Improving Students’ Learning Aspirations Beyond Post-Primary Education: A First Account of Two Non-Formal Education Programmes in Middle-Income

Non-formal education programmes are active in a number of developing countries. These programmes offer vulnerable students an opportunity to pursue their education although they were excluded for various reasons from the formal education systems. This paper examines the impact of two programmes (one in Mauritius, and one in Thailand) on their participants’ aspirations towards learning. We develop a methodology to measure the perception of students regarding their learning experience. More than a third of them, for example, believe that there is no barrier to their education. Most acknowledge the role of their teachers in raising their aspirations towards their educational achievement. When compared to male students, female students seem to value more the role of their education.

Disease-causing mutations improving the branch site and polypyrimidine tract: pseudoexon activation of LINE-2 and antisense Alu lacking the poly(T)-tail.

Cryptic exons or pseudoexons are typically activated by point mutations that create GT or AG dinucleotides of new 5' or 3' splice sites in introns, often in repetitive elements. Here we describe two cases of tetrahydrobiopterin deficiency caused by mutations improving the branch point sequence and polypyrimidine tracts of repeat-containing pseudoexons in the PTS gene. In the first case, we demonstrate a novel pathway of antisense Alu exonization, resulting from an intronic deletion that removed the poly(T)-tail of antisense AluSq. The deletion brought a favorable branch point sequence within proximity of the pseudoexon 3' splice site and removed an upstream AG dinucleotide required for the 3' splice site repression on normal alleles. New Alu exons can thus arise in the absence of poly(T)-tails that facilitated inclusion of most transposed elements in mRNAs by serving as polypyrimidine tracts, highlighting extraordinary flexibility of Alu repeats in shaping intron-exon structure. In the other case, a PTS pseudoexon was activated by an A>T substitution 9 nt upstream of its 3' splice site in a LINE-2 sequence, providing the first example of a disease-causing exonization of the most ancient interspersed repeat. These observations expand the spectrum of mutational mechanisms that introduce repetitive sequences in mature transcripts and illustrate the importance of intronic mutations in alternative splicing and phenotypic variability of hereditary disorders.

CAT (Curator Archiving Tool): improving access to web archives

PADICAT is the web archive created in 2005 in Catalonia (Spain ) by the Library of Catalonia (BC ) , the National Library of Catalonia , with the aim of collecting , processing and providing permanent access to the digital heritage of Catalonia . Its harvesting strategy is based on the hybrid model ( of massive harvesting . SPA top level domain ; selective compilation of the web site output of Catalan organizations; focused harvesting of public events) . The system provides open access to the whole collection , on the Internet . We consider necessary to complement the current search for new and visualization software with open source software tool, CAT ( Curator Archiving Tool) , composed by three modules aimed to effectively managing the processes of human cataloguing ; to publish directories where the digital resources and special collections ; and to offer statistical information of added value to end users. Within the framework of the International Internet Preservation Consortium meeting ( Vienna 2010) , the progress in the development of this new tool, and the philosophy that has motivated his design, are presented to the international community.

Improving the accuracy of heat balance integral methods applied to thermal problems with time dependent boundary conditions

In this paper the two main drawbacks of the heat balance integral methods are examined. Firstly we investigate the choice of approximating function. For a standard polynomial form it is shown that combining the Heat Balance and Refined Integral methods to determine the power of the highest order term will either lead to the same, or more often, greatly improved accuracy on standard methods. Secondly we examine thermal problems with a time-dependent boundary condition. In doing so we develop a logarithmic approximating function. This new function allows us to model moving peaks in the temperature profile, a feature that previous heat balance methods cannot capture. If the boundary temperature varies so that at some time t & 0 it equals the far-field temperature, then standard methods predict that the temperature is everywhere at this constant value. The new method predicts the correct behaviour. It is also shown that this function provides even more accurate results, when coupled with the new CIM, than the polynomial profile. Analysis primarily focuses on a specified constant boundary temperature and is then extended to constant flux, Newton cooling and time dependent boundary conditions.

Improving the performance of positive selection inference by filtering unreliable alignment regions.

Errors in the inferred multiple sequence alignment may lead to false prediction of positive selection. Recently, methods for detecting unreliable alignment regions were developed and were shown to accurately identify incorrectly aligned regions. While removing unreliable alignment regions is expected to increase the accuracy of positive selection inference, such filtering may also significantly decrease the power of the test, as positively selected regions are fast evolving, and those same regions are often those that are difficult to align. Here, we used realistic simulations that mimic sequence evolution of HIV-1 genes to test the hypothesis that the performance of positive selection inference using codon models can be improved by removing unreliable alignment regions. Our study shows that the benefit of removing unreliable regions exceeds the loss of power due to the removal of some of the true positively selected sites.

Improving and Safeguarding Social Wellbeing

(A Strategy for Social Work in Northern Ireland 2012-2022)

Improving Dementia Services in Northern Ireland - A Regional Strategy - November 2011

Improving Dementia Services in Northern Ireland - A Regional Strategy - November 2011

Improving services for general paediatric surgery (PDF 97KB)

Policy and Standards of Care for Paediatric ENT Surgery in Northern Ireland

Improving services for paediatric ENT Surgery (PDF 95KB)

Policy and Standards of Care for Paediatric ENT Surgery in Northern Ireland

Improving the Patient and Client Experience (PDF 3.92 MB)

New set of standards aimed at improving patient care

Improving Stroke Services in Northern Ireland (PDF 194 KB)

Stroke can strike anyone, any age, anytime. Today in Northern Ireland around 4000 people each year have their lives and the lives of their families dramatically changed by stroke. A significant number of these could be avoided by simple lifestyle changes. More exercise, less alcohol and more attention to diet can make a major difference. Cutting down or cutting out smoking will make the most significant lifestyle contribution to a reduction in stroke and the enormous personal impact that it brings. åÊThese recommendations seek to make improvements in the key areas of prevention; treatment and rehabilitation of stroke patients in a modern health service setting. The accompanying standards outline the levels to which we must aspire, in the delivery of these services. åÊ

Improving Patients' Access to Medicines: A Guide to Implementing Nurse and Pharmacist Independent Prescribing within the HPSS in Northern Ireland (PDF 704 KB)

A Guide to Implementing Nurse and Pharmacist Independent Prescribing within the HPSS in Northern Ireland

Improving Patient Safety - Building Public Confidence (PDF 440 KB)

A response by the Department of Health, Social Services & Public Safety to the recommendations contained in the Shipman Inquiry Reports 3, 4 & 5.

Profitability, uncertainty and multi-product firm product proliferation: The Spanish car industry

This article studies how product introduction decisions relate to profitability and uncertainty in the context of multi-product firms and product differentiation. These two features, common to many modern industries, have not received much attention in the literature as compared to the classical problem of firm entry, even if the determinants of firm and product entry are quite different. The theoretical predictions about the sign of the impact of uncertainty on product entry are not conclusive. Therefore, an econometric model relating firms’ product introduction decisions with profitability and profit uncertainty is proposed. Firm’s estimated profits are obtained from a structural model of product demand and supply, and uncertainty is proxied by profits’ variance. The empirical analysis is carried out using data on the Spanish car industry for the period 1990-2000. The results show a positive relationship between product introduction and profitability, and a negative one with respect to profit variability. Interestingly, the degree of uncertainty appears to be a driving force of entry stronger than profitability, suggesting that the product proliferation process in the Spanish car market may have been mainly a consequence of lower uncertainty rather than the result of having a more profitable market. Keywords: Product introduction, entry, uncertainty, multiproduct firms, automobile JEL codes: L11, L13