3,317 research outputs found

    Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

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    Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

    Ono ĆĄto tijelo moĆŸe postati: kartografija između plesa i filozofije

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    This thesis does not explore what body is, but what a body can become. It explores the body as event-in-making throughout the concepts such as Body without Organs (Antonin Artaud, Gilles Deleuze and FĂ©lix Guattari), bodying (Erin Manning), body-in-making (Erin Manning). What all of those concepts have in common is the same state - a state of becoming. Here, body becomes, and as such - it is a verb, an activity, a force. This thesis does not only explore the body as a force of becoming, but it also explores the becoming of that force - at the molecular, experiential and relational level. As Manning says, a body is always more-than one. Here, we are trying to approach the physical, experiential and relational becomings of a body in movement. That which moves the body from the state of being into the state of becoming is movement. This thesis is trying to show how movement never stops. We always move, therefore, there is a continuity of becoming. A body is never just a form, but a force-form. Movement is that which opens the body toward its becoming of force(s). A moving body is not a form of expression, but a forcefield of expressivity. Movement connects the body to its very field of expressivity where the body starts to dance its capacities to do, produce and become. The body is never predetermined or finished - at the physical, experiential or relational level - but it is an ongoing movement. Movement makes the body, therefore, the body itself is a movement. We are not dancing with the body, we are dancing the body itself. The body is a score, a body-score, of its own becoming. We are not interested in what, for example, a heart is, but we are interested in molecular, experiential and relational becomings of a heart; we are interested in what a heart can become. Organs are not expressions, but flows, intensities, fields of expressivity. This thesis is an attempt to map those flows - performative and conceptual ones - and to redirect them toward new becomings.Ova teza ne istraĆŸuje ono ĆĄto tijelo jest, već ono ĆĄto tijelo moĆŸe postati. Ova teza istraĆŸuje tijelo kao događaj u nastajanju kroz koncepte kao ĆĄto su Tijelo bez Organa (Antonon Artaud, Gilles Deleuze i Felix Guattari), bodying (Erin Manning), body-in-making (Erin Manning). Ono ĆĄto svi ti koncepti dijele jest isto stanje - stanje postajanja. Tijelo neprestano postaje i kao takvo - ono je glagol, aktivnost, sila. Ova teza ne istraĆŸuje samo tijelo kao silu postajanja, već i postajanje te sile - na molekularnoj, iskustvenoj i relacijskoj razini. Kao ĆĄto kaĆŸe Manning, tijelo je uvijek viĆĄe nego "jedno". Ovdje pokuĆĄavamo pristupiti fizičkim, iskustvenim i relacijskim postajanjima tijela u pokretu. Ono ĆĄto pomiče tijelo iz stanja bivanja u stanje postajanja jest pokret. Ova teza pokuĆĄava pokazati kako pokret nikada ne prestaje. Kontinuitet pokreta također je i kontinuitetom