Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Graduate unemployment in South Africa: A much exaggerated problem

Increasing reference in the media and public discussions to high and rising levels of graduate unemployment in the South African labour market has raised concern about the functionality of South Africa’s higher education system and the employability of the graduates that it produces. While such references are generally premised on the findings of a handful of published research studies that have made reference to rising graduate unemployment, the results of those studies are subject to a number of criticisms, ranging from inadequate definitions of “graduates” to the use of incomplete, dated, or unrepresentative data. This paper reviews the existing evidence on graduate unemployment in South Africa and analyses levels of, and trends in, graduate unemployment in the country since 1995. To overcome the deficiencies of previous studies, “graduates” are explicitly defined as individuals with bachelor’s degrees or equivalents and higher educational qualifications (honours, Masters, and doctorate degrees) and all of the available nationally representative labour force survey data for South Africa between 1995 and 2011 is exploited. In contrast to what appears to be a growing consensus regarding the extent of graduate unemployment in the country, the analysis conducted shows no evidence of a high level or a markedly upward trend in graduate (i.e. degreed) unemployment. Instead levels and rates of graduate unemployment are found to be quite low in an international context, revealing that there is little cause for concern about broad trends in graduate unemployment.
Stress-Induced Hsp70 Gene Expression and Inactivation of Cryptosporidium parvum Oocysts by Chlorine-Based Oxidants

ABSTRACT Our research on the mechanisms of action of chlorine-based oxidants on Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts in water revealed a dual-phase effect: (i) response to oxidative stress, which was demonstrated by induced expression of the Hsp70 heat shock gene, and (ii) oocyst inactivation as a result of long-term exposure to oxidants. The relative biocidal effects of sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and electrolytically generated mixed oxidant solution (MOS) on C. parvum oocysts were compared at identical free chlorine concentrations. Oocyst inactivation was determined by quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR) amplification of the heat-induced Hsp70 mRNA and compared with tissue culture infectivity. According to both assays, within the range between 25 and 250 mg/liter free chlorine and with 4 h contact time, MOS exhibits a higher efficacy in oocyst inactivation than hypochlorite. Other RNA-based viability assays, aimed at monitoring the levels of β-tubulin mRNA and 18S rRNA, showed relatively slow decay rates of these molecules following disinfection by chlorine-based oxidants, rendering these molecular diagnostic viability markers inappropriate for disinfection efficacy assessment.
Biofuel Development and Large-Scale Land Deals in Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa's biofuel potential over the last ten years has increasingly attracted foreign investors’ attention. We estimate the determinants of foreign investors land demand for biofuel production in SSA, using Poisson specifications of the gravity model. Our estimates suggest that land availability, abundance of water resources and weak land governance are significant determinants of large-scale land acquisitions for biofuel production. This in turn suggests that this type of investment is mainly resource-seeking and investors might see land governance weaknesses as a way to access land and water resources at very favorable conditions. Results are robust to different specifications.
Chapter 5 ADHD and personality characteristics in older adults in the general Dutch population

Objectives: To examine the association between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and personality characteristics and the potential mediating role of these characteristics in the relationship between ADHD and depression in older adults in the general Dutch population. Design: Data from the Longitudinal Aging study Amsterdam in 2008/2009 were used in a cross-sectional design on 231 participants with and without ADHD, aged 60-94 years. Questionnaires assessing self-esteem, self-efficacy, mastery, neuroticism and social inadequacy were administered. ADHD was measured by means of ADHD diagnosis and level of ADHD symptoms. Linear regression analyses were performed to assess the association between ADHD (symptoms) and personality characteristics. Single and multivariate mediation analyses were performed to examine the mediating role of personality characteristics in the relationship between ADHD (symptoms) and depressive symptoms. Results: ADHD was significantly negatively associated with sense of mastery df=228, p= 0.02), and self-efficacy (B=-2.33, t =-2.02, df = 228, p= 0.045) and positively associated with neuroticism (B= 0.99, t= 4.90, df= 228, p <0.001) and social inadequacy (B= 0.65, t = 3.32, df = 229, p= 0.001). In the single mediation analyses, all personality characteristics were mediators in the relationship between ADHD symptoms and depressive symptoms. In the multivariate analysis only mastery and self-esteem were mediators. Conclusions: Older adults with ADHD reported lower self-esteem and sense of mastery and higher levels of neuroticism and social inadequacy than older adults without ADHD. Mastery and self-esteem partly explained the association between ADHD and depressive symptoms in old age. The results implicate that in treatment clinicians should pay attention to the personality characteristics of older adults with ADHD.
News from OPUS — A collection of multilingual parallel corpora with tools and interfaces

