, pilot testing with several larger players indicated that light loads (< 45 kg) resulted in throw distance that exceeded the limits of the device. Further investigation of optimal loading of the PST to achieve maximal bar velocity and optimal peak power expression appears warranted.
The current findings support the BOMB throw as a good reflection of total body explosive power in college football players when benchmarked against the PST, a test with similar compound movement pattern and skill complexity. The correlation between the two tests of power in the present study (r = 0.73) was higher than previously noted when comparing BOMB to vertical jump power determined on a force plate (r=0.59). 7 This is most likely related to the similarity of movement pattern between the two throw tests. Peak power previously reported for vertical jump (4,343 W) 7 was significantly greater than the present PST test (Table 1), which could be due to the external load relative to body weight for each player.
An interesting finding in the present study relates to the novelty of the PST task and BOMB throw as indicated by a significant learning curve (Figure 1). Due to the novelty of the PST, it is possible that expression of power and performance in the present testing scenario could be limited by skill, and improvements may only indicate lifting technique and enhanced skill acquisition. 15-17 The PST test required players to release (throw) the bar overhead at the top of the snatch movement, a procedure with which they were not familiar. The high reliability for both tests (ICC > 0.961), however, does suggest a relatively rapid learning curve requiring only a single exposure with less than 5 attempts to acquire stable scores: BOMB throw by the third repetition and PST by the second repetition. The high ICC for PST power and small effect size (ES = 0.07) between trials 1 and 2
supports a fast learning curve despite the complex movement pattern. Similarly with the BOMB, the high ICC and small TEM with the current group of football players is in close agreement with previous work showing a TEM of 0.1m. 18 Based on the current analysis, a change of approximately 5% in either the BOMB throw or PST would be considered a meaningful improvement in performance. This allows strength and conditioning professionals to have a standard by which to evaluate whether players are making meaningful progress in training.
CONCLUSION
Based on the present observations, it appears that the BOMB throw is a valid and reliable field test for assessing explosive power in college football players. The minimal learning curve for the BOMB throw lends itself to all sports and levels of athlete experience, both for assessment and training. Since movement velocity is the key determinant of explosive power, maximal BOMB throws with different loads may enhance movement velocity in various athletic movements. The relationship between BOMB throw and peak power suggests greater involvement of the arms and back during the BOMB throw. One caveat of the present study might be the small sample upon which our prediction equation was based. Further investigations to evaluate the validity of the current equation and assess the transfer of BOMB throw training to specific sports movement improvements are warranted.
REFERENCES
1. Jacobson BH, Conchola EG, Glass RG et al. Longitudinal morphological and performance profiles for American, NCAA Division I football players. J Strength Cond Res 2013;27:2347-2354.
2. Baker D, Nance S. The relation between strength and power in professional rugby league players. J Strength Cond Res 1999;13:224-229.
3. McGuigan MR, Winchester JB. The relationship between isometric and dynamic strength in college football players. J Sports Sci Med 2008;7:101105.
4. Comfort P, Fletcher C, McMahon JJ. Determination of optimal loading during the power clean in college athletes. J Strength Cond Res 2012;26: 2970-2974.
5. Johnson DL, Bahamonde R. Power output estimate in university athletes. J Strength Cond Res 1996;10:161-166.
6. Stocbrugger BA, Haennel RG. Contributing factors to performance of a medicine ball explosive power test: a comparison between jump and nonjump athletes. J Strength Cond Res 2003;17:768-774.
7. Mayhew JL, Bird M, Cole ML, et al. Comparison of the backward overhead medicine ball throw to power production in college football players. J Strength Cond Res 2005;19:514-518.
8. Faul F, Erdfelder E, Lang A-G, et al. G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behav Res Methods 2007;39:175-191.
9. Mayhew JL, Jacques JA, Mann JB et al. Reliability of the NFL-225 test and 3 repetition maximum test in college football players. J Athl Enhancement 2014;3:3-8.
10. Kawamori N, Crum AJ, Blumert PA, et al. Influence of different relative intensities on power output during the hang power clean: identification of the optimal load. J Strength Cod Res 2005;19:698-708.
11. Kilduff LP, Bevan H, Owen N, et al. Optimal loading for peak output during the hang power clean in professional rugby players. Int J Sports Physiol Perform 2007;2:260-269.
12. Kelly J, McMahon JJ, Comfort P. A comparison of maximal power clean performance performed from the floor, knee and mid-thigh. J Trainol 2014;3:53-56.
13. Hori N, Newton RU, Andrews WA, et al. Comparison of four different methods to measure power output during the hang power clean and the weighted jump squat. J Strength Cond Res 2007;21:314-320.
14. Suchomel TJ, Beckham GK, Wright GA. Lower body kinetics during the jump shrug: impact of load. J Trainol 2013;2:19-22.
15. Cormie P, McCaulley GO, Triplett NT, et al. Optimal loading for maximal power output during lower-body resistance exercises. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2007;39:340-349.
16. Comfort P. Within- and between-session reliability of power, force, and rate of force development during the power clean. J Strength Cond Res 2013;27:1210-1214.
17. Comfort P, McMahon JJ. Reliability of maximal back squat and power clean performance in inexperienced athletes. J Strength Cond Res 2015; 29:3089-3096.
18. Duncan MJ, Al-Nakeeb Y, Nevill AM. Influence of familiarization on a backward, overhead medicine ball explosive power test. Res Sports Med 2005;13:345-353.
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UNICEF
Innocenti Working Paper
THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN IMPLEMENTING THE GENERAL MEASURES OF THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD
Nevena Vučković Šahović
IWP 2010-18
JUNE 2010
Innocenti Working Papers
UNICEF Innocenti Working Papers are intended to disseminate initial research contributions within the Centre‟s programme of work, addressing social, economic and institutional aspects of the realisation of the human rights of children.
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© 2010 United Nations Children‟s Fund (UNICEF) June, 2010
ISSN: 1014-7837
This paper examines the particular role and impact of civil society in implementation of the general measures of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It provides insights into the experience and actions of a number of organizations and countries involved in the promotion and protection of children‟s rights and gives recommendations for further engagement of civil society in these endeavours. The research reported here was generously funded by the Government of Italy.
For readers wishing to cite this document, we suggest the following form:
Vučković Šahović Nevena (2010), „The Role of Civil Society in Implementing the General Measures of the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, Innocenti Working Paper No.201018. Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre.
The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre
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The Role of Civil Society in Implementing the General Measures of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
Nevena Vučković Šahović a a Consultant, email:
firstname.lastname@example.org
Summary: This paper examines the role of civil society in the process of implementing the general measures of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, as defined in article 4 of the Convention and its General Comment No.5 (2003). While it is established in international law that States parties are the primary duty bearers to promote and protect children‟s rights, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has also recognized that other actors, including children, have a right and need to be engaged in this process. An examination of the variety of definitions provided of „civil society‟ reveals that it includes, inter alia, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community groups, women's groups, environmental movements, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, selfhelp groups, social movements, business associations and advocacy groups.
Drawing on the author‟s experience in civil society organisations and her membership on the Committee on the Rights of the Child (2003-2009), the findings show that civil society plays an important role in the implementation of the CRC, and that NGOs, in particular, play a vital role. NGOs operate in different legal, economic, social and political settings, which results in varied modalities of work and impacts.
The paper draws attention to the wide issues and challenges affecting civil society today, including financial crises, poverty, globalization, and varying levels of political commitment. Based on the examples provided, many of which draw on the concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and case studies of civil society activities, the paper lists recommendations for follow-up by key actors. In so doing, this paper seeks to provide concrete recommendations to government, the Committee, and actors at national, regional and international level.
Keywords: Convention on the Rights of the Child, civil society, NGOs
Acknowledgments: The process of producing this Innocenti Working Paper began in July 2009. It has been greatly informed by my long engagement with civil society in Serbia, in particular, and Central and Eastern Europe, more broadly. In addition, my previous membership in the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and the work I was able to carry out in this capacity and with civil society informed the drafting of this paper.
I am very grateful to Yanghee Lee, the current Chairperson of the Child Rights Committee, who, in addition to her constructive feedback, was a great supporter of this study from the very beginning. Further, I wish to thank the peer reviewers, Eva Geidenmark (Save the Children Sweden), Enakshi Ganguly Thukral (Haq: Centre for Child Rights), Birgitta Jansson (Sida), Dan O'Donnell, and Vanessa Sedletzki (UNICEF IRC) for their substantive comments and feedback.
This paper would not have been possible without the commitment and support of a number of colleagues from the UNICEF IRC, including; the former director, Marta Santos Pais, Susan Bissell and Lena Karlsson. It also benefits from discussions, comments and inputs provided by David Parker, Saudamini Siegrist, Karin Heissler and Susanna Nordh. I wish to also thank Claire Akehurst, for administrative and logistical support.
This report also benefits from informal consultations and discussions held with the NGO Group for the Rights of the Child, CRIN and many national coalitions and NGOs. A timely and constructive event which occurred during the development of this paper was my visit to Sida in Stockholm, in December 2009, where I presented an early version of this study. I thank the organizers for the opportunity to exchange views on this important subject.
CONTENTS
v
1. INTRODUCTION
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the most comprehensive human rights instrument for the promotion and protection of the rights of the child. It is the first international instrument to include the economic, social, cultural and civil rights of children. It is also the most widely ratified of international human rights treaties. Its broad reach and wide ratification and accession make it a unique and important tool for the advancement of children‟s rights. Nevertheless, more than 20 years after its adoption, three key questions may be asked: How much impact has the CRC had on children‟s daily lives? How far has the enjoyment of their human rights been advanced? And, what role has civil society played in this process?
With these questions in mind, this paper examines the impact of civil society on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 1
1.1 Background and Aims
International law identifies States as primary duty bearers, including in the promotion and protection of children‟s rights. However, other important actors also play a role as duty bearers, such as inter-governmental organizations, international and national nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), parents and other individuals who have responsibility, be it legal, social or moral. In this regard, civil society (defined in section 2) has played an important role in the implementation of the Convention. 2 This paper focuses on the role of civil society in ensuring the effective application and enforcement of the provisions of the CRC.
This paper analyses and reflects on the positive experiences and challenges facing civil society in its endeavours to assist States and other actors in implementing the CRC and to advocate for those efforts. The study does not assess the performance of individual States parties with regard to child rights. Rather it is intended to provide insights into the experiences and actions of a select number of countries that have recently been considered by the Committee and other examples collected as part of this research.
The findings are expected to be of relevance to governments, the Committee and actors at national, regional and international levels as they work to further this important agenda and support civil society in its key role. The paper also provides civil society, including children and adolescents, with examples that demonstrate how they can engage in CRC implementation.
1 The paper draws on the author‟s two-plus decades of research and practice in human rights and the promotion and protection of child rights, notably in civil society building efforts, and her membership on the Committee on the Rights of the Child (the Committee) from 2003 to 2009.
2 See for example UNICEF website on the 20 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, available at: <www.unicef.org/rightsite/237_241.htm>, accessed on 3 June 2010.
1.2 Methodology
The study involved a review of States parties‟ initial and periodic reports considered by the Committee between 2007 and 2009, together with its concluding observations. An examination of more than 400 reports submitted to the Committee so far is beyond the scope of this study, and it has been necessary to limit the number of countries for review. The scope, countries and the period of consideration was chosen to be representative, though the paper also reflects some promising examples reported before 2007.
As a result the case studies and examples presented may not be universally representative or replicable, and the findings are not always based on evaluations or broader impact assessments.
This paper has also been informed by research undertaken by the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (IRC) on the general measures of implementation of the CRC. 3 In addition a desk review was carried out of materials submitted to or documents issued by the Committee, including:
Documents submitted by State parties to human rights treaty bodies;
State parties‟ replies to issues raised by the Committee before oral examination of their reports;
Summary records of Committee meetings;
Alternative reports submitted to the Committee;
Statements or briefings to the Committee by United Nations agencies;
Concluding observations of the Committee;
Committee‟s General Comments;
Days of General Discussion and other recommendations adopted by the Committee
Materials prepared in the context of major international child rights conferences and movements have likewise been reviewed. Information was also gathered from reports of other human rights treaty bodies to the Committee and documents on children developed by United Nations agencies, such as UNICEF country office annual reports and country profiles by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Information gathered from civil society and web pages of these organizations further informed the work.
3 The United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre publications consulted in this study include: United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, The General Measures of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, The Process in Europe and Central Asia, Florence, 2006; United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, „Law reform and Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, Innocenti Insight, Florence, 2007; United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, Handbook on the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, Florence, 2009; United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, Summary report of the study on the impact of the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Florence, 2004; United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, „Reforming Child Law in South Africa: Budgeting and Implementation Planning‟, Innocenti Case Studies, Florence, 2007; United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, „Independent Institutions Protecting Children‟s Rights‟, Innocenti Digest, Florence, No. 8, June 2001; Alston Philip, and Tobin, John, „Laying the Foundations for Children‟s Rights - An Independent Study of some Key Legal and Institutional Aspects of the
Impact of the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, Innocenti Insight, Florence, 2005.
This paper examines the role of civil society in implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but not of the two Optional Protocols to the CRC (the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict and the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography). 4 Nevertheless, given the indivisibility of human rights and the value of a holistic approach, many civil society organizations do not separate their work on the CRC from that on the Optional Protocols.
The CRC and its Optional Protocols are not alone in formally acknowledging the role of civil society in protecting and promoting human rights. The list of the treaties that acknowledge the role of civil society is extensive. For example, The Statute of the International Criminal Court: Article 15 (2), Article 44 (4); The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families: Article 74 (4); United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Articles 32 (1), 33 (3). States parties are therefore obliged to promote civil society and to cooperate with its various types of organizations, though it is not within the scope of this study to assess the role of civil society in implementing those instruments.
While it may not be possible to argue that civil society has had a direct and distinct causal effect on implementation of the CRC, the analysis in this paper suggests how and in what ways it is reasonable to attribute partial causality. Moreover, it is possible to observe and comment on trends regarding civil society involvement in implementation. In addition to providing analysis, this study will also show that more research is required, particularly on trends regarding implementation of each of the general measures. Also needed is more systematic evaluation of the impact of civil society actions on the lives of children.
2. WHAT IS CIVIL SOCIETY?
„Civil society‟ has many definitions. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) defines it as "a third sector existing alongside and interacting with the state and private industry". 5 UNDP takes a broad view of the term, considering Non Governmental Organizations as an important part of civil society.
The working definition of the London School of Economics Centre for Civil Society is also noteworthy:
Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power.
4 As in the case of the drafting of the CRC, NGOs participated in the drafting processes as well in monitoring, implementation and raising awareness on the issues covered by the two Protocols. See for example, United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, Handbook on the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, Florence, 2009.
5 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Engagement with Civil Society, and information available at: <www.undp.org/partners/civil_society/>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
Civil societies are often populated by organisations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organisations, community groups, women's organisations, faith-based organisations, professional associations, trades unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy group. 6
Development cooperation agencies have also formulated working definitions of civil society. For example the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), defines it as "an arena, separate from the state, the market and the individual household, in which people organize themselves and act together to promote their common interests". 7 According to Sida, civil society organizations include NGOs, community groups, women‟s groups, environmental movements, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations and advocacy groups.
For the United Kingdom Department for International Development:
„Civil society‟ broadly means the groups and organizations which occupy a position between the household, the state and the private sector. They include nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as well as think tanks, trade unions, faith groups, social movements and community groups. 8
Concerning child rights organizations, Save the Children Sweden has defined civil society as:
...citizens who act collectively and voluntarily in an organized way in order to express or promote a common interest or opinion. Civil society is an organized sphere in the public space between individuals and their private households and the state along with its various institutions. 9
Mindful of the breadth of these definitions, this study views civil society or civil society organizations broadly, as including NGOs and any other associations or organizations that are non-profit and independent from the State and that act in an organized way to promote common interests.
The growth of civil society has been seen as significant globally in recent years. UNDP notes that:
...over the last decade there has been a considerable increase both in the number of CSOs and in the scope of their activities and that they are playing an increasingly
6 Centre for Civil Society, London Schools of Economics, What is Civil Society? Information available at: <www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CCS/introduction/what_is_civil_society.htm>, accessed on 23 March 2010.
7 Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), What is Civil Society? Information available at: <www.sida.se/English/Partners/Civil-Society-/Civil-society-organisations/>, accessed on 19 March 2010. 8 UK Aid, Department for International Development, Civil Society, information available at:
<www.dfid.gov.uk/About-DFID/Who-we-work-with1/Civil-society/>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
9 Geidenmark Eva, Section for Knowledge Management and Development, Rädda Barnen (Save the Children Sweden), Thematic strategic framework 2009 – 2012: A Civil Society for the Rights of the Child and Human Rights, Stockholm, 21 February 2008, p. 2.
influential role in setting and implementing development agendas across the globe. A strong civil society enables people, especially vulnerable groups, to influence public policies at national and local levels. 10
According to the expert Salamon M. Lester, this growth is similar to that during the creation of nation states in the 19th century. Civil society organizations are sometimes considered the „third sector‟, after government and business (respectively), in their influence on the political life of states. In the United States, for example, the most important social campaigns have originated in civil society, such as those for human rights, women‟s rights, the environment and consumer protection. 11
The broad development and growth of civil society is likely related to the decline in traditional forms of political participation, such as voting and membership in political parties and trade unions. This phenomenon is understandable given the diminishing confidence being expressed in traditional institutions. Many people increasingly believe it is their own responsibility to bring about change, even at the grass-roots level. Involvement in civil society organizations can support individual creativity and vision. Participation in an organization such as an NGO may provide opportunities for members to take initiative in specific ways, sometimes faster and with fewer bureaucratic impediments than could a government department. Such individual inputs therefore can play an important role in building civil society. Depending on the country or region, this participation may even open avenues towards greater political involvement, representation and democracy.
The development and growth of the Internet and other information and communication technologies has enabled unprecedented communication and opened new avenues for civil society to play a role in CRC implementation. Social networking sites can serve as a space for young people to exchange ideas, thoughts and information about upcoming events. 12 A Facebook search resulted in over 500 results for youth groups and organizations engaged in networking. An example is the Amnesty International Youth Program; in which Facebook members can join its Facebook membership group.
In some less democratic political environments, civil society organizations have played an important role in their nation‟s history and transition to democracy. For example, civil society groups flourished in Eastern Europe after massive political transitions in the late 1980s, when opportunities opened for individual initiative as an essential ingredient in democratization. Civil society organizations also contribute to maintaining established democracies. 13 They have played an important part in promoting and protecting children‟s rights. International NGOs such as Plan International, World Vision, Amnesty International, Save the Children and Defence for Children International, along with many international campaigns, coalitions
10 United Nations Development Programme, What is Civil Society? <www.undp.org/partners/civil_society/>
Information available at:
11 Lester, M., Salamon, „The Rise of the Non profit Sector‟, p. 109, Foreign Affairs, July/August 1994, NO. 73411, New York.
12 Information available at: <www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2227663820>, accessed on 22 April 2010.
13 This trend is observed in States parties reporting to the CRC Committee, in particular with regards to cooperation with civil society.
and initiatives have advocated for States to comply with their obligations as signatories to the CRC and other human rights treaties.
It would be an impossible task to list all of the tens of thousands of child rights organizations around the world, although some data are collected, for example, in the Yearbook of International Organisations. 14 Lists of child rights organizations are provided by the Child Rights Information Network (CRIN), which links more than 2,100 organizations in 150 countries 15 , and the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a network of 80 national and international organizations.
This paper focuses on the positive role that civil society plays in implementation of the CRC. Yet not all civil society organizations are independent of government, democratic, wellorganized or well-intended. They may also compete with other groups in the same area of work, for funding or for government endorsement. Some examples will be discussed in which civil society may not have been effective in promoting and protecting children‟s rights or where there may be risks or obstacles.
2.1 Modes of work
Civil society groups working for child rights operate at local, national, regional and international levels through diverse modalities. They provide services (such as non-formal educational activities), raise awareness and perform advocacy and/or research, so their role in supporting implementation of the CRC takes a number of forms. Some activities identify and expose problems and setbacks in implementation of the CRC; in these cases such groups may represent a challenge to States by revealing realities that governments would rather conceal.
Some organizations have a specialized focus. They might address the rights of children with disabilities, refugees, or victims of violations such as sexual abuse. Some of these organizations are interest groups such as women‟s groups, parents‟ associations, organizations of people with disabilities, indigenous people‟s groups and associations of paediatricians or attorneys.
Civil society groups also work at regional and sub-regional levels. The African Child Policy Forum, for instance, is a pan-African policy advocacy centre based in Addis Ababa that works on knowledge, advocacy, policy development and capacity-building. 16 Some civil society organizations are national, such as the Child Rights Centre Belgrade (Serbia), the Child Rights Information and Documentation Centre in Malawi and the Korea Council of Children‟s Organizations. 17
14 The Yearbook of International Organizations provides the most extensive coverage of non-profit international organizations available today. Directly reflecting a dynamic international arena, it contains entries on 60,000 CSOs in 300 countries and territories, in every field of human endeavor, see: <www.uia.be/yearbook>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
15 Information available at: <www.crin.org/about/index.asp>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
16 Information available at: <www.africanchildforum.org>, accessed on 25 of May 2010.
17 Information available at: <www.kocconet.org.kr>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
NGOs often form coalitions, either permanently or temporarily, for a specific issue or activity, such as elimination of corporal punishment or juvenile justice reform. National permanent coalitions may also engage in joint efforts across borders. For example, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay held an audience before the Inter American Commission for Human Rights regarding juvenile justice. 18 The process of alternative reporting to the Committee on the Rights of the Child has encouraged NGOs to build coalitions to draft alternative reports on CRC implementation and to monitor implementation of the Committee‟s recommendations. 19
International NGOs play an important role in supporting the implementation of the CRC. Some work both internationally as well as domestically, such as Save the Children Sweden, which works in eight regions, while also being very active in Sweden. Save the Children Sweden is also part of Save the Children Alliance. 20
Some human and child rights NGOs work only internationally, such as the International Service for Human Rights or World Organization against Torture. Both are based in Geneva and regularly follow the work of the Committee. The World Organization against Torture also submits alternative reports on children to other treaty bodies, such as the Committee against Torture and the Human Rights Committee. 21
Some international and national organizations form strategic coalitions in a range of areas, such as to push for the implementation of the CRC and other international treaties or for particular provisions in a convention. As mentioned above, the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, is a network of 80 international and national NGOs working together to facilitate CRC implementation. It was formed in 1983 during drafting of the Convention; since that time, it has supported monitoring and implementation of the Convention and its Optional Protocols. 22
Child Rights Information Network (CRIN), a global network for children's rights, undertakes advocacy campaigns and leads international children's rights coalitions, striving to make human rights enforcement mechanisms accessible for all. 23
Many human rights organizations have extended their mandates to include a specific focus on implementation of the CRC. For example, Human Rights Watch has become active in child rights, 24 and Amnesty International works to end recruitment of children into armed forces and to stop discrimination against vulnerable children, such as Roma children. 25
18 Information available at: <www.colectivoinfancia.org.ar/V2/es/audiencia-cidh-2008.php>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
20 Information available at: <www.savethechildren.se/About-Us/>, accessed on 24 June 2010.
19 For country by country information on the NGO coalitions and their reports on the implementation of the CRC, information available at: <www.crin.org/about/index.asp>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
21 Information available at: <www.omct.org>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
23 Information available at: <www.crin.org/about/index.asp>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
22 Information available at: <www.childrightsnet.org>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
24 Information available at: <www.hrw.org/en/category/topic/children%E2%80%99s-rights>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
25 Information available at: <www.amnesty.org/eng/children>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
A review of State party and alternative reports to the Committee reveals that service provision is the most common activity undertaken by civil society organizations, in particular those working on a grass-root level. For example, with regard to the Moldova Report, the Committee noted the:
...active participation of the NGO community in providing social services to families as well as the collaboration between governmental institutions and NGOs, including through cooperation in the area of juvenile justice. 26
Advocacy preoccupies many civil society organizations, and is carried out in many forms, from village campaigns to global movements. Such organizations need to build their skills to become strong advocates for child rights, in terms of both thematic knowledge and organizational skills. NGO involvement in CRC implementation also includes monitoring, research and data collection.
International and national organizations in many countries work to develop and train civil society, enabling state-wide participation in implementation of child rights. For example, Save the Children organizations work in many countries in cooperation with national and local groups. Over the 2009-2012 period it is supporting mobilization of civil society actors and states, from:
...working in conflict and disaster situations to further [...] engaging community-based groups, non-governmental actors, informal networks, etc and strengthening their capacities to claim their rights. 27
The past decade has seen growth in children's organizations, some established and run by children and adolescents themselves. Awareness has been growing that children can play a key role in realization of their rights. 28 In General Comment No. 12 (2009) on „The right of the child to be heard‟, the Committee called on States parties to enable children to form groups and organizations so that they can express their views on matters affecting them. The Committee also asks States parties to listen to children, including when they speak collectively. States parties should enable continuous participation of children in decisionmaking processes through organizational structures such as student councils and representation on school boards and committees. The Committee underlined the important role of NGOs in developing practices to support children in such a way as to safeguard transparency of representation and counter the risk of manipulation or tokenism. 29
26 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Concluding Observations: Moldova, CRC/C/MDA/CO/3, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, 20 February 2009, para. 23.
28 Such growth of children run organizations is visible in States parties' reports to the CRC as well as in alternative reports, for further information see: <www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/>.
27 Geidenmark Eva, Section for Knowledge Management and Development, Rädda Barnen (Save the Children Sweden), Thematic strategic framework 2009 – 2012: A Civil Society for the Rights of the Child and Human Rights, Stockholm, 21 February 2008, p. 1.
29 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 12 (2009) „The Right of the Child to be heard‟, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/C/GC/12, Geneva, 20 July 2009.
States parties are encouraged to consult with civil society, including children and adolescents. When they do not, programmes for children and young people may be less effective. Still, civil society organizations may disagree with governments about the means by which they seek to fulfil children‟s rights and cooperate with civil society. States retain their primary responsibility for realizing child rights. Nevertheless, States are increasingly handing over core child-related work to civil society organizations. In such cases the organizations need to be supportive of the State but not replace it. As the Committee itself made clear in General Comment No. 5, implementation is an obligation of States parties:
When a State ratifies the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it takes on obligations under international law to implement it. Implementation is the process whereby States parties take action to ensure the realization of all rights in the Convention for all children in their jurisdiction. 30
3. CIVIL SOCIETY AND OTHER PARTNERS IN CHILD RIGHTS
When the CRC came into force, it inspired formation of civil society organizations and influenced some human rights groups to add a specific focus on child rights. Another trend among organizations working on behalf of children has been the adoption of a rights-based approach, comprising the principles of non-discrimination, participation and accountability, 31 with a stronger focus on advocating with governments to fulfil their responsibilities to children. Adoption of the CRC coincided with dramatic political changes, particularly the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this also contributed to the growth of rights organizations. Thousands of organizations were founded in Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland within a couple of years after 1989, the year the Iron Curtain fell. 32
3.1 State Accountability
A review of State party reports and concluding observations indicates that implementation of legal standards remains the weakest area among the general measures of CRC implementation. For example, the right to be protected from violence or exploitation cannot be enjoyed in the absence of an independent, professional and child-sensitized judiciary, which few countries have. Executing administrative or court orders and decisions remains a major challenge in many States, and civil society plays an important role in advancing this issue. An example of this work is the Centre for Justice and International Law, an NGO with consultative status before the Organization of American States and the United Nations and observer status before the African Commission of Human Rights. The centre focuses on the defence of human rights before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. As the organization indicates:
30 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003), „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (CRC/GC/2003/5), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, 3 October 2003, para. 1.
32 Save the Children Sweden, An Introduction to Child Rights Programming – concept and application, Stockholm, 2004, p. 111.
31 One example is the Save the Children Sweden manual on child rights programming „An Introduction to Child Rights Programming – Concept and application‟, Stockholm 2004.
...the lack of justice, attention and adequate responses by the state authorities in dealing with the critical situation of children has necessitated the use of regional and international arenas and mechanisms to promote respect for children‟s human rights in Latin America. 33
Another example is the Centre for Child Law, based at the Law Faculty of the University of Pretoria (South Africa), which focuses on education, research, advocacy and litigation. Through its Children‟s Litigation Project, the Centre has undertaken „impact litigation‟ in the High Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court in the areas of both civil and criminal law in order to:
Push forward boundaries of the law relating to children;
Establish the content of legal rights and protection of children;
Set precedents, thereby changing the attitudes of the courts;
Hold government accountable on their responsibilities towards children;
Build experience and knowledge in litigation on children‟s behalf. 34
The Convention states clearly that States have the primary obligation to implement the CRC. That includes measures related to the justiciability of rights (meaning capable of being brought to and considered before a court). In addition to ensuring implementation of legal standards, the State has the obligation to make sure child victims are compensated, rehabilitated and reintegrated into society and that perpetrators of crimes against children are brought to justice. While civil society organizations often play an important role in providing services for rehabilitation and reintegration, they must not take over the States‟ role as the primary duty bearer.
3.2 Inter-Governmental Organizations
Civil society is often an indispensable partner to inter-governmental organizations. For example, the United Nations describes its link to civil societies as follows:
More and more, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other CSOs are UN system partners and valuable UN links to civil society. CSOs play a key role at major United Nations Conferences and are indispensable partners for UN efforts at the country level. NGOs are consulted on UN policy and program matters. The UN organizes and hosts, on a regular basis, briefings, meetings and conferences for NGO representatives who are accredited to UN offices, programs and agencies. 35
In addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2009, the United Nations SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-Moon stated:
33 CEJIL‟s central office is located in Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The CEJIL/MESOAMÉRICA office is located in San José, Costa Rica, headquarters of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. CEJIL/BRASIL is located in Rio de Janeiro and CEJIL/SUR is located in Buenos Aires and it comprises of a representative in Chile. Information available at: <http://cejil.org/en/front>, accessed on 19 March 2010.
35 Information available at: <www.un.org/en/civilsociety/index.shtml>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
34 Information available at: <www.childlawsa.com/>, accessed on 11 May 2010.
Our times demand a new definition of leadership – global leadership. They demand a new constellation of international cooperation – governments, civil society and private sector, working together for a collective global world. 36
As a specialized agency of the United Nations, UNICEF works with governments and civil society to promote and protect children‟s and women‟s rights, recognizing that building a world fit for children requires partnerships with diverse sectors, including children and young people themselves. Collaboration with NGOs takes place at global, regional, national and community levels. Civil society is also consulted at headquarters level during formulation of UNICEF policy. 37
3.3 Other Non-State Actors
The private sector and the media are also important stakeholders in achieving realization of children‟s rights. The private sector‟s impact, both positive and negative, on realization of child rights is growing rapidly, particularly in the context of economic globalization, privatization and decentralization. As part of corporate social responsibility, private sector entities are increasingly engaged in activities for the promotion and protection of child rights. For example, the Norwegian telecom company Telenor and its Telenor Foundation granted 12 scholarships for students pursuing a master‟s degree in children‟s rights at the Faculty of Law of Union University in Belgrade in 2007 and 2008, with the aim to recruit more professionals to aid realization of child rights in Serbia. 38
Yet there can be contradictions in private sector initiatives. A corporate social responsibility programme may support innovative programmes for children while the company‟s practices and means of operation may undermine rights, such as by polluting the environment or forcing employees to work excessive hours for little pay in harmful working conditions.
The United Nations recognizes the important role of private enterprises in realization of human rights, but it also notes that the private sector has been responsible for human rights violations. More efforts are needed to expand the positive role of the private sector and improve accountability. In Resolution 2005/69, for example, the former Commission on Human Rights (now the Human Rights Council) requested the United Nations SecretaryGeneral to appoint a special representative on human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. Mr. John Ruggie (from the United States) was appointed the first Special Representative for an initial two-year period.
36 Information available at:
<www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=560&ArticleID=6059&l=en&t=long>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
38 This program includes studies of international law in the field of children‟s rights, political, pedagogical and legal practices in this field, relevant national legislation and its compliance with the international law, and international and national systems for the monitoring and protection of these rights. Lecturers, who come from different fields of expertise, use the interdisciplinary approach to enable students to understand the children‟s needs, protect their rights and undertake measures, i.e. institute procedures for their protection. Information available at: <www.telenor.co.yu/?section=about&page=6223&pn=1>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
37 Information available at: <www.unicef.org/about/partnerships/index.html>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
In 2002, the Committee on the Rights of the Child devoted its day of general discussion to the theme of „the private sector as service provider and its role in implementing child rights‟. Representatives of United Nations organizations and specialized agencies were present, as were NGOs, research and academic organizations, and individual experts. In the resulting recommendations, the Committee encouraged "non-state service providers, particularly forprofit service providers, as well as the media, to engage in a continuing process of dialogue and consultation with the communities they serve". The Committee expressed the view that such partnerships are important for implementation of child rights and facilitate inclusion of community groups in decision-making and service provision. Regarding accountability, the Committee sent a clear message that governments should retain sole responsibility for ensuring realization of child rights, even if the private sector participates in providing services. The establishment of a code of conduct for non-State actors was emphasized, along with the need to monitor it. 39
Another influential non-state actor is the media, which plays a key role in informing societies about child rights and facilitating debate. At its thirteenth session, in 1996, the Committee devoted a day of general discussion to „the child and the media‟. The media often plays a positive role in promoting introduction and functioning of the measures to implement rights of the child. Yet a 2007 UNICEF IRC study, Law Reform and Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, pointed out that sensational media treatment of issues relating to children can be a major obstacle to reform or trigger a reaction against child rights. 40 To address this issue, some NGOs provide training on children‟s rights for the media, to inform them about child rights, teach methods of interviewing children and explain how to prevent unethical reporting. One example among many is child rights training provided by Save the Children Sweden for the regional Latin American news agencies network (Red Andi América Latina). 41 Civil society groups have also contributed to drafting codes of conduct for media when working with children. CRIN‟s guidelines underscore the importance of considering children‟s vulnerability in carrying out any journalistic activity and of maintaining the highest standards of ethical conduct in reporting on child rights. 42
4. CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD
Civil society‟s support of the CRC began during the drafting process, in which NGOs participated actively. After its adoption, civil society groups continued to cooperate in support to CRC implementation, including through their involvement in the process of State reporting to the Committee on the Rights of the Child on progress in implementation. Civil society groups also write alternative reports and form coalitions to participate in discussions with the Committee on the Rights of the Child. In addition such groups participate in drafting
39 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, „Day of General Discussion‟, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, 5 October 2007, information available at:
<www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/discussion2008.htm>, accessed on 28 May 2010.
41 Information available at: <www.redandi.org/conheca_Rede.php5?L=ES,>, accessed on 6 November 2009.
40 United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, „Law Reform and Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, Innocenti Insight, Florence, 2007, p. 108.
42 Information available at: <www.crin.org/violence/search/closeup.asp?infoID=5572>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
international treaties, making sure they include provisions relevant for child rights. They also participate in the debates, working groups and sessions of the United Nations and other international organizations. As already introduced, civil society is also heavily involved in the implementation of the CRC at national and sub-national levels.
4.1 Drafting the CRC
NGOs played a stronger role in the drafting of the CRC than they had in any previous treaty drafting process. Civil society became involved immediately after the Polish Government submitted a proposal for the treaty in 1978. Although these NGOs were not specifically oriented towards child rights, some of them focused on children in their activities. By 1983 enough NGOs had joined the process to set up the NGO Ad Hoc Group, which brought together human rights and child-focused organizations. By 1984, they were preparing joint proposals that reflected their increased organization and cooperation.
A working group established by the United Nations ECOSOC Commission on Human Rights was responsible for drafting the Convention. Government delegates formed the core of this group, which also included representatives of United Nations bodies and specialized agencies. NGOs could speak if invited, and were given the floor and included in task forces. A prominent participant in the NGO Ad Hoc Group stated, "A decade of re-drafting gave time and space for the children‟s rights movement to develop within a human rights framework". 43
As a result of NGO participation in the drafting process, the CRC reflected a more negotiated, consensual understanding of the substance of the human rights of children, than might otherwise have been the case. NGOs also helped to shift the focus from needs-based to rights-based policy and action. The drafting process created an unprecedented NGO partnership and laid the foundation for even greater cooperation at international and national levels in implementation of the CRC. 44
4.2 Support to CRC ratification
The Convention on the Rights of the Child entered into force on 2 September 1990. Most States were eager to ratify it, and NGOs supported them. In States that hesitated, NGOs pushed to accelerate ratification.
While the United States has not ratified the Convention, it has a vibrant civil society, and some organizations have pushed for ratification. The Campaign for US Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child has very broad representation, involving academics, attorneys, child and human rights advocates, educators, members of religious and faith-based communities, physicians, NGO representatives, students and other concerned citizens. 45
43 Nigel Cantwell‟s Presentation at Presentation FICE 2008 congress, Helsinki 2008.
44 For more on proposals of the NGO Ad Hoc Group search through Ek Simone, Legislative History of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Volume I and II, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2007.
45 Information available at: <www.childrightscampaign.org/>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
In August 2002, after the General Assembly Special Session on Children, a core group of child advocates convened the first meeting of the Campaign for US Ratification of the CRC, with leadership by the Child Welfare League of America, aiming to build a national coalition. In 2003, representatives from more than 50 NGOs met in Washington, D.C. for a two-day strategy session. This effort formalized the Campaign, which has grown to encompass members from 200 organizations and academic institutions. Its mission is:
...to bring about ratification and implementation of the CRC in the United States [...] through mobilizing their diverse network to educate communities on the Convention, thereby creating a groundswell of national support for the treaty, and by advocating directly with the government on behalf of U.S. ratification. 46
4.3 Civil Society within the CRC
As a result of pressure from the NGO Ad Hoc Group, the CRC became the first international treaty to include civil society in its legal provisions. Article 45 addresses civil society as a partner to the Committee on the Rights of the Child (box 1).
BOX 1
Article 45 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
In order to foster the effective implementation of the Convention and to encourage international co-operation in the field covered by the Convention:
(a) The specialized agencies, the United Nations Children's Fund, and other United Nations organs shall be entitled to be represented at the consideration of the implementation of such provisions of the present Convention as fall within the scope of their mandate. The Committee may invite the specialized agencies, the United Nations Children's Fund and other competent bodies as it may consider appropriate to provide expert advice on the implementation of the Convention in areas falling within the scope of their respective mandates. The Committee may invite the specialized agencies, the United Nations Children's Fund, and other United Nations organs to submit reports on the implementation of the Convention in areas falling within the scope of their activities;
(b) The Committee shall transmit, as it may consider appropriate, to the specialized agencies, the United Nations Children's Fund and other competent bodies, any reports from States parties that contain a request, or indicate a need, for technical advice or assistance, along with the Committee's observations and suggestions, if any, on these requests or indications.
Further, in the concluding observations adopted as part of States parties‟ reporting procedures, the Committee regularly recommends that States continue or strengthen their cooperation with civil society in CRC implementation in general and on particular child
46 Information available at: <www.childrightscampaign.org/>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
rights issues. They also call for dissemination of the Convention with assistance from NGOs and participation by children.
An examination of the Committee‟s General Comments reveals frequent references to NGOs. For example, in General Comment No. 7 (Rev. 1), „Implementing children‟s rights in early childhood‟ (2005), the Committee called on States parties:
… to ensure that all young children receive education in the broadest sense... which acknowledges a key role for parents, wider family and community, as well as the contribution of organized programmes of early childhood education provided by the State, the community or civil society institutions... 47
Most of the other General Comments also refer to civil society. 48
The Committee has also consistently highlighted the role of NGOs in its recommendations. For example, in its Day of General Discussion on the Rights of the Child to Education in Emergency Situations (19 September 2008), the Committee noted with appreciation the "valuable initiatives and programmes implemented on the ground for children in emergencies
47 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 7 „Implementing child rights in early childhood Rev.1‟, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/C/GC/7/Rev.1, Geneva, 2005, para. 30, accessed from:
<www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/docs/AdvanceVersions/GeneralComment7Rev1.pdf>, on 2 June 2010. 48 See for example, General Comment No. 10 (2007) „Children‟s Rights in Juvenile Justice‟ (article 37and 40 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child), where there are various references to NGOs found. The objective of General Comment No. 10 is to "encourage States Parties to develop and implement a comprehensive juvenile justice policy to prevent and address juvenile delinquency based on and in compliance with CRC, and to seek in this regard advice and support from […] non-governmental organizations (NGO's) [author's emphasis], established by ECOSOC resolution 1997/30".
Regarding Prevention of juvenile delinquency States Parties should "fully promote and support the involvement of children, in accordance with article 12 the CRC, and of parents, community leaders and other key actors (e.g. representatives of NGOs, [author's emphasis] probation services and social workers), in the development and implementation of prevention programmes".
Article 37 of the CRC on Treatment and Conditions states: "The Committee draws the attention of States Parties to the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty […] the Committee recommends that the States Parties incorporate these rules into their national laws and regulations, and make them available, in the national or regional language, to all professionals, NGOs [author's emphasis] and volunteers involved in the administration of juvenile justice."
Regarding awareness raising and training the States Parties should "seek the active and positive involvement of members of parliament, NGOs and the media, and support their efforts in the improvement of the understanding of a rights-based approach to children who have been or are in conflict with the penal law."
References to NGOs and Civil Society can also be found in the following General Comments: General Comment No. 2 (2002) „The role of independent national human rights institutions in the promotion and protection of the rights of the child‟, General Comment 3 (2003) „HIV/Aids and the Rights of the Child‟, General Comment No. 4 „Adolescent health‟, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „the General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, General Comment No. 6 (2005) „Treatment of unaccompanied and separated children outside their country of origin‟, General Comment No. 8 (2006) „Corporal punishment‟, General Comment No. 9 „Disabilities‟, General Comment No. 11 (2009) „Indigenous children and their rights under the Convention‟, General Comment No.12 (2009) „The right of the child to be heard‟.
by many organizations…" In addition to acknowledging the role of a number of United Nations agencies, it also mentioned a number of international NGOs. 49
In its recommendations following the Day of General Discussion on "Resources for the Rights of the Child – Responsibility of States" (21 September 2007), the Committee underscored:
... the ways in which factors such as the level of decentralization, national and subnational planning processes, executive discretion and the role of the civil society [author's emphasis] greatly determine or influence the allocation of resources, as well as the ways in which those allocations actually reach children and advance their enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights. 50
4.4 NGOs and the Committee on the Rights of the Child
NGOs began working with the Committee shortly after the CRC entered into force. Over the past 20 years, the relationship has developed into a strong partnership. NGOs have participated in the reporting procedure, provided expertise in drafting general comments and been involved in events organized by the Committee, such as the Days of General Discussions or regional seminars.
4.4.1 State party and alternative reports
Monitoring of CRC implementation hinges on States party reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. States are required to submit an initial report to the Committee describing progress in implementation within two years after ratification. Subsequently reports are to be submitted every five years. The Committee has drafted guidelines for initial and periodic reports. 51 The Committee is interested in the general situation in a country, as well as the status of child rights issues.
To obtain an accurate picture of the situation of children, the Committee does not rely solely on state reports. For example, it receives information in the form of „alternative reports‟ from national and international NGOs. These reports often contain information not mentioned in official country reports. Sometimes, it includes information that governments would prefer not to share. The NGO Group for the Rights of the Child helps NGOs with CRC reporting and has prepared a guide to support national coalitions to prepare and submit alternative reports. 52
49 Information available at:
<www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/docs/discussion/RecommendationsDGD2008.doc>, accessed on 14 June 2010.
50 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Day of General Discussion, Resources for the Rights of the Child – Responsibility of States, Recommendations, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, 5 October 2007, p. 8, available at:
<www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/docs/discussion/recommendations2007.doc>, accessed on 23 April 2010.
52 Information available at: <www.childrightsnet.org/>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
51 Information available at: <www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/>, accessed on 14 June 2010.
In its guidelines for periodic reports, the Committee call on States to report broadly on their work with civil society: "[t]he States Parties should provide information on cooperation with CSOs, including non-governmental organizations and children‟s and youth groups, with regard to implementation of all aspects of the Convention". The guidelines also call for States to "describe the manner in which the (present) report was prepared and the extent to which non-governmental organizations (NGOs), youth groups and others were consulted." 53
Reporting to the Committee can empower NGOs and provide them the opportunity to raise concerns about the status of children with the treaty body. It is a unique opportunity for NGOs to influence the country‟s child rights agenda, open a debate on the status of children in the country and have a serious dialogue with those responsible for national implementation of the CRC.
Two decades of NGO involvement with the Committee has demonstrated that separate and independent reports are, in many cases, the strongest source of information on CRC implementation. However, the Committee has observed that some NGO inputs are not independent and may be co-opted by States. Similarly, the NGO Group for the Rights of the Child has highlighted the following concern in the reporting procedure:
In some countries, NGOs have been involved or consulted in the preparation of the State party report and their contributions have been incorporated into the official State party report. The latter rightly reflects the point of view of the government, however, and NGOs may or may not agree with all the information provided or the way in which it is presented. Reporting to the Committee is an obligation of the State party and NGOs need to be cautious about maintaining their independence and perform an independent monitoring role. 54
The Committee has noted an improvement in the quality of NGO alternative reports over time, especially in States without a long tradition of civil society. Improvement has been identified both in the structure of reports and in the members‟ capacity to evaluate the situation and present it to the Committee. 55 This reflects the effect of the CRC and the reporting procedures on developing the capacity of civil society to participate in national coalitions and engage in international dialogues.
Increasingly, children‟s groups are preparing and submitting alternative reports, as welcomed in General Comment No. 12. 56 Between 2007 and 2009, the Committee met with or received reports from children from more than 20 countries, including Australia, Austria, China, Denmark, India, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Lesotho, Mali, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Sweden, Thailand, Uganda, United Kingdom
53 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, „General Guidelines regarding the format and content of periodic reports to be submitted by states parties under article 44, paragraph 1 (b), of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights‟, Geneva, 29 November 2005.
55 This is a personal view of the author, who served on the Committee in that period.
54 Information available at: <www.childrightsnet.org/ive>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
56 United Nations, General Comment No. 12 The right of the child to be heard (2009), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/C/GC/12, Geneva 20 July 2009, para. 131.
and Uzbekistan. Children sometimes raise issues or provide evidence on subjects not raised in other alternative reports. For example, a children‟s rights coalition from Serbia carried out research in 2007 among 1,132 children (box 2). The coalition comprised 25 children from various youth organizations and representatives of children without parental care, children with disabilities and children who live and work on street. The results, which focused on violence against children, were shared with the Committee, 57 and it met with the Serbian children. In its recommendations to Serbia, the Committee emphasized the problem of violence in families, schools, institutions and the community. 58
BOX 2
Children's Views on the Most Important Rights in Serbia 59
The 10 most important rights for boys (average percentage responding):
1. Health care protection (4.7)
2. Life and physical safety (4.6)
3. Protection from human trafficking (4.6)
4. Family life (4.5)
5. Protection from narcotics abuse (4.5)
6. Protection from physical violence (4.4)
7. Protection from sexual violence (4.4)
8. Free time (4.3)
9. Privacy and protection of intimacy (4.3)
10. Protection from psychological violence (4.3)
The 10 most important rights for girls:
1. Protection from sexual violence (4.9)
2. Protection from physical violence (4.9)
3. Protection from psychological violence (4.8)
4. Protection from human trafficking (4.8)
5. Protection from narcotics abuse (4.7)
6. Health care protection (4.7)
7. Life and physical safety (4.7)
8. Family life (4.6)
9. Privacy and protection of intimacy (4.6)
10. Protection from participation in war (4.6)
Children should be encouraged to participate in these processes, but it is essential to avoid manipulating their involvement and to ensure that it does not pose risks to their well-being. Child participation in alternative reporting, including in the dialogue with the Committee, is not always easy for children, and it raises ethical questions. Children should always have the
57 Information available at: <www.crin.org/resources/InfoDetail.asp?ID=16483>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
59 Adapted from Child Rights Centre Serbia, Child Rights in Serbia, the Children's Perspective, Belgrade, 2007, available at: <www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=16483&flag=legal>, accessed on 23 March 2010.
58 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding observations: Serbia, CRC/C/SRB/CO/1, 20 June 2008.
opportunity to be consulted in the alternative reporting and even to draft their own reports. To make use of that opportunity, children need to be prepared and well informed. As indicated in participation guidelines prepared by World Vision: "The process of gathering children to participate needs to be carefully planned so that as many children from a range of different backgrounds as possible have an equal opportunity to have their voices heard." 60
4.4.2 Dialogue between civil society and the Committee
To ensure the Committee receives all relevant information regarding implementation of the CRC in a particular country, NGOs take an active part in the dialogue with the Committee. Rules of procedure have been established for meetings between the Committee and NGOs and other competent bodies. An important rule requires the Committee to meet with NGOs in private sessions prior to its meeting with the government delegation. This allows the Committee to identify in advance issues to be discussed with the state representatives. On rare occasions, NGOs are not present in this pre-sessional working group, due to the lack of budget to prepare the alternative report or to travel to Geneva, or more rarely due to inactivity by civil society. The political situation in a country may also lead NGOs to not engage in CRC reporting.
Sometimes children who have been involved in writing reports travel to Geneva to meet with members of the Committee, which appreciates the opportunity to listen to children directly and hear their concerns and recommendations. It is important to ensure that children are well informed about the process of CRC reporting. In addition to being informed about the process, they must have an opportunity to meet with the Committee members in private. 61 Selection of children to participate with the Committee is an issue; it is difficult to assess whether these children are selected in a transparent and participatory manner, and budget constraints can make this even more difficult.
4.4.3 Follow up to the concluding observations
The Committee discusses the State party report with the presence of the government, and a summary of the discussion is produced. The concluding observations provide guidance and encouragement to States to improve children‟s lives by strengthening implementation of the CRC. The Committee regularly recommends that the State party disseminate the concluding observations throughout the country, a process in which civil society often plays an active role. For example, the Committee recommended the State party of Kazakhstan take:
...all appropriate measures to ensure full implementation of present recommendations, inter alia, by transmitting them to relevant government ministries, Parliament members and authorities of districts and communities for appropriate consideration and further action. 62
60 Miller, Jenifer, Children as Agents: Guidelines for participation in periodic reporting on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, World Vision, 2007, p. 26.
62 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding
61 For more recommendations see: Miller, Jenifer, Children as Agents: Guidelines for participation in periodic reporting on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, World Vision, 2007, pp 37-38.
The Committee also commonly recommends that civil society organizations use the concluding observations to generate awareness of the CRC and its implementation and monitoring. 63 In this regard the NGO Group on the Rights of the Child carried out a review titled „The Use of Concluding Observations for Monitoring the Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child – The Experiences of NGO Coalitions in Nine Country Case Studies‟. It was noted that:
Concluding observations of the Committee can be an unparalleled tool for NGOs to stimulate a discussion at the national level, to exert pressure on the government to follow up on the recommendations of the Committee, and to lobby for changes in legislation and practice. NGOs should also try to get the national mass media involved in reporting the concluding observations and the comments of Committee members in the press. The effectiveness of the proceedings is largely dependent on the publicity they attract. Scrutiny by the media and the public can help to ensure that the concerns raised by the Committee figure prominently on the national agenda. The Committee is not able to enforce its recommendations and looks towards national-level mechanisms to ensure that their recommendations are taken into account by the State party. NGOs can play a key role in the short and long term to assist the government in following up on the concluding observations. 64
In another example, CRIN and the NGO Group for the Rights of the Child reviewed the use of concluding observations for monitoring implementation of the CRC, reporting experiences of NGO coalitions in nine country case studies, from Bangladesh, Canada, Georgia, Germany, India, Jamaica, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Pakistan. 65 They concluded that "the case studies reveal useful insights about the way coalitions and NGOs use the Concluding Observations (COs) for monitoring implementation." Experiences from the nine countries showed that even though each country‟s situation is unique, there are similarities with regard to challenges facing NGOs in monitoring CRC implementation. 66
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Kazakhstan, CRC/C/KAZ/CO/3, 8 June 2007, para. 71.
64 NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Third Edition of the Guide for the NonGovernmental Organizations Reporting to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2006, available at: <www.childrightsnet.org/>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
63 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Malaysia, CRC/C/MYS/CO/1, 2 February 2007, para. 108.
65 Report available at: <www.crin.org/docs/resources/publications/ngocrc/CRIN-NGOCRC_WP2_en.pdf>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
66 NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, „
The use of Concluding Observations for Monitoring the Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child – The Experiences of NGO Coalitions in nine Country Case Studies‟, CRIN – NGO Joint Working Paper No. 2, January 2005, p. 25, accessed from: <www.crin.org/docs/resources/publications/ngocrc/CRIN- NGOCRC_WP2_en.pdf>, on 25 May 2010.
4.5 Civil Society and Global Actors
The Convention has served as a point of departure for a number of national and international NGOs and coalitions addressing international processes and commitments, including ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes), 67 the Global Initiative to End Corporal Punishment, and the Better Care Network, concerned about children without adequate family care. 68 Together with experts and other organizations, including UNICEF, they have drafted the text of the United Nations Guidelines for the Protection and Alternative Care of Children without Parental Care.
Acting on the recommendation of the Committee, in 2001 the General Assembly called for a study on violence against children (res. 56/138). The study was developed over a three-year period in consultation with civil society and a range of other stakeholders. Presented to the General Assembly in October 2006, it was the first such study to consult with children and reflect their views in the recommendations.
International meetings, congresses and conferences are also important means of building commitment by States parties to implement child rights. A key event was the General Assembly Special Session on Children in 2002. NGO participation in the Session, like that of children and adolescents, was unprecedented in a number of ways. NGOs:
Took part in the preparatory processes of the Special Session and in negotiating the outcome document, „A World Fit for Children‟;
Participated formally at the Session, both as formally accredited participants and grass-roots NGOs partnering with UNICEF at the national level. NGO delegations included a great number of children and adolescents;
Participated in and organized a number of official and supporting events, working to promote collaboration among governments, civil society organizations and children;
Stressed the importance of the rights-based approach in developing national plans of action for children and in all follow-up action to the Special Session;
Prepared a commitment chart that tracked the pledges of governments, NGOs and other non-state participants during the Session;
Provided news of the Special Session through updates and newspapers;
In an official address to the General Assembly, insisted on the importance of child rights and the Convention as a cornerstone for all follow-up action. 69
67 Information available at: <www.ecpat.net/EI/index.asp>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
69 Information available at: <www.unicef.org/specialsession/ngo_participation/index.html>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
68 Information available at: <www.crin.org/bcn/about.asp>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
The outcome document identifies civil society actors as partners in its implementation:
Non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations will be supported in their work and mechanisms should be established, where appropriate, to facilitate the participation of civil society in matters relating to children. Civil society actors have a special role to play in promoting and supporting positive behaviour and creating an environment that is conducive to the well-being of children. 70
The World Congress III against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents (Rio de Janeiro, November 2008) involved even more NGOs than the two previous congresses addressing sexual exploitation. Civil society groups participated in regional preparatory meetings in every region of the world. The outcome document makes strong references to the role of civil society, including children and adolescents. 71
5. CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE GENERAL MEASURES OF IMPLEMENTATION
In its first guidelines for initial reporting, the Committee identified articles 4, 42 and 44.6 of the CRC as the articles relating to the „general measures of implementation‟ (G3). The Committee clarified the concept of the general measures and requirements of States parties in General Comment No. 5 (2003). 72
BOX 3
The General Measures of Implementation 73
The process of law reform calls on States parties to ensure the compatibility of existing and new legislation and judicial practice with the Convention.
Independent national institutions for children‟s rights need to be developed, such as children‟s ombudsperson offices, child rights commissioners and focal points within national human rights institutions.
Comprehensive national agendas or strategies for implementation of the Convention are needed; their relationship to the follow-up process to the
70 United Nations, „A world fit for children‟, General Assembly Resolution A/RES/S-27/2, United Nations, New York, 11October 2002, para. 32(5).
71 III World Congress against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents, The Rio de Janeiro Declaration and Call for Action to Prevent and Stop Sexual Exploitation of
Children and Adolescents, Rio de Janeiro, 25-28 November 2008, accessed from:
<www.crin.org/docs/Rio_Declaration_and_Call_for_Action.pdf>, on 22 June 2010.
73 United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, Handbook on the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, Florence, 2009, p. 2.
72 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003.
1990 World Summit for Children and the 2002 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children is important.
Child rights-focused permanent institutions and structures within government are required to ensure coordination and pursue implementation.
Allocation of resources to children "to the maximum extent of their availability" is key in States parties‟ efforts to ensure implementation.
Systematic monitoring of CRC implementation is needed through effective child-related data collection, analysis, evaluation and dissemination.
Education, training and awareness-raising on children‟s rights need to be promoted.
The involvement of civil society, including children, is critical for progress on implementation.
International cooperation.
The general measures of implementation identified by the Committee are intended to promote full enjoyment of all rights recognized by the CRC by all children. The general measures are closely interrelated, and their implementation is mutually supportive, concomitant and evolving.
Overall, civil society has been active on issues concerning legal reforms, state coordination, research and monitoring, state budgets for children, cooperation with independent institutions and training for awareness-raising. The following questions will be examined in assessing civil society‟s impact on implementation of the general measures:
Which types of child rights violations motivated NGOs to become involved?
What were the factors encouraging NGO activity on a particular measure?
How do concluding observations, international processes and donor policies influence civil society engagement?
What type of civil society group participated in the implementation of a particular measure?
How were children and their organizations involved in implementation of a particular measure?
What was the outcome of their activities on the national, regional and international levels?
In line with the principle of indivisibility, it is important to consider the role and impact of civil society in implementation of all general measures. The general measures are closely inter-related. Their implementation is mutually supportive, concomitant, and evolving. In line with the principle of indivisibility, it is important to consider the role and impact of civil society in the implementation of all the general measures. Role and focus of NGOs varies from country to country. In some countries, civil society is mostly involved with law reform, in others with monitoring and research, and in still others with awareness raising and capacity building. However, in most countries, NGOs are active in more than one of the general measures and sometimes in all.
Though the CRC identifies civil society organizations as partners of the Committee in its monitoring task, it does not call for State cooperation with civil society, including children and their organizations. Nevertheless, General Comment No. 5 makes the role of civil society explicit. It notes that States need to work with a range of civil society organizations, such as those dealing with human rights in general, organizations led by children and youth, parent and family groups, faith groups, academic institutions and professional associations. It states that such organizations have a right to participate in implementation and a vital role to play, given their crucial part in drafting the Convention. General Comment No. 5 adds that, while cooperating with these organizations, States should respect their autonomy.
The Committee also welcomed the development of NGO coalitions and alliances committed to promoting, protecting and monitoring children‟s human rights. General Comment No. 5 further urges governments to provide NGOs with non-directive support and to develop positive relationships with them, both formal and informal. The engagement of NGOs in the reporting process has in many cases spurred implementation of the CRC. The NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child is a strong supporter in the reporting process and other aspects of the Committee‟s work. The Comment also notes that the process of preparing a report should facilitate popular participation and public scrutiny of government policies. Finally, it emphasizes that the media can be a valuable partner in the process of implementation. 74 General Comment No. 5 also may influence governments and donors to establish, continue or enhance cooperation with civil society, particularly children and their organizations.
5.1 Law Reform 75
States parties are required to ensure that existing and new legislation and judicial practice are compatible with the CRC. It calls on them to make comprehensive reviews of legislation; include children‟s rights in the Constitution; develop specific laws to reflect the CRC‟s principles and provisions; respond to issues that arise related to children‟s rights; and consider effective remedies for violations of children‟s rights.
Many NGOs have long provided services for children, but law and legal reform have not often been addressed by them. After ratification of the CRC and dissemination of information on children‟s rights, increasing numbers of child rights NGOs began reviewing laws to assess their compliance. Despite significant attention, even 20 years later loopholes remain in terms of harmony between laws and the CRC and neglect of some areas of child rights in legislation. An additional problem is insufficient enforcement of laws in many countries, and NGOs have sought to address this gap.
74 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003.
75 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003, paras 18-23.
Participating in law reform and lobbying for its implementation require very specific knowledge. In recent years many NGOs have strengthened their capacity to advocate for and participate in legal reform, thanks partly to increased numbers of legal professionals in their ranks. Civil society has also gained greater international and national attention and financial support, allowing it to engage experts. NGOs that do not have staff lawyers can find them through networks and legal aid organizations. 76
Law reform is complex, and few NGOs participate directly in drafting laws; instead most focus on assessing legislation and advocating for reform. For example, NGOs in many countries have advocated for a legal ban on corporal punishment of children, although few are involved in drafting legislation. The International Campaign to Ban Corporal Punishment provides some information on the issue. 77
A review of documentation suggests that NGO engagement with legal reform may be a function of donor funding policies, and legal reform is not typically a donor priority. An assessment of donors‟ perceptions and funding policies regarding the role of civil society in child-related law reform process would be useful. Law reform is a key obligation of States‟ Parties. Nevertheless, civil society, including children, has a role to play, and NGOs are increasingly getting involved. In Kenya, for example, children were prepared for and participated in the constitution review process (box 4).
BOX 4
Child Participation in Law Reform in Kenya 78
In 2001, the Constitution Review Commission of Kenya was established to collect public opinions on this subject. NGOs responded by forming a Children‟s Caucus to ensure children‟s participation. A major focus was the prohibition of corporal punishment.
Children were selected to participate in the caucus from children's rights clubs and schools, as well as from the wider community. There were an equal number of girls and boys, and disabled children were included. Participants were between 12 and 17 years of age. They were first educated about children's rights, especially about the CRC and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and about the Constitution. The children learned about the deficiencies of the Constitution in terms of the situation of children and how the deficiencies could be corrected.
During this process, children asked the Commission to let them participate in the review conference. Though the law did not allow participants under 18
76 Child Rights Information Network (CRIN), Children's Rights: A Guide to Strategic Litigation, London, 2009, pp 27-29.
78 Kapoor, Gopika, and Owen, Sharon, Towards the universal prohibition of all violent punishment of children, Report of the global workshop on „Prohibiting all corporal punishment and other humiliating punishment of children: Achieving legal reform‟, Save the Children Sweden, Bangkok,Thailand, May 2008, p. 58, available at: < http://shop.rb.se/Product/Product.aspx?ItemId=5008432>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
77 International, regional and national campaigns for law reform to prohibit all corporal punishment of children, available at: <www.endcorporalpunishment.org/pages/frame.html >, accessed on 19 March 2010.
years of age, provincial children's forums were held. At these the children drafted suggestions for amending the Constitution, and these were sent to community leaders, members of Parliament and the Commission. Children's views were publicized on television and radio, and a national essay competition on the Constitution was organized. Finally, a National Children's Forum consolidated the exchange of information and produced a joint national submission by children from all provinces, which was distributed to all parliamentarians.
Eventually, 95 per cent of the children‟s recommendations were incorporated into the draft Constitution, including those on corporal punishment. Organizers of the Caucus also found these results of their participation:
- The capacities of children and children's rights organizations were enhanced.
- Interest in children's rights was generated among the general public and legislators.
- Children participated in the CRC state reporting process, which highlighted the need to harmonize legislation on children with the Convention.
Regarding corporal punishment, article 45 of the Draft Constitution provides that "Every person has the right to freedom and security of the person, which includes the right (c) to be free from all forms of violence from either public or private sources; (e) not to be subjected to corporal punishment or to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhuman or degrading manner."
A UNICEF IRC study on law reform and the implementation of the CRC concluded that:
...reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child provide ample evidence that, in many societies, civil society has made an important contribution to the various stages of the law reform process. Further, the ways in which civil society participates are numerous and have often lobbied for and even drafted or participated in drafting of new legislation on the rights of the child. In some countries, this is done by a process of publishing drafts or papers on the issues to be addressed by new legislation and inviting public comment. In others, interested organizations and individual experts are invited to participate in drafting groups and parliamentary hearings. In still others, national councils or commissions on children composed in part of representatives of civil society play a large role in the development of new laws. Finally, in some countries NGOs, professional associations, parent groups, academic institutions and other interested organizations have been invited to participate in the development of new laws through ad hoc arrangements. 79
79 United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, „Law reform and Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, Innocenti Insight, Florence, 2007, pp 107-108.
In the Dominican Republic, several organizations established the NGO Coalition for a Modern and Consensus Oriented Legislation, which contributed to the drafting of amendments to the Penal Code. In the process of drafting an amendment to the Constitution, some NGOs carried out referendums with children, who gave their opinions about the need for protection of their identity and name and on social security, education, health, participation and proposals to eradicate the worst kinds of child labour. 80
The impact of civil society on children‟s rights is measured not only through the number of laws or amendments enacted but also by changes in attitudes among parliamentarians and others in the law reform process. In Kenya, the effort generated "interest in children‟s rights [...] among the general public and among legislators." 81 It found that "the capacities of children and children‟s rights organizations were enhanced through knowledge about Constitutional matters" and that "Children participated in the UNCRC state reporting process, which highlighted the need to harmonize all legislation on children with the Convention." 82
In India, NGOs were involved in drafting the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2000 and its Rules. This was the first law to define a child as a person up to the age of 18 years (compared to the earlier definition of 15 years), in accordance with the CRC. However, despite concerted advocacy and litigation, advocates so far have failed to overturn a law passed in 1986 that allows children to work in certain occupations and defines children up to the age of 14 years. India continues to have a reservation to its ratification of the CRC on article 32, which addresses child labour. 83
80 The Dominican Republic Ngos‟ Coalition for Childhood, The Performance of Children and Adolescents‟ Rights established in the Convention on the Rights of the Child period 2001-205, May 2007, pp 6-7, available at: <www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=16150&flag=legal>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
81 Kapoor, Gopika, and Owen, Sharon, Towards the universal prohibition of all violent punishment of children, Report of the global workshop on „Prohibiting all corporal punishment and other humiliating punishment of children: Achieving legal reform‟, Save the Children Sweden, Bangkok,Thailand, May 2008, p. 59, accessed from:
< www.endcorporalpunishment.org/pages/pdfs/legalreform/Towards%20the%20universal%204.pdf>, on 25 May 2010.
82 Kapoor, Gopika, and Owen, Sharon, Towards the universal prohibition of all violent punishment of children, Report of the global workshop on „Prohibiting all corporal punishment and other humiliating punishment of children: Achieving legal reform‟, Save the Children Sweden, Bangkok, Thailand, May 2008, p. 59, accessed from:
< www.endcorporalpunishment.org/pages/pdfs/legalreform/Towards%20the%20universal%204.pdf>, on 25 May 2010.
83 Declaration of the Government of India:"While fully subscribing to the objectives and purposes of the Convention, realising that certain of the rights of child, namely those pertaining to the economic, social and cultural rights can only be progressively implemented in the developing countries, subject to the extent of available resources and within the framework of international co-operation; recognising that the child has to be protected from exploitation of all forms including economic exploitation; noting that for several reasons children of different ages do work in India; having prescribed minimum ages for employment in hazardous occupations and in certain other areas; having made regulatory provisions regarding hours and conditions of employment; and being aware that it is not practical immediately to prescribe minimum ages for admission to each and every area of employment in India - the Government of India undertakes to take measures to progressively implement the provisions of article 32, particularly paragraph 2 (a), in accordance with its national legislation and relevant international instruments to which it is a State Party." The declaration is available at: <http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-
11&chapter=4&lang=en>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
5.2 National Plans of Action for Children
In its General Comment No. 5, the Committee on the Rights of the Child sent a clear message to States parties that they need unified, comprehensive and rights-based national strategies for children based on the Convention. A comprehensive strategy or national plan of action for children should take into account the recommendations given in the concluding observations. The strategy should be developed through a process of consultation, including with children and young people and those living and working with them. To give the strategy authority requires endorsement at the highest level of government, links to national development planning and inclusion of children in national budgeting. It must also specify a sustainable process for realizing children‟s rights throughout the State based on real and achievable targets. 84
General Comment No. 5 indicates that civil society, including NGOs and children, should participate in the implementation of all measures, including development and implementation of strategies and policies relevant for the rights of the child. 85 The Committee has further elaborated this position in other general comments, directly or indirectly requesting States parties to involve civil society in policy formulation, for example, in General Comment No. 11 on indigenous children, 86 General Comment No. 12 of the CRC on the right of the child to be heard, 87 and General Comment No. 10 on juvenile justice. 88
The Committee noted that governments may decide to develop sectoral national plans of action, such as for education and health that set out specific goals, targeted implementation measures and allocation of financial and human resources. Such plans must be adequately resourced, in human and financial terms, and coordinated with other sectoral plans. But these cannot replace a comprehensive national strategy. A national strategy must include arrangements for continuous monitoring, regular updating and periodic reporting to the legislature and the public.
84 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003, paras 71-79.
86 "In order to develop policy and programming efforts in a culturally sensitive manner, States Parties should consult with indigenous communities and directly with indigenous children", General Comment No. 11 (2009), Indigenous children and their rights under the Convention CRC/C/GC/11, para. 80
85 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003, para. 56.
87 "… children should be consulted in the formulation of legislation and policy related to these and other problem areas and involved in the drafting, development and implementation of related plans and programmes", General Comment No. 12 (2009) The right of the child to be heard, para. 122
88 The Committee explains the objective of this General Comment so as "to encourage States Parties to develop and implement a comprehensive juvenile justice policy to prevent and address juvenile delinquency based on and in compliance with CRC, and to seek in this regard advice and support from the Interagency Panel on Juvenile Justice, with representatives of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the United Nations Children‟s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and non-governmental organizations (NGO‟s), established by ECOSOC resolution 1997/30", General Comment No. 10 (2007) Children‟s rights in juvenile justice, para. 4.
Follow-up to international meetings concerning children‟s human rights have been critical to the development of national plans of action for children. States have been encouraged to develop, integrate or strengthen such plans at the World Summit for Children (1990), 89 the World Conference on Human Rights (1993) and the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children (2002). NGOs have welcomed the commitments governments have made at these conferences, including commitments to involve civil society organizations in these processes. Although many countries started to develop such plans in the early 1990s, many governments did not immediately involve civil society actors in these processes.
Some NGOs have argued that a comprehensive national strategy can be elaborated through sectoral strategies. In the absence of comprehensive strategies developed with broad participation of civil society, some NGOs are content with sectoral strategies, in particular if they cover the NGO‟s focus area and if it has the capacity to participate in the development and implementation of a specific plan of action. Most civil society attention has been directed towards plans on poverty reduction, prevention of violence and the right to education or health care.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child has recommended that States cooperate with civil society in drafting and implementing policies, strategies, action plans and legal measures. At times, the Committee has recommended that States cooperate with civil society in specific areas such as alternative family care, social and legal protection of children, and guardianship. 90 Poverty reduction strategies also require broad involvement of civil society. The Committee has recommended that State parties "encourage participation of parents and children in the development of poverty-alleviation strategies." 91
It is notable that the Committee expects States to develop plans of action on child rights in cooperation with children and children‟s rights groups. Regarding Bulgaria, for example, it recommended that the State:
...ensure the involvement of children and child-focused organizations, including the Child Council, in the preparation and implementation of major developmental plans and programmes in the country, such as national development plans, action plans, annual budgets and poverty reduction strategies 92
89 World Summit for Children, „World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children and Plan of Action for Implementing the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children in the 1990s‟, CF/WSC/1990/WS-001, United Nations, New York, 30 September 1990.
