Modularity and Integrity Issues in Instructional Engineering

Course materials for e-learning are a special type of information system (IS). Thus, in the development of educational material one may learn from principles, methods, and tools that originated in the Software Engineering (SE) discipline and that are relevant in similar ways in "Instructional Engineering". An important SE principle is mo dularization, which supports properties like reusability and adaptability of code. To foster the adaptability of courseware we present a concept in which learning material is organized as a library of modular course objects. A certain lecturer may customize the courseware according to his specific course requirements. He must consider logical dependencies of and relationship integrity between selected course objects. We discuss integrity issues that have to be regarded for the composition of consistent course materials.

A comparison of labor and delivery management activities in two settings

Similarities and differences in management activities and patient health outcomes between a traditional physician staffed labor and delivery setting and a certified nurse-midwife staffed Birth Center within the same hospital were described. The 950 study subjects, low income, minority women, were classified as low obstetrical risk by a POPRAS score of 25 points or less at time of admission for labor and delivery. The study subjects were similar in demographic, antepartum and intrapartum characteristics; the labor course was problem free for the majority in both settings. There were no remarkable differences in health outcomes between the groups. Management activities varied between settings; these variations were policy related rather than health related. The POPRAS rating system was an accurate predictor for 93% of BC subjects and 85% of LDU subjects. Charge for service was approximately $600 less for BC women; length of stay did not contribute to the difference in charge. Overall, BC respondents to the attitude survey were more satisfied with their labor and delivery experience than L\&DU women. ^

Epidemiologic and methodological issues in serial measurements of blood pressure: The blood pressure study in Mexican children

The Blood Pressure Study in Mexican Children (BPSMC) is a short term longitudinal study of serial blood pressure collected in three observation periods by standardized examinations of 233 female children, 10 to 12 years of age, enrolled in public and private primary schools in Tlalpan, Mexico. Study objectives were: (1) to describe from baseline information the distribution and relationship of blood pressure to age and selected anthropometric factors, as well as to compare the BPSMC results with other blood pressure studies, (2) to examine the sources and amount of variation present in serial blood pressure of 123 children, and (3) to evaluate observer performance by means of intra- and inter-observer variability.^ Stepwise regression results from baseline revealed that of all anthropometric factors and age, weight was the best predictor for blood pressure.^ The results of serial blood pressure measurements show that, besides the known sources of blood pressure variability (subject, day, reading), the physiologic event of menarche has an important bearing upon the variability and characterization of blood pressure in young girls. The assessment of the effects of blood pressure variability and reliability upon the design and analysis of epidemiologic studies, became apparent among post-menarcheal girls; where blood pressure measurements taken from them have low reliability. Research is needed to propose alternatives for assessing blood pressure during puberty.^ Finally, observer performance of blood pressure and anthropometry were evaluated. Anthropometric measurements had reliabilities in excess of R = 0.96. Acceptable reliabilities (R = 0.88 to 0.95) were obtained for systolic and diastolic (phase 4 and 5) blood pressures. The BPSMC showed a 50 percent decrease in measurement error from the first to the third observation periods. ^

Planning for Emotional Labor and Secondary Traumatic Stress in Child Welfare Organizations

This analysis provides an emergent framework that emphasizes a neglected component of both direct practice with families and organizational development. Human emotions, both beneficial (positive emotional labor) and harmful (negative emotional labor), have received short shrift in leadership development, supervision, direct practice preparation and supports, and workforce stabilization, and professionalization. Significantly, a key indicator of negative emotional labor—secondary traumatic stress (STS)—often has been ignored and neglected, despite the fact that it may be endemic in the workforce. STS typically results from traumatic events in practice, but it also stems from workplace violence. Often undetected and untreated, STS is at least a hidden correlate and perhaps a probable cause of myriad problems such as questionable practice with families, life-work conflicts, undesirable workforce turnover, and a sub-optimal organizational climate. Special interventions are needed. At the same time, new organizational designs are needed to promote and reinforce positive emotional labor. Arguably, positive emotional labor and the positive organizational climates it facilitates are requisites for harmonious relations between jobs and personal lives, desirable workforce retention, and better outcomes for children and families. What’s more, specialized interventions for positive emotional labor constitute a key component in the prevention system for STS. A dual design for positive emotional labor and STS (and other negative emotional labor) prevention/intervention is provided herewith. Early detection and rapid response systems for STS, with social work leadership, receive special attention. Guidelines for new organizational designs for emotional labor in child welfare are offered in conclusion.

High Tunnel Production: Inputs, Labor, and Crop Productivity

The 30 × 12 × 96 ft (W × H × L, 2,880 ft 2 ) high tunnel was planted and maintained as part of a high tunnel production budget project funded by a Specialty Crop Grant through the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. Six growers throughout the state participated in the project with the objectives of creating an enterprise budgeting tool that estimates the costs and revenues associated with producing specific crops in a high tunnel, either as a single crop or multi-crop system. The budgeting tool will estimate the production cost and net profit per square foot in a high tunnel from mono-culture (one crop per tunnel) or multi-cropping, successionplanted systems. This report summarizes the findings from the high tunnel at the ISU Horticulture Research Station. The plantings in this high tunnel were used to collect labor and yield data as well as demonstrate a continuous, multi-cropping production system. A publication containing the enterprise budgeting tool, using this data and data collected from the other six farms, will be available through Iowa State University Extension and Outreach in the fall of 2012.

