Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sector skills councils and employer engagement – delivering the ‘employer‐led’ skills agenda in England

UK Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) are seen as critical to policymakers’ aspirations to develop an education and training (E&T) system that is both ‘demand‐driven’ and ‘employer‐led’ and where employers ‘play their part’ in national upskilling. However, the concept of employer leadership remains deeply problematic in the English context, with some commentators arguing that the system is better viewed as government/target‐led. More recently, the Leitch Review of Skills has offered employers a new training contract or ‘something for something deal’. If this deal is to succeed, much will depend upon the ability of SSCs to engage employers in their sectors and build commitment to the Leitch agenda. The article outlines previous attempts to develop effective sectoral bodies in the UK and asks why this has proven so problematic. Drawing upon interviews with representatives of seven SSCs, it then explores SSC employer engagement strategies together with the main challenges they confront.
Who Cares About Life Cycle Assessment?

Our cohort was drawn from students enrolled in a massive open online course (MOOC) titled ‘How Green is That Product? An Introduction to Life Cycle Environmental Assessment. ’ Given the global nature of MOOCs, our survey included wider geographic representation than . previous . surveys to a dedicated few engineers and scientists; rather, it is increasingly being utilized within a large number of professions and for a wide variety of sustainability objectives. Previous surveys have shed light on the applications, methods, and challenges of experienced LCA analysts. This journal has published two such surveys, both of which offered useful windows into the state of LCA practice. Cooper and Fava surveyed 65 LCA practitioners in 2006 and focused on their job functions, how and why they used LCA, and the difficulties faced when performing LCAs (Cooper and Fava 2006). In 2011, Teixeira and Pax adapted the Cooper and Fava survey to query an additional 117 LCA practitioners (Teixeira and Pax 2011), primarily from the agri-food industries. Both surveys provided useful insights on LCA applications and challenges related to LCA methods and data sources. This column presents survey results for a different, but equally important, cohort: prospective LCA practitioners. We define prospective LCA practitioners as those with little or no LCA experience who are in the early stages of their formal LCA training. Understanding the skills, professions, and intended applications of prospective LCA practitioners can provide insights into the characteristics and expectations of future LCA analysts. By considering the needs of both current and prospective LCA practitioners, the LCA commu-
Burden of acute gastrointestinal illness in Canada, 1999-2007: interim summary of NSAGI activities.

INTRODUCTION The National Studies on Acute Gastrointestinal Illness (NSAGI) initiative was designed to generate baseline period prevalence rates of self-reported AGI in communities across Canada, assess the burden associated with AGI, and quantify the under-reporting of AGI in Canada's national enteric disease reporting systems. METHODS Methods utilized included population surveys administered randomly via telephone services. Three population surveys in three locations within Canada included over 10,000 residents. Questions pertained to recent symptoms as well as socio-demographic factors, use of the health care system and missed work or school due to illness. RESULTS In summary of published results, there are an estimated 1.3 episodes of AGI per person-year and an estimated 10-47, 13-37 and 23-49 cases in the community for every case of verotoxigenic Escherichia coli, Salmonella and Campylobacter, respectively, captured within the national surveillance system. AGI represents an annual per capita cost of $115 CAD. DISCUSSION The work of NSAGI highlights the significant burden and impact of AGI in the Canadian population. These results will also be incorporated into the current work at the World Health Organization (WHO) to estimate the global burden of food related illnesses.
Caching learning units on mobile terminal unit in a mobile learning system

In order to support large-scale mobile learning software running on the resource-limited mobile devices, a cache management on mobile terminal units in a mobile learning system based on learning unit (LU) is introduced. The generation-based algorithm in memory management according to the adaptive thinking is introduced. Considering the different characteristics of the objects in the less-relied generation and the more relied generation, different allocating methods and garbage collecting algorithm are adopted. These methods highly improve the efficiency of the cache management and avoid longtime problem in general garbage collecting algorithms. The experiment indicates that the cache management is reasonable and effectively supports the application of the mobile learning software for mobile terminal units.
An integrated remote sensing and GIS approach in the monitoring and evaluation of rapid urban growth for sustainable development in the Pearl River Delta, China

Abstract The publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987 has led to worldwide concern over sustainable development. Sustainable development is particularly important to regions that are undergoing rapid economic development, such as the Pearl River Delta and other rapidly developing regions in China, Malaysia, Thailand and Asia. Geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing are useful tools in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of urban development in the move towards a sustainable development strategy. Since the adoption of economic reform in China in 1978, cities in the Pearl River Delta are developing very rapidly. Economic growth is around 20% a year, making it one of the highest growth areas in the world. Accompanying economic development is rapid urban growth. This paper attempts to demonstrate the application of the integration of GIS and remote sensing in urban growth management in the Pearl River Delta by using them to monitor and evaluate land development. Remote sensing.
Adequacy of child anthropometric indicators for measuring nutritional stress at population level: a study from Niakhar, Senegal