91 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Djibouti, CRC/C/DJO/CO/2, 7 October 2008, para. 61.
90 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Slovakia, CRC/C/SVK/CO/2, 8 June 2007, para. 23.
92 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Bulgaria, CRC/C/BGR/CO/2, 23 June 2008, para. 27.
There is plenty of evidence that children and their organizations influence policies. 93 For example, O‟Malley summarizes the experience of Save the Children UK in facilitating children‟s participation in the development of poverty reduction strategy papers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Honduras, Lesotho and Viet Nam. She discusses the effectiveness of different approaches, outlines learning points and raises questions about the impact and the costs and benefits of children and youth participation in developing these papers. 94
While children have the right to participate, tokenistic involvement of children‟s and youth organizations in policy development should be avoided. With careful preparation, capacity building and reasonable limits on the amount of work asked of children and youth, such involvement can be effective.
In many States, collaboration between government and civil society in policy development has not been easy. It has often depended on personal relationships and the attitude of authorities towards NGOs; animosity makes the process especially challenging. However, over the past 20 years NGOs have made meaningful contributions to plans and polices. At present, every State party has at least a partial plan of action for children. Many have an elaborate set of plans, policies, strategies, guides and protocols, often developed in cooperation with NGOs. One such an example is Maldives:
The Government of the Maldives developed the National Plan of Action for the well being of the Maldivian Child 2001-2010 with the involvement of civil society. The National Plan of Action (NPA) was developed in consultation with the community and with the active participation of various civil society organizations. A consultative meeting held December 24-25, 2002 was attended by 109 representatives of government offices, private associations, civil society organizations, the representatives of the Atolls, and students from different schools in Malé (the capital city). After detailed discussions and debate over the draft Action Plan during this meeting, the National Plan of Action was finalized. The three main components of the NPA were: education, health and the preservation of children‟s rights. 95
5.3 Coordination for Implementation of the CRC
The CRC cannot be successfully implemented without government accountability and coordination between government ministries and departments. Child rights issues are often dealt with by a particular department or scattered over different departments, without adequate coordination. Ideally, every State should have a specific coordination and
93 Williams, Emma, Children's Participation and Policy Change in South Asia Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre (CHIP), 2004. Examines cases of child participation in poverty-reduction issues in Nepal, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh and impact on policies.
95 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Second and third periodic reports of States parties due in 1998 and 2003, Maldives, CRC/C/MDV/3, 8 October 2008, para. 15.
94 O‟Malley, Kate, Children and Young People Participating in PRSP Processes: Lessons from Save the Children's experiences, Save the Children UK, London, 2004, accessed from: <www.eldis.org/fulltext/SCUKparticipation-PRSP.pdf> on 2 June 2010.
monitoring body for children, at a central and strategic position within the government. This body‟s purpose is to make children visible in government actions, ensure coordination of relevant activities, monitor progress and promote a comprehensive and integrated agenda for realization of children‟s rights. In General Comment No. 5, the Committee notes that:
In examining States parties‟ reports the Committee has almost invariably found it necessary to encourage further coordination of government to ensure effective implementation: coordination among central government departments, among different provinces and regions, between central and other levels of government and between Government and civil society. 96
The Committee added that it was not the intention "to attempt to prescribe detailed arrangements appropriate for very different systems of government across States Parties" since "there are many formal and informal ways of achieving effective coordination, including for example inter-ministerial and interdepartmental committees for children." 97 Further, the Committee noted that, since each department affects at least one aspect of children‟ lives,
... it is not practicable to bring responsibility for all children‟s services together into a single department, and in any case doing so could have the danger of further marginalizing children in Government…but a special unit, if given high-level authority – reporting directly, for example, to the Prime Minister, the President or a Cabinet Committee on children – can contribute both to the overall purpose of making children more visible in Government and to coordination to ensure respect for children‟s rights across Government and at all levels of Government. Such a unit can be given responsibility for developing the comprehensive children‟s strategy and monitoring its implementation, as well as for coordinating reporting under the Convention. 98
While making one single department responsible may not always be the most appropriate approach, civil society organizations have often expressed their dissatisfaction with the coordination arrangements in place. For example, a coalition of NGOs from the Netherlands expressed concern regarding coordination activities in their country‟s government:
However, there is criticism of the bandwidth of the portfolio and the „virtual nature‟ of the Programme Minister‟s Ministry. This latter criticism is based on the fact that the Ministry of Youth and Family Affairs is housed in the premises of another Ministry, and that part of the administrative structure is
96 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟(arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5), Geneva, 3 October 2003, para. 37.
98 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003, para. 38.
97 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003, para. 38.
also „borrowed‟ from other ministries. The Dutch NGO Coalition for Children‟s Rights would welcome a reinforcement of this structure, in particular to ensure that the new Ministry is future-resistant. 99
In the case of Timor-Leste, the Committee recommended that the State:
...strengthen coordination between the various governmental bodies and mechanisms involved in children's rights both at the national and local level and …involve members of civil society, child rights experts and other professionals in the coordination and evaluation of the implementation of the Convention. 100
Chile took into account a similar CRC recommendation, as reflected in the country‟s third periodic report to the Committee:
As regards the recommendation contained in the concluding observations on the second Report of the State of Chile concerning closer cooperation and active dialogue with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in all matters concerning children, mention should be made of the establishment of the Advisory Committee of Civil Society for Children and Adolescents. The Committee was established on 1 August 2003; its terms of reference are laid down in the National Policy in favor of Children and Adolescents and the presidential instructions concerning citizen participation; it has contact with the Council of Ministers for Children and Adolescents through the Office of the Executive Secretary of the Council. The membership of the Council consists of federations of professional associations, networks of NGOs concerned with children and employers‟ and workers‟ unions, each of which elect a representative to the Committee; the latter enjoys standing participation in the Council of Ministers. 101
Recommendations made at major international conferences have additionally added an authoritative voice to NGO aspirations to participate in government coordination. The United Nations Study on Violence against Children resulted in a recommendation for a coordination agency "with the capacity to involve multiple sectors in a broad-based implementation strategy" to implement strategies, policies and plans. 102 In the outcome document of World Congress III against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents (November 2008),
99
101 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties
Dutch NGO Coalition for Children‟s Rights, „Children‟s Rights in the Netherlands, The third report of the Dutch NGO Coalition for Children‟s Rights on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, p. 7, accessed from: <www.crin.org/docs/Netherlands_KRC_NGO_Report.pdf>, on 2 June 2010. 100 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Timor-Leste, CRC/C/TLS/CO/1, 14 February 2008, para. 13.
under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Third periodic report of States parties due in 1998 and 2003: Chile, CRC/C/MDV/3, 20 December 2005, para. 24. 102 United Nations, Report of the independent expert for the United Nations study on violence against children submitted pursuant to the General Assembly Resolution A/61/299, United Nations, New York, 29 August 2006, para. 54.
participants, including government and civil society representatives, committed themselves to:
Establish and/or improve by 2013 concrete mechanisms and/or processes to facilitate coordination at national, regional and international levels for enhanced cooperation among government ministries, funding bodies, UN agencies, NGOs, the private sector, workers‟ and employers‟ organizations, the media, children‟s organizations and other representatives of civil society with a view to enabling and supporting concrete action to prevent and stop the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents. 103
Despite the widespread call for States to involve civil society, including children, in coordinating activities, some caution is warranted. Some governments may involve civil society representatives in a tokenistic manner, which precludes substantive impact. It is important to emphasize that it is not the role of NGOs to coordinate State activities; rather, through meaningful participation, they should help influence and strengthen coordination to aid implementation of the CRC. This should include ensuring wide civil society participation and the visibility of children in government actions. NGOs also need to maintain their independence so they can credibly monitor government actions for children. Bearing in mind the potential risks noted above, civil society participation in state coordination bodies can provide a valuable opportunity to help promote and implement child rights strategies and plans. Nevertheless, for reasons included that civil society organizations started participating in coordination activities relatively recently, little evidence has been collected of their impact on implementation of the CRC. This requires further monitoring, evaluation and analysis.
5.4 Budgets for Children
A number of child rights NGOs have realized the importance of advocating with governments for allocation of resources to fulfil children‟s rights. Some have analysed state budgets from a child rights perspective, in support of article 4 of the CRC:
With regard to economic, social and cultural rights, States Parties shall undertake such measures to the maximum extent of their available resources and, where needed, within the framework of international cooperation.
The allocation of resources to children "to the maximum extent of their available resources" is key to efforts by States parties to ensure implementation of the CRC. In General Comment No. 5, the Committee underscored that Governments should:
... ensure that economic and social planning and decision-making and budgetary decisions are made with the best interests of children as a primary consideration and that children, including in particular marginalized and
103 III World Congress against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents, The Rio de Janeiro Declaration and Call for Action to Prevent and Stop Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents, Rio de Janeiro, 25-28 November 2008, para. 54, accessed from: <www.crin.org/docs/Rio_Declaration_and_Call_for_Action.pdf>, on 22 June 2010.
disadvantaged groups of children, are protected from the adverse effects of economic policies or financial downturns. 104
The issue of how state resources and budgets are used and distributed generates vigorous debates in legislatures, government ministries and among the general public. It is crucial to have independent impact assessments, and civil society organizations worldwide have been working to strengthen their ability to assess government budgets for children. As noted in the International Budget Project‟s Guide to Budget Work for NGOs: "The NGOs have realised that their ability to advance their goals – whether these are to combat poverty or to strengthen democratic practices – will be enhanced if they develop a capacity to undertake budget analysis." 105 This engagement has been encouraged by the trend towards more open and democratic decision-making processes, even in countries where it is relatively new. To a great extent, this development coincided with the adoption of the CRC.
Also influencing civil society engagement in budgetary issues is its recognized role in addressing poverty, budgetary reforms and decentralization, 106 in which is stressed the need for a rights-based approach. As CRIN notes,
The rights based approach to budgets aims to give all citizens an understanding of how the budgetary process can affect their daily lives and how they can intervene. In this way, citizens can hold governments accountable for their spending choices. 107
Assessing budgets and their impact on children from a child rights perspective is a challenging task for civil society, calling for sufficient expertise and resources. It may involve assessing both central and local government budgets, which is particularly relevant in large countries with decentralised structures, such as India (box 5).
BOX 5
Budgeting for Children in India
Several years ago, the HAQ: Centre for Child Rights in India came to the conclusion that budget analysis would be helpful in developing a comprehensive picture of government financial commitments to children. Its first report, „India‟s Children and the Union Budget‟, was issued in September 2001, and HAQ has continued this exercise annually.
HAQ soon realized that in a country as large and diverse as India it was insufficient to focus solely on the central government budget. Hence in 2002,
104 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para. 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003, para. 51.
106 International Budget Project, 'Guide to Budget Work for NGOs‟, Washington, DC, 2001, p. 2, available at: <www.InternationalBudget.org>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
105 International Budget Project, „Guide to Budget Work for NGOs‟, Washington, DC, 2001, p. 2, available at: <www.InternationalBudget.org>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
107 Information available at: < www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=4651&flag=report>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
it started analysing state budgets, beginning with three States, and covering seven by 2006. In each state HAQ works with and supports partner organizations, thereby building the capacities of state-level organizations and enabling them to advocate around the analysis at the local level.
The impact of HAQ‟s work is clear. Two years after its 2001 report, the Government undertook its first Budget for Children analysis, drawing upon HAQ‟s methodology. In October 2005, the Government declared its intention to undertake such analysis for both the Union and the states. Child budgeting has also been included in the Government‟s National Plan of Action for Children (2005). In presenting the Union Budget for 2008-2009, the Finance Minister announced, "We will score another 'first' this year. A statement on child-related schemes is included in the budget documents." This was highlevel recognition for the Budget for Children work that HAQ had performed for a number of years. 108
The African Report on Child Well-being 2010, produced by the African Child Policy Forum, is another example of an NGO study that will focus on budgeting for children. 109 Civil society has also involved children in such efforts. In Bangladesh, Save the Children Australia supported children to form a Children's Parliament, giving girls and boys the opportunity to voice their opinions. The Child Parliament held a unique children's budget discussion in June 2003 during the parliamentary budget session. A total of 68 children from all over the country participated. The children discussed the existing situation concerning education, health and recreation facilities and tried to encourage government to make more appropriate allocations in the national budget. 110
Civil society involvement seems to have had a significant and measurable impact on budgets for children. A 2007 study by the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, „Reforming Child Law in South Africa: Budgeting and Implementation Planning‟ found that appropriate budgeting has played an important role in realizing children‟s rights in that country, to which NGO interest has contributed in recent years. 111 The study considered that this was due to the changed international context; as many formerly closed societies are becoming more transparent in their processes, NGOs are adopting a more holistic and rights-based approach. This has created opportunities, especially in developing countries, for NGOs to examine budgets and determine how specific sectors are affected. This knowledge enables them to lobby for necessary changes. The study concluded that the constructive involvement of NGOs can clearly improve the quality of budget debate and influence prioritization of spending, producing better outcomes for children. 112
108 Information available at: <www.haqcrc.org/home.html>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
109 Information available at: <www.africanchildforum.org>, < www.africanchild.info>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
110 Save the Children Australia, Report on Children‟s budget discussion, Dhaka, 17 June 2003.
112 United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, „Reforming Child Law in South Africa: Budgeting and Implementation Planning‟, Innocenti Case Studies, Florence, 2007, p. 17.
111 United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, „Reforming Child Law in South Africa: Budgeting and Implementation Planning‟, Innocenti Case Studies, Florence, 2007.
5.5 Research and Data Collection
It is difficult to imagine the successful implementation of children‟s rights without collection and assessment of reliable data for planning and monitoring. In General Comment No. 5, the Committee on the Rights of the Child underlines that "Collection of sufficient and reliable data on children, disaggregated to enable identification of discrimination and/or disparities in the realization of rights, is an essential part of implementation." 113 Further, the Committee reminds States parties that data needs to extend over the whole period of childhood, up to age 18, and that it has to be coordinated throughout the jurisdiction, ensuring nationally applicable indicators. It is primarily a State responsibility to develop indicators, conduct research and collect data.
However, the Committee interprets the States‟ obligation as follows: "States should collaborate with appropriate research institutes and aim to build up a complete picture of progress towards implementation, with qualitative as well as quantitative studies." 114 States parties are hence encouraged to promote in-depth studies on issues covered by the CRC, and a uniform information system to ensure collection and analysis of data disaggregated by age, sex, disability and ethnic or social origin. Although the Committee always raises the issue of research and data collection in its concluding observations, it rarely recommends that States cooperate with or assist NGOs in such activities. Traditionally, data are collected by government departments, research institutes and universities. However, civil society organizations also carry out research and collect data, alone or in cooperation with other institutions, including with international organizations such as UNICEF and WHO.
The Committee has stressed that "Evaluation requires the development of indicators related to all rights guaranteed by the Convention." 115 Many projects have aimed at developing sets of common global indicators in the thematic areas of the Convention. For example, the Better Care Network introduced a set of common global indicators for children in formal care, which includes children living in institutional care or formally arranged foster family care. It has also produced a manual explaining the value of this information and offering guidance on data collection. 116 Another example is the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development, an inter-agency consortium involved in international advocacy and knowledge development, which published a study on early childhood indicators. 117
113 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Righst (CRC/GC/2003/5), Geneva, 3 October 2003, para. 59.
115 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003.
114 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General Measures of Implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2003/5, Geneva, 3 October 2003, para. 59.
116 Information available at: <www.crin.org/bcn/about.asp>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
117 Information available at: <www.ecdgroup.com/pdfs/cn25indicators.pdf>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
Data on the situation of children should be collected and analysed regularly. Ideally, relevant government departments should publish data and research results annually and disseminate them broadly, including to children. For different reasons, many States fail to carry out sufficient research and data collection or to disaggregate it appropriately. NGOs sometimes find that the official data are insufficient or of poor quality, which hampers policy development and implementation. In some child rights areas, particularly child protection, States do not systematically collect data. While NGOs try to fill that gap, they too may be weak in this area, lacking organizational, financial resources and tools and analytical frameworks. Mauritania provides an example of the impact of NGO-conducted research on government policy and actions. Its report to the Committee included information on the impact of NGO research:
A civil society study of how the law and the courts treat sexual assaults on women and girls has resulted in a series of recommendations which should enhance the effectiveness of the campaign against the sexual exploitation of children. The Government has taken note of these recommendations and is taking action to improve preventive measures and refine the techniques for detecting sexual assault, while ensuring that cases are rapidly dealt with by the justice system and the police. 118
In many cases, it is relevant to consult with children about whether they believe their rights are being fully recognized and realized. Interviewing children and promoting children as researchers (with appropriate ethical considerations and safeguards) can be an important way to learn about key aspects of their lives, such as to what extent they enjoy respect for their civil rights, including the right to have their views heard and given due consideration, in the family, schools and the community. Feinstein and O‟Kane (2008) argue that the development of child-friendly information and materials should be increased, particularly those that support participation by younger children, children with disabilities and other marginalized groups. 119
Mann and Tolfree (2003) reviewed the experience of involving children in data analysis and research; their analysis raised ethical issues concerning these children‟s age, gender, experience, education and adult assistance. Their key message is that:
...securing the participation of children in research can be empowering and validating for children (and adults) as well as enriching for the research process and its findings. It was found that children‟s views and experiences
118 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Written replies by the Government of Mauritania to the list of issues (CRC/C/MRT/2) prepared by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in connection with the consideration of the second periodic report of Mauritania (CRC/C/MRT/2), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/C/MRT/Q/2/Add. 1, Geneva 22 April 2009, p. 17.
119 Feinstein, Clare and O‟Kane, Claire: Cultivating Children's Participation- Abridged version of Participation is a virtue that must be cultivated', Save the Children Sweden, 2008, p. 37, available at:
<http://shop.rb.se/Section/Section.aspx?SectionId=2017321&MenuId=74347>, accessed on 25 May 2010.
are often significantly different from those of adults, even when the latter believe that they are reflecting children‟s viewpoints. 120
A gap in reliable data on certain areas of child rights and research gaps remains an obstacle to implementation of the CRC. This helps explain why so much attention is paid to data collection and research. In the United Nations violence study for example, Professor Pinheiro recommends that States "improve data collection and information systems in order to identify vulnerable sub-groups, inform policy and programming at all levels, and track progress towards the goal of preventing violence against children." 121 He also recommends that States "develop a national research agenda on violence against children across settings where violence occurs, including through interview studies with children and parents, with particular attention to vulnerable groups of girls and boys". 122 Although he does not specifically recommend that States cooperate with NGOs in data collection and research, in addressing implementation and follow-up he says that the primary responsibility for implementation lies with governments but that participation of other actors, including civil society and children, is critical.
5.6 Independent Human Rights Institutions
Implementation of the CRC suggested independent institutions able to monitor governmental and other actions, advise on gaps and measures needed to fulfil children‟s rights, and be empowered to work directly with children to address their individual and collective challenges. National human rights institutions (NHRIs) for children are different from NGOs in that they are public entities founded in legislation, financed by state budgets and charged with responsibility for reporting to the legislature and/or the government (box 6). In 1981, Norway became the first country to set up an independent ombudsman for children through legislation. Since then, independent institutions for children‟s rights have multiplied in all regions and are now present in more than 80 countries, according to forthcoming UNICEF IRC research on human rights institutions for children.
The concept evolved within the framework of article 4 of the CRC and was further elaborated in the Committee‟s General Comment No. 2 on the Role of Independent National Human Rights Institutions in the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Child. 123 General
120 Mann, Gillian and Tolfree, David, Children's Participation in Research: Reflections from the Care and Protection of Separated Children in Emergencies Project, Save the Children Sweden, 2003, p.7, available at:
<http://shop.rb.se/Product/Product.aspx?ItemId=2967683&SectionId=2017321&MenuId=74347>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
121 World Report on Violence against Children, p. 22, accessed from:
<www.unicef.org/violencestudy/1.%20World%20Report%20on%20Violence%20against%20Children.pdf>, on
2 June 2010.
World Report on Violence against Children, p. 23, accessed from:
122
<www.unicef.org/violencestudy/1.%20World%20Report%20on%20Violence%20against%20Children.pdf>, on 2 June 2010.
123 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 2 (2002) „The role of independent national human rights institutions in the promotion and protection of the rights of the child‟, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2002/2, 15 November 2002.
Comment No. 2 calls for NHRIs to work closely with NGOs. 124 It also explicitly indicates that civil society, including groups led by children and youth, should participate in the establishment of such institutions. It specifies that their mandate should include advocating for and facilitating "meaningful participation by children‟s rights NGOs, including organizations comprised of children themselves, in the development of domestic legislation and international instruments on issues affecting children." 125 Many human rights institutions have members from civil society who specialize in children‟s rights. The Deputy Ombudsman for Children in Serbia, for example, has an Advisory Board composed of NGO representatives and experts.
Partnerships are key, as is cooperation with a wide range of actors at national, regional and international levels. In General Comment No. 2, the Committee devoted a paragraph to NHRIs and NGOs:
Non-governmental organizations play a vital role in promoting human rights and children‟s rights. The role of NHRIs, with their legislative base and specific powers, is complementary. It is essential that institutions work closely with NGOs and that Governments respect the independence of both NHRIs and NGOs. 126
Many NHRIs have developed close links with NGOs working with and for children. Such institutions may benefit from NGOs‟ wealth of expertise and experience, including in providing services. Collaboration with NGOs helps NHRIs grasp the scope of work, capitalize on shared knowledge and experience, and avoid duplication of work. In many countries and regions, NGOs have been instrumental in efforts to establish human rights institutions. NGOs may also help to ensure that children actually make use of an ombudsman or commissioner. 127
BOX 6
Development of a Human Rights Institution for Children in Kazakhstan
The Government of Kazakhstan reported that the legal mechanisms for protecting children‟s interests were further developed during the 2003-2005 period. The Office of the Human Rights Commissioner now has a special section with responsibility for children‟s rights. In 2006, a pilot project was launched, „Protecting the rights of the child and establishing monitoring mechanisms‟. The goal is to establish a children‟s rights ombudsman in every
124 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 2 (2002) „The role of independent national human rights institutions in the promotion and protection of the rights of the child‟, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2002/2, 15 November 2002, para. 26.
126 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 2 (2002) „The role of independent national human rights institutions in the promotion and protection of the rights of the child‟, Office
125 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 2 (2002) „The role of independent national human rights institutions in the promotion and protection of the rights of the child‟, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2002/2, 15 November 2002, para. 19 (k).
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/GC/2002/2, 15 November 2002, para. 26.
127 United Nations Children‟s Fund Innocenti Research Centre, „Independent Institutions Protecting Children‟s Rights‟, Innocenti Digest, Florence, No. 8, June 2001, p. 10.
region of Kazakhstan. The initiative is being implemented jointly with the central Government as part of the programme of cooperation for 2005-2009. Key partners include 90 representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ombudsman‟s Office, local authorities, NGOs and the media, plus 3,000 children aged 10-17 years. 128
The relationship between NHRIs and civil society remains complex. While they cooperate with each other in promoting implementation of the CRC, they also have very different functions and often assess each other‟s work. For example, NHRIs for children monitor all actors‟ practices, including those of NGOs. Similarly, NGOs may be critical of actions and approaches of the national institutions. They might be dissatisfied with the appointment process, or perceive ombudsman as too close to government.
5.7 Monitoring of CRC Implementation
Monitoring implementation of the Convention is an activity performed by many civil society groups. It may take place globally, nationally and sub-nationally. Honduras provides an interesting example of how NGOs monitor implementation of the Convention (box 7).
BOX 7
Civil Society Monitoring of CRC Implementation in Honduras
Twenty four civil society organizations working to protect children‟s rights in Honduras have formed a network known as COIPRODEN. Over the years, these NGOs have monitored implementation of the country‟s international commitments as a signatory to the CRC, and they presented alternative reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1994, 1997, 1998 and 2005.
The NGOs have also carried out activities supporting implementation of the CRC, particularly with regard to street children, children‟s participation, child abuse, commercial sexual exploitation, child labour, children in institutions and children with HIV/AIDS. They have been engaged in sex education, training for teachers and municipal officials, lobbying, panel discussions, seminars and other means of publicizing child rights. 129
Monitoring is a major task of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: "For the purpose of examining the progress made by States Parties in achieving the realization of the obligations undertaken in the present Convention, there shall be established a Committee on the Rights of
128 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Second and third periodic reports of States parties due in 2006, Kazakhstan, CRC/C/KAZ/3, 23 August 2006, para. 31.
129 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Written replies by the Government of Honduras to the list of issues (CRC/C/HND/Q/3) prepared by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in connection with the consideration of the second periodic report of Honduras, CRC/C/HND/3, 29 November 2006, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, 22 April 2009, pp 49-50.
the Child, which shall carry out the functions hereinafter provided." 130 Other international treaty bodies participate in monitoring the implementation of child rights, such as the Human Rights Committee and the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, along with other international organizations. States parties to the CRC have the primary responsibility for its implementation. As indicated in General Comment No. 5:
Ensuring that the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in all actions concerning children (art. 3 (1)), and that all the provisions of the Convention are respected in legislation and policy development and delivery at all levels of government demands a continuous process of child impact assessment (predicting the impact of any proposed law, policy or budgetary allocation which affects children and the enjoyment of their rights) and child impact evaluation (evaluating the actual impact of implementation). This process needs to be built into government at all levels and as early as possible in the development of policy.
Further, the Committee clearly states that "[s]elf-monitoring and evaluation is an obligation for Governments." 131 General Comment No. 5 also elaborates on monitoring, providing opportunities for other participants:
But the Committee also regards as essential the independent monitoring of progress towards implementation by, for example, parliamentary committees, NGOs, academic institutions, professional associations, youth groups and independent human rights institutions. 132
This provides further confirmation of the role of civil society in implementation of the CRC. This is especially important given that the Committee cannot directly monitor its implementation.
It is important for NGOs to have independence in their monitoring activities and that States cooperate with them. Where State monitoring mechanisms are insufficient, States may draw on NGO information or try to involve NGOs in this process. For example, the Government of Bhutan noted in its second periodic report that it:
... is now involving several NGOs to carry out, monitor, and evaluate women and children-related programmes. NGOs are involved in reviewing the situation of children in relation to the implementation of the Convention and
130 United Nations, Convention on the Rights of the Child, General Assembly resolution 44/25, United Nations, New York, 20 November 1989, article 43, para. 1.
132 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟(arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6) , Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, CRC/GC/2003/5, 3 October 2003, para. 46.
131 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003) „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva (CRC/GC/2003/5), 3 October 2003, para. 46.
are initiating new and comprehensive studies on youth, substance abuse and violence on women and families. 133
Consequently, the Committee stated in its concluding observations that, "The Committee notes that the State party recognizes the important role played by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in carrying out, monitoring, evaluating child rights related programmes and welcomes the inclusion of civil society representatives in the NCWC (the National Commission for Women and Children)." 134
The Committee regularly notes cooperation between States and civil society in monitoring implementation of the CRC. When cooperation or support for civil society monitoring efforts is lacking, the Committee may recommend that the State cooperate and collaborate. In the case of Kazakhstan, the Committee suggested that "the State party intensify its cooperation and collaboration with NGOs and civil society in the implementation and monitoring of the Convention." 135
The Committee also recommends that States cooperate with NGOs in monitoring implementation of particular areas of child rights. For example, Venezuela was recommended to "establish mechanisms that facilitate the implementation and monitoring of the plans and programmes of Government and NGOs on the subjects of trafficking, sexual exploitation and sale of children." 136 The Committee also recommended that Bulgaria involve NGOs in monitoring rights of children with disabilities, suggesting that the State:
...establish a formal monitoring system for residential care homes for children which closely examines the right to education of children with mental and other disabilities, as well as ensure that monitoring incorporates concrete steps to follow up recommended actions, and favours the participation of civil society organizations. 137
The Committee urged Mali to collaborate with civil society to "put in place effective monitoring systems to assess progress towards the eradication of harmful traditional practices
133 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Second periodic report of States parties due in 1997, Bhutan, CRC/C/BTN/2, 16 July 2007, para. 56.
135 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Kazakhstan, CRC/C/KAZ/CO/3, 8 June 2007, para. 25.
134 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Bhutan, CRC/C/BTN/CO/2, 8 October 2008, para. 15.
136 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Venezuela, CRC/C/VEN/CO/2, 5 October 2007, para. 75.
137 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Bulgaria, CRC/C/BGR/CO/2, 23 June 2008, para. 75.
against children." 138 The issue of children in conflict with the law provides ample opportunities for civil society involvement in monitoring. In its concluding observations to Georgia the Committee recommended that "the State party, in close cooperation with relevant NGOs .... [c]onsider strengthening the existing system of independent monitoring for detention centres for juveniles" 139
Many international and national NGOs have an overall objective of continuously monitoring implementation of the Convention. International organizations and coalitions usually have a global or regional approach, although they also monitor the situation in particular countries, often in cooperation with national partners. For example, ECPAT monitors efforts to protect children from sexual exploitation and has published a Global Monitoring Report on the Status of Action against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (Agenda for Action). 140 The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers produces a Global Report containing information on the involvement of children in armed conflicts worldwide. 141 International human rights NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the World Organization against Torture and others monitor implementation of particular areas related to their primary activity. National NGOs may monitor implementation of the CRC as a whole or certain parts of the treaty. 142 A search of the member organizations in the CRIN database provides ample evidence of children‟s rights monitoring activities.
A full cycle of monitoring includes the development of tools and methodologies, carrying out the monitoring, analysing the results and applying them in different ways. For many NGOs, this remains a challenge. Smaller grass-roots organizations may not have the capacity to perform all the functions, but they may be able to highlight gaps and advocate with governments and other actors to address them. Civil society organizations are accountable for their monitoring activities; just because NGOs are considered independent, it should not be assumed that they have the capability to fully monitor CRC implementation. Regarding quality of services provided to children by NGOs, the Committee recommended to the Government of Malaysia that it:
...ensure – for example, by providing guidelines and standards for service provision – that both not-for-profit and for-profit NGOs fully comply with principles and provisions of the CRC...as regards privatizing or contracting out services to NGOs, (to) enter into detailed agreements with service providers and ensure effective monitoring of implementation as well as transparency of the entire process. 143
138 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Sierra Leone, CRC/C/SLE/CO/2, 20 June 2008, para. 58.
140 Information is available at: <www.ecpat.net/A4A_2005/europe.html>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
139 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Georgia, CRC/C/GEO/CO/3, 23 June 2008, para. 30.
141 Available at: <www.childsoldiersglobalreport.org/>, accessed on 26 April 2010.
143 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding
142 Information is available at: <www.crin.org/organisations/>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
5.8 Awareness Raising, Training and Education
Implementation of the CRC requires States parties and other stakeholders to undertake education, training and awareness-raising on children‟s rights. Civil society plays an important role in these crucial activities. In General Comment No. 5, the Committee:
...emphasises the States‟ obligation to develop training and capacity-building for all those involved in the implementation process – government officials, parliamentarians and members of the judiciary – and for all those working with and for children. These include, for example, community and religious leaders, teachers, social workers and other professionals, including those working with children in institutions and places of detention, the police and armed forces, including peacekeeping forces, those working in the media and many others. 144
Children receive special attention as beneficiaries of training:
Understanding and knowledge of human rights must, of course, be promoted among children themselves, through the school curriculum and in other ways (see also paragraph 69 below and the Committee‟s General Comment No. 1 (2001) on the aims of education). 145
The Committee underlines the need for ongoing training, reflecting the reality that understanding the complexity of children‟s rights requires repetition and:
... periodic evaluation of the effectiveness of training, reviewing not only knowledge of the Convention and its provisions but also the extent to which it has contributed to developing attitudes and practice which actively promote enjoyment by children of their rights. 146
A key aspect of capacity-building in General Comment No. 5 concerns the purpose of training, which is to "emphasise the status of the child as a holder of human rights, to increase knowledge and understanding of the Convention and to encourage active respect for
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Malaysia, CRC/C/MYS/CO/1, 2 February 2007, para. 54.
144 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003),„General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, CRC/GC/2003/5, 3 October 2003, para. 53. 145 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003), „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, CRC/GC/2003/5, 3 October 2003, para. 53. 146 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003), „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, CRC/GC/2003/5, 3 October 2003, para. 55.
all its provisions." 147 The Committee further recognizes the role of NGOs in making the Convention known to adults and children. 148
Among the general measures of CRC implementation, training, awareness raising and capacity building on children‟s rights are the most commonly undertaken activities of civil society, constituting the core activities of many organization. States frequently recognize this role and highlight it in their reports to the Committee. For example, the Government of Mauritania reported that:
Civil society organizations play an important part in training and awarenessraising activities. They have held several seminars, training courses and workshops in Nouakchott and in the interior of the country to improve the situation of all children in difficult situations and of girl domestic workers in particular. 149
In replying to the Committee‟s list of issues to be addressed, Mauritania added that,
Every year seminars are held in partnership with civil society, bringing together judges, police officers, lawyers and non-governmental organizations which specialize in combating sexual assaults on women and girls. These seminars are a means of spreading knowledge about the campaign to end such assaults, improving the statistical record and thereby making the campaign strategy more effective. 150
Twenty years after adoption of the CRC, awareness of it is low even in most industrialized countries. This is due to insufficient efforts by States parties to spread information about this treaty. It is a particular concern with regard to children‟s awareness of their rights. The Committee regularly states that the understanding and knowledge of human rights must be promoted among children themselves, through school curricula and in other ways. Nevertheless, few countries have fully integrated child rights into the curriculum. NGOs have contributed greatly to informing children about the Convention, and there are many examples of children participating in training, including as peer educators.
Many NGOs understand that short trainings in child rights are insufficient to change attitudes and behaviours. Therefore, they encourage academic training on child rights as a tool for
147 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003), „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, CRC/GC/2003/5, 3 October 2003, para. 53.
149 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Second periodic report of States parties due in 1997, Mauritania, CRC/C/MRT/2, 30 July 2008, para. 256.
148 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003), „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, CRC/GC/2003/5, 3 October 2003, para. 67.
150 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Written replies by the Government of Mauritania to the list of issues (CRC/C/MRT/2) prepared by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in connection with the consideration of the second periodic report of Mauritania (CRC/C/MRT/2), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, CRC/C/MRT/Q/2/Add. 1, Geneva 22 April 2009, p. 17.
deeper knowledge and sensitization. One such source for professional training is the European Network of Masters on Children‟s Rights. This programme arose out of the growing recognition that, despite the commitment and intentions of States parties in Europe and efforts by civil society, there was a need for professionals with specialized education who would be dedicated to developing and promoting children‟s rights. This was seen to call for a master‟s degree that would include international and interdisciplinary perspectives of the CRC to extend and complement existing training courses and seminars on children, childhood, human and in particular child rights. 151
While a review of alternative reports and other examples show that NGOs have done much to build awareness of children‟s rights, these efforts are not enough without full State commitment to including information on child rights at all levels of education and professional training. NGOs need to advocate with governments to fulfil their responsibility as key duty bearers for informing citizens about the CRC. Greater coordination of efforts would help reduce overlap and duplication, for example, in production of awareness raising materials. NHRIs for children are also expected to make a difference through training and awareness-raising. The media is a key actor in awareness-raising efforts, and it too should be reached through capacity building initiatives.
5.9 International Cooperation
International cooperation has been a key force behind implementation of the CRC. According to General Comment No. 5, "Article 4 emphasizes that implementation of the Convention is a cooperative exercise for the States of the world. This article and others in the Convention highlight the need for international cooperation." 152 Other articles relevant to international cooperation include articles 7 (2) on name and nationality; 11 (2) on illicit transfer and nonreturn of children abroad; 17 (b) on access to information; 21 (e) on adoption; 22 (2) on refugee children; 23 (4) on children with disabilities; 24 (4) on health and health care; 27 (4) on standard of living; 28 (3) on education; 34 on sexual exploitation and abuse, and 35 on abduction and sale or trafficking of children. The Committee reminds States parties that "The Charter of the United Nations (Arts. 55 and 56) identifies the overall purposes of international economic and social cooperation, and members pledge themselves under the Charter to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the Organization" to achieve these purposes. Further,
In the United Nations Millennium Declaration and at other global meetings, including the United Nations General Assembly special session on children, States have pledged themselves, in particular, to international cooperation to eliminate poverty. 153
151
152 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003), „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, CRC/GC/2003/5, 3 October 2003, para. 60.
Information available at: <www.ina-fu.org/enmcr-cd/index.php>, accessed on 22 June 2010.
153 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003), „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, CRC/GC/2003/5, 3 October 2003, para. 60.
International cooperation involves multiple stakeholders, including civil society. In General Comment No. 5, the Committee notes that the CRC should serve as the framework for international cooperation, and States parties that receive international assistance should earmark a substantive part of that aid for children. Such an approach requires that "Governments, donors and civil society ensure that children are a prominent priority in the development of PRSPs and sector wide approaches to development." 154
In their reports on CRC implementation, States parties have emphasized the importance of international cooperation. Some have acknowledged their heavy dependence on international and national assistance, including from international and national NGOs (box 8).
BOX 8
Bhutan and International Cooperation
As noted in its second periodic report to the Committee, Bhutan continues to depend on donors, bilateral and multilateral organizations, and international NGOs to implement programmes for child rights and development. Many children benefit from programmes aimed at improving their education, health and nutrition. In addition to the United Nations system, external development partners involved in programmes aiding children and women include Austria, Canada (CIDA), Denmark (Danida), Finland, Germany (GTZ), India, Japan (JICA) and Switzerland, as well as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Save the Children USA. 155 The involvement of civil society is also stressed: "The Government works closely with several NGOs including the YDF, Save the Children Fund, USA, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Nature, a local environmental group." 156
Having recognized the significance of international cooperation in implementing the Convention, the Committee recommends that States seek technical assistance in particular areas of child rights, from UNICEF and other international organizations, but also from civil society. For example, in 2007 the Committee encouraged the Government of Malaysia to "strengthen cooperation with, among others, ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), IOM and NGOs." 157
154 United Nations, Committee for the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003), „General measures of implementation for the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟ (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para 6), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, CRC/GC/2003/5, 3 October 2003, para. 60.
155 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Second periodic report of States parties due in 1997, Bhutan, CRC/C/BTN/2, 16 July 2007, para. 47.
156 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Second periodic report of States parties due in 1997, Bhutan, CRC/C/BTN/2, 16 July 2007, para. 363.
157 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Malaysia, CRC/C/MYS/CO/1, 2 February 2007, para. 96.
The reports of donor States to the Committee provide information on their assistance in specific sectors relevant to implementation of the Convention. For example, the Government of the Netherlands reported on its assistance in improving basic health and identified civil society organizations as key partners in the country‟s international assistance strategy:
Considerable financial and technical assistance is given to improve health in the broadest sense of the word, and this assistance is growing. It is distributed via bilateral cooperation, multilateral organizations (mainly WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and UNAIDS), national and international NGOs and Global Health Initiatives. These include various activities which are especially relevant to children, such as mother and child programmes and initiatives, sex education, vaccination programmes (e.g. the GAVI campaign), the provision of essential medicines, and programmes for the control and treatment of infectious diseases like malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS. In 2005, the Netherlands was the fourth biggest UNICEF donor in terms of US dollars. 158
Since NGOs are non-profit organizations, they have to raise funds to finance their activities. Many get most of their funding through international assistance. There is always concern about the reliability of international assistance to child rights NGOs, given changing trends in development and humanitarian assistance. Many NGOs worry about this dependence, fearing they may not be able to finish work they have started or be forced to shut down, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
International NGOs typically receive funding from diverse sources. More than half of Save the Children Sweden‟s revenues come from donations, and one quarter is provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The remaining quarter comes from investment income, sales of publications, membership fees and contributions from various other organizations and companies. 159 More broadly, Sweden‟s role in strengthening civil society through development assistance is discussed in box 9.
BOX 9
Support to Civil Society Work on Child Rights from Sweden
In 2008, approximately 1,000 Swedish NGOs and other groups participated in development cooperation programmes in more than 100 countries, involving more than 2,000 partner organizations and associations. Sweden also supports NGOs abroad through its embassies, which work with local organizations to promote their participation in local decision-making. This engagement is additional to Swedish support to programmes and activities carried out through the United Nations and other international organizations. Generally, the aim is to promote active, democratic civil society organizations that work
158 United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of the Convention, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Third periodic report of States parties due in 2007, The Netherlands, CRC/C/NDL/3, 23 July 2008, para. 223. 159 Information available at: <www.savethechildren.se/About-Us/The-organization/>, accessed on 19 March 2010
for marginalized groups and populations affected by poverty, such as by providing health and education services.
Sida is working to strengthen the capacities of civil society organizations, and it aimed to provide SEK 1.3 billion 160 for this purpose in 2009. These resources are channelled through 15 Swedish framework organizations 161 and their development partners. 162
While implementation of the Convention is increasingly evident, paralleling the growth and role played by child rights NGOs, several issues of concern remain regarding civil society organizations and donor relations. Viewing civil society organizations primarily as service providers, some donor agencies are reluctant to support their advocacy and watchdog activities. Such a view can particularly hamper the efforts of child and youth organizations. In reviewing the role of civil society in European Union development assistance to Bolivia, India, Kenya and Senegal, the organization BOND stated that "recognizing civil society as a relevant and political actor, not just as a pool of contract implementers, has the potential to revolutionize the effectiveness and accountability of European Development cooperation." 163
Donors should also keep in mind that civil society organizations are heterogeneous, and it is important to promote diversity through development cooperation. Small local NGOs can suffer from a lack of fund-raising capacity while succeeding in their work. On the other hand, stronger NGOs can draw more donor attention, leaving little space for the growth of grassroot organizations.
A major challenge for national and local NGOs is that many international NGOs are setting up country offices as implementation agencies (not support agencies), competing for small, local initiatives. While the international NGOs have a profile and access to resources and reach, their activities may undermine the initiatives of smaller locally based groups.
6. CONCLUSIONS, CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Civil society plays an important role in implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As a vital part of civil society, NGOs had a central role in drafting the Convention and have subsequently become important partners in promoting and implementing it. NGOs regularly contribute to the work of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. They support the child rights–related work of governments and work closely with other organizations, including national and international NGOs and multilateral organizations such as UNICEF. Hence they are active in helping to make child rights a reality. The relationship between the CRC and civil society:
160 Equivalent to US$ 154.6 million as of 14 May 2010.
162 Statement by Peter Newell during his speech at the Conference "Convention on the Rights of the Child: From Moral Imperatives to Legal Obligations: In Search of Effective Remedies for Child Rights Violations", Geneva 12-13 th of November 2009.
161 A „framework organization‟ is an organization with whom Sida has a framework agreement.
163 BOND (Networking for International Development), „Reviewing civil society‟s role in European Community development assistance in Kenya, Senegal, Bolivia and India‟, information available at: <www.bond.org.uk/>, p. 3, accessed on 2 June 2010.
...can be thought of as a process of mutual legitimation, as the CRC has helped to give legitimacy to the campaigns and programmes of the NGOs and the latter have helped to build public support for the CRC and a better understanding of it. 164
This paper demonstrates that NGOs‟ work for children covers all the general measures of implementation of the CRC. NGOs operate in different legal, political, economic and societal settings, resulting in varied modalities of work and impacts. They have different levels of human, organizational and financial capacity to carry out child rights–related activities. As civil society is a complex and diverse mix of organizations and structures, operating on different geographic, thematic and professional levels and with many different approaches and mandates, no specific rule or model approach to implementation of the CRC was identified through the research for this paper. A diversity of models and approaches has been identified.
Donor policies and the child rights issues they support also influence the relevance and impact of civil society‟s engagement in CRC implementation. Emergencies generated further shift in NGO programming. All these factors have influenced the pace, quality and nature, of civil society roles and its impact on implementation of the CRC.
The analysis for this paper leads to the following specific conclusions:
NGOs have played a significant role in law reform, training, education, research and monitoring. Civil society organizations have had growing influence in State policies, including budgets, as well as in the child rights coordination activities of governments. Over the years they have increasingly cooperated with other stakeholders, such as NHRIs, international organizations, donors and the private sector.
The political environment for NGOs has improved in many countries. Cooperation with governments and parliaments has generally improved, although exceptions remain. In many settings, civil society actions in support of human and children‟s rights are under threat.
Some of the most visible improvements in realization of child rights have resulted from a synergy of efforts by all stakeholders. Collaboration between governments and civil society, including children, has resulted in new legislation, NHRIs for children, national plans of action for children and the establishment of juvenile courts.
NGOs have played roles in all areas covered by all articles of the CRC, often through partnerships with other stakeholders. Because of the collaboration it makes, this makes it difficult to assess the specific contributions of each participant.
164 Alston Philip, and Tobin, John, „Laying the Foundations for Children‟s Rights - An Independent Study of some Key Legal and Institutional Aspects of the Impact of the Convention on the Rights of the Child‟, Innocenti Insigh, Florence, 2005.p. 55, available at:<www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/ii_layingthefoundations.pdf>, accessed on 19 March 2010.
Civil society‟s contribution to implementation of the CRC is also reflected in broader societal participation in promoting and protecting children‟s rights, widened understanding of child rights and in respect for civil society organizations. This is particularly evident in the growing participation of children in efforts for girls and boys; it is no longer just adults who advocate and work on children‟s behalf. Children are more than advocates; they are agents for change, largely due to civil society efforts.
More research is needed to determine the role and impact of civil society organizations on implementation of the general measures of implementation. This research needs to account for the varied global and local circumstances that shape the capacities of children and civil society.
6.1 Challenges to Child Rights and the Role of Civil Society
There are many challenges in implementing child rights, and all of them affect the role of civil society.
Financial downturns and crises endanger the well-being of children. UNICEF views the current global economic crisis as threatening to reverse accomplishments in child survival and well-being:
Countries on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals could fall behind, while those that were struggling to advance could be left even worse off. The crisis threatens both the resources of families as well as national budgets, creating serious challenges to the fulfillment of children‟s and women‟s rights. 165
Decentralization and privatization are seen as providing a more democratic and participatory environment in which people can develop in freedom. But privatizing core services might lead States to abdicate their responsibility to children. It could also make services such as health or education too expensive for poor, marginalized and excluded children and their families.
Globalization and urbanization bring further challenges, also with consequences for children. Environmental issues such as climate change, pollution and land degradation seriously impede the realization of child rights. Natural disasters often come without warning, hitting even the most economically advanced countries and regions. Crime and violence and internal and international armed conflicts hamper realization of the rights of children. In spite of enormous efforts to prevent violence and protect children by stakeholders in all parts of the world, including civil society organizations, implementing the CRC in such circumstances remains a great challenge.
165 Information available at: <www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/index_49070.html>, accessed on 2 June 2010.
Poverty represents an overarching challenge. Yet poverty alone is not the only root cause for the failure to fulfil children‟s rights; many children from wealthier societies and families do not fully enjoy their rights.
Other challenges are related to social norms and values. Although values and traditions vary around the world, States parties to the CRC have agreed to a set of rights. Yet many States parties find it challenging to implement the CRC due to prejudices, stereotypes and practices that are deeply rooted in local cultures and norms and thus are reflected in legal frameworks. These difficult challenges require patient efforts by all actors.
Many States lack political commitment to implement the general measures. Taking into account all other challenges, those related to effective and efficient governance remain of the paramount significance for fulfilment of the CRC.
Responding to all the challenges of implementing the CRC is a huge task, requiring the involvement of national and international organizations, States, the private sector and civil society. Civil society organizations are expected to respond to all challenges, including emergencies, yet it is exactly these challenges to children‟s rights that threaten the work and even the existence of these institutions. A State facing a crisis may choose solutions that harm children, such as reducing social spending on children. NGOs can help alleviate the consequences of crises for children while maintaining their regular activities, though they too may face falling budgets and struggle to maintain their ongoing activities.
Civil society is often the strongest voice for the promotion and protection of human rights. Implementing the rights of every child, as set forth in the CRC, should always be the primary consideration. A strong and vibrant civil society is fundamental to keeping child rights high on all agendas.
6.2 Implementing Civil Society Contributions
To ensure an ongoing and improving role for civil society in implementing the CRC, the following actions should be strengthened:
6.2.1 States
Support NGO activities on children‟s rights and CRC implementation.
Establish separate funds for assistance to child rights and child-focused NGOs.
Establish transparent procedures for NGO funding applications.
Adopt legislation that legitimizes the status of NGOs and enables tax incentives for their activities.
Provide training for NGOs to help them strengthen their capacities, including in child rights monitoring and child budgeting.
Nurture friendly and constructive relations with NGOs and promote meaningful participation of children and young people.
6.2.2. International organizations
Mobilize, support and strengthen the capacity of civil society to actively engage in CRC monitoring and implementation.
Promote coordination and collaboration among NGOs.
Support child and youth organizations and other child-led activities in efforts to promote and implement the CRC.
Strengthen adult capacities to engage children and young people in a meaningful way.
Encourage and support States in further acknowledging and enabling civil society‟s activities on national and community levels.
Prioritize the provision of support to local initiatives and do not implement directly.
6.2.3 Donors, including the private sector
Support civil society organizations in their monitoring and implementation of the CRC.
Engage and support civil society through corporate social responsibility.
Act to ensure that the activities of child rights NGOs are not hampered by financial crises.
Make all efforts to ensure that NGOs are included as partners in supporting governments and promoting active participation by children and young people.
Support NGOs in a sustainable manner and encourage them to build networks to aid in coordinating their activities with like-minded organizations.
Where appropriate, provide training and education for civil society organizations, including in data collection, monitoring and conducting child budget analysis.
Promote simple procedures to apply for grants and coordinate these procedures across donor agencies.
6.2.4 Civil society
Participate actively in implementation of the CRC, including through the preparation of alternative reports and by following up on the Committee‟s concluding observations.
Advocate with States parties to fulfil their responsibilities in implementing children‟s rights.
Collaborate with national independent human rights institutions.
Engage students, volunteers and children in programmes and activities.
Work to improve organizational, financial and professional capacities for better documentation of activities and lessons learned, and regularly assess and evaluate work to strengthen evidence-based advocacy.
Coordinate and collaborate with other civil society organizations nationally and internationally.
Continue building partnerships with governments, yet stay independent of their actions.
Through these steps it can be foreseen that the role of civil society and NGOs, in particular, in implementing the CRC will be further enhanced, leading to activities reaching the realization of children‟s rights in all areas.
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usTLD Transfer Policy
2021 Registry Services, LLC
Contents
1 Policy on Transfer of Sponsorship of Registrations between Registrars
A. Holder-Authorized Transfers
1.1 Registrar Requirements
The Registration Agreement between each registrar and its Registrant must allow for Registered Name Holders to transfer their domain name registrations between Registrars provided that the Gaining Registrar's transfer process meets the minimum standards of this policy and that such transfer is not prohibited by usTLD Registry policies. Inter-Registrar domain name transfer processes must be clear and concise in order to avoid confusion. Further, Registrars should make reasonable efforts inform Registered Name Holders of, and provide access to, the published documentation of the specific transfer process employed by the Registrars.
Both the Administrative Contact and the Registered Name Holder, as listed in the usTLD Administrator's publicly accessible WHOIS service, are the only parties that have the authority to approve or deny a transfer request to the Gaining Registrar. In the event of a dispute, the Registered Name Holder's authority supersedes that of the Administrative Contact. Registrars may use WHOIS data from either the Registrar of Record or the relevant Registry for the purpose of verifying the authenticity of a transfer request; or from another data source as determined from time to time.
For the purposes of this Exhibit, the Registered Name Holder and the Administrative Contact are collectively referred to as the "Transfer Contact".
1.2 Gaining Registrar Requirements
For each instance where a Registered Name Holder requests to transfer a domain name registration to a different Registrar, the Gaining Registrar shall:
§ Obtain express authorization from the Transfer Contact. Hence, a transfer may only proceed if confirmation of the transfer is received by the Gaining Registrar from the Transfer
§ The authorization must be made via a valid Standardized Form of Authorization (FOA). There are two different FOA's available on the usTLD Administrator's website. The FOA labeled "Initial Authorization for Registrar Transfer" must be used by the Gaining Registrar to request an authorization for a registrar transfer from the Transfer Contact. The FOA labeled "Confirmation of Registrar Transfer Request" may be used by the Registrar of Record to request confirmation of the transfer from the Transfer Contact.
The FOA shall be communicated in English, and any dispute arising out of a transfer request shall be conducted in the English language. Registrars may choose to communicate with the Transfer Contact in additional languages. However, Registrars choosing to exercise such option are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the translation into such additional non-English version of the FOA.
§ In the event that the Gaining Registrar relies on a physical process to obtain this authorization, a paper copy of the FOA will suffice insofar as it has been signed by the Transfer Contact and further that it is accompanied by a physical copy of the Registrar of Record's WHOIS output for the domain name in question.
§ If the Gaining Registrar relies on a physical authorization process, then the Gaining Registrar assumes the burden of obtaining reliable evidence of the identity of the Transfer Contact and maintaining appropriate records proving that such evidence was obtained. Further the Gaining Registrar also assumes the burden for ensuring that the entity making the request is indeed authorized to do so. The acceptable forms of identification for these purposes are:
§ Notarized statement
§ Valid Drivers license
§ Passport
§ Articles of Incorporation
§ Military ID
§ State/Government issued ID
§ Birth Certificate
§ In the event that the Gaining Registrar relies on an electronic process to obtain this authorization the acceptable forms of identity would include:
§ Electronic signature in conformance with United States legislation, in the location of the Gaining Registrar (if such legislation exists).
§ Consent from an individual or entity that has an email address matching the Registered Name Holder's email address.
§ The Registrar of Record may not deny a transfer request solely because it believes that the Gaining Registrar has not received the confirmation set forth above.
§ A transfer must not be allowed to proceed if no confirmation is received by the Gaining Registrar. The presumption in all cases will be that the Gaining Registrar has received and authenticated the transfer request made by a Registered Name Holder.
§ Request, by the transmission of a "transfer" command as specified in the Registrar Tool Kit, that the Registry Operator database be changed to reflect the new Registrar.
§ Transmission of a "transfer" command constitutes a representation on the part of the Gaining Registrar that the requisite authorization has been obtained from the Transfer Contact listed in the authoritative WHOIS database.
§ The Gaining Registrar is responsible for validating the Registered Name Holder requests to transfer domain names between Registrars. However, the Registrar of Record must still transmit an FOA in accordance with the Obligations of the Registrar of Record in this policy.
§ The FOA labeled "Initial Authorization for Registrar Transfer" shall expire under the following circumstances:
§ a period of sixty (60) days has passed since the FOA was issued by the Gaining Registrar, unless the Gaining Registrar allows automatic renewal of the FOA and the Registered Name Holder has expressly opted in to the automatic renewal;
§ the domain name expires before the inter-registrar transfer is completed;
§ a Change of Registrant is completed further to the Section Change of Registrant Process.
§ the inter-registrar transfer is completed.
§ If the FOA expires pursuant to one of the aforementioned circumstances described prior to submitting the "transfer" request to the registry, in order to proceed with the transfer, the Gaining Registrar must re-authorize the transfer request via a new
1.3 Obligations of the Registrar of Record
§ A Registrar of Record shall confirm the intent of the Registered Name Holder when a notice of a pending transfer is received by notifying the Registered Name Holder of the transfer. The Registrar of Record must do so in a manner consistent with the standards set forth in this policy.
§ In order to ensure that the form of the request employed by the Registrar of Record is substantially administrative and informative in nature and clearly provided to the Transfer Contact for the purpose of verifying the intent of the Transfer Contact, the Registrar of Record must use the FOA.
§ The FOA shall be communicated in English and any dispute arising out of a transfer request shall be conducted in the English language. This requirement does not preclude the Registrar of Record from marketing to its existing customers through separate communications in a language other than English. Registrars may choose to communicate with the Transfer Contact in additional languages. However, the Registrar choosing to exercise such option is responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the translation into such additional non-English version of theFOA. Further, such non-English communications must follow the processes and procedures set forth in this policy. This includes but is not limited to the requirement that no Registrar shall add any additional information to the FOA used to obtain the consent of the Transfer Contact in the case of a transfer request.
In the event the Registered Name Holder preapproves a transfer, the Registrar of Record has the option of sending a modified version of the FOA, which informs the Registered Name Holder that the preapproved transfer has been initiated.
This requirement does not preclude the Registrar of Record from marketing to its existing customers through separate communications.
§ The FOA should be sent by the Registrar of Record to the Registered Name Holder as soon as possible, but must be sent not later than twenty-four (24) hours after receiving the transfer request from the usTLD Administrator.
§ Failure by the Registrar of Record to respond within five (5) calendar days to a notification from the Registry regarding a transfer request will result in a default "approval" of the transfer.
§ In the event that a Transfer Contact listed in the WHOIS has not confirmed its request to transfer with the Registrar of Record and the Registrar of Record has not explicitly
denied the transfer request, the default action will be that the Registrar of Record must allow the transfer to proceed.
§ Upon denying a transfer request for any of the following reasons, the Registrar of Record must provide the Registered Name Holder and the potential Gaining Registrar with the reason for denial. The Registrar of Record may deny a transfer request only in the following specific instances:
§ Evidence of fraud
§ Reasonable dispute over the identity of the Registrant or Administrative Contact
§ No payment for previous registration period (including credit card chargebacks) if the domain name is past its expiration date or for previous or current registration periods if the domain name has not yet expired. In all such cases, however, the domain name must be put into "Registrar Hold" status by the Registrar of Record prior to the denial of transfer.
§ Express written objection to the transfer from Transfer Contact. Objection could take the form of specific request (e.g. by email, fax, paper document or other processes) by the Transfer Contact to deny a particular transfer request or a general objection to all transfer requests received by the Registrar, either temporarily or indefinitely. In all cases, the objection must be provided with the express and informed consent of the authorized Transfer Contact on an opt-in basis and upon request by the authorized Transfer Contact, the Registrar must remove the lock or provide a reasonably accessible method for the authorized Transfer Contact to remove the lock within five (5) calendar days.
§ The transfer was requested within 60 days of the creation date as shown in the registry WHOIS record for the domain name.
§ A domain name is within 60 days (or a lesser period to be determined) after being transferred (apart from being transferred back to the original Registrar in cases where both Registrars so agree and/or where a decision in the dispute resolution process so directs). "Transferred" shall only mean that an interregistrar transfer has occurred in accordance with the procedures of this policy
§ The Registrar of Record must deny a transfer request in the following circumstances:
§ A pending usDRP proceeding that the Registrar has been informed of.
§ Court order by a court of competent jurisdiction.
§ Pending dispute related to a previous transfer pursuant to the Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy.
§ usRS proceeding or usRS suspension that the Registrar has been informed of.
§ The Registrar imposed a 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock following a Change of Registrant, and the Registered Name Holder did not opt out of the 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock prior to the Change of Registrant
§ Instances when the requested change of Registrar may not be denied include, but are not limited to:
§ Nonpayment for a pending or future registration period.
§ No response from the Registered Name Holder or Administrative Contact.
§ Domain name in Registrar Lock Status, unless the Registered Name Holder has been provided with the reasonable opportunity and ability to unlock the domain name prior to the Transfer Request.
§ Domain name registration period time constraints, other than during the first 60 days of initial registration, during the first 60 days after a registrar transfer, or during the 60-day lock following a Change of
§ General payment defaults between Registrar and business partners / affiliates in cases where the Registered Name Holder for the domain in question has paid for the registration.
§ A dispute over payment. The Registrar of Records must not employ transfer processes as a mechanism to secure payment for services from a Registered Name Holder. Exceptions to this requirement are as follows:
§ in the case of non-payment for previous registration period(s) if the transfer is requested after the expiration date, or
§ in the case of non-payment of the previous or current registration period, if transfer is requested before the expiration date.
1.4 Registrar Coordination
§ Each Registrar is responsible for keeping copies of documentation, including the FOA and the Transfer Contacts response thereto, that may be required for filing and supporting a dispute under the dispute resolution policy. Gaining Registrars must
maintain copies of the FOA as received from the Transfer Contact. Copies of the reliable evidence of identity must be kept with the FOA.
§ Both the Gaining Registrar and the Registrar of Record must provide the evidence relied on for the transfer during and after the applicable inter-registrar domain name transaction(s). Such information must be provided when requested by, and only by, the other Registrar that is party to the transfer transaction. Additionally, the usTLD Administrator, a court or authority with jurisdiction over the matter or a third party dispute resolution panel may also require such information within five (5) days of the request.
§ The Gaining Registrar must retain and produce pursuant to a request by a Losing Registrar a written or electronic copy of the FOA. In instances in which the Registrar of Record has requested copies of the FOA, the Gaining Registrar must fulfill the Registrar of Record's request (including providing the attendant supporting documentation) within five (5) calendar days. Failure to provide this documentation within the time period specified is grounds for reversal by the usTLD Administrator or the Dispute Resolution Panel in the event that a transfer complaint is filed in accordance with the requirements of this policy.
§ If either a Registrar of Record or a Gaining Registrar does not believe that a transfer request was handled in accordance with the provisions of this policy, then the Registrar may initiate a dispute resolution procedure as set forth in this policy.
§ For the purposes of facilitating transfer requests, Registrars should provide and maintain a unique and private email address for use only by other Registrars and the usTLD Administrator:
§ This email address is for issues related to transfer requests and the procedures set forth in this policy only.
§ The email address should be managed to ensure messages are received by someone who can respond to the transfer issue.
§ Messages received at such email address must be responded to within a commercial reasonable timeframe not to exceed seven (7) calendar days.
§ Transfer Emergency Action Contact
§ Registrars will establish a Transfer Emergency Action Contact ("TEAC") for urgent communications relating to transfers. The goal of the TEAC is to quickly establish a real-time conversation between registrars (in a language that both
parties can understand) in an emergency. Further actions can then be taken towards a resolution, including initiating existing (or future) transfer dispute or undo processes.
§ Communications to TEACs will be reserved for use by Registrars, and usTLD Administrator staff. The TEAC point of contact may be designated as a telephone number or some other real-time communication channel and will be recorded in, and protected by, the registrar portal. Communications to a TEAC must be initiated in a timely manner, within a reasonable period of time following the alleged unauthorized loss of a domain.
§ Messages sent via the TEAC communication channel must generate a nonautomated response by a human representative of the Gaining Registrar. The person or team responding must be capable and authorized to investigate and address urgent transfer issues. Responses are required within 4 hours of the initial request, although final resolution of the incident may take longer.
§ The Losing Registrar will report failures to respond to a TEAC communication to the usTLD Administrator. Failure to respond to a TEAC communication may result in a transfer-undo in accordance with this policy, and may also result in further action.
§ Both parties will retain correspondence in written or electronic form of any TEAC communication and responses, and share copies of this documentation the usTLD Administrator upon request. This documentation will be retained in accordance with USTLD REGISTRAR ACCREDITATION AND REGISTRYREGISTRAR AGREEMENT. Users of the TEAC communication channel should report non-responsive Registrars to the usTLD Administrator. Additionally, the usTLD Administrator may conduct periodic tests of the Registrar TEAC communication channel in situations and a manner deemed appropriate to ensure that registrars are indeed responding to TEAC
1.5 Requirements for the "ClientTransferProhibited" Status and "AuthInfo" Codes
§ Subject to the usTLD Administrator specifications or policies and any applicable laws or regulations, Registrars must follow the requirements set forth below.
Registrars may only set a domain name in "ClientTransferProhibited" status upon registration or subsequent request by the Registered Name Holder, provided, however, that the Registrar includes in its registration agreement (obtaining the express consent of the Registered Name Holder) the terms and conditions upon which it prohibits transfer of the domain name. Further, the Registrar must remove the "ClientTransferProhibited" status within five (5) calendar days of the Registered Name Holder's initial request if the Registrar does not provide facilities for the Registered Name Holder to remove the "ClientTransferProhibited" status.
§ Registrars must provide the Registered Name Holder with the unique "AuthInfo" code and remove the "ClientTransferProhibited" within five (5) calendar days of the Registered Name Holder's initial request if the Registrar does not provide facilities for the Registered Name Holder to generate and manage their own unique "AuthInfo" code and to remove the "ClientTransferProhibited" status.
§ Registrars may not employ any mechanism for complying with a Registered Name Holder's request to remove the "ClientTransferProhibited" status or obtain the applicable "AuthInfo Code" that is more restrictive than the mechanisms used for changing any aspect of the Registered Name Holder's contact or name server information.
§ The Registrar of Record must not refuse to remove the "ClientTransferProhibited" status or release an "AuthInfo Code" to the Registered Name Holder solely because there is a dispute between the Registered Name Holder and the Registrar over payment.
§ Registrar-generated "AuthInfo" codes must be unique on a per-domain basis.
§ The "AuthInfo" codes must be used solely to identify a Registered Name Holder, whereas the FOAs still need to be used for authorization or confirmation of a transfer request, as described in this policy.
1.6 Registry Requirements
§ Upon receipt of the "transfer" command from the Gaining Registrar, the usTLD Administrator will transmit an electronic notification to both Registrars. In the case of those Registries that use electronic mail notifications, the response notification may be sent to the unique email address established by each Registrar for the purpose of facilitating transfers.
§ The usTLD Administrator shall complete the requested transfer unless, within five (5) calendar days, the usTLD Administrator receives a NACK protocol command from the Registrar of Record.
§ When the Registry's database has been updated to reflect the change to the Gaining Registrar, the usTLD Administrator will transmit an electronic notification to both Registrars. The notification may be sent to the unique email address established by each Registrar for the purpose of facilitating transfers or such other email address agreed to by the parties.
§ The usTLD Administrator shall undo a transfer if, after a transfer has occurred, the usTLD Administrator receives one of the notices as set forth below. In such case, the transfer will be reversed and the Registrar of Record field reset to its original state. The usTLD Administrator must undo the transfer within five (5) calendar days of receipt of the notice except in the case of a Registry dispute decision, in which case the usTLD Administrator must undo the transfer within fourteen calendar days unless a court action is filed. The notice required shall be one of the following:
§ Agreement of the Registrar of Record and the Gaining Registrar sent by email, letter or fax that the transfer was made by mistake or was otherwise not in accordance with the procedures set forth in this policy;
§ The final determination of a dispute resolution body having jurisdiction over the transfer; or
§ Order of a court having jurisdiction over the transfer;
§ Documentation provided by the Registrar of Record prior to transfer that the Gaining Registrar has not responded to a message via theTEAC within the timeframe specified in this policy.
1.7 Records of Registration
Each Registrar shall require its customer, the Registered Name Holder, to maintain its own records appropriate to document and prove the initial domain name registration date.
1.8 Effect on Term of Registration
The completion by usTLD Administrator of a holder-authorized transfer under this Part A shall result in a one-year extension of the existing registration, provided that in no event shall the total unexpired term of a registration exceed ten (10) years.
2 usTLD Administrator Approved Transfers
1. Transfer of all of the registrations held by one registrar as the result of acquisition of that registrar or its assets by another registrar, or lack of accreditation of that Registrar or lack of its authorization with the usTLD Administrator, may be made according to the following procedure:
§ The acquiring registrar must be accredited by usTLD Administrator for the usTLD under an Accreditation Agreement and must have in effect a usTLD Administrator-Registrar Agreement with usTLD Administrator for the usTLD.
§ The usTLD Administrator shall determine in its sole discretion that the transfer would promote the community interest, such as the interest in stability that may be threatened by the actual or imminent business failure of a registrar.
2. Upon satisfaction of these two conditions, the usTLD Administrator will make the necessary one-time changes in the registry database for no charge for transfers involving 50,000 name registrations or fewer; provided that the data to be transferred to the usTLD Administrator is in the form specified by the usTLD Administrator ("Approved Format"). If the transfer involves registrations of more than 50,000 names, and the data to be transferred to the usTLD Administrator is in the Approved format, the usTLD Administrator will charge the acquiring registrar a one-time flat fee of US $50,000. If the data to be transferred is not in the Approved Format, the usTLD Administrator may charge a reasonable fee, as determined by the usTLD Administrator, in connection with the cost associated with reformatting such data.
3 Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy
Procedures for handling disputes concerning inter-registrar transfers are set forth in the Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy. Procedures in this policy must be followed by accredited Registrars.
4 Inter-Registrant Transfer (Change of Registrant)
4.1 Definitions
This policy uses the following terms:
§ "Change of Registrant" means a Material Change to any of the following:
§ Prior Registrant name
§ Prior Registrant organization
§ Prior Registrant email address
§ Administrative Contact email address, if there is no Prior Registrant email address.
§ "Designated Agent" means an individual or entity that the Prior Registrant or New Registrant explicitly authorizes to approve a Change of Registrant on its behalf.
§ "Material Change" means a change which is not a typographical correction. The following will be considered material changes:
§ A change to the Registered Name Holder's name or organization that does not appear to be merely a typographical correction;
§ Any change to the Registered Name Holder's name or organization that is accompanied by a change of address or phone number;
§ Any change to the Registered Name Holder's email address.
§ "Prior Registrant" means the Registered Name Holder at the time a Change of Registrant is initiated.
§ "New Registrant" means the entity or person to whom the Prior Registrant proposes to transfer its domain name registration.
4.2 Availability of Change of Registrant
In general, registrants must be permitted to update their registration/WHOIS data and transfer their registration rights to other registrants freely.
4.2.1 A Registrar must deny a Change of Registrant request under the following circumstances:
§ The domain name registration agreement has expired, and the Registered Name Holder no longer has the right to renew or transfer the domain name to another registrar;
§ The Change of Registrant was not properly authorized by the Prior Registrant and the New Registrant, further to the Section Change of Registrant Process;
§ The domain name is subject to a domain name related dispute, including but not limited to:
§ A pending usDRP proceeding that the Registrar has been informed of;
§ A pending usRS proceeding that the Registrar has been informed of;
§ A pending TDRP proceeding;
§ A court order by a court of competent jurisdiction, prohibiting a Change of Registrant, that the Registrar has been informed of.
4.2.2 In the following circumstances, the Change of Registrant process described in the Section Change of Registrant Process below does not apply:
§ the registration agreement expires;1
§ the registration agreement is terminated by the Registrar;
§ the Registrar or usTLD Administrator updates the Prior Registrant's information pursuant to a court order;
§ the Registrar updates the Prior Registrant's information in the implementation of a usDRP decision;
§ the Registrar updates the Prior Registrant's information in accordance with policy;
§ the Registrar updates the Prior Registrant's information in response to an abuse complaint.
