Financial literacy is a core life skill for participating in modern society. But how many of us have been educated about money; the importance of budgeting and saving for a rainy day; how bank accounts and debt work and when it makes sense to save for a pension? Our brief research to date indicates a shockingly low level of financial literacy in the general population. And, it does not look like this will get better soon; regarding improving financial literacy, the Financial Services Authority stated in 2003 that “Never has the need been so great or so urgent”. And yet many children will go through school without an hour spent studying financial literacy. Furthermore, efforts to improve financial literacy at older ages are either non-existent or piecemeal at best.

The consequences of poor financial literacy are especially damaging for vulnerable people. Vulnerable groups of people are most at risk of making poor financial decisions throughout their lives, which has negative consequences for saving, home ownership, debt levels, retirement and financial inclusion. In this paper, we consider various mechanisms to protect such financial customers, whilst recognising that improving financial literacy is not a silver bullet to improve customer outcomes from financial products.

Financial literacy cannot be brought to a point where the public can understand many financial products without support and advice. But surely, awareness of basic financial literacy principles can be raised, including the most important: when to seek support and advice before undertaking important financial decisions. The paper suggests some key principles for financial literacy and will also consider methods and tools to allow the public to access much-needed support and advice.

WeedSOFT® is a decision support system that was developed to help farmers and consultants in Nebraska with the selection of optimal weed management strategies. WeedSOFT® evolved from HERB, a bioeconomic model for soybean that was developed in North Carolina. The program is composed of four independent modules, namely, ADVISOR, EnviroFX, MapVIEW, and WeedVIEW. ADVISOR helps the user select a treatment based on maximum yield or maximum net gain. EnviroFX and MapVIEW provide environmentally relevant herbicide information and county soil maps that indicate vulnerability to groundwater contamination. WeedVIEW is a visual library of color images and line drawings of 46 common weed species. Over 500 farmers and consultants in Nebraska and adjacent states use WeedSOFT®. As a result of the current regionalization effort, the user base is expected to increase rapidly during the next 2 or 3 yr. This article explains the algorithms implemented in the current version of WeedSOFT®.

Nutrient deficiencies during childhood have adverse effects on child growth and health. In a single-arm 48-week long-term intervention, we previously reported the efficacy of oral nutritional supplementation (ONS) and dietary counselling on catch-up growth and growth maintenance in nutritionally at-risk Filipino children. The present analysis was done to assess the contributing effects of ONS to nutritional adequacy, dietary diversity, food intake and longitudinal growth. ONS (450 ml) was consumed daily providing 450 kcal (1880 kJ) and at least 50 % of micronutrient requirements among 200 children aged 3–4 years with weight-for-height percentiles between 5th and 25th (WHO Growth Standards). Weight, height and dietary intakes using 24-h food recalls were measured at baseline, and at weeks 4, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40 and 48. Nutrient adequacy and dietary diversity score (DDS) were calculated. Generalised estimating equations were used to assess the effects of total nutrient intakes, DDS, ONS compliance and sociodemographic factors on longitudinal growth. The percentages of children with adequate intake of energy, protein, Fe, Ca and some vitamins at each post-baseline visit were improved from baseline, reaching 100 % for most nutrients. DDS was also increased from baseline and reached significance from week 16 onwards (P < 0·01). Male children, total energy intake and parental employment status were associated with weight-for-height percentile gain (P < 0·05), whereas higher parental education level and ONS compliance were significantly associated with height-for-age percentile gain over time (P < 0·05). Long-term ONS intervention did not interfere with normal food intake and helped promote nutritional adequacy and growth of Filipino children.

A typical stellar spectrogram shows a vast number of spectral lines. Each of these has its characteristic shape and strength which must, in some way, reflect the structure of the atmosphere in which the radiation arose. It seems reasonable that from all this profile data we should be able (and with considerable redundancy) to infer a good deal about the physical structure of the radiating gas, and a major effort has correspondingly been devoted to clarifying the physical basis of spectral line formation, i.e., exactly how the atmospheric structure and the atomic properties are reflected in the line profiles. This problem, however, is far from solved : Few, if any, of the profiles of strong lines can be predicted in detail from model atmospheres, nor have analyses of the profiles yielded unambiguous data on the atmospheric structure. Indeed, as recently as 1967, the participants at a conference in Bilderberg (Holland) concluded that no data at all which had been obtained from line profile analyses was worthy of inclusion in specifying the solar atmospheric model. Evidently, then, the problem of line formation is not trivial ; in this paper we discuss some of the difficulties and review the not inconsiderable progress which has been made in this area of astrophysical research.

