ethicalabs/Research-Intent-Collab huggingface dataset:
Complementarity of National and International Courts on Protection of Indigenous Peoples’ Right to Ancestral Lands in the Contemporary World

Protection of indigenous peoples’ rights is one of the contentious matters in the modern world history. While subjecting indigenous peoples to modern civilization, state governments have forcefully evicted them from their ancestral lands in pursuit for environmental conservation or economic development goals. This has adversely affected indigenous peoples’ right to ancestral lands protected by various international, regional and national instruments. While seeking for justice, national courts have strictly applied judicial restraint approach to award inadequate judicial remedies to the victims. Being aggrieved, indigenous peoples have sought for remedies before international courts and tribunals which issue declarative orders and award compensation to victims. These orders by international bodies cannot be effective unless enforced by local courts. This raises a complementarity of national and international courts in protecting indigenous community’s right to ancestral lands, and revival of judicial activism approach in interpretation of national and international human rights instruments. This paper critically evaluates two competing judicial approaches in interpretation of laws by national and international judicial bodies. It eventually recommends for a human rights approach towards effective protection of indigenous peoples’ right to ancestral lands. The paper applies doctrinal methodology in evaluating different literature, legal instruments and precedents by national and international judicial bodies.
Experimental Optimization, Scaling Up, and Characterization for Continuous Aragonite Synthesis from Lime Feedstock Using Magnesium Chloride as Chemical Inducer

The current state of the art research, and latest engineering technology application in the synthesis of the aragonite crystalline phase of calcium carbonate is presented here. Aragonite crystalline products are highly valuable in selected industries, such as medical and personal care, and in food additives using MgCl2 as a chemical inducer. The outcome of this literature review provides the outlook of the available research whitespace opportunity in optimizing the current process parameters and in ensuring that sustainable and economically feasible continuous production of aragonite products could be achieved. One of the major improvements proposed in this study is to investigate the methods of synthesizing aragonite crystalline particles using a continuous mineral carbonation reactor system and optimizing the operating parameters. An experimental design was established to identify all the main effects to maximize aragonite production. The three main effects investigated are the effect of feedstock or reactant concentration, the effect of reaction temperature, and the effect of reaction time towards aragonite yield in the final products synthesized. An optimized operating parameter for maximum aragonite yield at 95% purity was proposed at the reaction temperature T of 90 °C, reaction time t of 10 min, and feedstock ratio Mg-to-Ca of 0.4. Subsequently, the continuous reactor system was designed, operated, and tested for at least 50 h operation, where the lime CaO(s) feed was successfully converted into aragonite products with purity between 75 and 81%. The properties and quality of the aragonite produced were analytically characterized from the following laboratory methods which include the thermalgravimetric analysis, TGA; X-Ray Diffraction, XRD; scanning electron microscopy, SEM; and induction coupled plasma, ICP. TGA mass balance after decomposition suggests that 44% of the mass balance represents the weight of CO2 sequestered in the aragonite crystalline carbonates. Hence, the aragonite crystalline carbonates can be labeled as a green product which sequesters 0.44 kg of CO2 per 1 kg of precipitated aragonite products synthesized. Interestingly, SEM microscopy characterization results revealed that the aragonite precipitate has a physical morphology of needle-like shape with a good aspect ratio (length/diameter) AR of between 8.67 micron and 11.35 micron. The properties were found to be suitable for paper making fillers, medical, personal care, and food additive applications.
An Integrated Course on Wavelet-Based Image Compression - Learning Abstract Information Theory on Visual Data