4.3 Change of Registrant Process
4.3.1 To process a Change of Registrant from the Prior Registrant to a New Registrant, the Registrar must do all of the following:
§ Confirm the domain name is eligible for Change of Registrant further to the Section Availability of Change of Registrant;
§ Obtain confirmation of the Change of Registrant request from the New Registrant, or a Designated Agent of the New Registrant. The Registrar must use a secure mechanism to confirm that the New Registrant and/or their respective Designated Agents have explicitly consented to the Change of Registrant. In obtaining the confirmation, the Registrar must inform the New Registrant or its Designated Agent, if applicable, that the New Registrant must enter into a registration agreement with the Registrar (a link to the registration agreement itself can be provided). The Registrar must also inform the New Registrant or Designated Agent, if applicable, that the request will not proceed if it is not confirmed in a number of days set by the Registrar, not to exceed sixty (60) days);
§ Inform the Prior Registrant or its Designated Agent that if its final goal is to transfer the domain name to a different registrar, the Prior Registrant is advised to request the interregistrar transfer before the Change of Registrant to avoid triggering the 60-day lock described in the Section Change of Registrant Process Clause 14 (unless the Registrar gave the Prior Registrant the option to opt out of the 60-day lock, and the Prior Registrant opted out the 60-day lock);
§ Upon or after informing the Prior Registrant or its Designated Agent, if applicable, as described in Change of Registrant Process Clause 13.3 above, obtain confirmation of the Change of Registrant request from the Prior Registrant, or the Designated Agent of the Prior Registrant. The Registrar must use a secure mechanism to confirm that the Prior Registrant and/or their respective Designated Agents have explicitly consented to the Change of Registrant. In obtaining the confirmation, the Registrar must inform the Prior Registrant or Designated Agent, if applicable, that the Change of Registrant request will not proceed if it is not confirmed in a number of days set by the Registrar, not to exceed sixty (60) days);
§ Process the Change of Registrant within one (1) day of obtaining the confirmations described above;
§ Notify the Prior Registrant and New Registrant before or within one day of the completion of the Change of Registrant. The notification must:
§ always be sent to both the New Registrant and Prior Registrant before or within one day of the Change of Registrant being performed;
§ explain the request that was received and list the domain(s) in question;
§ include contact information for questions.
§ advise the Prior Registrant and New Registrant of the 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock as described in the Section Change of Registrant Process Clause 14 or advise the Prior Registrant that it previously opted out of the 60-day interregistrar transfer lock as described in the Section Change of Registrant Process Clause 14.
4.3.2 The Registrar must impose a 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock following a Change of Registrant, provided, however, that the Registrar may allow the Registered Name Holder to opt out of the 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock prior to any Change of Registrant request.
Updated 29 August 2019
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Volume 7 | Issue 1
Undergraduate Economic Review
Article 4
2010
Macroeconomic Impacts Of Oil Price Levels And Volatility On Indonesia
Marcel Gozali Carleton College, email@example.com
Recommended Citation
Gozali, Marcel (2011) "Macroeconomic Impacts Of Oil Price Levels And Volatility On Indonesia," Undergraduate Economic Review: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by The Ames Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Center for Curricular and Faculty Development, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the President. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Commons @ IWU by the faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact firstname.lastname@example.org. ©Copyright is owned by the author of this document.
Macroeconomic Impacts Of Oil Price Levels And Volatility On Indonesia
Abstract
This paper empirically examines the impact of oil price levels and volatility on key macroeconomic indicators of Indonesia. In particular, two measures of volatility – historical volatility and realized volatility – are utilized and compared for their different macroeconomic impacts. The relationships between oil price levels, the two volatility measurements, and macroeconomic indicators are explored with the Granger-causality test and the vector autoregressive system (VAR). Empirical analysis is done on two sets of data – one over the period between 1990 and 2008 and another between 1999 and 2008, following a structural break in the time series data during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997-1998 (Rafiq, Salim and Bloch ,2008). Results from both sets of data show that realized volatility is a significant predictor of growth rates of GDP only when oil price levels is included in the VAR system. Another important result is that oil price levels has statistically meaningful impacts on government consumption and investment, and that the explanatory power of price levels to investment is strengthened when realized volatility is included in the time-series analysis.
CARLETON COLLEGE ECONOMICS SENIOR INTEGRATIVE EXERCISE
Macroeconomic Impacts Of Oil Price Levels And Volatility On Indonesia
February 10
2010
This paper empirically examines the impact of oil price levels and volatility on key macroeconomic indicators of Indonesia. In particular, two measures of volatility – historical volatility and realized volatility – are utilized and compared for their different macroeconomic impacts. The relationships between oil price levels, the two volatility measurements, and macroeconomic indicators are explored with the Granger-causality test and the vector autoregressive system (VAR). Empirical analysis is done on two sets of data – one over the period between 1990 and 2008 and another between 1999 and 2008, following a structural break in the time series data during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997-1998 (Rafiq, Salim and Bloch ,2008). Results from both sets of data show that realized volatility is a significant predictor of growth rates of GDP only when oil price levels is included in the VAR system. Another important result is that oil price levels has statistically meaningful impacts on government consumption and investment, and that the explanatory power of price levels to investment is strengthened when realized volatility is included in the time-series analysis.
Published by Digital Commons @ IWU, 2011
Author:
Marcel Gozali
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Introduction
Policymakers are concerned with crude oil price levels and large movements in oil prices. This is because pioneering work by Hamilton (1983) found that all but one recession between the end of World War II and 1973 in the United States were preceded by a sharp rise in oil prices. The study paved the road for many others in investigating the macroeconomic impacts of oil shocks in developed economies (Burbridge and Harrison, 1984; Mork, Olsen and Mysen 1994; Ferderer, 1996; Guo and Kliesen, 2005). However, while many studied the macroeconomic impacts of oil price levels, few conducted analysis on the effect of oil price volatility while hardly any was done in the context of developing countries. In bridging this gap within the current literature, this paper attempts to analyze the impacts of both oil price levels and price volatility on the macroeconomy of Indonesia.
The contributions of this paper differ from previous research in three areas. Firstly, this paper remains one of the few that investigate the combined effects of oil price levels and price volatility – the two channels through which changes in oil prices affect aggregate economic activity. Secondly, empirical analysis is done in the context of Indonesia, on which no prior study of this type exists. Thirdly, this paper attempts to compare empirical results between two different measures of price volatility, namely historical volatility and realized volatility. Historical volatility is standard variance, which is used by earlier studies to measure oil price volatility (Burbidge and Harrison, 1984; Mork, Olsen and Mysen 1994; Ferderer, 1996). Realized volatility is a comparatively new measure of oil price proposed by Andersen et al. (2001a, 2001b, 2003) and Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (2001a, 2002) to be an unbiased and highly efficient estimator of volatility. Only two other studies on oil price volatility used this volatility measure (Guo and Kliesen 2005; Rafiq, Salim and Bloch, 2008).
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Indonesia serves as an appropriate and interesting case for a few reasons. Firstly, the Indonesian domestic market is heavily dependent on oil. Oil makes up the largest portion of energy sources used domestically, accounting for 52 percent of the energy mix (Simbolon 2009). This is high relative to the global average of 36 percent, making the Indonesian economy particularly susceptible to oil price changes (International Energy Outlook 2009 – Chapter 1). When oil prices hit record prices in 2008, power generation became so costly that largest stateowned power company switched off its oil-fired power plants, causing rotating blackouts nationwide (Simbolon 2009). Secondly, no such studies on Indonesia exist. Finally, the time series data required for this study – daily oil prices and quarterly Indonesian macroeconomic indicators – are available and accurate.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The Literature Review discusses the macroeconomic impacts of oil price levels and price volatility on the US and other countries, and the transmission channels through which both impact macroeconomic activities. Data Sources lists the definition of all variables used for empirical analysis, including the measurement of macroeconomic variables and price volatility, and the justifications for the use of a particular type of oil price. Details of the statistical methods used in this paper are under Empirical Methodology and empirical findings are discussed in Analysis Of Results before the Conclusion Of Results And Policy Implications is offered in the final section.
Literature Review
Oil price shocks and the US macroeconomy
In response to two consecutive oil shocks in the 1970s, Hamilton (1983) analyzed the correlation between oil prices and the output of the US economy over 1948-1981, and found that changes in oil price appeared to Granger-cause both real and nominal GNP, unemployment,
Published by Digital Commons @ IWU, 2011
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domestic prices, wages, coal and metallic commodity indexes, interest rates, and high-grade bond yields. This result cast serious doubt on the proposition that the correlation between oil prices and the macroeconomy represented a mere coincidence. In particular, the correlation between oil price increases and real GNP becomes more negative for three quarters after an oil shock between the end of World War II and 1973, showing that every recession in that period had been preceded by a large increase in the price of crude oil with a lag of around nine months. Further work by Hamilton (1988, 1996, 2008) reinforced his conviction that statisticallysignificant correlations existed between oil prices and macroeconomic activities.
A number of studies confirmed Hamilton's results and made significant discoveries of their own. Gisser and Goodwin (1986) claimed that oil prices had significant impacts on output in the United States between 1961 and 1982, and that these impacts even exceeded the impacts of monetary and fiscal policy. The authors also proved that monetary and fiscal policy were unable to predict oil price changes, thereby concluding that oil price changes reflected the influence of exogenous events. A notable contribution in this study was related to the discovery that oil prices were determined by distinctively different factors before and after 1973. Before 1973, inflation, above all other variables, was a statistically-significant predictor of oil prices; after 1973, no such predictor could be identified. These results were consistent with the historical developments of oil pricing. The pre-1973 results supported the notion that the pricing of oil in the United States were dominated by regulatory bodies whose manipulation of supply conditions to meet demand were constrained by a need to keep inflation under control. The post-1973 results were suggestive of the domination of a post-1973 OPEC strategy based on a relatively broader array of indicators that was not strongly focused on any one variable.
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Building on the work of Hamilton (1983) and Gisser and Goodwin (1986), Hooker (1996) indicated that the oil price shock of 1973, an effect of OPEC domination, had a large and significant impact on GDP growth in the United States, while that of 1979 was significant but incomplete in capturing the dynamics of the 1980-82 recession. In particular, an increase of 10% in oil prices led to a GDP growth which is 0.6% lower in the third and fourth quarters relative to the first and second quarters after the shock.
Asymmetric impact of oil price changes
Though agreeing with Hamilton, Mork (1989) observed that the author's study included only periods of oil price increases and excluded periods of oil price declines. In a check for robustness of Hamilton's results, the data set was extended to 1988 which included periods of oil price crashes, and real price increases and decreases were specified as separate variables and tested individually for statistical significance within the same econometric framework as specified by Hamilton (1983). The results showed that Hamilton's conclusions broke down after 1986 as Hamilton had implicitly assumed a symmetric effect of oil shocks: An increase (decrease) in oil prices reduced (increased) future GDP growth (Hooker 1996; Guo and Kliesen 2005). However, the effect could also be asymmetric, in which an oil price decrease might actually lower future GDP growth (Guo and Kliesen, 2005).
Oil price shocks in G10, European and Asian countries
Extending Hamilton's conclusions and incorporating Mork's discovery of asymmetric effects to G10, European and Asian countries was done by Mork and Olsen (1994), Lardic and Mignon (2006), and Cunado and Gracia (2005). Basing their work on seven OECD countries including the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany (West), France, the United Kingdom, and
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Norway, Mork and Olsen (1994) examined the correlation between oil price changes and GDP growth between 1967 and 1992. Bivariate correlations between oil-price changes and GDP growth were carried out for each country in a fashion similar to Hamilton's Granger causality test, which refers to a regression equation with GDP growth as the variable on the left and lagged values of GDP growth and oil price changes on the right. Similar to Mork, real oil price increases and decreases were entered as separate variables to test for asymmetries for each country. The bivariate results showed a general pattern of negative correlations between GDP growth and oil price increases. Norway was the only country that showed a significantly positive correlation, which was not a surprise given the large Norwegian oil sector. Meanwhile, correlations with oil price decreases were positive which suggested that oil-price declines were associated with subsequent declines in overall growth. The overall differences between the estimated coefficients for oil price increases and decreases, respectively, were suggestive of asymmetric effects.
In a study of the long-term relationship between oil prices and economic activity in G7, Europe and Euro area countries, Lardic and Mignon (2006) found that rising oil prices slowed down economic activity more than falling oil prices stimulated it. The authors found evidence that their time-series data exhibited non-stationarity, leading to the rejection of standard cointegration. Building on Mork's discovery of asymmetric effects, the authors proceeded to find evidence of asymmetric cointegration between oil prices and GDP in most of the European countries in its data. Asymmetric cointegration involved the decomposition of a time series into its positive and negative partial sums, which was conceptually similar to Mork's specification of oil price increases and decreases as separate variables.
Cunado and Gracia (2005) examined the relation between oil price shocks and macroeconomic activities in six Asian countries, namely Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
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Japan, Thailand and the Philippines. Similar to Mork and Olsen (1994), Hamilton's Granger causality test was used and the asymmetric effect of oil price changes was accounted for. The paper's main contribution was the testing of the impact of expressing oil prices in different currencies, either local or the United States dollar (USD). The relationship between oil price shocks and economic growth rates was more significant when oil price shocks were defined in local currencies than when defined in USD. In testing for evidence of causality from oil price shocks to inflation rates, all six countries displayed evidence for causality when oil was priced in local currencies but only 3 did when oil was priced in USD.
Transmission channels through which changes in oil price impact macroeconomic activities
Changes in oil price can impact the macroeconomy through many transmission channels. First, since oil is a vital input, rising oil prices can lead to a classic supply-side shock that reduces potential output (Barro 1984; Brown and Yücel 1999). Consequently, the growth of output and productivity decreases. The decline in productivity growth lessens real wage growth and increases the unemployment rate at which inflation accelerates. If the higher oil prices are expected to be temporary, consumers will attempt to smooth out their consumption by saving less or borrowing more which boosts the equilibrium real interest rate. Declining output growth and higher real interest rate will result in a lower demand for real cash balances, leading to higher consumer spending and ultimately a greater rate of inflation. Therefore, rising oil prices reduce GDP growth and boost real interest rates and the measured rate of inflation. If wages are 'sticky' downward, the reduction in GDP growth will lead to increased unemployment and a further reduction in GDP growth – unless unexpected inflation increases as much as GDP growth falls (Koenig 1995; Brown and Yücel 2002).
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Second, rising oil prices deteriorates the terms of trade for oil-importing countries and improves that for oil-exporting countries (Dohner 1981). This means that wealth is transferred from oil-importing nations to oil-exporting nations, diminishing consumer demand in oilimporting nations and increasing consumer demand in oil-exporting nations. Historically, the increase in demand in oil-exporting nations is less than the reduction in demand in the oilimporting nations. On net, the world consumer demand for goods diminishes, and the world supply of savings increases (Fried and Schulze 1975; Brown and Yücel 2002). The increased supply of savings puts downward pressure on real interest rates which can partially offset the upward pressure on real rates that comes from consumers in the oil-importing nations attempting to smooth their consumption. The downward pressure on world interest rates should stimulate investment that offsets the reduction in consumption and leaves aggregate demand unchanged in the oil-importing countries.
Third, monetary policy can determine the way an economy experiences an oil price shock. If the oil price shock leads to a higher real interest rate as mentioned, the velocity of money will increase. The national central bank can respond in one of three ways (Brown and Yücel 1999).. The first way is to hold the growth rate of nominal GDP constant through the implementation of contractionary policies to reduce the growth rate of monetary aggregate. The second way is to keep the growth rate of the monetary aggregate at a constant level. With an increasing velocity of money, the growth in nominal GDP will accelerate, and inflation will rise by more than GDP growth slows. The third way is to leave the real interest rate unchanged. This accelerates the growth of the monetary aggregate and increases the rate of inflation. Though the goal of a national central bank seeks is the pursuit of economic stabilization following oil price shocks, several studies argue that contractionary monetary policy accounts for much of the decline in http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
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aggregate economic activity following an oil price increase (Bohi 1989, 1991; Bernanke, Gertler and Watson 1997).
Bohi analyzed four countries after each energy shock in the 1970s and found no consistent relationship between industry activity and oil price shocks. He concluded that the obvious explanation of the negative impact of higher prices on output was tight monetary policy, which was implemented after a significant increase in oil prices. Bernanke, Gertler and Watson showed that the responses of the United States economy to an oil price shock were different when the federal funds rate was constrained to be constant relative to the case in which monetary policy was unconstrained. With a constant federal funds rate, the authors found that a positive oil price shock was correlated to an increase in real GDP. In the unconstrained case, a positive oil price shock was correlated to an increase in the federal funds rate and a decline in real GDP. The difference in the response of real GDP between the two cases showed that it was monetary policy's response to oil price shocks which accounted for the fluctuations in aggregate economic activity.
Fourth, as the demand of money rises in oil-importing countries to support the higher value of transactions initiated by rising oil prices, interest rate rises at a given supply of money and retards economic growth as a result (Pierce and Enzler 1978; Mork 1989).
Fifth, oil price shocks can lead to aggregate unemployment by inducing workers of adversely affected sectors to remain unemployed while waiting for conditions to improve in their own sectors rather than moving to positively affected sectors (Lilien 1982; Loungani 1986; Hamilton 1988). Aggregate unemployment rises with increased variability in the price shocks.
Macroeconomic influence of oil price volatility
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In contrast to the above studies which focus on oil price shocks, previous research on oil price volatility and its macroeconomic impacts are very limited. Significant increases in oil price volatility began in mid-1980 and had persisted till today. Figure 1 below shows the trend of real crude oil prices between January 1947 and December 2008 (Hamilton 2008). Oil prices were characterized mainly by upward movements until 1980, after which large price increases and decreases reflected a substantial rise in oil price volatility.
Source: Energy Information Administration, Bureau of Labor Statistics
The change in the pattern of oil prices in mid-1980 prompted Hooker (1996) to discover the importance of oil price volatility and challenge the assumptions underlying the relationship between oil prices and the Unites States macroeconomy. Before Hooker's paper, the assumption was that a general pattern of negative correlations between the growth of the macroeconomy and oil price increases exist with oil prices having asymmetric impacts on macroeconomic variables.
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The author found that the relationship was significantly altered through his discovery that oil prices Granger-cause a variety of macroeconomic variables in data up to 1973 but not in data up to 1994. Analysis indicated that the relationship had changed in such a way that could neither be described by a simple linear relation between oil prices and output nor by the asymmetric relation presented by Mork (1989). The author instead emphasized the importance of oil price volatility for the period after 1973. He discovered that between 1973 and 1994, changes in oil price levels could neither affect unemployment nor GDP growth. On the contrary, oil price volatility could predict GDP in the same period. This suggests that it is not the oil price level but its volatility that have a significant negative impact on economic activity in the period from 1973 to 1994.
Supporting Hooker's findings was conclusions from Lee and Ni (1996) who showed that the level of oil price alone was insufficient to explore the issue of causality of real oil price to the macroeconomy through 1992. Oil price volatility also had to be taken into account so that oil price could still be a predictor for growth in real GNP. To track oil price volatility, the authors included an innovative 'shock' variable as a measure of the degree of 'surprise' of the environment in which the oil price shock occurred. It indicated how different a given oil price movement was from its prior pattern and reflected both the unanticipated component of real oil price movement and the time-varying conditional variance of oil price change forecasts. Over a period between 1949 and 1992, the 'shock' variable was highly statistically significant in explaining GNP growth. This result was consistent with the view that the effect of a change in real oil price depends upon the degree of 'surprise' of the oil shock. Low volatility on the oil markets before a strong oil price increase could lead to a higher impact of the oil price shock on the macroeconomy than a highly volatile oil price environment.
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Ferderer (1996) confirmed Hooker's findings as well. The author showed that oil price volatility exerted a stronger impact on output growth relative to oil price changes, though both oil price changes and oil price volatility had negative impacts on output growth. Both oil price variables also have a stronger and more statistically significant impact than do all of the monetary policy variables, namely the Federal Funds Rate and the industrial production. The fact that both the level and volatility of oil prices helped forecast output growth even when measures of monetary policy were included suggested that monetary tightening was not the sole cause of the recessionary effects of oil price shocks.
Utilizing impulse response functions and variance decomposition tests to extend the results of the Granger causality test, Ferderer (1996) indicated the duration of the impact of oil price shocks and oil price volatility on macroeconomic variables. An interesting contribution was the discovery that oil price volatility had a negative and significant impact on output growth that occurred immediately and then again for eleven months, while real oil prices required a year to have a significantly negative impact on output growth. In addition, Ferderer observed that oil price volatility strongly correlated with real oil price increases. This implied that the negative impact of price volatility on output growth could more likely be observed during periods of oil price increases relative to periods of oil price declines. Ferderer's results were consistent with the conclusions from prior studies, which emphasized the importance of oil price volatility over oil price changes on the United States macroeconomy.
In contrast, Hamilton (1996) claimed that oil price changes might be more important than oil price volatility in affecting the macroeconomy. Hamilton found that the majority of increases in oil prices since 1986 had been followed immediately by even larger decreases. In an attempt to smooth the effect of oil price decreases, Hamilton proposed to compare the current price of oil http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
with the price level of the previous year rather than only compare it with the price level of the previous quarter by the use of a measure known as 'net oil price increase' (NOPI). In contrast to Hooker, Hamilton demonstrated that the relation between GDP growth and NOPI remained statistically significant using the same data set that Hooker had used, even when oil price volatility was included in the model in testing for impacts on macroeconomic variables. Thus, the author concluded that even if oil price increases seemed to have had a smaller macroeconomic effect after 1973, it was large oil price changes induced by oil supply disruptions, not oil price volatility, that had a major effect on macroeconomy.
Transmission channels through which oil price volatility impact macroeconomic activities
The well-established channels through which oil price volatility exert their impact macroeconomic activities are the uncertainty channel, that is a branch of business cycle theory, and the sectoral resource allocation channel. Bernanke (1983) offered a theoretical explanation about the uncertainty channel based on an important assumption, which is that the channel applied to only irreversible economic decisions, defined as activities that cannot be "undone" without the incurrence of high costs. When a firm faces increased uncertainty about the price of oil as a result of high oil price volatility, it is optimal for the firm to delay irreversible projects whose returns are closely related to oil prices and wait for the arrival of new information. Assuming that the new information is relevant to the estimation of the returns of the projects, the firm is more likely able to make a more well-informed decision by forgoing the returns from an early commitment.
In the uncertainty channel, the dynamics of investment are very sensitive to the timing of the arrival of new information. Bernanke showed that the interactions of investor learning and
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the optimal timing of investments gave rise to sharp fluctuations in the demand of goods like oil, resulting in higher price volatility that in turn reinforced the cycle. Thus, the uncertainty channel implies that volatility in oil prices is more important than the level of oil prices, as regular changes in oil prices increase the uncertainty of investment. Hence, as the level of oil price volatility increases, the returns associated with delays in investments increases and the incentive for immediate investment declines, which results in lower output levels for the entire macroeconomy (Ferderer 1996).
The sectoral resource allocation channel was first examined by Lilien (1982), whose focus was on labor allocation. In theory, even in periods of stable aggregate employment, continuous shifts of employment demand within the United States resulted in almost five percent of natural unemployment. This unemployment would always exist as separated workers would need time to be matched to new jobs. Economists theorized that the amount of such unemployment was small and fairly stable over time, thus having no impact on cyclical unemployment that made up the bulk of aggregate unemployment.
However, Lilien challenged the notion that natural unemployment was insignificant in explaining aggregate unemployment. Based on traditional theory, the quantity of unemployment depended on the speed with which workers were matched to new jobs. If workers were to have strong attachments to particular firms or industries due in part to firm- and industry-specific skills and to wage premiums associated with seniority, they would be reluctant to seek employment in other sectors of the economy. Thus the process of adjustment to sectoral shifts tended to be slow and typically involved significant unemployment before labor adjusted fully to new patterns of employment demand. The impact of such sectoral shifts on cyclical unemployment was assessed by constructing a dispersion index as a measure of labor http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
reallocation. The dispersion index was then used as a proxy for employment demand and the relationship between the index and aggregate unemployment was assessed. Lilien argued that, given a standard definition of natural unemployment, as much as half of the variation in cyclical unemployment was attributed to the fluctuations of the natural rate brought about by the slow adjustment of labor to sectoral shifts of employment demand. This means that aggregate unemployment could be mostly explained by the dispersion of employment growth across industries. Another implication was that increasing variability in relative price shocks resulted in higher fluctuations of the natural rate of unemployment, which in turn led to higher aggregate unemployment.
Loungani (1986) built on Lilien's work on the sectoral resource allocation channel. Following Lilien in constructing a dispersion index to measure the magnitude of labor reallocation, Loungani decomposed the index into separate parts comprising the differential impact of oil price shocks across industries and residual dispersion. He presented two new results. First, Loungani showed that the dispersion of employment growth across industries was due to the differential impact of oil shocks across industries. Second and more importantly, once the dispersion of employment growth due to oil shocks was accounted for, the residual dispersion possessed no predictive power for unemployment. This result implied that if not for disruptions in the oil market, the process of labor reallocation would have been carried out without the generation of significant unemployment. However, Loungani also noted that his data included the dramatic oil price increases in the 1950s and 1970s, which could underlie the massive amount of labor reallocation. Thus, during periods without significant increases or decreases in oil prices, oil prices affect the economy through channels other than the process of labor reallocation.
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Hamilton (1988) extended the works of Lilien and Loungani by demonstrating that volatility in the prices of primary commodities could lead to a reduction in aggregate unemployment by inducing workers of adversely affected sectors to remain unemployed while waiting for conditions to improve in their own sectors rather than moving to other positively affected sectors.
Data Sources
Macroeconomic variables of Indonesia
This paper uses quarterly data from 1990Q1 to 2008Q4 extracted from the International
Financial Statistics (IFS) September 2009 database. Empirical analysis is confined within this period of time as data is not available for all the relevant macroeconomic variables prior to this
period. The macroeconomic variables used in this study are as follows (short notations for each variable are in brackets):
1
*
growth rate of GDP (GGDP)
* •
*
*
investment, measured as gross fixed capital formation as a percentage of GDP (INV)
private household expenditures, measured as household consumption as a percentage of
GDP (PCON)
government expenditures, measured as government consumption as a percentage of GDP
(GCON)
interest rate for working capital loans (IR)
*
inflation rate, measured as the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index (INF)
1
All data can be found in Appendix C.
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*
trade balance, measured as the difference between exports and imports as a percentage of
GDP (TB)
Other variables used in this study include:
* realized volatility (RV) 3
* historical volatility (HV) 4
*
quarterly moving average of oil price levels (OILP).
5
A moving average is taken in an attempt to smooth price trends and decrease the impact of volatility on price levels
Measurement and justification of type of oil prices
The type of oil price chosen for empirical analysis is Light, Sweet Crude Oil, Cushing, Oklahoma Contract 4. It is the combined price for the highest grades of crude oil, defined as oil with low sulphur content and a high degree of viscosity. Examples of the varieties oil included in this price included West Texas Intermediate, which represents the global standard for crude oil prices. Contract 4 refers to the longest-dated crude oil future price that is available on the Energy Information Administration website.
Empirical research on oil prices often do not provide sufficient, if any, grounds for their use of particular oil prices. Of the 161 different types of oil that are traded around the world, it is suggested that the variety of oil chosen should most closely reflect the greatest degree of price discovery for the purposes of empirical research (Energy Intelligence Group). Price discovery is the process of uncovering an asset's full information or permanent value. At its most efficient
2
These data can be found in Appendix C.
3 Computation of RV is outlined in the section 'Measurement of oil price volatility'.
4
Computation of HV is outlined in the section 'Measurement of oil price volatility'.
5
This is calculated from daily oil prices, which can be found in http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=RCLC4&f=D.
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2
level, the process facilitates the attainment of equilibrium between buyers and sellers, and reflects the fundamental and technical factors underlying buyers' and sellers' decisions without the possibility of arbitrage. Important factors underlying price discovery include current supply and demand conditions such as valuation perceptions and the relative size of buyers and sellers; speculative expectations; market mechanisms that involve bidding and settlement processes; the abundance of liquidity; the amount, timeliness and reliability of information; and risk management choices including the availability of derivatives like futures and swaps.
Price discovery in oil prices is determined by three factors. The first factor is the variety of oil. Adelman (1984) concluded from performing correlation analysis on prices of major oil varieties that the "the world oil market, like the world ocean, is one great pool". Supporting his conclusions was a paper by Bachmeier and Griffin (2006). Utilizing daily prices for five geographically separated crude oils of varying quality characteristics within a vector error correction model, the authors showed that the world oil market is a single, highly integrated economic market. These results imply that prices for different varieties of oil tend to move in an integrated fashion. For this paper, the combined price for the highest grades of tradable oil is utilized to minimize the impact of illiquidity.
The second factor is spot or future prices of a particular tenor. Theoretical and empirical literature concluded that futures prices dominated price discovery relative to spot prices for light sweet crude oils (Schwarz and Szakmary, 1994; Gulen 1996; Silvapulle and Moosa, 1999). Of these studies, Gulen provided the most comprehensive coverage of the topic as he analyzed the crude oil trivariate system of spot-futures-posted prices in addition to bivariate spot-futures and spot-posted systems. In bivariate systems, both the futures price and the posted price are efficient predictors of the spot price as both spot-futures and spot-posted systems are http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
found to be cointegrated. The analysis of trivariate systems shows that the futures price is superior to the posted price in predicting the spot price. Overall, futures prices provided a superior and efficient predictor of the spot price. In addition, long-dated futures reflect price discovery to a greater extent relative to short-dated futures because higher volatilities in shortdated futures contracts relative to long-dated contracts reflect transitory noises, which are unlikely to have any significant effect on investors' perceptions about the uncertainty of oil prices (Guo and Kliesen 2005).
The third factor is the settlement currency of the oil price. Empirical research on oil prices stick to one of two measures – either the USD world price of oil is used as a common indicator of the world market disturbances that affect all countries (Burbidge and Harrison, 1984; Cunado and Gracia, 2004), or this world oil price is converted into a specific currency by means of the market exchange rate (Mork, Olsen, & Mysen, 1994). The main difference between the two is that the specific currency in the second measure reflects expectations and actual conditions of exchange rate fluctuations and inflation levels in the underlying economy (Cunado and Gracia 2005).
However, a considerable amount of literature argues for the USD to be the ideal settlement currency. McKinnon (1979) suggested that the trading of homogenous commodities such as oil require the use of vehicle currencies because only vehicle currencies could provide a high degree of price transparency. Goldberg and Tille (2005) presented evidence that the USD is the best choice as a vehicle currency due to the central role of the United States in international trade. Krugman (1980) and Rey (2001) also suggested that only the currency of an economically dominant currency can serve as a vehicle currency.
Measurement of oil price volatility
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Price volatility is traditionally measured as the square of simple standard deviation, otherwise known as historical variance, denoted as HV (Mork 1989; Lee and Ni 1995; Hooker 1996; Ferderer 1996). However, Andersen (2001a, 2001b, 2003) argued for the use of realized volatility, denoted as RV, as a relatively more accurate measure of volatility. Consider the following:
where Dt is the total number of days in quarter t, Pd is the price of oil in day d of quarter t and <P> is the average of P within the period t.
If two sets of numbers, x and y, are given and their RV and HV measured,
| x | 10 |
|---|---|
| y | 10 |
The set of numbers in x represents a smooth trend with low volatility while that in y is characterized by relatively higher volatility. However, the table shows that historical volatility is not an accurate measure of volatility as it gives the same figure for both sets of numbers.
Realized volatility is a relatively more accurate measure as it clearly shows that volatility in y is http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
greater than that in x. As suggested by Andersen (2001b, 2003) and Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (2001a, 2002), the theory of quadratic variation suggested that, under appropriate conditions, realized volatility is an unbiased and highly efficient estimator of volatility of returns. In addition, papers by Zhang (2005) and Ait-Sahalia (2005) claimed that realized variance was a consistent and asymptotically normal estimator once suitable scaling is performed.
Empirical methodology
The econometric methods utilized in Rafiq, Salim and Bloch (2008) and Guo and Kliesen (2005) form the core of the empirical methodology in this paper. This study employs the Granger causality test to examine the causal relationship between oil price volatility, oil price levels and macroeconomic indicators of Indonesia. A variable, say Xt, Granger-causes another variable, say Yt, when Xt provides statistically significant information about Yt in a regression of Yt on lagged values of Yt and Xt. Vector auto-regression (VAR) of the following form is considered:
where Y is a macroeconomic variable, X is a measurement of volatility such as HV or RV, n is the optimum lag length as specified by the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), µ and υ are vectors of disturbance terms, α and ε are vectors of constants, and the remaining Greek letters are coefficients of independent variables.
For each of the equations above, Wald χ 2 statistics are used to test for the significance of lagged values of an independent variable in forecasting values of the dependent variable while
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controlling for lagged values of the dependent variable. In addition, the Wald χ 2 statistics informs whether the dependent variables are endogenous or exogenous. For example, to test whether past values of GGDP (growth rate of GDP) predicts HV (historical volatility of oil prices), equation (1) can be used to set up two equations as follows (suppose that n=1):
Considering equation (3) as a restricted model where δ=0 and equation (4) as an unrestricted model where δ≠0, the null hypothesis is set as δ=0 and the alternative hypothesis as δ≠0. Should the null hypothesis be rejected, lagged values of GGDP correlate to HV, implying that GGDP Granger-causes HV. Residual sum of squares for each equation can be computed to derive a χ 2 test statistic that either rejects or fails to reject the null hypothesis. Next, equation (2) is used to set up another two equations where GGDP and HV switch sides. GGDP becomes the dependent variable and HV the independent variable. This was necessary since by definition, if GGDP Granger-cause HV, HV does not necessarily Granger-cause GGDP.
The above process is carried out with HV as the dependent variable and the macroeconomic indicators as the independent variables. Each macroeconomic indicator is tested for its significance in predicting HV. The block exogeneity Wald Test is then carried out to test for the joint significance for all macroeconomic indicators. The same process is then repeated with RV and OILP as the dependent variables. The results of the joint significance test inform whether volatility or oil price levels are endogenous variables, that is whether they have causal links from other variables in the model.
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The next step involves the macroeconomic indicators as the dependent variables and HV as the independent variable. For each macroeconomic indicator, HV is tested for its significance in predicting values of the macroeconomic indicators. In addition, oil price levels are tested for its predictive significance as well. Using GGDP as an example and assuming that n=1, equations are set up as follows:
The block exogeneity Wald Test is again used to test for the joint significance of both HV and OILP in predicting values of the macroeconomic indicators. The process is then repeated with RV as the independent variable. These tests reveal whether one variable – volatility or price levels – alone is sufficient in predicting values of macroeconomic indicators, or that both variables – volatility and price levels – are needed. Another possible result is that either variable may only be statistical significant predictors of macroeconomic indicators only when the other variable is included. For example, lagged values of HV may not correlate to GGDP in equation (6) above, but HV and GGDP may correlate when OILP is included in equation (7).
The Granger-causality framework based on standard VAR outlined above is only valid if the time series variables are stationary. A stationary time series is one whose statistical properties such as mean, variance and autocorrelation are all constant over time. In testing for stationarity, confirmatory data analysis, as proposed by Brooks (2002), is carried out. The procedure involves the use of standard unit root tests – the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test, the Philips-Perron
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(PP) test and the Kwiatkowaski-Philips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS) test. These tests check for the presence of a unit root within the time series autoregressive model. The presence of a unit root implies a non-stationary time series. To illustrate the effect of a unit root, consider the following: Given a first-order autoregressive model,
For convenience, assume that α0=0. The model has a unit root if β=1. The model is thus given by
By repeated substitution, the model can be written as
Since the variance depends on t, the model with the unit root is thus non-stationary. If it is known that a series has a unit root, the series can be differenced to render it stationary.
However, Rafiq, Salim and Bloch (2008) suggested that the standard unit root tests may not be appropriate if the time series data were to contain structural breaks. Breaks in time series data can occur either instantaneously or gradually. Instantaneous change is modeled in the Additive Outlier (AO) model and changes that take place gradually are modeled in the Innovational Outlier (IO) model (Rafiq, Salim and Bloch, 2008). The authors further suggested the use of the IO model as "policy reforms at the macro level do not cause the target [macroeconomic] variable to respond instantaneously to the policy actions". Using an IO model http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
following Perron (1997) unit root test that allows for structural breaks, the authors found that the dates for the structural break congregated around the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998 for the macroeconomic variables of Thailand. Since Indonesia and Thailand are well-known victims of the crisis, it is reasonable to assume that the time series macroeconomic variables of Indonesia share a similar structural break to those of Thailand. As a check for robustness, this paper employs two VAR systems – one for the entire time period between 1990Q1 and 2008Q4 and another for the time period after the structural break between 1999Q1 and 2008Q4.
A general form of the VAR system is as follows:
where n is the optimum lag length as specified by the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), p is the number of independent variables excluding the lagged dependent variable, µ is the disturbance term, α is a constant, and the remaining Greek letters are coefficients of independent variables. Each VAR equation is set up with a different variable as the dependent variable. To test for the significance of volatility and price levels in predicting values of macroeconomic indicators, the VAR equations are crafted in a fashion similar to equations (6) and (7). For the first VAR equation, volatility is first included and price levels excluded in the vector of lagged independent variables; for the second VAR equation, both volatility and price levels are included in the vector of lagged independent variables. This test is done for both the full and partial data set. The main difference between the VAR system and the Granger-causality test based on standard VAR is that the VAR system controls for all other independent variables, thus providing a closer approximation to reality compared to the Granger-causality test.
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Analysis Of Results
First, we discuss the results of various statistical tests as applied to the entire data set. Section labels that begin with '1' denote analysis of the entire data set. Next, findings of the empirical analysis as applied to the data set from 1999Q1 are discussed and compared to those applied to the entire data set. Section labels that begin with '2' denote analysis of the partial data set.
1.1 Time-series properties of data
Since the core of the empirical methodology is the VAR Granger-causality test, it is imperative to first discuss the stationary properties of all variables. The unit root tests are applied to the level (original) series and first differences. The results of the ADF, PP and KPSS tests are as follows:
Table 1: Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test (Null hypothesis: unit root present)
Legend
ggdp – growth rate of gdp
ir – interest rate
inv – investment
inf – inflation rate
pcon – private consumption
tb – trade balance
gcon – government consumption
| Variable | Level series t statistics | Significance | First differenced t statistics | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | -2.339 | ** | -7.711 | *** |
| inv | 0.1 | | -13.705 | *** |
| pcon | -0.049 | | -8.268 | *** |
| gcon | -0.335 | | -8.462 | *** |
| ir | -0.685 | | -4.037 | *** |
| inf | -2.928 | *** | -5.983 | *** |
| tb | -0.438 | | -7.347 | *** |
| hv | 0.052 | | -4.611 | *** |
| rv | -0.321 | | -5.362 | *** |
| oilp | -1.585 | | -5.506 | *** |
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Table 2: Philips-Perron (PP) test
(Null hypothesis: unit root present)
Table 3: Kwiatkowaski-Philips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS) test
| Variable | Level series t statistics | Significance | First differenced t statistics | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | -1.605 | | -8.397 | *** |
| inv | 8.432 | *** | -2.982 | *** |
| pcon | 10.331 | *** | -1.303 | |
| gcon | 5.413 | *** | -5.841 | *** |
| ir | 27.843 | *** | 6.139 | *** |
| inf | 6.503 | *** | -1.308 | |
| tb | 17.317 | *** | -2.356 | ** |
| hv | 19.295 | *** | 3.21 | *** |
| rv | 24.506 | *** | 3.97 | *** |
| oilp | 23.952 | *** | 2.017 | ** |
(Null hypothesis: stationarity present)
| Variable | Original series t statistics | Significance | First differenced t statistics |
|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 0.091 | | 0.048 |
| inv | 1.233 | *** | 0.064 |
| pcon | 1.393 | *** | 0.058 |
| gcon | 0.856 | *** | 0.139 |
| ir | 1.448 | *** | 0.082 |
| inf | 0.111 | | 0.023 |
| tb | 3.048 | *** | 0.078 |
| hv | 0.789 | *** | 0.483 |
| rv | 1.159 | *** | 0.543 |
| oilp | 2.419 | *** | 0.061 |
Significance code
'***': rejection of null hypothesis at 0.10% critical level.
'**': rejection of null hypothesis at 1% critical level.
‘*’: rejection of null hypothesis at 5% critical level.
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With the exception of two variables, results from the ADF and PP tests are relatively similar, showing that most variables are stationary at first differences. Findings from the KPSS test indicate that first differences for all but two variables are stationary. Since all variables are checked by at least one test to be stationary at first differences, a VAR in level or first differences makes no difference asymptotically (Sims, Stock and Watson, 1990). For convenience, level data is employed for this study.
1.2 Lag length selection, VAR Granger-causality and block exogeneity Wald test
According to the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), the lag length of VAR is identified to be 1. The following results are obtained from the VAR Granger-causality and block exogeneity Wald test carried out at lag 1 with HV, RV and OILP as dependent variables, and lagged values of macroeconomic indicators as independent variables.
Table 4: Test for exogeneity for HV
(Dependent variable: HV)
Legend
ggdp – growth rate of gdp
ir – interest rate
inv – investment
inf – inflation rate
pcon – private consumption
tb – trade balance
gcon – government consumption
| Excluded variable | Chi square statistics | P-value | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 0.452 | 0.502 | |
| inv | 0.275 | 0.6 | |
| pcon | 0.091 | 0.763 | |
| gcon | 0.009 | 0.924 | |
| ir | 1.864 | 0.172 | |
| inf | 0.004 | 0.948 | |
| tb | 1.629 | 0.202 | |
| oilp | 14.69 | 0 | *** |
| All (with oilp) | 21.836 | 0.005 | *** |
| All (without oilp) | 3.399 | 0.846 | |
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Table 5: Test for exogeneity for RV
(Dependent variable: RV)
Table 6: Test for exogeneity for OILP
| Excluded variable | Chi square statistics | P-value |
|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 0.488 | 0.485 |
| inv | 0.004 | 0.95 |
| pcon | 0.251 | 0.616 |
| gcon | 0.023 | 0.88 |
| ir | 1.817 | 0.178 |
| inf | 0.002 | 0.961 |
| tb | 1.296 | 0.255 |
| oilp | 15.776 | 0 |
| All (with oilp) | 21.788 | 0.005 |
| All (without oilp) | 3.949 | 0.786 |
(Dependent variable: OILP)
| Excluded variable | Chi square statistics | P-value | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 0.167 | 0.683 | |
| inv | 1.26 | 0.262 | |
| pcon | 2.684 | 0.101 | |
| gcon | 0.047 | 0.829 | |
| ir | 2.481 | 0.115 | |
| inf | 0.373 | 0.542 | |
| tb | 3.837 | 0.05 | * |
| hv | 115.41 | 0 | *** |
| rv | 82.15 | 0 | *** |
| All (with hv) | 128.77 | 0 | *** |
| All (without hv) | 7.72 | 0.358 | |
| All (with rv) | 83.97 | 0 | *** |
| All (without rv) | 7.72 | 0.358 | |
Significance code
'***': rejection of null hypothesis at 0.10% critical level.
'**': rejection of null hypothesis at 1% critical level.
‘*’: rejection of null hypothesis at 5% critical level.
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From Tables 4 and 5, the only significant variables are oil price levels and the joint significance of all variables inclusive of oil price levels. This shows that lagged values of oil prices correlate with both historical and realized volatility, implying that causal links may exist between the volatility measures and price levels. It is also interesting to observe that the joint significance of variables merits statistical importance only if price levels are included. Without price levels, results show that both volatility measurements can be treated as exogenous variables, implying that both HV and RV affect the macroeconomic variables without being affected by the same variables.
Table 6 confirms results from Tables 4 and 5 that causal links may exist between the volatility measures and price levels, since past values of both volatility measurements correlate with price levels and past values of price levels correlate with both volatility measurements as well. Results from the same table also show that the joint significance of variables is statistically important only if either HV or RV is included in the equations. Without volatility measurements, the joint significance of variables dwindles in importance in their prediction of price levels. This implies that oil price levels, similar to volatility measurements, is an exogenous variable, confirming the conclusions of a famous study by Gisser and Goodwin (1986) who concluded that oil price changes reflected the influence of exogenous events.
The following tables illustrate results from the VAR Granger-causality and block exogeneity Wald test carried out at lag 1 with the variables on opposite sides. Macroeconomic indicators are dependent variables, and lagged values of HV, RV and OILP are independent variables.
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Table 7: Testing for significance of HV
(Independent variable: HV)
Legend
ggdp – growth rate of gdp
ir – interest rate
inv – investment
inf – inflation rate
pcon – private consumption
tb – trade balance
gcon – government consumption
| ggdp | 0.715 | 0.398 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| inv | 0.889 | 0.346 | |
| pcon | 0.006 | 0.936 | |
| gcon | 4.046 | 0.044 | ** |
| ir | 0.97 | 0.325 | |
| inf | 0.251 | 0.617 | |
| tb | 1.476 | 0.225 | |
Table 8: Testing for significance of HV and OILP
(Independent variable: HV and OILP)
| Dependent variable | Chi square statistics | P-value | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 1.916 | 0.384 | |
| inv | 0.934 | 0.627 | |
| pcon | 0.382 | 0.826 | |
| gcon | 4.32 | 0.115 | |
| ir | 1.912 | 0.384 | |
| inf | 0.263 | 0.877 | |
| tb | 4.494 | 0.106 | |
Table 9: Testing for significance of RV
(Independent variable: RV)
| Dependent variable | Chi square statistics | P-value | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 0.174 | 0.677 | |
| inv | 0.682 | 0.409 | |
| pcon | 0.006 | 0.941 | |
| gcon | 3.434 | 0.064 | * |
| ir | 0.868 | 0.352 | |
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Table 10: Testing for significance of RV and OILP
| inf | 0.187 | 0.665 |
|---|---|---|
| tb | 1.743 | 0.189 |
(Independent variable: RV and OILP)
Table 11: Testing for significance of OILP
| Dependent variable | Chi square statistics | P-value | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 1.002 | 0.606 | |
| inv | 0.769 | 0.681 | |
| pcon | 0.309 | 0.857 | |
| gcon | 3.661 | 0.16 | |
| ir | 2.476 | 0.29 | |
| inf | 0.209 | 0.901 | |
| tb | 7.611 | 0.026 | ** |
(Independent variable: OILP)
| Dependent variable | Chi square statistics | P-value |
|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 0.035 | 0.851 |
| inv | 0.253 | 0.615 |
| pcon | 0.143 | 0.706 |
| gcon | 3.274 | 0.07 |
| ir | 0 | 0.992 |
| inf | 0.071 | 0.79 |
| tb | 0.051 | 0.821 |
Significance code
'***': rejection of null hypothesis at 0.10% critical level.
'**': rejection of null hypothesis at 1% critical level.
'*': rejection of null hypothesis at 5% critical level.
In Table 7, lagged values of HV are observed to be statistically significant in predicting values of government consumption (GCON). This result is however not observable in Table 8, in which lagged values of both HV and OILP are tested for their joint significance. It appears that http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
the inclusion of price levels weakens the explanatory power of HV to GCON. RV displays relatively similar results as well in Tables 9 and 10. Past values of RV are statistically significant in predicting GCON, but display different results when joint significance with price levels is tested for. In particular, the joint significance of RV and OILP is statistically important in the prediction of values of trade balance (TB). In summary, both volatility measures appear to have causal links to government consumption, but these links weaken with the inclusion of price levels. Another implication of the findings in this section is that different types of volatility measurement do produce varying statistical results. While the joint significance of HV and OILP does not produce statistically meaningful results, the joint significance of RV and OILP is useful in predicting trade balance.
Table 11 shows that lagged values of price levels correlate with values of government consumption. The comparison of results from Tables 8, 10 and 11 is interesting in that both measures of volatility appear to weaken causal links between price levels and GCON. Recall that in the previous paragraph the opposite is true as well, that is price levels weaken the explanatory power of volatility measurements to GCON.
1.3 VAR estimation
The results of the VAR(1) models for both HV and RV, with and without OILP, are presented in the following tables. Numbers in bold represent statistical significance at a 5% critical level or lower. SE in the tables represents standard error.
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| | hv | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hv (-1) | 1.123 | -0.0003044 | 0.000292 | 0.0001023 | 0.0001062 | -1.305e-05 | -0.0001124 |
| SE | 0.06799 | 0.0003177 | 0.0002151 | 0.0002553 | 6.979e-05 | 7.407e-05 | 0.000225 |
| | hv | oilp | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf | tb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hv (-1) | 0.8383 | -0.005716 | -0.001023 | -0.0001722 | 0.0001822 | -1.073e-05 | 8.446e-05 | -0.000248 | -0.3355 |
| SE | 0.09105 | 0.0005488 | 0.0004644 | 0.0003154 | 0.0003851 | 0.0001035 | 0.0001106 | 0.0003389 | 0.1054 |
| oilp (-1) | 42.5 | 1.31 | 0.1074 | 0.06939 | -0.01195 | 0.01749 | -0.01458 | 0.02027 | 40.11 |
| SE | 10.13 | 0.06109 | 0.05169 | 0.0351 | 0.04286 | 0.01152 | 0.01231 | 0.03772 | 11.73 |
| | rv | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rv (-1) | 1.097 | -0.002875 | 0.006292 | 0.001497 | 0.001938 | -0.0001489 | -0.001655 |
| SE | 0.05629 | 0.005928 | 0.003974 | 0.004741 | 0.001296 | 0.001375 | 0.00418 |
| rv | oilp | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.8116 | -0.109 | -0.01711 | -0.003294 | 0.003095 | -0.0008675 | 0.00252 | -0.004669 |
| 0.08587 | 0.01318 | 0.009911 | 0.006644 | 0.008113 | 0.002177 | 0.002319 | 0.007142 |
| 2.116 | 1.364 | 0.1056 | 0.07109 | -0.01186 | 0.0208 | -0.0198 | 0.02235 |
| 0.5149 | 0.07903 | 0.05943 | 0.03983 | 0.04864 | 0.01306 | 0.0139 | 0.04282 |
| | oilp | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oilp(-1) | 0.8359 | 0.02263 | 0.05512 | 0.00315 | 0.0166 | -0.007579 | -0.0002813 |
| SE | 0.06612 | 0.0355 | 0.02331 | 0.02844 | 0.007635 | 0.008193 | 0.02509 |
In Table 12, lagged values of HV do not correlate with any macroeconomic indicators. When price levels are included in VAR(1), results in Table 13 indicate that lagged values of both HV and OILP correlate with the growth rate of GDP (GGDP) and trade balance (TB), while lagged values of OILP alone correlate with investment. Since the inclusion of OILP in Table 13 uncovered more significant results relative to its exclusion in Table 12, OILP appears to augment the explanatory power of HV in predicting the values of GGDP and TB. This result is confirmed by the Granger-causality test in Tables 7 and 8. Tables 7 and 8 show decreases in p-values for both GGDP and TB when price levels are included in addition to HV, implying that price levels augment the explanatory power of HV for GGDP and TB. This extent of increase in explanatory power, however, is not sufficient to merit statistical significance in Table 8. In contrast, the increase in explanatory power of HV merits statistical significance in Table 13.
When RV replaces HV, similar results are obtained. Table 14 shows no statistical significance between lagged values of RV and values of macroeconomic indicators. The inclusion of price levels in Table 15 suggests that lagged values of both HV and OILP correlate with the growth rate of GGDP and TB. This result is again confirmed by the Granger-causality test involving RV in Tables 9 and 10.
Table 16 shows that past values of price levels are significant in predicting values of investment (INV) and government consumption (GCON). However, Tables 13 and 15, with the inclusion of HV and RV respectively, shows that price levels are statistically meaningful predictors of INV but not of GCON. This shows that the volatility measurements weaken the explanatory power of price levels to GCON by a statistically meaningful extent.
2.1 Time series properties of data
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Building on the findings of Rafiq, Salim and Bloch (2008) who found a structural break in the time series data during the Asian Financial Crisis at 1997-98, the above tests for the full data set are repeated for a partial data set that begins in 1999 as a check for the robustness of results obtained in previous sections. The unit root tests are applied to the level (original) series and first differences. The results of the ADF, PP and KPSS tests are as follows:
Table 17: Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test
(Null hypothesis: unit root present)
Legend
ggdp – growth rate of gdp
ir – interest rate
inv – investment
inf – inflation rate
pcon – private consumption
tb – trade balance
gcon – government consumption
| Variable | Level series t statistics | Significance | First differenced t statistics | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | -0.38 | | -5.899 | *** |
| inv | 1.776 | * | -1.102 | |
| pcon | -1.136 | | -3.327 | *** |
| gcon | 1.31 | | -2.946 | *** |
| ir | -0.316 | | -3.066 | *** |
| inf | -0.722 | | -4.365 | *** |
| tb | -0.545 | | -3.4 | *** |
| hv | -0.011 | | -3.157 | *** |
| rv | -0.197 | | -3.597 | *** |
| oilp | -1.395 | | -3.789 | *** |
Table 18: Philips-Perron (PP) test (Null hypothesis: unit root present)
| ggdp | -1.169 | | -4.281 | *** |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| inv | 16.72 | *** | -1.375 | |
| pcon | 6.143 | *** | -1.848 | |
| gcon | 1.318 | | -4.947 | *** |
| ir | 25.63 | *** | 8.341 | *** |
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Table 19: Kwiatkowaski-Philips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS) test (Null hypothesis: stationarity present)
| inf | 0.845 | | -2.023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| tb | 4.254 | *** | -1.533 |
| hv | 13.623 | *** | 2.248 |
| rv | 16.911 | *** | 2.673 |
| Variable | Original series t statistics | Significance | First differenced t statistics |
|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 0.107 | | 0.132 |
| inv | 0.918 | *** | 0.471 |
| pcon | 0.348 | | 0.177 |
| gcon | 0.923 | *** | 0.124 |
| ir | 0.822 | *** | 0.407 |
| inf | 0.108 | | 0.07 |
| tb | 0.23 | | 0.149 |
| hv | 0.7 | ** | 0.448 |
| rv | 0.924 | *** | 0.471 |
| oilp | 1.699 | *** | 0.064 |
Significance code
'***': rejection of null hypothesis at 0.10% critical level.
'**': rejection of null hypothesis at 1% critical level.
'*': rejection of null hypothesis at 5% critical level.
Findings from the ADF and PP tests differ, though most variables are shown be stationary at first differences. With the exception of two variables, results from the KPSS test suggest that most variables are stationary at first differences. The unit root tests imply that level data can be used for further empirical analysis.
2.2 Lag length selection, VAR Granger-causality and block exogeneity Wald test
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According to the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), the lag length of VAR is identified to be 3. The following results are obtained from the VAR Granger-causality and block exogeneity Wald test carried out at lag 3 with HV, RV and OILP as dependent variables, and lagged values of macroeconomic indicators as independent variables.
Table 20: Test for exogeneity for HV
(Dependent variable: HV)
Legend
ggdp – growth rate of gdp
ir – interest rate
inv – investment
inf – inflation rate
pcon – private consumption
tb – trade balance
gcon – government consumption
Table 21: Test for exogeneity for RV
| Excluded variable | Chi square statistics | P-value | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 0.591 | 0.898 | |
| inv | 5.891 | 0.117 | |
| pcon | 0.306 | 0.959 | |
| gcon | 3.159 | 0.368 | |
| ir | 2.994 | 0.393 | |
| inf | 0.24 | 0.971 | |
| tb | 9.754 | 0.021 | ** |
| oilp | 15.083 | 0.002 | *** |
| All (with oilp) | 53.439 | 0.001 | *** |
| All (without oilp) | 22.674 | 0.362 | |
(Dependent variable: RV)
| Excluded variable | Chi square statistics | P-value |
|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 3.459 | 0.326 |
| inv | 6.287 | 0.098 |
| pcon | 0.938 | 0.816 |
| gcon | 1.866 | 0.601 |
| ir | 3.056 | 0.383 |
| inf | 1.404 | 0.705 |
| tb | 8.701 | 0.034 |
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Table 22: Test for exogeneity for OILP
| oilp | 24.774 | 0.000 | *** |
|---|---|---|---|
| All (with oilp) | 94.749 | 0 | *** |
| All (without oilp) | 31.556 | 0.065 | * |
(Dependent variable: OILP)
| Excluded variable | Chi square statistics | P-value |
|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 1.812 | 0.612 |
| inv | 6.33 | 0.097 |
| pcon | 2.089 | 0.554 |
| gcon | 4.93 | 0.177 |
| ir | 3.479 | 0.324 |
| inf | 1.716 | 0.633 |
| tb | 5.141 | 0.162 |
| hv | 51.83 | 0 |
| rv | 37.394 | 0 |
| All (with hv) | 151.37 | 0 |
| All (without hv) | 35.151 | 0.027 |
| All (with rv) | 118.21 | 0 |
Significance code
'***': rejection of null hypothesis at 0.10% critical level.
'**': rejection of null hypothesis at 1% critical level.
'*': rejection of null hypothesis at 5% critical level.
Results from Table 20 suggest that TB and OILP have causal links to HV. However, the block exogeneity Wald Test shows that the joint significance of all other variables excluding price levels is not statistically sufficient to imply endogeneity for HV. We conclude that HV is an exogenous variable that affects the macroeconomic variables without being affected by the same variables. However, Tables 21 and 22 suggest a different story for RV and OILP. The
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block exogeneity Wald Test for RV and OILP shows that the joint significance of all other variables is statistically sufficient to imply endogeneity. This means that the values of RV and OILP may be determined by a particular functional relationship with the macroeconomic indicators. Recall that in the context of the full data set, RV and OILP are treated as exogenous variables.
The following tables illustrate results from the VAR Granger-causality and block exogeneity Wald test carried out at lag 3 with the variables on opposite sides. Macroeconomic indicators are dependent variables, and lagged values of HV, RV and OILP are independent variables.
Table 23: Testing for significance of HV
(Independent variable: HV)
Legend
ggdp – growth rate of gdp
ir – interest rate
inv – investment
inf – inflation rate
pcon – private consumption
tb – trade balance
gcon – government consumption
| Dependent variable | Chi square statistics | P-value |
|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 0.981 | 0.806 |
| inv | 4.517 | 0.211 |
| pcon | 0.169 | 0.982 |
| gcon | 7.483 | 0.058 |
| ir | 11.457 | 0.009 |
| inf | 1.942 | 0.585 |
| tb | 8.917 | 0.03 |
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Table 24: Testing for significance of HV and OILP
(Independent variable: HV and OILP)
Table 25: Testing for significance of RV
| Dependent variable | Chi square statistics | P-value |
|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 6.193 | 0.402 |
| inv | 7.799 | 0.253 |
| pcon | 3.904 | 0.69 |
| gcon | 8.255 | 0.22 |
| ir | 31.071 | 0 |
| inf | 5.684 | 0.46 |
| tb | 9.334 | 0.156 |
(Independent variable: RV)
Table 26: Testing for significance of RV and OILP
| ggdp | 0.440 | 0.932 |
|---|---|---|
| inv | 5.254 | 0.154 |
| pcon | 0.408 | 0.939 |
| gcon | 5.059 | 0.168 |
| ir | 7.372 | 0.061 |
| inf | 0.666 | 0.881 |
| tb | 6.116 | 0.106 |
(Independent variable: RV and OILP)
| Dependent variable | Chi square statistics | P-value |
|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 9.1285 | 0.1665 |
| inv | 8.805 | 0.1848 |
| pcon | 4.5051 | 0.6087 |
| gcon | 6.1442 | 0.4072 |
| ir | 10.504 | 0.105 |
| inf | 3.3623 | 0.7622 |
| tb | 8.934 | 0.1773 |
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Table 27: Testing for significance of OILP
(Independent variable: OILP)
| Dependent variable | Chi square statistics | P-value |
|---|---|---|
| ggdp | 3.862 | 0.277 |
| inv | 7.735 | 0.052 |
| pcon | 3.364 | 0.339 |
| gcon | 5.811 | 0.121 |
| ir | 5.554 | 0.136 |
| inf | 1.646 | 0.649 |
| tb | 5.69 | 0.128 |
Significance code
'***': rejection of null hypothesis at 0.10% critical level.
'**': rejection of null hypothesis at 1% critical level.
'*': rejection of null hypothesis at 5% critical level.
Tables 23 shows that government consumption (GCON), interest rates (IR) and trade balance (TB) are Granger-caused by HV. Comparing Tables 23 and 24, the inclusion of price levels appears to strengthen the explanatory power of HV to interest rates (IR) and weaken that to GCON and TB. Table 25 shows that IR is Granger-caused by RV. A comparison between Table 25 and 26 shows that the inclusion of price levels appears to weaken the explanatory power of RV to IR. At this point it is interesting to observe that the statistical significance of RV and HV in predicting IR respond in opposite directions when price levels are taken into account. Table 27 shows that investments (INV) is Granger-caused by OILP. A comparison between Tables 24, 26 and 27 shows that the inclusion of either volatility measurement weakens the predictive power of price levels to INV.
2.3 VAR estimation
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The results of the VAR(3) models for both HV and RV, with and without OILP, are presented in the following tables. Numbers in bold represent statistical significance at a 5% critical level or lower. SE in the tables represents standard error.
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| | hv | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hv (-1) | 1.313 | -0.0003067 | 0.0002614 | 0.0006295 | 0.0001323 | -1.095e-05 | 0.0001508 |
| SE | 0.3033 | 0.0005369 | 0.0001843 | 0.0004708 | 0.0001723 | 6.454e-05 | 0.0003112 |
| hv (-2) | -0.2518 | -0.001052 | 1.509e-05 | -8.965e-05 | -2.858e-05 | -4.68e-06 | -0.0007455 |
| SE | 0.4172 | 0.0007386 | 0.0002535 | 0.0006477 | 0.000237 | 8.879e-05 | 0.0004281 |
| hv (-3) | -0.4991 | -8.79e-05 | 2.467e-05 | 6.753e-05 | 0.001197 | 0.0001924 | 0.001091 |
| SE | 0.8761 | 0.001551 | 0.0005324 | 0.00136 | 0.0004978 | 0.0001865 | 0.0008989 |
| | | hv | | oilp | | ggdp | | inv | | pcon | | gcon | | ir | | inf | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hv (-1) | | 8.835E-01 | | -3.468E-03 | | 1.858E-04 | | -1.442E-05 | | -2.312E-04 | | 1.211E-04 | | -1.566E-04 | | -6.825E-04 | | |
| SE | | 3.986E-01 | | 1.908E-03 | | 9.771E-04 | | 2.533E-04 | | 8.683E-04 | | 2.816E-04 | | 1.077E-04 | | 4.532E-04 | | |
| hv (-2) | | -8.633E-01 | | -7.414E-03 | | -3.561E-03 | | -2.756E-04 | | 1.838E-03 | | -5.616E-04 | | 2.174E-04 | | 1.894E-04 | | |
| SE | | 9.112E-01 | | 4.362E-03 | | 2.234E-03 | | 5.790E-04 | | 1.985E-03 | | 6.439E-04 | | 2.462E-04 | | 1.036E-03 | | |
| hv (-3) | | 2.281E-01 | | -1.386E-03 | | -2.363E-03 | | 5.309E-04 | | 2.863E-03 | | 3.952E-04 | | 2.661E-04 | | 1.828E-03 | | |
| SE | | 1.150E+00 | | 5.504E-03 | | 2.819E-03 | | 7.306E-04 | | 2.505E-03 | | 8.125E-04 | | 3.107E-04 | | 1.308E-03 | | |
| | oilp(-1) | | 2.729E+01 | | 8.921E-01 | | -2.099E-01 | | 2.332E-02 | | 2.313E-01 | | -1.943E-02 | | 3.850E-02 | | 1.948E-01 | 1.096E+02 |
| SE | 9.756E+01 | 4.670E-01 | 2.392E-01 | 6.199E-02 | 2.125E-01 | 6.894E-02 | 2.636E-02 | 1.109E-01 | 1.257E+02 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oilp(-2) | 287 | 1.267 | 0.4594 | 0.1589 | -0.204 | 0.09881 | -0.03029 | -0.06261 | -91.22 |
| SE | 161.5 | 0.7729 | 0.3958 | 0.1026 | 0.3518 | 0.1141 | 0.04363 | 0.1836 | 208 |
| oilp(-3) | -184.5 | -0.4925 | 0.07386 | -0.1133 | -0.2248 | 0.04619 | 0.001284 | -0.06499 | 109.6 |
| SE | 97.55 | 0.4669 | 0.2391 | 0.06198 | 0.2125 | 0.06893 | 0.02636 | 0.1109 | 125.7 |
| | rv | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf | tb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rv (-1) | 2.142 | -0.01841 | 0.006301 | 0.0206 | 0.01484 | -0.0009498 | 0.004533 | 3.115 |
| SE | 0.3783 | 0.01369 | 0.005475 | 0.01392 | 0.005091 | 0.001886 | 0.01036 | 10.24 |
| rv (-2) | -2.063 | 0.03075 | -0.008246 | -0.03165 | -0.02612 | 0.004239 | -0.001381 | -21.26 |
| SE | 0.7214 | 0.0261 | 0.01044 | 0.02655 | 0.009708 | 0.003596 | 0.01976 | 19.53 |
| rv (-3) | 0.3868 | -0.08048 | 0.01762 | 0.04509 | 0.02628 | -0.006664 | -0.02934 | 14.07 |
| SE | 0.6558 | 0.02373 | 0.00949 | 0.02414 | 0.008825 | 0.003269 | 0.01797 | 17.75 |
| | rv | oilp | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rv (-1) | 1.326 | -0.05062 | -0.04327 | -0.005672 | 0.02311 | 0.01155 | -0.00499 | -0.01785 |
| SE | 0.3285 | 0.05334 | 0.01558 | 0.005132 | 0.01949 | 0.005798 | 0.001595 | 0.00834 |
| rv (-2) | -1.13 | -0.07168 | 0.05459 | 0.002443 | -0.02786 | -0.02308 | 0.008457 | 0.02671 |
| SE | 0.5302 | 0.08609 | 0.02514 | 0.008282 | 0.03145 | 0.009357 | 0.002575 | 0.01346 |
| rv (-3) | | 4.916E-02 | | -1.452E-01 | | -1.059E-01 | | 1.083E-02 | | 5.687E-02 | | 1.914E-02 | | -1.079E-02 | | -4.845E-02 | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE | | 4.714E-01 | | 7.653E-02 | | 2.235E-02 | | 7.362E-03 | | 2.796E-02 | | 8.318E-03 | | 2.289E-03 | | 1.196E-02 | | |
| | oilp(-1) | | 6.141E+00 | | 1.192E+00 | | 1.143E-01 | | 6.455E-02 | | 5.602E-02 | | 4.033E-03 | | 2.093E-02 | | 1.585E-01 | 2.202E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.630E+00 | | 2.647E-01 | | 7.730E-02 | | 2.546E-02 | | 9.670E-02 | | 2.877E-02 | | 7.915E-03 | | 4.138E-02 | 6.418E+01 |
| | oilp(-2) | | 2.641E+00 | | 5.421E-01 | | 7.709E-02 | | 9.468E-02 | | -8.378E-02 | | -1.476E-02 | | 4.605E-03 | | -5.626E-02 | -4.755E+01 |
| | SE | | 2.914E+00 | | 4.732E-01 | | 1.382E-01 | | 4.552E-02 | | 1.729E-01 | | 5.143E-02 | | 1.415E-02 | | 7.398E-02 | 1.147E+02 |
| | oilp(-3) | | -5.322E+00 | | -1.826E-01 | | 8.669E-02 | | -8.404E-02 | | -1.103E-01 | | 8.920E-02 | | 1.915E-02 | | 9.721E-02 | 1.549E+02 |
| | SE | | 2.203E+00 | | 3.578E-01 | | 1.045E-01 | | 3.442E-02 | | 1.307E-01 | | 3.888E-02 | | 1.070E-02 | | 5.593E-02 | 8.675E+01 |
| | oilp | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oilp (-1) | 1.325 | 0.08418 | 0.04348 | 0.07038 | 0.02965 | 0.0138 | 0.1458 |
| SE | 0.3695 | 0.1154 | 0.02506 | 0.0899 | 0.02827 | 0.01099 | 0.05292 |
| oilp (-2) | -1.088 | -0.2859 | 0.08131 | 0.1219 | -0.01679 | -0.01481 | -0.185 |
| SE | 0.5255 | 0.1642 | 0.03564 | 0.1279 | 0.04021 | 0.01563 | 0.07526 |
| oilp (-3) | -0.01838 | 0.08432 | -0.06213 | -0.1106 | 0.09527 | 0.01692 | 0.08757 |
| SE | 0.5662 | 0.1769 | 0.0384 | 0.1378 | 0.04332 | 0.01684 | 0.08109 |
In Table 28, lagged values of HV correlate to values of government consumption (GCON) and trade balance (TB). However, the inclusion of price levels in Table 29 appears to weaken the predictive significance of HV to GCON and TB. In contrast, RV displays a completely different set of results. Recall that RV and HV produce the same results in section 1, in which the VAR model is applied in the context of the entire data set. Table 30 shows that past values of RV correlate to the growth rate of GDP (GGDP), investment (INV), private consumption (PCON), government consumption (GCON) and interest rate (IR). The inclusion of price levels strengthens the predictive significance of RV to GGDP, IR and the inflation rate (INF), and weakens that to INV. Lagged values of price levels correlate to values of INV, GCON, INF and TB in Table 32. When past values of HV are included in the VAR (3) model, the predictive significance of price levels to all macroeconomic variables weaken; when that of RV are included, the predictive significance of price levels to INV and IR strengthens, while that to INF and TB weakens.
Conclusion Of Results And Policy Implications
If volatility is measured as HV, volatility is treated as an exogenous variable for both sets of data. However, the results in both sections appear to be ambiguous. In the context of the full data set in section 1, past values of HV do not correlate to any macroeconomic indicators and the inclusion of price levels strengthens the predictive significance of HV to GGDP and TB. In the context of the partial data set in section 2, past values of HV correlate to GCON and TB and the inclusion of price levels weakens the predictive significance of HV to the same indicators. It seems that no common statistically significant results exist in the two sections. If volatility is measured as RV, volatility is treated as an exogenous variable in the context of the full data set and an endogenous variable in the partial data set. A common statistically significant result in
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both sections is that the inclusion of price levels significantly increases the predictive significance of RV to GGDP.
Results from both sections also show that oil price levels is a statistically significant predictor of GCON and INV. It is interesting to observe that in both sections the inclusion of RV increases the explanatory power of price levels to INV. The results from this paper show that both oil price volatility and price levels do impact the Indonesian macroeconomy, suggesting that for purposes of macroeconomic prosperity, policymakers should not only focus on stabilizing price levels for the long-run, but on controlling short-term, day-to-day fluctuations of oil prices as well.
The final set of common statistical results relates to the existence of causal links between both volatility measurements and price levels. This is consistent with the above results, which show that the inclusion of volatility or price levels does improve the predictive significance of the other variable to selected macroeconomic variables.
Further research
Future work on this topic should perhaps investigate on the possible causes of the transition from exogeneity to endogeneity for realized volatility and price levels. Though both are proven to be exogenous in the context of the entire data set, realized volatility and price levels appear to be endogenous for the more recent half. If endogeneity for realized volatility and price levels can be accounted for, further research is required to uncover the feedback mechanism by which the macroeconomy affect both variables. Another topic for future research also concerns a similar form of feedback that exists between price levels and volatility. This feedback may account for the vast improvement in predictive significance between each variable http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol7/iss1/4
and the macroeconomic indicators when the other variable is included. It is perhaps also interesting to check whether a similar phenomenon exists for other emerging economies.
That oil price levels is a significant predictor of government consumption and investment is perhaps not surprising given Indonesia's heavy oil and electricity subsidies, a requisite for price stability and the protection of its citizens' purchasing power (Pasandran and Tisnabudi, 2010). It would be interesting for future research to look into the sensitivity of government expenditures, investment and national fuel subsidies to changes not only in oil prices, but also in prices for oil derivatives like diesel since diesel is also used by the country for electricity generation. Further work is also required to investigate into the channels by which price levels impact government consumption and investment. Previous research has established this for developed countries with free-market economies where little or no fuel subsidies exist. Perhaps a different form of channel exists for developing countries like Indonesia where fuel subsidies take up a substantial portion of the national budget.