postajanja. Tijelo nikada nije samo forma, već forma-sila. Pokret otvara tijelo prema njegovom postajanju silom. Tijelo u pokretu nije formom ekspresije, već poljem-silom ekspresivnosti. Pokret povezuje tijelo s njegovim poljem ekspresivnosti gdje tijelo počinje plesati svoj potencijal činjenja, proizvođenja i postajanja. Tijelo nikada nije unaprijed zadano ili dovrĆĄeno - na fizičkoj, iskustvenoj ili relacijskoj razini - već je kontinuiranim pokretom. Pokret čini tijelo, dakle, tijelo je pokret. Ne pleĆĄemo s tijelom, već pleĆĄemo tijelo kao takvo. Tijelo je partitura, tijelo-partitura, vlastitog postajanja. Ne zanima nas ĆĄto je, na primjer, srce, već nas zanimaju molekularna, iskustvena i relacijska postajanja srca; zanima nas samo ono ĆĄto srce moĆŸe postati. Organi nisu ekspresije, već tokovi, intenziteti, polja ekspresivnosti. Ova je teza pokuĆĄaj mapiranja tih tokova - performativnih i konceptualnih - te njihova preusmjerenja spram novih postajanja.Cette thĂšse n'explore pas ce qu'est le corps, mais ce qu'un corps peut devenir. Elle explore le corps comme un Ă©vĂ©nement en train de se faire Ă  travers les concepts tels que le Corps sans Organes (Antonin Artaud, Gilles Deleuze et FĂ©lix Guattari), le bodying (Erin Manning), le corps en train de se faire (Erin Manning) et le devenir (Gilles Deleuze et FĂ©lix Guattari). Ce que tous ces concepts ont en commun est l'Ă©tat de devenir. Ici, le corps devient, et en tant que tel - c'est un verbe, une activitĂ©, une force. Cette thĂšse explore non seulement le corps comme une force de devenir, mais elle explore Ă©galement le devenir de cette force - au niveau molĂ©culaire, expĂ©rientiel et relationnel. Comme le dit Manning, un corps est toujours plus qu'un corps. Ici, nous essayons d'aborder les devenirs physiques, expĂ©rientiels et relationnels d'un corps en mouvement. Ce qui bouge le corps de l'Ă©tat d'ĂȘtre vers l'Ă©tat de devenir est le mouvement. Cette thĂšse tente de montrer comment le mouvement ne s'arrĂȘte jamais. Nous bougeons toujours, donc, il y a une continuitĂ© de devenir. Un corps n'est jamais uniquement une forme, il est une force-forme. Le mouvement est celui qui ouvre le corps vers son devenir de force(s). Un corps en mouvement n'est pas une forme d'expression, mais une force d'expressivitĂ©. Le mouvement relie le corps Ă  sa force d'expressivitĂ© oĂč le corps commence Ă  danser ses capacitĂ©s Ă  faire, Ă  produire et Ă  devenir. Le corps n'est jamais prĂ©dĂ©terminĂ© ou fini - au niveau physique, expĂ©rientiel ou relationnel - il est un mouvement continu. Le mouvement fait le corps, par consĂ©quent, le corps lui-mĂȘme est un mouvement. Nous ne dansons pas avec le corps, nous dansons le corps lui-mĂȘme. Le corps est une partition, un corps-partition, de son devenir. Nous ne nous intĂ©ressons pas, par exemple, Ă  ce qu'est un cƓur, mais nous sommes intĂ©ressĂ©s par les devenirs molĂ©culaires, expĂ©rientiels et relationnels d'un cƓur ; nous sommes intĂ©ressĂ©s par ce qu'un cƓur peut devenir. Les organes ne sont pas des expressions, mais des flux, des intensitĂ©s, des champs d'expressivitĂ©. Cette thĂšse tente de cartographier ces flux - performatifs et conceptuels - et de les rĂ©orienter vers de nouveaux devenirs