Urban development is an increasing threat to the integrity of formerly remote protected areas, in some cases resulting in their downgrading, downsizing or degazetting. One-quarter of previously remote protected areas are now within 17 km of a city and thus face the threat of urbanization. Here we describe a case of avoided downgrading, downsizing and degazetting of a protected area in the Mondah forest of Gabon, north of Libreville. Since its creation in 1934 the Forêt Classée de la Mondah has been downsized regularly, losing 40% of its area over 80 years. During this time the forest surrounding the Forêt Classée was subject to usage for urban and peri-urban needs, including agriculture, sand extraction, collection of medicinal plants, ceremonies, and housing construction. In 2010 the area was threatened with further downsizing. The presence of narrowly endemic plant species in the area was suspected, and mapping and evaluation of these species was proposed in an effort to maintain the protected area boundaries. Botanical field work, including ex situ conservation measures and participant observation in nearby forest communities, was conducted; 24 endemic species, all threatened by urbanization, were evaluated using the criteria for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The borders of the protected area were maintained because of its role in maintaining irreplaceable habitat for threatened species. The area was renamed Raponda Walker Arboretum in 2012.

This research focuses on the design and experimental characterization of two types of MEMS asymmetrical electrothermal microactuators. Both microactuator design variants use resistive (Joule) heating to generate thermal expansion and movement. Deflection and force measurements of both microactuators as a function of applied electrical power are presented. Also described is the practical integration of the electrothermal microactuators in a monolithic microengine that is capable of rotating a set of gears.

A new polysilicon surface micromachining technique for fabricating and assembling three- dimensional structures has been developed. Single-layer polysilicon elements and laminated polysilicon panels incorporating trapped-glass reinforcement ribs have been successfully fabri- cated on a silicon substrate with robust and continuous hinges that facilitate out-of-plane rotation and assembly. To realize a stable three-dimensional structure, one of the device's elevatable panel components is terminated with an array of open windows, and the mating rotatable element has a matched set of protruding arrowheads/microrivets with flexible barbs that readily flex to facilitate their joining and assembly. Because the arrowhead/microrivet barb tip-to-barb tip sepa- ration is larger than the opening in the mating window, the barbs flex inward as they pass through the open window and then expand to their original shape upon exiting the window, re- sulting in a permanently latched joint and a three-dimensional structure. Three novel arrow- head/microrivet designs have been micromachined to facilitate the latching process, including a simple arrowhead, a high-aspect ratio arrowhead, and a rivet-like structure with a hemispherical shaped cap and a flexible split shank.

This research focuses on the design and experimental characterization of two types of asym- metrical MEMS electrothermal microactuators. Both MEMS polysilicon electrothermal microac- tuator designs use resistive (Joule) heating to generate thermal expansion and movement. Deflection and force measurements as a function of applied electrical power are presented.

Fluorine-doped silicon dioxide, a dielectric material compatible with copper integration, has received considerable attention for applications requiring a k value in the 3.5 to 4.0 range. Given the influence of structure on desired properties, convenient experimental structural probes of this type of material are of widespread interest. This work focuses on Raman spectroscopic analyses of ring defects in fluorine-doped silicon dioxide films prepared by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) as well as high density plasma methods (HDP). These measurements are complemented by ab initio computational simulations of the ring defects in these films and the impact of nearby fluorine on their stability. The impact of aging on these structures and correlations of observed trends with experimental techniques such as X-ray fluorescence are also described.

The application of non-equilibrium transport techniques to Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) grown InSb/InAlSb heterostructure diodes has produced practical devices such as midinfrared LED's and negative luminescent sources that operate at room temperature. By extending the epitaxial growth to vicinal InSb substrates it has been demonstrated that the temperature window for high quality epitaxy can be lowered by ∼12°C, giving greatly improved epilayer morphology. The degree of misorientation needed for given growth temperatures is shown from Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) measurements to be only ∼2°. In addition, the lower growth temperature gives improved dopant activation, lower trap densities and lower reverse bias leakage currents, with consequent benefits to device performance.