Indonesia was a long-time oil exporter until 2006, during which it became a net oil importer. In 2009, its membership from OPEC was removed as a result of its declining oil exports. As future macroeconomic data becomes available, it would be interesting to compare time series results between the period when the country was a net oil exporter and that when it was a net oil importer. This comparison can only be carried out when sufficient data is available in the future to prevent low-power errors in time series analysis.
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| | | hv | | ggdp | | inv | | pcon | | gcon | | ir | | inf | | tb | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hv (-1) | | 1.123E+00 | | -3.044E-04 | | 2.920E-04 | | 1.023E-04 | | 1.062E-04 | | -1.305E-05 | | -1.124E-04 | | -6.715E-02 | |
| SE | | 6.799E-02 | | 3.177E-04 | | 2.151E-04 | | 2.553E-04 | | 6.979E-05 | | 7.407E-05 | | 2.250E-04 | | 7.582E-02 | |
| | ggdp (-1) | | 3.174E+01 | | -4.962E-01 | | 1.069E-01 | | 2.292E-01 | | 8.310E-02 | | -6.844E-02 | | -1.499E-01 | | 3.301E+01 |
| | SE | | 3.667E+01 | | 1.713E-01 | | 1.160E-01 | | 1.377E-01 | | 3.764E-02 | | 3.995E-02 | | 1.214E-01 | | 4.089E+01 |
| inv (-1) | | -9.174E-02 | | 2.055E-01 | | 4.786E-01 | | -3.376E-01 | | 2.868E-03 | | 1.257E-01 | | 1.106E-01 | | -2.759E+01 | |
| SE | | 3.177E+01 | | 1.484E-01 | | 1.005E-01 | | 1.193E-01 | | 3.261E-02 | | 3.461E-02 | | 1.051E-01 | | 3.543E+01 | |
| | pcon (-1) | | 8.470E+00 | | -9.209E-02 | | -2.560E-03 | | 6.375E-01 | | -4.232E-02 | | -9.711E-02 | | -7.687E-02 | | 1.716E+01 |
| | SE | | 2.374E+01 | | 1.109E-01 | | 7.511E-02 | | 8.912E-02 | | 2.437E-02 | | 2.586E-02 | | 7.856E-02 | | 2.647E+01 |
| gcon (-1) | | 6.382E+01 | | -9.200E-01 | | 2.760E-01 | | -3.201E-01 | | 4.494E-01 | | -4.620E-01 | | -4.858E-01 | | -1.196E+02 | |
| SE | | 1.164E+02 | | 5.440E-01 | | 3.684E-01 | | 4.371E-01 | | 1.195E-01 | | 1.268E-01 | | 3.853E-01 | | 1.298E+02 | |
| | ir (-1) | | -2.211E+01 | | -8.160E-02 | | -1.204E-01 | | 1.221E-01 | | 8.520E-03 | | 8.544E-01 | | -7.674E-03 | | -7.338E+00 |
| | SE | | 2.875E+01 | | 1.343E-01 | | 9.096E-02 | | 1.079E-01 | | 2.951E-02 | | 3.132E-02 | | 9.514E-02 | | 3.206E+01 |
| inf (-1) | | -4.851E+00 | | 3.526E-01 | | -4.442E-02 | | 8.073E-02 | | -1.154E-01 | | 2.545E-01 | | 6.459E-01 | | -4.305E+01 | |
| SE | | 4.096E+01 | | 1.914E-01 | | 1.296E-01 | | 1.538E-01 | | 4.204E-02 | | 4.462E-02 | | 1.356E-01 | | 4.568E+01 | |
| | tb (-1) | | 3.854E-02 | | 2.089E-04 | | -6.904E-04 | | 6.999E-05 | | -8.042E-06 | | -1.887E-05 | | 1.052E-04 | | 8.285E-01 |
| | SE | | 6.899E-02 | | 3.224E-04 | | 2.183E-04 | | 2.590E-04 | | 7.082E-05 | | 7.516E-05 | | 2.283E-04 | | 7.694E-02 |
| C | | -7.790E+02 | | 1.458E+01 | | 1.566E+01 | | 2.957E+01 | | 6.638E+00 | | 9.054E+00 | | 7.345E+00 | | 1.440E+03 | |
| SE | | 2.378E+03 | | 1.111E+01 | | 7.524E+00 | | 8.927E+00 | | 2.441E+00 | | 2.590E+00 | | 7.870E+00 | | 2.652E+03 | |
| | hv | oilp | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hv (-1) | 0.8383 | -0.005716 | -0.001023 | -0.0001722 | 0.0001822 | -1.073e-05 | 8.446e-05 | -0.000248 |
| SE | 0.09105 | 0.0005488 | 0.0004644 | 0.0003154 | 0.0003851 | 0.0001035 | 0.0001106 | 0.0003389 |
| oilp (-1) | 42.5 | 1.31 | 0.1074 | 0.06939 | -0.01195 | 0.01749 | -0.01458 | 0.02027 |
| SE | 10.13 | 0.06109 | 0.05169 | 0.0351 | 0.04286 | 0.01152 | 0.01231 | 0.03772 |
| ggdp (-1) | 11.16 | 0.1207 | -0.5482 | 0.0733 | 0.235 | 0.07463 | -0.06138 | -0.1597 |
| SE | 33.15 | 0.1998 | 0.1691 | 0.1148 | 0.1402 | 0.03769 | 0.04027 | 0.1234 |
| inv (-1) | -39.61 | -0.06368 | 0.1056 | 0.4141 | -0.3265 | -0.0134 | 0.1393 | 0.0917 |
| SE | 29.93 | 0.1804 | 0.1526 | 0.1037 | 0.1266 | 0.03403 | 0.03636 | 0.1114 |
| pcon (-1) | 8.833 | 0.2331 | -0.09117 | -0.001967 | 0.6374 | -0.04217 | -0.09723 | -0.0767 |
| SE | 21.22 | 0.1279 | 0.1082 | 0.07351 | 0.08975 | 0.02413 | 0.02578 | 0.07899 |
| gcon (-1) | -87.88 | -0.6958 | -1.303 | 0.02823 | -0.2775 | 0.387 | -0.41 | -0.5582 |
| SE | 110.2 | 0.6642 | 0.562 | 0.3817 | 0.466 | 0.1253 | 0.1339 | 0.4102 |
| ir (-1) | 24.37 | -0.01213 | 0.03584 | -0.04451 | 0.1091 | 0.02765 | 0.8384 | 0.0145 |
| SE | 27.99 | 0.1687 | 0.1427 | 0.09695 | 0.1184 | 0.03182 | 0.034 | 0.1042 |
| inf (-1) | 4.007 | -0.04247 | 0.375 | -0.02996 | 0.07824 | -0.1117 | 0.2514 | 0.6501 |
| SE | 36.68 | 0.2211 | 0.1871 | 0.127 | 0.1551 | 0.0417 | 0.04456 | 0.1365 |
| tb (-1) | -0.1953 | -0.001173 | -0.0003819 | -0.001072 | 0.0001357 | -0.0001043 | 6.135e-05 | -6.346e-06 |
| SE | 0.08315 | 0.0005012 | 0.0004241 | 0.000288 | 0.0003517 | 9.455e-05 | 0.000101 | 0.0003095 |
| C | 205.1 | -9.733 | 17.07 | 17.27 | 29.29 | 7.043 | 8.717 | 7.815 |
| SE | 2139 | 12.89 | 10.91 | 7.408 | 9.045 | 2.432 | 2.598 | 7.961 |
| | rv | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rv (-1) | 1.097 | -0.002875 | 0.006292 | 0.001497 | 0.001938 | -0.0001489 | -0.001655 |
| SE | 0.05629 | 0.005928 | 0.003974 | 0.004741 | 0.001296 | 0.001375 | 0.00418 |
| ggdp (-1) | 1.302 | -0.5058 | 0.103 | 0.2304 | 0.08298 | -0.06876 | -0.1512 |
| SE | 1.636 | 0.1723 | 0.1155 | 0.1378 | 0.03769 | 0.03998 | 0.1215 |
| inv (-1) | 1.069 | 0.194 | 0.4674 | -0.3371 | 0.001009 | 0.1254 | 0.11 |
| SE | 1.431 | 0.1506 | 0.101 | 0.1205 | 0.03294 | 0.03494 | 0.1062 |
| pcon (-1) | 0.6657 | -0.0914 | -0.001806 | 0.6375 | -0.04219 | -0.09709 | -0.07686 |
| SE | 1.059 | 0.1115 | 0.07475 | 0.08917 | 0.02438 | 0.02587 | 0.07862 |
| gcon (-1) | 1.691 | -0.9192 | 0.2438 | -0.3251 | 0.4409 | -0.4617 | -0.4802 |
| SE | 5.211 | 0.5487 | 0.3679 | 0.4389 | 0.12 | 0.1273 | 0.387 |
| ir (-1) | -1.253 | -0.07375 | -0.1117 | 0.1219 | 0.01007 | 0.8546 | -0.007498 |
| SE | 1.291 | 0.1359 | 0.09114 | 0.1087 | 0.02973 | 0.03154 | 0.09586 |
| inf (-1) | -0.1479 | 0.3544 | -0.04465 | 0.08035 | -0.1156 | 0.2545 | 0.6463 |
| SE | 1.827 | 0.1924 | 0.129 | 0.1538 | 0.04207 | 0.04462 | 0.1356 |
| tb (-1) | 0.002183 | 0.0001992 | -0.0007413 | 6.421e-05 | -2.056e-05 | -1.885e-05 | 0.0001117 |
| SE | 0.00317 | 0.0003338 | 0.0002238 | 0.0002669 | 7.3e-05 | 7.743e-05 | 0.0002354 |
| C | -66.51 | 14.71 | 16.08 | 29.61 | 6.738 | 9.056 | 7.3 |
| SE | 106.3 | 11.19 | 7.502 | 8.948 | 2.447 | 2.596 | 7.89 |
| | | rv | | oilp | | ggdp | | inv | | pcon | | gcon | | ir | | inf | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rv (-1) | | 8.116E-01 | | -1.090E-01 | | -1.711E-02 | | -3.294E-03 | | 3.095E-03 | | -8.675E-04 | | 2.520E-03 | | -4.669E-03 | | |
| SE | | 8.587E-02 | | 1.318E-02 | | 9.911E-03 | | 6.644E-03 | | 8.113E-03 | | 2.177E-03 | | 2.319E-03 | | 7.142E-03 | | |
| | oilp (-1) | | 2.116E+00 | | 1.364E+00 | | 1.056E-01 | | 7.109E-02 | | -1.186E-02 | | 2.080E-02 | | -1.980E-02 | | 2.235E-02 | 5.230E+01 |
| | SE | | 5.149E-01 | | 7.903E-02 | | 5.943E-02 | | 3.983E-02 | | 4.864E-02 | | 1.306E-02 | | 1.390E-02 | | 4.282E-02 | 1.292E+01 |
| ggdp (-1) | | 3.933E-01 | | 9.375E-02 | | -5.511E-01 | | 7.248E-02 | | 2.355E-01 | | 7.405E-02 | | -6.026E-02 | | -1.608E-01 | | |
| SE | | 1.486E+00 | | 2.280E-01 | | 1.715E-01 | | 1.149E-01 | | 1.404E-01 | | 3.767E-02 | | 4.011E-02 | | 1.236E-01 | | |
| | inv (-1) | | -4.803E-01 | | -2.009E-02 | | 1.167E-01 | | 4.154E-01 | | -3.284E-01 | | -1.423E-02 | | 1.399E-01 | | 9.367E-02 | -6.489E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.338E+00 | | 2.054E-01 | | 1.545E-01 | | 1.036E-01 | | 1.265E-01 | | 3.394E-02 | | 3.614E-02 | | 1.113E-01 | 3.358E+01 |
| pcon (-1) | | 6.551E-01 | | 2.267E-01 | | -9.193E-02 | | -2.162E-03 | | 6.376E-01 | | -4.229E-02 | | -9.699E-02 | | -7.697E-02 | | |
| SE | | 9.506E-01 | | 1.459E-01 | | 1.097E-01 | | 7.354E-02 | | 8.981E-02 | | 2.410E-02 | | 2.567E-02 | | 7.906E-02 | | |
| | gcon (-1) | | -4.480E+00 | | -4.173E-01 | | -1.227E+00 | | 3.649E-02 | | -2.905E-01 | | 3.802E-01 | | -4.040E-01 | | -5.454E-01 | -2.669E+02 |
| | SE | | 4.914E+00 | | 7.542E-01 | | 5.671E-01 | | 3.801E-01 | | 4.642E-01 | | 1.246E-01 | | 1.327E-01 | | 4.087E-01 | 1.233E+02 |
| ir (-1) | | 7.303E-01 | | -3.212E-02 | | 2.522E-02 | | -4.508E-02 | | 1.108E-01 | | 2.957E-02 | | 8.360E-01 | | 1.346E-02 | | |
| SE | | 1.256E+00 | | 1.927E-01 | | 1.449E-01 | | 9.714E-02 | | 1.186E-01 | | 3.184E-02 | | 3.390E-02 | | 1.044E-01 | | |
| | inf (-1) | | 3.127E-01 | | -1.693E-02 | | 3.774E-01 | | -2.918E-02 | | 7.777E-02 | | -1.111E-01 | | 2.502E-01 | | 6.512E-01 | -3.150E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.644E+00 | | 2.523E-01 | | 1.897E-01 | | 1.272E-01 | | 1.553E-01 | | 4.168E-02 | | 4.438E-02 | | 1.367E-01 | 4.125E+01 |
| tb (-1) | | -7.329E-03 | | -7.896E-04 | | -2.753E-04 | | -1.061E-03 | | 1.175E-04 | | -1.141E-04 | | 7.014E-05 | | 1.122E-05 | | |
| SE | | 3.668E-03 | | 5.630E-04 | | 4.234E-04 | | 2.838E-04 | | 3.466E-04 | | 9.301E-05 | | 9.904E-05 | | 3.051E-04 | | |
| | C | | -3.491E+01 | | -1.387E+01 | | 1.628E+01 | | 1.714E+01 | | 2.943E+01 | | 7.048E+00 | | 8.760E+00 | | 7.634E+00 | 2.162E+03 |
| | SE | | 9.571E+01 | | 1.469E+01 | | 1.105E+01 | | 7.404E+00 | | 9.042E+00 | | 2.427E+00 | | 2.584E+00 | | 7.960E+00 | 2.401E+03 |
| | oilp | ggdp | inv | pcon | gcon | ir | inf | tb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oilp(-1) | 0.8359 | 0.02263 | 0.05512 | 0.00315 | 0.0166 | -0.007579 | -0.0002813 | 12.31 |
| SE | 0.06612 | 0.0355 | 0.02331 | 0.02844 | 0.007635 | 0.008193 | 0.02509 | 8.353 |
| ggdp (-1) | 0.1807 | -0.5375 | 0.07511 | 0.2331 | 0.07474 | -0.06227 | -0.1571 | 17.1 |
| SE | 0.3238 | 0.1738 | 0.1142 | 0.1393 | 0.03739 | 0.04013 | 0.1229 | 40.91 |
| inv (-1) | 0.1298 | 0.1402 | 0.4199 | -0.3326 | -0.01303 | 0.1364 | 0.1001 | -53.54 |
| SE | 0.2909 | 0.1562 | 0.1026 | 0.1251 | 0.03359 | 0.03605 | 0.1104 | 36.75 |
| pcon (-1) | 0.2445 | -0.08914 | -0.001626 | 0.6371 | -0.04215 | -0.0974 | -0.07621 | 18.17 |
| SE | 0.2074 | 0.1113 | 0.07311 | 0.08922 | 0.02395 | 0.0257 | 0.07871 | 26.2 |
| gcon (-1) | 0.7876 | -1.038 | 0.07291 | -0.3247 | 0.3898 | -0.4319 | -0.4938 | -175.7 |
| SE | 1.052 | 0.5647 | 0.3708 | 0.4525 | 0.1215 | 0.1303 | 0.3992 | 132.9 |
| ir (-1) | -0.354 | -0.02531 | -0.05481 | 0.12 | 0.02701 | 0.8435 | -0.0003325 | 16.48 |
| SE | 0.2683 | 0.144 | 0.09459 | 0.1154 | 0.03098 | 0.03325 | 0.1018 | 33.9 |
| inf (-1) | -0.1159 | 0.3618 | -0.03217 | 0.08058 | -0.1118 | 0.2525 | 0.6469 | -38.99 |
| SE | 0.3583 | 0.1923 | 0.1263 | 0.1541 | 0.04137 | 0.04439 | 0.136 | 45.26 |
| tb (-1) | 0.0009416 | -3.562e-06 | -0.001009 | 6.833e-05 | -0.0001003 | 3.01e-05 | 8.54e-05 | 0.7319 |
| SE | 0.0007429 | 0.0003989 | 0.0002619 | 0.0003196 | 8.579e-05 | 9.207e-05 | 0.000282 | 0.09386 |
| C | -16 | 15.95 | 17.08 | 29.49 | 7.031 | 8.809 | 7.543 | 2001 |
| SE | 20.88 | 11.21 | 7.361 | 8.982 | 2.411 | 2.587 | 7.924 | 2638 |
| | | hv | | ggdp | | inv | | pcon | | gcon | | ir | | inf | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hv (-1) | | 1.313E+00 | | -3.067E-04 | | 2.614E-04 | | 6.295E-04 | | 1.323E-04 | | -1.095E-05 | | 1.508E-04 | |
| SE | | 3.033E-01 | | 5.369E-04 | | 1.843E-04 | | 4.708E-04 | | 1.723E-04 | | 6.454E-05 | | 3.112E-04 | |
| hv (-2) | | -2.518E-01 | | -1.052E-03 | | 1.509E-05 | | -8.965E-05 | | -2.858E-05 | | -4.680E-06 | | -7.455E-04 | |
| SE | | 4.172E-01 | | 7.386E-04 | | 2.535E-04 | | 6.477E-04 | | 2.370E-04 | | 8.879E-05 | | 4.281E-04 | |
| hv (-3) | | -4.991E-01 | | -8.790E-05 | | 2.467E-05 | | 6.753E-05 | | 1.197E-03 | | 1.924E-04 | | 1.091E-03 | |
| SE | | 8.761E-01 | | 1.551E-03 | | 5.324E-04 | | 1.360E-03 | | 4.978E-04 | | 1.865E-04 | | 8.989E-04 | |
| | ggdp (-1) | | 1.148E+02 | | -4.559E-01 | | -3.122E-02 | | -9.683E-03 | | 2.146E-02 | | 6.996E-02 | | 1.862E-01 |
| | SE | | 2.415E+02 | | 4.275E-01 | | 1.467E-01 | | 3.749E-01 | | 1.372E-01 | | 5.140E-02 | | 2.478E-01 |
| | ggdp (-2) | | -7.584E+01 | | -6.078E-01 | | 2.370E-02 | | 2.347E-01 | | -2.706E-01 | | 6.406E-02 | | -2.047E-01 |
| | SE | | 2.625E+02 | | 4.648E-01 | | 1.595E-01 | | 4.076E-01 | | 1.492E-01 | | 5.587E-02 | | 2.693E-01 |
| | ggdp (-3) | | 5.097E+01 | | -5.079E-02 | | 3.723E-02 | | -3.309E-02 | | -1.122E-01 | | 4.983E-03 | | 5.721E-02 |
| | SE | | 1.039E+02 | | 1.840E-01 | | 6.315E-02 | | 1.614E-01 | | 5.904E-02 | | 2.212E-02 | | 1.066E-01 |
| inv (-1) | | -5.530E+02 | | 6.141E-01 | | 5.156E-01 | | -8.379E-01 | | -2.679E-01 | | -1.101E-02 | | -3.801E-01 | |
| SE | | 5.714E+02 | | 1.012E+00 | | 3.472E-01 | | 8.872E-01 | | 3.246E-01 | | 1.216E-01 | | 5.863E-01 | |
| inv (-2) | | 4.024E+02 | | 1.669E+00 | | -2.068E-01 | | -9.480E-01 | | -2.740E-02 | | 2.007E-01 | | 1.031E+00 | |
| SE | | 6.520E+02 | | 1.154E+00 | | 3.962E-01 | | 1.012E+00 | | 3.704E-01 | | 1.388E-01 | | 6.690E-01 | |
| inv (-3) | | 2.058E+01 | | -1.126E+00 | | 3.019E-01 | | 1.184E+00 | | 1.651E-01 | | -1.336E-01 | | -3.261E-01 | |
| SE | | 4.349E+02 | | 7.699E-01 | | 2.642E-01 | | 6.752E-01 | | 2.471E-01 | | 9.255E-02 | | 4.462E-01 | |
| | pcon (-1) | | 3.179E+02 | | 1.651E-01 | | -1.290E-01 | | 3.076E-01 | | -1.287E-01 | | 9.660E-02 | | 4.367E-01 |
| | SE | | 3.001E+02 | | 5.313E-01 | | 1.824E-01 | | 4.660E-01 | | 1.705E-01 | | 6.387E-02 | | 3.079E-01 |
| | pcon (-2) | | -2.633E+02 | | -8.228E-01 | | 1.008E-01 | | 6.844E-01 | | -9.989E-02 | | -2.870E-02 | | -5.864E-01 |
| | SE | | 3.503E+02 | | 6.202E-01 | | 2.129E-01 | | 5.439E-01 | | 1.990E-01 | | 7.455E-02 | | 3.594E-01 |
| | pcon (-3) | | 1.785E+02 | | 7.184E-01 | | -1.565E-02 | | -6.174E-01 | | 9.085E-02 | | -8.620E-02 | | 9.108E-02 |
| | SE | | 2.428E+02 | | 4.300E-01 | | 1.476E-01 | | 3.771E-01 | | 1.380E-01 | | 5.169E-02 | | 2.492E-01 |
| gcon (-1) | | -4.402E+02 | | -8.237E-01 | | 5.280E-02 | | 5.555E-01 | | 4.788E-01 | | 9.802E-02 | | 5.307E-01 | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE | | 3.729E+02 | | 6.602E-01 | | 2.266E-01 | | 5.790E-01 | | 2.119E-01 | | 7.937E-02 | | 3.826E-01 | | |
| gcon (-2) | | -4.326E+02 | | -1.492E+00 | | 2.960E-01 | | 7.557E-01 | | 3.822E-01 | | -2.515E-01 | | -8.577E-01 | | |
| SE | | 3.620E+02 | | 6.409E-01 | | 2.200E-01 | | 5.621E-01 | | 2.057E-01 | | 7.705E-02 | | 3.714E-01 | | |
| gcon (-3) | | 1.122E+02 | | 4.621E-01 | | -6.513E-02 | | -6.006E-01 | | -3.903E-01 | | -2.711E-01 | | -8.725E-01 | | |
| SE | | 4.562E+02 | | 8.077E-01 | | 2.772E-01 | | 7.084E-01 | | 2.592E-01 | | 9.710E-02 | | 4.681E-01 | | |
| | ir (-1) | | -1.535E+03 | | 7.888E-01 | | -1.388E+00 | | -1.303E+00 | | 6.488E-01 | | 1.172E+00 | | 4.963E-01 | 1.775E+03 |
| | SE | | 8.445E+02 | | 1.495E+00 | | 5.132E-01 | | 1.311E+00 | | 4.798E-01 | | 1.797E-01 | | 8.665E-01 | 7.861E+02 |
| | ir (-2) | | 6.812E+02 | | -3.694E+00 | | 1.184E+00 | | 3.151E+00 | | -1.345E+00 | | -5.372E-01 | | -1.627E+00 | -7.963E+02 |
| | SE | | 1.093E+03 | | 1.936E+00 | | 6.643E-01 | | 1.697E+00 | | 6.212E-01 | | 2.327E-01 | | 1.122E+00 | 1.018E+03 |
| | ir (-3) | | 2.208E+02 | | 2.783E+00 | | -2.311E-01 | | -2.035E+00 | | 5.041E-01 | | 2.384E-01 | | 9.108E-01 | -3.104E+02 |
| | SE | | 8.405E+02 | | 1.488E+00 | | 5.107E-01 | | 1.305E+00 | | 4.775E-01 | | 1.789E-01 | | 8.624E-01 | 7.824E+02 |
| inf (-1) | | 6.504E+02 | | 7.884E-01 | | 1.708E-01 | | -6.887E-01 | | -5.061E-01 | | -7.789E-02 | | -5.186E-01 | | |
| SE | | 3.147E+02 | | 5.571E-01 | | 1.912E-01 | | 4.886E-01 | | 1.788E-01 | | 6.697E-02 | | 3.229E-01 | | |
| inf (-2) | | 3.359E+02 | | 1.335E+00 | | -5.577E-02 | | -1.252E+00 | | 1.450E-02 | | 1.597E-01 | | 3.285E-01 | | |
| SE | | 4.004E+02 | | 7.089E-01 | | 2.433E-01 | | 6.217E-01 | | 2.275E-01 | | 8.522E-02 | | 4.108E-01 | | |
| inf (-3) | | 3.687E+02 | | 4.176E-02 | | 1.257E-01 | | -3.496E-02 | | 1.187E-01 | | 9.384E-02 | | 1.028E-01 | | |
| SE | | 2.359E+02 | | 4.177E-01 | | 1.434E-01 | | 3.663E-01 | | 1.341E-01 | | 5.022E-02 | | 2.421E-01 | | |
| | tb (-1) | | 4.154E-02 | | -6.901E-04 | | 2.273E-04 | | 4.109E-04 | | 2.728E-04 | | -1.257E-04 | | -3.982E-04 | 2.946E-01 |
| | SE | | 2.805E-01 | | 4.966E-04 | | 1.704E-04 | | 4.355E-04 | | 1.594E-04 | | 5.970E-05 | | 2.878E-04 | 2.611E-01 |
| | tb (-2) | | 7.967E-01 | | 6.928E-04 | | -6.446E-05 | | -5.325E-04 | | -2.290E-05 | | -9.339E-05 | | 9.089E-05 | 8.558E-02 |
| | SE | | 2.743E-01 | | 4.856E-04 | | 1.667E-04 | | 4.259E-04 | | 1.558E-04 | | 5.838E-05 | | 2.814E-04 | 2.553E-01 |
| | tb (-3) | | -1.030E-01 | | 5.801E-04 | | -1.862E-04 | | -9.346E-04 | | -4.108E-04 | | 2.967E-05 | | -3.376E-04 | 2.774E-01 |
| | SE | | 3.310E-01 | | 5.861E-04 | | 2.012E-04 | | 5.140E-04 | | 1.881E-04 | | 7.045E-05 | | 3.396E-04 | 3.081E-01 |
| C | | -3.826E+03 | | -1.256E+01 | | 1.560E+01 | | 6.124E+01 | | 2.186E+01 | | 5.244E+00 | | 1.560E+01 | | |
| SE | | 1.811E+04 | | 3.206E+01 | | 1.100E+01 | | 2.812E+01 | | 1.029E+01 | | 3.854E+00 | | 1.858E+01 | | |
| | | hv | | oilp | | ggdp | | inv | | pcon | | gcon | | ir | | inf | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hv (-1) | | 8.835E-01 | | -3.468E-03 | | 1.858E-04 | | -1.442E-05 | | -2.312E-04 | | 1.211E-04 | | -1.566E-04 | | -6.825E-04 | | |
| SE | | 3.986E-01 | | 1.908E-03 | | 9.771E-04 | | 2.533E-04 | | 8.683E-04 | | 2.816E-04 | | 1.077E-04 | | 4.532E-04 | | |
| hv (-2) | | -8.633E-01 | | -7.414E-03 | | -3.561E-03 | | -2.756E-04 | | 1.838E-03 | | -5.616E-04 | | 2.174E-04 | | 1.894E-04 | | |
| SE | | 9.112E-01 | | 4.362E-03 | | 2.234E-03 | | 5.790E-04 | | 1.985E-03 | | 6.439E-04 | | 2.462E-04 | | 1.036E-03 | | |
| hv (-3) | | 2.281E-01 | | -1.386E-03 | | -2.363E-03 | | 5.309E-04 | | 2.863E-03 | | 3.952E-04 | | 2.661E-04 | | 1.828E-03 | | |
| SE | | 1.150E+00 | | 5.504E-03 | | 2.819E-03 | | 7.306E-04 | | 2.505E-03 | | 8.125E-04 | | 3.107E-04 | | 1.308E-03 | | |
| | oilp(-1) | | 2.729E+01 | | 8.921E-01 | | -2.099E-01 | | 2.332E-02 | | 2.313E-01 | | -1.943E-02 | | 3.850E-02 | | 1.948E-01 | 1.096E+02 |
| | SE | | 9.756E+01 | | 4.670E-01 | | 2.392E-01 | | 6.199E-02 | | 2.125E-01 | | 6.894E-02 | | 2.636E-02 | | 1.109E-01 | 1.257E+02 |
| | oilp(-2) | | 2.870E+02 | | 1.267E+00 | | 4.594E-01 | | 1.589E-01 | | -2.040E-01 | | 9.881E-02 | | -3.029E-02 | | -6.261E-02 | -9.122E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.615E+02 | | 7.729E-01 | | 3.958E-01 | | 1.026E-01 | | 3.518E-01 | | 1.141E-01 | | 4.363E-02 | | 1.836E-01 | 2.080E+02 |
| | oilp(-3) | | -1.845E+02 | | -4.925E-01 | | 7.386E-02 | | -1.133E-01 | | -2.248E-01 | | 4.619E-02 | | 1.284E-03 | | -6.499E-02 | 1.096E+02 |
| SE | | 9.755E+01 | | 4.669E-01 | | 2.391E-01 | | 6.198E-02 | | 2.125E-01 | | 6.893E-02 | | 2.636E-02 | | 1.109E-01 | | |
| ggdp (-1) | | 3.192E+02 | | 1.113E+00 | | -1.929E-01 | | 8.397E-02 | | -9.230E-02 | | 7.836E-02 | | 5.503E-02 | | 1.754E-01 | | |
| SE | | 2.046E+02 | | 9.794E-01 | | 5.016E-01 | | 1.300E-01 | | 4.458E-01 | | 1.446E-01 | | 5.529E-02 | | 2.327E-01 | | |
| ggdp (-2) | | 5.485E+01 | | 3.504E-01 | | -3.140E-01 | | 9.366E-02 | | 6.214E-02 | | -1.864E-01 | | 5.485E-02 | | -2.184E-01 | | |
| SE | | 2.136E+02 | | 1.022E+00 | | 5.235E-01 | | 1.357E-01 | | 4.652E-01 | | 1.509E-01 | | 5.771E-02 | | 2.428E-01 | | |
| ggdp (-3) | | 8.193E+01 | | 1.689E-01 | | 1.780E-02 | | 5.364E-02 | | -7.525E-02 | | -1.095E-01 | | -7.722E-03 | | 7.237E-03 | | |
| SE | | 8.529E+01 | | 4.082E-01 | | 2.091E-01 | | 5.419E-02 | | 1.858E-01 | | 6.027E-02 | | 2.305E-02 | | 9.698E-02 | | |
| | inv (-1) | | -1.346E+03 | | -3.823E+00 | | -4.451E-01 | | 6.784E-02 | | -5.019E-01 | | -6.657E-01 | | -5.393E-02 | | -7.840E-01 | 3.760E+02 |
| | SE | | 5.185E+02 | | 2.482E+00 | | 1.271E+00 | | 3.294E-01 | | 1.129E+00 | | 3.664E-01 | | 1.401E-01 | | 5.896E-01 | 6.679E+02 |
| | inv (-2) | | 2.281E+02 | | -1.200E+00 | | 1.584E+00 | | -3.094E-01 | | -1.014E+00 | | -5.020E-02 | | 1.969E-01 | | 9.570E-01 | -3.296E+02 |
| | SE | | 4.892E+02 | | 2.342E+00 | | 1.199E+00 | | 3.108E-01 | | 1.066E+00 | | 3.457E-01 | | 1.322E-01 | | 5.563E-01 | 6.302E+02 |
| | inv (-3) | | -2.660E+02 | | -1.170E-01 | | -2.051E+00 | | 1.556E-01 | | 1.817E+00 | | -2.239E-01 | | -1.748E-01 | | -5.501E-01 | -4.430E+02 |
| | SE | | 4.273E+02 | | 2.045E+00 | | 1.047E+00 | | 2.715E-01 | | 9.308E-01 | | 3.019E-01 | | 1.155E-01 | | 4.859E-01 | 5.504E+02 |
| pcon (-1) | | 4.880E+02 | | 2.597E+00 | | 5.697E-01 | | -3.883E-02 | | 5.870E-02 | | -3.478E-02 | | 6.970E-02 | | 3.511E-01 | | |
| pcon (-2) | | -3.769E+02 | | -9.584E-01 | | -8.326E-01 | | 3.215E-02 | | 5.921E-01 | | -1.418E-01 | | -5.866E-02 | | -7.595E-01 | | -1.381E+02 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE | | 2.665E+02 | | 1.276E+00 | | 6.534E-01 | | 1.693E-01 | | 5.806E-01 | | 1.883E-01 | | 7.202E-02 | | 3.031E-01 | | 3.433E+02 | |
| pcon (-3) | | -1.099E+02 | | -3.307E-01 | | 4.112E-01 | | -1.802E-01 | | -5.642E-01 | | 1.549E-02 | | -7.703E-02 | | 4.925E-02 | | 5.634E+01 | |
| SE | | 2.144E+02 | | 1.026E+00 | | 5.255E-01 | | 1.362E-01 | | 4.670E-01 | | 1.515E-01 | | 5.793E-02 | | 2.437E-01 | | 2.761E+02 | |
| | gcon (-1) | | -3.628E+02 | | -5.469E+00 | | -1.351E+00 | | 1.148E-01 | | 1.122E+00 | | 2.650E-01 | | 9.273E-02 | | 5.695E-01 | | -4.289E+01 |
| | SE | | 3.456E+02 | | 1.654E+00 | | 8.472E-01 | | 2.196E-01 | | 7.528E-01 | | 2.442E-01 | | 9.339E-02 | | 3.930E-01 | | 4.452E+02 |
| | gcon (-2) | | -4.768E+02 | | -2.904E+00 | | -2.649E+00 | | 3.055E-01 | | 1.848E+00 | | 1.431E-01 | | -1.318E-01 | | -2.649E-01 | | 6.638E+02 |
| | SE | | 4.980E+02 | | 2.383E+00 | | 1.221E+00 | | 3.164E-01 | | 1.085E+00 | | 3.519E-01 | | 1.346E-01 | | 5.662E-01 | | 6.414E+02 |
| | gcon (-3) | | 8.086E+02 | | 8.448E-01 | | 4.030E-01 | | 3.569E-01 | | 4.750E-02 | | -4.151E-01 | | -2.345E-01 | | -4.570E-01 | | 1.372E+02 |
| | SE | | 4.349E+02 | | 2.082E+00 | | 1.066E+00 | | 2.763E-01 | | 9.474E-01 | | 3.073E-01 | | 1.175E-01 | | 4.945E-01 | | 5.602E+02 |
| ir (-1) | | -2.466E+03 | | -1.598E+01 | | -2.218E+00 | | -1.859E+00 | | 8.090E-01 | | -2.116E-01 | | 1.290E+00 | | 8.852E-01 | | 1.641E+03 | |
| SE | | 1.091E+03 | | 5.221E+00 | | 2.674E+00 | | 6.930E-01 | | 2.376E+00 | | 7.707E-01 | | 2.947E-01 | | 1.240E+00 | | 1.405E+03 | |
| ir (-2) | | 8.669E+02 | | 6.202E+00 | | -3.761E+00 | | 1.297E+00 | | 3.365E+00 | | -1.426E+00 | | -5.620E-01 | | -1.667E+00 | | -9.977E+02 | |
| SE | | 8.255E+02 | | 3.951E+00 | | 2.024E+00 | | 5.245E-01 | | 1.798E+00 | | 5.833E-01 | | 2.231E-01 | | 9.387E-01 | | 1.063E+03 | |
| ir (-3) | | 9.274E+02 | | 3.789E+00 | | 4.716E+00 | | 1.377E-01 | | -3.288E+00 | | 1.152E+00 | | 2.275E-01 | | 9.869E-01 | | -1.358E+01 | |
| SE | | 8.275E+02 | | 3.961E+00 | | 2.029E+00 | | 5.258E-01 | | 1.803E+00 | | 5.847E-01 | | 2.236E-01 | | 9.410E-01 | | 1.066E+03 | |
| | inf (-1) | | 5.817E+02 | | 4.121E+00 | | 1.065E+00 | | 1.213E-01 | | -1.011E+00 | | -4.036E-01 | | -8.255E-02 | | -5.820E-01 | | -3.967E+02 |
| | SE | | 2.595E+02 | | 1.242E+00 | | 6.362E-01 | | 1.649E-01 | | 5.654E-01 | | 1.834E-01 | | 7.013E-02 | | 2.951E-01 | | 3.343E+02 |
| | inf (-2) | | 6.237E+02 | | 3.531E+00 | | 2.236E+00 | | 9.012E-02 | | -1.883E+00 | | 2.330E-01 | | 1.005E-01 | | 1.084E-01 | | -3.465E+02 |
| | SE | | 4.139E+02 | | 1.981E+00 | | 1.015E+00 | | 2.630E-01 | | 9.018E-01 | | 2.925E-01 | | 1.119E-01 | | 4.707E-01 | | 5.332E+02 |
| | inf (-3) | | 2.077E+02 | | 1.353E+00 | | 4.419E-01 | | 1.622E-02 | | -5.606E-01 | | 2.153E-01 | | 5.148E-02 | | -1.694E-01 | | 9.105E+01 |
| | SE | | 2.465E+02 | | 1.180E+00 | | 6.042E-01 | | 1.566E-01 | | 5.369E-01 | | 1.742E-01 | | 6.661E-02 | | 2.803E-01 | | 3.175E+02 |
| tb (-1) | | -1.823E-01 | | 3.557E-04 | | -1.043E-03 | | 1.024E-04 | | 5.551E-04 | | 1.215E-04 | | -1.494E-04 | | -5.599E-04 | | 1.903E-01 | |
| SE | | 2.313E-01 | | 1.107E-03 | | 5.671E-04 | | 1.470E-04 | | 5.040E-04 | | 1.635E-04 | | 6.252E-05 | | 2.631E-04 | | 3.358E-01 | |
| tb (-2) | | 5.614E-01 | | 1.564E-03 | | 2.213E-04 | | -1.930E-04 | | -2.869E-04 | | -2.311E-04 | | -1.254E-04 | | -1.042E-04 | | -9.757E-02 | |
| SE | | 2.462E-01 | | 1.178E-03 | | 6.035E-04 | | 1.564E-04 | | 5.363E-04 | | 1.739E-04 | | 6.652E-05 | | 2.799E-04 | | 3.171E-01 | |
| tb (-3) | | -2.733E-01 | | -2.733E-05 | | 2.733E-04 | | -2.801E-04 | | -7.878E-04 | | -5.348E-04 | | 1.505E-05 | | -4.431E-04 | | 1.903E-01 | |
| SE | | 2.607E-01 | | 1.248E-03 | | 6.390E-04 | | 1.656E-04 | | 5.679E-04 | | 1.842E-04 | | 7.044E-05 | | 2.964E-04 | | 3.358E-01 | |
| | C | | 2.931E+04 | | 1.185E+02 | | 4.619E+01 | | 3.389E+01 | | 3.358E+01 | | 4.552E+01 | | 8.017E+00 | | 3.587E+01 | | -1.273E+04 |
| | | rv | | ggdp | | inv | | pcon | | gcon | | ir | | inf | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rv (-1) | | 2.142E+00 | | -1.841E-02 | | 6.301E-03 | | 2.060E-02 | | 1.484E-02 | | -9.498E-04 | | 4.533E-03 | | |
| SE | | 3.783E-01 | | 1.369E-02 | | 5.475E-03 | | 1.392E-02 | | 5.091E-03 | | 1.886E-03 | | 1.036E-02 | | |
| rv (-2) | | -2.063E+00 | | 3.075E-02 | | -8.246E-03 | | -3.165E-02 | | -2.612E-02 | | 4.239E-03 | | -1.381E-03 | | |
| SE | | 7.214E-01 | | 2.610E-02 | | 1.044E-02 | | 2.655E-02 | | 9.708E-03 | | 3.596E-03 | | 1.976E-02 | | |
| rv (-3) | | 3.868E-01 | | -8.048E-02 | | 1.762E-02 | | 4.509E-02 | | 2.628E-02 | | -6.664E-03 | | -2.934E-02 | | |
| SE | | 6.558E-01 | | 2.373E-02 | | 9.490E-03 | | 2.414E-02 | | 8.825E-03 | | 3.269E-03 | | 1.797E-02 | | |
| | ggdp (-1) | | 2.771E+00 | | -3.031E-01 | | -7.456E-02 | | -1.280E-01 | | -7.480E-02 | | 7.869E-02 | | 1.906E-01 | 3.274E+02 |
| | SE | | 9.284E+00 | | 3.360E-01 | | 1.344E-01 | | 3.417E-01 | | 1.249E-01 | | 4.628E-02 | | 2.544E-01 | 2.513E+02 |
| | ggdp (-2) | | -1.587E+01 | | -3.155E-01 | | -4.683E-02 | | -1.874E-02 | | -4.671E-01 | | 9.686E-02 | | -1.820E-01 | 4.660E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.135E+01 | | 4.108E-01 | | 1.643E-01 | | 4.178E-01 | | 1.528E-01 | | 5.659E-02 | | 3.110E-01 | 3.073E+02 |
| | ggdp (-3) | | -4.638E+00 | | -5.363E-02 | | 2.718E-02 | | -7.218E-02 | | -1.568E-01 | | 1.981E-03 | | 4.428E-03 | 3.101E+01 |
| | SE | | 4.008E+00 | | 1.450E-01 | | 5.800E-02 | | 1.475E-01 | | 5.394E-02 | | 1.998E-02 | | 1.098E-01 | 1.085E+02 |
| inv (-1) | | -1.665E+01 | | 1.742E+00 | | 3.413E-01 | | -1.433E+00 | | -7.291E-01 | | 1.041E-01 | | 3.595E-02 | | |
| SE | | 2.476E+01 | | 8.961E-01 | | 3.584E-01 | | 9.114E-01 | | 3.333E-01 | | 1.235E-01 | | 6.785E-01 | | |
| inv (-2) | | 4.906E+00 | | 3.243E-01 | | -3.273E-02 | | -3.977E-01 | | 3.519E-01 | | 6.686E-02 | | 3.630E-01 | | |
| SE | | 2.695E+01 | | 9.753E-01 | | 3.900E-01 | | 9.919E-01 | | 3.627E-01 | | 1.344E-01 | | 7.384E-01 | | |
| inv (-3) | | 1.412E+01 | | -2.069E-01 | | 1.536E-01 | | 8.561E-01 | | 1.510E-01 | | -4.340E-02 | | 2.963E-01 | | |
| SE | | 1.671E+01 | | 6.046E-01 | | 2.418E-01 | | 6.149E-01 | | 2.248E-01 | | 8.329E-02 | | 4.577E-01 | | |
| | pcon (-1) | | 6.809E+00 | | 8.988E-02 | | -1.491E-01 | | 2.633E-01 | | -1.658E-01 | | 8.181E-02 | | 3.143E-01 | 2.198E+02 |
| | SE | | 1.123E+01 | | 4.064E-01 | | 1.625E-01 | | 4.133E-01 | | 1.511E-01 | | 5.598E-02 | | 3.077E-01 | 3.040E+02 |
| | pcon (-2) | | -2.109E+01 | | -2.795E-01 | | 1.474E-02 | | 3.740E-01 | | -3.032E-01 | | 3.317E-02 | | -3.711E-01 | -2.027E+02 |
| | SE | | 1.496E+01 | | 5.415E-01 | | 2.166E-01 | | 5.508E-01 | | 2.014E-01 | | 7.460E-02 | | 4.100E-01 | 4.051E+02 |
| | pcon (-3) | | 1.782E+01 | | 3.547E-01 | | 6.415E-02 | | -3.555E-01 | | 2.430E-01 | | -1.304E-01 | | -2.464E-02 | 7.989E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.047E+01 | | 3.789E-01 | | 1.515E-01 | | 3.854E-01 | | 1.409E-01 | | 5.220E-02 | | 2.869E-01 | 2.834E+02 |
| gcon (-1) | | -3.044E+01 | | -7.063E-01 | | 1.364E-02 | | 4.214E-01 | | 3.241E-01 | | 1.036E-01 | | 4.637E-01 | | |
| SE | | 1.430E+01 | | 5.176E-01 | | 2.070E-01 | | 5.265E-01 | | 1.925E-01 | | 7.131E-02 | | 3.919E-01 | | |
| gcon (-2) | | 7.010E+00 | | -1.734E+00 | | 3.532E-01 | | 9.798E-01 | | 5.911E-01 | | -2.657E-01 | | -8.157E-01 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE | | 1.492E+01 | | 5.399E-01 | | 2.159E-01 | | 5.491E-01 | | 2.008E-01 | | 7.437E-02 | | 4.087E-01 | |
| gcon (-3) | | -8.225E+00 | | 6.801E-01 | | -1.272E-01 | | -7.659E-01 | | -5.821E-01 | | -2.676E-01 | | -9.127E-01 | |
| SE | | 1.698E+01 | | 6.144E-01 | | 2.457E-01 | | 6.249E-01 | | 2.285E-01 | | 8.464E-02 | | 4.651E-01 | |
| | ir (-1) | | -4.480E+01 | | 7.639E-01 | | -1.383E+00 | | -1.307E+00 | | 6.210E-01 | | 1.196E+00 | | 5.110E-01 |
| | SE | | 3.191E+01 | | 1.155E+00 | | 4.618E-01 | | 1.174E+00 | | 4.294E-01 | | 1.591E-01 | | 8.742E-01 |
| | ir (-2) | | 1.796E+01 | | -2.151E+00 | | 9.192E-01 | | 2.282E+00 | | -2.084E+00 | | -4.028E-01 | | -1.190E+00 |
| | SE | | 4.519E+01 | | 1.635E+00 | | 6.539E-01 | | 1.663E+00 | | 6.081E-01 | | 2.253E-01 | | 1.238E+00 |
| | ir (-3) | | 4.238E+00 | | 1.548E+00 | | -1.984E-02 | | -1.341E+00 | | 1.087E+00 | | 1.172E-01 | | 5.287E-01 |
| | SE | | 3.509E+01 | | 1.270E+00 | | 5.078E-01 | | 1.291E+00 | | 4.722E-01 | | 1.749E-01 | | 9.614E-01 |
| inf (-1) | | 2.980E+01 | | 6.922E-01 | | 2.117E-01 | | -5.332E-01 | | -3.785E-01 | | -1.035E-01 | | -4.864E-01 | |
| SE | | 1.223E+01 | | 4.425E-01 | | 1.770E-01 | | 4.501E-01 | | 1.646E-01 | | 6.096E-02 | | 3.350E-01 | |
| inf (-2) | | 4.520E+00 | | 1.117E+00 | | -3.100E-02 | | -1.147E+00 | | 1.118E-01 | | 1.250E-01 | | 2.204E-01 | |
| SE | | 1.570E+01 | | 5.681E-01 | | 2.272E-01 | | 5.778E-01 | | 2.113E-01 | | 7.827E-02 | | 4.301E-01 | |
| inf (-3) | | 1.420E+01 | | -1.498E-01 | | 1.639E-01 | | 1.165E-01 | | 2.610E-01 | | 6.562E-02 | | 7.386E-02 | |
| SE | | 9.830E+00 | | 3.557E-01 | | 1.423E-01 | | 3.618E-01 | | 1.323E-01 | | 4.900E-02 | | 2.693E-01 | |
| | tb (-1) | | 2.941E-03 | | -8.596E-04 | | 2.430E-04 | | 4.794E-04 | | 2.977E-04 | | -1.568E-04 | | -5.253E-04 |
| | SE | | 1.061E-02 | | 3.839E-04 | | 1.535E-04 | | 3.905E-04 | | 1.428E-04 | | 5.289E-05 | | 2.907E-04 |
| | tb (-2) | | 2.816E-02 | | 6.853E-04 | | -5.282E-05 | | -4.750E-04 | | -3.129E-05 | | -1.213E-04 | | 4.928E-05 |
| | SE | | 1.022E-02 | | 3.699E-04 | | 1.479E-04 | | 3.762E-04 | | 1.376E-04 | | 5.095E-05 | | 2.800E-04 |
| | tb (-3) | | -2.250E-03 | | 8.876E-04 | | -2.234E-04 | | -1.081E-03 | | -5.287E-04 | | 6.181E-05 | | -2.123E-04 |
| | SE | | 1.273E-02 | | 4.608E-04 | | 1.843E-04 | | 4.687E-04 | | 1.714E-04 | | 6.348E-05 | | 3.489E-04 |
| C | | 1.470E+02 | | -3.860E+01 | | 2.136E+01 | | 7.822E+01 | | 3.454E+01 | | 3.376E+00 | | 1.039E+01 | |
| | | hv | | oilp | | ggdp | | inv | | pcon | | gcon | | ir | | inf | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hv (-1) | | 1.326E+00 | | -5.062E-02 | | -4.327E-02 | | -5.672E-03 | | 2.311E-02 | | 1.155E-02 | | -4.990E-03 | | -1.785E-02 | | |
| SE | | 3.285E-01 | | 5.334E-02 | | 1.558E-02 | | 5.132E-03 | | 1.949E-02 | | 5.798E-03 | | 1.595E-03 | | 8.340E-03 | | |
| hv (-2) | | -1.130E+00 | | -7.168E-02 | | 5.459E-02 | | 2.443E-03 | | -2.786E-02 | | -2.308E-02 | | 8.457E-03 | | 2.671E-02 | | |
| SE | | 5.302E-01 | | 8.609E-02 | | 2.514E-02 | | 8.282E-03 | | 3.145E-02 | | 9.357E-03 | | 2.575E-03 | | 1.346E-02 | | |
| hv (-3) | | 4.916E-02 | | -1.452E-01 | | -1.059E-01 | | 1.083E-02 | | 5.687E-02 | | 1.914E-02 | | -1.079E-02 | | -4.845E-02 | | |
| SE | | 4.714E-01 | | 7.653E-02 | | 2.235E-02 | | 7.362E-03 | | 2.796E-02 | | 8.318E-03 | | 2.289E-03 | | 1.196E-02 | | |
| | oilp(-1) | | 6.141E+00 | | 1.192E+00 | | 1.143E-01 | | 6.455E-02 | | 5.602E-02 | | 4.033E-03 | | 2.093E-02 | | 1.585E-01 | 2.202E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.630E+00 | | 2.647E-01 | | 7.730E-02 | | 2.546E-02 | | 9.670E-02 | | 2.877E-02 | | 7.915E-03 | | 4.138E-02 | 6.418E+01 |
| | oilp(-2) | | 2.641E+00 | | 5.421E-01 | | 7.709E-02 | | 9.468E-02 | | -8.378E-02 | | -1.476E-02 | | 4.605E-03 | | -5.626E-02 | -4.755E+01 |
| | SE | | 2.914E+00 | | 4.732E-01 | | 1.382E-01 | | 4.552E-02 | | 1.729E-01 | | 5.143E-02 | | 1.415E-02 | | 7.398E-02 | 1.147E+02 |
| | oilp(-3) | | -5.322E+00 | | -1.826E-01 | | 8.669E-02 | | -8.404E-02 | | -1.103E-01 | | 8.920E-02 | | 1.915E-02 | | 9.721E-02 | 1.549E+02 |
| | SE | | 2.203E+00 | | 3.578E-01 | | 1.045E-01 | | 3.442E-02 | | 1.307E-01 | | 3.888E-02 | | 1.070E-02 | | 5.593E-02 | 8.675E+01 |
| ggdp (-1) | | 7.083E+00 | | 9.654E-01 | | -1.403E-01 | | 2.227E-02 | | -2.048E-01 | | -5.815E-02 | | 1.010E-01 | | 2.626E-01 | | |
| SE | | 6.389E+00 | | 1.037E+00 | | 3.030E-01 | | 9.979E-02 | | 3.790E-01 | | 1.127E-01 | | 3.102E-02 | | 1.622E-01 | | |
| ggdp (-2) | | -7.454E+00 | | -2.185E-01 | | 1.192E-02 | | 9.592E-02 | | -1.098E-01 | | -4.107E-01 | | 1.486E-01 | | 7.112E-02 | | |
| SE | | 7.877E+00 | | 1.279E+00 | | 3.735E-01 | | 1.230E-01 | | 4.673E-01 | | 1.390E-01 | | 3.825E-02 | | 1.999E-01 | | |
| ggdp (-3) | | -3.672E+00 | | 4.145E-02 | | -2.847E-02 | | 4.763E-02 | | -8.153E-02 | | -1.574E-01 | | 5.115E-03 | | 1.288E-02 | | |
| SE | | 2.632E+00 | | 4.273E-01 | | 1.248E-01 | | 4.111E-02 | | 1.561E-01 | | 4.644E-02 | | 1.278E-02 | | 6.680E-02 | | |
| | inv (-1) | | -3.338E+01 | | -3.664E+00 | | 1.137E+00 | | 3.921E-02 | | -1.251E+00 | | -8.137E-01 | | 1.202E-02 | | -3.840E-01 | 1.473E+00 |
| | SE | | 1.707E+01 | | 2.772E+00 | | 8.096E-01 | | 2.666E-01 | | 1.013E+00 | | 3.013E-01 | | 8.289E-02 | | 4.333E-01 | 6.721E+02 |
| | inv (-2) | | -1.526E+00 | | -1.039E+00 | | 3.557E-02 | | -2.148E-01 | | -2.061E-01 | | 3.233E-01 | | 3.070E-02 | | 2.978E-01 | -4.484E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.811E+01 | | 2.941E+00 | | 8.590E-01 | | 2.829E-01 | | 1.074E+00 | | 3.196E-01 | | 8.795E-02 | | 4.598E-01 | 7.131E+02 |
| | inv (-3) | | 6.229E+00 | | 1.936E+00 | | -1.110E+00 | | 3.085E-02 | | 1.249E+00 | | -1.655E-01 | | -2.004E-01 | | -5.163E-01 | -5.192E+02 |
| | SE | | 1.301E+01 | | 2.113E+00 | | 6.172E-01 | | 2.033E-01 | | 7.720E-01 | | 2.297E-01 | | 6.319E-02 | | 3.303E-01 | 5.124E+02 |
| pcon (-1) | | 9.536E+00 | | 2.515E+00 | | 2.668E-01 | | -7.806E-02 | | 1.611E-01 | | -1.274E-01 | | 1.078E-01 | | 4.061E-01 | | |
| | | 7.523E+00 | | 1.222E+00 | | 3.568E-01 | | 1.175E-01 | | 4.463E-01 | | 1.328E-01 | | 3.653E-02 | | 1.910E-01 | | |
| pcon (-2) | | -2.060E+01 | | -1.355E+00 | | -2.989E-01 | | 3.939E-02 | | 3.669E-01 | | -3.236E-01 | | 2.699E-02 | | -4.285E-01 | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE | | 9.747E+00 | | 1.583E+00 | | 4.622E-01 | | 1.522E-01 | | 5.782E-01 | | 1.720E-01 | | 4.733E-02 | | 2.474E-01 | | |
| pcon (-3) | | 5.002E+00 | | 2.656E-01 | | 9.063E-02 | | -1.552E-01 | | -3.413E-01 | | 2.597E-01 | | -1.668E-01 | | -1.892E-01 | | |
| SE | | 7.767E+00 | | 1.261E+00 | | 3.683E-01 | | 1.213E-01 | | 4.607E-01 | | 1.371E-01 | | 3.771E-02 | | 1.971E-01 | | |
| | gcon (-1) | | -2.477E+01 | | -5.743E+00 | | -9.740E-01 | | 6.217E-02 | | 6.909E-01 | | 1.704E-01 | | 5.749E-02 | | 2.902E-01 | -2.047E+02 |
| | SE | | 9.848E+00 | | 1.599E+00 | | 4.670E-01 | | 1.538E-01 | | 5.842E-01 | | 1.738E-01 | | 4.782E-02 | | 2.500E-01 | 3.877E+02 |
| | gcon (-2) | | 1.643E+01 | | -1.919E+00 | | -2.012E+00 | | 3.635E-01 | | 1.435E+00 | | 4.382E-01 | | -3.025E-01 | | -7.921E-01 | 4.573E+02 |
| | SE | | 1.141E+01 | | 1.852E+00 | | 5.408E-01 | | 1.781E-01 | | 6.766E-01 | | 2.013E-01 | | 5.538E-02 | | 2.895E-01 | 4.490E+02 |
| | gcon (-3) | | 1.617E+01 | | 8.458E-01 | | 1.010E+00 | | 2.543E-01 | | -6.496E-01 | | -6.734E-01 | | -2.243E-01 | | -6.783E-01 | 1.397E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.271E+01 | | 2.063E+00 | | 6.025E-01 | | 1.985E-01 | | 7.537E-01 | | 2.242E-01 | | 6.169E-02 | | 3.225E-01 | 5.002E+02 |
| ir (-1) | | -4.996E+01 | | -1.520E+01 | | -6.131E-01 | | -1.787E+00 | | -1.747E-01 | | 2.108E-01 | | 9.981E-01 | | -2.025E-02 | | |
| SE | | 2.690E+01 | | 4.367E+00 | | 1.275E+00 | | 4.201E-01 | | 1.596E+00 | | 4.746E-01 | | 1.306E-01 | | 6.827E-01 | | |
| ir (-2) | | 3.099E+01 | | 6.095E+00 | | -1.718E+00 | | 1.180E+00 | | 2.127E+00 | | -2.046E+00 | | -3.416E-01 | | -9.556E-01 | | |
| SE | | 2.974E+01 | | 4.829E+00 | | 1.410E+00 | | 4.645E-01 | | 1.764E+00 | | 5.249E-01 | | 1.444E-01 | | 7.549E-01 | | |
| ir (-3) | | 8.987E+00 | | 2.992E+00 | | 2.315E+00 | | 1.915E-01 | | -1.889E+00 | | 1.316E+00 | | 2.324E-01 | | 9.149E-01 | | |
| SE | | 2.417E+01 | | 3.924E+00 | | 1.146E+00 | | 3.775E-01 | | 1.434E+00 | | 4.265E-01 | | 1.174E-01 | | 6.135E-01 | | |
| | inf (-1) | | 2.273E+01 | | 5.075E+00 | | 8.136E-01 | | 1.615E-01 | | -7.684E-01 | | -2.836E-01 | | -8.558E-02 | | -4.896E-01 | -2.065E+02 |
| | SE | | 8.440E+00 | | 1.370E+00 | | 4.002E-01 | | 1.318E-01 | | 5.006E-01 | | 1.489E-01 | | 4.098E-02 | | 2.142E-01 | 3.323E+02 |
| | inf (-2) | | 2.487E+00 | | 3.301E+00 | | 1.319E+00 | | 4.266E-02 | | -1.427E+00 | | 1.737E-01 | | 1.476E-01 | | 1.754E-01 | -7.506E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.122E+01 | | 1.821E+00 | | 5.320E-01 | | 1.752E-01 | | 6.655E-01 | | 1.980E-01 | | 5.447E-02 | | 2.847E-01 | 4.416E+02 |
| | inf (-3) | | 7.239E-01 | | 1.850E+00 | | -2.156E-01 | | 1.386E-02 | | -9.514E-02 | | 3.361E-01 | | 5.408E-02 | | -8.436E-02 | 3.168E+02 |
| | SE | | 7.206E+00 | | 1.170E+00 | | 3.417E-01 | | 1.125E-01 | | 4.274E-01 | | 1.272E-01 | | 3.499E-02 | | 1.829E-01 | 2.837E+02 |
| tb (-1) | | -4.998E-03 | | 1.161E-03 | | -1.190E-03 | | 1.031E-04 | | 5.844E-04 | | 2.373E-04 | | -2.087E-04 | | -7.722E-04 | | |
| SE | | 7.445E-03 | | 1.209E-03 | | 3.531E-04 | | 1.163E-04 | | 4.417E-04 | | 1.314E-04 | | 3.615E-05 | | 1.890E-04 | | |
| tb (-2) | | 1.729E-02 | | 2.662E-03 | | 2.633E-04 | | -2.046E-04 | | -4.029E-04 | | -1.178E-04 | | -1.925E-04 | | -3.499E-04 | | |
| SE | | 7.436E-03 | | 1.207E-03 | | 3.526E-04 | | 1.161E-04 | | 4.411E-04 | | 1.312E-04 | | 3.611E-05 | | 1.888E-04 | | |
| tb (-3) | | -6.009E-03 | | -3.814E-04 | | 6.691E-04 | | -2.834E-04 | | -1.006E-03 | | -5.869E-04 | | 2.521E-05 | | -4.006E-04 | | |
| SE | | 8.418E-03 | | 1.367E-03 | | 3.992E-04 | | 1.315E-04 | | 4.994E-04 | | 1.486E-04 | | 4.088E-05 | | 2.137E-04 | | |
| | C | | 8.995E+02 | | 6.006E+01 | | 3.388E+00 | | 3.607E+01 | | 6.049E+01 | | 4.428E+01 | | 1.001E+01 | | 4.038E+01 | -5.336E+03 |
| | | oilp | | ggdp | | inv | | pcon | | gcon | | ir | | inf | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oilp (-1) | | 1.325E+00 | | 8.418E-02 | | 4.348E-02 | | 7.038E-02 | | 2.965E-02 | | 1.380E-02 | | 1.458E-01 | | |
| SE | | 3.695E-01 | | 1.154E-01 | | 2.506E-02 | | 8.990E-02 | | 2.827E-02 | | 1.099E-02 | | 5.292E-02 | | |
| oilp (-2) | | -1.088E+00 | | -2.859E-01 | | 8.131E-02 | | 1.219E-01 | | -1.679E-02 | | -1.481E-02 | | -1.850E-01 | | |
| SE | | 5.255E-01 | | 1.642E-01 | | 3.564E-02 | | 1.279E-01 | | 4.021E-02 | | 1.563E-02 | | 7.526E-02 | | |
| oilp (-3) | | -1.838E-02 | | 8.432E-02 | | -6.213E-02 | | -1.106E-01 | | 9.527E-02 | | 1.692E-02 | | 8.757E-02 | | |
| SE | | 5.662E-01 | | 1.769E-01 | | 3.840E-02 | | 1.378E-01 | | 4.332E-02 | | 1.684E-02 | | 8.109E-02 | | |
| | ggdp (-1) | | -5.104E-01 | | -6.589E-01 | | 2.291E-02 | | 8.090E-02 | | -4.522E-03 | | 5.921E-02 | | 5.445E-02 | 2.409E+02 |
| | SE | | 1.596E+00 | | 4.985E-01 | | 1.082E-01 | | 3.883E-01 | | 1.221E-01 | | 4.747E-02 | | 2.285E-01 | 2.404E+02 |
| | ggdp (-2) | | -1.540E+00 | | -8.501E-01 | | 6.553E-02 | | 3.540E-01 | | -2.288E-01 | | 5.809E-02 | | -2.947E-01 | 8.465E+01 |
| | SE | | 1.702E+00 | | 5.317E-01 | | 1.154E-01 | | 4.141E-01 | | 1.302E-01 | | 5.063E-02 | | 2.437E-01 | 2.564E+02 |
| | ggdp (-3) | | -8.050E-02 | | -9.170E-02 | | 3.239E-02 | | -4.733E-02 | | -1.419E-01 | | -1.637E-03 | | -1.060E-02 | 1.419E+01 |
| | SE | | 6.835E-01 | | 2.135E-01 | | 4.636E-02 | | 1.663E-01 | | 5.229E-02 | | 2.033E-02 | | 9.788E-02 | 1.030E+02 |
| inv (-1) | | -1.425E+00 | | 5.329E-01 | | 1.635E-01 | | -9.560E-01 | | -4.987E-01 | | -1.003E-01 | | -7.457E-01 | | |
| SE | | 4.085E+00 | | 1.276E+00 | | 2.771E-01 | | 9.940E-01 | | 3.125E-01 | | 1.215E-01 | | 5.850E-01 | | |
| inv (-2) | | 1.721E+00 | | 2.056E+00 | | -3.041E-01 | | -1.291E+00 | | -7.859E-02 | | 2.418E-01 | | 1.198E+00 | | |
| SE | | 4.154E+00 | | 1.298E+00 | | 2.818E-01 | | 1.011E+00 | | 3.178E-01 | | 1.236E-01 | | 5.950E-01 | | |
| inv (-3) | | 4.316E+00 | | -7.491E-01 | | 1.936E-01 | | 1.038E+00 | | -1.535E-01 | | -1.880E-01 | | -4.382E-01 | | |
| SE | | 3.173E+00 | | 9.912E-01 | | 2.152E-01 | | 7.720E-01 | | 2.428E-01 | | 9.438E-02 | | 4.544E-01 | | |
| | pcon (-1) | | 1.214E+00 | | 9.073E-03 | | -9.833E-02 | | 3.085E-01 | | -1.360E-01 | | 9.604E-02 | | 3.204E-01 | 1.480E+02 |
| | SE | | 1.949E+00 | | 6.089E-01 | | 1.322E-01 | | 4.743E-01 | | 1.491E-01 | | 5.798E-02 | | 2.791E-01 | 2.937E+02 |
| | pcon (-2) | | -1.432E+00 | | -9.669E-01 | | 4.865E-02 | | 7.173E-01 | | -1.232E-01 | | -5.822E-02 | | -7.413E-01 | -1.645E+02 |
| | SE | | 2.325E+00 | | 7.265E-01 | | 1.577E-01 | | 5.658E-01 | | 1.779E-01 | | 6.918E-02 | | 3.331E-01 | 3.504E+02 |
| | pcon (-3) | | 1.759E+00 | | 9.734E-01 | | -1.278E-01 | | -8.176E-01 | | 8.482E-02 | | -7.675E-02 | | 1.830E-01 | 1.876E+02 |
| | SE | | 1.680E+00 | | 5.249E-01 | | 1.140E-01 | | 4.088E-01 | | 1.286E-01 | | 4.998E-02 | | 2.406E-01 | 2.531E+02 |
| gcon (-1) | | -4.567E+00 | | -8.268E-01 | | 4.419E-02 | | 6.024E-01 | | 2.161E-01 | | 5.542E-02 | | 3.353E-01 | | |
| SE | | 2.579E+00 | | 8.056E-01 | | 1.749E-01 | | 6.274E-01 | | 1.973E-01 | | 7.671E-02 | | 3.693E-01 | | |
| gcon (-2) | | 7.965E-01 | | -1.015E+00 | | 3.761E-01 | | 8.863E-01 | | 3.217E-01 | | -2.194E-01 | | -3.917E-01 | | 6.510E+02 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE | | 2.802E+00 | | 8.755E-01 | | 1.901E-01 | | 6.819E-01 | | 2.144E-01 | | 8.337E-02 | | 4.014E-01 | | 4.222E+02 | |
| gcon (-3) | | -6.976E-02 | | 4.886E-01 | | 2.047E-01 | | -3.680E-01 | | -5.623E-01 | | -2.784E-01 | | -8.903E-01 | | -5.045E+01 | |
| SE | | 3.275E+00 | | 1.023E+00 | | 2.221E-01 | | 7.968E-01 | | 2.505E-01 | | 9.741E-02 | | 4.690E-01 | | 4.934E+02 | |
| | ir (-1) | | -5.543E+00 | | 1.716E+00 | | -1.693E+00 | | -1.487E+00 | | 1.623E-01 | | 1.137E+00 | | 8.227E-01 | | 1.864E+03 |
| | SE | | 6.289E+00 | | 1.965E+00 | | 4.266E-01 | | 1.530E+00 | | 4.812E-01 | | 1.871E-01 | | 9.008E-01 | | 9.476E+02 |
| | ir (-2) | | 4.787E+00 | | -3.879E+00 | | 1.227E+00 | | 3.271E+00 | | -1.481E+00 | | -5.980E-01 | | -1.946E+00 | | -1.188E+03 |
| | SE | | 7.221E+00 | | 2.256E+00 | | 4.898E-01 | | 1.757E+00 | | 5.525E-01 | | 2.148E-01 | | 1.034E+00 | | 1.088E+03 |
| | ir (-3) | | -2.875E+00 | | 2.242E+00 | | 5.718E-02 | | -1.794E+00 | | 9.493E-01 | | 3.194E-01 | | 1.047E+00 | | -1.691E+02 |
| | SE | | 5.726E+00 | | 1.789E+00 | | 3.884E-01 | | 1.393E+00 | | 4.381E-01 | | 1.703E-01 | | 8.200E-01 | | 8.627E+02 |
| inf (-1) | | 3.873E+00 | | 8.396E-01 | | 1.582E-01 | | -7.704E-01 | | -3.790E-01 | | -6.140E-02 | | -4.485E-01 | | -3.507E+02 | |
| SE | | 2.144E+00 | | 6.698E-01 | | 1.454E-01 | | 5.216E-01 | | 1.640E-01 | | 6.377E-02 | | 3.070E-01 | | 3.230E+02 | |
| inf (-2) | | -8.979E-02 | | 8.990E-01 | | 1.783E-03 | | -1.174E+00 | | 6.861E-02 | | 1.503E-01 | | 6.748E-02 | | -4.347E+02 | |
| SE | | 2.681E+00 | | 8.377E-01 | | 1.819E-01 | | 6.525E-01 | | 2.052E-01 | | 7.977E-02 | | 3.840E-01 | | 4.040E+02 | |
| inf (-3) | | 7.912E-01 | | -3.887E-02 | | 3.647E-02 | | -1.772E-01 | | 1.962E-01 | | 9.649E-02 | | 1.839E-02 | | 1.829E+02 | |
| SE | | 1.682E+00 | | 5.256E-01 | | 1.141E-01 | | 4.094E-01 | | 1.287E-01 | | 5.005E-02 | | 2.409E-01 | | 2.535E+02 | |
| | tb (-1) | | 3.252E-03 | | -3.523E-04 | | 1.107E-04 | | 1.257E-04 | | 1.264E-04 | | -1.357E-04 | | -4.309E-04 | | 3.934E-01 |
| | SE | | 1.723E-03 | | 5.383E-04 | | 1.169E-04 | | 4.193E-04 | | 1.318E-04 | | 5.126E-05 | | 2.468E-04 | | 2.596E-01 |
| | tb (-2) | | 4.122E-03 | | 9.453E-04 | | -1.971E-04 | | -7.739E-04 | | -2.262E-04 | | -1.289E-04 | | -6.670E-05 | | 4.777E-02 |
| | SE | | 1.802E-03 | | 5.630E-04 | | 1.222E-04 | | 4.385E-04 | | 1.379E-04 | | 5.361E-05 | | 2.581E-04 | | 2.715E-01 |
| | tb (-3) | | -7.635E-04 | | 2.972E-04 | | -2.751E-04 | | -8.079E-04 | | -5.012E-04 | | -1.618E-05 | | -5.673E-04 | | 5.953E-02 |
| | SE | | 2.187E-03 | | 6.831E-04 | | 1.483E-04 | | 5.320E-04 | | 1.673E-04 | | 6.504E-05 | | 3.131E-04 | | 3.294E-01 |
| C | | -1.154E+02 | | -2.552E+01 | | 3.209E+01 | | 7.730E+01 | | 4.166E+01 | | 9.133E+00 | | 3.183E+01 | | -2.397E+04 | |
| SE | | 1.448E+02 | | 4.525E+01 | | 9.824E+00 | | 3.524E+01 | | 1.108E+01 | | 4.308E+00 | | 2.074E+01 | | 2.182E+04 | |
| | | ggdp | | inv | | pcon | | gcon | | ir | | inf | | tb | | hv | | rv | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 1990 | | 3.0500 | | 20.7014 | | 50.3303 | | 10.1065 | | 20.5667 | | 1.5838 | | 1326.0000 | | 14.6919 | | 5.2729 | | |
| Q2 1990 | | 3.4509 | | 17.4258 | | 56.5980 | | 8.8696 | | 19.7333 | | 2.2156 | | 923.0000 | | 31.5133 | | 4.0359 | | |
| Q3 1990 | | 6.1588 | | 40.4338 | | 58.5091 | | 8.3150 | | 20.4000 | | 3.9690 | | 924.0000 | | 1312.9364 | | 36.2786 | | |
| Q4 1990 | | -0.9168 | | 33.4333 | | 51.8690 | | 8.7506 | | 22.6000 | | 1.8167 | | 2179.0000 | | 807.3312 | | 76.4962 | | |
| | Q1 1991 | | 8.4158 | | 28.9258 | | 51.9860 | | 9.5288 | | 25.5333 | | 1.1263 | | 1089.0000 | | 347.5226 | | 61.6779 | 20.0900 |
| | Q2 1991 | | 3.8397 | | 27.5621 | | 54.0408 | | 8.4395 | | 27.0000 | | 2.2993 | | 825.0000 | | 22.6413 | | 3.0937 | 20.6121 |
| | Q3 1991 | | 6.3186 | | 26.7079 | | 56.3281 | | 8.9615 | | 24.6667 | | 3.5980 | | 1374.0000 | | 7.0691 | | 3.3892 | 21.3554 |
| | Q4 1991 | | -0.4641 | | 29.1917 | | 57.2933 | | 9.6024 | | 24.9333 | | 2.2739 | | 1513.0000 | | 132.6809 | | 4.0835 | 21.3197 |
| Q1 1992 | | 2.8966 | | 26.3351 | | 47.8849 | | 9.9458 | | 24.8333 | | 1.3179 | | 1199.0000 | | 8.1588 | | 4.5401 | | |
| Q2 1992 | | 3.1872 | | 27.3119 | | 49.9280 | | 8.8141 | | 24.6333 | | 1.7323 | | 1345.0000 | | 44.6329 | | 3.0864 | | |
| Q3 1992 | | 6.8465 | | 26.6724 | | 54.6173 | | 8.9679 | | 24.0000 | | 0.8646 | | 1849.0000 | | 5.0840 | | 1.4666 | | |
| Q4 1992 | | 0.0585 | | 28.6142 | | 56.2286 | | 10.3392 | | 22.6667 | | 0.9893 | | 2629.0000 | | 44.9225 | | 2.2714 | | |
| | Q1 1993 | | 5.5308 | | 25.8101 | | 51.3418 | | 9.1709 | | 21.7600 | | 5.3878 | | 2163.0000 | | 20.8825 | | 3.1132 | 20.0519 |
| | Q2 1993 | | 3.6722 | | 24.8014 | | 52.9783 | | 9.0885 | | 21.3800 | | 1.9822 | | 2250.0000 | | 15.2352 | | 1.2134 | 20.2711 |
| | Q3 1993 | | 6.3321 | | 25.8150 | | 61.5628 | | 8.7554 | | 20.1733 | | 1.1865 | | 2241.0000 | | 9.3034 | | 3.9282 | 18.5008 |
| | Q4 1993 | | 0.8372 | | 28.5459 | | 67.0965 | | 9.0967 | | 19.0333 | | 1.3455 | | 1577.0000 | | 115.8362 | | 3.8756 | 17.1784 |
| Q1 1994 | | 2.0165 | | 25.2322 | | 54.4289 | | 8.3020 | | 18.2633 | | 3.1826 | | 1309.0000 | | 10.0377 | | 3.7953 | | |
| Q2 1994 | | 5.6934 | | 27.2046 | | 54.8318 | | 8.1828 | | 17.5533 | | 1.6820 | | 2075.0000 | | 45.1281 | | 3.9795 | | |
| Q3 1994 | | 7.3364 | | 26.2529 | | 63.5377 | | 7.8710 | | 17.5667 | | 2.4133 | | 2462.0000 | | 23.2357 | | 3.3560 | | |
| Q4 1994 | | 1.6361 | | 31.2303 | | 64.8926 | | 8.1277 | | 17.6567 | | 2.0316 | | 2055.0000 | | 10.0407 | | 2.2005 | | |
| | Q1 1995 | | 5.0275 | | 27.4115 | | 62.5560 | | 8.2220 | | 18.2400 | | 2.7429 | | 1447.0000 | | 5.1990 | | 1.2905 | 18.0119 |
| | Q2 1995 | | 4.8103 | | 27.1045 | | 61.4831 | | 7.4408 | | 18.7867 | | 2.9092 | | 1418.0000 | | 29.0117 | | 2.6009 | 18.7287 |
| | Q3 1995 | | 4.8823 | | 29.1906 | | 60.8581 | | 7.2456 | | 19.1100 | | 1.3245 | | 1414.0000 | | 6.1761 | | 1.3863 | 17.2738 |
| | Q4 1995 | | 1.7614 | | 29.8348 | | 61.4962 | | 8.4156 | | 19.2700 | | 1.5541 | | 2254.0000 | | 16.1940 | | 0.9967 | 17.4925 |
| Q1 1996 | | 2.8083 | | 26.7575 | | 66.0606 | | 8.5628 | | 19.3033 | | 4.4559 | | 1166.0000 | | 26.1020 | | 3.5019 | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 1996 | | 5.1547 | | 27.6353 | | 62.6236 | | 7.4841 | | 19.2433 | | 0.4670 | | 910.0000 | | 7.9761 | | 5.3966 | | |
| Q3 1996 | | 6.2819 | | 31.7964 | | 60.6083 | | 7.0732 | | 19.1667 | | 0.4447 | | 1343.0000 | | 81.2163 | | 5.7492 | | |
| Q4 1996 | | 5.3403 | | 31.6922 | | 60.6337 | | 7.2643 | | 19.1567 | | 0.9022 | | 2529.0000 | | 27.0187 | | 11.3939 | | |
| | Q1 1997 | | 1.0731 | | 28.0993 | | 61.6018 | | 7.1817 | | 18.9767 | | 2.5872 | | 1438.0000 | | 118.8633 | | 7.4031 | 21.9289 |
| | Q2 1997 | | 2.4725 | | 29.7023 | | 61.1060 | | 6.9542 | | 18.7233 | | 0.8684 | | 3482.0000 | | 34.0725 | | 5.0714 | 20.0400 |
| | Q3 1997 | | 9.2573 | | 28.4960 | | 58.8004 | | 6.4452 | | 23.3767 | | 1.8688 | | 2176.0000 | | 9.6436 | | 3.3913 | 19.9883 |
| | Q4 1997 | | 3.6848 | | 27.0744 | | 65.0362 | | 6.8366 | | 26.1933 | | 3.5685 | | 2979.0000 | | 71.0189 | | 4.5374 | 20.1392 |
| Q1 1998 | | 25.0059 | | 31.0481 | | 58.6336 | | 5.3678 | | 26.3333 | | 19.8298 | | 4821.1400 | | 41.7913 | | 9.1153 | | |
| Q2 1998 | | 5.3097 | | 25.4123 | | 65.6517 | | 6.3220 | | 32.1567 | | 18.3356 | | 4971.9200 | | 22.6332 | | 4.0305 | | |
| Q3 1998 | | 18.6052 | | 24.1120 | | 69.3676 | | 5.1002 | | 34.9300 | | 20.0639 | | 5099.4900 | | 26.1228 | | 4.4899 | | |
| Q4 1998 | | -2.7083 | | 22.1749 | | 75.5253 | | 6.0271 | | 35.1967 | | 4.7793 | | 3536.2800 | | 97.1265 | | 6.0106 | | |
| | Q1 1999 | | 5.4919 | | 20.3845 | | 78.0736 | | 5.9688 | | 34.1133 | | 4.7560 | | 4039.4000 | | 99.3348 | | 5.1420 | 13.3492 |
| | Q2 1999 | | 0.1364 | | 19.8611 | | 77.3749 | | 8.2862 | | 30.3367 | | -0.6632 | | 4457.4400 | | 31.7288 | | 5.3940 | 17.3989 |
| | Q3 1999 | | 2.1952 | | 19.9890 | | 73.9889 | | 6.0636 | | 24.5200 | | -2.2454 | | 6343.0900 | | 93.1536 | | 4.9267 | 21.2411 |
| | Q4 1999 | | -0.7948 | | 22.2642 | | 76.5682 | | 6.2131 | | 21.6800 | | -0.0698 | | 5803.5000 | | 63.1099 | | 12.5834 | 23.0762 |
| Q1 2000 | | 17.7518 | | 19.0668 | | 62.7871 | | 6.2335 | | 19.5833 | | 2.4618 | | 6264.5000 | | 106.7901 | | 18.5631 | | |
| Q2 2000 | | 3.7263 | | 19.5150 | | 62.6742 | | 7.3018 | | 18.4633 | | 1.0086 | | 5744.6400 | | 240.7483 | | 16.0977 | | |
| Q3 2000 | | 7.2756 | | 19.6168 | | 59.1641 | | 6.0842 | | 17.9767 | | 2.2289 | | 6168.0700 | | 216.2851 | | 21.5845 | | |
| Q4 2000 | | 2.1223 | | 21.0767 | | 62.1507 | | 6.5306 | | 17.7967 | | 2.8483 | | 6864.8000 | | 359.9979 | | 31.4712 | | |
| | Q1 2001 | | 8.0111 | | 20.6246 | | 59.4274 | | 5.8971 | | 17.8500 | | 2.9609 | | 6179.3400 | | 59.6119 | | 17.6797 | 27.4846 |
| | Q2 2001 | | 6.5638 | | 19.5233 | | 59.2223 | | 6.4541 | | 18.2633 | | 2.6750 | | 5492.9300 | | 63.3066 | | 11.3857 | 28.1481 |
| | Q3 2001 | | 2.3175 | | 17.7885 | | 60.3187 | | 6.8573 | | 18.8767 | | 3.7122 | | 5644.6400 | | 80.7914 | | 20.3480 | 26.1673 |
| | Q4 2001 | | -1.2823 | | 19.1015 | | 67.7698 | | 7.6629 | | 19.2000 | | 2.7396 | | 5379.1800 | | 137.8041 | | 22.0065 | 21.1306 |
| Q1 2002 | | 4.8433 | | 18.3570 | | 66.6506 | | 6.4480 | | 19.3167 | | 4.6955 | | 5219.4500 | | 235.9542 | | 13.1252 | | |
| Q2 2002 | | 2.4285 | | 18.2454 | | 67.2358 | | 6.6140 | | 19.1767 | | 0.8963 | | 6341.0100 | | 37.3833 | | 14.3398 | | |
| Q3 2002 | | 4.5070 | | 18.2008 | | 65.6184 | | 7.0828 | | 18.8667 | | 1.7005 | | 6130.0100 | | 104.5775 | | 9.2005 | | |
| Q4 2002 | | -1.5094 | | 19.2267 | | 71.8326 | | 8.1925 | | 18.4200 | | 2.6479 | | 5822.7700 | | 164.1450 | | 12.3510 | | |
| | Q1 2003 | | 5.2964 | | 18.6989 | | 67.4407 | | 6.6202 | | 18.1967 | | 2.2937 | | 5837.3700 | | 245.8860 | | 23.3648 | 30.3956 |
| | Q2 2003 | | 0.8312 | | 18.7625 | | 65.9558 | | 7.4994 | | 17.6767 | | 0.2023 | | 6113.5100 | | 79.0690 | | 15.0489 | 27.0435 |
| | Q3 2003 | | 4.1163 | | 19.2307 | | 66.3561 | | 8.1798 | | 16.4367 | | 0.8514 | | 6439.5000 | | 94.6127 | | 12.3875 | | 29.1333 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Q4 2003 | | -2.2257 | | 20.4402 | | 69.7641 | | 9.8071 | | 15.4300 | | 2.1032 | | 6172.6900 | | 81.8992 | | 19.6540 | | 30.0510 |
| Q1 2004 | | 4.8603 | | 21.5844 | | 67.8482 | | 8.0400 | | 14.7967 | | 1.6486 | | 3125.3500 | | 109.5201 | | 20.8523 | | 33.1968 | |
| Q2 2004 | | 5.1839 | | 21.7810 | | 66.7995 | | 8.4359 | | 14.2833 | | 1.9716 | | 5489.1800 | | 222.3276 | | 39.8173 | | 37.2395 | |
| Q3 2004 | | 5.4744 | | 22.7818 | | 65.0896 | | 7.6758 | | 13.8767 | | 1.0672 | | 5969.6900 | | 467.1477 | | 76.2936 | | 42.6437 | |
| Q4 2004 | | 0.6983 | | 23.5198 | | 67.4400 | | 9.1083 | | 13.5400 | | 1.5504 | | 5567.5800 | | 792.3805 | | 80.5480 | | 47.7097 | |
| | Q1 2005 | | 5.4803 | | 23.1456 | | 66.1709 | | 6.7516 | | 13.3600 | | 2.9381 | | 3176.8500 | | 1152.1201 | | 43.2363 | | 50.3206 |
| | Q2 2005 | | 6.0324 | | 23.7929 | | 64.0816 | | 6.9493 | | 13.2900 | | 1.8889 | | 4056.5100 | | 579.0134 | | 70.7007 | | 55.4260 |
| | Q3 2005 | | 6.3424 | | 23.5760 | | 62.7969 | | 8.1370 | | 13.7767 | | 1.7879 | | 3501.5800 | | 589.2254 | | 83.0638 | | 64.9795 |
| | Q4 2005 | | 6.3780 | | 23.9789 | | 64.5748 | | 10.2413 | | 15.7767 | | 10.3369 | | 6798.6200 | | 187.4193 | | 61.3466 | | 61.3119 |
| Q1 2006 | | 3.2009 | | 23.7973 | | 63.2282 | | 7.0474 | | 16.3367 | | 2.1721 | | 6692.5200 | | 248.4758 | | 72.5835 | | 65.8419 | |
| Q2 2006 | | 3.8311 | | 24.1777 | | 62.2901 | | 8.6803 | | 16.2300 | | 0.6628 | | 6985.7300 | | 240.1979 | | 71.5322 | | 73.0959 | |
| Q3 2006 | | 7.0845 | | 23.9070 | | 59.8036 | | 8.3253 | | 16.0033 | | 1.2206 | | 8595.7300 | | 1580.7615 | | 60.6116 | | 73.1846 | |
| Q4 2006 | | 0.3542 | | 24.6098 | | 65.3759 | | 10.2943 | | 15.3467 | | 1.8678 | | 7385.9800 | | 100.9573 | | 96.5527 | | 63.7186 | |
| | Q1 2007 | | 5.2064 | | 24.0209 | | 63.2590 | | 7.2455 | | 14.7000 | | 2.4679 | | 7711.8300 | | 845.3637 | | 99.6454 | | 61.0960 |
| | Q2 2007 | | 4.9968 | | 24.3117 | | 63.2842 | | 8.5746 | | 14.0800 | | 0.4273 | | 8107.3000 | | 143.1172 | | 55.4757 | | 68.0032 |
| | Q3 2007 | | 6.8409 | | 24.6960 | | 61.8416 | | 7.8174 | | 13.5600 | | 1.5380 | | 7487.1800 | | 515.1697 | | 56.1541 | | 73.7571 |
| | Q4 2007 | | 0.3948 | | 26.7061 | | 65.8268 | | 9.6510 | | 13.1067 | | 1.8244 | | 9447.8300 | | 1709.3185 | | 170.8836 | | 88.5760 |
| Q1 2008 | | 7.9934 | | 26.0680 | | 62.9694 | | 6.8652 | | 12.9433 | | 2.8091 | | 7535.9600 | | 2082.3448 | | 250.3359 | | 96.3002 | |
| Q2 2008 | | 10.0279 | | 26.6463 | | 60.0934 | | 8.5385 | | 12.9467 | | 3.6081 | | 5442.7700 | | 8197.6760 | | 457.1028 | | 123.5511 | |
| Q3 2008 | | 8.3658 | | 27.7113 | | 58.3183 | | 7.9577 | | 13.4967 | | 3.2259 | | 5771.4900 | | 12806.3515 | | 708.6770 | | 118.5552 | |
| Q4 2008 | | -4.3699 | | 29.9256 | | 62.7553 | | 10.1319 | | 15.0067 | | 1.3440 | | 4165.8600 | | 12513.5578 | | 652.3560 | | 61.9083 | |
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SHORT REPORT
Open Access
Effects of senktide, a neurokinin 3 receptor agonist, on luteinizing hormone secretion and follicular development in anestrous Shiba goats: a pilot study
Natsumi Endo and Tomomi Tanaka *
Abstract
Background: Recent studies suggest that neurokinin B and its receptor, neurokinin 3 receptor, have an essential role in the regulation of gonadotropin-releasing hormone and luteinizing hormone (LH) release in several mammalian species. As the first trial, this pilot study reports the effect of intravenous treatment with senktide, a selective agonist of neurokinin 3 receptor, on LH secretion, follicular development in female goats that were clinically diagnosed with anestrus.
