Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Behavioral factors associated with utilization of outpatient services among elderly in Pakistan: evidence from a nationally representative survey

BackgroundIn Pakistan, health system is facing unprecedented challenges to deal with the healthcare demand of the growing ageing population. Using conceptual framework, this study analyzes the factors associated with outpatient services utilization by the elderly population Methods This study used a sample of 5,319 individuals aged 60 and above extracted from the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey 2014-15. We modified the Anderson’s Behavioral model to accommodate available information on the elderly healthcare utilization. The behavioral factors, including predisposing, enabling and need factors, associated with the use of outpatient service were analyzed using exploratory data analysis and binary logistic regressions. The utilization of outpatient service in the study refers to the visits to private and government hospitals.ResultsOut of total 5,319 participants, 72.4% of participants visited outpatient services in private hospitals for their healthcare needs. Multivariate analysis showed that older age-group (80 years and above) and participants from urban were 35% and 53% times more likely to visit outpatient services in private hospitals, respectively. The elderly persons from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were three times (AOR: 3.29, CI 2.5-4.8) more likely to visit government hospitals than their peers in Punjab. Participants who attended school (AOR: 1.21, CI 0.82-1.31) were more likely to utilize outpatient service in private hospitals. Elders from rich (AOR: 1.04, CI 0.84-1.13) and richest (AOR: 1.29, CI 0.89-1.87) wealth quintiles were more likely to visit private hospitals. The likelihood of the utilization of outpatient service in private hospitals increased by 17% with the increase in the frequency of consultation by three times and more.ConclusionsOur findings underscore a dire need for expanding the outreach of healthcare services, particularly government hospital facilities, for the elderly population. Moreover, the knowledge generated through this research may be employed to make particular behavioral interventions in areas, such as, age, caregiving for elderly living without spouse, poor, and elderly without social security or pension, and education.
Discrete Event Simulation Modeling and Analysis of Key Leader Engagements

Abstract : The Cultural Geography (CG) Model is a low-resolution, agent-based discrete event social simulation tailored to specific operational environments. It is based on doctrine and social theory that are designed to represent the behavioral response of civilian populations in conflict environments. The current version of the CG Model does not represent key leader engagements (KLEs), which are activities between coalition military forces and host nation civilian personnel as means of obtaining information, influencing behavior, and building an indigenous base of support for coalition and government objectives. These capabilities are needed for additional tactical-level representation of the operational environment. This research develops a simulation model using Simkit to explore the feasibility of modeling KLEs using discrete event simulation. A total of 32 dynamic input factors are varied using a 512-design point design. Second-order regression metamodels and partition tree models are developed for simulation model output responses that track numbers of engagements, numbers of times knowledge is provided, numbers of campaigns, and numbers of captures and kills. These analytical models are used to verify the proper execution of the simulation model. Summary statistics are analyzed to gain further insights about the simulation model's behavior.
Creating the Corporate Future: Plan or be Planned For

Here's why thousands of readers in business and management turn to Russell Ackoff for innovative and effective ideas: "Russell Ackoff has probably influenced more managers than any other living person. Two of his books, Scientific Method (1962) and Redesigning the Future (1974), are the cornerstones of much of the theory and methods for systematic analysis of problems in management and planning. " - APA Journal "Russell Ackoff is undoubtedly one of the great masters of this art " [of storytelling as a means of conveying information]. - Omega, The International Journal of Management Science The Art of Problem Solving is "A witty, literate, and most of all convincing reflection . He shines an often bright light into corners where problems hide, showing the manager how to understand the consequences of his own behavior; identify real, rather than supposed, elements of problems; perceive another's aims; determine what is controllable; and deal with other nettlesome factors. " - INC.
ADAPTATION OF COMMON CARP TO SALINITY

This study was conducted to investigate the ability of common carp, Cyprinus carpio, to adapt to various salinity levels. Two experiments were conducted to study the effects of gradual increase of salinity on weight gain, survival, immunological and osmoregulatory responses and consequent resistance to Vibrio vulnificus infections in common carp. In the first experiment, sodium chloride was added to the water by 0.5ppt every two days to reach a final concentration of 4, 6 and 8ppt, and fish were sampled after 14 days. In the second experiment, sodium chloride was added by 0.5ppt every week to reach a final concentration of 6 ppt and fish were sampled after one month. Fish of the first experiment exposed to 8ppt salinity showed significant increase in all serum measurements and detrimental effects on weight gain and survival. In the second adaptation experiment, the unaltered glucose, cortisol and ions levels indicated that salinity up to 6ppt did not produce significant stress in common carp it decrease the mortality rate caused by V. vulnificus. The above results suggest that common carp, a freshwater fish, can withstand gradual increases of salinity of up to 6ppt, and thus can be raised in brackish water with little or no detrimental effects on growth and performance.
Sustainable Ecosystems: and the Built Environment