The opus corpus is a growing resource providing various multilingual parallel corpora from diﬀerent domains. In this article we introduce resources that have recently been added to opus . We also look at some corpus-speciﬁc problems and the solutions used in preparing the parallel data for the inclusion in our collection. In particular, we discuss the alignment of movie subtitles and the conversion of biomedical documents and localization data to a sentence aligned xml format. opus also includes various tools and interfaces besides the actual data. We will brieﬂy describe our corpus processing and query tools and a newly added lexical database of word alignments.
MMT Observations of New Extremely Metal-poor Emission-Line Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We present 6.5 m MMT spectrophotometry of 20 H II regions in 13 extremely metal-poor emission-line galaxies selected from Data Release 5 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to have [O III] λ4959/Hβ ≲ 1 and [N II] λ6583/Hβ ≲ 0.05. The electron-temperature-sensitive emission line [O III] λ4363 is detected in 13 H II regions, allowing a direct abundance determination. The oxygen abundance in the remaining H II regions is derived using a semiempirical method. The oxygen abundance of the galaxies in our sample ranges from 12 + log (O/H) ~ 7.1 to ~7.8, with 10 H II regions having an oxygen abundance lower than 7.5. The lowest oxygen abundances, 7.14 ± 0.03 and 7.13 ± 0.07, are found in two H II regions of the blue compact dwarf galaxy SDSS J0956+2849 (≡DDO 68), making it the second most metal-deficient emission-line galaxy known, after SBS 0335-052W.
Ketahanan Fiskal: Studi Kasus Malaysia dan Indonesia

In the last ten years, fiscal policy has played an important role to the macroeco¬nomy. This paper aims to explore the fiscal strength and the synchronization between fiscal and monetary policy for Malaysia and Indonesia. For the first issue, this paper applies the Trehan and Walsh method, meanwhile the Berument’s approach is used to examine the syn¬chronization between fiscal and monetary policy. The result shows that in case of Malaysia, the government applied tax-financed policy; meanwhile Indonesia has entered to the debt trap. The Malaysia’s government has also synchronized fiscal and monetary policy, which is different with that in Indonesia.Keyword: Fiscal policy, tax-financed policy, debt trap.
Musical expertise and foreign speech perception

The aim of this experiment was to investigate the influence of musical expertise on the automatic perception of foreign syllables and harmonic sounds. Participants were Cuban students with high level of expertise in music or in visual arts and with the same level of general education and socio-economic background. We used a multi-feature Mismatch Negativity (MMN) design with sequences of either syllables in Mandarin Chinese or harmonic sounds, both comprising deviants in pitch contour, duration and Voice Onset Time (VOT) or equivalent that were either far from (Large deviants) or close to (Small deviants) the standard. For both Mandarin syllables and harmonic sounds, results were clear-cut in showing larger MMNs to pitch contour deviants in musicians than in visual artists. Results were less clear for duration and VOT deviants, possibly because of the specific characteristics of the stimuli. Results are interpreted as reflecting similar processing of pitch contour in speech and non-speech sounds. The implications of these results for understanding the influence of intense musical training from childhood to adulthood and of genetic predispositions for music on foreign language perception are discussed.
Pattern of adult intestinal obstruction at Tenwek hospital, in south-western Kenya

Introduction Acute mechanical intestinal obstruction (IO) is one of the leading causes of surgical admissions in most emergency departments worldwide. The causes of IO vary significantly depending on geographical location. The aim of this study was to identify the etiology, management and outcomes of patients with acute mechanical IO presenting in south-western Kenya. Methods A 4 year (November 2009–October 2013) retrospective review of all adult patients admitted with acute mechanical IO at Tenwek Hospital in Bomet, Kenya. Results A total of 303 male and 142 female patients, presented with acute mechanical IO during the study period. Mean patient age was 40.6 years (range 17-91), with peak incidence in those aged 31-40 years. The foremost signs and symptoms were abdominal pain (89.4%), abdominal tenderness (81.6%), vomiting (78%), abdominal distension (65.4%) and constipation (50.8%). Sigmoid volvulus (25.6%), adhesions (23.1%), small bowel volvulus (21.3%), and ileo-sigmoid knotting (8.5%) were the leading causes of IO. Laparotomy was undertaken in 361 (81.1%) cases, with bowel gangrene noted in 112 (30.4%). The overall morbidity and mortality rates were 15% and 4.5% respectively. Patients with gangrenous bowel at laparotomy had a higher morbidity rate (22.3% vs 9.6%, P=.001), a higher mortality rate (9.8% vs 3.2%, P=.02) and a longer duration of stay (9.9 days vs 7.6 days, P=.0001) compared to those with viable bowel. Conclusion The most common causes of IO in this study were sigmoid volvulus, adhesions, small bowel volvulus and ileo-sigmoid knotting. Presence of bowel gangrene was associated with higher morbidity and mortality rates.
Bringing the target to the cursor: proxy targets for older adults