Abstract Objective To compare the responsiveness of different anthropometric indicators for measuring nutritional stress among children in developing countries. Design Growth was studied within 6-month intervals in a rural Senegalese community during one dry and two rainy (hungry) seasons. Responsiveness was defined as the change divided by the standard deviation of each anthropometric indicator. Contrast was defined as the difference in responsiveness between dry and rainy seasons. Setting The study was conducted in Niakhar, a rural area of Senegal under demographic surveillance, with contrasted food and morbidity situations between rainy and dry seasons. Subjects Some 5000 children under 5 years of age were monitored at 6-month intervals in 1983–1984. The present analysis was carried out on a sub-sample of children aged 6–23 months with complete measures, totalling 2803 children-intervals. Results In both univariate and multivariate analysis, mid-upper arm circumference was found to be more responsive to nutritional stress than the commonly used weight-for-height Z-score (contrast = −0·64 for mid-upper arm circumference v. −0·53 for weight-for-height Z-score). Other discriminant indicators were: muscle circumference, weight-for-height, BMI and triceps skinfold. Height, head circumference and subscapular skinfold had no discriminating power for measuring the net effect of nutritional stress during the rainy season. Conclusions The use of mid-upper arm circumference for assessing nutritional stress in community surveys should be considered and preferred to other nutritional indicators. Strict standardization procedures for measuring mid-upper arm circumference are required for optimal use.
Fatal hepatic sarcocystosis in two polar bears (Ursus maritimus).

Fatal hepatic sarcocystosis was diagnosed in 2 polar bears from a zoo in Anchorage, Alaska. Gross lesions were icterus and systemic petechiae. Marked microscopic lesions were detected only in the liver and included severe random necrotizing hepatitis with hemorrhage. Only asexual stages of an apicomplexan parasite were detected within hepatocytes, and rare extracellular zoites were seen in foci of necrosis. The parasite divided by endopolygeny, and occasionally merozoites formed rosettes around a central residual body. Ultrastructural features of the merozoites included a conoid and low numbers of micronemes at the apical pole, centrally located nuclei, and absence of rhoptries. The parasites failed to react with anti-Neospora sp. , anti-Toxoplasma gondii, or anti-Sarcocystis neurona sera. The microscopic and ultrastructural morphology of the parasite are most compatible with an apicomplexan protozoan of the genus Sarcocystis. The life cycle of this parasite in bears is not known.
GOVERNMENT DEFICIT AND THE INFLATIONARY PROCESS IN NIGERIA, 1986-1998

A Thesis in the department of ECONOMICS, FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Submitted to The School of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Jos, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY of the UNIVERSITY OF JOS.
The Origin of Failure: A Multidisciplinary Appraisal of the Hubris Hypothesis and Proposed Research Agenda

The hubris hypothesis complements the extant debate on how people make judgments and decisions in organizations. Drawing on the origin of hubris in Greek mythology, the psychological approach, and finance studies, this paper portrays an informed picture of the current status of managerial hubris literature that develops a more advanced understanding of what is known about hubris. We present a conceptual map that provides a comprehensive appreciation of hubris antecedents-symptoms-strategic choices-feedback performance main cause effect relationships. Our proposed conceptual map draws on the idea that managerial hubris is one of the determinants of CEO judgments, strategic choices, and organizational performance. We also show that managerial hubris has a good side and a bad side and identify the implications for strategy formulation and implementation. By doing so, the study not only provides a multidisciplinary introduction to hubris that is tailored to scholars, but also distills a suite of suggestions for managing hubris symptoms and traps that may prove valuable to practitioners.
The impact of children on women's paid work

This paper investigates how and when differences in work behaviour between men and women develop, focusing on the evolution of the gender gaps over the period of family development. The findings support the theory that gender differences in the formal labour market stem from the presence of children in the home and that childbirth and children entering school are critical times in women's employment. Births mark a dramatic decline in participation in work for women, while school entry is a time of considerable turnover in participation. The length of absence from work following a subsequent birth is closely related to whether the mother was in work between births, while maternity pay and leave entitlements appear to influence the precise timing of the return to work. In addition, a return to work following birth is often only temporary. The gradual decline in women's relative wages following the first birth appears to stem from the accumulation of several shorter periods of unusually low wage growth for women around the times of birth and school entry. There is also a sharp movement into part-time work for women following childbirth and a transition towards non-permanent positions and non-supervisory roles at both critical points. Copyright Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2006.
Sustaining quality in tourism destinations: an economic model with an application