Preface Introduction Structures Renewed Dialogue with Climatic Forces Genesis of Natural Forces Atomic Architecture The Power of the Brief Shape, Texture and Flow Global Warning Landscape Sustained by Nature Towards the Light An Architecture of Smell Dynamic Cities A Breath of Fresh Air Embodied Energy More for Less Post Air--Conditioned Architecture Working with the Elements The Design of Sustainable New Towns Interactive Urbanism Sculpting with Energy Structural Substance of Composite Detailing Engaging Pre--Engineering Technology in Chongqing, China Delivering a Sustainable Future List of Projects.
Assessing the Effects of Gamification on Enhancing Information Security Awareness Knowledge

Information security awareness (ISA) has become a vital issue, as security breaches often attributed to humans lead to losses for individuals and organizations. Information security (IS) education may be an effective strategy to improve students’ ISA; however, studies associated with the relationships between teaching effects and information security learning are few. This study adopted gamification practice and examined its effect on students’ ISA knowledge enhancement, attitude and intention of security compliance, and willingness for continuous IS education. This study also examined the gender difference in a gamified learning system. One hundred ten undergraduates participated in a quasi-experimental study. The results indicated that students within a gamified class performed better than students within a lecture-based instructional group. We found significant gamification effects on the three security focus areas of password management, Internet use, and information handling. Gamification did not significantly impact the attitude and intention of participants’ security compliance and students’ willingness for continuous IS learning. Gender difference in the effect of gamification on ISA knowledge enhancement was not observed as well. The research provides theoretical and practical contributions by incorporating gamification into IS learning and suggests gamification as an effective means to enhance students’ knowledge acquisition in an engaging, timely, economical, and repeated manner.
Daniel of Service Attack Detection using Classification Techniques in WSNs

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are comprised of a large number of sensor nodes that are low in cost and smaller in size. The sensor nodes are usually placed in open areas and used in many applications. The nature of WSNs makes it threatened by many security attacks, one of them is the Denial of Service (DoS) attack which is defined as any activities that prevent the network to perform its expected functions. Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a mechanism used to detect the malicious nodes in the network. In this paper, classification techniques are used as a tool to detect intruder node. These techniques are Naives Bayesian, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest and J48. Four types of DoS attacks are considered in this study, they are: Blackhole, Grayhole, Flooding and Scheduling attacks. The detection performance evaluation is measured by different metrics such as True Positive Rate (TP), Precision (P), Recall, False Positive Rate (FP) and ROC area. A specialized dataset for WSNs is used as an input file. Using WEKA data mining tool. The results show that the SVM classifier outperforms the other classifiers with high detection rate of 96.7%.
Informatical Thinking

In this paper, we reviewed many definitions of computational thinking, finding they share a lot of common elements, of very different nature. We classified them in mental processes, methods, practices, and transversal skills. Many of these elements seem to be shared with other disciplines and resonate with the current narrative on the importance of 21st-century skills. Our classification helps on shedding light on the misconceptions related to each of the four categories, showing that, not to dilute the concept, elements of computational thinking should be intended inside the discipline of Informatics, being its “disciplinary way of thinking”.
Handbook for Productivity Measurement and Improvement

No other reference answers more of your questions on quality and productivity. Seventy of the world's leading experts talk about quality and productivity. Learn the evolving theories and specific practices of world class organizations. Insightful and fascinating articles by Peter Drucker, William Christopher, Jay Forrester, Carl Thor, Yasuhiro Monden among others. Contents: Productivity - where we stand: the road ahead; Basic Concepts, Productivity Measures and Improvement in: manufacturing, service industries, staff departments, profit centers, government and non-profit institutions, Structuring feedback for control and improvement; Sustainability and the new economics; Total employee involvement; Gain sharing.
Evaluation of safety effects of various ISA vehicle penetration grades by microscopic simulations. Final report

