Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Professional Knowledge, Professional Lives

The work of teachers has changed significantly in recent years and now, more than ever, there is a pressing need for high quality professional development. This timely new series examines the actual and possible forms of professional learning, professional knowledge, professional development and professional standards that are beginning to emerge and be debated at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The series will be important reading for teachers, teacher educators, staff developers, and policy makers throughout the English-speaking world.
Spectral approach to find number of clusters of short-text documents

We propose a technique of determining the number of clusters of a corpus of short-text documents. A spectral algorithm suitable for short-texts is used to generate an ensemble. A Markov chain induced by the co-association matrix is studied to observe nearly uncoupling phenomenon over iterations. A large spectral gap and number of eigenvectors close to 1 indicate the number of clusters. We demonstrate by experimenting on several datasets.
Perceived quality of care of primary health care services in Burkina Faso.

INTRODUCTION Patients' views are being given more and more importance in policy-making. Understanding populations' perceptions of quality of care is critical to developing measures to increase the utilization of primary health care services. OBJECTIVE Documentation of user's opinion on the quality of care of primary health care services. METHODS A 20-item scale, including four sub-scales related to health personnel practices and conduct, adequacy of resources and services, health care delivery, and financial and physical accessibility, was administered to 1081 users of 11 health care centres in the health district of Nouna, in rural Burkina Faso. RESULTS The respondents were relatively positive on items related to health personnel practices and conduct and to health care delivery, but less so on items related to adequacy of resources and services and to financial and physical accessibility. In particular, the availability of drugs for all diseases on the spot, the adequacy of rooms and equipment in the facilities, the costs of care and the access to credit were valued poorly. Overall, the urban hospital was rated poorer than the average rural health care centre. Analysis of variance showed that, overall, health system characteristics explain 29% of all variation of the responses. CONCLUSION Improving drug availability and financial accessibility to health services have been identified as the two main priorities for health policy action. Policy-makers should respect these patient preferences to deliver effective improvement of the quality of care as a potential means to increase utilization of health care.
LOCAL++: a C++ framework for local search algorithms

We present LOCAL++, an object-oriented framework to be used as a general tool for the development and the implementation of local search algorithms in C++. The framework comprises a hierarchy of abstract template classes, one for each local search technique taken into account (i.e., hill-climbing, simulated annealing, and tabu search). Each class specifies and implements the invariant part of the algorithm built according to the technique, and is supposed to be specialized by a concrete class which implements the problem-dependent part of the algorithm. LOCAL++ comprises also a set of abstract classes for creating new techniques by combining different search techniques and different neighborhood relations. The architecture of LOCAL++ provides a principled method for the solution of combinatorial search problems, and helps the designer deriving a neat conceptual scheme of the application, thus facilitating the development and debugging phases. LOCAL++ proved to be flexible enough for the implementation of the algorithms solving various scheduling problems.
Vowel acoustics in dysarthria: speech disorder diagnosis and classification.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which vowel metrics are capable of distinguishing healthy from dysarthric speech and among different forms of dysarthria. METHOD A variety of vowel metrics were derived from spectral and temporal measurements of vowel tokens embedded in phrases produced by 45 speakers with dysarthria and 12 speakers with no history of neurological disease. Via means testing and discriminant function analysis (DFA), the acoustic metrics were used to (a) detect the presence of dysarthria and (b) classify the dysarthria subtype. RESULTS Significant differences between dysarthric and healthy control speakers were revealed for all vowel metrics. However, the results of the DFA demonstrated some metrics (particularly metrics that capture vowel distinctiveness) to be more sensitive and specific predictors of dysarthria. Only the vowel metrics that captured slope of the second formant (F2) demonstrated between-group differences across the dysarthrias. However, when subjected to DFA, these metrics proved unreliable classifiers of dysarthria subtype. CONCLUSION The results of these analyses suggest that some vowel metrics may be useful clinically for the detection of dysarthria but may not be reliable indicators of dysarthria subtype using the current dysarthria classification scheme.
Pharmacokinetics of olanzapine long-acting injection: the clinical perspective