The Changing Nature of Employment and the Reform of Labor and Social Security Legislation in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This paper tries to understand the current status of South African labor market, which is changing in contradictory directions, i.e. a strengthening of the rights and protection of workers at the same time as the flexibilization of employment, in the context of the characteristics of labor and social security legislation in South Africa, as well as the nature of labor and social security reforms after democratization. We put emphasis on the corporatist nature of labor policy-making as the factor influencing the course of reforms; it is argued that the apparently contradictive changes can be explained consistently by the corporatist labor policy-making process which has been practiced notwithstanding the problem of representativeness.

Migration, labor and business in the worlding cities of the Arabian Peninsula

This short essay, built on a foundation of more than a decade of fieldwork in the hydrocarbon-rich societies of the Arabian peninsula, distills a set of overarching threads woven through much of that time and work. Those threads include a discussion of the social heterogeneity of the Gulf State citizenries, the central role of development and urban development in these emergent economies, the multifaceted impact of migrants and migration upon these host societies, and the role of foreign 'imagineers' in the portrayal of Gulf societies, Gulf values, and Gulf social norms.

Termination and cost analysis: Complexity and precision issues

The research in this thesis is related to static cost and termination analysis. Cost analysis aims at estimating the amount of resources that a given program consumes during the execution, and termination analysis aims at proving that the execution of a given program will eventually terminate. These analyses are strongly related, indeed cost analysis techniques heavily rely on techniques developed for termination analysis. Precision, scalability, and applicability are essential in static analysis in general. Precision is related to the quality of the inferred results, scalability to the size of programs that can be analyzed, and applicability to the class of programs that can be handled by the analysis (independently from precision and scalability issues). This thesis addresses these aspects in the context of cost and termination analysis, from both practical and theoretical perspectives. For cost analysis, we concentrate on the problem of solving cost relations (a form of recurrence relations) into closed-form upper and lower bounds, which is the heart of most modern cost analyzers, and also where most of the precision and applicability limitations can be found. We develop tools, and their underlying theoretical foundations, for solving cost relations that overcome the limitations of existing approaches, and demonstrate superiority in both precision and applicability. A unique feature of our techniques is the ability to smoothly handle both lower and upper bounds, by reversing the corresponding notions in the underlying theory. For termination analysis, we study the hardness of the problem of deciding termination for a speci�c form of simple loops that arise in the context of cost analysis. This study gives a better understanding of the (theoretical) limits of scalability and applicability for both termination and cost analysis.

A proposal for improving safety in construction projects by strengthening coordinators’ competencies in health and safety issues

The figure of the coordinator in health and safety issues in the construction sector first appeared in our legislation through the incorporation of the European Directives (in our case Royal Decree 1627/97 on the minimum health and safety regulations in construction works), and is viewed differently in different countries of the European Union regarding the way they are hired and their role in the construction industry. Coordinating health and safety issues is also a management process that requires certain competencies that are not only based on technical or professional training, but which, taking account of the work environment, require the use of strategies and tools that are related to experience and personal skills. Through a piece of research that took account of expert opinions in the matter, we have found which competencies need to be possessed by the health and safety coordinator in order to improve the safety in the works they are coordinating. The conclusions of the analyses performed using the appropriate statistical methods (comparing means and multivariate analysis techniques), will enable training programmes to be designed and ensure that the health and safety coordinators selected have the competencies required to carry out their duties.

A proposal for improving safety in construction projects by strengthening coordinators’ competencies in health and safety issues

The figure of the coordinator in health and safety issues in the construction sector first appeared in our legislation through the incorporation of the European Directives (in our case Royal Decree 1627/97 on the minimum health and safety regulations in construction works), and is viewed differently in different countries of the European Union regarding the way they are hired and their role in the construction industry. Coordinating health and safety issues is also a management process that requires certain competencies that are not only based on technical or professional training, but which, taking account of the work environment, require the use of strategies and tools that are related to experience and personal skills. Through a piece of research that took account of expert opinions in the matter, we have found which competencies need to be possessed by the health and safety coordinator in order to improve the safety in the works they are coordinating. The conclusions of the analyses performed using the appropriate statistical methods (comparing means and multivariate analysis techniques), will enable training programmes to be designed and ensure that the health and safety coordinators selected have the competencies required to carry out their duties.

Counting Highly Cited Papers for University Research Assessment: Conceptual and Technical Issues

A Kuhnian approach to research assessment requires us to consider that the important scientific breakthroughs that drive scientific progress are infrequent and that the progress of science does not depend on normal research. Consequently, indicators of research performance based on the total number of papers do not accurately measure scientific progress. Similarly, those universities with the best reputations in terms of scientific progress differ widely from other universities in terms of the scale of investments made in research and in the higher concentrations of outstanding scientists present, but less so in terms of the total number of papers or citations. This study argues that indicators for the 1% high-citation tail of the citation distribution reveal the contribution of universities to the progress of science and provide quantifiable justification for the large investments in research made by elite research universities. In this tail, which follows a power low, the number of the less frequent and highly cited important breakthroughs can be predicted from the frequencies of papers in the upper part of the tail. This study quantifies the false impression of excellence produced by multinational papers, and by other types of papers that do not contribute to the progress of science. Many of these papers are concentrated in and dominate lists of highly cited papers, especially in lower-ranked universities. The h-index obscures the differences between higher- and lower-ranked universities because the proportion of h-core papers in the 1% high-citation tail is not proportional to the value of the h-index.