The purpose of the EVITA project was to, by means of computer simulation, estimate the safety impacts of different grades of Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) vehicles with respect to rearend collisions, vehicle-pedestrian collisions and intersection conflicts. Simulation becomes popular in evaluation of effects of ITS system because of its ability to mimic the virtual situations and to partly replace the expensive and complex field experiments. ISA is a type of vehicle based ITS system but few simulation studies were applied to this system. To explore the safety effects of different ISA penetration grades, simulations, however, seem to be a very useful method. In this section, ISA and its effects from the previous experiments will be introduced at first. The safety problem in urban area will be described based on the statistics of accidents in Sweden within previous periods (A). This document is available at http://www.infra. kth.se/ctr/publikationer/ctr2004_14. pdf
UTILIZATION OF AGGLOMERATION ALGORITHM (TREE CLUSTERING) IN RESEARCH ON CRIMINALITY IN MOTOR TRANSPORT IN POLAND

Summary. In this thesis there are introduced theoretical basics and utilization opportunities of an agglomeration method (tree clustering) in researches on criminality in motor transport in Poland. It concerns a period of intensifi cation of government transitions in the country, in which the problems of property larceny, including cars, have considerably grown. Application of the mathematical, statistical method enabled to acquire an objective image of this research issue in a multidimensional form.
ANALYSIS OF LEAF TOLERANCE TO MIDVEIN DAMAGE BY A SIMPLE MIDVEIN CUT-OFF TRIAL

Venation type is an important trait for terrestrial plant leaves. Especially the midvein plays a crucial role in water and nutrient transportation and correlates with leaf tolerance to physical damage. In our study, we explored the leaf tolerance to midvein damages in 95 terrestrial species by a simple midvein cut-off trial. Within three months, no detectable changes of leaf intactness were found for over two-thirds of the selected species. In two species, Acer rubrum and Hylotelephium erythrostictum, over 10 % of the leaf area was damaged by the end of the experiment. The diameter of the midvein and the leaf length showed a significantly positive correlation with the ratio of lamina damaged area to the total area (RLD), but the correlation became insignificant after including the phylogenetic relationships. The RLD varied considerably within each venation type (netted or parallel) while showed no significant difference and did not differ significantly between the two venation types; however, the RLD tended to be higher in herbaceous plants than in shrubs and trees. Our results indicated that the leaf tolerance to physical damages on the midvein of terrestrial plants was a trait somehow independent of phylogenetic relationships.
Influence analysis of capital shopping and local own-source revenue on non-food shopping

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of Capital Expenditure and Local Own-Source Revenue (PAD) on Non-food Expenditure of the population; in North Central Timor Regency. Research methodology: This research was a quantitative study that used time series data and located in North Central Timor Regency. Descriptive statistic and Multiple linear regressions were used as statistic tools. SPSS Version 23 was used for data analysis. Results: The results of this study indicate that PAD has a significant effect on non-food shopping of the population in North Central Timor Regency. Limitations: This study it only generalized the problem that occurred in North Central Timor Regency Contribution: These findings could be very significant information to North Central Timor Regency.
Acoustic communication for use in underwater sensor networks

In this study an underwater acoustic communications system has been simulated. The simulations has been performed through use of a simulation program called EasyPLR that is based on the PlaneRay propagation model. In the simulations different pulse shapes have been tested for use in underwater communication. Different types of loss have also been studied for different carrier frequencies. Changing the carrier frequency from 20 kHz to 75 kHz gives a huge difference in both absorption loss and reflection loss. This means that there will be a tradeoff between having a high frequency for high data rate and reducing the carrier frequency to reduce the loss. The modulation technique used in this study is Quadrature phase shift keying and different sound speed profiles have been tested to see how this affects the performance. The transmission distance has been tested for several distances up to 3 km. The results show a significant difference in the performances at 1 km and 3 km for the same noise level. Direct sequence spread spectrum with Quadrature phase shift keying has also been simulated for different distances with good performance. The challenge is to get good time synchronization, and the performance is much better at 1 km than at 3 km.
AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)

The common presupposition of Enterprise Systems (ES) is that they lead to significant efficiency gains. However, this is only the case for well-implemented ES that meet organisational requirements. The list of major ES implementation failures is as long as the list of success stories. We argue here that this arises from a more fundamental problem, the functionalist approach to ES development and provision. As long as vendors will continue to develop generic, difficult-to-adapt ES packages, this problem will prevail because organisations have a non-generic character. A solution to this problem can only consist in rethinking the way ES packages are provided. We propose a strict abstraction layer of ES functionalities and their representation as conceptual models. ES vendors must provide sufficient means for configuring these conceptual models. We discuss in this paper what generic situations can occur during process model configuration in order to understand process model configuration in depth.
Measuring the Relationship between Airline Network Connectivity and Productivity