Findings: Anestrous goats were intravenously administered 200 nmol senktide at 4-h intervals for 24 h. Most of them examined (5/6 cases) showed a pulsatile increase in LH secretion after each injection of senktide, whereas the remaining one case showed a surge-like increase of LH secretion. Ovulation was confirmed in 5/6 cases at the range of 48–96 h after the beginning of treatment.
Conclusions: This pilot study demonstrated that intravenous treatment with senktide has therapeutic action in goats with anestrus by inducing LH release, which could promote follicular development and ovulation.
Keywords: Anestrus, Goats, Senktide, LH, Ovulation
Findings
Introduction
Neurokinin B (NKB) is a member of the tachykinin family of peptides. Recent studies have revealed that hypothalamic signaling of NKB and its receptor, neurokinin 3 receptor (NK3R), has an important role in the regulation of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurosecretion in mammalian species [1]. Loss-of-function mutations of Tac3 and Tacr3, which encode NKB and NK3R, respectively, have been identified in patients with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism [2]. Subsequently, research using animal models found that exogenous administration of NKB stimulates neural oscillation governing pulsatile GnRH [3] and luteinizing hormone (LH) secretion [4,5]. NKB has affinity for other tachykinin receptors, even though marginal, which might compromise the interpretation of the
* Correspondence: firstname.lastname@example.org Laboratory of Veterinary Reproduction, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 3-5-8 Saiwai-cho, Fuchu-city, Tokyo 183-8509, Japan
role of NKB/NK3R system in reproductive control [6]. To overcome this problem, senktide was developed as a highly selective and potent agonist of NK3R [7], and currently available only for experimental use. Along with investigating the physiological role of NKB/NK3R system in various stages of the reproductive process, attention is now focused on the therapeutic use of NK3R agonists, e.g. senktide, to accelerate or improve gonadal activity in humans as well as domestic animals [8].
Anestrus is a major component of postpartum infertility in domestic animals including dairy cows [9], which extends calving interval and leads great economic loss for farmers. Particularly in high-yielding dairy cows, occurrence of anestrus is often associated with nutritional deficiency in early lactation period. The condition of anestrus is characterized by the lack of ovarian cycles or gonadal activity with repeated turnover of follicles without ovulation. The existing follicles are incapable of producing sufficient estradiol-17β (E2) to induce ovulation, owing to the
decreased secretion of GnRH and LH. Taking the endocrine background of anestrus into consideration, anestrous animals are relevant subjects for investigating the therapeutic action of NKB on ovarian dysfunction through the stimulation of GnRH/LH secretion.
Shiba goats are non-seasonal breeders under natural daylight conditions in Japan, and are used as experimental and clinical models for the investigation of reproductive functions in domestic ruminants. Anestrus is also observed in this species, although the incidence is very low under normal management conditions. In this pilot study, we examined the effect of intravenous treatment with senktide on LH secretion and follicular development in anestrous female goats.
Methods
The study protocol was approved by the University Committee for Use and Care of Animals at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (#22-67). Five Shiba goats (2.4 ± 0.5 years of age; 21.8 ± 3.6 kg of body weight) that were clinically diagnosed with anestrus were subjected to the study. The goats and other herd-mates were maintained in an outdoor paddock and fed a maintenance diet based on alfalfa hay cubes twice daily, under group feeding conditions. The five goats had no estrus signs more than 30 days after the last appearance of estrus. After the expected day of estrus (20 or 21 days after ovulation), no functional corpus lutea and only antral follicles were detected by ovarian ultrasonography (7.5 MHz linear probe, HLS-375 M, Honda Electronics Co., Ltd., Aichi, Japan) and the progesterone concentration in plasma was lower than 1 ng/ml. They received senktide on 48.2 ± 16.8 days after the last appearance of estrus.
On the day of the experiment, a catheter was inserted into the jugular vein. The goats were treated seven times with 200 nmol senktide in 5 ml of saline containing 0.25% dimethyl sulfoxide at 4-h intervals, beginning at 1100 h (designated as 0 h). The senktide solution was injected slowly over 5 minutes via the jugular catheter. The dose of senktide was determined according to a previous study [10] to induce pulsatile LH secretion in ovariectomized Shiba goats. Blood samples (1.5 ml) were collected in heparinized tubes through the catheter at 10-min intervals from −2 to 4 h, at 4-h intervals from 4 to 24 h, at 6-h intervals from 24 to 48 h after the beginning of treatment, and thereafter at 24-h intervals up to 120 h. Plasma was separated and assayed for LH, E2 and progesterone [11]. Ovarian ultrasonography was performed 2 days before the treatment, just before the treatment (between 0700 and 0800 h on the experiment day) and then daily until 5 days after treatment. All follicles and corpus lutea that were larger than 2 mm in diameter were recorded. All measured values are presented as means ± SD. Differences between means were evaluated by analysis of variance followed by Dunnett ' s multiple comparison test or paired t -test. Differences with P <0.05 were considered to be significant.
Results
Almost all cases (5/6, except for no.9) showed a pulsatile increase in LH concentration in response to each senktide treatment; the LH concentration increased rapidly and reached a peak at 10–20 min after each injection. In these five goats, LH concentrations at 10–20 min after the first injection and at 10–30 min after the second injection were significantly higher (P <0.05) than the pretreatment level (Figure 1). As for E2, the mean concentration during the pre-treatment 2 h were 5.9 ± 0.9 pg/ml. The E2 concentrations fluctuated and no significant change was observed in the hourly profiles for 6 h after the senktide treatment.
Profiles of LH and E2, occurrence of estrus and ovulation in all cases are shown in Figure 2. Estrus and ovulation were observed 2/6 and 5/6 cases, respectively. In the four of five cases that showed a pulsatile increase of LH release, ovulation occurred in response to senktide treatment at 72 (no.17) or 96 h (no.12-2, no.13 and no.15) after the beginning of treatment. Two cases (no.13 and no.15) showed standing estrus one to two days before the day of ovulation. E2 level showed a gradual increase through the 24-h repetitive injections. The peak of E2 concentration, which was detected at 20–48 h after the beginning of treatment, was preceded or approximately coincided with the peak of LH.
Only one case (no.12-1) failed to ovulate, although a pulsatile increase in LH concentration was clearly observed in response to each injection of senktide. The E2 concentration was higher than 5 pg/ml around the time of first injection. However, it decreased to the basal level by 6 h after the beginning of treatment and was maintained lower than 5 pg/ml throughout the experiment.
Goat no.9 showed a different LH response from the other five goats. Mean concentrations of LH and E2 during the pre-treatment 2 h in this goat was 4.0 ± 2.5 ng/ml and 8.1 ± 4.7 pg/ml, respectively. A surge-like increase in LH concentration was observed, with a peak of 56.1 ng/ml at 3 h after the first injection. The E2 concentration showed a concomitant increase with the increase of LH, followed by a gradual decrease by the time of ovulation (at 48 h after the beginning of treatment).
Goats that ovulated upon the senktide treatment had 2–4 follicles with a diameter larger than 3 mm (mean, 4.0 ± 0.6 mm) on the day of treatment. Finally, 1–4 ovulatory follicles per goat grew after the treatment, and the mean maximal diameter of them was 4.8 ± 0.6 mm. The goat that failed to ovulate (no.12-2) had only one follicle with a smaller diameter of 2.7 mm on the day of treatment, although three additional small follicles were detected 24 h later.
neurons in the arcuate nucleus (ARC) in the hypothalamus, colocalized three neuropeptides, kisspeptin, NKB and dynorphin [12,13], and is a likely candidate for the intrinsic GnRH pulse generator. Accumulating evidence suggests that the action of NKB or its analog occurs within the ARC through regulation of the release of kisspeptin [3,4]. An in vitro study using cell-attached recording method showed that both NKB and senktide have a potent stimulatory action on the firing of kisspeptin neurons derived from the ARC region of the mouse hypothalamus [14]. In ovariectomized goats, GnRH pulse generator activity at the ARC kisspeptin neurons, which was monitored by recording the multiple-unit activity in the hypothalamus, was stimulated after the intravenous injection of senktide [10]. It is suggested that small-amplitude release of LH (pulsatile LH secretion) is induced by the stimulatory action of NKB on the hypothalamic GnRH pulse generating system.
Additional monitoring of ovarian dynamics and blood progesterone concentrations in the ovulated five goats indicated that premature luteal regression occurred (data not shown) and estrus was observed at 5–18 days after the senktide-induced ovulation.
Discussion
The present study showed the stimulatory action of NKB on the LH secretion in almost all goats with anestrous symptom, in which there was a pulsatile increase in LH concentration in response to each senktide treatment. Recently, it has been revealed that a specific subset of
The present study is the first trial to evaluate the use of NKB for the treatment of anestrus in goats. The obtained findings are limited because there was no untreated control group. In addition, the exact reasons for anestrus remain unclear, but it is likely that insufficient nutrition intake or other related factors such as stress might be attributed to the incidence of anestrus, as has been experimentally demonstrated in feed-restricted animals [15,16]. Consequently, most cases showed a therapeutic outcome; there was a gradual increase in E2 secretion followed by ovulation after the repetitive injections of senktide, at 4-h intervals for 24 h. However, the treatment was insufficient
for one goat (no.12) to stimulate follicular development, in spite of the increased LH stimulation caused by senktide treatment. One possible explanation for this is that the failure of follicular development and/or ovulation might be associated with the status of ovarian follicles during senktide treatment. According to ultrasonographic observation of ovaries during the estrous cycle in this species [17], ovulatory follicles appear from 5 days before ovulation and then grow to about 5 to 6 mm in diameter in parallel with the increase in the plasma E2 concentration. In addition to the fact that the anovulated goat (no.12) had only one follicle sized 2.7 mm in diameter on the day of treatment, the constantly low level of E2 (<5 pg/ml) also indicates the absence of steroidogenically active follicle(s) that can respond to LH stimulation. For optimal treatment of inactive ovary, the timing, duration and route of treatment seem to require adaptation according to the follicular and endocrine conditions.
In one goat (no.9), a prominent increase in LH concentration close to those observed during the preovulatory LH surge was observed following the first injection of senktide. A similar observation was reported from a study by Billings et al. [5], in which a surge-like increase in LH occurred after the treatment of senktide into the third ventricle in ewes during the follicular phase but not during the luteal phase. Although there may be limits to this pilot study as it is based one case, it seems likely that intravenous injection of senktide in a steroid milieu similar to that present during the follicular phase of the cycle can generate a preovulatory GnRH/LH surge, as a trigger of ovulation.
In conclusion, the present pilot study showed that intravenous treatment with senktide can stimulate LH secretion in anestrous goats, suggesting the potential value of NKB application in the treatment of reproductive disorders. The increased release of LH resulted in ovulation in most cases, except for one goat. This different outcome might be associated with the developmental and steroidogenic status of ovarian follicles during senktide treatment.
Abbreviations
E2: Estradiol-17β; GnRH: Gonadotropin-releasing hormone; LH: Luteinizing hormone; NKB: Neurokinin B; NK3R: Neurokinin 3 receptor.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
NE designed and carried out the study, analyzed and interpreted the data, and drafted the manuscript. TT participated in the experimental design, interpretation of the data, and criticizing the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Y. Mori, The University of Tokyo, for providing anti-ovine LH serum (YM #18), Dr. A. F. Parlow and the National Hormone & Peptide Program for providing reagents used in the LH radioimmunoassay, and
Dr. S. Oishi, Kyoto University, for providing senktide. We also thank Dr. H. Okamura (National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences), Dr. S. Ohkura (Nagoya University) and Dr. H. Kamomae (Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology) for technical advice and productive discussions. This study was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (Research Program on Development of Innovative Technology for Animal Reproduction).
Received: 4 January 2014 Accepted: 24 October 2014 Published: 3 November 2014
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doi:10.1186/1756-0500-7-773
Cite this article as: Endo and Tanaka: Effects of senktide, a neurokinin 3 receptor agonist, on luteinizing hormone secretion and follicular development in anestrous Shiba goats: a pilot study. BMC Research Notes 2014 7:773.
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SHORT REPORT
Open Access
Epidemiology of underweight and overweightobesity among term pregnant Sudanese women
Duria A Rayis 1 , Ameer O Abbaker 1 , Yasir Salih 1 , Tayseer E Diab 2 , Ishag Adam 1*
Abstract
Background: The increasing prevalence of obesity in young women is a major public health concern. Few data are available concerning the epidemiology of malnutrition especially obesity among pregnant women in the developing countries. A cross sectional study was conducted at Khartoum hospital during February-April 2008, to investigate prevalence of underweight, obesity, and to identify contemporary socio-demographic predictors for obesity among term pregnant women in Khartoum Hospital, Sudan. After taking an informed consent, a structured questionnaire was administered to each woman to gather information on educational level, age and parity. Maternal weight and height were measured and expressed as body mass index (BMI - weight (kg)/height (m) 2 ).
Findings: Out of 1690 term pregnant women, 628 (37.1%) were primigravidae, 926 (54.8%) had ≥ secondary educational level (minimum of 8 years) and 1445 (85.5%) were housewives. The mean (SD) of the age and parity were 27.2 (6.3) years and 2.0 (2.1) respectively. Out of these 1690 women, 94(5.5%) were underweight (BMI of ≤ 19.9 Kg/m2), 603 (35.6%) were overweight (BMI of 25 - 29.9 Kg/m2) and 328 (19.4%) were obese (BMI of ≥ 30 Kg/m2). In multivariate analyses, obesity was positively associated with age (OR = 1.2, 95% CI = 1.0-1.1; P< 0.001), and with women's education (OR = 1.8, 95% CI = 1.2-2.7; P = 0.001). Obesity was positively associated with parity in univariate analyses only (OR = 1.1, 95% CI = 1.0-1.2; P = 0.02)
Conclusion: The high prevalence of obesity in these pregnant women represents a competing public health problem in Sudan. More research is needed.
Introduction
Many developing countries are currently affected by high rates of overweight that in some cases surpass underweight as a public health nutritional problem. Recent reports showed that, in many developing countries e.g. Bangladesh, Nepal, and India, the prevalence of overweight-obesity in women of reproductive age has risen steadily in the last two decades [1]. In the case of Africa, recent analyses of national data on body mass index (BMI) from women showed that, the prevalence of overweight-obesity exceeded that of underweight [2].
Increasing BMI is associated with increased incidence of pre-eclampsia, gestational hypertension, macrosomia, induction of labor and caesarean delivery [3]. We have recently observed that, both type of malnutrition (underweight and overweight-obesity) were associated with poor pregnancy outcomes in pregnant Sudanese women [4,5]. Generally few data are available concerning epidemiology of obesity during pregnancy in SubSaharan Africa and none available for Sudan the largest African country with 40 million populations. Sudan has traditionally been known as to have the highest rates of poverty -and may be underweight in women- worldwide and there has been limited research to investigate how the nutritional status of women has changed during the recent period of economic development following oil industry. Investigating obesity during pregnancy and labour is of paramount importance for care-givers, health planners as well as managing clinicians so as to have fundamental data necessary for intervention. Thus, the current study was conducted to investigate prevalence of underweight, overweight and obesity among term pregnant women in Khartoum teaching hospital, Sudan.
* Correspondence: firstname.lastname@example.org
Faculty of Medicine University of Khartoum, Khartoum, Sudan
1
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Materials and methods
The study was conducted during the period of February-April 2008 at Khartoum teaching hospital, Sudan, to investigate prevalence and risk factors for underweight, overweight-obesity among term pregnant women. Khartoum hospital provides tertiary care for women who receive a free antenatal care at the hospital, as well as for referrals from other clinics and hospitals, and for women who live close to the hospital. All women with risk factors or obstetric complications are referred to this hospital. However, the referral criteria are not strictly adhered to and many patients without any significant complications deliver at the hospital. After an informed consent, women with a singleton baby have been approached to participate in the study. A structured questionnaire was administered to each woman to gather information on educational level, age, parity and last menstrual period. The date of the last normal menstrual period was used to determine the gestational age at delivery. However, when the discrepancy between the gestational age determined in this way and the gestational age calculated from ultrasound scanning was greater than 2 week, the ultrasound estimate was preferred. Maternal weight and height were measured and expressed as body mass index (BMI - weight (kg)/height (m) 2 ). BMI was classified as underweight: less than or equal to a BMI of 19.9 Kg/m2. Normal: BMI of 20 - 24.9 Kg/m 2 . Overweight: BMI of 25 - 29.9 Kg/m 2 . Obese: BMI of 30 34.9 Kg/m 2 . Morbidly obese: BMI ≥ 35 Kg/m 2 [6]. The group with BMI in the normal range (20 - 24.9 Kg/m 2 ) was used as the reference or comparison group for the analysis.
Statistic analysis
Data were entered into a computer database and SPSS software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and double checked before analysis.
Means and proportions for the socio-demographic characteristics were compared between the four subgroups of the BMI (underweight, normal, overweight and obese) in study using student t-test, ANOVA and X 2 respectively.
Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed, maternal BMI was dichotomized according to the above mentioned subgroups, here obesity (versus those with normal BMI, 20-24.9) was the dependent variable and socio-demographic (age, parity, gestational age, occupation and education) characteristics were independent variables. P - value < 0.05 was considered significant. In case of inconsistency between the results of ANOVA, X 2 and the results of multivariate analyses, the later was taken as final.
Ethics
The study received ethical clearance from the Research Board at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum.
Results
Out of 1890, 1690 women had complete data, hence included in these final analyses. Out of these 1690 women, 628 (37.1%) were primigravidae, 926 (54.8%) had ≥ secondary education level (minimum of 8 years) and 1445(85.5%) were housewives. The mean (SD) of the age, parity and gestational age were 27.2 (6.3) years, 2.0 (2.1) and 38.1 (1.8) weeks, respectively.
Out of these 1690 women, 94(5.5%) were underweight, 665(39.3%) had normal weight, 603 (35.6%) were overweight and 328 (19.4%) were obese. Both age and parity were significantly higher in the obese women. Gestational age was not significantly different between these subgroups. Significantly high numbers of obese women had ≥ secondary education level. There was no significant difference in the number of housewives between the BMI subgroups, table 1.
Predicators for obesity
Women job (housewives vs. employees) was not significantly associated with obesity in multivariate analyses. Obesity was positively associated with age, i.e those who had age ≥ 27.2 years vs. those of age < 27.2 years (OR = 1.2, 95% CI = 1.0-1.1; P < 0.001), and with women's education of ≥ secondary level vs. education < secondary level (OR = 1.8, 95% CI = 1.2-2.7; P = 0.001) in both univariate and multivariate analyses. Obesity was positively associated with parity in univariate analyses only (OR = 1.1, 95% CI = 1.0-1.2; P = 0.02), table 2.
Discussion
This is the first published data concerning the epidemiology of underweight overweight and obesity among term pregnant women in Sudan. The main findings of the study were; the high prevalence (19.4%) of obesity among these women and obesity was positively associated with age, and with women's higher education. Recent reports from Bangladesh, Nepal, and India showed that, the prevalence of overweight-obesity in women of reproductive age has risen between 1996 and 2006 and overweight-obesity was positively related to age [1]. In neighboring Tanzania, the prevalence of obesity among pregnant women rose steadily and progressively from 3.6% in 1995 to 9.1% in 2004, obesity was positively associated with age, parity, and socioeconomic status and inversely with HIV infection [7]. However, these data should be compared cautiously because of the methodological differences. In the later studies these were the national surveys data and antenatal care data
Table 1 Socio-demographic characteristics of the term pregnant women in the different BMI subgroups *
* Data were shown as mean (SD) or number (%) for all variables (as applicable) except for parity where it was shown as median (range).
while in ours, it is the hospital - based data among parturient women. Interestingly in Tanzanian data the influence of HIV on underweight was obvious. HIV infection has become more prevalent and must now be considered as a possible etiological factor for malnutrition among pregnant women in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, for ethical reasons we could not investigate HIV among these women. Previously we have shown that pregnant women in central Sudan had a low HIV prevalence and they were poor uptakes for HIV testing and counseling [8,9]. It is necessary to point to the limitation of using anthropometric measurements taken during pregnancy. Unlike measurements before pregnancy, these measurements are liable to changes; unfortunately pre-pregnancy measurements can seldom be taken in Africa, where women commonly present to health facilities only when they are advanced in pregnancy. In Brazil, weight change associated to reproduction was highly dependent on BMI before pregnancy [10].
sign of prosperity as opposed to the stigma that exists in some developed societies [12].
In the current study, obese pregnant Sudanese women had higher parity and parity was associated with obesity in univariate analyses but this association disappeared in multivariate analyses. This indicated that parity was a confounder in this study. Recently parity was associated with increased waist circumference and other anthropometric indices of obesity in a sample of rural Iraqi women attending two primary health care centers [13]. Likewise, in neighboring Tanzania obesity was positively associated parity [7].
Educational level was associated with higher prevalence of overweight-obesity in Bangladesh, Nepal, and India [1] as well as in this study. This is may be the result of shifts from manual labor to more sedentary occupations and the related decline in physical activity. Although, there is no published data on physical activity among Sudanese women, there is evidence that sedentary lifestyles are becoming more common among urban Indian women [11]. Furthermore, the cultural perception toward weight and body image may be different in the different setting; e.g. obesity could be perceived as a
Recently Villamor and colleagues (2006) observed that obesity was positively associated with socio-economic status among Tanzanian pregnant women [7]. In chilly marital status, employment and smoking were associated with obesity [14]. Smoking and the use of alcohol and other substances are not common among Sudanese women and all women who presented in this study were married. These factors have not been investigated, because they are difficult to investigate and may be considered as confounders in our study. Sudan is the largest African country with 40 million inhabitants with various cultural and social backgrounds that make it difficult to investigate the socio-economic status among these pregnant women. Moreover body weight (specially obesity) could be predicted by many other important factors apart from those included in the study, like family history, some endocrinal disorders (Cushing and Hypothyroidism), and nutritional habits. For technical and fund
Table 2 Factors associated with obesity among term pregnant women in Khartoum hospital, Sudan using univariate and multivariate analyses
Abbreviations: OR, Odds Ratio; CI, confidence interval.
constrains, It was difficult to investigate all of these factors in this work.
Conclusion
In summery these are hospital- based data which may not represent what is going in the community. Women tend to present to the hospital when they have complications. The high prevalence of obesity in these pregnant women represents a competing public health problem in Sudan. More research is needed in the area of maternal and perinatal outcomes of obesity during in this setting.
Acknowledgements
Authors are very grateful to the women who participated in the study and to all the staff of the labor room of Khartoum teaching hospital. This work has been funded by The Ministry for Higher Education and Scientific Research, Sudan. I Adam was funded by the University of Khartoum, Sudan.
Author details
1 Faculty of Medicine University of Khartoum, Khartoum, Sudan. 2Faculty of Medicine, Elneileen University, Khartoum, Sudan.
Authors' contributions
DER and IA carried out the study and participated in the statistical analysis and procedures. AOA, YS and TED coordinated and participated in the design of the study, statistical analysis and the drafting of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final version.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Received: 27 August 2010 Accepted: 6 December 2010 Published: 6 December 2010
References
1. Balarajan Y, Villamor E: Nationally representative surveys show recent increases in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among women of reproductive age in Bangladesh, Nepal, and India. J Nutr 2009, 139:2139-2144.
2. Mendez MA, Monteiro CA, Popkin BM: Overweight exceeds underweight among women in most developing countries. Am J Clin Nutr 2005, 81:714-721.
3. Bhattacharya S, Campbell DM, Liston WA, Bhattacharya S: Effect of Body Mass Index on pregnancy outcomes in nulliparous women delivering singleton babies. BMC Public Health 2007, 7:168.
4. Adam I, Babiker S, Mohmmed AA, Salih MM, Prins MH, Zaki ZM: Low body mass index, anaemia and poor perinatal outcome in a rural hospital in eastern Sudan. J Trop Pediatr 2008, 54:202-204.
5. Alhaj AM, Radi EA, Adam I: Epidemiology of preterm birth in Omdurman Maternity hospital, Sudan. J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med 2010, 23:131-134.
6. Abrams B, Parker J: Overweight and pregnancy complications. Int J Obes 1988, 12:293-303.
7. Villamor E, Msamanga G, Urassa W, Petraro P, Spiegelman D, Hunter DJ, Fawzi W W: Trends in obesity, underweight, and wasting among women attending prenatal clinics in urban Tanzania 1995-2004. Am J Clin Nutr 2006, 83:1387-1394.
8. Gassmelseed DEA, Nasr AM, Homeida SM, Elsheikh MA, Adam I: Prevalence of HIV infection among pregnant women of the central Sudan. J Med Virol 2006, 78:1269-1270.
9. Mahmoud MM, Nasr AM, Gassmelseed DEA, Abdalelhafiz MA, Elsheikh MA, Adam I: Knowledge and attitude toward HIV voluntary counseling and testing services among pregnant women attending an antenatal clinic in Sudan. J Med Virol 2007, 79:469-473.
10. Coitinho DC, Sichieri R, D'Aquino Benício MH: Obesity and weight change related to parity and breast-feeding among parous women in Brazil. Public Health Nutr 2001, 4:865-870.
11. Singh RB, Pella D, Mechirova V, Kartikey K, Demeester F, Tomar RS, Beegom R, Mehta AS, Gupta SB, De Amit K, Neki NS, Haque M, Nayse J, Singh S, Thakur AS, Rastogi SS, Singh K, Krishna A: Prevalence of obesity, physical inactivity and undernutrition, a triple burden of diseases during transition in a developing economy. The Five City Study Group. Acta Cardiol 2007, 62:119-127.
12. Prentice AM: The emerging epidemic of obesity in developing countries. Int J Epidemiol 2006, 35:93-99.
13. Mansour AA, Ajeel NA: Parity is associated with increased waist circumference and other anthropometric indices of obesity. Eat Weight Disord 2009, 14:50-55.
14. Koch E, Bogado M, Araya F, Romero T, Díaz C, Manriquez L, Paredes M, Román C, Taylor A, Kirschbaum A: Impact of parity on anthropometric measures of obesity controlling by multiple confounders: a crosssectional study in Chilean women. J Epidemiol Community Health 2008, 62:461-470.
doi:10.1186/1756-0500-3-327
Cite this article as: Rayis et al.: Epidemiology of underweight and overweight-obesity among term pregnant Sudanese women. BMC Research Notes 2010 3:327.
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Alarms in the ICU: A study investigating how ICU nurses respond to clinical alarms for patient safety in a selected hospital in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa
A Ramlaul, MSc; G Chironda, PhD; OrcID 0000-0003-1361-1495; P Brysiewicz, PhD; OrcID 0000-0001-6258-1603
School of Nursing and Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Corresponding author: G Chironda (firstname.lastname@example.org)
Background. Advances in technology have facilitated the implementation of improved alarm management systems in the healthcare sector. There is a need to identify challenges encountered by intensive care unit (ICU) nurses with clinical alarm management systems in South Africa (SA) to ensure utilisation of these technological resources for patient safety.
Objective. To investigate how intensive care nurses respond to clinical alarms for patient safety in a selected hospital in KwaZulu-Natal Province, SA. Methods. A descriptive, non-experimental research design using the census sampling strategy was used to invite 120 nurses from four ICUs to complete an adapted, structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data.
Results. We had 91 respondents who completed the questionnaires (response rate of 75.8%). The majority of the respondents (85.7%) strongly knew the purpose of clinical alarms and 45.1% strongly felt confident about adjusting and monitoring the clinical alarms. More than half of the nurses (53.8 %) agreed to the existence of nuisance alarms that disrupted patient care (46.7%) and contributed to lack of responses (52.7%). While 76.9% strongly agreed with alarm sounds and displays to differentiate the priority of the alarms, 75.8% strongly agreed to the existence of proper documentation on setting alarms that are appropriate for each patient. The most frequent barriers were difficulty in setting alarms properly (51.6%) and lack of training on alarm systems (47.8%).
Conclusion. The complexity in setting the alarms, limited training and existence of false alarms was evident. Alarm-specific training is required to keep intensive care nurses updated with changes in technology to ensure patient safety.
Keywords. clinical alarms, patient safety, intensive care nurses, intensive care unit.
South Afr J Crit Care 2021:37(1):57-62. https://doi.org/10.7196/SAJCC.2021.v37i2.469
Contributions of the study. The findings of this present study highlighted the importance of understanding the alarm management system within the ICU environment of the healthcare sector in SA. Technological improvements, specialised trainings and clear clinical policies for alarm management are essential to improve patient safety.
Nurses working in an intensive care unit (ICU) are dependent on various medical devices to assist with patient monitoring, care and safety. [1] There is an escalation in the number and type of innovative medical devices used in the ICU for patient care. [2] The alarm systems of these medical devices (invasive and non-invasive) remain important components of the ICU environment as they alert nurses to the changing physiological parameters of the patient. [3,4] Increased dependence on these devices is standard practice as they warn of abnormalities in vital signs and deteriorating patient condition that may not be visible. [5]
clinical alarms. [10] These alarms are expected to make the nurses' work easier but their associated hazards have been reported as being among the top ten health technological hazards encountered in the ICUs for several years. [4,11]
Visual access to physiological data, waveform configurations and false alarms are crucial determinants in timely responses of intensive care nurses to bedside alarm investigations. [6] Hence, the effectiveness of alarm systems in an ICU is dependent on direct involvement of nurses in setting the monitors and responding to the alarming limits appropriately. [7] Currently, the availability of the ideal one-to-one nurse patient ratio is not a realistic expectation due to the increasing prevalence of nurse attrition and an inexperienced workforce. [8] Modern ICUs are equipped with clinical alarms that are technologically advanced in order to assist nurses; [9] however, nurses need to correctly interpret the
The increasing use of clinical alarm systems in the ICU setting leads to the concept of alarm fatigue. Alarm fatigue occurs when clinicians are exposed to a high occurrence of alarms, resulting in a failure to recognise and respond to true alarms that require bedside clinical intervention. [12] Alarm fatigue is an important clinical problem and delayed responses may impair patient care, [13] leading to patient deterioration and possible patient mortality in the ICU setting. [2] Funk et al. [14] highlighted the ability of nurses to respond to the alarming limits as they are aware that most of them are non-actionable or false. Unfortunately, most nurses are unsure of how they could prevent alarm fatigue. [15] Studies carried out in Ireland [15] and South Korea [16] revealed the occurrence of false alarms as reported by 63.8% and 90% of nurses, respectively.
In the South African (SA) ICU setting, nurses are responsible for monitoring the patient's devices and alarms, hence there is a need for training and orientation to improve the nurse's knowledge. [11,14]
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Understanding of the clinical alarms among ICU nurses is vital to guide the effective management and development of alarm system hospital policies that may further reduce false alarms and alarm fatigue. However, this area remains relatively unexplored and there is scarcity of literature on the response of nurses to clinical alarms in the ICU setting in SA.
Methods
A descriptive, non-experimental research design was used, and data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. The conceptual framework guiding this present study is the Shepherd's System Risk Model, [17] which analyses device-related adverse events by considering components surrounding the situation and the persons that interact with these systems and devices. These components include device (human factors design), patient (passive causes), operator (education and training, diverted attention) and environment (internal).
Study design
Study setting
The present study was conducted in a private hospital in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal Province, SA. The hospital has three adult and one neonatal ICU. ICU 1 has 26 beds and manages cardiac patients such as those with myocardial infarction, post-catherisation, as well as cardiac patients undergoing procedures and needing advanced levels of care. ICU 2 has 25 beds and receives predominantly surgical cases that are elective or planned surgical cases that require advanced levels of care and also receives trauma cases. Patients in ICU 3 (9 beds) are mostly elective surgical cases for brain and cardiac surgery. Patients in ICU 4 (24 beds) are newborns and premature babies that require additional advanced levels of care.
Population, sample and sampling
The target population was all registered and enrolled nurses (either permanent or sessional staff) working in any of the four ICUs in the hospital. The South African Nursing Council regulations [18] identifies a registered nurse (RN) as a practitioner who is qualified and competent to independently practise comprehensive nursing and midwifery, and is capable of assuming responsibility and accountability for such practice. An enrolled nurse (EN) carries out nursing care under the direct or indirect supervision or direction of a RN. Sessional refers to non-permanent staff working through nursing agencies. These registered and enrolled bedside nurses were directly involved in setting and managing alarm limits for their allocated patients. Using a census sampling strategy, all of the 120 RNs and ENs working in the ICU units were targeted.
The inclusion criteria were: (i) registered and enrolled nurses who worked at least 1 month in the ICU at the study hospital; (ii) ICU and non-ICU trained nurses; and (iii) sessional nurses meeting the criteria and working during the data collection period.
Research tool
A self-administered questionnaire was developed by the research team, incorporating the alarm fatigue questionnaire and the clinical alarms survey. [2,19] Approval to use these two questionnaires was obtained from their developers. Items in these questionnaires deemed not applicable to the SA context, namely questions related to other country-specific organisations for patient safety and communication systems such as pagers, were excluded.
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The questionnaire comprised of three sections. Section A requested demographic data and section B (21 items) contained alarm-related information aligned to the components of the Shepherd's System Risk Model. [17] The respondents were asked to respond using a 5-point Likert scale: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree. Section C consisted of nine items related to the challenges or barriers to the management of clinical alarms. The respondents were asked to rank the statements from 1 (most important) to 9 (least important).
Validity and reliability
We utilised two tools, the alarm fatigue questionnaire and the clinical alarms survey. [2,19] Alignment of the objectives of the study to the questionnaire items was done, enhancing the content validity of the current tool. Pre-testing of the questionnaire was done with five RNS working in the ICUs of the research setting. No problems were highlighted, and no changes were made to the tool. Their data were not included in the present analysis. The established reliability of both of the questionnaires prior to them being combined was not highlighted by the researchers of the previous tools. However, the reliability coefficient analysis, which was the internal consistency of the newly combined structured tool for the study, was 0.71. This indicated that the tool was an acceptable measure of the variables under study. [20]
Data collection process
Data were collected in October 2015 over a 2-week period. After obtaining ethical approval and permission from hospital management, AR made appointments with the unit managers of the respective ICUs in order to explain the objective of the present study and asked for access to the intensive care nurses. The distribution of the questionnaires was done on duty time as per agreement with hospital management. The respondents were given two envelopes; the first contained a detailed information sheet with details of the objective of the study and the consent form. A second envelope contained the questionnaire. The respondents were asked if they agreed to participate in the study and if so, to then sign the consent form. They were asked to complete the questionnaire at their convenience, and this was then returned to the unit manager in a sealed envelope. AR collected these sealed envelopes from the unit managers on a daily basis.
Data analysis
Data were cleaned, coded and entered into the SPSS software, version 23 (IBM Corp., USA) for analysis. Descriptive statistics in the form of frequencies and percentages were used to analyse the data. Crosstabulations were carried out between the nursing categories and training on clinical alarm monitoring system and functionality.
Ethical considerations
Ethical approval was obtained from the University of KwaZulu-Natal Ethics Committee (ref. no. HSS/0714/015M) and the hospital research committee. Confidentiality and anonymity of the respondents' responses were maintained, and they were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time. An information sheet explaining the nature of the research and the rights of the respondents was provided to ensure informed consent was obtained prior to participating in the study. A signed consent form was completed and was collected separately from the completed questionnaires received to ensure that no participant could be linked to their completed questionnaire, thus ensuring their anonymity.
Results
We distributed 120 questionnaires to nurses and received 91 responses, resulting in a response rate of 75.8%.
Demographic data
orientation plus training, 75.8% indicated that they found this to be adequate.
Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of the study respondents. Almost a third of the respondents (32%) were from ICU 1, 24% from ICU 4, and ICU 2 and 3 each accounted for 22% of the respondents. Most of the respondents were permanent non-ICU trained RNs (40.7%). Overall, 60.4% of respondents had 7 years or more of nursing experience. The majority (72.5%) had only received orientation regarding the alarm monitoring system and its functionality and 11% trained further. Among respondents who received orientation or
Table 2 reveals information on clinical alarms against the nursing categories. More than a third of the respondents (38.5) were permanent RNs who were non-ICU trained and had orientation only on the alarm monitoring system. The number of respondents who received both orientation and training were predominantly low for all of the nursing categories except for unit managers. None of the sessional RNs or ENs had received orientation and training.
Alarm-related information
Table 3 shows alarm-related information which is highlighted according to the components of the Shepherd's System Risk Model. [17] Regarding the component of operator (education
and training), the majority of the respondents (85.7%; n=78) strongly agreed that they knew the purpose of the clinical alarms, and 45.1% (n=41) strongly agreed they felt confident in adjusting and monitoring the alarm parameters. In terms of the component device (human factors design), the majority of the respondents (76.9%; n=70) strongly agreed that alarm sounds and/or visual displays should differentiate the priority of the alarms, 61.5% (n=56) strongly agreed that the alarm sounds and/or visual displays needed to be distinct based on the parameter or source of the alarm, and 59.3% (n=54) strongly agreed that multiple senses needed to be impacted by the alarms. Concerning the parameter patient (passive causes), more than half of the respondents (53.8%; n=49) supported the existence of nuisance alarms which disrupted patient care (46.7%; n=42), contributed to lack of responses (52.7%; n=48) and reduced trust in alarms (35.6%; n=32).
For the parameter operator (diverted attention), 56% (n=51) disagreed that they were overwhelmed by the number of alarms, 60.4% (n=55) disagreed that alarms could not be heard and were thus missed, and 59.3% (n=54) disagreed with the statement that they got confused with the sources of the alarms. With respect to the environmental (internal) parameter, 51.6% (n=47) strongly agreed that the alarms were adequate, while 75.8% (n=69) agreed that they were sensitive and responsive to alarms. The majority of the respondents (73.6%; n=67) agreed to the existence of a requirement in their institutions to document the setting of appropriate alarms for each patient.
Barriers to management of clinical alarms
Table 4 identifies barriers to the management of clinical alarms. The highest ranked barriers were difficulty in setting alarms properly (51.6%; n=47), lack of training on the alarm systems (47.8%; n=43), and difficulty in hearing alarms, identifying the source of an alarm and understanding the priority of an alarm ranked at the same level (46.2%;n=42).
Discussion
The operators of the clinical alarms on the equipment in the ICU environment were predominately the ICU nurses who were either registered ICU trained, or non-ICU trained and enrolled nurses. The present study revealed a greater number of nurses who worked in the ICU were non-ICU trained. Similar findings were reported by Meng'anyi et al., [3] who found that a majority of nurses working in the ICU were non-ICU trained.
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Despite the years of experience of the majority of the nurses (7 years and over), the number of ICU nurses who received both education and orientation on alarm management was low. While the majority of the
ICU nurses had received orientation to the new surroundings of clinical alarms at the time, they were new employees in ICU, the minority (11%) received training on knowledge and skills of managing the clinical
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alarms. This is almost similar to the findings by Aysha and Ahmed, [21] who reported that none of the nurses had received training before the implementation of the clinical alarm nursing intervention program. Overall, the majority of the nurses did not receive any form of training on alarm management systems; however, a study in by Mirhafez et al. [22] in Iran revealed that nurses needed such training. Wyckoff [7] also agreed with the need for further training coupled with simulation training regarding better alarm usage.
increased frequency of false alarms did predispose the nursing staff to alarm fatigue [24] and consequently negative clinical consequences for patient safety and care. [25] Bell [26] also confirmed that due to the many potential alarms that one could be exposed to from the various medical equipment, the risk of desensitisation to the alarming limits was high and could cause a patient safety concern.
Alarm-related information
Although the operator education and training on clinical alarm management was low, a greater number of nurses indicated that they understood the purpose of clinical alarms, thus agreeing with the findings of Cho et al. [16] Nevertheless, operator alarm-related information on distracted attention indicated that the staff did not feel overwhelmed and were responsive to the alarming limits, thus making it an unnecessary area of concern in the present study. However, Baillargeon [23] highlighted delayed responses to alarm limits occurring due to an overwhelming number of alarms sounding at the same time.
Passive patient causes in the form of clinically non-actionable alarms, also known as nuisance alarms, were highlighted in the present study. Although the ICU nurses in the present study did have an understanding of their roles and expectations with regard to alarm management, the frequency of the nuisance alarms was acknowledged as a cause for delays in their responses to these alarming limits. This concurred with the findings of Casey et al., [15] where most nurses agreed to the existence of non-actionable alarms, which disrupted patient care. The
Human factors design always comes into play when looking to improve human performance with regards to the use of equipment. [27] A significant number of nurses in the present study indicated that they understood the need for differentiating between the priority alarms based on the parameters and their impacts on multiple senses, thus agreeing with the findings of Cho et al. [16] The role of human factors is coupled with the environmental space and the staff was well aware of the existing policies for alarm management systems available within their ICU environments. However, these policies could be reinforced to address staff that were not confident with alarm management. Bell [26] indicated that the development of a hospital or unit policy on appropriate parameters was implemented specifically to meet patients' clinical needs.
Barriers to the management of clinical alarms
The present study highlighted difficulties in setting alarms properly and lack of training on alarm systems as the top two challenges. This contrasted with the findings of Funk et al., [14] Casey et al. [15] and Mirhafez et al., [22] who identified that frequent false alarms caused reduced attention and inadequate numbers of staff to respond to alarms as the most common barrier to the management of clinical alarms. Although 11% of the ICU
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nurses had not received training, 47.8% of the respondents stated that the lack of training on the alarm systems was their biggest issue. According to the ACCE Healthcare Technology Foundation, [19] for a clinical alarm to be effective, it needed to be only activated by a problem that would adversely affect the patient. The nurses or other healthcare workers had to then identify the source and correct the identified problem to prevent a patient event. However, this simple concept has still not resulted in clinical alarm systems that are user-friendly and ensure patient safety.
Study limitations
Only one private hospital was used as the study setting, therefore generalisation of the study findings to other private settings and state hospitals cannot be made. The instrument used the Likert scale, which was suitable for the data being collected, but the inclusion of the neutral response and missing data had the potential to affect the quality of the data collected. Respondents were asked to recall information on how they responded to clinical alarms in ICUs, creating a possibility of recall bias. There was also the possibility of information bias, where the respondents may have given information regarded as desirable for the researchers to hear, although not necessarily a true reflection of how they understood clinical alarms in ICU settings.
Recommendations
Due to technological advancements in the healthcare sector, nursing education and training should incorporate devices and alarm management for ICU nurses of all categories. In addition, representatives of companies that sell medical equipment need to increase their frequency and involvement with education around the devices.
Replicable research is recommended in more hospitals, including public hospital ICUs, to investigate the similarities and differences, as well as to gain a better understanding of the alarm management system within the healthcare sector in SA. Policies that are existent in the facility need to be reinforced and communicated to the staff.
Conclusion
Although a greater number of intensive care nurses knew the purpose of the clinical alarms, the complexity in setting the alarms, limited training and existence of false alarms was evident. These further impacted on how nurses respond to clinical alarms in ICU, thus potentially compromising patient safety. Therefore, continuous education and in-service training to create awareness about alarm management may be beneficial.
Declaration. None.
Acknowledgements. None.
Author contributions. AR and PB conceptualised the study, analysed and interpreted the data. AR, GC and PB drafted and critically revised the manuscript. All the authors approved the final manuscript for publication. Funding. None.
Conflicts of interest. None.
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Accepted 12 May 2021.
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The Universe is a Strange Place ∗
Frank Wilczek 1
1 Center for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
Our understanding of ordinary matter is remarkably accurate and complete, but it is based on principles that are very strange and unfamiliar. As I'll explain, we've come to understand matter to be a Music of the Void, in a remarkably literal sense. Just as we physicists finalized that wonderful understanding, towards the end of the twentieth century, astronomers gave us back our humility, by informing us that ordinary matter – what we, and chemists and biologists, and astronomers themselves, have been studying all these centuries constitutes only about 5% of the mass of the universe as a whole. I'll describe some of our promising attempts to rise to this challenge by improving, rather than merely complicating, our description of the world.
∗ Public lecture given at Lepton-Photon 2005, Uppsala, Sweden July 2005. Earlier I used the same title for a quite different talk, astro-ph/0401347.
In a lecture of one hour I will not be able to do justice to all the ways in which the Universe is a strange place. But I'll share a few highlights with you.
I. INTERIOR STRANGENESS
First I'd like to talk about how strange I am. Oh, and you too, of course. That is, I'd like to describe how strange and far removed from everyday experience is the accurate picture of ordinary matter, the stuffthat we're made of, that comes from modern physics.
I think that 10,000 years from now, our descendants will look back on the twentieth century as a very special time. It was the time when humankind first came to understood how matter works, indeed what it is.
By 1900, physicists had a great deal of Newtonian-level knowledge. The paradigm for this level of understanding is Newton's account of the motion of planets, moons, and comets in the solar system. Newtonian-level knowledge takes the form: if bodies are arranged with given positions and velocities at time t0, then the laws of physics tell you what their positions and velocities will be at any other time. Newton's theory is extremely accurate and fruitful. It led, for example, to the discovery of a new planet – Neptune – whose gravity was necessary to account for anomalies in motion of the known planets. (We're facing similar problems today, as I'll describe later. Neptune was the "dark matter" of its day.)
But nothing in Newton's theory prescribes how many planets there are. Nothing predicts their masses, or their distances from the Sun. For planetary systems all that freedom is a good thing, we know now, because astronomers are discovering other systems of planets around other stars, and these solar systems are quite different from ours, but they still obey Newton's laws.
But no such freedom is observed for the building blocks of ordinary matter. Those building blocks come in only a few kinds, that can only fit together in very restricted ways. Otherwise there could not be such a subject as chemistry, because each sample of matter would be different from every other sample. Pre-modern physics could not account for that fact, and therefore it could not even begin to account for the specific chemical, electrical, and mechanical properties of matter.
The turning point came in 1913, with Bohr's model of the hydrogen atom. Bohr's model brought quantum ideas into the description of matter. It pictured the hydrogen atom as analogous to a simplified solar system (just one planet!) held together by electric rather than gravitational forces, with the proton playing the role of the sun and the electron the role of the planet. The crucial new idea in Bohr's model is that only certain orbits are allowed to the electron: namely, oribts for which the angular momentum is a whole-number multiple of Planck's constant. When the atom exchanges energy with the outside world, by emitting or absorbing light, the electron jumps from one orbit to another, decreasing its energy by emitting a photon or increasing its energy by absorbing one. The frequency of the photon, which tells us what color of light it conveys, is proportional to its energy according to the Planck-Einstein relation E = hν, where E is the energy, ν is the frequency, and h is Planck's constant. Because the allowed orbits form a discrete set, rather than a continuum, we find discrete spectral lines corresponding to the allowed energy changes.
Bohr's model predicts the colors of the spectral lines remarkably accurately, though not perfectly. When Einstein learned of Bohr's model, he called it "the highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought". I suppose Einstein was alluding here to the ancient idea of "Music of the Spheres", which has enchanted mathematically inclined mystics from Pythagoras to
Kepler. According to that idea the planets produce a kind of music through their stately periodic motions, as the strings of a violin do through their periodic vibrations. Whether the "Music of the Spheres" was intended to be actual sounds or something less tangible, a harmonious state induced in the appreciative mind, I'm not sure. But in Bohr's model the connection is close to being tangible: the electron really does signal its motion to us in a sensory form, as light, and the frequencies in the line spectrum are the tonal palette of the atomic instrument.
So that's one way in which Bohr's model is musical. Another is in its power to suggest meanings far beyond its actual content. Einstein sensed immediately that Bohr's introduction of discreteness into the description of matter, with its constraint on the possible motions, intimated that the profound limitations of pre-modern physics which I just described would be overcome – even though, in itself, Bohr's model only supplied an approximate description of the simplest sort of atom.
In one respect, however, Einstein was wrong. Bohr's model is definitely not the highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought. The theory that replaced Bohr's model, modern quantum mechanics, outdoes it by far.
In modern quantum mechanics, an electron is no longer described as a particle in orbit. Rather, it is described by a vibrating wave pattern in all space. The equation that describes the electron's wave function, Schr¨odinger's equation, is very similar to the equations that describe the vibrations of musical instruments. In Schr¨odinger's account light is emitted or absorbed when the electron's vibrations set the electromagnetic field – aether, if you like – in motion, by the same sort of sympathetic vibration that leads to the emission of sound by musical instruments, when their vibrations set air in motion. These regular, continuous processes replace the mysterious "quantum jumps" from one orbit to another that were assumed, but not explained, in Bohr's model.
A major reason that physicists were able to make rapid progress in atomic physics, once Schr¨odinger found his equation, is that they were able to borrow techniques that had already been used to analyze problems in sound production and music. Ironically, despite his wellknown love of music, Einstein himself never accepted modern quantum mechanics.
After the consolidation of atomic physics in the early 1930s, the inner boundary of physics shrank by a factor of a hundred thousand. The challenge was to understand the tiny atomic nuclei, wherein are concentrated almost all the mass of matter. The nuclei could only held together by some new force, which came to be called the strong force, since gravity is much too feeble and electrical forces are both too feeble and of the wrong sign to do the job (being repulsive, not attractive). Experimenters found that it was useful to think of nuclei as being built up from protons and neutrons, and so the program initially was to study the forces between protons and neutrons. You would do this by shooting protons and neutrons at each other, and studying how they swerved. But when the experiments were done, what emerged was not just existing particles swerving around in informative directions, but a whole new world containing many many new particles, a Greek and Roman alphabet soup containing among others π, ρ, K, ω, φ mesons and ∆, Λ, Σ, Ωbaryons and their antiparticles, that are unstable, but otherwise bear a strong family resemblance to protons and neutrons. So the notion of using protons and neutrons as elementary building blocks, bound together by forces you would just go ahead and measure, became untenable.
I'll skip over the complicated story of how physicists struggled to recover from this confusing shock, and just proceed to the answer, as it began to emerge in the 1970s, and was firmly established during the 1990s. The building blocks of nuclei are quarks and gluons. Add electrons and photons, and you have all the building blocks you need for atoms, molecules, ions, and indeed all ordinary matter.
Quarks once had a bad reputation, because for many years attempts to produce them in the laboratory, or to find them anywhere, failed. People went so far as to search with great care through cosmic ray tracks, and even in moon rocks. And gluons had no reputation at all. But now we know that quarks and gluons are very real. You can see them, quite literally — once you know what to look for! Here (Fig. 1) is a picture of a quark, an antiquark, and
a gluon. What is shown here is the result of colliding electrons and positrons at very high energy. It was taken at the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP) at CERN, near Geneva, which operated through the 1990s. You see that the particles are emerging in three groups, which we call jets. I want to convince you that one of these jets represents a quark, one an antiquark, and one a gluon.
The key idea for justifying this interpretation is asymptotic freedom, for which the Nobel Prize was awarded in 2004. Asymptotic freedom says that an energetic quark (or antiquark or gluon) will frequently emit soft radiation, which does not significantly change the overall flow of energy and momentum; but only rarely emit hard radiation, which does produce changes in the flow. Here's what asymptotic freedom means, concretely, in the LEP situation. Right after the electron and positron annihilate, their energy is deposited into a quark-antiquark pair moving rapidly in opposite directions. Usually the quark and antiquark will only emit soft radiation. In that case, which occurs about 90% of the time, we will have two jets of particles, moving in opposite directions, whose total energy and momentum reflect those of the original quark and antiquark. More rarely, about 10% of the time, there will be a hard radiation, where a gluon is emitted. That gluon will then initiate a third jet. And 10% of the 10%, that is 1%, of the time a second hard radiation will occur, and we'll have four jets, and so forth. Having invested hundreds of millions of Euros to construct the LEP machine, physicists exploited it intensely, producing many millions of collisions, working up to about one bang per buck. So it was possible to study the properties of these multi-jet events, to see how likely it was for them to emerge at different angles and to share the available energy in various ways, and thereby to test precisely whether they behave in the way that our basic theory of quarks and gluons, namely quantum chromodynamics (QCD), predicts. It works.
That's why I can tell you, with complete confidence, that what you're seeing in the picture is a quark, an antiquark, and a gluon. We see them not as particles in the conventional sense, but through the flows they imprint on the visible particles.
There's another aspect of this business that I think is extremely profound, though it is so deeply ingrained among physicists that they tend to take it for granted. It is this: These observations provide a wonderfully direct illustration of the probabilistic nature of quantum theory. At LEP experimentalists just did one thing over and over again, that is collide electrons and positrons. We know from many experiments that electrons and positrons have no significant internal structure, so there's no question that when we make these collisions we really are doing the same thing over and over again. If the world were governed by deterministic equations, then the final result of every collision would be the same, and the hundreds of millions of Euros would have had a very meagre payoff. But according to the principles of quantum theory many outcomes are possible, and our task is to compute the probabilities. That task, computing the probabilities, is exactly what QCD accomplishes so successfully.
By the way, one consequence of the probabilistic nature of our predictions is that while I can tell you that you're seeing a quark, an antiquark and a gluon, I can't say for sure which is which!
So we know by very direct observations that quarks and gluons are fundamental constituents of matter. QCD proposes that gluons and quarks are all we need to make protons, neutrons, and all the other strongly interacting particles. That's an amazing claim, because there's a big disconnect between the properties of quarks and gluons and the properties of the things they are supposed to make.
Most notably, gluons have strictly zero mass, and the relevant quarks have practically zero mass, but together, it's claimed, they make protons and neutrons, which provide overwhelmingly most of the mass of ordinary matter. That claim flies in the face of the "conservation of mass" principle that Newton used as the basis of classical mechanics and Lavoisier used as the foundation of quantitative chemistry. Indeed, before 1905, this idea of getting mass from no mass would have been inconceivable. But then Einstein discovered his second law.
My friend and mentor Sam Treiman liked to relate his experience of how, during World War II, the U.S. Army responded to the challenge of training a large number of radio engineers starting with very different levels of preparation, ranging down to near zero. They designed a crash course for it, which Sam took, and a training manual, which Sam loved, and showed me . In that training manual, the first chapter was devoted to Ohm's three laws. The Army designed Ohm's first law is V = IR. Ohm's second law is I = V/R. I'll leave it to you to reconstruct Ohm's third law.