Olanzapine long-acting injection (OLAI) is a sustained-release depot antipsychotic for the treatment of schizophrenia in adults. Our objective was to explain the pharmacokinetics of OLAI to provide clinical insight. Simulation models and data from clinical trials are presented. Olanzapine concentrations were observed immediately upon injection. Half-life was ∼30 days, controlled by the slow rate of intramuscular absorption rather than the 30-h elimination rate-based half-life of oral olanzapine. As each injection builds on the drug still being released from previous injections, concentrations increase gradually until a steady state is reached after ∼3 months. Concentrations were similar to oral olanzapine and proportional to the dose; the average steady-state concentrations (10th–90th percentile) for the 150, 210, and 300 mg/2-week doses were 16–32, 15–55, and 20–67 ng/ml, respectively, and those for the 300 and 405 mg/4-week doses were 19–48 and 19–62 ng/ml, respectively. Peak concentrations most often occurred at 2–4 days after injection. Peak-to-trough fluctuation was greater for the 4-week dosing interval than the 2-week one, with no apparent clinical ramifications for these differences. Trough concentrations were above the lower end of the therapeutic range, even at the first injection. Long-term use up to 6 years indicated no additional accumulation. The impact of smoking and sex was similar, but less pronounced than for oral olanzapine.
Prevalence of Bacteria and Intestinal Parasites among Food-handlers in Gondar Town, Northwest Ethiopia

Food-handlers with poor personal hygiene working in food-service establishments could be potential sources of infection due to pathogenic organisms. The study was undertaken to determine the prevalence of bacteria and intestinal parasites among 127 food-handlers working in the cafeterias of the University of Gondar and the Gondar Teachers Training College, Gondar, Ethiopia. Fingernail contents of both the hands and stool specimens were collected from all the 127 food-handlers. The samples were examined for bacteria and intestinal parasites following standard procedures. Coagulase-negative staphylococci were the predominant bacteria species (41.7%) isolated from fingernail contents, followed by Staphylococcus aureus (16.5%), Klebsiella species (5.5%), Escherichia coli (3.1%), Serratia species (1.58%), Citrobacter species (0.8%), and Enterobacter species (0.8%). Shigella species were isolated from stool samples of four food-handlers (3.1%). None of the food-handlers was positive for Salmonella species and Shigella species in res-pect of their fingernail contents. No intestinal parasites were detected from fingernail contents. Intestinal parasites detected in the stools of the food-handlers included Ascaris lumbricoides (18.11%), Strongyloides stercoralis (5.5%), Entamoeba histolytica/dispar (1.6%), Trichuris trichiura (1.6%), hookworm species (0.8%), Gardia lamblia (0.8%), and Schistosoma mansoni (0.8%); 1.6% of the study subjects were positive for each of A. lumbricoides, T. trichiura, hookworm, and G. lamblia. The findings emphasize the importance of food-handlers as potential sources of infections and suggest health institutions for appropriate hygienic and sanitary control measures.
Out of order packets analysis on a real network environment

As Internet usage grows, more efforts are put in analysing its internal performance, usually such analysis comes through simulation using different models. While simulation can provide a good approximation of network behaviour, modeling such a complex network as the Internet is very difficult if not impossible. This paper studies the network's performance from an experimental point of view using the European Academic Network (EAN) as a testbed. In the framework of the EuQoS project, many performance tests have been performed to prove the reliability of data transmissions. The tests show some rough edges which need further analysis, among them the most important being random losses in UDP flows and a great amount of out of order packets. This paper focuses on the study of such out of order packets, searching for their causes, and more importantly to show the effects on real-time traffic such as VoIP, videoconferencing, video streaming, etc
Applying Machine Learning Methods in Diagnosing Heart Disease for Diabetic Patients

Classifying data is a common task in Machine learning. Data mining plays an essential role for extracting knowledge from large databases from enterprises operational databases. Data mining in health care is an emerging field of high importance for providing prognosis and a deeper understanding of medical data. Most data mining methods depend on a set of features that define the behaviour of the learning algorithm and directly or indirectly influence the complexity of resulting models. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world over the past 10 years. Researches have been using several data mining techniques in the diagnosis of heart disease. Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin, or when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. Most of these systems have successfully employed Machine learning methods such as Naive Bayes and Support Vector Machines for the classification purpose. Support vector machines are a modern technique in the field of machine learning and have been successfully used in different fields of application. Using diabetics’ diagnosis, the system exhibited good accuracy and predicts attributes such as age, sex, blood pressure and blood sugar and the chances of a diabetic patient getting a heart disease.
Innovation and business growth through corporate venturing in Latin America

Purpose – The purpose of this research is aimed at discussing the external and internal strategic fit in corporate ventures in Latin America.Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on empirical investigation through semi‐structured interviews administered to the managers of multinational companies operating in Mexico. The success of the corporate ventures in Mexico has been evaluated from the perspectives of economic and relational attributes. The results of the study showed that the degree of fit between a corporate parent and venture affects the success of the venture. The success is associated with high levels of commitment, competitive skills and dynamics in the functional management of the venture. In this study the variables of economic and relational dimensions of external and internal fit have shown greater association with venture success. It has also been found that ventures opt for greater autonomy and less economic dependency with their parent ventures for leading success and these f.
Sentinel: an object-oriented DBMS with event-based rules