Studies in the literature have proposed techniques to facilitate pointing in graphical user interfaces through the use of proxy targets. Proxy targets effectively bring the target to the cursor, thereby reducing the distance that the cursor must travel. This paper describes a study which aims to provide an initial understanding of how older adults respond to proxy targets, and compares older with younger users. We found that users in both age groups adjusted to the proxy targets without difficulty, and there was no indication in the cursor trajectories that users were confused about which target, i.e. the original versus the proxy, was to be selected. In terms of times, preliminary results show that for younger users, proxies did not provide any benefits over direct selection, while for older users, times were increased with proxy targets. A full analysis of the movement times, error rates, throughput and subjective feedback is currently underway.
The Graduate Experience in Engineering and the Physical Sciences: Gender and Ethnic Differences in Initial Expectations and Departmental Incorporation

AUTHOR Santiago, Anna M. ; Einarson, Marne K. TITLE The Graduate Experience in Engineering and the Physical Sciences: Gender and Ethnic Differences in Initial Expectations and Departmental Incorporation. INSTITUTION Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor. Center for the Education of Women. SPONS AGENCY Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New York, N.Y. PUB DATE 8 Apr 96 NOTE 53p. ; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New York, NY, April 8-12, 1996). PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143) Speeches /Conference Papers (150)
The role of the direct perforant path input to the CA1 subregion of the dorsal hippocampus in memory retention and retrieval

Subregional analyses of the hippocampus have suggested a selective role for the CA1 subregion in intermediate/long‐term spatial memory and consolidation, but not short‐term acquisition or encoding processes. It remains unclear how the direct cortical projection to CA1 via the perforant path (pp) contributes to these CA1‐dependent processes. It has been suggested that dopamine selectively modulates the pp projection to CA1 while having little to no effect on the Schaffer collateral (SC) projection to CA1. This series of behavioral and electrophysiological experiments takes advantage of this pharmacological dissociation to demonstrate that the direct pp inputs to CA1 are critical in CA1‐dependent intermediate‐term retention and retrieval function. Here we demonstrate that local infusion of the nonselective dopamine agonist, apomorphine (10, 15 μg), into the CA1 subregion of awake animals produces impairments in between‐day retention and retrieval, sparing within‐day encoding of a modified Hebb‐Williams maze and contextual conditioning of fear. In contrast, apomorphine produces no deficits when infused into the CA3 subregion. To complement the behavioral analyses, electrophysiological data was collected. In anesthetized animals, local infusion of the same doses of apomorphine significantly modifies evoked responses in the distal dendrites of CA1 following angular bundle stimulation, but produces no significant effects in the more proximal dendritic layer following stimulation of the SC. These results support a modulatory role for dopamine in the EC‐CA1, but not CA3‐CA1 circuitry, and suggest the possibility of a more fundamental role for EC‐CA1 synaptic transmission in terms of intermediate‐term, but not short‐term spatial memory. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Planning manipulator trajectories under dynamics constraints using minimum-time shortcuts

Planning minimum-time, dynamically-feasible, collision-free trajectories for robotic manipulators is essential to improve industrial productivity. Yet this diﬃcult problem is still waiting for robust and eﬃcient algorithms. Here we propose to tackle it by bringing together two methods : (cid:12)xed-path time-minimization under dynamics constraints and shortcuts-based smoothing. We implement our algorithm using the OpenRAVE platform, and demonstrate its eﬃciency through simulations on a dynamic model of the 4-dof Barrett Whole-Arm Manipulator.
Robust and Eecient Computation of Optical Flow 1 List of Figures

