Electrocatalytic regeneration of atmospherically aged MoS2 nanostructures via solution-phase sulfidation

The performance of MoS2 as a hydrogen evolution catalyst is diminished by exposure to air. We demonstrate a solution phase technique to resulfidate MoSxO2-x using Na2S2O3. The success of the method was judged by performance as a H+ reduction catalyst. Following sulfidation samples displayed a favourable decrease in both onset potential and Tafel slope, with the best decreasing from -0.23 V to -0.18 V (vs. SHE), and 282 mV dec-1 to 87 mV dec-1 respectively. Ageing studies indicate that this method may be used to recycle the MoS2 repeatedly without losing catalytic performance, although repeated sulfidation did result in homogenisation of the nanostructure.

Mindmapping as an adult learning notetaking strategy to increase the encoding of information in a corporate training course

A study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness, as measured by performance on course posttests, of mindmapping versus traditional notetaking in a corporate training class. The purpose of this study was to increase knowledge concerning the effectiveness of mindmapping as an information encoding tool to enhance the effectiveness of learning. Corporations invest billions of dollars, annually, in training programs. Given this increased demand for effective and efficient workplace learning, continual reliance on traditional notetaking is questionable for the high-speed and continual learning required on workers.^ An experimental, posttest-only control group design was used to test the following hypotheses: (1) there is no significant difference in posttest scores on an achievement test, administered immediately after the course, between adult learners using mindmapping versus traditional notetaking methods in a training lecture, and (2) there is no significant difference in posttest scores on an achievement test, administered 30 days after the course, between adult learners using mindmapping versus traditional notetaking methods in a training lecture. After a 1.5 hour instruction on mindmapping, the treatment group used mindmapping throughout the course. The control group used traditional notetaking. T-tests were used to determine if there were significant differences between mean posttest scores between the two groups. In addition, an attitudinal survey, brain hemisphere dominance survey, course dynamics observations, and course evaluations were used to investigate preference for mindmapping, its perceived effect on test performance, and the effectiveness of mindmapping instruction.^ This study's principal finding was that although the mindmapping group did not perform significantly higher on posttests administered immediately and 30 days after the course, than the traditional notetaking group, the mindmapping group did score higher on both posttests and reported higher ratings of the course on every evaluation criteria. Lower educated, right brain dominant learners reported a significantly positive learning experience. These results suggest that mindmapping enhances and reinforces the preconditions of learning. Recommendations for future study are provided. ^

Metrópole digital: o jovem aprendiz na educação tecnológica

This thesis was elaborated in the scenario of Digital Metropolis Institute (IMD) – a supplementary unit at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in the training of personnel with technical and higher level courses whose technical level training is associated with a process of digital inclusion, with the purpose of attracting young people to this area, with emphasis on Software and Hardware Development. It aims to investigate the cognitive change of young apprentice on technological education and his/her entrance into the labor market, through the formation and the social inclusion proposed by the Instituto Metrópole Digital; understanding the juvenile subjectivity production through the Instituto Metrópole Digital’s education by performance in the labor market; recognizing the Brazilian professional qualification public policies for youth and identifying the role of Tutoring in the learning process during the course of formation of the young apprentice of the technological education proposed by the Instituto Metrópole Digital.The clipping of the object of investigation was the process of cognitive change and constitution of subjectivity of the young apprentice in information technology (IT) in the IMD. It was searched support in theory Freireana as proposal that problematizes the policies and the process of formation and professional qualification, in the perspective of a citizen and liberating consciousness. By qualitative and ethnographic nature, descriptive-explanatory, it counts with the participation of young people, high school students from public and private schools, aged between 15 and 18 years. There are strong aspects: a cognitive change on the young apprentice of technological education onto overdrive high school as the student of the Instituto Metrópole Digital; it happened the social integration for those who remain in the course, both in the neighborhood where they reside and at school where he attended high school, the young man is recognized and becomes reference to other young, favoring him a life projection which when the activities of mentoring is learning motivator, it exerts a positive influence to the young on the continuity of studies, it provides intellectual and institutional affiliation and continuity in the investments to the academic life for a better insertion in the labor market, which refers to the modification of the life project-invest in academic training, in exchange for a technical job in the labor market. There are weak aspects: the absence of professor in the course, in his most important role, which involves awareness of his/her condition in action, in explicit position that the professional practice constitutes as this constitution requires reciprocity of its students and the context in which it operates; fragile formation of mentoring, absence of dialogues in the classroom that favors the formation of subject learning, mainly in guiding action, mediator of the young; There is a lack of methodological proposal to develop real projects on the labor market with problem solving and collaborative learning. It considers that without converting information into knowledge cannot discern clearly enough that there is no direct causal relationship between Professional and technological Education and the level of employability of the young worker certificate. It suggests to the evasion: a greater knowledge of the reality of the student of the Institute Metropolis Digital; better knowledge of youth and their expectations of life project; the Tutoring will be Teacher-tutor; investing in employability conditions effective the young into the labor market.