Active or reactive database management systems (DBMSS) provide an event-based rule capability that can be used to support a number of database functionality (e.g., integrity enforcement, view materialization, management of index structures, applicability of compiled query plane when access methods change) in a uniform way. Rules used for supporting active capability consists ofi au event expression, one or more conditions, an action, and a set of attributes. An event expression specifies the sequence of events whose occurrence triggers the evaluation of the condlt ion. A condition is a aide effect-free boolean computation (set computation in general) on the database state and an action is an arbitrary sequence of operations. Attributes, typically, specify rule characteristics such as coupling mode, event consumption mode, and precedence relationahlp among rules. A rule with these. components is termed an ECA or eventcondition-action rule in the literature [3].
Insurer Reserve Error and Executive Compensation

This article investigates incentives of insurance firm managers to manipulate loss reserves in order to maximize their compensation. We find that managers who receive bonuses that are likely capped or no bonuses tend to over-reserve for current-year incurred losses. However, managers who receive bonuses that are likely not capped tend to under-reserve for current-year incurred losses. We also find that managers who exercise stock options tend to under-reserve in the current period.
Language identification using phone-based acoustic likelihoods

Applies the technique of phone-based acoustic likelihoods to the problem of language identification. The basic idea is to process the unknown speech signal by language-specific phone model sets in parallel, and to hypothesize the language associated with the model set having the highest likelihood. Using laboratory quality speech the language can be identified as French or English with better than 99% accuracy with only as little as 2 seconds of speech. On spontaneous telephone speech from the OGI corpus, the language can be identified as French or English with 82% accuracy with 10 seconds of speech. The 10 language identification rate using the OGI corpus is 59.7% with 10 seconds of signal. <<ETX>>
Quality Implementation in Selected UK Hotels: Perspectives and Future Challenges

The strategic importance of quality management has grown in recent years. However, although the competitive implications of adhering to a quality agenda have been much alluded to within the literature, the evidence from a review of published studies suggests that service quality and strategy issues have been addressed as separate concerns by researchers. This study examines managerial perceptions of quality implementation and shows that two factors are important when implementing quality practices: ‘managers' feelings about things that they perceive themselves to control’ and ‘managers’ fears about areas outside their control'. Respondent managers clearly emphasise ‘areas within their control’ to be important when implementing quality practices. However, at the same time, the findings illuminate managerial fears towards practices associated with implementation. Further research ivill need to be carried out to examine managerial attitudes towards the actual practice of quality management in hotel organisations and to evaluate whether the factors are of importance or are perceived to be important by managers within the industry.
Relationship between the reaction–diffusion master equation and particle tracking models

The reaction–diffusion master equation (RDME) is a model for chemical systems in which both noise in the chemical reaction process and the diffusion of molecules are important. It extends the chemical master equation for well-mixed chemical reactions by discretizing space into a collection of voxels. In this work, we show how the RDME may be rewritten as an equivalent ‘particle tracking’ model following the motion and interaction of individual molecules on a lattice. This new representation can be interpreted as a discrete version of the spatially-continuous ‘probability distribution function’ stochastic reaction–diffusion model studied by Doi. We show how this new representation can be mapped to a quantum field theory, complementing the existing work by Peliti mapping the RDME, and Doi mapping his spatially continuous model, to quantum field theories. The formal continuum limit, as the voxel size approaches zero, of the ‘particle tracking’ representation is studied to consider the question of whether the RDME approximates any spatially continuous model.
The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters: The Impact of Catastrophic Events on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy, 1981–2002