1 The discrepancy between the gradient directions of the function I 0 and I 1 at the i-th location is small and thus the use of the gradient direction as the search direction for the i-th component is robust; while the the j-th component of the gradient direction is unreliable for a local 2 Frames from the (a) Square 2 and (b) Diverging Tree image sequences. 19 3 Computed optical ow of the (a) Square 2 and (b) Diverging Tree image sequences after 40 iterations of the incomplete Cholesky pre-conditioned CG 4 (a) One frame from the Rotating Rubic cube sequence (b) Computed optical ow after 40 iterations of the incomplete Cholesky preconditioned CG 5 Frames from the (a) Sinusoid 1 and (b) Translating Tree image 6 Computed optical ow of the (a) Sinusoid 1 and (b) Translating Tree image sequences, using the preconditioned nonlinear CG algorithm. 24 7 (a) One frame from the Hamburg Taxi sequence (b) Computed optical ow after 200 iterations of the preconditioned nonlinear CG Abstract In this paper, we present two very eecient and accurate algorithms for computing optical ow. The rst is a modiied gradient-based regularization method, and the other is an SSD-based regularization method. To amend the errors in the image ow constraint caused by the brightness discontinuities, we propose to selectively combine the image ow constraint and the contour-based ow constraint into the data constraint in a regularization framework. The image ow constraint is disabled in the neighborhood of discontinuities, while the contour-based ow constraint is active at discontinuity locations. To solve the linear system resulting from the regularization formulation, the incomplete Cholesky preconditioned conjugate gradient algorithm is employed, leading to an eecient algorithm. Our SSD-based regularization method uses the SSD measure as the data constraint in a regularization framework. The precondi-tioned nonlinear conjugate gradient with a modiied search direction scheme is developed to minimize the resulting energy function. Experimental results for these two algorithms are given to demonstrate their performance.
Developing shared understandings of standards-based assessment : online moderation practices across geographically diverse contexts

This thesis investigates the place of online moderation in supporting teachers to work in a system of standards-based assessment. The participants of the study were fifty middle school teachers who met online with the aim of developing consistency in their judgement decisions. Data were gathered through observation of the online meetings, interviews, surveys and the collection of artefacts. The data were viewed and analysed through sociocultural theories of learning and sociocultural theories of technology, and demonstrates how utilising these theories can add depth to understanding the added complexity of developing shared meaning of standards in an online context. The findings contribute to current understanding of standards-based assessment by examining the social moderation process as it acts to increase the reliability of judgements that are made within a standards framework. Specifically, the study investigates the opportunities afforded by conducting social moderation practices in a synchronous online context. The study explicates how the technology affects the negotiation of judgements and the development of shared meanings of assessment standards, while demonstrating how involvement in online moderation discussions can support teachers to become and belong within a practice of standards-based assessment. This research responds to a growing international interest in standards-based assessment and the use of social moderation to develop consistency in judgement decisions. Online moderation is a new practice to address these concerns on a systemic basis.
Are Democrats conservative ? Towards a theory of the role of standard setters in standard setting *

We investigate the role of standard setters in standard setting. In particular, we examine how the backgrounds and personal politics of FASB members influence the nature of accounting standards proposed between 1973 and 2007. Among other results, we find that length of service on the board and a prior career in investment banking/ investment management are associated with proposing standards perceived as decreasing accounting “reliability;” while affiliation with the Democratic Party is associated with proposing standards perceived as increasing accounting “reliability. ” Broadly, the evidence suggests that individuals on the FASB have a wider influence in the political economy of standard setting than is currently understood. * We thank S.P. Kothari, Sugata Roychowdhury, and Doug Skinner for helpful discussions and Beiting Cheng for research assistance. Any errors are our responsibility. 1 Are Democrats conservative? Towards a theory of the role of standard setters in standard setting
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELF-AWARENESS AND EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP IN COUNTY GOVERNMENTS IN KENYA

Purpose: The main objective of this study was to establish the relationship between self-awareness and effective leadership in County Governments in Kenya. Methods: The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The target population of the study was 3,190 County Officials. A stratified sampling technique was used to gather for proper representation of the entire population. Data collection instrument used was a questionnaire. Quantitative data was analyzed statistically yielding frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations, while inferential statistical tools such as correlation and regression were used to determine and explain variable relations by use of SPSS Version 22 program. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test for significant differences in three categories of county officers and data were presented in the form of tables, figures and charts. Results: The results of correlation analysis showed that there was a moderately strong, positive and significant relationship between self-awareness and effective leadership. These finding implied that increase in self-awareness positively resulted to increase in effective leadership. This univariate regression results also confirmed that there is a positive linear relationship between self-awareness and effective leadership. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study recommends county government, public institutions and private entity that wish to gain from the significant impact of self-awareness should hire employee with high self-confidence, accurate self-assessment and generally high self-awareness. The organisations should also during the induction process conduct self-awareness evaluation and offers training where necessary. Improving self-awareness of employees with enhance their leadership qualities hence benefiting the organisation.