React vs Angular : Slaget om användarupplevelsen

Lately, various programming frameworks has been developed for developing web applications. These frameworks focus on increasing the user experience by performance improvements such as faster render times and response times. One of these frameworks are React, which has introduced a completely new architectural pattern for both managing the state and data flow of an application. React also offers support for native application development and makes server-side rendering possible. Something that is difficult to accomplish with an application developed with Angular 1.5, which is used by the company Dewire today. The aim of this thesis was to compare React with an existing Angular project, in order to determine whether React could be a potential replacement for Angular. To gain knowledge about the subject, a theoretical study of web- based sources has been made. While the practical part has been to rebuild a web application with React together with the architecture Flux, which is based on a view from the Angular project. The implementation process was repeated until the view was completed and a desired data flow, as in the Angular application, was reached. The resulting React application was later compared with the Angular application developed by the company, where the outcome of the comparison showed that the React performed better than Angular in all tests. In conclusion, due to the timeframe of the project, only the most important parts of the Angular project were implemented in order to carry out the measurements that were of interest to the company. By recreating most of the functionality, or the entire Angular application, more interesting comparisons could have been done.

Information Presentation Features and Comprehensibility of Hospital Report Cards: Design Analysis and Online Survey Among Users

Background: Improving the transparency of information about the quality of health care providers is one way to improve health care quality. It is assumed that Internet information steers patients toward better-performing health care providers and will motivate providers to improve quality. However, the effect of public reporting on hospital quality is still small. One of the reasons is that users find it difficult to understand the formats in which information is presented. Objective: We analyzed the presentation of risk-adjusted mortality rate (RAMR) for coronary angiography in the 10 most commonly used German public report cards to analyze the impact of information presentation features on their comprehensibility. We wanted to determine which information presentation features were utilized, were preferred by users, led to better comprehension, and had similar effects to those reported in evidence-based recommendations described in the literature. Methods: The study consisted of 5 steps: (1) identification of best-practice evidence about the presentation of information on hospital report cards; (2) selection of a single risk-adjusted quality indicator; (3) selection of a sample of designs adopted by German public report cards; (4) identification of the information presentation elements used in public reporting initiatives in Germany; and (5) an online panel completed an online questionnaire that was conducted to determine if respondents were able to identify the hospital with the lowest RAMR and if respondents’ hospital choices were associated with particular information design elements. Results: Evidence-based recommendations were made relating to the following information presentation features relevant to report cards: evaluative table with symbols, tables without symbols, bar charts, bar charts without symbols, bar charts with symbols, symbols, evaluative word labels, highlighting, order of providers, high values to indicate good performance, explicit statements of whether high or low values indicate good performance, and incomplete data (“N/A” as a value). When investigating the RAMR in a sample of 10 hospitals’ report cards, 7 of these information presentation features were identified. Of these, 5 information presentation features improved comprehensibility in a manner reported previously in literature. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically analyze the most commonly used public reporting card designs used in Germany. Best-practice evidence identified in international literature was in agreement with 5 findings about German report card designs: (1) avoid tables without symbols, (2) include bar charts with symbols, (3) state explicitly whether high or low values indicate good performance or provide a “good quality” range, (4) avoid incomplete data (N/A given as a value), and (5) rank hospitals by performance. However, these findings are preliminary and should be subject of further evaluation. The implementation of 4 of these recommendations should not present insurmountable obstacles. However, ranking hospitals by performance may present substantial difficulties.