Similarly, as a companion to Einstein's famous equation E = mc 2 we have his second law, m = E/c 2 .
All this isn't quite as silly as it may seem, because different forms of the same equation can suggest very different things. The great theoretical physicist Paul Dirac described his method for making discoveries as "playing with equations".
The usual way of writing the equation, E = mc 2 , suggests the possibility of obtaining large amounts of energy by converting small amounts of mass. It brings to mind the possibilities of nuclear reactors, or bombs. In the alternative form m = E/c 2 , Einstein's law suggests the possibility of explaining mass in terms of energy. That is a good thing to do, because in modern physics energy is a more basic concept than mass. It is energy that is strictly conserved, energy that appears in the laws of thermodynamics, energy that appears in
Schr¨odinger's equation. Mass, by contrast, is a rather special, technical concept – it labels irreducible representations of the Poincar´e group (I won't elaborate on that.)
Actually, Einstein's original paper does not contain the equation E = mc 2 , but rather m = E/c 2 . So maybe I should have called m = E/c 2 the zeroth law, but I thought that might be confusing. The title of the original paper is a question: "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon its Energy Content?" From the beginning, Einstein was thinking about the foundations of physics, not about making bombs. I think he would have been delighted to learn that our answer to his question is a resounding "Yes!" Not only does the inertia of bodies depend on its energy content; for ordinary matter most of inertia is the energy associated with moving quarks and gluons, themselves essentially massless, following m = E/c 2 . Who knows, it might even have inspired him to accept modern quantum mechanics.
To solve the equations of QCD, and identify the different ways in which quarks and gluons can organize themselves into the particles we observe, physicists have pushed the envelope of modern computing. They sculpt upwards of 10 30 protons and neutrons into a massively parallel computer, which runs at teraflop speeds – that is, a thousand billion, or 10 12 multiplications of big numbers per second for months, that is 10 7 seconds. All to calculate what every single proton does in 10 − 24 seconds, that is figure out how to arrange its quarks and gluons efficiently, to get the minimum energy.
Evidently there's room for improvement in our methods of calculation. But already the results are most remarkable. They are displayed in Fig. 2. I think what you see in that
modest-looking plot is one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time. We start with a very specific and mathematically tight theory, QCD. An objective sign of how tight the theory is, is that just a very few parameters have to be taken from experiment. Then everything else is fixed, and must be computed by algorithms the theory supplies, with no room for maneuver or fudge factors. Here three parameters were fixed, indicated by the diamonds, by matching the masses of the π and K mesons and a splitting among heavy quark mesons (I won't enter the technicalities) and then all the other calculated masses are displayed as circles, with line intervals indicating the remaining uncertainty in calculation (due to computer limitations). As you see, they agree quite well with the measured values, indicated as squares.
What makes this tour de force not only impressive, but also historic, is that one of the entries, N, means "nucleon", that is, proton or neutron. So QCD really does account for the mass of protons and neutrons, and therefore of ordinary matter, starting from ideally simple elementary objects, the quarks and gluons, which themselves have essentially zero mass. In this way, QCD fulfills the promise of Einstein's second law.
Another important aspect of Figure 2 is what you don't see. The computations do not produce particles that have the properties of individual quarks or gluons. Those objects, while they are the building block, are calculated never to occur as distinct individual particles. They are always confined within more complex particles – or, as we've seen, reconstructed from jets. This confinement property, which historically made quarks and gluons difficult to conceive and even more difficult to accept, is now a calculated consequence of our equations for their behavior.
Thus our theory corresponds to reality, in considerable detail, wherever we can check it. Therefore we can use it with some confidence to explore domains of reality that are extremely interesting, but difficult to access directly by experiment.
I think that for the future of physics, and certainly for the future of this lecture, the most profound and surprising result to emerge from late twentieth-century physics may be the realization that what we perceive as empty space is in reality a highly structured and vibrant dynamical medium. Our eyes were not evolved to see that structure, but we can use our theories to calculate what empty space might look like if we had eyes that could resolve down to distances of order 10 − 14 centimeters, and times of order 10 − 24 seconds. Derek Leinweber in particular has put a lot of effort into producing visualizations of the behavior of quark and gluon fields, and I highly recommend his website www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/theory/ staff/leinweber/VisualQCD/QCDvacuum/
welcome.html as a source of enlightenment. Figure 3 shows gluon fields as they fluctuate in "empty" space. I want to emphasize that this is not a free fantasy, but part of the calculation that leads to Fig. 2 (for experts: what is shown is a smoothed distribution of topological charge).
The different particles we observe are the vibration patterns that are set up in the medium of "empty" space, let's call it Void, when it is disturbed in different ways. Stable particles such as protons correspond to stable vibration patterns; unstable particles correspond to vibration patterns that hold together for a while, then break apart. This is not a metaphor, it is our most profound understanding. Rather it is more familiar and conventional ideas about matter that are metaphors, for this deeper reality.
Indeed, the way Figure 2 was produced, and more generally the way we compute the properties of matter from first principles, is to introduce some disturbance in Void, let it settle down for a while, and observe what kind of stable or long-lived patterns emerge. An example is shown in Fig. 4. Here a quark and an antiquark are inserted on the left, the
medium responds, and a stable vibration pattern emerges (the plane shows a slice of time). This picture is obtained by averaging over the fluctuations that would occur in the absence of the quark and antiquark, so the stuffin Figure 3 has been subtracted; we're interested in the net disturbance. This is how we produce a π meson for numerical study. The picture for a proton would look similar; you'd get it by studying the disturbance when you introduce three quarks, instead of a quark and antiquark.
We go from these vibration patterns to masses by combining Einstein's second law m = E/c 2 with the Einstein-Planck relation E = hν between the energy of a state and the frequency at which its wave function vibrates. Thus
or alternatively
Thus masses of particles correspond in a very direct and literal way to the frequencies at which the Void vibrates, when it is disturbed. That is how we calculate them. The ancient "Music of the Spheres" was an inspiring concept, but it never corresponded to ideas that are very precise or impressive. Now we have a Music of the Void, which I trust you'll agree is all three of these things.
II. OUR STRANGE SURROUNDINGS
Just as we physicists were finally consolidating this powerful understanding of ordinary matter, astronomers made some amazing new discoveries, to help us maintain our humility. They discovered that the sort of matter we've been familiar with, made from electrons, photons, quarks, and gluons — the stuffwe're made of, the stuffof chemistry and biology, the stuffof stars and nebulae — makes up only 5% of the Universe by mass. The remainder consists of at least new substances. There's 25% in something we call dark matter, and 70% in what we call dark energy.
Very little is known about dark matter, and even less about dark energy. One thing we do know is that neither of them is really dark. They're transparent. They neither emit nor absorb light to any significant extent — if they did, we'd have discovered them a long time ago. In fact, dark matter and dark energy seem to interact very feebly not only with photons, but with ordinary matter altogether. They've only been detected through their gravitational influence on the (ordinary) kind of matter we do observe.
Other things we know: Dark matter forms clumps, but not such dense clumps as ordinary matter. Around every visible galaxy that's been carefully studied we find an extended halo of dark matter, whose density falls offmuch more slowly than that of ordinary matter as you recede from the center. It's because it is more diffusely distributed that averaged over the Universe as a whole the dark matter has more total mass than ordinary matter, even though ordinary matter tends to dominate in the regions where it is found.
Dark energy doesn't seem to clump at all. It is equally dense everywhere, as far as we can tell, as if it is an intrinsic property of space-time itself. Most strange of all, dark energy exerts negative pressure, causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate.
With that, I've basically told you everything we know about dark matter and dark energy. It's not very satisfying. We'd like to know, for example, if the dark matter is made of particles. If so, what do those particles weigh? Do they really not interact with matter at all, except by gravitation, or just a little more feebly than we've been sensitive to so far? Do dark matter particles interact strongly with each other? Can they collide with one another and annihilate?
How do you find answers to questions like those? One way, of course, is to do experiments. But the experiments have not borne fruit so far, as I mentioned, and as a general rule it's difficult to find something if you don't know what you're looking for. There's another way to proceed, which has a great history in physics. That is, you can improve the equations of fundamental physics. You can try to make them more consistent, or to improve their mathematical beauty.
For example, in the middle of the nineteenth century James Clerk Maxwell studied the equations of electricity and magnetism as they were then known, and discovered that they contained a mathematical inconsistency. At the same time Michael Faraday, a self-taught genius of experimental physics who did not have great skill in mathematics, had developed a picture of electric and magnetic phenomena that suggested to Maxwell how he might fix the inconsistency, by adding another term to the equations. When Maxwell added this term, he found that the new equations had solutions where changing electric fields induce magnetic fields, and vice versa, so that you could have self-supporting waves of electromagnetic disturbance traveling through space at the speed of light. Maxwell proposed that his electromagnetic disturbances in fact are light, and in this way produced one of the great unifications in the history of physics. As a bonus, he predicted that there could be electromagnetic waves of different wavelength and frequency, which would in effect be new forms of "light", not visible to human eyes. Waves of this sort were finally produced and detected by Heinrich Hertz in 1888; today of course we call them radio waves, and also microwaves, gamma rays, and so on. Another example came around 1930, when Paul Dirac worked to improve Erwin Schr¨odinger's equation for the quantum mechanical wave function of electrons. Schr¨odinger's equation, as I mentioned before, made a big logical improvement on Bohr's model and is quite successful in giving a first account of atomic spectra. We still use it today. But Schr¨odinger's equation has a severe theoretical flaw: it is not consistent with special relativity. In 1928 Dirac invented an improved equation for electrons, that implements quantum dynamics and is also consistent with special relativity. Some of the solutions of Dirac's equation correspond closely to solutions of solutions of Schr¨odinger's equation, with small corrections. But Dirac's equation has additional solutions, that are completely new. At first it was quite unclear what these solutions meant physically, but after some struggles and false starts in 1932 Dirac put forward a convincing interpretation. The new solutions describe a new kind of matter, previously unsuspected. Dirac predicted the existence of antielectrons, or positrons. Within a few months, the experimentalist Carl Anderson found positrons, by studying cosmic rays. It was the first example of antimatter. Nowadays positrons are used for medical purposes (Positron Emission Tomography, or PET), and many other kinds of antimatter have been discovered.
Today we have several good new ideas for how to improve the equations of physics. I'll mention a few momentarily. But first let me make a preliminary observation: Because we understand so much about how matter behaves in extreme conditions, and because that behavior is remarkably simple, we can work out the cosmological consequences of changes in our fundamental equations. If our suggestion for improving the equations predicts new kinds of particles, we can predict the abundance with which those particles would be produced during the big bang. If any of the particles are stable, we will predict their present cosmological density. If we're lucky, we might find that one of our new particles is produced in the right amount, and has the right properties, to supply the astronomers' dark matter.
Recently experimenters have been testing our theoretical understanding of the early universe in a most remarkable way. By colliding gold nuclei at extremely high energies they create, for very brief times and in a very small volume (around 10 − 20 seconds, and 10 − 12 centimeters), conditions of temperature and density in terrestrial laboratories similar to those that last occurred throughout the universe a hundredth of a second or so after the Big Bang. The ashes of these tiny fireballs are thousands of particles, as shown in Fig. 5. It looks very complicated, and in many ways it is, but our theories makes many predictions about the overall flow of energy and the properties of the most energetic particles that can be compared with observations, and those predictions work pretty well, so we're encouraged, and emboldened.
So, how do we go about improving our equations? Over the course of the twentieth century, symmetry has been immensely fruitful as a source of insight into Nature's basic operating principles. QCD, in particular, is constructed as the unique embodiment of a huge symmetry group, local SU(3) color gauge symmetry (working together with special relativity, in the context of quantum field theory). As we try to discover new laws that improve on what we know, it seems good strategy to continue to use symmetry as our guide. This strategy has led physicists to several compelling suggestions. Let me very briefly mention four of them:
1. We can combine our theories of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions
FIG. 5: Particles emerging from a violent collision of gold nuclei, which reproduces physical conditions close to the big bang. Courtesy STAR collaboration.
into a single unified theory, by extending the symmetries that form the basis of these theories into a larger symmetry, that contains all of them (and more). This is known as grand unification. Grand unification predicts the existence of new particles and new phenomena, including mass for neutrinos (which has been observed) and instability of protons (not yet observed).
2. We can extend the space-time symmetry of special relativity to include mixing of space and time with additional quantum dimensions. This is known as supersymmetry. Supersymmetry predicts the existence of a whole new world of particles. Each currently known particle will have a heavier superpartner, with different spin.
3. We can enhance the equations of QCD by adding a symmetry that explains why the strong interactions exhibit no preferred arrow of time. This leads us to predict, by quite subtle and advanced arguments, the existence of a new kind of extremely light, extremely feebly interacting particle, the axion.
4. We can enhance the symmetry of our equations for the weak and electromagnetic interactions, and achieve a partial unification, by postulating the existence of a universal background field, the so-called Higgs condensate, that fills all space and time. There is already a lot of indirect evidence for that idea, but we'd like to produce the new particles, the Higgs particles, that this field is supposed to be made of.
Each of these items leads into a beautiful story and an active area of research, and it's somewhat of a torture for me to restrain myself from saying a lot more about them, but time forbids. I'll just describe one particular line of ideas, that ties together the first two of these items with the dark matter problem, and that will soon be tested decisively.
Both QCD and the modern theory of electromagnetic and weak interactions are founded on similar mathematical ideas. The combination of theories gives a wonderfully economical and powerful account of an astonishing range of phenomena. It constitutes what we call the Standard Model. Just because it is so concrete and so successful, the Standard Model can and should be closely scrutinized for its aesthetic flaws and possibilities. In fact, the structure of the Standard Model gives powerful suggestions for its further fruitful development. They are a bit technical to describe, but I'll say a few words, which you can take as poetry if not as information.
The product structure SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1) or the gauge symmetry of the Standard Model, the reducibility of the fermion representation (that is, the fact that the symmetry does not make connections linking all the fermions), and the peculiar values of the hypercharge quantum numbers assigned to the known particles all suggest the desirability of a larger symmetry. The devil is in the details, and it is not at all automatic that the superficially complex and messy observed pattern of matter will fit neatly into a simple mathematical structure. But, to a remarkable extent, it does.
There seems to be a big problem with implementing more perfect symmetry among the different interactions, however. The different interactions, as observed, do not have the same overall strength, as would be required by the extended symmetry. The strong interaction, mediated by gluons, really is observed to be much stronger than the electromagnetic interaction, mediated by photons. That makes it difficult, on the face of it, to interpret gluons and photons as different aspects of a common reality.
But now we should recall that empty space is a dynamical medium, aboil with quantum fluctuations. Gluons or photons see particles not in their pristine form, but rather through the distorting effects of this unavoidable medium. Could it be that when we correct for the distortion, the underlying equality of different interactions is revealed?
To try out that idea, we have to extend our theory to distances far smaller than, or equivalently energies far larger than, we have so far accessed experimentally. Fig. 6 gives a sense of what's involved. The left-most part of the graph, with the discs, represents our
actual measurements. It's a logarithmic scale, so each tick on the horizontal axis means a factor of ten in energy. Building an accelerator capable of supplying one more factor of ten in energy will cost a few billion Euros. After that it gets really difficult. So the prospects for getting this information directly are not bright. Nevertheless, it's interesting to calculate, and if we do that we find some very intriguing results.
In correcting for the medium, we must include fluctuations due to all kinds of fields, including those that create and destroy particles we haven't yet discovered. So we have to make some hypothesis, about what kind of additional particles there might be. The simplest hypothesis is just that there are none, beyond those we know already. Assuming this hypothesis, we arrive at the calculation displayed in the top panel of Fig. 6. You see that the approach of coupling strengths to a unified value is suggested, but it is not quite accurately realized.
Physicists react to this near-success in different ways. One school says that near-success is still failure, and you should just give up this dream of unification, that the world is bound to be a lot more complicated. Another school says that there is some truth in the basic idea, but the straightforward extrapolation of physics as we know it (based on quantum field theory) to such extreme energies and distances is wrong. You might have to include the effect of extra dimensions, or of strings, for example. So you should be grateful that this calculation works as well as it does, and wait for revolutionary developments in physics to teach you how to improve it.
Either or both of these reactions might turn out to be right. But I've long advocated a more definite and (relatively) conservative proposal that still seems promising, and I'd like to mention it now, having warned you that not all my colleagues have signed on to it, by any means. It is based on yet another way to improve the equations of physics, known as low-energy supersymmetry.
As the name suggests, supersymmetry involves expanding the symmetry of the basic equations of physics. This proposed expansion of symmetry goes in a different direction from the enlargement of gauge symmetry, which we've just been considering. Supersymmetry connects particles having the same color charges and different spins, whereas expanded gauge symmetry changes the color charges while leaving spin untouched. Supersymmetry expands the space-time symmetry of special relativity.
In order to implement low-energy supersymmetry, we must postulate the existence of a whole new world of heavy particles, none of which has yet been observed directly. There is, however, a most intriguing indirect hint that this idea may be on the right track. If we include the particles needed for low-energy supersymmetry, in their virtual form, into the calculation of how couplings evolve with energy, then accurate unification is achieved! This is shown in the bottom panel of Fig. 6.
Among the many new particles, one is particularly interesting. It is electrically neutral and has no color charge, so it interacts very weakly with ordinary matter. It lives a very long time – longer than the current lifetime of the Universe. Finally, if we calculate how much of it would be produced during the big bang, we find that it supplies roughly the right density to supply the dark matter. All this adds up to suggest that maybe this new particle is supplying the dark matter astronomers have discovered.
By ascending a tower of speculation, involving now both extended gauge symmetry and extended space-time symmetry, we seem to break though the clouds, into clarity and breathtaking vision. Is it an illusion, or reality? That question creates a most exciting situation for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), due to begin operating at CERN in 2007. For that great accelerator will achieve the energies necessary to access the new world of heavy particles, if it exists. How the story will play out, only time will tell. In any case, I think it is fair to say that the pursuit of unified field theories, which in past (and many present) incarnations has been vague and barren of testable consequences, has in the circle of ideas I've been describing here attained entirely new levels of concreteness and fertility.
III. THREE GREAT LESSONS
Now I'm done with what I planned to tell you today about the strangeness of the Universe. I think it's appropriate to conclude by connecting these grand considerations about the nature of reality to human life. So I'll conclude by drawing what I feel are three great lessons — I'm not sure whether I should call them moral, philosophical, or spiritual lessons — from the scientific results I've described.
1. The part of the world we understand is strange and beautiful. We, and all the things we deal with in everyday life, are Music of the Void.
2. If we work to understand, we can understand. Using hands and minds evolved for quite other purposes, by diligent labor and honest thought, we have come to comprehend vastly alien realms of the infinite and the infinitesimal.
3. We still have a lot to learn.
Acknowledgment
The work of FW is supported in part by funds provided by the U.S. Department of Energy under cooperative research agreement DE-FC02-94ER40818.
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Project Healthy Moms: Resource List for Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs)
Provided by Project Healthy Moms, Mental Health America of Georgia
Mental Health America of Georgia's Project Healthy Moms provides this resource list of healthcare providers and outlets for self-care that specialize in providing care for pregnant or postpartum women. Please note that although seeking professional help is vital, a woman can complement her treatment plan with self-care and other support strategies. This list is comprehensive and includes many resources that may be combined.
Disclaimer: This list is intended for reference purposes only. Practitioners on this list have indicated experience and interest in PMADs; however, they have not been approved by a formal process through Mental Health America of Georgia. Therefore, inclusion on this resource list should not be considered an endorsement from Mental Health America of Georgia. Furthermore, services and information provided by these resources do not necessarily reflect the views of Mental Health America of Georgia.
Table of Contents
Do you have specialized training and/or experience with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders? Do you think you or your organization should be added to this list of resources? If so, please contact Sarah Yoss at 678-904-1968 or at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Healthcare providers
A list of psychiatrists, therapists, and other healthcare providers in Georgia with specialized training, experience, and/or interest in Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders.
**Are you a Georgia provider with specialized training and/or experience in perinatal mood disorders? Do you think you or your organization should be added to this list of resources? If so, please contact Sarah Yoss at 678-904-1968 or at email@example.com**
Atlanta and Decatur
Psychiatrists and therapists
Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW The Stress Therapist for Moms 106 N Clarendon Ave, Ste A Avondale Estates, GA 30002 404-610-1780 http://guidinginneraction.com/
Payment: Self pay
Elizabeth O'Brien & Associates LLC
2801 Buford Highway, Suite 540 | Atlanta, GA 30329
Psychotherapy and Coaching
Office: 907-378-6972
http://www.facebook.com/ElizabethOBrienLPC
http://www.elizabethobrienlpc.com
Payment: Self pay
Gina Campbell, LCSW, MDiv
http://www.ginacampbellcounseling.com
118 East Maple St Decatur, GA 30030 (404) 987-0896
firstname.lastname@example.org
Payment: Self pay, in-network with United Healthcare, Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield
Project Healthy Moms – Resource List
Judy Cantwell, LPC, MEd International Workforce Effectiveness 1790 Century Blvd, Suite B Atlanta GA, 30345 404-315-7331 email@example.com Payment: Private insurances or self-pay
Anne Cumings, LCSW, MDiv
Decatur GA, 30033
1814 Clairmont Road
404-636-1457 ext. 437
Payment: Medicaid, Medicare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, CIGNA, United, Aetna firstname.lastname@example.org
Bethany B. Davis, MD
Twelve Piedmont Center 3495 Piedmont Road, NE Suite 419 Atlanta, GA 30305 404-841-1000 http://www.drbethanydavis.com/ Payment: Self pay
Nicole Elliott, LAPC, NCC, CYT
3996 Clairmont Road
The Brookhaven Center for Counseling & Wellness
Atlanta, GA 30341
678.357.6259
www.atlantawellnesscounseling.com
email@example.com
Payment: Self pay
Kate Ferguson, MA, NCC
404-987-8876
Licensed Professional Counselor Psychotherapy for Women 4200 Northside Parkway Building 6 Atlanta, GA 30327
www.katefergusontherapy.com
Payment: Self pay, financial aid available, out-of-network benefits offered
Dana Frederick, MA, LPC, LMFT
www.counselinggenerations.com
2024 Powers Ferry Road, Suite 120 Atlanta, GA 30339 678-381-3493
Payment: Self-pay, sliding scale based on income, out-of-network benefits offered
Licia Freeman, MA, MEd, LMFT
Atlanta, GA 30305
3520 Piedmont Rd Suite 330
770-352-0029
http://www.parentsandpartners.com/
firstname.lastname@example.org
Sally Herbert, MD 49 Lenox Pointe NE Atlanta, GA 30324 404-842-0070
Sarah Hightower, MA, LAPC
Individual and group counseling services A.T.L. Psychotherapy & Consulting Services 5835 Campbellton Road, SW Atlanta, GA 30331 404-428-4114 http://sarahhightower.com email@example.com Payment: Self pay, sliding scale available
Laura Knorr, M.S., LMFT Therapist Atlanta Counseling Center 6111 Peachtree Dunwoody Rd., NE Building C Atlanta, GA 30328 (770) 396-0232x228 firstname.lastname@example.org Payment: Self-pay, some financial aid
Linda Kondilis, Ph.D
Specialty: Mood Disorders, Women's Reproductive Health, and LGBTQ Family Planning
675 Seminole Ave NE Suite 307
Atlanta, GA 30307
678-701-9559 x 102
http://www.lindakondilis.com
Payment: Self pay, out-of-network can submit claims
Lauren Magalnick Berman, PhD
5605 Glenridge Dr. One Premier Plaza, Suite 600 Atlanta, GA 30342 404-634-2555 http://laurenberman.com/
Cassie Owens, LPC
Counseling for Women
Specialty: Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders
4470 Chamblee Dunwoody Rd, #324
Atlanta, GA 30338
404-448-1733
www.postpartumatlanta.com email@example.com
Payment: Aetna, BCBS, Medicaid, and Private Pay
Karen Padron, MD, PhD 4 Executive Park E. Suite 470 Atlanta, GA 30329 404-922-0024
Shana Pittman, LPC
150 E. Ponce de Leon Avenue, Suite 350
One Decatur Town Center
Decatur, GA 30030
firstname.lastname@example.org
770-361-6833
http://www.spcounseling.net/
Payment: Self pay; sliding scale available
Julie Rand Dorney, MD Peachtree Psychiatric Professionals 3520 Piedmont Road NE, Suite 330 Atlanta, GA 30305 404-351-2008 http://ppp-pc.com/
Meredith Klouth, LAPC, NCC Intown Family Therapy 464 Cherokee Ave, Suite 202 Atlanta, GA 30312 678-718-7565
http://www.intownfamilytherapy.com/
email@example.com
Mental Health Centers and Programs with a Specialty in PMADs
Emory Women's Mental Health Program
1365 Clifton Rd NE, Suite 6100
Emory Clinic Building B
Atlanta, GA 30322
http://WomensMentalHealth.emory.edu/
404-778-2524
Payment: Self pay, private insurance, some Medicare and Medicaid
Translation services available
New Joshua's Circle of Hope for Mental Wellness and Recovery
Decatur GA, 30033
2799 Lawrenceville Hwy,
404-286-0054
Payment: Medicaid, private insurance, self pay
Northside Behavioral Health Services
Atlanta, GA 30328
1140 Hammond Drive NE, Suite J-1075
404-851-8960 or 404-851-8050
Translation services available
Payment: Self pay, private insurance, Medicare, state funding offered
OGCC Behavioral Health Services
3915 Cascade Rd SW
Specialty: Individual and family therapy, group therapy, psych eval, medication management
Atlanta GA 30331
http://www.ogccbhs.com/
404-691-3270
Payment: Medicaid, Wellcare and Amerigroup
The Quilt Transitional Services
4151 Memorial Dr, Suite 207-A
Specialty: Assertive Community Treatment
Decatur,GA 30032
http://www.thequilttransitionalservices.com/q_edu.html
678-778-0637
Payment: Medicaid, SSI
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Community Outreach for Youth and Family Services of Atlanta
Atlanta GA 30344
1514 Cleveland Ave #120
404-631-6383
http://www.communityoutreachservices.com/
Payment: Amerigroup and Medicaid
Eastchester Family Services
250 Georgia Ave SE
Specialty: In home therapeutic services
Atlanta GA 30312
http://www.eastchesterfamilyservices.com/
404-653-0374
Payment: Medicaid, Amerigroup, Peachstate, Wellcare
Mental Health Comprehensive Services
http://mhcservices.net/
3013 Clairemont Rd, Suite B Atlanta GA 30329 678-302-1945
Payment: Medicaid, all insurances, self-pay
Marietta and Smyrna
Psychiatrists and therapists
Tamara Ashley, MS, APC, NCC
The Anxiety & Stress Management Institute
Associate Professional Counselor
1640 Powers Ferry Rd SE, Building 9, Suite 100
770-953-0080, ext. 316
Marietta, GA 30067
firstname.lastname@example.org | www.stressmgt.net
Payment: Self pay, superbills for out-of-network reimbursement, sliding scale may be available
Jacqueline V. Cohen, LPC
4985B Lower Roswell Rd, Suite 200
Individual and Couples Counselor
Marietta, GA 30068
www.therapymama.com
404-822-1026
Payment: Self pay
Merrilee Stewart, LCSW
Smyrna, GA 30080
1260 Concord Road SE, Suite 101
770-432-0660
Payment: Major private insurance companies and self-pay
Stacey Wald, MA, RD, LD, CDE
Therapeutic Associates, LLC
Counselor, Registered Dietitian, Life Coach
2964 Peachtree Road, Suite 760
Atlanta, Georgia email@example.com: Self pay, may be covered through out-of-network benefits, sliding scale slots may be available
Mental Health Centers and Programs with a Specialty in PMADs
ACE Community Support Services
Specialty: Dr. Desmond Mall specializes in maternal mental health; Individual, marriage, and family counseling
2759 Delk Rd SE
Marietta GA 30067
678-401-4596
http://acecommunitysupport.com/
Payment: Medicaid, Medicare, Peachcare, Amerigroup
The Anxiety & Stress Management Institute
Marietta, GA 30067
1640 Powers Ferry Rd SE, Building 9, Suite 100
Main: 770-953-0080
http://www.stressmgt.net/
Intake office: 770-980-9229
Payment: Self pay, superbills for out-of-network reimbursement, sliding scale may be available
Tucker, Norcross, Roswell, Alpharetta, Lawrenceville
Psychiatrists and therapists
Monica Davis, MA LPC, NCC
3636 Shrewsbury Court
Child & Adolescent Resource Education Services
Snellville GA, 30039
Payment: Peachstate, Wellcare, private insurance, self-pay on a sliding scale
404-578-7629
Peyton Knight, LAPC 11 Lumpkin Street, Suite 100 Lawrenceville, GA 30046 770-601-7550 www.greaterlifecounseling.com
Nancia Leath, LPC
Inward Core Healthcare Services
Therapist
Alpharetta, GA
Payment: Aetna, Coventry, Tricare, self-pay on a sliding scale
770-744-5855
Natasha Thomas, MD Psychiatrist Cumberland Psychiatric Group 51 Houze Road Suite 225 Roswell, GA 30076
Payment: Self-pay, insurance
Mental Health Centers and Programs with a Specialty in PMADS
Family Works, Inc Specialty: Individual and family counseling 3562 Habersham at Northlake, Building J Tucker, GA 30084 770-270-2231
Payment: Medicaid, Amerigroup
www.familyworksga.com
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
View Point Health - Norcross Specialty: Individual and group counseling, psychiatry, substance abuse 5030 Georgia Bell Court, St B Norcross GA 30093 678-209-2745
Payment: Medicaid, medicare, sliding scale for uninsured, some private insurers https://myviewpointhealth.org/
Athens and Jefferson
Psychiatrists and therapists
Suzanne McLean, LCSW
firstname.lastname@example.org
Counseling Associates for Well-being 1 Huntington Road, Suite 703 Athens, GA 30606 706-425-8900
http://www.ca4wellbeing.com/suzanne_morgan_mclean.html
Payment: Self-pay, some forms of insurance
Taylor Grove Yates & Associates
http://www.taylorgroveyates.com/index.htm
Taylor Yates, LCSW Tracey Wyatt, LPC Leslie Schwartz, LPC Leigh Ellen Magness, LCSW 1 Huntington Road, Suite 105 Athens, GA 30606 (888)307-2780
Payment: Self-pay, insurance, Wellcare
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Advantage Behavioral Health Services – Jackson County
Jefferson, GA 30549
383 General Jackson Drive
706-367-5258
Payment: Medicaid, private insurances and state-contracted funds for low income http://www.advantagebhs.org/
Dahlonega and Toccoa
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Avita Community Partners - Dahlonega
http://www.gamtns.org/
Specialty: Counseling and Medication services 150-A Johnson Street Dahlonega GA 30533 706-864-6822
Payment: Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield, sliding scale for uninsured
Avita Community Partners - Toccoa
1763 Fernside Dr
Specialty: Individual counseling and psychiatry
Toccoa GA 30577
http://www.gamtns.org/
706-282-4542
Payment: Medicaid, Tricare, Peachcare, sliding fee scale
Dalton
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Westcott Behavioral Health Services-Outreach
Ste: 201
1109 Burleyson Rd.
Dalton, GA 30720
http://www.hamiltonhealth.com/behavioral-outpatient
706-272-6560
Georgia Hope 1414 Dug Gap Rd. Dalton, GA 30720 706-279-0405 http://gahope.org
Douglasville and Cedartown
Psychiatrists and therapists
Chrishina Scott, LPC, BCC Elite Journey, LLC 4040 Chapel Hill Road, Suite Q Douglasville GA, 30135 404-975-2816
Payment: Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cameron & Associates, Humana, self-pay
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Highland Rivers Service Board – Polk County 180 Wateroak Drive Cedartown GA. 30125 770-748-2225 http://highlandrivershealth.com
Payment: Medicaid, Medicare, private insurance, state-contracted funds for low-income
Covington, Stockbridge, Fayetteville, College Park, Peachtree City, Griffin and Greenville
Psychiatrists and therapists
Omi Dobbins, LPC, NCC, NCSC 159 Burke St, Suite 205 Stockbridge, GA 30281 678-960-9355 email@example.com http://www.georgiawaterwell.com
Vicki Leopold, LCSW 170 Broadmoor Drive Fayetteville, GA 30215 770- 461-0284
Mental Health Centers and Programs with a Specialty in PMAD
Progressive Consumer Counseling Services Specialty: Individual and family counseling 5536 Old National Highway #100 College Park GA 30349 404-209-1209
Payment: Medicaid, all private insurance and self-pay
http://www.progressivecounseling.org/
Underdue Social Services
165 Burke St
Specialty: Individual and group counseling, in community and in office, psychiatrist and psychologist, addiction and drug therapy
Stockbridge GA 30281
http://underduesocialservices.com/wp/
770-389-9886
Payment: Medicaid, CMOs, Bluecross, Aetna, and other private options
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Achieving Skills for Change Outreach Therapeutic Counseling
4146 Highway 278,
Specialty: Individual and family counseling, in home counseling
Covington GA 30014
http://www.asfcoutreach.com/about.html
770-787-3788
Payment: Medicaid, Peachstate, Wellcare, Blue Cross, Tri-Care, sliding scale for uninsured
Grace Harbour 23 Eastbrook Bend Peachtree City GA 30269 770-716-1444 http://www.graceharbour.net/
Pathways Center - Meriwether County
Greenville GA, 30222
756 Woodbury Road
706-672-1118
Payment: Medicaid, Wellcare, sliding scale for uninsured http://www.pathwayscsb.org/
Pathways Center - Spalding County Griffin Office
medication management
Specialty: Individual and group counseling, substance abuse and anger management, psychiatry and
244 Odell Road, Suite 6
770-229-3407
Griffin GA 30204
http://www.pathwayscsb.org/
Payment Medicaid, Amerigroup, Peachcare, private insurance out of network, sliding scale
Macon, Warner Robbins, Milledgeville, and Dublin
Mental Health Centers and Programs with a Specialty in PMAD
Family Counseling Center
Macon: 277 MLK Jr. Blvd. Suite 203
Masters level licensed therapists
Warner Robbins: 106-B Olympia Drive
478-918-0663 (Warner Robbins)
478-745-2811 (Macon)
http://www.fcccg.org/index.php
Payment: Self-pay using sliding scale; employee assistance program; no cost for victims of crimes with police report; no cost for people on public assistance in Macon and Warner
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Oconee Center Specialty: Individual, group, and family counseling 430 North Jefferson Street Milledgeville GA 31061 478-445-4721
http://www.oconeecenter.org/
Payment: Medicaid or sliding fee scale, no private insurance
Phoenix Center Behavioral Health Services
940 GA State Highway 96
Specialty: Individual counseling, psychiatry
Warner Robins GA 31088
http://www.phoenixcenterbhs.com/
478-988-1222
Payment: Medicaid and Tricare
Community Service Board of Middle Georgia Community Mental Health Center 600 N. Jefferson St Dublin, GA 31021 478-272-1190
Payment: Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United and other private insurance http://www.csbmg.us/
Columbus
Psychiatrists and therapists
Kevin McPherson, MD Psychiatrist Columbus Psychological Associates 2325 Brookstone Centre Parkway Columbus, GA 706-653-6841 www.columbuspsychological.com
Payment: Self pay, most insurance carriers, Medicare, Medicaid (Peachstate & Wellcare), BCBS, Tricare, QHP, Aetna, PHCS, Coventry, and Caring For The Mind
Mental Health Centers and Programs with a Specialty in PMADs
Columbus Psychological Associates Psychiatrist Practice 2325 Brookstone Centre Parkway Columbus, GA 706-653-6841 firstname.lastname@example.org www.columbuspsychological.com
Payment: Self pay, most insurance carriers, Medicare, Medicaid (Peachstate & Wellcare)Tricare, Blue Cross Blue Shield and(most private Insurance)
Augusta and Waynesboro
Mental Health Centers and Programs with a Specialty in PMADs
Augusta Center for Psychological Services 3643 Walton Way Extension Augusta, GA 30909 706-729-9595
Payment: We accept Medicaid, Medicare, Tricare, and one provider accepts Blue Cross. We also accept http://www.augustapsychologicalservices.com/
self-pay and will bill all insurance companies.
Ogeechee Behavioral Health Services
Burke County: 292 West Fourth Street, Waynesboro, GA 30830, (706) 437-6863
Emanuel County: 223 N. Anderson Drive, Swainsboro, GA 30401, (478) 289-2530
http://www.obhs-ga.org/home.html
Payment: Self pay, some insurance carriers, Medicare, Medicaid, sliding scale available
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Transitional Family Services Specialty: Individual and family counseling 3463 Walton Way Extension #4 Augusta GA 30909 706-364-1404
Payment: Medicaid, United Healthcare, CMOs, self-pay full fee http://www.tfsga.org/
Savannah, Metter, Hinesville, Jesup
Psychiatrists and therapists
Michelle Aycock, M.ED., LPC 115 Oglethorpe Professional Court, Suite 3, Savannah, Georgia 31406 912-233-4294 www.coastaltherapist.com
Fran McAleer, LCSW Medical College of Georgia Dept of Psychiatry and Health Behavior Savannah, GA 706-721-CARE | 912-350-7673 email@example.com
Mental Health Centers and Programs with a Specialty in PMADs
Malinda Graham & Associates
http://www.mgacommunityservices.com/
Specialty: Individual and Family Counseling 1458 Airport Rd Hinesville GA 31313 912-877-7928
Payment: Medicaid, Amerigroup, Wellgroup, Tricare, Etna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Humana
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Pineland Community Service Board - Toombs Counseling
737 S. Lewis Street
Specialty: Individual, group, and family counseling
Metter GA 30439
http://www.pinelandcsb.org/
912-685-3317
Payment: Medicaid, Wellcare, Amerigroup, Peachstate, self-pay
Pineland Community Service Board - Wayne Counseling Center
244 Peachtree Street
Specialty: Individual and family counseling
Jesup GA 31545
http://www.pinelandcsb.org/
912-427-9338
Payment: Medicaid, self-pay on a sliding fee scale, accept all private insurance
Albany, Pelham, Moultrie
Mental Health Centers and Programs with a Specialty in PMADs
Georgia Pines Community Service Board - Colquitt County Mental Health Center
615 North Main Street
Specialty: Individual and family counseling, community-based services, psychiatry
Moultrie GA 31768
Payment: Medicaid, Tricare, ChampVA, self-pay on sliding scale for low-income
229-891-7160
Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital
417 Third Avenue, Albany, Georgia 31701
Psychiatrists on staff
877-312-1167
Payment: Self-pay, Medicare, Medicaid, commercial insurance
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Georgia Pines Community Services Board - Mitchell County Mental Health Center
Specialty: Individual and group counseling, case management
339 Pride Street
Pelham GA 31779
229-294-6509
Payment: Medicaid, sliding scale for low-income, Tricare, ChampVA, no private insurance
Nahunta, Folkston, Brunswick
Mental Health Centers and Programs with Experience Treating PMADS
Gateway Behavioral Health Services
600 Coastal Village Drive
Specialty: Individual and family counseling
Brunswick GA 31520
http://www.gatewaybhs.org/
912-554-8500
Payment: Medicaid, all private insurance, sliding scale for uninsured
Unison Behavioral Health - Brantly County
434 Bryan Street
Specialty: Individual and family counseling, community-based services
Nahunta GA 31553
http://www.unisonbehavioralhealth.com/
912-462-5849
Payment: Medicaid, private insurances, sliding fee scale based on income
Unison Behavioral Health - Charlton Behavioral Health Services
3010 Homeland Park Road
Specialty: Individual and family counseling, community-based services
Folkston GA 31537
http://www.unisonbehavioralhealth.com/
912-496-7460
Payment: Medicaid, private insurances, sliding fee scale based on income
Other healthcare providers
Patricia McAfee, RN, BSN Women and Infant Services Henry Medical Center 1133 Eagle's Landing Parkway Stockbridge, GA 30281 678-604-5455 firstname.lastname@example.org
Stephanie Mobley, MSW
Community Outreach Coordinator First Steps-Parents of Newborns Program St. Joseph's/Candler Health System Savannah, GA 31405 912-819-6911
Joanne Patterson, RN, MSN
Georgia State Co-Coordinator, Postpartum Support International 404-849-5466 email@example.com
Kaprice Welsh, CNM Northside Women's Specialists 980 Johnson Ferry Rd NE, Suite 620 Atlanta, GA 30342 404-255-2057
Sara Rossi
Specialty: Fertility and Pregnancy Holistic Nutrition, Hypnobirthing, HypnoMothering (online
Health Coach and in person)
406-600-1994
672 Cumberland Rd, Atlanta firstname.lastname@example.org
www.rossisara.com
Payment: Self pay
Balance Atlanta Family Chiropractic
Lower Level 101
360 Pharr Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30305
http://balanceatlanta.com/
404-261-4848
Payment: Self pay, some insurance coverage
Buckhead Acupuncture & Herbal Center
Marietta:
Buckhead: 2964 Peachtree Road NW, Suite 350, Atlanta, GA 30305
678-549-7848
1640 Powers Ferry Road, Building 9, Suite 350, Marietta GA 30067
http://atlanta-acupuncture.net/
Payment: Self pay, some insurance coverage
Metro Acupuncture 6255 Barfield Road, Suite 175 Atlanta, Georgia 30328 (404) 255-8388
Payment: Self pay
http://www.metroacupuncture.com/
Atlanta Center for Holistic and Integrative Medicine
404-814-9808
1401 Dresden Drive, Atlanta, GA 30319 http://atlantaholisticmedicine.com/
H & Z Acupuncture
Atlanta, GA 30329
57 Executive Park South, Suite 100
404-778-7216
http://www.atlanta-acupuncture.com/
Highland Acupuncture 675 Seminole Ave NE STE B-02 Atlanta, GA 30307 404-428-7899 http://www.highland-acupuncture.com/
Northside Acupuncture 3442 Francis Road, Suite 130 Alpharetta, GA 30004 404-849-8805 http://www.northsideacupuncture.com/
The Wellpath Center
770-218-1166
Prenatal chiropractic care 3590 Cherokee Street, Suite 401 Kennesaw, GA 30144
http://www.wellpath.net/prenatal-care
Payment: Self pay, BCBS, Cigna, United Healthcare
Georgia Association of Community Service Boards (GACSB)
Member organizations: http://www.gacsb.org/pages.html?page=112
Community Service Boards (CSBs) are the safety net for mental health, developmental disability and substance use disorder services management and delivery. CSBs are community-based behavioral health and developmental disabilities services organizations that provide mental health, substance abuse, and developmental disabilities services.
Intown Midwifery
http://www.intownmidwifery.com
Midwifery services and a New Parent Group, free for patients, meets every Friday from 11am-12pm 285 Boulevard, Suite 110 Atlanta, GA 30312 404-622-9810
Payment: Self-pay, most major insurance carriers
Outlets for self-care
A list of support groups, fitness facilities, and other organizations in Georgia that promote self-care and support among pregnant and/or postpartum women.
** Do you run a support group for mothers? Do you have specialized training and/or experience in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders? Do you think you or your organization should be added to this list of resources? If so, please contact Sarah Yoss at 678-904-1968 or at email@example.com**
Peer support
(in-person, telephone, online, etc.)
Atlanta Postpartum Support Group (Atlanta, GA)
914-261-8182
Meet with other moms who have recovered from or are currently experiencing a challenging pregnancy or postpartum period. Experience the benefits of peer support. Learn about postpartum depression and related disorders and discuss resources such as therapists, doctors, opportunities to meet other moms/children, and ways to improve your health and mood.
http://www.meetup.com/PPDAtlanta/
Cassie Owens, LPC
Postpartum wellness group for moms of babies 0-24 months Meets every other Wednesday www.postpartumatlanta.com
Elizabeth O'Brien, LPC
Meets every other Thursday
New Moms group for mom of babies 0-6 months http://www.elizabethobrienlpc.com
Happy Mama I: For Expectant Moms
Donation up to $40 for the 12 week group is requested
Meeting on a weekday evening or weekend (depending on the needs of the group)
http://www.happymamaconsulting.com/group.html
Happy Mama II (Monday Morning Moms): For New Moms
SUMMER SESSION DATES : June 8 & 22, July 6 & 20, Aug 3 & 17
Meeting every other Monday at 9:30
The Solarium in Oakhurst (321 W. Hill Street, Decatur GA 30030)
http://www.happymamaconsulting.com/group.html
Sarah Hightower, MA, LAPC
Meets every Wednesday from 10 to 11am
New moms support group
BirthSource Georgia
1329 Wynnton Road
Located in the Ressmeyer Wellness Center
Columbus, GA 31906
http://sarahhightower.com/counseling-services/new-moms-support-group/
Parent to Parent of Georgia (throughout Georgia)
1-800-229-2038
Peer support, resources, referrals, and training for parents of children with disabilities or special health care needs.
http://www.p2pga.org/
Regroup Therapy
http://regrouptherapy.com/
Online video support group for women who are struggling with issues related to maternal mental health. Every group is moderated by a licensed and experienced therapist. There are no more than 10 participants in each group, and each session lasts an hour and 15 minutes. Women can register for just one session without making an ongoing commitment to the program or can register for multiple sessions.
DeKalb Medical Support
Contact people: Gail Winston; Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Sarah Dailey, LCSW; Email: email@example.com
Meetings are held each Thursday 10am to noon in the Women’s Center at DeKalb Medical’s North Decatur Rd. location, Classroom 4000A. Mothers and partners are encouraged to attend this meeting.
Compassionate Friends (throughout Georgia)
They offer online support through their website or support through local chapters.
Compassionate Friends offers peer support to families grieving the loss of a child of any age.
http://www.compassionatefriends.org/home.aspx http://www.compassionatefriends.org/Find_Support/Chapters/Chapter_Locator.aspx
The Postpartum Support Community
http://postpartumstress.com/about/support-groups/the-postpartum-stress-center-supportcommunity/
24/7 support for new moms from other new moms.
Other online and telephone-based resources
Georgia Crisis and Access Line
1-800-715-4225
A hotline staffed with professional social workers and counselors 24/7 who assist callers with urgent and emergency needs in areas of mental health, developmental disability, or addictive disease. Those callers who need more routine services are directly connected with the agency of their choice and given a scheduled appointment.
http://bhlweb.com/tabform/
Postpartum Support International – Georgia Resources (throughout Georgia)
http://www.postpartum.net/Get-Help/Support-Resources-Map-Area-Coordinators/PSI-LocationsUnited-States/PSI-Georgia.aspx
Postpartum Support International's Chat with the Expert
http://www.postpartum.net/Get-Help/PSI-Chat-with-an-Expert.aspx
Postpartum Support International hosts free, live phone sessions every week, including Wednesday chats for moms and Monday chats for dads. During these sessions you can talk with a PSI expert about resources, symptoms, options and general information about perinatal mood and anxiety disorders from the privacy of your own phone. There is no need to preregister or give your name. These sessions, facilitated by licensed mental health professionals, are informational only and open to anyone with questions and concerns. Instructions and schedule:
Postpartum Progress
http://www.postpartumprogress.com/
A blog created by Katherine Stone that offers help and hope from women who've been there, providing an unflinching yet hopeful look at getting through postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, postpartum psychosis, and antenatal depression/anxiety. The award-winning Postpartum Progress blog is the most widely read blog on perinatal mood disorders in the US.
Learn about 5 ways to connect with the Postpartum Progress community:
Postpartum Progress offers a private peer support forum for moms who do not yet feel comfortable asking questions, commenting, or otherwise talking in public about what they are going through. It is free and open to all:
http://www.postpartumprogress.com/5-ways-to-connect-with-the-postpartum-depression-momcommunity https://www.smartpatients.com/postpartumprogress
http://hopefulpublishing.org/katherine-stone-daily-hope/
Postpartum Progress also provides Daily Hope, an email service that provides daily support for pregnant and new mothers with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. For $49 per year or $5 per month, subscribers receive email messages Monday through Friday:
Beyond Postpartum
http://www.beyondpostpartumblog.com/
A blog created by Amber Koter-Puline that offers insight into personal experience dealing with perinatal mood disorders as well as to share research and information related to pregnancy and the postpartum period.
MedEd PPD
http://www.mededppd.org/mothers/
A website developed with the support of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to provide education about postpartum depression (PPD). One part of the site, Mothers and Others, contains information for women with PPD as well as for their friends and families.
Spanish: http://www.mededppd.org/sp/default.asp
Mental Health America of Georgia
www.mhageorgia.org
Mental Health America of Georgia (MHA of Georgia) is our state's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to helping all Georgians live mentally healthier lives through education, outreach, and advocacy. Project Healthy Moms (PHM), an important initiative of MHA of Georgia, strives to increase awareness, identification, treatment, and support of perinatal mood disorders in Georgia, while also reducing the stigma associated with them. PHM hopes to achieve this goal through educational seminars for healthcare providers, students, and the general public, through the distribution of informational provider tool-kits, and through the expansion of Georgia's perinatal peer support for mothers recovering from perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
Postpartum Support International's Warmline
1-800-944-4PPD (4773)
A toll-free telephone number anyone can call to get basic information and resources. Dial extension 1 for Spanish and extension 2 for English. The PSI Warmline is answered MondayFriday, 8am-4:30pm (PST). The PSI Warmline is not a crisis hotline and does not handle emergencies.
http://www.postpartum.net/
PEP: Postpartum Education for Parents
1-805-564-3888
A free 24 hour telephone service provides confidential one-on-one support from trained volunteers, parents just like you. From basic infant care to breast or bottle feeding issues to postpartum adjustment, the Warmline can be a great source of general parenting information and support.
http://www.sbpep.org/
PowerLine (Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies)
A phone number that anyone can call to receive referrals for healthcare, prenatal care, child health and development, breastfeeding support, and other health-related concerns. Spanishspeaking staff members are available and telephone interpreters in 170+ languages. 1-800-300-9003
text4baby
Text the word "BABY" to the number 511411 To receive messages in Spanish, text "BEBE" to 511411 http://text4baby.org/
Women can sign up to receive free text messages throughout their pregnancy and their baby's first year. Women receive critical health and safety tips timed to their baby's age.
SAMHSA - Depression in Mothers: Toolkit for Providers
http://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content//SMA14-4878/SMA14-4878.pdf
This online guide provides information and advice for Family Service Providers in how to screen and refer pregnant women and mothers suffering from depression.
MotherToBaby Georgia
Toll-free: (866) 626-6847
Monday-Friday: 9:00 AM-3:00 PM
www.MotherToBaby.org firstname.lastname@example.org
A telephone service where pregnant women may call a toll-free line and request information on a number of topics related to pregnancy, including: medications, vaccines, smoking, alcohol, diseases, beauty products, household cleaning products, and herbal supplements. Information is available in English and Spanish.
Books about PMADs and Parenthood
The following books can all be found on Amazon.com:
- Beck, Cheryl and Jeanne Driscoll: Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorder
- Beck, Cheryl and Jeanne Driscoll: Traumatic Childbirth
- Bennett, Shoshana: Children of the Depressed
- Bennett, Shoshana: Pregnant on Prozac
- Bennett, Shoshana: Postpartum Depression for Dummies
- Bennett, Shoshana: Beyond the Blues
- Dunnewold, Ann and Diana Sanford: Life Will Never Be the Same
- Feingold, Susan: Happy Endings, New Beginnings
- Gerdes, Sharon: Back in Six Weeks
- Hibbert, Christina:
This is How We Grow
- Hibbert, Christina: Who Am I Without You?
- Honikman, Jane: I'm Listening
- Honikman, Jane: Community Support for New Families
- Honikman, Jane: My Diary
- Honikman, Jane: Postpartum Action Manual
- Kaarra, Walker: Transformed by Postpartum Depression
- Kendall-Tackett, Kathleen: Depression in New Mothers
- Kleiman, Karen: What Am I Thinking?
- Kleiman, Karen: The Postpartum Husband
- Kleiman, Karen: This Isn't What I Expected
- Kleiman, Karen: Dropping the Baby and Other Scary Thoughts
- Kleiman, Karen: Tokens of Affection: Reclaiming Your Marriage after Postpartum Depression
- Kleiman, Karen: Therapy and the Postpartum Woman
- Moyer, Jennifer: A Mother's Climb Out of Darkness
- Shields, Brooke: Down Came the Rain
- Rouds, Anna Clare: Dancing on the Edge of Sanity
- Taylor, Elly: Becoming Us: 8 Steps to Grow a Family that Thrives
- Twomey, Teresa: Understanding Postpartum Psychosis
- Venis, Joyce: Postpartum Depression Demystified
- Weigartz, Pamela: Pregnancy and Postpartum Anxiety Workbook
Fitness facilities targeted to perinatal women
Decatur Yoga and Pilates 431 West Ponce de Leon Ave. Decatur, GA 30030 404-377-4899 http://decaturhotyoga.com/
Elizabeth Holland at Perfect Health Wellness Center
Atlanta, GA 30328
855 Mt. Vernon Highway NE #100
404-246-6910
http://elizabeth-holland.com/pre-post-natal.shtml
Oh Baby! Fitness
678-528-1390
Various locations in metro Atlanta http://www.ohbabyfitness.com/
The Little Gym
http://www.thelittlegym.com/Pages/default.aspx
Locations in Smyrna and Lawrenceville
Peachtree Yoga Center 6050 Sandy Springs Circle Atlanta, Georgia 30328 404-847-9642 http://peachtreeyoga.com/
Stroller Strides
Locations in Atlanta, Kennesaw, and Woodstock 1-866-FIT-4MOM (1-866-348-4666) email@example.com http://www.strollerstrides.com/ Baby Belly Yoga 393 North Finley Street Athens, GA, 30601 http://babybellyyoga.com/Home_Page.php
Baby Boot Camp
https://babybootcamp.com/
Various locations in Georgia
Fit4Mom
http://fit4mom.com/
Various locations in Georgia
Space Yoga Studio
Augusta, GA 30904
1403 Monte Sano Avenue http://www.spaceyogastudio.com/
Discipline Pilates
Macon, GA 31201
584 Arlington Place http://www.maconpilates.com/pregnancy.htm
Savannah Yoga Center
Savannah, GA 31401
1319 Bull St.
http://savannahyoga.com/
Housing Organizations
MSM Economic Development
Must be a single man or woman and receive Medicaid, Disability, SSI, or Veteran's benefits
Mental health housing in the metro Atlanta area
Contact person: Khari Jaxon, 404-437-5828
Nicholas House
404-622-0793
Mental health housing in the metro Atlanta area
http://nicholashouse.org/
Other organizations
(Doulas, pregnancy massage, organizations that serve teenage moms, low-income moms, etc.)
List of free or low-cost childcare options, as compiled by Katherine Stone
http://postpartumprogress.com/child-care-services-for-moms-with-postpartum-depressionand-few-resources
Baby Steps, Inc.
770- 778-4886
Childbirth classes in the metro Atlanta area http://www.babystepsonline.net/
Catholic Charities
Client intake line: (404) 733-3527
Locations in Atlanta, Chamblee, Lilburn, and Athens http://www.catholiccharitiesatlanta.org/services/clinical-services/
CenterPoint Prenatal Massage
Smyrna, Georgia 30080
3050 S. Atlanta Rd.
404-867-5543
http://www.centerpointprenatalmassage.com
Care: Childcare
http://www.care.com/
COMIZIA Care Inc.
2183 Sara Ashley Way
For young, single mothers
Lithonia, GA 30058
http://www.comiziacare.org/about.html
404-428-1472
Happy Baby Solutions
404-592-2858
Baby nurses and nannies http://happybabysolutions.com/
La Leche League of GA
Breastfeeding support 404-681-6342 https://lllofga.org/
Labor of Love Doula and Childbirth Services, Inc.
770-241-2078
Serving the metro area of Atlanta and Athens http://www.alaboroflove.org/
Doula support in Atlanta and Athens
Lumina Birth http://www.luminabirth.com/
Pregnancy Massage Center
Atlanta, GA 30306
1164 N. Highland Ave.
678-462-2173
http://www.pregnancymassage.com/
Ready Birth
2412 Coosawattee Drive NE
Childbirth preparation class
Atlanta, GA 30319
http://readybirth.com/info/welcome.html
404-812-0774
Sweet Dreams, LLC
Doula services 2605 Little John Circle Cumming, GA 30040 770-780-2997 firstname.lastname@example.org http://www.sweetdreamsdoulas.com/index.php
TLC Sitters of Atlanta
Nannies/childcare in Atlanta 770-410-4774 email@example.com http://www.tlcsittersofatlanta.com/
Zipmilk
Website providing listings for breastfeeding support by zip code http://zipmilk.org/
Statewide programs
For pregnant women, new moms, and children
In addition to the statewide peer support programs like the Project Healthy Moms Warmline and online and telephone-based resources like text4baby, there are other statewide programs in Georgia that support pregnant women, new moms, and children.
Children 1st
http://health.state.ga.us/programs/childrenfirst/
Children 1st identifies children who are at risk for poor health and developmental outcomes, so that needed interventions can be made to ensure the optimal health and development of the child. Participation is voluntary and there are no financial requirements for enrollment into the program. Children 1st is currently implemented in all 159 counties in the state.
Other Department of Public Health maternal and child health programs:
(404) 656-6679
http://health.state.ga.us/programs/family/index.asp
Great Start Georgia
Families. Great Start Georgia wants to be sure every child in our state gets a "great start" in life. Great Start Georgia is designed to create a community culture of care, encouragement, and support for all families before and after the birth of a child. Across hundreds of Georgia communities, services are available to ensure that these important early years are rich with opportunities for children to be educated, safe, and healthy. A free Information & Referral Center offers connections to relevant local resources and information.
Great Start Georgia is a statewide effort, sponsored by the Governor's Office for Children and
Evidence-based Home Visiting Programs for children ages 0-5 include: Early Head Start - Home Based Option (EHS-HBO), Healthy Families Georgia (HFG), Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) and Parents as Teachers (PAT).
http://www.greatstartgeorgia.org/
Toll-free: 1-855-707-8277
WellCare of Georgia: Planning for Healthy Babies (P4HB)
https://georgia.wellcare.com/member/p4hb
The goal of P4HB is to help moms be healthy and have healthy babies. Women 18–44 years of age can join if they do not have health insurance and their family income is below a certain level. Interpregnancy care includes mental health and substance abuse services.
1-866-231-1821
Resources for fathers
PSI Chat with an Expert – for Dads
1-800-944-8766
The first Monday of every month, Postpartum Support International hosts a free call-in forum for fathers to speak with an expert about resources, symptoms, options and general information about perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. All sessions are facilitated by licensed mental health professionals.
Instructions and schedule: http://postpartum.net/Friends-and-Family/PSI-Chat-with-an-Expert.aspx
PostpartumDads.org
http://www.postpartumdads.org/
This site intends to help dads and families by providing firsthand information and guidance through the experience of postpartum depression. The site also provides resources that can be used by professionals to assist families dealing with postpartum depression.
PostpartumMen Online Forum
http://postpartummen.com/forum/
An online community for men with concerns about depression, anxiety or other mood disruptions after the birth of a child.
Postpartum Progress
http://www.postpartumprogress.com/depression-in-men-a-dads-story-of-male-postpartum-depression
While this site may seem to be mainly geared towards women, it has featured dad stories as well. This is a blog run by an Atlanta woman who has survived postpartum OCD, depression, and anxiety, and there is amazing information on the site that can help destigmatize postpartum mood issues. Here is an article geared towards dads:
Becoming Dad
http://becomingdad.com.au/
This is an online community to engage, educate, mentor and support expectant and new fathers in the role of fatherhood.
Boot Camp for New Dads
http://www.bootcampfornewdads.org/bc-listings?category=Georgia
Boot Camp for New Dads is a father-to-father, community-based workshop to help new dads to engage with their infants, support their partners, and navigate their transformation into dads. http://www.bootcampfornewdads.org/
Men's Health Magazine
depression/2011/03/27
Here is a great article from Men's Health Magazine that may help your husband feel that he is not alone: http://blogs.menshealth.com/health-headlines/can-men-get-post-partumRecursos en español (Resources in Spanish)
Apoyo por teléfono (Telephone support)
Apoyo de PSI por teléfono para las familias hispano parlantes
1-800-944-4773, #1
Llame al número de teléfono gratuito para obtener recursos, apoyo e información gratuita. Deje un mensaje y un voluntario de Postpartum Support International le devolverá la llamada.
PowerLine (Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies) – se habla español
1-800-300-9003
Powerline es una forma rápida de encontrar el cuidado que usted necesita. Una llamada le pone en contacto con referencias de médicos, apoyo para la lactancia, y más.
Sitios web (Websites)
MedEd PPD – en español
http://www.mededppd.org/sp/default.asp
Este sitio informa sobre la depresión posparto (PPD, siglas del inglés "postpartum depression"). La sección "Mamás y los demás" contiene información para las mujeres con depresión posparto, sus familiares y amigos.
text4baby – en español
Envie la palabra "BEBE" al número 511411
Mensajes gratuitos para mujeres, con consejos para su embarazo y el cuidado de su bebe.
http://text4baby.org/index.php/en-espanol
La Liga de la Leche
https://lllofga.org/En_Espanol.html
Educación, información, apoyo y motivación para las mujeres que desean amamantar a sus bebés.
Terapeutas (Therapists)
Beth Brock, LCSW 9876 Main Street, Suite 100 Woodstock, GA 30188 770-516-1050 firstname.lastname@example.org
Pago: Amerigroup, Peach State, WellCare, Cenpatico Behavioral Health
CETPA, Inc
Norcross, GA 30022
6020 Dawson Blvd, Suite I
770-662-0249
Ofrece servicios de salud mental y del comportamiento para Latinos/as.
www.cetpa.org
Camino a la Recuperación es una práctica psicológica internacional que ofrece servicios profesionales cultural y lingüísticamente competentes en inglés, español y portugués en todo el mundo a través de la telemedicina interactiva. En los Estados Unidos, ofrecen servicios en horarios convenientes para usted en seis clínicas bien ubicadas y con fácil acceso a transporte público en la zona metropolitana y norte del estado de Georgia. Camino a la Recuperación no acepta seguros pero existe la posibilidad de ayuda financiera. Por favor póngase en contacto hoy para una cita confidencial llamando al 770-220-2885 o por correo electrónico a email@example.com. Si desea mayor información, visite http://www.rdtorecovery.com/Contact.html para direcciones y números de teléfono.
Iréné Celcer, MA, LCSW
404-869-8902
2996 Grandview Ave. Suite 206, Atlanta, GA 30035
firstname.lastname@example.org
La Licenciada Iréné Celcer no pertenece a ningún panel de seguranza sin embargo, en casos necesarios, ajusta su arancel profesional a las necesidades del paciente.
www.icelcer.com
Marissa Coleman, PsyD 1409 North Highland Ave, Suite J Atlanta, GA 30306 678-871-0122 email@example.com
Alzi Faubion, MA, LPC, RPT, NCC 111 Petrol Point, Suite B6 Peachtree City, GA 30269 678-925-3306 firstname.lastname@example.org
Rosa Fitzhugh, PhD
404-503-5752
2801 Buford Hwy Suite 503, Atlanta, GA 30329
email@example.com
También existe ayuda financiera para consejería.
Acepta: Cigna, Aetna, Humana, Tricare, BCBS, Wellcare, Peachstate, Amerigroup
Good Samaritan Health Center
1015 Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway Atlanta, GA 30318 404-523-6571 www.goodsamatlanta.org Servicios a bajo costo y personal bilingüe
Grady Memorial Hospital
Atlanta, GA 30303
80 Jesse Hill Jr Drive SE
404-616-6689
Servicios en español en el "International Medical Center"
www.gradyhealth.org
Servicios gratuitos para los que califican
Guía de Servicios de Salud para la Comunidad Latina en Atlanta
Brindado por la Coalición Hispana de la Salud de Georgia, este guía tiene una lista extensiva de terapeutas y organizaciones de salud mental, y además incluye servicios médicos. http://hhcga.org/pdf_resources/LatinoHealthResourceGuide6-2012.pdf
Soledad Hammond, Psy. D 3133 Maple Drive, Suite 140 Atlanta, GA 30305 404-994-3618 firstname.lastname@example.org
Lista del Metro Atlanta Therapists' Network
http://www.matn.info/bilingual-therapists
Esta lista del terapeutas bilingües tiene datos personales de terapeutas en Atlanta que hablan español.
Mariela Hiscox, LPC, NCC, MAC
2801 Buford Highway NE, Suite 503 Atlanta, GA 30329 404-633-9090 email@example.com
Organizaciones Benéficas Católicas de Atlanta
Varios tipos de terapia y asesoramiento (404) 733-3527
Oscar Medina 2171 Northlake Parkway, Building 3, Suite 102 Tucker, GA 30084 770-934-9307
Lorena Soares, MA, LPC, NCC
Marietta, GA 30060
120 South Park Square NE, Suite 208
770-633-6503
Pago: Aetna, American Behavioral, Amerigroup, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Cameron & Associates, Cenpatico Behavioral Health, Humana, MH Net, Magellan, MultiPlan/PHCS, NovaNet, Peach State, Tricare firstname.lastname@example.org
Lynn Thompson, LPC, CIRT, CAMS, CPCS
Kennesaw, GA 30144
4255 Wade Green Road, Suite 414
678-213-2194
email@example.com
Training and Counseling Center at St. Lukes
firstname.lastname@example.org
404-876-6266 (ext. 2001)
http://www.trainingandcounselingcenter.org/#!ayuda-program/c1uof hablantes que buscan una terapeuta bilingüe.
El Proyecto Ayuda es un programa que proporciona consejería y terapia para personas hispano-
Otros recursos (Other resources)
Yoga en Español – Peachtree Yoga Center
Peachtree Yoga Center ofrece un curso completamente en español, que también introduce nombres en sánscrito de unas posturas. 6050 Sandy Springs Circle, Atlanta, GA 30328 (404) 847-9642 email@example.com
(sitio web en inglés)
|
Volume 2 Issue 1
Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality
Article 8
Fall 2013
Changing the Narrative of Neonaticide
Julie Spain email@example.com
Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijlse
Part of the Law Commons
Recommended Citation
Spain, Julie (2013) "Changing the Narrative of Neonaticide," Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality: Vol. 2 : Iss. 1 , Article 8.
Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijlse/vol2/iss1/8
This Student Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School Journals at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality by an authorized editor of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact firstname.lastname@example.org.
Indiana Journal
of Law and Social Equality
Volume 2: Issue 1
Changing the Narrative of Neonaticide
Julie Spain*
Introduction
In the United States, the public abhors few crimes as much as those that a mother commits against her infant child. Unable to reconcile these acts with deeply-rooted beliefs that mothers are inherently nurturing and self-sacrificing, the American legal system and public typically demand harsh punishments for what they perceive to be violations of human nature. However, in the case of mothers who commit neonaticide, this trend toward harsh criminal penalties and public out rage may not be a just response to these infant deaths. Neonaticide, the killing of an infant within its first twenty-four hours of life, 1 differs from other types of infant deaths in that women who commit neonaticide are typically young and acting either out of psychotic motivators or as a result of adaptive evolution.
There are two conflicting theories about what causes these women to kill. Under the psychotic break theory, these women often suffer from symptoms that culminate in a psychotic break at the time of the infant's birth. 2 This psychotic break results in the spontaneous killing of the infant by its mother. 3 Some experts have accepted these acts as part of a recognized syndrome called neonaticide syndrome. 4 However, the concepts that define neonaticide syndrome have recently come under fire. 5 Some experts now contend that women committing neonaticide do not do so
* Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Class of 2014. Notes and Comments Editor for the Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality and Student Bar Association President. Special thanks to Professor Roger Levesque for his time, insight, and encouraging mentorship throughout the writing process and to Cory Spain for his unceasing support and confidence.
2. See Shannon Farley, Comment, Neonaticide: When the Bough Breaks and the Cradle Falls, 52 Buff. L. Rev. 597, 614 (2004); see also Phillip J. Resnick, Murder of the Newborn: A Psychiatric Review of Neonaticide, 126 Am. J. Psychiatry 1414, 1415 (1970).
1. Beth E. Bookwalter, Note, Throwing the Bath Water Out with the Baby: Wrongful Exclusion of Expert Testimony on Neonaticide Syndrome, 78 B.U. L. Rev. 1185, 1186 (1998).
3. Farley, supra note 2, at 614.
5. See Susan Hatters Friedman, James Cavney & Phillip J. Resnick, Mothers Who Kill:
4. See id. at 601.
because of mental health or psychotic reasons, but rather as a result of adaptive evolution. 6 Under this theory, these women, typically adolescents with minimal resources, 7 commit neonaticide because the infants are not desired and because the new mothers do not have the resources to care for the newborns. 8 Some experts be lieve that this occurs as a response to external coercion rather than internal illness. 9 Regardless of whether these deaths occur as the result of a psychotic break or evo lutionary instinct, many factual similarities exist in neonaticide deaths.
Criminal law reform proposals have called for remedies such as clear sen tencing guidelines for neonaticide 15 or the allowance of evidence regarding neonat icide syndrome into trials, 16 but these suggestions have not come to fruition. This Note asserts that these reform proposals cannot come to fruition until the media changes its portrayal of neonaticide to include information about the experiences of these women leading up to the infant deaths. This information is essential in or der for these women to build complete defenses and to rebut the inference that all women who commit neonaticide do so deliberately.
However, evidence of these similarities is routinely not permitted in the criminal trials of these women. 10 It also appears to be entirely absent from the public narrative about infanticide. This absence prevents those who commit neonaticide from obtaining appropriate and consistent penalties when they enter the criminal justice system. An inadequate understanding of the experiences of women com mitting neonaticide results in inconsistent criminal charges, 11 an inability of these women to present a complete defense at their trials, 12 and inconsistent sentences for factually similar crimes. 13 Because adolescents commit neonaticide more fre quently than any other group, 14 the current trends in the prosecution of neonaticide should be of exceptional importance to those studying juveniles in the criminal justice system.
Part I of this Note will examine the experiences of women accused of com mitting neonaticide by discussing their mental states leading up to the births and deaths of their newborns, and by examining the ways that the criminal justice system
Evolutionary Underpinnings and Infanticide Law, 30 Behav. Sci. & L. 585, 588–89 (2012).
7. Id. at 588.
6. Id. at 586.
8. Id. at 588, 591.
10. Data about neonaticide rarely distinguishes between women over or under eighteen years of age. All of the data used in this Note applies to adolescent and adult women commit ting neonaticide unless otherwise stated.
9. Id. at 588.
11. See Friedman et al., supra note 5, at 592–93.
13. See Bookwalter, supra note 1, at 1194–96.
12. Farley, supra note 2, at 601–02; see also Bookwalter, supra note 1, at 1205–06.
14. Resnick, supra note 2, at 1415.
16. See generally Bookwalter, supra note 1.
15. See generally United States v. Deegan, 605 F.3d 625 (8th Cir. 2010).
deals with these infant deaths. Part II will examine the role played by the media in establishing a national narrative of motherhood and neonaticide, and will demon strate the ways in which the media influences these trials and hinders the ability of the defendants to present a complete defense or obtain an unbiased criminal judg ment. Finally, the conclusion of this Note will assert that better regulation of the media will be essential in improving the judicial outcomes of the women and girls accused of neonaticide.