Abstract Natural disasters do not affect people equally. In fact, a vulnerability approach to disasters would suggest that inequalities in exposure and sensitivity to risk as well as inequalities in access to resources, capabilities, and opportunities systematically disadvantage certain groups of people, rendering them more vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters. In this article we address the specific vulnerability of girls and women with respect to mortality from natural disasters and their aftermath. Biological and physiological differences between the sexes are unlikely to explain large-scale gender differences in mortality rates. Social norms and role behaviors provide some further explanation, but what is likely to matter most is the everyday socioeconomic status of women. In a sample of up to 141 countries over the period 1981 to 2002 we analyze the effect of disaster strength and its interaction with the socioeconomic status of women on the change in the gender gap in life expectancy. We find, first, that natural disasters lower the life expectancy of women more than that of men. In other words, natural disasters (and their subsequent impact) on average kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men. Since female life expectancy is generally higher than that of males, for most countries natural disasters narrow the gender gap in life expectancy. Second, the stronger the disaster (as approximated by the number of people killed relative to population size), the stronger this effect on the gender gap in life expectancy. That is, major calamities lead to more severe impacts on female life expectancy (relative to that of males) than do smaller disasters. Third, the higher women's socioeconomic status, the weaker is this effect on the gender gap in life expectancy. Taken together our results show that it is the socially constructed gender-specific vulnerability of females built into everyday socioeconomic patterns that lead to the relatively higher female disaster mortality rates compared to men.
THE IMPACT OF DIFFERENCES IN TURNOVER RATES ON MALE/FEMALE PAY DIFFERENTIALS*

Economic theory suggests that wages vary with turnover rates. Because of hiring and training costs, workers viewed as likely to quit can anticipate a wage discount. Workers in industries with high layoff rates may demand a compensating wage premium. By pooling time-series industry turnover rates, by sex, with 1970 Census data, we are able to examine the effect of past industry turnover on current earnings. Turnover proves to be important for both males and females, although the wage discount for a high quit probability is larger for females. When differences in turnover are taken into account, the portion of the male/female earnings gap "explainable" by human capital and socioeconomic variables increases by a factor of one-half.
A Secure YS-Like User Authentication Scheme

Recently, there are several articles proposed based on Yang and Shieh's password authentication schemes (YS for short) with the following features: (1) A user can choose password freely. (2) The server does not need to maintain a password table. (3) There is no need to involve a trusted third party. Although there were several variants of the YS-like schemes claimed to address the forgery attacks, this paper analyzes their security and shows that they still suffer from forgery attacks. Furthermore, a new scheme based on the concept of message authentication is proposed to foil the forgery attack.
Acute Exercise and Motor Memory Consolidation: The Role of Exercise Intensity

A single bout of high intensity aerobic exercise (~90% VO2peak) was previously demonstrated to amplify off-line gains in skill level during the consolidation phase of procedural memory. High intensity exercise is not always a viable option for many patient groups or in a rehabilitation setting where low to moderate intensities may be more suitable. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of intensity in mediating the effects of acute cardiovascular exercise on motor skill learning. We investigated the effects of different exercise intensities on the retention (performance score) of a visuomotor accuracy tracking task. Thirty six healthy male subjects were randomly assigned to one of three groups that performed either a single bout of aerobic exercise at 20 min post motor skill learning at 45% (EX45), 90% (EX90) maximal power output (Wmax) or rested (CON). Randomization was stratified to ensure that the groups were matched for relative peak oxygen consumption (ml O2/min/kg) and baseline score in the tracking task. Retention tests were carried out at 1 (R1) and 7 days (R7) post motor skill learning. At R1, changes in performance scores were greater for EX90 compared to CON (p<0.001) and EX45 (p = 0.011). The EX45 and EX90 groups demonstrated a greater change in performance score at R7 compared to the CON group (p = 0.003 and p<0.001, respectively). The change in performance score for EX90 at R7 was also greater than EX45 (p = 0.049). We suggest that exercise intensity plays an important role in modulating the effects that a single bout of cardiovascular exercise has on the consolidation phase following motor skill learning. There appears to be a dose-response relationship in favour of higher intensity exercise in order to augment off-line effects and strengthen procedural memory.
A Culture of Complaint:

As we assessed its impact for this essay, we concluded that collective bargaining is taking public education in an unsustainable direction. But rather than watching it fall on its own, bringing our education system tumbling down with it, we propose fixing it. The bargaining process needs to be more open, so the public can see how it affects our schools. And the public needs more alternatives to the methods currently used. Let’s begin by turning back the clock. What would Americans in the 1960s reasonably have expected from their public schools if they had been told that the future
Image Registration using Blur Invariants in Wavelet Domain

Image registration is an important step in all image analysis and it performs the operation of overlaying images of the alike picture taken at various times, from various viewpoints, and/or by various sensors. The wavelet domain provides invariant that are centrally symmetric to blur. Blur invariants are constructed from different wavelet function. Template image is chosen in the degraded images using similarity the template image is matched with the original image. Using Daubuchies wavelet functions the images are accurately registered, even in the severely degraded images compared to the spatial domain blur invariants which may result in misfocus registration of an image.