Modelo de gestión del desempeño como base de los programas de gestión humana

La evaluación del desempeño se ha convertido en un factor crítico para el éxito de las organizaciones, ya que realizarla de forma consciente y adecuada permite tomar decisiones y acciones que llevan a la obtención de mejores resultados. El presente trabajo muestra el impacto que tiene la evaluación del desempeño en los demás procesos de Gestión Humana: Incorporación, Desarrollo Humano (Formación y Capacitación, Plan Carrera y Bienestar) y Compensación. Se realizó una encuesta a los colaboradores de una empresa de servicio de tercerización de procesos de negocio (o BPO por sus siglas en inglés) de la ciudad de Medellín para conocer la percepción que tienen acerca de la importancia y utilidad de la evaluación de desempeño dentro de la organización, realizando una comparación con la teoría y encontrando que existen algunos procesos que las personas sienten que no son tan impactados por la evaluación del desempeño, por ejemplo, selección. Se plantea un modelo capaz de demostrar la forma como afecta la evaluación del desempeño los demás procesos de Gestión Humana y los resultados de la organización desde el momento en que la persona se incorpora a la misma, siendo fundamental el rol de los líderes, el análisis de las competencias de las personas y la alineación con la estrategia organizacional.

The impact of Open Access outside of European Universities

The Open Access movement has encouraged the availability of publicly-funded research papers, data and learning content for barrier-free use of that content without payment by the user. The impact of increasing availability of content to researchers in European universities is understood in terms of easier access to previous research and greater exposure for new research results, bringing benefits to the research community itself. A new culture of informal sharing is evident within the teaching and learning communities and to some extent also within the research community, but as yet the growth in informal sharing has not had a major effect upon the use of formal publication choices. This briefing paper explores the impact of open access upon potential users of research outputs outside the walls of research-led European universities, where the economic value of open access may be even greater than the academic value within universities. The potential impact of open access is understood in many communities but requires a greater volume of open access content to be available for the full potential to be realised. More open access content will become available as the opportunities in open, internet-based digital scholarship are understood. This briefing paper was written in cooperation with SPARC Europe. All links provided in footnotes in this Briefing Paper are to studies available in open access.

Performance audit [of] the Department of Healthcare and Family Services Prompt Payment Act Compliance and Medicaid Payment Process /

Contains performance audit of state moneys provided by or through Illinois state agencies to the Illinois Dept. of Healthcare and Family Services Prompt Payment Act Compliance and Medicaid Payment Process, under contracts or grant agreements in year 2007.

Adaptive and phase transition behavior in performance of discrete multi-articular actions by degenerate neurobiological systems

The identification of attractors is one of the key tasks in studies of neurobiological coordination from a dynamical systems perspective, with a considerable body of literature resulting from this task. However, with regards to typical movement models investigated, the overwhelming majority of actions studied previously belong to the class of continuous, rhythmical movements. In contrast, very few studies have investigated coordination of discrete movements, particularly multi-articular discrete movements. In the present study, we investigated phase transition behavior in a basketball throwing task where participants were instructed to shoot at the basket from different distances. Adopting the ubiquitous scaling paradigm, throwing distance was manipulated as a candidate control parameter. Using a cluster analysis approach, clear phase transitions between different movement patterns were observed in performance of only two of eight participants. The remaining participants used a single movement pattern and varied it according to throwing distance, thereby exhibiting hysteresis effects. Results suggested that, in movement models involving many biomechanical degrees of freedom in degenerate systems, greater movement variation across individuals is available for exploitation. This observation stands in contrast to movement variation typically observed in studies using more constrained bi-manual movement models. This degenerate system behavior provides new insights and poses fresh challenges to the dynamical systems theoretical approach, requiring further research beyond conventional movement models.

The performance of a prolonged reading task by students with low vision

Purpose: Students often read for long periods and prolonged reading practice may be important for developing reading skills. For students with low vision, reading at a close working distance imposes high demands on their near visual functions, which might make it difficult to sustain prolonged reading. The aim of this study was to investigate the performance of a prolonged reading task by students with low vision. Method: Forty students with low vision, aged from eight to 20 years and without any intellectual, reading or learning disability, were recruited through the Paediatric Low Vision Clinic, Buranda, Queensland. Following a preliminary vision examination, reading performance measures—critical print size (CPS), maximum oral reading rates (MORR), near text visual acuity— were recorded using the Bailey-Lovie text reading charts before and after a 30-minute prolonged reading task. Results: The mean age of the participants was 13.03 ± 3 years. The distance and near visual acuities ranged between -0.1 to 1.24 logMAR and 0.0 to 1.60 logMAR, respectively. The mean working distance of the participants was 11.2 ± 5.8 cm. Most of the participants (65 per cent) in this study were able to complete the prolonged reading task. Overall, there was no significant change in CPS, MORR and near text visual acuity following the prolonged task (p > 0.05). MORR was significantly correlated to age and near text visual acuity (p < 0.05). Conclusions: In this study, students with low vision were able to maintain their reading performance over a 30-minute prolonged reading task. Overall, there was no significant increase or decrease in reading performance following a prolonged reading task performed at their habitual close working distances but there were wide individual variations within the group.