I. Introduction to Neonaticide in the American Criminal Justice System
A. Introduction to Neonaticide
Approximately 250 cases of neonaticide occur every year in the United States. 17 Adolescents commit neonaticide more frequently than any other group of women. 18 These adolescents typically share several characteristics. 19 These girls are likely to be in their late teens, living with their parents, and unmarried. 20 They typi cally have a low socioeconomic status, 21 and their personalities are passive and es pecially immature for their age. 22 They are more socially isolated than their peers, 23 and are often victims of abuse. 24 The high school aged girls in this group were typically in relationships that lasted only a few weeks and often ended before the pregnancy was discovered. 25 Their pregnancies were most often accidental. 26 The
17. Id. at 1177.
19. These findings have remained consistent among studies using administrative samples and correctional populations both inside the United States and in other countries. See Friedman et al., supra note 18, at 1582.
18. See Susan Hatters Friedman, Sarah McCue Horwitz & Phillip J. Resnick, Child Mur der by Mothers: A Critical Analysis of the Current State of Knowledge and a Research Agenda, 162 Am. J. Psychiatry 1578, 1579 (2005); see also Resnick, supra note 2, at 1415.
20. Id. at 1579.
22. See Resnick, supra note 2, at 1416.
21. Id.
23. See Bookwalter, supra note 1, at 1193.
J. Psychiatry 811, 812 (2001). One study of twenty-three women who committed neonaticide revealed that 47.8% of the women reported a major trauma in their childhood, while 26.1% of those women also reported abuse during adulthood. Sabine Amon, Hanna Putkonen, Ghitta Weizmann-Henelius, Maria P. Almiron, Anton K. Formann, Martin Voracek, Markku Eronen, Jenny Yourstone, Max Friedrich & Claudia M. Klier, Potential Predictors in Neonaticide: The Impact of the Circumstances of Pregnancy, 15 Archives Women's Mental Health 167, 169 (2012).
24. Margaret G. Spinelli, A Systematic Investigation of 16 Cases of Neonaticide, 158 Am.
25. Michelle Oberman, Mothers Who Kill: Coming to Terms with Modern Infanticide, 8 DePaul J. Health Care L. 3, 28–29 (2004).
26. Molly Karlin, Damned if She Does, Damned if She Doesn't: De-legitimization of Women's Agency in Commonwealth v. Woodward, 18 Colum. J. Gender & L. 125, 159 (2008).
experiences of these adolescents demonstrate a pattern of "powerlessness, poverty, and alienation." 27 Some assert that a combination of these characteristics results in a break from reality during their pregnancy, during the birth of their children, and during the ultimate death of their newborn. Though the American media has portrayed these girls as cold-hearted killers, research has indicated that a subset of those committing neonaticide do so without reasoned intentionality. 28 At least one study has shown that women who commit neonaticide show an elevated rate of personality disorders, and the symptoms consistently experienced by these women have been coined neonaticide syndrome. 29
While not all women who commit neonaticide share the same pregnancy and birth experiences, many of them experience similar pathology leading up to and resulting in the death of their newborns. 30 Collectively, these experiences make up neonaticide syndrome. 31 Upon becoming pregnant, these women experience in tense fear. 32 They fear public shame and the possibility that their pregnancies will be viewed as proof that they have been sexually promiscuous or irresponsible. 33 Younger girls fear parental abandonment, anger, and punishment. 34 They simply do not view disclosing their pregnancies as an option, 35 and they encounter great mental and emotional turmoil when presented with the crisis of how to handle their pregnancies. Those who commit neonaticide may attempt to conceal their pregnancies, 36 or their fear and depression may become so great that the women enter into a state of severe and pathological denial of their pregnancies. 37 These two experiences sometimes co-occur, 38 but pregnancy denial represents a more se vere flaw in the woman's psychological rationalization of the pregnancy. Women experiencing pregnancy denial genuinely believe that they are not pregnant, and in some cases their bodies will mask the physical symptoms of the pregnancy. 39 These adolescents have no awareness of their pregnancies and will maintain their denial in the face of intense questioning by peers and physical changes in their bodies. 40
27. See Friedman et al., supra note 18, at 1582.
29. Farley, supra note 2, at 601.
28. See generally Resnick, supra note 2, at 1415.
30. See generally Resnick, supra note 2, at 1415–16.
32. Jennie Lusk, Modern New Mexican Neonaticide: Tranquilizing with this Jewel/The Torments of Confusion, 11 Tex. J. Women & L. 93, 96–98 (2001).
31. Farley, supra note 2, at 601.
33. See Farley, supra note 2, at 601.
35. See Megan C. Hogan, Note, Neonaticide and the Misuse of the Insanity Defense, 6
34. See Lusk, supra note 32, at 96–98.
Wm. & Mary J. Women & L. 259, 263–64 (1999).
37. Farley, supra note 2, at 612.
36. Amon et al., supra note 24, at 168.
38. Amon et al., supra note 24, at 168.
40. Farley, supra note 2, at 612–13.
39. See Friedman et al., supra note 5, at 588.
Neonaticide syndrome is a "clinical entity consisting of behaviors and symptoms that occur during the stages of pregnancy, delivery, and [the newborn's death]." 41 It begins with a pathological denial of and disassociation from one's pregnancy. 42 This denial continues until the birth of the newborn, at which point the woman cannot continue in her delusion. 43 Because these women are unaware of their pregnancies, the births often take place in bathrooms. 44 One study examined sixteen instances of neonaticide and found that the women experienced various atypical mental states during the birthing process. 45 It found that:
All of the women described "watching" themselves during the birth. Eleven denied pain, and five described the pain as "not bad." Twelve women experienced dissociative hallucinations as an internal com mentary of critical and argumentative voices. Fourteen women experienced brief amnesia, and nine of those women described as sociated psychotic symptoms at the sight of the infant. Upon reinte gration, the women could not account for the dead infant. 46
Upon the birth of the infant, these women experience a "brief psychotic break" that either results in the neglect of the newborn or in the mother actively killing the newborn. 47 Though the media portrays the mothers as being unfeeling during these deaths, under the theory of neonaticide syndrome, the deaths of these newborns are more likely the result of terror, panic, or fury that the adolescents ex perience during this psychotic break. 48 The mother does not view the newborn as her child, but rather as a "foreign body" that must be eliminated. 49 Some women lose consciousness while giving birth, causing those newborns who end up being born while the mother is seated on a toilet to drown. 50 Other women who commit neonat icide, especially young girls, may panic about someone discovering the birth and neglect the newborn in a panicked attempt to clean up the area in which they gave birth. 51 Others respond to this panic and fear by actively killing their newborns. 52 Mothers who actively kill their infants, as opposed to neglecting the newborn
41. Id. at 612.
43. Id. at 613.
42. Id. at 612–13.
44. Id.
46. Id. at 811.
45. See Spinelli, supra note 24, at 811–12.
47. See Judith E. Macfarlane, Note, Neonaticide and the "Ethos of Maternity": Traditional Criminal Law Defenses and the Novel Syndrome, 5 Cardozo Women's L.J. 175, 199 (1998).
49. Id. at 197.
48. See id. at 184.
50. See Oberman, supra note 25, at 30.
52. Id.; see also Bookwalter, supra note 1, at 1196.
51. Id. at 30.
until it passes away, often receive significantly greater sentences. 53 However, these killings may have been no more premeditated than the births themselves. 54 The extreme facts regarding how the newborns were killed in these cases likely do not indicate any additional malice toward the newborn—under the theory of neonati cide syndrome, they are merely different responses of women suffering from the same syndrome.
The evolutionary adaptive theory of neonaticide does not challenge the de nial experienced by the pregnant women or the potential for them to be physically unaware of their pregnancies. 55 It breaks down the denial experienced by these women into three different types: affective denial, pervasive denial, and psychotic denial. 56 Affective denial results in an emotional denial of a pregnancy, though the woman maintains cognitive awareness of the pregnancy. 57 Pervasive denial can re sult in physical and mental denial of pregnancy combined with masked symptoms of the pregnancy. 58 Psychotic denial, the most severe type, is claimed to be more rare and more likely to occur in women with histories of schizophrenia. 59 This the ory asserts that, due to external coercion and an inability to raise the newborn, these women instinctively kill the newborns. 60
B. Courts' Response to Neonaticide
While most western countries have developed infanticide legislation to deal with the unique circumstances surrounding these deaths, 61 the United States has no such legislation. Instead, neonaticide is prosecuted as anything from the unlawful disposal of a body to first-degree murder. 62 In countries with infanticide legisla tion, women committing any type of infanticide will typically receive probation or commitment to a facility that can address their mental health issues. 63 Many of these countries do not require any formal diagnosis of a mental health issue in order for the women to receive such treatment. 64 These more lenient sentences arguably reflect international awareness of the "biological vulnerability" of pregnant women caused by, among other things, hormonal changes that occur with any pregnancy. 65
See, e.g., United States v. Deegan, 605 F.3d 625, 644 (8th Cir. 2010).
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53. 54. See, e.g., id. 55. Friedman et al., supra note 5, at 588. 56. Id. 57. Id. 58. Id. 59. Id. 60. See id. 61. See Spinelli, supra note 24. 62. Oberman, supra note 25, at 31. 63. Spinelli, supra note 24, at 811. 64. See Friedman et al., supra note 5, at 587. 65. Spinelli, supra note 24, at 812.
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The findings regarding the low rates of mental health issues among those committing neonaticide may shed some light on the United States' lack of special legislation or leniency for these deaths. Some proponents of evolutionary adapta tion theory have explained their opposition to these lenient international laws by explaining that "to excuse depressed, manic or psychotic women who kill their newborns at the time of giving birth" benefits the wrong population. 66
Some commentators have noted the problematic nature of inconsistent sentencing at the federal level. 73 The federal sentencing guideline drafters did not contemplate acts such as neonaticide, 74 and the guidelines do not take into consid eration mitigating factors such as a woman experiencing a psychotic break immedi ately prior to the birth. At least one commentator has advocated for new and explicit sentencing guidelines for neonaticide offenses. 75 However, this proposal has not been implemented. 76 Clear sentencing guidelines would decrease the inconsisten cies in criminal punishments that women experience. However, they would not im prove the ability of these women to exercise their Sixth Amendment rights at trial. Because consistent sentencing measures do not assist women during the trial stage of the criminal process, they can serve as only one piece of a larger reform strategy.
However, the United States' lack of infanticide or neonaticide legislation means that those accused of committing neonaticide are inconsistently charged. 67 In some cases, no charges are brought at all. 68 In most cases, the initial charges are pled down to a lesser offense. 69 Sentencing varies greatly from state to state, 70 and these women may receive anything from probation to life in prison. 71 Such incon sistent sentences for acts that are often very factually similar must raise a question about whether justice is being achieved in these cases. 72 Further, these inconsisten cies and unpredictable trials indicate that our criminal justice system is not operat ing as efficiently as it could be.
Women whose cases go to trial encounter numerous obstacles as they at tempt to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to present a complete defense. First, while the defendants can sometimes present evidence that other women have had
66. Friedman et al., supra note 5, at 594.
68. Oberman, supra note 25, at 31.
67. See Spinelli, supra note 24.
69. Id. at 92–93.
71. Oberman, supra note 25, at 31.
70. See Bookwalter, supra note 1, at 1194–96 (comparing cases from Ohio, Louisiana, and New York).
72. See Bookwalter, supra note 1, at 1194.
74. See United States v. Deegan, 605 F.3d 625, 646–47 (8th Cir. 2010); see also Ryznar, supra note 73, at 462.
73. Margaret Ryznar, A Crime of Its Own? A Proposal for Achieving Greater Sentencing Consistency in Neonaticide and Infanticide Cases, 47 U.S.F. L. Rev. 459, 462 (2013).
75. Ryznar, supra note 73, at 462–63.
76. See Deegan, 605 F.3d at 625.
similar experiences during their pregnancies before committing neonaticide, the defendants cannot present a "psychological profile" linking the symptoms to a spe cific syndrome. 77 Evidence about neonaticide syndrome is generally inadmissible in courts for several reasons. At least one court has refused to admit this evidence because neonaticide syndrome has not undergone and passed the Frye or Daubert admissibility tests. 78 The fact that some disagree about whether this pattern of be havior meets the requirements for a syndrome and that neonaticide syndrome has not been published or verified by many medical experts has also hurt its chances for admissibility. 79 Lack of empirical evidence has prevented some state courts from recognizing neonaticide syndrome. 80 Finally, a lack of understanding about the dif ference between the symptoms involved in neonaticide syndrome and those con stituting postpartum depression has led at least one court to decide that the cost of having an out-of-state expert testify in these cases is too high to justify allowing the testimony if a local postpartum expert is available. 81
Any expert witnesses who do testify for the defendants will have similar credibility issues because they will be unable to support their assertions that these women experienced symptoms such as denial of pregnancy or a temporary psycho sis that led to the newborn's death with evidence that other pregnant women have
Even though neonaticide syndrome may not be the predominant theory ex plaining these deaths, several of its relevant symptoms are still accepted in the medical community and may decrease the legal culpability of these women. For instance, defendants may wish to present evidence about the physical or mental denial of their pregnancies as part of their defenses. Unfortunately, the experts brought into trial rarely specialize in neonaticide, and they consequently do not have sufficient knowledge to testify on behalf of the defendants. Instead, experts often specialize in postpartum depression or more common mental illnesses that are not linked to pregnancy. Because the experiences of women committing neonati cide do not fall neatly into insanity defenses, 82 a failure to admit evidence about the frequency with which others experienced similar symptoms means that defendants can only testify about what they experienced during their own pregnancies and birthing processes. 83 This cripples their credibility as witnesses, and consequently their defenses.
77. See People v. Wernick, 674 N.E.2d 322, 323 (N.Y. 1996).
79. Macfarlane, supra note 47, at 218.
78. Id.
80. Strawbridge v. Lord, No. 9:04-CV-0268, 2012 WL 1036089, at *4 (N.D.N.Y. Mar. 27, 2012).
82. Some experts contend that the experiences of these women are more properly defined as personality disorders rather than mental illnesses. Amon et al., supra note 24, at 168.
81. See Commonwealth v. Dupre, 2005 PA Super. 12, ¶ 22, 866 A.2d 1089, 1103.
83. See Bookwalter, supra note 1, at 1205.
experienced these same symptoms. 84 Because suspicion of these women is so high and some of the ways in which the newborns are killed are quite gruesome, informa tion about the theories behind these deaths is essential to combat the misconception that these defendants are trying to escape liability for deliberate murder. 85 A failure to admit this evidence allows the jury to think that the defendant's experiences were unique, 86 thus placing a prejudicial burden on the defendant to prove the pervasive nature of her symptoms in neonaticide cases. 87 The courts' failure to admit expert witness testimony as evidence that many women committing neonaticide experience a similar pathology before the deaths occur infringes on the Sixth Amendment rights of these defendants to present a complete defense.
Further, a blanket restriction on evidence regarding neonaticide syndrome in these trials means that these women are unable to obtain the medical treatment that they may need. 88 When adolescents are on trial after committing neonaticide, the court is often required to effectively step into the shoes of parents to make a decision that protects both society and the juvenile in the courtroom. In order to do so, the court must have all of the relevant information in front of it. Though some medical experts assert that the majority of those committing neonaticide do not suf fer from psychosis or insanity, the interests of justice should demand that a judge has information about the similar experiences of those who commit neonaticide available for assessment. Prison sentences are a more common punishment than commitments to psychiatric facilities. 89 Without information about the prevalence of the symptoms experienced by these women at the sentencing stage of the crimi nal trial, proper mental health treatment cannot be ordered when it is needed. Con sequently, those who are suffering from mental illness or personality disorders will end their prison terms with the same or worse pathology than they had at the time that they committed neonaticide. 90 Thus, the criminal justice system fails to offer rehabilitation services where they may be both necessary and effective.
II. Murder and the Media
A. The Changing Cultural Ideology About Motherhood
The media plays an under-assessed but highly influential role in determin ing how the legal system addresses neonaticide. To understand the media's role in these trials, groundwork must first be laid about how western civilization's cultural
84. See People v. Wernick, 674 N.E.2d 322, 323 (N.Y. 1996).
86. Id. at 1205.
85. See generally Bookwalter,supra note 1, at 1194–96.
87. Id. at 1192.
89. Resnick, supra note 2, at 1418.
88. See Macfarlane, supra note 47, at 182.
90. Spinelli, supra note 24, at 812.
beliefs about motherhood have developed and changed over the past two decades. In a study about this topic, Emma Cunliffe focused on how Australia has addressed unexplained infant deaths over the past several decades. 91 Her study revealed a strong connection between the media's portrayal of these deaths, the medical theo ries about how they occur, and bias in the courtroom. 92
Suddenly, medical researchers and the legal community alike experienced a dramatic cultural shift in how they viewed mothers whose children had experienced SIDS. 98 The cultural ideology about motherhood shifted to one of distrust, and the prevailing theory of SIDS investigation shifted from a medical one (positing that the deaths were linked to apnea) to a legal one that looked at mothers suspicious ly. 99 Newspapers, medical journals, and the general public all began to view SIDS as a cover for murder. 100 Though mothers whose young children unexpectedly died had historically been viewed with some amount of sympathy, 101 the general public and legal scholars began to view child homicide as the most morally heinous crime in existence, deserving of the harshest criminal punishment. 102 Criminalization of women whose infants had died of unknown causes increased, 103 and medical ex perts shifted their work from looking for apnea-related causes of these deaths to seeking out signs of foul play. 104
An analysis of the increasing criminalization of women whose infants die suddenly will illustrate this point. In the 1970s to 1990s, families who experienced Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) were looked upon with sympathy. 93 In the 1970s, Alfred Steinschneider's theory posited that SIDS was a tragic occurrence that was related to prolonged apnea issues in infants. 94 This theory was well ac cepted, and scientists largely focused their SIDS research on the syndrome's apnearelated causes. 95 In 1994, the mother whom Steinschneider had written about in his research as having suffered five SIDS deaths in her family confessed to having murdered each of her children. 96 Though she later recanted her confession, it gained enormous publicity and caused widespread suspicion about how many other moth ers had gotten away with murder. 97
91. Emma Cunliffe, Murder, Medicine and Motherhood 25–67 (2011).
93. Id. at 11.
92. Id. at 193–206.
94. Id. at 30.
96. Id. at 35.
95. Id. at 30–31.
97. Id. at 35–36.
99. Id.
98. Id.
100. Id. at 12.
102. Id. at 12.
101. Id. at 11.
103. Id. at 12–13.
104. Id. at 36.
As the cultural story of motherhood has changed, the way that society judg es and categorizes specific mothers has changed as well. 105 Society often equates inadequate mothering with criminal liability. 106 If an infant passes away and the mother is found to have neglected it during its life, society instantly suspects the mother of murder. 107 These suspicions often have no basis in evidence, but they ex hibit a deeply rooted and often unconscious bias. This bias makes its way into the courtroom during the trials of these accused women, and the media's role in creat ing it must be closely scrutinized. Journalists necessarily enjoy a great amount of freedom in the way that they report the news, but some restraint may be necessary when this freedom has an abnormally high ability to place the rights of citizens ac cused of crimes at risk.
B. The Media's Role in Increasing the Criminalization of Adolescent Mothers
Because the public gets the bulk of its information about the criminal jus tice system in general, as well as about specific criminal trials from the media, the media's lack of restraint can have devastating consequences for the women accused of having murdered their newborn infants. The media is the vehicle that brings in formation, such as the confession of the mother from Steinschneider's case study, into the general public's awareness. 108 Its presentation of this sensitive information guides the public discourse about these deaths. It reaches the individuals who may be jurors, judges, or experts testifying at trials. Cunliffe's study demonstrates sev eral ways in which this biases courtrooms and jeopardizes defendants' rights. 109 The risk for injustice is higher with these trials because, while the facts underlying the crimes may shock the conscience, they may be more indicative of severe mental distress than of malice or intent.
Most journalists have adopted the "voluntarily embraced" code of ethics
While reporting of crimes is an essential part of society, the way in which these crimes are being reported gives cause for concern. Freedom of speech nec essarily prevents journalists from having stringent accountability mechanisms in place to regulate their reporting. Though some amount of accountability exists through state regulatory laws involving defamation and privacy tort actions, the application of First Amendment doctrine has caused these remedies to apply only in the most extreme of circumstances. 110
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105. Id. at 100. 106. See id. at 101. 107. Id. at 37. 108. See id. at 157–90. 109. See id. 110. Richard T. Karcher, Tort Law and Journalism Ethics, 40 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 781, 782–83 (2009).
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from the Society of Professional Journalists, 111 but a survey indicating that 62% of journalists believe that journalism is going in the wrong direction shows that not even journalists themselves feel these standards are sufficient to hold the journalism community accountable for its reporting. 112 One part of the code of ethics requires journalists to "seek truth and report it," and to be honest, fair, and courageous in their reporting. 113 This has been described as the most crucial of journalists' obliga tions because the press controls the public's reception of news, and it has the first opportunity to color the way in which the public will receive new information. 114 Journalists are further instructed to ensure that they are properly representing the news and avoiding sensationalism. 115 However, the code of ethics has no external enforcement mechanism. 116 Consequently, it may fail as a tool for holding journal ists accountable for abiding by the standards to which they profess to adhere.
While many well-respected journalistic organizations exist, a new type of widely read media known as "infotainment" has emerged that draws consumers into its news articles with gimmicks such as highly emotional language or pho tographs of victims. 117 Rather than avoiding sensationalism, popular infotainment organizations feed on it. 118 Infotainment articles feature a mixture of entertainment and educational pieces, and they further strain journalism ethics, as the goal of infotainment is entertainment rather than enlightenment. 119 The benefits of info tainment news include increased public interest in national events and increased revenue to news services, but the drawback is a severe blow to journalistic integrity that poses a risk to both infotainment organizations as well as serious journalistic agencies. Infotainment news presents information in a way that impairs the public's ability to separate fact from opinion. 120 It also lends itself toward an adversarial reporting style that reinforces anger and baseless stereotypes. 121 Infotainment news organizations use headlines intended to outrage rather than inform, such as "Ac cused Waukegan tot killer pleads not guilty." 122 Rather than seeking enlightenment
111. See Code of Ethics, Soc'y of Prof'l Journalists (1996), http://www.spj.org/pdf/eth icscode.pdf (Dec. 13, 2013).
113. Code of Ethics, supra note 113.
112. Karcher, supra note 110, at 845.
114. Karcher, supra note 110, at 792.
116. Karcher, supra note 110, at 782–83.
115. See Code of Ethics, supra note 111.
117. See id. at 797.
119. See id. at 797.
118. See id. at 781–82, 797–98.
120. See id.
122. See, e.g., Beth Kramer, Accused Waukegan Tot Killer Pleads Not Guilty, Lake County News-Sun, Oct. 27, 2012, http://newssun.suntimes.com/news/15372453-418/accused-waukeg an-tot-killer-pleads-not-guilty.html.
121. Id. at 797–98.
about issues or additional information, readers start looking for someone to blame when they read these articles. 123 Infotainment news causes consumers to become more accusatory, more suspicious, and quicker to judge someone as guilty based on minimal facts. Citizens expect the press to serve as a "watch dog" and to priori tize accurate reporting over commercial gain, but whether infotainment organiza tions do this is extremely questionable. 124 Infotainment organizations are one of the key vehicles through which biases toward women accused of killing their children spread across the country.
Cunliffe compiled extensive data about the methods used by both newspa pers in their reporting. 131 She found that expert testimony was selectively reported in both papers, 132 and that the popular newspaper went as far as to mix fact with fiction in its narratives about the trial. 133 Rather than reporting events the way they unfolded during the trial, both newspapers carefully tailored the events in a way that would draw in more readership. Though the defendant put forth what Cunliffe felt to be a robust defense, the papers portrayed this defense as if it were virtually nonexistent. 134
Cunliffe's study also followed two Australian newspapers as they covered the arrest, trial, and sentencing of a woman who had been accused of murdering her four infants. 125 Cunliffe followed one "popular" newspaper and one "quality" newspaper. 126 She defined a "popular" newspaper as one that that presented in formation in an emotional and attention-grabbing manner. 127 Similar to American infotainment or tabloid journalism, these newspapers strive to portray information in an entertaining manner. 128 In contrast, "quality" newspapers focus on producing high quality, "literary work." 129 They pay close attention to language and accuracy of content. 130 Given that the United States has a similar structure to its media, this study provides important insight into the relationship between news reporting and bias in criminal trials.
Distinguishing the two newspapers, Cunliffe found that the popular news paper used more sensational reporting techniques, such as printing photos of the children and writing that the mother's acts resulted from "latent wickedness" after
123. Karcher, supra note 110, at 797.
125. Cunliffe, supra note 91, at 158.
124. Id. at 790–91.
126. Id. at 168.
128. Id.
127. See id.
129. See id.
131. Id. at 157–90.
130. Id.
132. Id. at 172–73.
134. Id. at 157–90.
133. Id. at 184.
she was sentenced. 135 The popular newspaper presented less synthesized report ing of day-to-day events, while the quality newspaper attempted to synthesize the events. 136 While the popular newspaper criminalized the mother, the quality news paper asked whether society had failed the children and looked broadly at child investigations. 137 By including longer excerpts of the trial testimony, the quality newspaper allowed readers to see what evidence was actually presented at the trial and how it was used. 138 By explicitly passing judgment on the mother's "wicked ness," the popular newspaper changed the function of the reader from fact analyst to fact consumer.
This narrative, heard in pieces over time by jurists, medical researchers, attorneys, and judges, also has detrimental results on the fairness of the trials of women who are charged with the deaths of their newborns. Cunliffe's research demonstrates that the method used by infotainment reporters when covering these trials has promoted an ideology of motherhood based on incorrect stereotypes. The preconception that a person has about motherhood and familial structures will af fect the way that individuals allocate criminal responsibility. 139 These news organi zations assume that mothers are naturally nurturing and assert that a mother whose infant dies must be criminally responsible for its death.
These popular, or infotainment, organizations fail to publish facts that would provide the counterargument to their assertions, and they teach consumers to ac cept journalists' judgments without a careful assessment of the criminal cases that they describe. By publicly labeling these women as killers and murderers, while failing to report facts such as the mental health defenses presented at their trials, infotainment organizations create a skeptical culture that is more prepared to pick up its torches and pitchforks than it is to digest information that may absolve these women of some level of criminal liability. This type of reporting violates the jour nalistic ethical commitment to avoiding sensationalism and reporting the truth.
These beliefs make their way into the courtroom through several avenues. First, they may affect the assumptions made by those responsible for medical re search. As individuals seek a criminal explanation, those researching these deaths may attempt to do the same, as evidenced in the 1990s with SIDS research. Second, witnesses, including expert witnesses, may increase the confidence in their asser tions as a trial progresses due to their desire to secure a conviction. Cunliffe asserts that this is exactly what happened in the trial that she followed. 140 Finally, these as sumptions enter the courtroom with every juror who reads and is influenced by info tainment organizations. Such rampant bias places a defendant's Sixth Amendment
135. Id. at 170.
137. Id. at 170.
136. Id. at 168–71.
138. Id. at 178.
140. Id.
139. Id. at 194.
rights in grave danger.
C. Moving Forward
Journalistic accountability will be essential in changing the narrative of neonaticide to one that prepares the public to consider the role of mental illnesses in these deaths. If the media presents these cases in a way that forecloses the pos sibility of mental illness or conditions such as neonaticide syndrome, then citizens cannot be expected to change their mindset simply because they have entered the courtroom. Those advocating for further research or education about neonaticide can have no better ally than the media, which has the unique ability to start a nation al dialogue about the syndrome and its role in neonaticide. The unbiased reporting of neonaticide will also aid parents of adolescents who commit the crime by allow ing them to better understand the experience of their children. This understanding is essential in order for parents to play a role in their children's rehabilitation and for parents to help these youth exercise their Sixth Amendment right to present a complete defense.
The tort of false light would effectively punish violations of the code of eth ics that journalists are expected to follow. It is fair to journalists because it does not restrain their freedom of speech any more than they have already agreed to restrain it when they abide by the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics. Also, it protects the privacy and mental health of adolescents who are in vulnerable posi tions, and it will ensure that news agencies report a more factually accurate version of neonaticide. The downside of the false light claim is that less than half of the states still allow this claim. 145 In order for it to be effective, the false light claim would have to be revived in all states.
Unfortunately, women committing neonaticide have few remedies against the sensationalism of the press. Defamation remedies can be obtained only in the most extreme of cases, as defendants need only prove that their statements are tech nically true to avoid liability. 141 However, the tort claim of false light may provide a more sufficient remedy. 142 Truth of facts is not a defense in a false light action, and a defendant may be liable for the one-sided or misleading presentation of facts. 143 The standard for a false light claim is also lower than the one that must be met in a defamation suit; a plaintiff in a false light claim need only prove that the facts would be "highly offensive to a reasonable person." 144
The media's power over the cultural understanding of these infant deaths combined with the difficulty of enforcing journalistic standards of ethics serves as
141. Karcher, supra note 110, at 786.
143. Id.
142. Id. at 788.
144. Id. at 789.
145. Id.
possibly the strongest argument for allowing experts to submit evidence of neo naticide syndrome in court. Even if media reform measures are implemented in the United States, changing the narrative of neonaticide will take time. Cunliffe's study serves as a powerful warning about the real connection between the media's portrayal of events and the criminal trials of defendants. When defendants are faced with permanent stigma and criminal sentences that may last decades, the stakes are too high to prohibit experts from testifying about medical research that counters the assumptions and biases that jurors, judges, and attorneys alike bring into the courtroom.
Conclusion
Enforcing violations of the journalistic code of ethics through tort law is only the first step in ensuring that information about the coercion, isolation, and denial experienced by women committing neonaticide is incorporated into the na tional narrative. Neonaticide experts, mental health experts, and other juvenile ad vocates must each commit to advocating for this information to be included in infotainment organizations and scholarly publications alike. If parents are to obtain any aid from the state in their efforts to identify signs of trouble in their adolescents, then this information must become widely available in order to stimulate conversa tions about prevention and rehabilitation.
While improving accountability for journalists will not immediately change the country's perception of these crimes or the court's response to women who kill their newborns, it will allow for a more honest dialogue about these crimes and about the experiences of women leading up to the crimes. A more open and honest national dialogue will lead to more appropriately targeted medical research, less bias infiltrating the judicial system through expert testimony, and better judicial outcomes for women who are criminally charged for the deaths of their newborns.
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The Institute of Italian Language and Culture Personalized study programs
Tailor-made, full immersion programs for professionals, students and anyone with little time to study
One-to-one and small group courses to make the most out of your time
Via degli Alfani 68, 50121 Florence, Italy - Phone: +39 055 29 46 80 - Fax: +39 055 28 34 81 - www.galilei.it - email@example.com
1
Center of Personalized Italian Studies
The Galilei Institute is one of the most prestigious among the Italian language and culture schools for foreigners.
The school of Italian language was established in 1985, in the centre of Florence, with the aim of providing high quality linguis tic services to private individuals and multi-national companies who need to learn the basics as well as improve their Italian lan guage to the highest level in a short amount of time:
- business people who need the Italian language for work
- language students who need to prepare for their exams
- private individuals of all ages who study Italian for their personal needs or passions
Intensive Courses to make the most out of your Time
The Institute Galilei specializes in one-to-one and small group courses (3-4 participants), which are the unique course types that assure individual attention from the teacher for each participant and a high degree of active participation, which enables the students to put the studied structures correctly into practice.
All courses have a personalized structure based on the students' linguistic needs and characteristics.
One week of these one-to-one courses corresponds to approximately one month in a class with a group of students, and two weeks of a small group course with 3-4 for students per class.
The Secret of our Quality:
Excellent teachers with years of training and the school's size, which has been kept rather small in order to give everyone the opportunity to receive individual attention.
Highlights of the Courses at the Galilei Institute
- Rapid and thorough assessment of the students' needs
- Course programs tailored to those needs
- Productive instruction environment
- Flexible schedules
- Reduction of amount of time required to learn/improve the language
- Exclusive attention of qualified and specialized teachers
- Italian for various professional fields and their specific terminology
- Excellent results
The courses take place the whole year (including Christmas and Easter holidays). Every lesson lasts 60 minutes.
Characteristics of One-to-one Courses
The one-to-one courses are characteristic for their tailor-made program customized to the student's profile and needs. Particular aspects of the language such as grammar, conversation, syntax, etc. can be explored or emphasized according to the student's wishes. Specific vocabularies or aspects of the language can be studied according to his/her field of work or interest.
The flexibility of the one-to-one courses allows the teacher to module parts of the lessons in an alter native way and hold them also outside the classroom.
The one-to-one courses can start and finish on any day requested, and be continued also on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
Characteristics of Small Group Courses
The small group courses meet the same high standards of personal attention and care given to the one-to-one courses. They are intensive classes with a maximum of 4 students per group and are an optimal course choice for those who prefer to participate in a group course, but still wish to have individual attention from the teacher and a high degree of active participation during the lesson.
For self-composed groups, the course program can be estab lished according to their request (see one-to-one courses). The participants of a self-composed small group need to all be at the same level of Italian.
Flexible Schedules & Weekend Crash Courses
The School and Classrooms
The Galilei Institute is located in the centre of Florence. The class rooms are furnished with air conditioning. They are spacious, calm and sunny assuring a productive instruction environment. The school is equipped with an audio-visual system and computers with inter net connections. Students can also connect to the internet using a provided wireless network.
Teaching Method
Our flexible and personalized teaching method is the result of more than 20 years of one-to-one and small group teaching. It assures fast and efficient results with only a few days of lessons, and takes into consideration mother tongue, age, interests, study habits and motivation differences when developing your lessons.
5 steps that assure high quality teaching:
- Evaluation of the students' linguistic needs and characteristics to decide on the teaching approach;
- Individualization of the students' personal interests to assure that the course content is of high interest;
- Selection of the most appropriate teaching instruments and their way of utilization;
- Checking the learning progress regularly in order to properly organize the study plan;
- Interpretation of learning results so that the students can clearly see their achievements;
The main course of study includes: grammar; syntax; vocabulary; phonetics.
The practical exercises can include: conversation; technical conversation; translation; dictation; oral and written summary; pronunciation; reading.
Vocabulary, technical conversation and reading are selected according to the relevance of the student's profession or interests - see also "language specialization & business courses" on page 6.
One-to-one Courses
Course "A" is a basic course for those who wish to have the after noon free for other activities. Course "B" and "D" are more intensive courses, which focus in the morning on grammar and language structures and concentrate in the afternoon on the practical use of the language. In course "C" and "E" the lessons continue without interruption by having lunch with the teacher at the restau rant. Course "F" is indicated for those who want to take advantage of the day hours for business or sightseeing.
| Courses | hours/day | schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Course “A” | 4 hours/day | 9am - 1pm |
| Course “B” | 6 hours/day | 9am - 1pm and 2pm - 4pm |
| Course “C” | 6 hours/day incl. lunch | 9am - 3pm |
| Course “D” | 8 hours/day | 9am - 1pm and 2pm - 6pm |
| Course “E | 8 hours/day incl. lunch | 9am - 5pm |
| Course “F” | 5 hours/day incl. dinner | 5pm - 10pm |
Discounts/Supplements:
- for one-to-one courses of 4-11 weeks: discount of 10%
- for one-to-one courses of 3 weeks: discount of 8%
- for one-to-one courses of 12 or more weeks: discount of 15%
- during the months of February and March: special discount of 10%
- for 2 participants in the same course (two-to-one course): discount of 20% per person
- during Saturdays, Sundays and holidays: supplement of 10%
All discounts/supplements are calculated on the lessons rate (excl. meals).
The prices include:
Textbooks and notebooks, use of videos and DVDs, housing service, certificates and diplomas, weekly tour with a guide to the museums and churches of Florence, school tax, examination fee.
Business Courses & Language Specialization
In the one-to-one and self-composed small group courses, specific vocabularies and aspects of the language can be studied according to the students' field of work or interest. The lessons on specific terminologies such as economics, finance, marketing, law, etc. are given by an expert in the sector. Some of the possible fields of language specialization:
Executives and business people
Lessons of terminology on financial reports, mar keting, import-export, commercial policy of Ital ian industries, insurance companies and banks.
Lawyers and social workers
Secretaries
Study and composition of business correspon dence (e.g. enquiries and offers of merchan dise, complaints and reminders). Training in expressions which are recurrent in telephone conversations.
Translators and Interpreters
Vocabulary lessons given by an expert in jurispru dence. Illustration of the Italian civil and criminal law as well as the laws relevant to the legislation of commerce (contracts, bankruptcy, agree ments) and to the family (marriage, adoption, divorce, inheritance).
Opera singers
Analysis and composition of commercial, politi cal and economic texts as well as texts of litera ture and science, depending on the student's working field.
Phonetics and vocabulary are practised and studied through the use of librettos chosen by the student. Analyses and comprehension of the librettos.
Italian teachers (non-Italians)
Revision of advanced grammar and language structures and ideas for the planning of the lessons at their school.
Exam Preparation Courses for Students
The study program will be established in order to prepare the student specifically for
his/her exams (all levels) by integrating the specific topics of the school / university curriculum. Study and deepening of grammar, oral and written use of the language, analysis and interpretation of Italian literature.
Small Group Courses
The courses "A-gr" and "S-gr" are basic courses suitable for those who wish to have free time to sight see or combine the course with another one of Italian culture (s. page 8). The courses "B-gr" and "D-gr" provide the opportunity for a more intensive study of the language. These Italian small group courses can be combined with extra hours of one-to-one lessons to specialize the language (s. page 6). The small group courses have a minimum length of 2 weeks.
| Courses | hours/day | schedule* |
|---|---|---|
| Course “A-gr” | 4 hours/day, morning | 9am - 1pm |
| Course “S-gr” | 4 hours/day, afternoon | 2pm - 6pm |
| Course “B-gr” | 6 hours/day | 9am - 1pm and 2pm - 4pm |
| Course “D-gr” | 8 hours/day | 9am - 1pm and 2pm - 6pm |
Discounts:
- for small group courses of 6 or more weeks: discount of 10%
- for small group courses of 4-5 week: discount of 8%
- for self-composed small groups (of same Italian level): discount of 10%
- during the months of February and March: special discount of 10%
Courses of Italian Cooking, Art and Culture
The Italian cooking, art and culture courses have a practical teaching approach so that the students can learn and experience some of the most typical aspects of Italian culture first-hand.
The courses of Italian cooking, art and culture have the same struc ture and teaching method as the Italian language courses and are offered as one-to-one and small group courses. All programs are personalized and give good results also in only a few days of lessons. For more information please consult our website at www.galilei.it
No enrolment in the Italian language courses is required in order to follow the programs of Italian cooking, art and culture.
Lodging
The secretary's office of the Institute can arrange lodging for the students among the following options:
| | single room |
|---|---|
| Family with breakfast and dinner | from Euro 33 per day |
| Shared apartment with use of kitchen | from Euro 16 per day |
| Whole apartment | |
| Hotel (2 stars) | from Euro 45 per day |
| Hotel (4 stars) | from Euro 60 per day |
* option only available for 2 people coming together
How to enroll
General Rules
To enroll please send the completed applica tion form. If you prefer you can use the online form at our home page www.galilei.it. The secretary's office will then give confirmation of the chosen course by email, fax or letter. To complete the enrolment, a 30% deposit of the course fee is requested.
The course fee must be paid before or on the first day of lessons. Cancellations have to be made by fax or email. If they are made within the 15 days preceding the beginning of the course 30% of the course fee will be kept. Once the course has started, no reimbursement can be made.
Application Form
Course Choices
One-to-one course
A
B
C D
E
F
Requested vocabulary
for weeks from
to
incl. Saturday incl. Sunday
Small group course
A-gr
S-gr
B-gr
D-gr
Last Name
First Name
Address
Email
Phone
Fax
Nationality
Age
Profession
Company/School
General Information
Lodging
Hotel Family with half board Room in apartment
Apartment
from
to
Single room
Double room
Please send to:
Istituto Galilei - Via degli Alfani 68 - 50121 Florence - Italy or by fax to +39 055 28 34 81 or use the online application form at our web page www.galilei.it
Companies: 3M, ACO Passavant, Alcatel, Alcoa, Alfa Romeo, Ascom Holding, Avis Fleet Service, Barilla, BASF, Bearing
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Ciba-Geigy, Dunhill, ENEL Produzione, Enichem, Enrico Coveri, Ericsson, Ernst & Young, Exxon Chemical, Ferrero, Fiat, Fiorentina AC, Forest Oil International, Franklin Electric Europe, FYM, General Electric, Gentiva Health Services, Gerling-Konzern, Gold Pfeil, Goodyear, Hachette Livre, Heineken, Helene Curtis, IBM, Ikea, Imexo Papier, Industrial Sugar Mills, Itochu, Iveco, JAL, Kirkland & Ellis, Km Europa Metal, Koenig & Bauer, Lever, Lloyds Abbey Life, L'Orèal, Lufthansa, Mitsubishi, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Max Mara, Mastertaste, Mazda, Merrill Lynch, Mission Energy, Missoni, Mitsubishi, Moët & Chandon, NEC, Nestlé, New York Times, Nikon, Nixdorf Computer, Nordica, Nuovo Pignone, Olivetti, Opera House of Zurich, Perugina, Peugeot-Citroën, Philip Morris, Pioneer, Pirelli, Porsche, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Procter & Gamble, Renault, Ricoh Corporation, Saab, Jil Sanders, Sanyo, Saudi Aramco, Sealy, Seeber, Shell, Siemens, Simon Dickinson, Solera, Sun Microsystems, Swarovski, Shell, Swiss Radio Television, Swiss Reinsurance Company, Swiss State Railways, Tecnologie Diesel, Telecom Italia, The New York Hospital, TIM, Toyota, Triumph, Uniflex, Unilever, Valentino, Vanervell, Vita Life Insurance, Wiggins Teape, Winterthur Technology Group, Wochenzeitung, World, Zanussi. Banks: ABN Ambro Bank, Bank of America, Banca del Gottardo, Banque Bruxelles Lambert, Banque Rothschild, Barclays's Private Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, European Central Bank, Graubündner Kantonalbank, Holderbank, Hypo Bank, International Moscow Bank, Merrill Lynch, Monte dei Paschi, Sumitomo Bank, Swiss Bank Corporation, Tokai Bank, UBS, Volksbank, Westdeutsche Landesbank. Embassies & Consulates: Belgium, Japan, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States. Institutions: California Institute of Technology, The Court of First Instance of EC, Department for Health of Bavaria, European Council and Parliament, FBI, Ministère de l'Intérieur Français, USA Dept. of Defense, Justice and State, Unesco. Schools & Universities: Ecole Internationale de Genève, Ecole Lemania, Ecole Moser, Ecole Nouvelle de la Suisse Romande, New York University, San Francisco University High School, Université de Caen, University of Kyoto, University of Munich. Some of our Clients
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Point, Benetton, Blaupunkt, Bosch, British Airways, Buitoni, Cameo, Canadian Airlines, Canon, Caterpillar,
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Pastor Chris The Power Of The Tongues
A Practical Guide to Walking in Healing Power
Healing From Heaven
Seven Things The Holy Spirit Will Do in You
Rhapsody of Realities Topical Compendium-Volume 5
The Heist
The Power of One Day's Time
Our Miracle
God's Voice-Activated Universe: : Change Your Words...Change Your World!
How To Recieve A Miracle and Retain It
How to Make Your Faith Work!
Prophecy
Now That You Are Born Again
Join This Chariot
Pray First
The Power of Your Mind
Back to Sender
Prophecy
The Oil and the Mantle
The Wonderful Name of Jesus
Know the Gospel Live the Gospel
Praying the Right Way
Walking in Supernatural Healing Power
I Can Do All Things
Recreating Your World
Activating the Grace of Marriage
Fresh Air
The Power of One Day's Time
Pray First Bible Study Guide plus Streaming Video
The Power Of Your Mind
The Power of Tongues
Human by Choice
None of These Diseases
The Power Of Tongues
How to Pray Effectively
Out of the Cave
Your Right In Christ
Healing from Heaven
Pray First Study Guide with DVD
Pastor Chris The Power Of The Tongues
Downloaded from socialmediaweektoronto.com by guest
SIENA KYLER
A Practical Guide to Walking in Healing Power Twilight Times Books
Dr. Chris Sutley and his wife Pastor JoJo, are the senior and founding pastors of Faith Life Fellowship, in Littleton, Colorado. They pastor a thriving congregation with the vision and mandate from God of "Walking in love, Abounding in faith, and manifesting THE BLESSING in all the nations of the earth." Pastor Chris has written a comprehensive book detailing the call of every Christian to frame their world with the words they speak. God has given to man, the power, the authority and the dominion to rule over this earth, using the words of their mouth and the power of THE BLESSING. If you are not happy with your life at this moment, then maybe you need to begin to change the words that are coming out of your mouth. Because whether you know it or not, your life is a reflection of the words you have spoken! Pastor Chris takes you step by step through what the Bible has to say about the ""words of your mouth", and the power they convey. This book is a must read for every Christian in order for them to walk in the full plan and purposes that God has for their lives! Healing From Heaven Destiny Image Publishers The Wonderful Name of Jesus is a thrilling exposition of the power vested in the name of Jesus and the believer's right to use that name. This message has changed the prayer lives of multitudes. If you are looking for power in prayer, this book is a must. It will astound you and fill you with joy to find out who you are in Christ and what Christ is in you. In this inspiring book, E. W. Kenyon clearly explains our spiritual authority in the name of Jesus. The church must use Jesus's name more and more to confront sickness and demonic activity and live in the victory Christ has provided. You don't need to be a weak, defeated Christian. Discover what the Word has to say about you and your rights and privileges as a redeemed believer!
Seven Things The Holy Spirit Will Do in You Christ Embassy International
Do you need a miracle—that supernatural intervention of God in the natural affairs of men that transcends human reasoning and ability? Learn how to receive one in this captivating book as Pastor Chris shares vital steps you must take to release God's power on your behalf. Also discover how to ward off the devil's counter-attack and retain what God has given you!
Rhapsody of Realities Topical Compendium-Volume 5 Christ Embassy International
Be Equipped to Carry the Miraculous! Have you ever thought, I believe in healing. But the healing ministry is for—someone on a platform? Someone who is super spiritual? Someone who has got their act together? In this manual, ideal for small groups and classes, you will be effectively trained, equipped, and released into a lifestyle of walking in healing and miracles. It is available to everyone! By going through these sessions, you will learn how to: • Build a foundation for healing by knowing God's character—He is good • Overcome doubts and offense—Roadblocks to walking in healing power • Place Your faith in the only One good at the job of healing—Jesus • Be encouraged reading testimonies of God's power at work—In everyday life • Rely on God's grace to accomplish the supernatural—It's Him, not you Get ready to take your place as Jesus' hands and feet to bring God's supernatural healing power to a broken world.
The Heist Loveworld Publishing
Make Prayer Your First Response How do you approach prayer? Do you worry you are not doing it "correctly"? Do you see it as an obligation to check off a to-do list? Do you think of it as a last resort—a kind of supernatural SOS when you need help? In this Pray First video Bible study, Pastor Chris Hodges shares proven ways to help you spend time in conversation with God—and enjoy every minute of it. You will gain tools to bring joy back into your time with God, explore prayers in the Bible, learn about fasting (an often overlooked discipline), and discover biblically grounded methods for making prayer a priority and not an afterthought. Pray First is a revolutionary study for anyone who wants to experience a dynamic, intimate prayer life with God. This study guide includes: Individual access to six streaming video sessions A guide to best practices for leading a group Video notes and a comprehensive structure for group discussion time Personal study section with questions and biblical passages for reflection between sessions Sessions and video run times: The Five P's of Prayer (21:00) The Lord's Prayer (20:00) The Prayer of Jabez (16:00) Praying the Names of God (18:30) My Prayer for You (17:00) Prayer and Fasting (21:00) This study guide has everything you need for a full Bible study experience, including: The study guide itself—with discussion and reflection questions, video notes, and a leader's guide. An individual access code to stream all video sessions online. (You don't need to buy a DVD!) Streaming video access code included. Access code subject to expiration after 12/31/2028. Code may be redeemed only by the recipient of this package. Code may not be transferred or sold separately from this package. Internet connection required. Void where prohibited, taxed, or restricted by law. Additional offer details inside.
The Power of One Day's Time Destiny Image Publishers THE RHAPSODY OF REALITIES TOPICAL COMPENDIUM SERIES ARE COMPREHENSIVE REFERENCE MATERIALS THAT HAVE ENHANCED WORD BASED TRAINING AMONG CHRISTIANS. THESE SERIES ARE RENOWNED WITH INSPIRING ARTICLES THAT ARTICULATE THE GOSPEL OF OUR LORD JESUS, AND IT'S THEREFORE AN IMPORTANT TOOL FOR THE SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT OF GOD'S CHILDREN. THE RHAPSODY OF REALITIES TOPICAL COMPENDIUM VOLUME 5 IS THE NEWEST INSTALMENT IN THIS SERIES OF COMPILATIONS OF CHOICE ARTICLES BY REV. CHRIS OYAKHILOME. WHAT'S MORE, THE ARTICLES IN THIS VOLUME HAVE BEEN ORGANIZED UNDER EXCITING CHAPTERS SUCH AS: THE ACTS OF GOD - THE EFFICACY OF GOD'S WORD - THE LORDSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST - THE HOLY SPIRIT AND YOU - THE MINDSET OF THE JUST - THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION - THE GLORY - LIFE - THE AUTHORITY OF BELIEVERS - DIVINE BENEFITS THIS IS A SURE COMPLETE RESOURCE BOOK, THAT GUARANTEES YOUR PROFOUND WALK WITH THE LORD THROUGH FELLOWSHIP WITH HIS WORD.
Our Miracle Harperchristian Resources
Get ready to discover: •What Prophecy really is •The difference between the prophetic ministry and the gift of prophecy •How to
change circumstances through prophecy and so much more! Learn to speak forth rhema – God's specific Word to you, at a specific time, for a specific purpose – and control your destiny by the power of God made available to you through prophecy!
God's Voice-Activated Universe: : Change Your Words...Change Your World! HarperChristian Resources "Chris Gore is a powerfully anointed minister of healing. In his book, truth and testimony are blended in an exciting, entertaining, educating way." – Randy Clark, author of There is More and founder of Global Awakening Walking in God's healing power is easier than you imagined. Have you ever imagined, I believe God heals people. But healing ministry? That's for…someone on a platform? Someone who is super spiritual? Someone who has their act together? In Walking in Supernatural Healing Power, Chris Gore demystifies God's supernatural power, showing how you can be effectively trained, equipped, and activated into a lifestyle of walking in healing and miracles. Get ready to: Build a foundation for healing by knowing God's character—He is good Overcome doubts and offense—Roadblocks to walking in healing power Be encouraged by reading exciting testimonies of God's power at work—In everyday life Rely on God's grace to accomplish the supernatural—It's Him, not you How To Recieve A Miracle and Retain It LoveWorld Publishing When God created the heavens and the earth, He gave the heavens dominion over the earth. The intervention of the heavens on behalf of a person on earth is called grace. Grace is the power of the Holy Spirit intervening in the affairs of man on earth. Grace is the strongest force on earth. It qualifies a person to achieve what he cannot ordinarily achieve. While the primary purpose of a curse is to disqualify a person from achieving a particular goal, grace qualifies a person. Grace qualifies even an unqualified person. The intervention of the heavens on behalf of a person in the area of marriage is called the grace of marriage. When the grace of marriage is activated in your life, it will automatically remove every form of disappointment and delay in marriage from your life, and enable you to marry effortlessly. If you are married, the grace of marriage will help you experience peace in your marriage. And if you are separated, the grace of marriage will also help you reconcile with your spouse. In this book, Pastor Chris clearly shows how you can activate the grace of marriage in your life. Pastor Chris Ojigbani is the Apostle of Marriage. God commissioned him to liberate marriages through the preaching of the Word. He is the Senior Pastor of Covenant Singles and Married Ministries. He and his wife Pastor Uche, who is also involved in the ministry, live in Lagos, Nigeria. His television programme, Singles and Married with Pastor Chris Ojigbani, is aired on various television stations in many parts of the world. He also conducts interactive marriage seminars in different countries. How to Make Your Faith Work! LoveWorld Publishing God's dream is for you to come into full possession of His manifold blessings, and your mind is the vital instrument He's given you to appropriate this provision. This timely classic opens to you that realm of endless possibilities and helps you explore the unlimited potential of your mind. So get ready to make the right changes in the structure of your thinking and be that excellent personality. Put your mind-power to work and be all God wants you to be! There are no limits to what you can achieve, and absolutely no restrictions to how high you can propel yourself, when you put your mind-power to work. In "The Power of Your Mind," Pastor Chris reveals that the mind is a spiritual entity, and its greatest potentials can only be reached through the education of the human spirit with God's Word, which ultimately influences the mind. As you read, you'll discover essential truths on: · Renewing Your Mind: The Concept of Mind-Management · The Power of Thoughts · Pulling Down Strongholds · Dealing With Negative Thoughts And Emotions · Attitude—Your Mental Disposition · Meditation—Your Moment of Creation…and so much more.
Prophecy WaterBrook
In this fine exposé on the God-given rights of the Christian: "Your Rights In Christ", Pastor Chris Oyakhilome PhD, guides your thoughts in to the reality of God's plan for excellence in your life. This newly revised masterpiece expounds three principal rights you have in Christ, and how to utilize these rights for the glorious and beautiful life that God has brought you into.
Now That You Are Born AgainXulon Press
Some say there were two thieves crucified on Golgotha, but I believe there were Three . "Gutsy. Unexpected. Refreshing. Chris Durso explains the story of saving Grace in a language that both the world and the Church, sinners and so-called saints, can understand. The Heist walks us down the road with the prodigal son, inviting us to come home to the One who has a grace-party
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waiting. Fresh and accessible, I believe this book will help many live fully and freely in Jesus." —Louie Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church, founder of Passion Conferences, author of Goliath Must Fall In the ultimate act of sacrifice, Jesus robbed the Enemy of every claim he ever had on our lives. He stole all our shame and guilt, and gave us back our lives so that we could live in true freedom. The real scandal of Jesus' work on the cross is found not only in what it gives but also in what it steals. The Grace of God robs the enemy of his ability to shame us. It robs death of its sting. And it robs sin of its power to destroy. We've all felt the weight of shame and brokenness. Like the prodigal son, we've pursued our own path only to find ourselves far from home and out of options. We long for a fresh start, but what we need most is the ability to see ourselves through God's eyes of grace. New York City pastor Chris Durso believes grace is the central message of all Scripture. While there have been some daring heists and cunning capers throughout history, this book is about the greatest heist the world has ever seen…a daring raid where God's son took back what the enemy had stolen, freeing us from the power of shame, sin, and Satan. Through a fresh take on the parable of the prodigal son, and the fascinating account of a true modern day diamond heist, The Heist offers a bold invitation into God's boundless grace.
Join This Chariot LoveWorld Publishing
"Now that you're born again, WHAT NEXT?" That's the big question, and this book gives clear and simple answers In it, bestselling author and teacher, Chris Oyakhilome, reveals vital truths fundamental to the Christian faith, truths upon which you can build a strong and vibrant life in Christ. "Now That You Are Born Again" unveils insightful revelations that will point the new Christian in the right direction and nurture him in his new life in Christ.
Pray First Christ Embassy International
In the midst of a world that seems, sometimes, to be spinning outof control, a world where we witness unspeakable acts of evil on our TV news, a world full of discord, hatred, and great pain, it is easy to get discouraged and feel hopeless. It is a fair question to ask, "Is there hope in the midst of a world like ours?" In this book, The Power of One Day's Time, Pastor Chris Slosser answers a resounding yes to this question. In these pages, Pastor Chris shares of numerous biblical characters who were in the midst of
great darkness, pain, and hardship like so many of us today, who had a one-day's-time encounter with the Living Lord, Jesus Christ. Many of these characters woke up to what they thought was going to be another horrible, mundane day in the midst of a horrible, mundane life, and then God showed up, and everything changed forever. The good news is that this same Savior is still in the life-changing, eternity-changing business, and he has come to seek and save what is lost (Luke 19:10). At any moment, in one day's time, this same Savior may come on the scene in your life as well and change the whole trajectory of your life, now and always, and that is reason for great and sure hope. Jesus Christ was a miraculous Savior in Bible times, and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). At any given moment, Jesus Christ may very well have a miracle with your name written all over it.
The Power of Your MindThomas Nelson
In Pray First, bestselling author and pastor Chris Hodges walks participants through the fundamentals of prayer and the benefits that can be obtained by having a time of daily interaction with God. He also explores several models of prayer found in Scripture and discusses the power of prayer and fasting. Back to Sender LoveWorld Publishing Put your mind-power to work and be all God wants you to
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be!There are no limits to what you can achieve, and absolutely no restrictions to how high you can propel yourself, when you put your mind-power to work.In "The Power of Your Mind," Pastor Chris reveals that the mind is a spiritual entity, and its greatest potentials can only be reached through the education of the human spirit with God's Word, which ultimately influences the mind. As you read, you'll discover essential truths on: * Renewing Your Mind: The Concept of Mind-Management* The Power of Thoughts* Pulling Down Strongholds * Dealing With Negative Thoughts And Emotions* Attitude-Your Mental Disposition* Meditation-Your Moment of Creation...and so much more.God's dream is for you to come into full possession of His manifold blessings, and your mind is the vital instrument He's given you to appropriate this provision. This timely classic opens to you that realm of endless possibilities and helps you explore the unlimited potential of your mind. So get ready to make the right changes in the structure of your thinking and be that excellent personality God planned for you to be
Prophecy Christ Embassy International In this book, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome teaches you the "what," "how" and "why" of speaking in other tongues, and reveals the immense benefits it holds for you as a New Testament believer in Jesus Christ. You will also learn about Tongues, Interpretation of
Pastor Chris The Power Of The Tongues tongues, and Prophecy The difference between Praying in Your Understanding and Praying in Tongues
The Oil and the Mantle Christian Faith Publishing, Inc. I Can Do All Things
The Wonderful Name of Jesus LoveWorld Publishing The yoke of barrenness destroyed by the power of the risen Lord. God is still in the business of demonstrating his miracle working power.
Know the Gospel Live the Gospel LoveWorld Publishing We've all gone through times in our lives when we feel like we need a fresh breeze to breathe new life into us. But what is that energy-giving, life-breathing force that inspires and empowers us? How do we put the wind in our sails again, so we can get unstuck, reset our compass, and redirect our course? In Fresh Air, New York Times bestselling author Chris Hodges reveals how breath—the breath of God—is the essence of life as it's meant to be. Fueled by the breath of God, we are not only refreshed in spirit ourselves; we have the power to create a life-giving environment of freedom and joyful purpose around us. Bold and encouraging, Fresh Air offers "breathing lessons" for those who long for a cool breeze to resuscitate their spirit, bring them closer to God, and make them enthusiastic, contagious life-breathers to those around them.
2021-08-25
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WORK IN PROGRESS FOR DISCUSSION ONLY BY WISDOM AND APOCALYPTICISM GROUP PLEASE DO NOT CITE OUTSIDE THIS GROUP. © Claudia V. Camp
"All This is the Book of the Covenant of the Most High God": Orality, Literacy and Textual Authority in the Work of Ben Sira
Claudia V. Camp Texas Christian University
Ben Sira stands, if not at a crossroad, then at hard bend in the road to a biblical canon. While he has no singularly causal role in the process, his book, I believe, provides a denser coding of important developments in it than we have heretofore recognized. Preceding him we speak of an increasingly written, increasingly authoritative, increasingly closed set of religious traditions. With and after him we speak, if only in hindsight, of more or less open-ended interpretive traditions—whether the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Oral cum Written-Oral Torah, the Pseudepigrapha, the New Testament. 1 These traditions have or had their own various forms of authority, but mainly, and sometimes only, insofar as they extend or comment on that consolidated and finally fully closed body of written work we now call Tanak, to which we ascribe the designation "canon." 2 The question I am interested in is how we got to "canon." My question is not so much a literary-historical one—in the sense of hypothesizing developments regarding oral traditions, early writings, and redactions—as it is a socio-cultural one. What I would like to understand better is how written texts gain authoritative status and, in particular, how they do this in a largely oral culture. Thus, while part of my agenda involves attention to processes of canon-formation as such, a wider purview in studies of orality and literacy is also necessary.
In the course of this research I came, hardly by chance, given the quantity and quality of his contributions, to Jack Goody. Reading his most recent book, The Power of Written Tradition (2000), I was repeatedly struck by the resonance of his broad observations about orality and literacy with what I encounter in Ben Sira's book, especially when considered in light of his cultural context. Goody 's work reinforces certain emerging scholarly views on these issues in the second century BCE while furthering the discussion on other questions. In this essay I shall try simply to set out these connections on a point-by-point basis. All page references are from this book, unless otherwise noted.
1. Literacy, power, and the scribes
Writing endows with power those who have it, whether the power that literate cultures have historically achieved over nonliterate ones or, more to the point here, the power that literate
1 David Carr (2001) cites the fact that Ben Sira, while promoting a variety of writings, "talks exclusively of the Torah as holy Scripture" as one piece of evidence that "a broad canon had not yet achieved enduring recognition by this point.
2 I realize that my use of the term "canon" already presupposes a commonly understood definition of the term, whereas there is in fact currently much debate on the matter, especially in regards to how "closed" a body of literature must be in order to qualify for the designation (see Chapman). I shall refer to elements of that debate below, but for will for the most part in this paper use the term for a body of authoritative literature that, while not necessarily fully closed, is moving in that direction, though perhaps more so for some groups (like the Jerusalem priesthood) than for others (like the denizens of Qumran; cf. Vanderkam 1998: 401).
groups within a society have over nonliterates. But "the dominated, too, may make use of this way of grappling with their social environment" (1). Needing historical specification are the exact ways this intersection of literacy and power operated in the social world of Ben Sira. There are two aspects to the dynamics at work here.
One lies in the always religiously coded world of politics. Jewish religious literature of the second century bears witness to a series of conflicts over legitimate priesthood related to claims of proper lineage, choice of the proper cultic site, choice of the proper calendar, and, of course, alliances with (or rejections thereof, or even war against) the foreign colonizers. Underlying and exacerbating specific points of political tension was the broader, on-going problem of assimilation and resistance to Hellenistic culture and language that came with the increasing and increasingly literate class of "landowners, traders, and investors" (Davies 1998: 65) in this period. 3 Religious writing could serve at times a political purpose, whether Ben Sira's ideological support of the Jerusalem priesthood in his hymn to the fathers or Qumran's possibly oppositional elevation of the Teacher of Righteousness (REF?; cf. Vanderkam 1998: 387). But political writing requires an audience to make a difference. From the proliferation of writing at Qumran we might infer the high degree of literacy, and thus the upper class demographics, of those who went there. (George Brooke has suggested that copies of Scripture, for example, were often brought to the desert enclave rather than written there; it was, in other words, literate, book-owning people who came [Cambridge ISBL, 2003].) To the question of who read or heard Ben Sira's hymn we shall return below.
The second aspect of the dynamics of power and literacy has to do with social roles, especially that of the scribes in relation to priests. There has been important work done now on scribes and priests in the Second Temple period, by Horsley, Tiller, and Wright, among others. Focus on scribes is crucial because, in this context, if writing is happening, scribes are, for the most part, doing it. And scribes (at least those who are producing significant bodies of literature) have a particular relation to power. On the one hand they are closely associated with the ruling classes who need, and pay for, their talents. On the other, they are beholden to, and dependent upon, those in power for precisely this reason. The scribe, as Ben Sira notes, requires leisure (38:24), and for this someone must pay. His self-presentation does not fit exactly with the activities of the scribe in Hellenistic Alexandria, as described by Philip Davies (1998:29), but moves in that direction. They were "students of literature and science. As well as studying, they apparently taught; but most of all they wrote: they were the heirs of the ancient Near Eastern scribes, but without the administrative responsibilities." Ben Sira did not stand apart from interaction with the mighty, and speaks as though he has had diplomatic and administrative experience (37:16-26; 38:32-39:4), as well as teaching. Yet it is opportunity for study, resulting in the "pouring forth" of the scribe's own wisdom, that he sees as the culmination of his role. And the expectation that this wisdom will endure for eternity suggests the importance of its materialization in writing. More than this, even, such endurance presumes some degree of canonization, if we take that term in the sense proposed by Jon Berquist (2001) of the sustained reproduction of a work.
As Tiller, Horsley, and Davies have all pointed out, while the scribes owe some degree of allegiance to the powerful, perhaps even producing for them justifying ideologies (in Ben Sira's case support for the Jerusalem priesthood embodied in Simeon), they can also develop a certain
3 Horsley and Tiller ("Sociology") resist the common assumption of frenetic and pervasive secular mercantile activity in Judah in the Hellenistic period as inconsistent with Ben Sira's depiction of a monolithic temple state. While this cautionary note is well taken, I think that the limited and likely politically idealized (so Tiller, "Politics") sociological window provided by this book does not preclude new economic developments as a result of 150 years of Hellenistic rule, and the possible concomitant increase in at least a functional literacy in that still small part of the population involved with such developments. What seems to be an explosion of Jewish literature in the latter part of the Hellenistic period suggests at the very least that books have become important.
sense of professional independence, generating an ideological self-justification to which Sirach also bears witness. In this case the justification comes in part from the scribe's relationship to an already (at least to some, and to some degree) authoritative written tradition--"the study of the law of the Most High" (38:34)—but not only from this. Ben Sira is concerned with traditions of all kinds (the wisdom of the ancients, prophecies, the sayings of the famous, subtle and obscure parables, proverbs with hidden meanings, 39:1-3). One imagines that these traditions are received and taught in both written and oral forms, as his own work is. Materially speaking, Goody observes that manuscript cultures "encouraged the continuing importance of the spoken version of the written word, of reading aloud and recitation" (104-05). Thus, essential means and modes of the scribe's authority lie in his ability both to read and write and to play the proper role in the interface of what is written and what is spoken. Among other things, then, the scribe mediates orality and literacy.
2. Restricted literacy
Goody and Watt (1957 REF; summarized in Goody 2000: 4) introduce the notion of "restricted literacy," which is relevant to Ben Sira in several ways. It may imply the use of literacy in restricted rather than general contexts (for example, in religious settings) and/or its restriction "to specific social groups or individuals." Although neither of these restrictions is absolute in Ben Sira's case, our understanding of the relationship of literacy and power can be elaborated by consideration of the various constraints on the use of literacy.
a. Literacy and social class
Horsley and Tiller detail the textual evidence for the claim that Ben Sira's role as an educator was devoted to "scribes in training" and argue that his teachings on wealth preclude the possibility that the audience for his instruction would have included members of the aristocratic elite. On the other hand, Maier (1995), for example, argues in the case of Proverbs that its scribal tradents also taught the sons of the aristocracy, whose fathers had an interest in instilling status quo values in their heirs. For all his harsh words against the meanspirited wealthy, Ben Sira certainly represents a stable society in which a man who is both rich and good could maximize his material well-being and find spiritual satisfaction as well. In particular, Ben Sira's concern for honor and shame, with its basis in the patriarchal family household, has a potentially wider audience than student scribes. Horsley and Tiller make strong argument that Ben Sira advocates a monolithic temple state, with the production of wealth ultimately under the control of the high priest and all social offices held by members of the priesthood. And surely this is Ben Sira's ideal. But does it represent the social actuality? I'm inclined to leave a bit more open the question of the political-economic-religious relationship at this time and, with it, the possibility of a wider audience for Ben Sira's instruction.
But "wider" remains, of course a relative term, with class issues still dramatically at stake. While few in the agricultural peasant population would have learned at most anything more than rudimentary reading and or writing skills, one wonders what the demographic pool for the scribes themselves might have been. Might a scribe who is dependent on others for his income, as Ben Sira seems to have been, have come from something less than privilege, or been a younger son with minimal inheritance? It is possible that by this time the scribal profession in Judah was typically passed on from father to son; on the other hand, matters of class may have been at work for scribes not simply as a condition of their profession but also of their birth.
b. Literacy and the temple
Writing was obviously used for more than religious purposes. Contracts, political communications, annals, economic records, as well as public monumental writing (which often has, to be sure, a religious character) are all in evidence in the ancient Near East. On the other hand, ancient Jewish literature has come down having been at least contextualized as religious. This is not to say it all started out that way (as, e.g., David Gunn's proposal regarding certain
biblical narratives as "serious entertainment" and Philip Davies discussion of "classics" and canon indicate [REF]). Yet the important narratives were ultimately preserved for the ages embedded in a religious framework. Davies argues that canons begin with the classification and storage of scrolls, usually either in temples or palaces, although, with increasing literacy, sometimes also in private homes. Literature that is read and re-copied over the years becomes de facto classic and, when grouped with literature of like sorts (e.g., collections of psalms or proverbs onto a single scroll or narratives on several related scrolls), these scrolls become "canons" in the general sense of that term (thus, in Davies' formulation, the Hebrew Bible represents a collection of once smaller canons). But these literary bits and pieces—even the more "religious" of them, and not all are—do not in themselves constitute the literature of national identity that the "Scriptures" would become. They required the addition of "more ambitious, complex structures" that are mostly narrative in character (Davies 2002: 45). Who, then, provided these structures and how did these writers come to have enough clout to get their scrolls prominently stored, read, and copied? The answer, at least in the post-exilic period, must be scribes closely associated with the temple.
This line of thought complicates, though it does not entirely contradict, an argument that has recently become common in Second Temple studies, namely, that the Torah, or some document like it, was one of the means by which the Persian empire exercised colonial control. 4 The assumption here is that a law book (Ezra's?) was introduced into colonized Yehud that both authorized the local control of a certain priestly faction amenable to Persian domination and provided a means of social order because of popular acceptance of the book's origin with God or, at least, hoary tradition. I would hardly discount the connection of this written tradition with political considerations, but I suspect it is more complicated than this. For a book that would authorize the temple leadership must needs first get to the temple. Particularly in an oral culture (but perhaps not only there) a book has no inherent authority, but requires some source of legitimation before it can do any legitimating.
Again we face the question not only of authorship, which is no doubt scribal, but also of audience, for different groups may demand different forms of legitimation. From the perspective of a wider lay audience with a large indigenous component, this may mean that what gets narratized as Ezra's law book brought from Persia would have had to represent (or be perceived to represent) older and local traditions (Knoppers). Alternatively, Horsley ("Origins") proposes that presentation of the document in the tradition of "found books" (like the "original" revelation of the law to Moses or its "re-discovery" in the temple under Josiah) would have served an authorizing function. But such a legend would seem to work best in retrospect rather than in the immediate circumstance. Davies assumes that the notion of a written canon (as opposed to an oral one) had little relevance for the illiterate (1998:38). Yet "illiterate" would mean almost everyone in Judah in the Persian period, except for the scribes. The depiction in Nehemiah of words being declaimed authoritatively from a written text would seem to be a fantasy of the scribes, likely retrojected from a later time. Yet it is a fantasy of general rather than restricted appropriation of the authority of the book. It is not difficult, in other words, to locate the source of the fantasy, but to whom is it addressed? At any rate, considerations of orality and literacy need to be added to the colonialist analysis of the story of Ezra and the law book. As has now been widely recognized, this biblical account is not historically transparent; likewise, our reconstruction of its connection of writing to power needs to take account of the fact that the presence of a book, in and of itself, even apart from ambiguities in its content, can mean different things to different people.
c. Literacy, languages, synagogues, and schools
Goody discusses the connection of restricted literacy, the preservation of "dead" (that is to say, only written) languages, and religion in contexts where
4 See already the several essays in Watts, ed., that question this view.
[l]earners have to acquire another language (often a dead one) before they can add the skills of reading and writing, which obviously requires more time and effort than learning to read in the vernacular. Such demands often result from the close connection between literacy and religion, the aim of educators being to make accessible sacred texts written in the classical language . . . (2000:4)
There is, then, an intellectual specialization required to work with such texts, which are themselves marked out as special. This specialness of the text in turn adds authority—not to mention new job opportunities—to those who tend it.