We describe the implementation of and our experiences with a capstone course on wavelet based image compression held at the Berlin University of Technology in the years 2002 to 2006. This course has been designed as an “integrated project”, which means that it combines lectures, seminar talks to be prepared and held by the students, and a programming part. The design goal of this course has been to provide all the necessary theoretical knowledge to understand the concepts behind image compression technologies, such as JPEG2000. We are also aiming at simulating the work-flow as found within an IT company as realistically as possible, preparing electrical engineers and computer scientists as well as possible for their professional life. This training does not only include the technical, but also the social skills required to successfully complete larger projects. The subject of image compression offers the advantage of requiring a solid knowledge on terms of information science such as entropy, distortion, quantization, Fourier and wavelet-transformation, but also offering a direct visual feedback of how these techniques perform. Therefore, we believe that image compression is an attractive topic to be used for a capstone course. Traditionally, a course would assign weekly programming exercises to the students; however, we believe this to be unsuitable for a capstone course as it does not simulate the work-flow of a professional software development team; furthermore, it does not require the degree of team-work we deem critical to modern software development. Thus, we divide students into groups of two to four people and assign each team to one sub-task of an image codec and provide some boiler-plate code of our own. Much to their astonishment, students soon find themselves spending a considerable amount of time with project management and coordination activities. That means, teams have to design interfaces and data structures to combine their efforts to create a working project, which adds an often underestimated social component to the course. With some guidance from the teachers, students have always been able to supply a working code at the end of the semester. Needless to say, the thrill of having a nontrivial working program at the end of the course is a major source of motivation for our students and adds much to the satisfaction and positive feedback we receive.
Dairy To Be Great : Enhancing Dairy Farming Practices and Designing an Information Dashboard for Animal Health and Reproduction Data

This thesis presents a comprehensive research study aimed at designing an information dashboard to address the specific information needs of dairy farmers in relation to animal health and reproduction data. The research focused on answering two key research questions: (1) How can we determine which factors are most relevant in terms of farms productivity and wellbeing of its animals? and (2) How can we visualize the data and farms history in a meaningful way so that the owner can make sense of it and therefore make better decisions for future planning?To answer these questions, extensive user research was conducted within the dairy farming community, involving interviews, literature review and surveys. The findings revealed that dairy farmers required quick access to critical data related to animal health and reproduction to make informed decisions. Applying a user-centered design approach, iterative prototyping and usability testing sessions were conducted to refine the dashboard design based on feedback from farmers. The goal was to create a user-friendly tool that addressed the specific needs of dairy farmers, including clear differentiation between data pertaining to individual animals versus the entire herd.The outcome of this research was the development of an information dashboard that successfully met the information needs of dairy farmers. The dashboard provided easy access to essential data, empowering farmers to make informed decisions regarding animal health and reproduction.Further testing and refinement of the dashboard design are recommended to ensure its effectiveness and usability in real-world farming scenarios. Additionally, future investigations could explore the inclusion of breeding value information in the dashboard. This research contributes to the transformation of the dairy farming landscape, offering farmers enhanced information management capabilities and improved decision-making processes.
Hybridisation of recommendation systems based on collaborative filtering

In this thesis, we present various techniques for recommender systems. We implement the k-Nearest Neighbours method and two matrix factorizations. Recommendations generated with these methods are then combined (hybridization). For the k-Nearest Neighbours method we implemented several similarity measures: Euclidean similarity, cosine similarity and the Pearson correlation coefficient. The first of the matrix factorization methods is BRISMF. It minimizes RMSE (root mean squared error). The second matrix factorization technique is BPRMF, which optimizes rank correlation. Recommendations from these individual methods are combined using average and linear regression blending. Using linear regression, we get weights which are then used in weighted sums. In the end, we were trying to find out in which cases hybridization improves final results. We generate recommendations for users in datasets iTIVI and MovieLens. Both datasets contain data about movies. We experiment with different similarity measures and parameters in order to get the most accurate recommendations. We use hybridization of individual methods, to see which methods together give the best results. On small datasets the most accurate recommendations are generated using the k-Nearest Neighbour method. On big datasets BRISMF gives better results. BPRMF does not give very good results by itself, however when used in hybridization it improves Spearman's rank correlation coefficient significantly. Using hybridization techniques improves results on most datasets.
An Economist’s Guide to Epidemiology Models of Infectious Disease

We describe the structure and use of epidemiology models of disease transmission, with an emphasis on the susceptible/infected/recovered (SIR) model. We discuss high-profile forecasts of cases and deaths that have been based on these models, what went wrong with the early forecasts, and how they have adapted to the current COVID pandemic. We also offer three distinct areas where economists would be well positioned to contribute to or inform this epidemiology literature: modeling heterogeneity of susceptible populations in various dimensions, accommodating endogeneity of the parameters governing disease spread, and helping to understand the importance of political economy issues in disease suppression.
Nurse Burnout and Patient Safety, Satisfaction, and Quality of Care

