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Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, has been the landscape of religious, social and political conflict for more than 500 years. The Magindanawn people, who embraced Islam after contact with Malay Muslims in the late 1400s, have experienced clan rivalries and other outsider aggressions leading to disenfranchisement and displacement from their ancestral domain in west Central Mindanao. In the activism and rebellion of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Magindanawn people were often caught between Philippine military forces and the Bangsamoro mujahideen. In the 1980s, there was some respite bu...

The aim of this project is to start creating awareness and to convey the idea that optical sensor technologies are now technically and economically mature enough to provide safety enhancement features in the residential environment and market. A first application of these technologies can be that of real time building structural health diagnosis: a utility company or telecommunications operator is in a position to provide it as a service by means of its urban optical fiber infrastructure and service management expertise. There are several advantages accruing from continuously monitoring the...

The purpose of this study was to explore the possible relationship between instrumental music education in Grades 8 and 11 and critical thinking as assessed by the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment. The subsets that were examined included Reading (B): Interpretation and Analysis of Fictional and Nonfictional Text, which assesses the academic standards 1.1, Learning to read independently; standard 1.2, Reading critically in all content areas; standard 1.3, Reading, analyzing and interpreting literature, and Mathematics, sections C.1 Geometry- Analyze characteristics of two and three dime...

The research problem focused on Panama's low-income consumers' decision making process when shopping for consumer-products. The purpose of the research was to determine Panama's low-income consumers' consumption values, preferences, and loyalty towards a particular brand over another. The qualitative research method was employed in this study, and the data collection process consisted of observation and in-depth interview documents that were organized and categorized. The results of the study found that Panama's low-income consumers' brand preferences were widely varied and brand-loyalty behav...

Since the turn of the century the use of computer-mediated-communication (CMC) has become more widespread in educational contexts and weblogs (blogs), one of the more popular forms of CMC (Bloch, 2007), have been the focus of numerous studies. However, whilst these studies have listed the potential benefits of blog use for language learners, few studies have offered any practical tips for educators who wish to implement the use of writing blogs in the EFL classroom. Moreover, the vast majority of studies have focused on the use of blogs with relatively high-level learners in academic contexts....

Immigrants are characterized on the average with higher human capital and are rewarded potentially less as compared to their native counterparts. This question has motivated me to analyze the immigrants-natives wage gap in detail and find the extent of this potential discrimination against the immigrants. I analyze the data from the first two quarters of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, 2009 using the Oaxaca Decomposition technique. Applying both the threefold and twofold decomposition approaches, I computed the wage gap first using simple decomposition based on threefold and then the twofol...

This paper seeks to analyze the role that literature has performed throughout the last years, the conflicts derived from the academic views, and how literature is an essential tool for the comprehensive study of a second language, as an integral part of the educational process. The Model suggested enhances the figure of the teacher and promotes the skills, knowledge and attitudes of the students within a multicultural environment.

In the United States, divorce is estimated to occur in approximately 50% of all marriages. As a result, children are increasingly being exposed to the divorce process and are at increased risk for emotional and behavioral difficulties. The maternal preference for child placement following a divorce is well documented and often places fathers in the role of the nonresidential parent. Parent-child relationships frequently continue after divorce and fathers have been shown to play a critical role in child development. Factors that contribute to the quality of the nonresident father-child relation...

One of the major problems encountered in qualitative and quantitative determination of residual pesticides by gas chromatography is the matrix effects. Matrix components have a considerable effect on the way analysis is conducted and the quality of results obtained, introducing problems such as inaccurate quantification, low analyte detectability and reporting of false positive or even false negative results. It was aimed to develop and validate a suitable method for counteracting the matrix effects so as to improve the detection and quantification of selected organochlorine pesticide residues...

Salvia divinorum is a hallucinogenic herb that was originally used in the Mazatec Indian culture of Oaxaca, Mexico for spiritual and medicinal purposes (Wasson, 1962). Salvia divinorum produces powerful hallucinogenic effects when the leaves are chewed, orally consumed in a liquid state, or dried and smoked. Its active ingredient is Salvinorin-A (Roth et al., 2002; Siebert, 1994), a highly selective kappa-opioid receptor agonist (Roth et al., 2002), that researchers consider to be the most potent naturally occurring hallucinogen (Ortega, Blount & Manchand, 1982; Siebert, 1994; Valdes et al., 1...