Differences in the performance of safety performance functions estimated for total crash count and for crash count by crash type

In recent years the development and use of crash prediction models for roadway safety analyses have received substantial attention. These models, also known as safety performance functions (SPFs), relate the expected crash frequency of roadway elements (intersections, road segments, on-ramps) to traffic volumes and other geometric and operational characteristics. A commonly practiced approach for applying intersection SPFs is to assume that crash types occur in fixed proportions (e.g., rear-end crashes make up 20% of crashes, angle crashes 35%, and so forth) and then apply these fixed proportions to crash totals to estimate crash frequencies by type. As demonstrated in this paper, such a practice makes questionable assumptions and results in considerable error in estimating crash proportions. Through the use of rudimentary SPFs based solely on the annual average daily traffic (AADT) of major and minor roads, the homogeneity-in-proportions assumption is shown not to hold across AADT, because crash proportions vary as a function of both major and minor road AADT. For example, with minor road AADT of 400 vehicles per day, the proportion of intersecting-direction crashes decreases from about 50% with 2,000 major road AADT to about 15% with 82,000 AADT. Same-direction crashes increase from about 15% to 55% for the same comparison. The homogeneity-in-proportions assumption should be abandoned, and crash type models should be used to predict crash frequency by crash type. SPFs that use additional geometric variables would only exacerbate the problem quantified here. Comparison of models for different crash types using additional geometric variables remains the subject of future research.

Improving the performance of model-order selection criteria by partial-model selection search

The traditional searching method for model-order selection in linear regression is a nested full-parameters-set searching procedure over the desired orders, which we call full-model order selection. On the other hand, a method for model-selection searches for the best sub-model within each order. In this paper, we propose using the model-selection searching method for model-order selection, which we call partial-model order selection. We show by simulations that the proposed searching method gives better accuracies than the traditional one, especially for low signal-to-noise ratios over a wide range of model-order selection criteria (both information theoretic based and bootstrap-based). Also, we show that for some models the performance of the bootstrap-based criterion improves significantly by using the proposed partial-model selection searching method. Index Terms— Model order estimation, model selection, information theoretic criteria, bootstrap 1. INTRODUCTION Several model-order selection criteria can be applied to find the optimal order. Some of the more commonly used information theoretic-based procedures include Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) [1], corrected Akaike (AICc) [2], minimum description length (MDL) [3], normalized maximum likelihood (NML) [4], Hannan-Quinn criterion (HQC) [5], conditional model-order estimation (CME) [6], and the efficient detection criterion (EDC) [7]. From a practical point of view, it is difficult to decide which model order selection criterion to use. Many of them perform reasonably well when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is high. The discrepancies in their performance, however, become more evident when the SNR is low. In those situations, the performance of the given technique is not only determined by the model structure (say a polynomial trend versus a Fourier series) but, more importantly, by the relative values of the parameters within the model. This makes the comparison between the model-order selection algorithms difficult as within the same model with a given order one could find an example for which one of the methods performs favourably well or fails [6, 8]. Our aim is to improve the performance of the model order selection criteria in cases where the SNR is low by considering a model-selection searching procedure that takes into account not only the full-model order search but also a partial model order search within the given model order. Understandably, the improvement in the performance of the model order estimation is at the expense of additional computational complexity.

Perceptions of visitor relationship marketing opportunities by destination marketers : an importance-performance analysis

Customer relationship marketing (CRM) initiatives are increasingly being adopted by businesses in the attempt to enhance brand loyalty and stimulate repeat purchases. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which destination marketing organisations (DMOs) around the world have developed a visitor relationship marketing (VRM) orientation. The proposition underpinning the study is that maintaining meaningful dialogue with previous visitors in some markets would represent a more efficient use of resources than above the line advertising to attract new visitors. Importance-performance analysis was utilised to measure destination marketers’ perceptions of the efficacy of CRM initiatives, and then rate their own organisation’s performance across the same range of initiatives. A key finding was that mean importance was higher than perceived performance for every item. While the small sample limits generalisability, in general there are appears to be a lack of strategic intent by DMOs to invest in VRM.