Sustaining quality in tourism destinations can be described as seeking to maintain a destination's reputation. This is a strategy that has a dynamic dimension in the sense that the benefits from such a strategy are likely to accrue in the future. The task of building reputation will necessitate some investment which implies that, in equilibrium, a high quality tourism experience will sell for a premium above its cost of production. This premium can be seen as the return on the initial investment in reputation, or as an important incentive in inducing a destination to maintain its reputation as a particular kind of quality destination. Without such a premium a destination may find that a fly-by-night strategy of quality reduction would be profit maximizing. This is the type of moral hazard problem that is present when, say, a tourism destination faces the question of how to react to increases in tourist numbers. With large numbers reputation may not be seen as important and the various providers have a str.
Strengthening food policy through gender and intrahousehold analysis: impact assessment of IFPRI multicountry research

"This assessment focuses on IFPRI's research program, Strengthening Food Policy through Intrahousehold Analysis,” within the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division (FCND). The program was initiated in 1992, formally began in 1994, and was completed in 2003. Research undertaken in the program was complex, involving work in several countries and taking on challenging new research issues of great potential policy relevance, within a rapidly changing environment. The objectives of the program were to document intrahousehold resource allocation patterns; develop economic models and data collection methods necessary to investigate determinants of intrahousehold resource allocations; establish the relevance of these patterns and models for food policy; evaluate the benefits relative to additional costs of data collection at the intrahousehold level, develop guidelines for a priori expectations on intrahousehold issues, and manage outreach through training materials and publications geared to the range of research users. " from Authors' Abstract
The schistosome genome project: RNA arbitrarily primed PCR allows the accelerated generation of expressed sequence tags.

Centro de Pesquisas René Rachou FIOCRUZ, Av. Augusto de Lima 1715, 30190-002 Belo Horizonte, MG Brasil *Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, ICB-UFMG, Caixa Postal 486, 30161970 Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil **Department of Biology, University of York, Heslington, York, Y015DD, UK ***Laboratório de Genética de Câncer, Instituto Ludwig de Pesquisas Contra o Câncer, R. Prof. Antônio Prudente 109/ 4o andar, 01509-010 São Paulo, SP, Brasil
E‐commerce: the challenge for UK SMEs in the twenty‐first century

This article explores the awareness and level of implementation of e‐commerce in UK small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Results of a survey of 298 small firms suggest that issues of leadership and waste management are of greater importance to SMEs than development of e‐commerce capability. Those SMEs which have developed e‐commerce capability have not done so strategically and have yet to enjoy significant cost and time savings. The survey also identifies the challenges faced by SMEs. Finally, paths are suggested, which might be followed by such firms in seeking to enhance their performance in e‐commerce.
Infectious diseases and child day care

It is estimated that more than 5.3 million children attend out-of-home child day care in the United States. This includes 2.1 million children who attend approximately 63 000 licensed child day-care centers. An additional 500 000 children receive care in 105 000 regulated day-care homes. Since the total regulated child care slots available in centers and homes are only 2.6 million, some 2.7 million additional children are likely attending unregulated family day-care homes. As a result infants and preschool children are intermingled in child care facilities that often lack adequate toilet and hand-washing facilities and are frequently staffed by individuals with little or no training in the area of infection control. Placing children in out-of-home care should not compromise their health and that of the community. The risk of infection can be lessened by teaching hygiene, supervising unregulated day-care facilities and regular antibiotic use so that bacterial resistance may be prevented.
Backstepping based hybrid adaptive control of robot manipulators incorporating actuator dynamics

By using the integrator backstepping technique, the control of rigid-link electrically-driven robot manipulators is addressed in the presence of arbitrary uncertain manipulator inertia parameters and actuator parameters. The control scheme developed is computationally simple due to the avoidance of the derivative computation of the regressor matrix. Semi-global asymptotic stability of the controller is established in the Lyapunov sense.
New technology for rural women: Paradoxes of sustainability