ImportanceOccupational burnout syndrome is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a diminished sense of personal accomplishment and is prevalent among nurses. Although previous meta-analyses have explored the correlates of nurse burnout, none have estimated their association with health care quality and safety and patient morbidity and mortality.ObjectiveTo evaluate the magnitude and moderators of the association between nurse burnout and patient safety, patient satisfaction, and quality of care.Data SourceThe Web of Science, Scopus, MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and ProQuest databases were searched from January 1, 1994, to February 29, 2024.Study SelectionTwo reviewers independently identified studies that reported a quantifiable association between nurse burnout and any of the outcomes of patient safety, patient satisfaction, or quality of health care.Data Extraction and SynthesisThe PRISMA 2020 guideline was followed. Two reviewers independently extracted the standardized mean difference (SMD) (Cohen d) estimates for a random-effects meta-analysis. Subgroup analyses and meta-regressions were conducted using prespecified variables.Main Outcomes and MeasuresAny measure of patient safety, patient satisfaction, or quality of health care previously associated with nurse burnout.ResultsA total of 85 studies (81 cross-sectional and 4 longitudinal) involving 288 581 nurses from 32 countries (mean [SD] age, 33.9 (2.1) years; 82.7% female; mean [SD] burnout prevalence rate with study-specific ascertainments, 30.7% [9.7%]) were included. Nurse burnout was associated with a lower safety climate or culture (SMD, −0.68; 95% CI, −0.83 to −0.54), lower safety grade (SMD, −0.53; 95% CI, −0.72 to −0.34), and more frequent nosocomial infections (SMD, −0.20; 95% CI, −0.36 to −0.04), patient falls (SMD, −0.12; 95% CI, −0.22 to −0.03), medication errors (SMD, −0.30; 95% CI, −0.48 to −0.11), adverse events or patient safety incidents (SMD, −0.42; 95% CI, −0.76 to −0.07), and missed care or care left undone (SMD, −0.58; 95% CI, −0.91 to −0.26) but not with the frequency of pressure ulcers. Nurse burnout was also associated with lower patient satisfaction ratings (SMD, −0.51; 95% CI, −0.86 to −0.17) but not with the frequencies of patient complaints or patient abuse. Finally, nurse burnout was associated with lower nurse-assessed quality of care (SMD, −0.44; 95% CI, −0.57 to −0.30) but not with standardized mortality rate. The associations were consistent across nurses’ age, sex, work experience, and geography and persistent over time. For patient safety outcomes, the association was smaller for the low personal accomplishment subcomponent of burnout than for emotional exhaustion or depersonalization, as well as for nurses with a college education.Conclusions and RelevanceIn this systematic review and meta-analysis, nurse burnout was found to be associated with lower health care quality and safety and lower patient satisfaction. This association was consistent across nurse and study characteristics.
A Comparative Analysis of Opinions of Americans, Australians and Malaysians on the Use of Biometric Devices in Workplaces for Security and Monitoring of Worker Productivity

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, the use of biometric devices such as fingerprint scans, retina and iris scans and facial recognition in everyday situations for national security and border control, have become commonplace. This has resulted in the biometric industry moving from being a niche technology to one that is ubiquitous. As a result. more and more employers are using biometrics to secure staff access to their facilities as well as for tracking staff work hours, maintaining 'discipline' and carry out surveillance against thefts. detecting work hour abuses and fraud. However, the data thus collected and the technologies themselves are feared of having the potential for and actually being misused - both in terms of the violating staff privacy and discrimination and oppression of targeted workers. This paper examines the issue of using biometric devices in organisational settings their advantages, disadvantages and actual and potential abuses from the point of view of critical theory. From the perspectives of Panoptic surveillance and hegemonic organisational control, the paper examines the issues related to privacy and identification, biometrics and privacy, biometrics and the 'body', and surveillance and modernity. The paper also examines the findings ofa survey carried out in Australia. Malaysia and the USA on respondents' opinions on the use of biometric devices in everyday life including at workplaces. The paper concludes that along with their applications in border control and national security, the use of biometric devices should be covered by relevant laws and regulations. guidelines and codes of practice. in order to balance the rights to privacy and civil liberties of workers with employers' need for improved productivity, reduced costs, safeguards related to occupational health and safety, equal opportunity, and workplace harassment of staff and other matters, that employers are legally responsible for.