This paper investigates the relationship between differing measures of airline network connectivity and changes in multifactor productivity (MFP) using data for the United States. It was found that how an airport is connected into the airline network does affect MFP and that the connectivity measures that best explain the effect on MFP vary by industry. The principal finding of the research is that connectivity does appear to affect productivity, but how the connectivity is achieved, whether by more flights, more destinations, or more capacity, varies in importance across industries.
LogWheels: A Security Log Visualizer

Logging security incidents is a required security measure in every moderately complex computer system. But while most systems produce large quantities of textual logs, these logs are often neglected or infrequently monitored by untrained personnel. One of the reasons for this neglect is the poor usability offered by distributed repositories of plain text log data, using different log formats and contradictory terminology. The use of security visualization has established itself as a promising research area, aiming to improve the usability of security logs by utilizing the visual perception system's abilities to absorb large data quantities. This thesis examines the state of the art in security log usability, and proposes two ideas to the areas of security log usability and security visualization: First, we introduce LogWheels, an interactive dashboard offering remote monitoring of security incident logs, through a user friendly visualization interface. By offering three levels of granularity, LogWheels provides both an overview of the entire system, and the opportunity to request details on demand. Second, we introduce the incident wheel, the core visualization component of LogWheels. The incident wheel presents three key dimensions of security incidents -- 'what', 'when', and 'where' -- all within a single screen. In addition to a specification of LogWheels architecture and visualization scheme, the thesis is accompanied by a functional proof-of-concept, which allows demonstrations of the system on real or simulated security data.
Driving Growth Through Innovation : How Leading Firms Are Transforming Their Futures Ed. 2

You’ve read creativity books before, but innovation, as bestselling author Robert B. Tucker explains in this groundbreaking book, is much, much more: it is bringing new ideas to life—to drive growth, profitiablity and competitive advantage. Innovation is fast becoming the critical business skill of the 21st century. Driving Growth Through Innovation will take you behind the scenes to learn the winning methods behind some of the most exciting breakthroughs of our time. You will find out how innovators at Colgate-Palmolive brainstormed a product—Colgate Total—that unseated Crest to become the world’s leading toothpaste brand. Learn how Citigroup, the world’s largest financial services company, has used its global innovation initiative to generate fifteen to twenty percent of their revenue from products that have been introduced in the previous two years. Witness a highly unconventional, even controversial, focus group that Daimler Chrysler used to design the breakthrough PT Cruiser. Get the true story of how developers at Maytag used their experiences with designing the revolutionary Neptune washer to jumpstart growth in a mature market. And how Dana Corporation consistently elicits two ideas per month per employee with a stunning eighty percent implementation rate. This second edition has been revised and updated throughout and includes a self-assessment instrument so that readers can evaluate the innovation culture and practices of their organizations, as well as a discussion of the newly emerging position of chief innovation officer.
Topographic Shifts in Functional Connectivity and Reduced Lateralization in 16p11.2 Deletion Carriers: A Genetics-First Approach to Understanding Autism

Background: The study of autism has been confounded by genetic and etiologic heterogeneity. The current study utilized a genetics-first approach to investigate the underlying neurobiology of autism by studying individuals with copy number variation at 16p11.2. Our aim was to investigate the prevailing theories of brain connectivity in autism – specifically, in regard to (1) distributed brain networks, (2) local and distant connectivity, and (3) functional lateralization. Methods: We analyzed resting-state functional connectivity MRI acquired in 26 carriers of a 16p11.2 deletion and 42 age-matched control participants. We also compared the functional connectivity metrics with measures of language ability, IQ, and social behavior.Results: We do not find widespread disruption of canonical large-scale networks in the deletion carriers. Nor do we find quantitative differences in the degree of local and distant connections. Instead, we discover unique connections in 16p11.2 deletion carriers that are not present in the control participants. Specifically, functional coupling between auditory cortex and regions of the default network is present only in the deletion carriers. In addition to the topographic shifts in functional connectivity, we observe reduced right hemispheric lateralization in the deletion carriers and less left hemispheric lateralization in individuals with poorer language ability.Conclusions: Links or connections between primary sensory areas and higher-order association areas violate fundamental large-scale circuit properties by functionally connecting brain regions specialized in local (hierarchical) processing with those that specialize in distant (parallel) processing. Aberrant hemispheric lateralization and connections between auditory and default networks may underlie difficulties with language and social interactions.