This article discusses the difficulties of reaching relatively poor populations with labour-saving technologies. Taking the case of milling and dehulling technologies in Senegal and The Gambia, it presents a simple analytic model that helps to explain why the vast majority of these labour-saving machines are under-utilised in rural areas. Though donors continue to support such projects widely, in few cases do they provide significant benefits to the broad population in the short term, and nor are they sustainable in the longer term. The key constraint is the lack of effective demand, owing to rural women's limited income-generating opportunities. In the time saved by using a machine to dehull or mill their coarse grains, they are unable to earn enough money even to pay the fees to use the machine, much less to earna surplus.
The odyssey of career and the opportunity for international comparison

The concept of career is where human resource management (HRM) processes and practices, and received social opinions about work, meet the aspirations and well-being of individuals at work. The effects are not all one way, though, as evolution in individual and collective career patterns can eventually challenge and reshape HRM practices. Thus the power of the concept of career is precisely the recursive link that it provides. To study careers orients attention not only to the external features of working lives – positions, promotions and organizational and occupational career structures – but also to how people perceive these features, as well as to the dialectical relationships between people and their environments. This allows for a wide-ranging examination of the intersection of individuals, organizations and social structures over time and space. Thus, the concept career provides a useful vehicle for exploring social processes and social change (Collin and Watts, 1996; Herriott, 1992; Arthur et al., 1989). There has been renewed interest in careers recently (e.g. Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Peiperl et al., 2000; Collin and Young, 2000; Inkson et al., 2002), stemming from the widespread debate about the career implications of those organizational and social changes which threaten traditional assumptions about work. The comfortable notion that careers travel predictable routes up organizational or occupational hierarchies appears no longer to hold. In response to the debate, a discernible body of literature has emerged addressing what has been described as a shift from ‘organizational careers’ to so-called ‘boundaryless careers’ involving less predictable career trajectories (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). Images of careers as protean (Hall et al., 1996), boundaryless (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996), capitalist (Inkson and Arthur, 2002), portfolio (Handy, 1994) and free agent (Hecksher, 1995) have been proposed. Much of this literature invites a sharper focus on the individual and the personal ‘odyssey’ involved in career journeys that are more idiosyncratic in their engagement with the changing world of work over time. Most new approaches to careers converge in exploring ‘independence from, rather than dependence on, traditional organizational career arrangements’ (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996: 6). Emerging ideas about careers as less predictable, less organizationally dependent and more boundaryless have acted as a powerful counterforce to earlier views of careers which have acted as limits to the legitimacy of a wide variety of career stories Int. J. of Human Resource Management 14:5 August 2003 705–712
Facilities Competition and Local Network Investment: Theory, Evidence and Policy Implications

A new approach has emerged in the United States and elsewhere in the world for promoting investment in local communications networks. Competition, especially facilities-based entry, has become a principal means to encourage the efficient amount and timing of investment in local exchange infrastructure and adoption of advanced technologies. Despite the popularity of open entry policies, the logic underlying these policies lacks convincing evidence. Nevertheless, preliminary and incidental studies suggest that facilities-based entry stimulates investment by both incumbents and entrants. The message for policymakers is, first, to remove artificial restrictions on facilities-based entry and on incumbent investment, both as a response to competition and in advance of entry; and, second, to take account of the possibility of a virtuous cycle of investment deriving from incumbent-entrant interaction. These measures promise to supplement the ordinary benefits of facilities competition that will aid in building the next generation advanced communications network. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.
Does Tourism Growth Influence Economic Development?

Having recognized the importance of tourism to economic growth, most international organizations have begun to argue that tourism growth can influence, as well, the economic and sociocultural development of society. However, recently, a new approach that criticizes the relationship between both dimensions has begun to be developed; suggesting that this is not an automatic relationship. In this context, the aim of this study is to determine whether the economic growth experienced in some countries as a result of the expansion of the tourism activity over the last two decades influences an increase in the level of economic development. To that end, a sample of 144 countries has been used, which verifies that this relationship occurs, especially in more developed countries, which calls into question the conception of tourism as a driving force of economic development for the least developed countries, and even in developing countries.
International Human Rights Law and Practice in Latin America

Human rights practices have improved significantly throughout Latin America during the 1990s, but different degrees of legalization are not the main explanation for these changes. We examine state compliance with three primary norms of international human rights law: the prohibition against torture, the prohibition against disappearance, and the right to democratic governance. Although these norms vary in their degree of obligation, precision, and delegation, states have improved their practices in all three issue-areas. The least amount of change has occurred in the most highly legalized issue-area—the prohibition against torture. We argue that a broad regional norm shift—a “norms cascade”—has led to increased regional and international consensus with respect to an interconnected bundle of human rights norms, including the three discussed in this article. These norms are reinforced by diverse legal and political enforcement mechanisms that help to implement and ensure compliance with them.