Hierarchical or scholarly divergences of language usage are not unknown in oral societies, but writing adds a new dimension by creating whole "dead" languages that refuse to die (in oral societies they are truly dead) and giving rise to a new axis of hierarchical (class) differentiation based on knowledge of texts. Moreover, with the accumulation of texts over time, the discrepancy between the language of ancient texts and current written practice grows, bringing with it the need for "scholarship" if these earlier texts are still to remain part of the contemporary repertoire (20-21).
Such considerations become important for our present purposes to the degree that the reading and production of literature in Hebrew was becoming a specialist's art in the context of an Aramaic vernacular. The shift in oral usage from Hebrew to Aramaic was certainly well underway by Ben Sira's day, but it is not clear whether Hebrew was yet approaching the status of "dead language." Fitzmyer (1970 REF), for example, argues that, by the first century CE, Aramaic had become the most common spoken language in Palestine, but that pockets of Hebrew usage remained, as indicated, e.g., by some later Qumran texts. Others suggest that socalled Mishnaic Hebrew inscribes an oral dialect but that Hebrew finally reached "dead language" status by around 200 CE (Alexander 1999: 75; DJBP 280). But the linguistic reality 400 years earlier was surely complex, with both written and spoken forms of both Hebrew and Aramaic (not to mention Greek) to take into account (see Schaper 1999 on Hebrew in the Persian period and Campbell 1999 on Hebrew at Qumran). The returned exiles, generally members of the upper classes already familiar with Aramaic as a diplomatic language, had brought back with them from Babylon its use for day-to-day affairs as well (Schaper 1999:16). For the lower classes, however, who had remained in Judah "the situation was utterly different." "The vernacular of the Judaean people in the Persian period . . . had some Aramaic admixtures but was essentially Hebrew. . . . Whereas Aramaic was used both in speaking and in writing, contemporary Hebrew [that is, "an older form of Mishnaic Hebrew"] seems to have existed only as the spoken vernacular of the lower classes" (17).
Now well into the Hellenistic period, Ben Sira writes in Late Biblical Hebrew. With the temporary nationalistic resurgence of spoken Hebrew under the Hasmoneans yet to come, however (see van Henten 1999 on the patriotic-political implications of the references to an ancestral language in 2 Maccabees), this may not have been his preferred spoken language (or it may have been the specialized language of instruction [Davies, private communication]). While it may not be the case that the language of the Bible was incomprehensible to the majority of people at this time (like Latin to the medieval serf), classical Hebrew was not the dialect of the uneducated common person. To the extent that Aramaic had filtered down from the elite, even "Late Biblical" Hebrew may have become "foreign" to many. Even "literacy" would not necessarily have entailed deep familiarity with classical Hebrew, as Aramaic would have been the most useful language to learn to read and write for the elite, who likely by that time also spoke it as their public if not exclusive language. In sum, while the language situation is not entirely clear for the second century BCE, and undoubtedly mixed, classical Hebrew belonged to the religious specialists and perhaps also, though secondarily, to the sons of the elite whom they may have taught.
This general question about the relationship of the vernacular to the language of Ben Sira's texts plays out in more institutionally specific terms if one considers the circumstances in which people would have encountered such authoritative writings. We confront here the questions of the synagogue and the school. When did the synagogue emerge, and what practices did it house? Was it a site of worship in Ben Sira's day, and did that worship include the reading of scripture, that is, an oral encounter with the text? If so, did listeners understand what they heard? Was the synagogue at this time a place of scripture study involving, that is, an encounter in reading? If so, who learned to read—first, of course, spending the time to learn another dialect or language—and in what contexts? Whatever degree of formality we imagine for Ben Sira's bet midrash, he is clearly a teacher with strong pedagogical and ideological concerns that center around the production and reproduction of books. He works at a time when the classical language, and thus the classics themselves, are in danger of falling into disuse, under the influence not only of Aramaic but also of Greek. One does not have to see this sage as an enemy of Greek culture (as DiLella long ago proposed) to imagine his concern for the potential loss of the ancestral heritage. A question lingers, however, as to his own interests in sharing access to this written heritage relatively narrowly (thus reserving its authority-granting potential to his scribal coterie) or relatively widely (thus expanding scribal influence over a conservative upper class audience who might also foot the bills).
d. Oral culture and iconic text
There is another way provided by orality/literacy theories for understanding the authority of a written text in a largely oral culture that is also related to restricted literacy. Susan Niditch (1996; also Horsley; Smith 1998:298) discusses the iconic nature of public monumental writing whose function was as "symbolic memorials" rather than historical records as such. Jon Berquist (SBL 2001) offers as an example the Behistun inscription which, despite being written in three languages, was not located where it could be read. Its symbolic communication of power was as effective for people who could not read as for those who could. But the same seems true in certain cases at least of writing done on scrolls. Niditch also discusses the biblical evidence for belief in the magical effects of written texts, while Horsley makes the larger claim that the scrolls as such were regarded as magical objects, at least early in the Second Temple period, as the sense of "holy scripture" was just emerging. Indeed Berquist proposes that "canonical writing is best understood as a form of monumental writing." While I think Horsley overstates his case for a development from text-as-icon to text-as-object-of-study during this period, the reverence shown to "the word [notably singular] of God" even in highly literate culture today suggests he is not wrong to imagine its iconic function in the ancient world (see also Goodman, JTS 41).
3. Cognition, calendars, and canons
One of the hotly debated questions within orality and literacy studies is the degree to which literacy effects cognitive changes in persons who acquire it (see Street REF and Goody). It is hard to gainsay, however, that writing at least increases certain capacities of the human mind, especially in terms of organization of larger quantities of data and memory storage. Literacy provides a cognitive tool, a technology, of the intellect (Goody; Ong REF).
So when I use the phrase "technology of the intellect" about writing, I am thinking mainly not about the primary level of physical instrumentation but about the way that writing affects the cognitive or intellectual operations, which I take in a wide sense as relating to the understanding of the world in which we live, especially the general methods we use for this (144).
Goody envisions three levels of technology: the script and writing materials themselves; the material products of these scripts and the storage and retrieval facilities to keep and use them; and "the product of the interaction between the human mind and the written word, which is external to the actor in a way spoken language is not. Once again the difference is a matter of degree, but with writing the modus operandi of the human intellect is changed by this internalexternal interaction" (145). "The existence of new cognitive tools enables people to undertake new cognitive tasks" (82).
Now writing itself is hardly a new cognitive tool in Ben Sira's context, yet culturally he lives in a liminal zone, a writer in an oral culture. While the instructions that comprise the first part of his book are classic examples of oral forms become written (see Niditch REF), I would like to propose that his poem in praise of the ancestors shows evidence of a new development, the constituting and thus the deployment of writing in a different mode. Here we find a canonconsciousness and, with it, the possibility of a new technology subsidiary to writing itself. With George Aichele, but with somewhat different emphases (REF explain), I would like to consider the idea of canon, as a technology.
In the first instance, canon utilizes directly the tendencies inherent in writing toward list making. "Lists and tables of a less semantically complex kind were the currency of many early written civilizations" (2000, 84; cf. The Domestication of the Savage Mind, 1977). They may be used for the solely practical purpose of recording economic transactions. But conceptual development also occurs as writing abets the organization of time and thought through the making of lists and tables. Lists of laws are become understood as codes and objectified as Law (see Bernard Jackson, Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law; BS 1199.L3/J35). Lists of Proverbs produce reflection on and eventually the personification of Wisdom. Importantly for our purposes, lists of books come to be perceived as having a self-evident stature.
Goody also points to the connection of literacy with the use of calendars (78-80). The Hebrew Bible shows the use of the lunar cycle to mark ritual time (xx:xx), a form of temporal reckoning that Ben Sira also advocates (43:6-8). Benjamin Wright (1997: 204-208; 2002) argues that this reference in Sirach is not innocent, but expresses conflict with the circle that produced the Enoch literature and which advocated a solar calendar. This conflict over time-keeping corresponds to one over canon: the Enoch people asserted their possession of law that was given through a direct heavenly revelation from God to Enoch and that therefore was not mediated by Moses (Nickelsberg). Again on analogy with Goody's observations about new cognitive tools producing new cognitive tasks, we might wonder whether a new cognitive form, namely written canon, is producing new political conflicts. The connection of canon and calendar in this ideological struggle points to a developing technology of organization associated with writing, calendar marking out one sort of time, narrative another. Written lists and tables, as well as narratives, allow more to be mentally held and organized at one time, thus changing and managing the nature of time itself. No wonder the symbolic representation of time itself—in the form of calendars, with all their implications of cosmic control and their effects of ritual control—becomes an ideological battleground just as the question of canon also emerges.
4. Writing and the fixity of tradition
Important for understanding the development of a written canon in an oral culture is the kind of fixity that writing creates. "Fixity," especially as it is related to "closure," has been an important issue in the scholarly discussion about the formation of the biblical canon. Debates about how "early" or "late" one is willing to date the presence of a Hebrew canon often ride implicitly on the degree to which one's definition of canon assumes closure (Chapman). If we back up for a minute from the canon question as such and consider writing more generally, we find that there is from the outset a relative immutability to written texts that does not exist for oral traditions, no matter how sacred the latter are taken to be.
Goody's story of part of his own on-the-job training as an anthropologist is instructive in this regard. He relates his early efforts to record "the" Bagre myth of the Lo Dagaa of northern Ghana and his surprise at the differences from one recitation to another—even of what he thought to be its key elements and major structural features—and in spite of the unanimous insistence by his informants that all recitations are "one" (116-18, 125-27). Goody attributes his
error, however, not only to indigenous belief, but also to "then-current ideas about traditional societies" which made it "difficult not to think the recitation was passed down in a relatively unchanged form from generation to generation" (125). Biblical scholars might note that "thencurrent" to this anthropologist means the 1950s. I'm not sure that we yet have given up this notion when it comes to the Bible. We do not have the advantage, of course, that anthropologists had with the advent of the portable tape recorder and modern transport, which finally allowed them to obtain many exact recordings of the myth, as opposed to the earlier constraint of transcription by hand of individual performances. 5 The epilogue to Goody's story is also informative with respect to writing and fixity in relation to the development of canons.
Looked at in a long-range perspective, the definitive shift to literate forms puts an end to the creative development of particular long oral recitations (though it opens up other possibilities). Even in mixed situations, problems arise. The Bagre that I first recorded and published has for at least some of the schooled population become the authorized version; the text, as opposed to the utterance, is orthodox. And it is authoritative not only because it was written but because it was written earlier and taken down from ancestral figures now departed. As such, it has become a standard version in a way no oral version could be. (105)
To a certain extent, then, the impetus toward investing authority in writing may be present in the fact of writing itself, at least in certain circumstances. Again the materiality of the text comes into play: speakers die, but texts endure, connecting the present to the past through a tangible form. Caution is necessary when drawing this parallel, however. For the situation of a modern anthropologist, with his or her new communication technology, suddenly arriving in a traditional, nonliterate society, is not exactly the same as the long-term, but specialized presence of writing in an ancient society where literacy is the provenance of an elite few. The more direct lesson may be rather one of fixity than of authority. "[T]he written version of an oral recitation transforms one of many possibilities into a fixed text. That fixed text then has to be taken into account in future performances or exegesis" (104).
There are two implications of this statement, at least for those who read. One is the stability of the text; the other is the concomitant need to interpret it. Theorists of orality and literacy have sometimes appealed to the "evanescence" of the spoken word (Luria, Ong, Botha). While such a formulation does not do justice to other ways in which oral discourse weaves both immediate and enduring effect into the social fabric, there is, nonetheless, a marked difference in the possibility for verification between what somebody just said (much less, is said to have said long ago) and what is written. This does not mean writing cannot be changed; it does mean that it can only be changed in a significant way by intention. Its meaning or application can be manipulated in any number of ways, but its power lies in part in its objective immutability. A written source can be checked.
But if sources can be checked, and are important enough to be, they will also have to be interpreted. It may be that the development of an interpretive tradition around a body of literature is the surest sign of its status as canon and, indeed, of the degree to which that canon has become closed. J. Z. Smith states this inversely by his observation that the "formal requirement of closure"
generates a corollary. Where there is a canon, it is possible to predict the necessary occurrence of a hermeneute . . . whose task it is continually to extend the domain of the closed canon over everything that is known or everything that exists without altering the canon in the process. (citing p. 48 of his 1979 book, Imagining Religion)
5 Note that Parry was using a recording device earlier than this.
But we are still left with further work to do on the question of how a text attains that canonical status (even using the word more loosely than Smith does) in the first place. I would like to examine the possibility that ritual plays a role in this process.
5. Canon, ritual, and authority
In Goody's experience there was an accidental quality to the transformation of oral tradition into writing. The early anthropologist recorded the version of the myth he or she happened to hear (105). The situation of the Bible is certainly more complicated. What is preserved there may be to some extent the result of historical accident, 6 but also at least equally the result of various theological, ideological, and political motivations. But the promulgation via writing of a given view of deity or social order, or the political justification of a regime, does require that the writing be read in a context where it can perform its social-functional task and where in fact it might receive this constructive capacity in the first place.
Texts may contain instructions for the proper conduct of rituals (though it is notable that the Bible typically details only the disposition of the grain or blood and body parts of the sacrificial animal). They may contain words that must be recited properly, even exactly, if a ritual is to be effective, as with magical incantations (or modern high church liturgies). Proper recitation involves verbatim memorization, which Goody argues becomes even more important with literacy than it is in strictly oral contexts, precisely because correctness can be checked (33). The need for ritual correctness is one important reason why houses of learning are often attached to temples, even if this is not their only context in a given culture. The use of writing as the basis for proper ritual may be considered, then, one of the sources of its authority in a largely oral culture, if only among the priests and temple scribes.
Beyond this, however, lies also the possibility of actual ritual reading of texts, a process that enhances their iconic status whether or not the content is understood. J. Z. Smith makes the point by the example of medieval single-volume manuscript scriptures, the majority of which "contained either the Gospels and Psalter, or were in the form of evangelaries and epistolaries which contained only those portions of scripture that were read aloud. . . . These texts . . . constituted the Bible for the vast majority of European layfolk, even if they could not understand the Latin and attended the 'liturgy of the Word' irregularly" (307). Smith connects this example to Kendall W. Folkert's distinction between two modes of canon, based on their "vectoring," that is, "the means or mode by which something is carried" (Smith 301).
Texts of the Canon I variety are "carried by some other form of religious activity" . . . By contrast, Canon II is its own "vector," or, more precisely, a "vector of religious authority." In texts of the Canon I type it is the employment that is definitive, more so than its boundaries. Indeed, from a functional viewpoint, the texts can be interchangeable. Texts understood as Canon II are "viewed as independently valid and powerful, and as such, as being absolutely closed and complete." Furthermore, "each form can and does occur within a single religious tradition, the two even existing simultaneously at times. . . ." (Folkert 1989: 172-73, cited in Smith 1999: 301)
The distinction is further developed by John E. Cort in terms of authority: "Canon I 'changes with time and place, and authority flows from the accumulated tradition into the texts"; Canon II 'is (more or less) fixed and closed, and authority is conveyed or vectored via the texts'" (Cort 1992, cited by Smith 1999: 303).
Even if one wishes to qualify Smith's view (with Folkert) that this means "there are no scriptural canons, in the sense of Canon II" before the Reformation (303), it seems clear that Ben Sira's "Bible" is a canon in process, or a Canon I, insofar as it is not yet a closed list. Indeed, I would argue that Ben Sira's text shows it sitting astride this line. While I do not think we have
6 Though contrast Haran (REF).
the tripartite canon that some have seen here, the contents of the poem in praise of the ancestors indicates awareness of the Torah and the Prophets at least nominally as we know them. On the other hand, the scribe's claim of inspiration for his own writing suggests his ambition to "make the list" himself. What then might we say about the need of these texts for "vectoring" or authorization from other religious forms? Important in this regard is Ben Sira's connection of the narrative from the Law and the Prophets with the cultic ceremony led by Simeon.
6. Narrative and ritual
Writing, asserts Goody, allows one to conquer time by means of organizing it. Time and writing come together in a special way in narrative, with its "insistent emphasis on time. . . . For narrative has a very special relationship to time, being located at a specific conjunction in time and space, and unwinding in the framework of time" (63). Sirach further connects narrative with ritual experience in the poem in praise of the ancestors, where a rehearsal of the great heroes of Israel's past culminates in an epiphany of the high priest Simeon in the Jerusalem temple.
Ben Sira's articulation of narrative time and space does not by any means compare to that of the eighteenth century novels which set the standard for what Goody means by "narrative" in the words just quoted (and which he associates with the domestication of time wrought by the modern clock), nor even to an ancient example like the epic of Gilgamesh. I have called attention elsewhere to the curious lack of attention to space in Ben Sira's rehearsal of the ancestors' story, coupled with his strong sense of temple/house space in his own present time (Camp 2002: xx). Likewise, there is little specification of time in this account, yet, on the other hand, a manifestation of eternity: from the beginning (or at least from Enoch, or Noah) until "now," as figured in the succession of illustrious personages ending with Simeon in his ritual glory. This sort of extended account reaching sequentially back to ancient times is a hallmark of literacy in Goody's view. It stands in contrast to an oral form like the genealogy (which it in one sense resembles: Simeon could be seen as "son" to a succession of fathers) precisely in its spatial vacuum. As studies of biblical and other genealogies have shown, "the oral genealogy is more often a statement about space (especially social space) than one about time, since among other things it often represents the contemporary, or near-contemporary, distribution of living groups as much as the relations between dead individuals" (81; cf. Numbers/Joshua xx; Ezra xx). The praise to the fathers also contrasts with oral forms generally, which, according to Goody, in fully nonliterate cultures rarely include extended narrative with strong narrative structure (73).
That Ben Sira's poem is not simply written, but also literate, should come as no surprise, given that its source(s?) is/are presumably already part of such a tradition. Yet the poem's culmination in the ritual moment of priestly glorification also suggests the possibility of its oral recitation in that context. What are the dynamics of authority transfer here? Is an already authoritative written text being used to legitimate this high priest, or is the authority that flows from the cult helping to legitimate the text itself? As "genealogy" the text seems to legitimize or glorify Simeon by connecting him with the past. Yet the elevated description of his ritual appearance also has a self-authorizing quality to it (indeed, interpreters often regard it as originally a separate poem) that shines its light on the narrative that precedes it: he is not only the current moment in the heroic sequence, but its culmination. In sense the ritual experience is the vector of authority for the narrative drawn from the Torah and the Prophets. But we need to consider more carefully the nature of the narrative text itself, which is dual: it is most immediately Ben Sira's own text, a hymnic poem that in effect summarizes Torah and Prophets, but which in so doing makes present in itself those very writings. If this poem was in fact read in ritual, then its own authority is being vectored along with that of its sources.
7. Narrative and history
Goody's discussion of the connection of narrative and time raises the issue of history, or the sense a culture has and expresses of history, as it relates to orality and literacy.
The relative absence of history of and within oral cultures is not at all a matter of their "childlike" nature. It is rather a question of a lack of means. . . . [O]ne of the first "scholarly" activities of newly literate groups in contemporary Africa is to write their own "histories." On the one hand, this activity is undoubtedly promoted by contact with other historiographic traditions, those of Islam and Europe. On the other hand, the impulse seems very widespread. And it is not simply a question of people having history in their heads waiting to be written down. The existence of new cognitive tools enables people to undertake new cognitive tasks (82, my emphasis).
Ben Sira hardly experiences writing like a person in a culture where it has been introduced for the first time. On the other hand, in his praise to the fathers, he creates a textualized history that draws on earlier writings yet is not quite like anything else in the Bible.
Like some of the Psalms (78; 105; 106; 135; 136), the poem condenses a longer version of Israel's story, apparently for recitation in worship. The focus of most of these Psalms, however, is limited to the events of the Exodus and wilderness wandering (135; 136), though 105 begins with Abraham and gets as far as taking possession of the "lands of the nations" and 106 mentions idolatry in Canaan. The focus on Exodus and especially the rebellion in the wilderness also marks Psalm 78, but this psalm is unusual in two respects. First, it signals its origin in the wisdom tradition by calling its listeners to "give ear . . . to my teaching," which will include "a proverb/parable" and "riddles from of old" (78:1-2). Second, its narrative extends to the selection of David, which is associated with the building of the sanctuary on Mt. Zion (78:68-71). To this degree the psalm resembles the way in which Ben Sira condenses history to project its culmination in a particular human leader associated with the temple. On the other hand, the psalm's sense of history remains in an oral mode, with great attention paid to a limited range of material that makes the point at hand (Israel's insistent rebellion and God's compassion). The contrast with Ben Sira's systematic and comprehensive review of the ancestral heroes throughout time is marked. Likewise, although Psalm 78 is possibly a post-exilic text, whose culmination with David may have been designed to support the claims of some nouveau monarch, Ben Sira is unique in identifying the present-day person to whose authority he offers support.
In this sense the effect of his poem is more like that of the Chronicler's history, including Ezra-Nehemiah, which also presents a history of Israel beginning with creation and presumably ending (the sequence is now confused and likely artificial) with a present-day leader, if Nehemiah can be so understood (though his is hardly a glorious portrayal). On the other hand, if Chronicles is read independently of Ezra-Nehemiah, the analogy fails, for this text, ending with the decree of Cyrus, validates a more general priestly rule indirectly, by appeal to the cultic organization established by David. Chronicles/Ezra/Nehemiah remains, moreover, an extended narrative work, explicitly dependent on a multitude of sources and formally quite different from the focused sequence of heroes that Ben Sira seems to draw directly from the Torah and Prophets as we know them. Is this poem a signal of an application of the technology of canon that allows and encourages the manipulation of history in a new way? [Aichele REF]
Let us imagine our way back: Ben Sira, in producing his poem in praise of the ancestors, works from a written text, a narrative text. While this narrative surely has already some stature, it is not yet universally acknowledged as holy writ. There is not yet a standardized text and—if Artapanus can be dated ca. 200 (cf. Collins 1986: 33)—traditions about as important a figure as Moses, including his identity as lawgiver, continue to vary wildly. As Goody points out, one problem with writing is that it "crystallizes a particular recitation, creating text from utterance" (104). These moments of crystallization had, if the Documentary Hypothesis still holds any meaning for us, happened repeatedly in the case of the biblical narratives and, on a meta-level, had happened (ultimately but not immediately) decisively at the point that earlier crystallizations were re-composed into the singular but multi-faceted narrative, from creation to exile, something like the Primary Story we know now. Ben Sira takes this text and those of the prophets and some information he has on Nehemiah and re-crystallizes the story once more. It is a new telling, one possible version among many. It draws on earlier writings, but it is now in a form that is both ritual and written, that is, (formally at least) re-oralized. Was it actually performed? Was it performed repeatedly? What power would this sort of fixed text, ritually used, have had to promote the reception, as canon, of a large part of what becomes Tanak?
8. Wisdom and law: from orality to literacy and back
Writing and orality intersect in a particularly important way in Judaism after the time of Ben Sira in the tradition of the "Oral" Torah. "What is really strange here is that at the very period in time when literacy made it possible to minimize memory storage, human society adopted the opposite track, at least in some contexts. . . . But it is significant that the people in charge of this process were the scribes (soferim), the experts in writing themselves" (Goody, 33). Goody's point is that not only the Torah itself but in relatively short order the "oral" Torah as well was in fact written. The encounter with it, then, took the form of verbatim memorization, a different track than oral transmission. A form of (non-cultic) ritual itself, memorization and recitation is another form of re-oralization of written texts.
One might wonder exactly when the scribes began this form of inscribing. Horsley (REF semeia) notes that it was about the time of Ben Sira that the first written halakhic-type interpretations of Torah appear at Qumran. This raises the question of why no such intellectual activity appears in Sirach. Was interpretation of the law not yet, as Horsley surmises, part of the work of the temple scribe? Or was written interpretation not yet part of the pattern? Does Ben Sira represent that interpretive mode that gave rise to the notion of Oral Torah in the first place, with writing reserved for other forms of discourse such as his instructions and hymns? One way or the other, how might we make sense of the seeming paradox of Ben Sira's elevated understanding of Torah as preexistent Wisdom in ch. 24 and his lack of any overt reference to, much less interpretation of, any particular laws?
The place of the law in Sirach can be considered in terms of the relationship of orality and literacy to canon formation. J. Z. Smith's comments regarding canon provide a point of departure:
The history of canon is not primarily one of transmission, but of reception. Authority and power inhere less in the book than in the capacity to manipulate the book, the language of the text, in such a way exegetically as to create parole, inviting both a sense of plausibility and conviction (J. Z. Smith 1979). From this point of view, "canon" is largely a professional's category (1998: 299).
The creation of parole, the spoken word, is another way of referring to what I have called re-oralization. Ritual, I have suggested, is one context of re-oralization in which the plausibility and conviction that are necessary for the reception of a text as canon can be induced. If we can imagine Ben Sira's ancestors poem as a ritual text, then the object of authorization is the narrative of God's relationship to Israel's heroes. Embedded in this narrative, however, are several references specifically to the law. Sir. 44:20 cites Abraham(!) as one who kept "the law of the Most High." Moses was given "the commandments face to face, the law of life and knowledge, so that he might teach Jacob the covenant and Israel his decrees" (45:5), a teaching function then passed on to Aaron (45:17). "By the law of the Lord [Samuel] judged the congregation" (46:14). The kings of Judah came to an end because "they abandoned the law of the Most High" (49:4). That the law should be wrapped up in narrative comes as no surprise to readers with two thousand years of Bible behind them. But perhaps we take this fact too much for granted, for the law codes stick out literarily like a sore thumb in the Pentateuch narrative while going missing in Chronicles. One wonders, then, whether the connection of written law with narrative was a
relatively new innovation in Ben Sira's day, and what role he might have played in wedding the two in the interests of authoritative parole. 7
Parole, re-oralization, happens in other ways as well. Ben Sira's grandson and translator understands his grandfather's purpose to be helping people to gain learning so that they might "live according to the law" (Prologue, two times). Yet, as noted, the text of Sirach never teaches about or interprets specific laws in any direct sense, either for the purpose of authorizing power or so that folk may live "accordingly." It would appear, however, that Ben Sira's grandson perceives that the sage's instructions in the first part of his book are considered to be teaching about how to live according to the law. It is not obvious, in fact, that Ben Sira himself, although he certainly recognizes a tradition of Moses-law with a special status (24:23), clearly differentiates its contents from ancient wisdom, prophecies, sayings, parables, and proverbs (39:1-3). What scholars call wisdom instructions, then, continuing a long tradition of non-legal teachings on how to live, are now also taken as a re-oralization of law, the one irony being, of course, that they too are passed on in written form.
Ben Sira's most commanding reference to Torah comes in ch. 24, where he identifies it with female personified Wisdom. As in Proverbs, Wisdom herself speaks, that is, produces parole, specifically the parole of sensuality and desire that the sage disallows from actual bodily experience (cf. Camp 1987: 102-105). And, even more explicitly than in Proverbs, the instruction pouring forth from Wisdom-cum-Torah is identified with the teaching of the scribes, poured out like prophecy by Ben Sira himself, the ultimate manipulator of a text that is not quite canon.
9. Literacy, canon, and theology
Writing tends to fix traditions where orality allows change. Canonization advances fixation by a mutually reinforcing combination of writing's material reality with an ideology that increasing validates stasis over change. Goody relates this phenomenon to relative degrees of fixity in ideas about God in oral and literate cultures.
[B]ecause African religions are closely linked to matters of health and well-being, they are inevitably more open-ended, if only because they are constantly faced with the problem of the God that failed, the unsuccessful cure, the promise made but unfulfilled. The closer the entailment of religious activity with the affairs of daily life, that is, the greater the contextualization, the more often the problem will arise. Consequently, I argue that truth is not fixed, as if residing in an immutable text, but involves a constant search, a seeking, a quest, after new solutions to old problems (102).
It would be difficult to prove that popular (oral) religion in Israel was "closely linked to matters of health and well-being" in the same way that Goody has observed in Africa. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a popular tradition that did not have such issues strongly in the foreground, a supposition for which many of the Psalms provide some formal evidence. And, for all that they mainly serve to suppress the concern, the psalms of lament certainly point as well to "the problem of the God that failed." Orality allows for mutability in religious tradition, including the adaptability to encompass God's failures; life requires that this adaptability be put to use. The problem of theodicy thus becomes particularly disturbing with the move towards writing; it becomes intractable in the presence of a canon. Though Ben Sira's doubts about God's justice are not very different from those of Qohelet before him, they are, as I have argued
7 It is possible that we touch on at this point what might be a sore spot in the relationship of priests and scribes, especially those scribes who worked for the temple. While the possibility of authoritative literature under their control might excite the interest of a scribe, the priests could well be less than enthusiastic precisely because the content and interpretation of the law escapes the domain of carefully guarded sacred knowledge passed down from one generation of cognoscenti to another.
elsewhere, unlike Qohelet in being both apparent and suppressed (Camp xxxx). Is this struggle to constrain his doubts rather than adopt the tradition of expression in part a function of the emerging canon itself?
There is another factor that intensifies this tension between an increasingly unchangeable tradition and the life to which is it still supposed to be relevant. Goody observes a difference between the content of the central myth of the LoDagaa (however much this varies from one performance to another) and a fuller picture of the religious system that accounts for all its beliefs and actions. Compared to the larger system, the myth is "more theocentric" and "leans more toward a picture of the universe that, if not monotheistic, at least emphasizes God's role." His effort to explain this fact is interesting.
In suggesting why this should be so, one is on difficult ground. But because the myth deals with the creation of the world, or rather of culture, it tends to emphasize the unique source of the unique act. If the myth had been more directly concerned with healing, then the emphasis might perhaps have been on the plurality of the saints (or shrines) rather than on the uniqueness of God. And saints, like ancestors, are by definition nonscriptural, or rather postscriptural. If we go back to the Book, we eliminate them, though by so doing we may create a gap in our understanding of the world. That argument suggests one kind of possible explanation of the tendency of written religions to emphasize the uniqueness of the godhead (105).
Is the implied argument here that writing helps to produce monotheism because of the part of their religious tradition (that is, myths) that people (often? typically? always?) choose to write down, once writing becomes an option in a largely oral culture? This is not clear. If so, Goody is ambiguous as to whose choice it is to write down myths in preference to other forms. His only example is the Bagre myth of the LoDagaa. At one point [REF] he suggests that it is Westerners who focus on the myths of other cultures. On the other hand, his ensuing discussion in the present context, with its broad references to nonscriptural saints (in Christianity) and jinn (in Islam), implies a general, emic rather than etic, tendency to inscribe myths as opposed to other sorts of tradition from the religion. In any case, the mythic focus on originary, and therefore unique, acts tends toward a focus on a singular deity (or, at least, a supreme deity in an organized pantheon). To the extent that writing exercises a certain cultural control over orality, the tendency toward monotheism already evident in the oral stages of myth is increased.
If we take Goody's point, there are important implications regarding the influence of writing on theology. Monotheism, as is often recognized (e.g., Berger REF), heightens the problem of theodicy by placing all agency in a single being. This fact interacts with another, namely, that the singularity of the acts told in myths tends toward a static and orderly view of the universe; myths assume a rightful sameness for eternity. In other words, neither the character of deity nor the assumption of order in myths lend themselves to the adaptability necessary for daily life that is available in other aspects of the religion (whether the LoDagaa's changing shrines and "beings of the wild," which deal with failures in efforts at healing, or Christianity's mediating saints, who comfort in the face of a judgmental or, worse, inexplicable God). Thus the unchangability associated with writing (and even more with canon) interacts with myth's inflexible assignment of agency to a single, or most powerful, god to exacerbate the problem of theodicy.
The problem of theodicy flows constantly through the biblical narratives, but it does so in a behind-the-scenes way. A reader must often tease apart, if not altogether deconstruct, these stories to see its traces beneath a surface of apparent just retribution. It is only in the so-called wisdom texts of Job and Qohelet, along with a few psalms, that overt reflection on the issue takes place. Goody has suggested that this sort of sustained reflection on contradiction is a function of literacy (143 and elsewhere). Do the biblical narratives reflect an oral-mode willingness to adaptation while the wisdom literature—not only fully literate, but also the product of a scribal
class self-conscious about its own literacy—manifests the literacy-driven need to tackle the problem head on, but also apart from the central cultural myths?
What happens then with Ben Sira? As I've noted, the problem of theodicy looms large for him but, unlike Qohelet, he works hard to suppress it rather than acknowledging it openly. While this difference could be simply a matter of personal inclination, it seems also possible that it is a function of the new textual situation that he is in. On the one hand, his instructions in the early part of the book reflect the sort of health-and-prosperity religion that is dependent on some degree of flexibility in order to maintain its viability (here already problematized by being written down). On the other hand, in combination with this instruction, he is committed to the articulation of the central myth with its doubly rigidifying underpinnings of radical monotheism and of writtenness itself. No wonder Ben Sira is in a bind.
(MOST OF) WORKS CITED
Aichele, George. The Control of Biblical Meaning: Canon as Semiotic Mechanism. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001.
Berquist, Jon. "The Politics of Canon in Persian Yehud." Paper delivered at the Society of Biblical Literature, 2001.
Camp, Claudia. "Possessing Wealth, Possessing Women, Possessing Self: The Shame of Biblical Discourse." In Having: Property, Possession, and Religious Discourse. Ed. W. Schweiker. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's, 2003
________. "Storied Space, or Ben Sira 'Tells' a Temple" in "Imagining" Biblical Worlds: Spatial, Social, and Historical Constructs. Essays in Honor of James W. Flanagan. Edited by D. M. Gunn and P. M. McNutt. Sheffield Academic Press, 2002.
________. "Honor and Shame in Ben Sira: Anthropological and Theological Reflections." Pp. 17188 in The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research. Ed. P. Beentjes. BZAW 255; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997.
________. "Female Voice, Written Word: Women and Authority in the Hebrew Bible." Pp. 97-14 in Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as Feminist Values. Ed. P. Cooey, M. Ross and S. Farmer. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.
Carr, David. "Thinking Socially About Canon: Implicit and Explicit Community Paradigms." Paper delivered at the Society of Biblical Literature, 2001.
Chapman, Stephen. "Canon and Criticism." Paper delivered at the Southwest Regional SBL, 2003.
Davies, Philip R. Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998.
Goody, Jack. The Power of the Written Tradition. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.
Knoppers, Gary. "An Achaemenid Imperial Authorization of Torah in Yehud?" In Watts, 91114.
Horsley, Richard. "The Origins of the Hebrew Scriptures in Imperial Relations." In Orality, Literacy, and Colonialism. Semeia, forthcoming.
Horsley, Richard and Patrick Tiller. "Ben Sira and the Sociology of the Second Temple." In Second Temple Studies.
Maier, Christl. Die 'fremde Frau' in Proverbien 1-9: Eine exegetische und sozialgeschichtliche Studie (OBO, 144: Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995.
Niditch, Susan. Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996.
van Der Kooij, A. and K. van Der Toorn, eds. Canonization and Decanonization.
Schaper, J. "The Rabbinic Canon and the Old Testament of Early Church: A Social-Historical View." In Van Der Kooij and Van Der Toorn, 93-106.
Smith, J. Z. "Canons, Catalogues and Classics." In Van Der Kooij and Van Der Toorn, 295-312.
________. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Tiller, Patrick. "Politics and the High Priesthood in Pre-Maccabean Judea."
Vanderkam, James C. "Authoritative Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls." Dead Sea Discoveries 5 (1998) 382-402.
Watts, James, ed. Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch. Atlanta: SBL, 2001.
Wright, Benjamin G. "'Fear the Lord and Honor the Priest': Ben Sira as Defender of the Jerusalem Priesthood." In The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research. Proceedings of the First International Ben Sira Conference. Pancratius C. Beentjes, ed. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997.
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1
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 08–1438
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HARVEY LEROY SOSSAMON, III, PETITIONER v. TEXAS ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
[April 20, 2011]
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE BREYER joins, dissenting.
The Court holds that the term "appropriate relief" is too ambiguous to provide States with clear notice that they will be liable for monetary damages under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), 114 Stat. 803, 42 U. S. C. §2000cc et seq. I disagree. No one disputes that, in accepting federal funds, the States consent to suit for violations of RLUIPA's substantive provisions; the only question is what relief is available to plaintiffs asserting injury from such violations. That monetary damages are "appropriate relief" is, in my view, self-evident. Under general remedies principles, the usual remedy for a violation of a legal right is damages. Consistent with these principles, our precedents make clear that the phrase "appropriate relief" includes monetary relief. By adopting a contrary reading of the term, the majority severely undermines the "broad protection of religious exercise" Congress intended the statute to provide. §2000cc–3(g). For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
I
A
As the Court acknowledges, the proposition that "States may waive their sovereign immunity" is an "unremarkable" one. Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 65 (1996); see also Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 737 (1999) ("[W]e have not questioned the general proposition that a State may waive its sovereign immunity and consent to suit"); Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 238 (1985) (noting the "well-established" principle that "if a State waives its immunity and consents to suit in federal court, the Eleventh Amendment does not bar the action"); Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Comm'n, 359 U. S. 275, 276 (1959) (noting that a State may waive sovereign immunity "at its pleasure").
Neither the majority nor respondents (hereinafter Texas) dispute that, pursuant to its power under the Spending Clause, U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 1, Congress may secure a State's consent to suit as a condition of the State's receipt of federal funding. 1 See College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 527 U. S. 666, 686 (1999) ("Congress may, in the exercise of its spending power, condition its grant of funds to the States upon their taking certain actions that Congress could not require them to take, and . . . acceptance of the funds entails an agreement to the actions"); Atascadero, 473 U. S., at 247 (suggesting that a federal statute can "condition participation in the programs funded under the [statute] on a State's consent to waive its constitutional immunity"). As with all waivers of sovereign immunity, the question is whether the State has unequivocally consented to suit in federal court. See College Savings Bank, 527 U. S., at 680; Atascadero, 473 U. S., at 238, n. 1.
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1 Though the Court reserves the general question whether RLUIPA is a valid exercise of Congress' power under the Spending Clause, see ante, at 2, n. 1, there is apparently no disagreement among the Federal Courts of Appeals, see 560 F. 3d 316, 328, n. 34 (CA5 2009) ("Every circuit to consider whether RLUIPA is Spending Clause legislation has concluded that it is constitutional under at least that power").
Thus, in order to attach a waiver of sovereign immunity to federal funds, Congress "must do so unambiguously," so as to "enable the States to exercise their choice knowingly." Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 17 (1981). In other words, the State must have notice of the condition it is accepting. See Arlington Central School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Murphy, 548 U. S. 291, 298 (2006) ("[C]lear notice . . . is required under the Spending Clause"). The reason for requiring notice is simple: "States cannot knowingly accept conditions of which they are 'unaware' or which they are 'unable to ascertain.' " Id., at 296 (quoting Pennhurst, 451 U. S., at 17). In assessing whether a federal statute provides clear notice of the conditions attached, "we must view the [statute] from the perspective of a state official who is engaged in the process of deciding whether the State should accept [federal] funds and the obligations that go with those funds." Arlington Central, 548 U. S., at 296.
There is also no dispute that RLUIPA clearly conditions a State's receipt of federal funding on its consent to suit for violations of the statute's substantive provisions. The statute states that "program[s] or activit[ies] that receiv[e] Federal financial assistance" may not impose a "substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person residing in or confined to an institution." §2000cc–1. When such a burden has been imposed, the victim "may assert a violation of [RLUIPA] as a claim . . . in a judicial proceeding and obtain appropriate relief against a government," §2000cc–2(a), which the statute defines, as relevant, as "a State, county, municipality, or other governmental entity created under the authority of a State," §2000cc–5(4)(A)(i). Accordingly, it is evident that Texas had notice that, in accepting federal funds, it waived its sovereign immunity to suit by institutionalized persons upon whom it has imposed an unlawful substantial burden. See Madison v. Virginia, 474 F. 3d 118, 130 (CA4 2006) ("On its face,
RLUIPA . . . creates a private cause of action against the State, and Virginia cannot be heard to claim that it was unaware of this condition" (citations omitted)); Benning v. Georgia, 391 F. 3d 1299, 1305 (CA11 2004) ("Congress unambiguously required states to waive their sovereign immunity from suits filed by prisoners to enforce RLUIPA").
B
The Court holds that the phrase "appropriate relief" does not provide state officials clear notice that monetary relief will be available against the States, meaning that they could not have waived their immunity with respect to that particular type of liability. This holding is contrary to general remedies principles and our precedents.
RLUIPA straightforwardly provides a private right of action to "obtain appropriate relief against a government." §2000cc–2(a). Under "our traditional approach to deciding what remedies are available for violation of a federal right," damages are the default—and equitable relief the exception—for "it is axiomatic that a court should determine the adequacy of a remedy in law before resorting to equitable relief." Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, 503 U. S. 60, 75–76 (1992); see also Weinberger v. Romero-Barcelo, 456 U. S. 305, 312 (1982) ("The Court has repeatedly held that the basis for injunctive relief in the federal courts has always been . . . the inadequacy of legal remedies"); Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388, 395 (1971) ("Historically, damages have been regarded as the ordinary remedy for an invasion of personal interests in liberty"); cf. Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, 561 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 24) ("An injunction is a drastic and extraordinary remedy, which should not be granted as a matter of course"). It is unsurprising, therefore, that on more than one occasion Congress has felt it necessary to clarify in the text of a statute
that it meant the terms "relief" and "appropriate relief" to exclude damages. See 5 U. S. C. §702 (providing that, under the Administrative Procedure Act, "relief other than money damages" is available against a federal agency to remedy a "legal wrong"); see also 42 U. S. C. §6395(e)(1) (providing a cause of action for "appropriate relief," but specifying that "[n]othing in this subsection shall authorize any person to recover damages"); 15 U. S. C. §797(b)(5) (similar).
If, despite the clarity of this background principle, state officials reading RLUIPA were somehow still uncertain as to whether the phrase "appropriate relief" encompasses monetary damages, our precedents would relieve any doubt. In Franklin we made clear that, "absent clear direction to the contrary by Congress," federal statutes providing a private right of action authorize all "appropriate relief," including damages, against violators of its substantive terms. 503 U. S., at 70–71, 75–76. We reiterated this principle in Barnes v. Gorman, 536 U. S. 181, 185, 187 (2002), affirming that "the scope of 'appropriate relief' " includes compensatory damages. 2 The holdings in these cases are fully consistent with the general principle
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2 The majority suggests that our use of the phrase "appropriate relief " in Franklin and Barnes did not "put the States on notice that the same phrase in RLUIPA subjected them to suits for monetary relief," because "[t]hose cases did not involve sovereign defendants." Ante, at 10, n. 6. The majority misperceives the point. Franklin and Barnes simply confirmed what otherwise would have been already apparent to any informed reader of RLUIPA—when it comes to remedying injuries to legal rights, monetary damages are "appropriate relief." Moreover, as noted in the text, see supra, at 4–5, the Administrative Procedure Act expressly excludes "money damages" from the "relief " available against the United States, suggesting that Congress understands the term normally to encompass monetary relief even when the defendant enjoys sovereign immunity. See 5 U. S. C. §702; Bowen v. Massachusetts, 487 U. S. 879, 891–892 (1988) (noting that §702 waives the United States' sovereign immunity to suit).
that monetary relief is available for violations of the substantive conditions Congress attaches, through Spending Clause legislation, to the acceptance of federal funding. See Davis v. Monroe County Bd. of Ed., 526 U. S. 629, 640 (1999) ("[P]ursuant to Congress' authority under the Spending Clause . . . private damages actions are available"); Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School Dist., 524 U. S. 274, 287 (1998) (noting that "[w]hen Congress attaches conditions to the award of federal funds under its spending power . . . private actions holding the recipient liable in monetary damages" are permissible). It would be an odd derogation of the normal rules of statutory construction for state officials reading RLUIPA to assume that Congress drafted the statute in ignorance of these unambiguous precedents. See Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 12) ("We normally assume that, when Congress enacts statutes, it is aware of relevant judicial precedent"). 3
C
Accordingly, it is difficult to understand the basis for the Court's position that the phrase "appropriate relief" in §2000cc–2(a) fails to provide state officials with clear notice that waiving sovereign immunity to monetary relief
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3 Curiously, the majority appears to believe that it would be appropriate for state officials to read the statutory phrase "appropriate relief " without reference to general remedies principles. See ante, at 12, n. 8. It is well-established, however, that "Congress is understood to legislate against a background of common-law . . . principles," Astoria Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn. v. Solimino, 501 U. S. 104, 108 (1991), and there can be no doubt that general legal principles necessarily inform judicial determinations as to what remedies are available to civil plaintiffs, see, e.g., Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend, 557 U. S. ___, ___ (2009) (slip op., at 15) (concluding that, in light of "general principles of maritime tort law" punitive damages were a remedy available to the plaintiff (internal quotation marks omitted)). Why Texas's sovereign immunity defense renders this approach improper is a mystery the majority opinion leaves unsolved.
OTOMAYOR
S,
J., dissenting is a condition of accepting federal funds. In arguing that "a waiver of sovereign immunity to other types of relief does not waive immunity to damages," ante , at 6 (emphasis added), the majority appears to accept that equitable relief is available to RLUIPA plaintiffs. See Madison , 474 F. 3d, at 131 (holding that a RLUIPA plaintiff's "claims for equitable relief are not barred by the Eleventh Amendment"); cf. 560 F. 3d 316, 331, 336 (CA5 2009) (reversing the District Court's grant of summary judgment to Texas on one of petitioner's RLUIPA claims for declaratory and injunctive relief). The explanation for the majority's implicit acceptance of suits for injunctive and declaratory relief is obvious enough: It would be a particularly curious reading of the statute to conclude that Congress' express provision of a private right of action to seek "appropriate relief" against "a State" nonetheless left plaintiffs suing for state violations of RLUIPA with no available relief.
It is not apparent, however, why the phrase "appropriate relief" is too ambiguous to secure a waiver of state sovereign immunity with respect to damages but is clear enough as to injunctive and other forms of equitable relief. The majority appears to believe that equitable relief is a "suitable" or "proper" remedy for a state violation of RLUIPA's substantive provisions but monetary relief is not; therefore, a state official reading the "open-ended and ambiguous" phrase "appropriate relief" will be unaware that it includes damages but fully apprised that it makes equitable relief available. See ante, at 6–7. But sovereign immunity is not simply a defense against certain classes of remedies—it is a defense against being sued at all. See, e.g., Federal Maritime Comm'n v. South Carolina Ports Authority, 535 U. S. 743, 766 (2002). As a result, there is no inherent reason why the phrase "appropriate relief" would provide adequate notice as to equitable remedies but not as to monetary ones. In fact, as discussed earlier, in light of general remedies principles the presumption
arguably should be the reverse. See supra, at 4–6.
The majority suggests that equitable relief is the sole "appropriate relief" for statutory violations "where the defendant is a sovereign." Ante, at 6–7. There can be little doubt, however, that the "appropriateness" of relief to be afforded a civil plaintiff is generally determined by the nature of the injury to his legal rights. See Franklin, 503 U. S., at 76 (concluding that monetary damages were "appropriate" because equitable relief offered no redress for the injury suffered); see also Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 280 (1977) ("[T]he nature of the . . . remedy is to be determined by the nature and scope of the . . . violation"); Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678, 684 (1946) ("[W]here federally protected rights have been invaded, it has been the rule from the beginning that courts will be alert to adjust their remedies so as to grant the necessary relief"). In support of its proposition the majority cites only to a case in which we expressly rejected the argument that state sovereign immunity operates differently according to what type of relief is sought. See Federal Maritime, 535 U. S., at 765 ("[S]overeign immunity applies regardless of whether a private plaintiff's suit is for monetary damages or some other type of relief"); cf. id., at 769 ("[T]he primary function of sovereign immunity is not to protect state treasuries, but to afford the States the dignity and respect due sovereign entities" (citation omitted)). Nor is the basis for the majority's view apparent from the other cases that it cites. 4
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4 In Lane v. Peña, 518 U. S. 187 (1996), United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U. S. 30 (1992), and Hoffman v. Connecticut Dept. of Income Maintenance, 492 U. S. 96 (1989), we simply reaffirmed the principle that a sovereign's liability for damages must be unambiguously expressed in the statute purporting to waive immunity; as demonstrated above, RLUIPA satisfies this requirement. The majority tellingly relies on the dissent's assertion in West v. Gibson, 527 U. S. 212 (1999), that the phrase "appropriate remedies" was too ambiguous
OTOMAYOR
S
, J., dissenting
The majority's additional arguments in support of its holding also fail to persuade. The majority contends that the use of a "context-dependent" word like "appropriate" necessarily renders the provision ambiguous. Ante, at 7. But the fact that the precise relief afforded by a court may vary depending on the particular injury to be addressed in a given case does not render §2000cc–2(a) ambiguous; it simply means that Congress meant for that provision to be comprehensive. See Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections v. Yeskey, 524 U. S. 206, 212 (1998) ("[T]he fact that a statute can be applied in situations not expressly anticipated by Congress does not demonstrate ambiguity. It demonstrates breadth" (internal quotation marks omitted)); cf. West v. Gibson, 527 U. S. 212, 217–218 (1999) (holding that the phrase "appropriate remedies" in 42 U. S. C. §2000e–16(b) includes remedies not expressly enumerated).
Next, the majority repeats Texas's dictionary-based contention that in using the word "relief" Congress meant to "connot[e] equitable relief." Ante, at 8. This proposition suffers from three flaws. First, it is not established by the dictionary to which the majority cites. See Black's Law Dictionary 1293 (7th ed. 1999) ("relief: . . . Also termed remedy"); id., at 1296 ("remedy: . . . The means of enforcing a right or preventing or redressing a wrong; legal or equitable relief" (emphasis added)). Second, it is inconsistent with our precedent. See Barnes, 536 U. S., at 185– 187 (noting that "appropriate relief" includes monetary and injunctive relief). Third, it is undermined by the fact that, on numerous occasions, Congress has deemed it necessary to specify that "relief" includes injunctive and other equitable relief. See 16 U. S. C. §973i(e) (authoriz-
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to waive sovereign immunity to monetary relief. See id., at 226 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.). Accordingly, the cases the majority cites do not mandate the conclusion it draws today.
ing the Attorney General to "commence a civil action for appropriate relief, including permanent or temporary injunction"); see also 2 U. S. C. §437g(a)(6)(A); 8 U. S. C. §1324a(f)(2); 12 U. S. C. §1715z–4a(b); 15 U. S. C. §6309(a). If the term "relief" already connotes equitable relief—and only equitable relief—additional explication is redundant.
Finally, the majority asserts that because the parties to this case advance opposing "plausible arguments" regarding the correct interpretation of RLUIPA's text, we must conclude that the statute is ambiguous. Ante, at 8–9. This view of how we adjudicate cases is incorrect as a descriptive matter. See, e.g., Carcieri v. Salazar, 555 U. S. 379, 390 (2009) (reviewing the parties' conflicting textual interpretations of a statute but concluding that it was unambiguous nonetheless). Moreover, I cannot agree with the majority that our capacity to interpret authoritatively the text of a federal statute is held hostage to the litigants' strategic arguments. If this were true, there would be few cases in which we would be able to decide that a statute was unambiguous.
In sum, the majority's conclusion that States accepting federal funds have not consented to suit for monetary relief cannot be reconciled with the fact that the availability of such relief is evident in light of RLUIPA's plain terms and the principles animating our relevant precedents. In so holding, the majority discovers ambiguity where none is to be found.
II
There is another reason to question the soundness of today's decision. The Court's reading of §2000cc–2(a) severely undermines Congress' unmistakably stated intent in passing the statute: to afford "broad protection of religious exercise, to the maximum extent permitted by the
terms of [the statute] and the Constitution." §2000cc–3(g). I find it improbable that, in light of this express statutory purpose and the history of "long-running congressional efforts to accord religious exercise heightened protection from government-imposed burdens," Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 714 (2005), state officials would read RLUIPA's relief provision in the same limited manner the majority does. 5
As the majority acknowledges, RLUIPA was Congress' second attempt to guarantee by statute the "broad protection" of religious exercise that we found to be unwarranted as a constitutional matter in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872 (1990). As we have previously recognized, in passing RLUIPA Congress was clearly concerned that state institutions regularly imposed "frivolous or arbitrary barriers imped[ing] institutionalized persons' religious exercise." Cutter, 544 U. S., at 716 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also 146 Cong. Rec. 16698, 16699 (2000) (joint statement of Sen. Hatch and Sen. Kennedy on RLUIPA) ("Whether from indifference, ignorance, bigotry, or lack of resources, some institutions restrict religious liberty in
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5 I agree with the majority's conclusion that, because Section 3 of RLUIPA, addressing the rights of institutionalized persons, is not a "provisio[n] of [a] . . . Federal statute prohibiting discrimination" within the meaning of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986, 42 U. S. C. §2000d–7(a)(1), the latter statute's waiver provision does not put the States on notice that they can be sued for damages under RLUIPA. See ante, at 12–14. It bears noting, however, that Section 2 of RLUIPA explicitly prohibits discrimination in land use regulation. See §2000cc(b)(2) ("No government shall impose or implement a land use regulation that discriminates . . . on the basis of religion or religious denomination"). As a result, the majority's decision in this case means that some RLUIPA plaintiffs will be able to seek monetary damages against a State and others will not, even though RLUIPA's provision of "appropriate relief " applies equally to suits for violations of the terms of both Section 2 and Section 3.
egregious and unnecessary ways"); ibid. ("Institutional residents' rights to practice their faith is at the mercy of those running the institution . . ."). It is difficult to believe that Congress would have devoted such care and effort to establishing significant statutory protections for religious exercise and specifically extended those protections to persons in state institutions, yet withheld from plaintiffs a crucial tool for securing the rights the statute guarantees.
By depriving prisoners of a damages remedy for violations of their statutory rights, the majority ensures that plaintiffs suing state defendants under RLUIPA will be forced to seek enforcement of those rights with one hand tied behind their backs. Most obviously, the majority's categorical denial of monetary relief means that a plaintiff who prevails on the merits of his claim that a State has substantially burdened his religious exercise will often be denied redress for the injury he has suffered, because in many instances "prospective relief accords . . . no remedy at all." Franklin, 503 U. S., at 76; see H. R. Rep. No. 102– 40, pt. 2, p. 25 (1991) (Report of Committee on the Judiciary on the Civil Rights Act of 1991) ("The limitation of relief under Title VII to equitable remedies often means that victims . . . may not recover for the very real effects of the [statutory violation]"). Injunctive relief from a federal court may address a violation going forward, but this fact will be of cold comfort to the victims of serious, nonrecurring violations for which equitable relief may be inappropriate.
In addition, the unavailability of monetary relief will effectively shield unlawful policies and practices from judicial review in many cases. Under state law, discretion to transfer prisoners "in a wide variety of circumstances is vested in prison officials." Meachum v. Fano, 427 U. S. 215, 227 (1976). A number of RLUIPA suits seeking injunctive relief have been dismissed as moot because the plaintiff was transferred from the institution where the
alleged violation took place prior to adjudication on the merits. See, e.g., Colvin v. Caruso, 605 F. 3d 282, 287, 289 (CA6 2010); Simmons v. Herrera, No. C 09–0318 JSW (PR), 2010 WL 1233815, *3 (ND Cal., Mar. 26, 2010); see generally Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae 8–11. Absent a damages remedy, longstanding RLUIPA challenges may well be dismissed for lack of a case or controversy conferring Article III jurisdiction on the federal court. Cf. Moussazadeh v. Texas Dept. of Crim. Justice, Civ. Action No. G–07–574, 2009 WL 819497, *9 (SD Tex., Mar. 26, 2009) (dismissing as moot plaintiff's RLUIPA claim because he had been transferred to a facility that provided kosher food), remanded, 364 Fed. Appx. 110 (CA5 2010); Opening Brief for Plaintiff-Appellant in Moussazadeh v. Texas Dept. of Crim. Justice, No. 09– 40400 (CA5), p. 11 (noting that transfer to a special facility took place 19 months after the plaintiff filed suit and just before discovery—which had been stayed 12 months for negotiation—was scheduled to recommence). Or, as happened in this case, officials may change the policy while litigation is pending. The fact of "voluntary cessation" may allow some of these claims to go forward, but many will nonetheless be dismissed as moot (as happened in this case). 6
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6 See Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U. S. 701, 719 (2007) ("Voluntary cessation does not moot a case or controversy unless subsequent events make it absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur" (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted)). The Fifth Circuit declined to apply the "voluntary cessation" doctrine in this case and instead granted Texas's motion that the court dismiss as moot petitioner's claim for injunctive relief with respect to the prison's cellrestriction policy. Because the prison director averred that the policy was no longer in force, and "absent evidence that the voluntary cessation [wa]s a sham," the court held that the "good faith nature" of Texas's change in policy rendered moot petitioner's claim for injunctive relief. See 560 F. 3d, at 324–326; see also Nelson v. Miller, 570 F. 3d
Of course, under the rule the majority announces, Congress can revise RLUIPA to provide specifically for monetary relief against the States, perhaps by inserting the phrase "including monetary relief" into the text of §2000cc–2(a). But we have never demanded that a waiver be presented in a particular formulation to be effective; we only require that it be clear. See, e.g., Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 673 (1974) (holding that waiver may be found in "express language" or by "overwhelming implications from the text" (internal quotation marks omitted)). In holding to the contrary, the majority erects a formalistic barrier to the vindication of statutory rights deliberately provided for by Congress.
More problematically, because there is no apparent reason why the term "appropriate relief" is sufficiently clear as to equitable relief but not as to monetary relief, we are left with the very real possibility that, in order to secure a waiver of immunity under the majority's new rule, Congress must now itemize in the statutory text every type of relief meant to be available against sovereign defendants. I, for one, do not relish the prospect of federal courts being presented with endless state challenges to all manner of federal statutes, on the ground that Congress failed to predict that a laundry list of terms must be included to waive sovereign immunity to all forms of relief. I would avoid the problems the majority's decision invites and hold instead that, as is the case here, when a general statutory term like "appropriate relief" is used, clear notice has been provided and a State's acceptance of federal funds constitutes a waiver of sovereign immunity to all relief, equitable and monetary.
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868, 882–883 (CA7 2009) (affirming the District Court's dismissal as moot of a RLUIPA claim because there was no evidence that the prison intended to revoke the plaintiff 's religious diet); El v. Evans, 694 F. Supp. 2d 1009, 1012–1013 (SD Ill. 2010) (similar).
As explained above, nothing in our precedent demands the result the majority reaches today. The conclusion that RLUIPA fails to provide States with sufficient notice that they are liable for monetary relief cannot be squared with the straightforward terms of the statute and the general principles evident in our prior cases. For these reasons, and because the majority's decision significantly undermines Congress' ability to provide needed redress for violations of individuals' rights under federal law, I respectfully dissent.
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MINUTES OF THE APPEARANCE REVIEW COMMISSION October 17, 2022
The regular meeting of the Appearance Review Commission was called to order by Acting Chair Sarah Burger at 5:06 p.m. at 118 W. Cook Avenue.
Members Present: Acting Chair Sarah Burger, Tom Flader, Les Galo, James Hartshorne, Michael Haug, Mike Kollman and Casey Rooney.
Members Absent: None.
A quorum was established.
Village Staff Present: David Smith, Senior Planner.
Commissioner Rooney made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Hartshorne, to approve the September 19, 2022, Appearance Review Commission meeting minutes, as written.
Motion carried 7 - 0.
OLD BUSINESS:
ARC 22-46 Pulte Homes LLC, Applicant.
100-198 Yorktown Court (Liberty Junction Subdivision)
Request is for new signage.
Mr. Fabian Fondriest, authorized agent for Pulte Homes LLC, presented the proposed signage for 100-198 Yorktown Court (Liberty Junction Subdivision). Mr. Fondriest stated the request is for a New Development Announcement Sign for the Liberty Junction Subdivision. Mr. Fondriest stated the signage is code compliant. Commissioner Kollman questioned if the signage will be singlesided. Mr. Fondriest confirmed the signage will be double-sided for people driving on either side of Peterson Road.
Commissioner Flader made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Rooney, to recommend the Village Board of Trustees approve the application for new signage at 100-198 Yorktown Court (Liberty Junction Subdivision), in accordance with the plans submitted.
Motion carried 7 - 0.
ARC 22-47 Steven Coppolillo, Applicant. 160 E. Cook Avenue
Request is for new building facades.
Mr. Angelo Eliades and Mr. Steven Coppolillo, applicants, presented the proposed building facades for 160 E. Cook Avenue. Mr. Eliades stated their previous request was to enclose the front outdoor dining area, but the parking fee is rendering that option unrealistic at this time. Mr. Eliades
stated they are opting not to enclose the space at this time. Mr. Eliades stated they would like to close out the outstanding items. Mr. Eliades stated they will not change anything on the exterior of the building. However, Mr. Copolillo stated they are willing to stain the interior rafters. Mr. Copolillo provided the Commission with an image of the existing rafters and discussed which rafters will be stained. Mr. Copolillo stated they will look to enclose the space sometime in January or February of 2023. Mr. Eliades stated the extra signage has been removed from the property. Mr. Copolillo stated the landscaping has been taken care of, so the property looks presentable.
Acting Chair Burger confirmed what is being requested of the Commission in this petition. Mr. Smith stated the applicant is looking to forego installing the outstanding items from the previous tenant as noted in the Staff Report. Acting Chair Burger acknowledged the rafters will be stained but questioned the other two outstanding items. Commissioner Flader stated the other two items are to install the aluminum downspouts on the western façade and install cedar wrap columns around the steel-pipe columns to hold up the pergola. Mr. Copolillo stated they discussed the downspout concern with the original roofing contractor, and it was not a concern given the slope of the roof. Commissioner Hartshorne stated it appears the roof is pitched towards the south and runs towards the street. Commissioner Kollman and Commissioner Flader stated it appears a black grid system was added to the design. Acting Chair Burger stated it appears that the black steelpipe columns have been wrapped, acknowledging that the design is different than what was previously approved.
Commissioner Hartshorne described how the rooftop was designed and noted there is not a downspout along the southwest corner of the facility. Mr. Copolillo stated the existing design works well, even in previous rainstorms. Commissioner Haug stated the roof is not very large so the water should eventually make it into a downspout. Commissioner Hartshorne stated it's possible the water can just drain into the landscaped planters. Commissioner Galo confirmed the roof was pitched towards the southeast corner of the property and the existing downspout. Mr. Copolillo stated that rain did not come off the front of the roof. Commissioner Galo stated that an additional downspout should not be required if the existing downspout is performing well. Acting Chair Burger stated her concern is whether the roof is sloped or flat. Commissioner Kollman questioned if the rain is going into the downspout. Mr. Eliades and Mr. Copolillo confirmed that the water only ran into the downspout. Commissioner Kollman stated he does not have an issue with not requiring an additional downspout on the roof. Commissioner Rooney stated she agrees with Commissioner Kollman. Acting Chair Burger confirmed the applicant is willing to stain the rafters and that the signage was removed.
Commissioner Haug made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Kollman, to recommend the Village Board of Trustees approve the application for new building facades at 160 E. Cook Avenue, subject to the following condition: (1) Staff Report Comments "A & B" are not required for completion, while Staff Report Comment "C" is required to be completed (i.e. stain the cedar rafters).
Motion carried 7 - 0.
ARC 22-49 Community Partners for Affordable Housing, Authorized Agent for Nabih Mangoubi.
500 Peterson Road
Request is for new building façade, landscaping, lighting, and signage.
Mr. Anthony Akindele, architect, presented the proposed building facades, landscaping, lighting, and signage for 500 Peterson Road. Mr. Akindele stated the patio and trellis on the second floor of the East Elevation has been re-introduced to the plans per the conversation at last month's meeting. Mr. Akindele stated the monument sign has been re-designed to match the signage from the preliminary plans. Mr. Akindele stated the freestanding sign is not internally illuminated but will be illuminated from the ground. Mr. Akindele stated the rooftop screening will comply with the Zoning Code. Mr. Akindele stated they do not have the height of the mechanical equipment at this time, but the screening material will be to the full height. Mr. Akindele stated there will be one continuous screening device around the equipment. Mr. Smith stated Staff was uncertain whether the screening will be completely opaque. Mr. Smith stated there is an exhibit that shows the line-of-sight to screen the units, although it is unclear if the screening will be opaque or not. Mr. Akindele stated the drawing does not do it justice. Mr. Akindele stated the screening is completely opaque but there is ½" spacing between the slats. Mr. Smith stated the drawings show the tree behind the building. Commissioner Kollman questioned the material of the screening device. Mr. Akindele stated it will be a synthetic composite material. Acting Chair Burger confirmed there is a written requirement for the screening to be completely opaque. Acting Chair Burger stated the rendering shows it to be lacking. Mr. Akindele stated they will provide a better rendering for permit submittal. Commissioner Kollman questioned the color of the proposed screening device. Mr. Akindele stated it will be a light gray that matches the primary color of the metal panels on the façade of the building.
Commissioner Kollman made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Hartshorne, to recommend the Plan Commission/Zoning Board of Appeals approve the application for new building facades, landscaping, lighting, and signage at 500 Peterson Road, subject to the following conditions: (1) The rooftop mechanical screening is compliant with the Zoning Code regulations.
Motion carried 7 - 0.
NEW BUSINESS:
ARC 22-50 Matthew Stried, Authorized Agent for Geneva Pacific. 1402 N. Milwaukee Avenue
Request is for new signage.
Mr. Matthew Stried, authorized agent for Geneva Pacific, presented the proposed signage for 1402 N. Milwaukee Avenue. Mr. Stried stated the scope of work includes refacing the two (2) existing signage on site. Mr. Stried stated the existing building is also being remodeled. Mr. Stried stated the existing pole sign will remain in the same location and the background will be opaque. Mr. Stried stated the wall sign will also be refaced and relocated in the same location. Mr. Stried stated
they will also provide landscaping at the base of the sign in accordance with the Zoning Code requirements. Mr. Stried stated there is only grass at the base of the pole sign, so it should not be an issue to install the required amount of landscaping. Mr. Smith stated the landscaping plan can be submitted with the permit application. Commissioner Kollman questioned the translucent polycarbonate. Mr. Stried stated there will be an opaque layer over the top of the polycarbonate, so the blue is going to be opaque. Mr. Stried stated he is also able to provide a night-view of the plans so everyone is on the same page.
Commissioner Haug made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Rooney, to recommend the Village Board of Trustees approve the application for new signage at 1402 N. Milwaukee Avenue, in accordance with the plans submitted.
Motion carried 7 - 0.
ARC 22-51 Marcin Chrapek, Applicant. 2001 Kelley Court
Request is for new signage.
Commissioner Kollman made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Rooney, to recommend continuance of the application for new signage at 2001 Kelley Court, until November 21, 2022.
Motion carried 7 - 0.
ARC 22-52 Edward L. Morgan Jr., Authorized Agent for Parkview Complex LLC. 215 E. Park Avenue
Request is for new landscaping.
Mr. Edward L. Morgan Jr., authorized agent for Parkview Complex LLC, presented the proposed landscaping for 215 E. Park Avenue. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated he has inherited a project at the property regarding the removal and replacement of trees. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated two trees were removed from the property and not replaced, since the property is so dense with landscaping. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated Staff suggested finding another place on site that can accommodate the two replacement trees. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated he discussed the plans with a landscaper who noted the property is too dense and there is not a viable location for these replacement trees to be replanted. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated the landscaping has grown so much over the past thirty years and the two trees that were removed were located along the front property line. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated previous trees died off that were replanted. Mr. Morgan Jr. showed the Commission images of the existing landscaping on the property. Commissioner Flader noticed a soon-to-be dead tree on the West side of the property. Acting Chair Burger confirmed the issue at hand is that the two trees were removed and never replaced. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated the ball was dropped on their end and the trees were never replaced. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated there is very little space between the subject property and the one to the east (School of Rock). Commissioner Flader stated there is nowhere to plant on the property except on the property. Commissioner Galo questioned how many trees are on the property. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated there are approximately 22 trees on the property. Commissioner
Galo questioned how many trees are supposed to be on the property. Mr. Morgan Jr. stated that several other properties only have a few trees in comparison. Commissioner Galo stated the 22 trees seem like a lot of trees and he should not have to replace them. Commissioner Kollman stated he did not see anywhere a new tree will survive on the property. Commissioner Kollman stated the only way to get a new tree on the property would be if one died and needed to be replaced. Commissioner Kollman recommended an arborist review the existing trees on the property to determine if additional trees need to be removed and replaced.
Commissioner Kollman made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Hartshorne, to recommend the Village Board of Trustees approve the application for new landscaping at 215 E. Park Avenue, in accordance with the plans submitted.
Motion carried 7 - 0.
ARC 22-53 McGrath Acura of Libertyville, Applicant. 1620 S. Milwaukee Avenue
Request is for new fencing.
Mr. Gary McGrath, applicant, presented the proposed fencing (bollards) for 1620 S. Milwaukee Avenue. Mr. McGrath stated they are dealing with an increase in car thefts at their stores in the Chicagoland suburbs. Mr. McGrath stated they have had 31 cars stolen in the past two years and they can be in-and-out of the store in less than eight minutes. Mr. McGrath stated they have security cameras, but the police are not able to respond in time. Mr. McGrath stated they are looking to fortify the facility with bollards around the perimeter. Mr. McGrath stated they will use a car they do not want and crash into the front of the store so they can get to the cars they do want to take. Mr. McGrath stated the bollards are 48-inches tall, measured about 5-feet on center. Mr. McGrath stated the problems are stemming from Chicago and moving outwards towards the suburbs. Acting Chair Burger confirmed the material will be a 6" x 6" timber over a concrete bollard. Mr. Smith questioned the color of the sleeves. Commissioner Rooney stated the darker the color the better, like a dark brown or black color.
Commissioner Hartshorne made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Rooney, to recommend the Village Board of Trustees approve the application for new fencing at 1620 S. Milwaukee Avenue, in accordance with the plans submitted.
Motion carried 7 - 0.
COMMUNICATIONS AND DISCUSSION:
The Commission entertained a discussion about the Village's Tree Ordinance, specifically the regulations surrounding commercial and residential properties. Mr. Smith discussed the Tree Preservation Ordinance and how it is catered for residential properties. Mr. Smith noted commercial properties rely on the Appearance Review Commission and approved Landscape Plan. With no further discussion, Commissioner Galo moved and Commissioner Rooney seconded a motion to adjourn.
Motion carried 7 - 0.
Meeting adjourned at 6:10 p.m.
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