    Applications of machine learning to diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases

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    Globally, there is a huge unmet need for effective treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. The complexity of the molecular mechanisms underlying neuronal degeneration and the heterogeneity of the patient population present massive challenges to the development of early diagnostic tools and effective treatments for these diseases. Machine learning, a subfield of artificial intelligence, is enabling scientists, clinicians and patients to address some of these challenges. In this Review, we discuss how machine learning can aid early diagnosis and interpretation of medical images as well as the discovery and development of new therapies. A unifying theme of the different applications of machine learning is the integration of multiple high-dimensional sources of data, which all provide a different view on disease, and the automated derivation of actionable insights

    Anticoagulation for atrial fibrillation in general practice: a critical evaluation of the implementation of changes to practice

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    This thesis critically evaluated, and updated existing knowledge, improving scholarship about the nature of oral-anticoagulation (OAC) use and changes to OAC management in general-practice in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). This thesis represents an original contribution to knowledge by presenting a new integrated-care model for AF/OAC care in general-practice; Developed uniquely via an Insider-Researcher lens and assessment of AF/OAC care; Which used context-specific data to combine existing methods within related methodologies in a novel way; To provide an original exploration of the embedding processes involved in AF/OAC care in general-practice. This thesis also provides a significant contribution to knowledge in several ways. Firstly, this thesis challenges the previously accepted assumptions about OAC use and underuse in general-practice, establishes and answers a knowledge-gap about the extent of GP involvement in the OAC rates reported. Secondly, this thesis proposes a new, initial theory, of how a general-practice affected the OAC rates reported; whilst, also identifying a further literary gap about the essential roles for General-Practice Nurses (GPNs) required to deliver improved AF/OAC care, via a general-practice integrative-care model. Thirdly, the insider-researcher approach that was taken using a form of realist evaluation incorporating the Normalization Process Theory (NPT), positively impacts on existing nurse-led research within general-practice settings. The context of this study is the high stroke burden attributable to the increasingly prevalent cardiac arrythmia AF, for which an effective risk-reducing treatment, OAC, is historically underused and for which general-practice holds responsibility. This study involves a mixed-methods approach, which includes a quantitative examination of the clinical pathways and management of an AF cohort, and a qualitative investigation about clinicians’ experiences of transformation of OAC practice in a large general-practice in Northern England. Using realism as a methodological perspective, an insider-researcher approach incorporating the Normalization Process Theory (NPT) produced a new program theory about the roles of general practitioners and other practice staff in stroke prevention work in AF patients. Between June and October 2013, the electronic records of 297 AF patients included in a general-practice caseload were analyzed, following their initial presentation to eventual diagnosis and treatment with OAC. Then, between October and December 2013, clinical staff within the same setting were also questioned about their roles before, during and after changes to OAC and AF care in the general practice. Findings showed that historic underuse did exist as suggested by the literature with only 51.9% of patients initially taking OAC in 2013. Furthermore, the findings also indicated the presence of a limited GP role, who were involved in only 24.9% of all previous AF diagnoses. However, several contextual factors, which resulted in a series of mechanisms for OAC service change, also existed. These led to increased general-practice diagnoses of AF, totaling 78.6% of new AF patients and a 91.1% uptake of OAC in all patients diagnosed with AF after 2013 up to 2017. Historical OAC use in treating AF patients in general practice has been previously shaped by the GPs’ willingness to refer to specialists and by the outcomes of decision-making by specialists. Furthermore, there has been no previous recognized role for nurses in AF/OAC care, both within the literature, and within this practice. This was exemplified by a lack of awareness about stroke, AF and OAC; which also resulted in significant clinical anxiety. AF and OAC care are complex interventions that require multiple Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) factors, occurring in various configurations, to achieve changes in clinical general-practice. Nursing activity in general practice was integral to achieving improvements in OAC treatment change and improved outcomes. The nature of roles, knowledge and agency are critically integrated to processes of OAC and AF treatment change and are, themselves, constructs of power that reflect embedded historical general-practice funding models. Outcomes of significantly increased OAC use, routine AF case-finding and internal OAC initiation occurred because of role-specific CMO-configurations. Increases in OAC use to prevent stroke is possible in general-practice using an integrated-care approach. But further research is required to explore the possible variations of integrated care that are used more widely in general-practice, and explore patients’ roles within decisions about OAC use, within these integrated-care models

    Being an Austrian mother with rheumatoid arthritis: An institutional ethnography about the social organization of everyday life

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    This institutional ethnography research explored how women with rheumatoid arthritis, who are mothers, and of employable age, go about their daily lives given their social context. The social context for this research was Austria, which is characterized by social policies based on familialism and an emphasis on employment. This context may open up various resources and possibilities about what women can do and actually do in their daily lives, and thus, directs attention to the situated nature of human occupation. In institutional ethnography particular attention is given to the social, which suggests that daily life becomes accomplished through coordinated activities of various individuals who are active across places and time. These social relations often remain invisible. Institutional ethnography aims to explicate these social relations by exploring the work, that is, anything that requires time, effort, and has intent, of individuals in their daily lives. An understanding of the work of the seven women in going about their lives was collected by means of interviews and participant observations. Texts were analyzed to understand how the actual, local doings of the women are coordinated to trans-local relations. Texts have a mediating character and coordinate the women’s consciousness into relations ruling organizational processes. The findings contain a thick description of the women’s actual work in their daily lives; an explication of how their doings are coordinated to the relations ruling arthritis-related health care; and relations organizing processes related to employment and invalidity. What the women do, how they do it, and with whom, depends on how they are situated within social relations. Once they enter arthritis-related health care, their experiences become coordinated to medical concepts ruling these particular relations; once the women enter relations at the labor market, the concept of employability rules the processes there. Within these respective ruling relations, the complexity of the women’s daily lives is not accounted for. This research illustrates the necessity for attending to the situated nature of how individuals go about their daily lives to comprehensively understand the social organization and work that goes into accomplishing the ordinary activities of everyday life

    Detecting and tracking populations at-risk of Alzheimer’s disease: studying asymptomatic cognitive profiles and symptomatic clinical presentations

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    Familial Alzheimer’s disease (FAD) is a penetrant autosomal dominantly inherited condition. Due to its clinical and neurophysiological similarities with sporadic AD features, it represents an important clinical group in its own right but also offers a potential model for AD. This thesis is largely based on the longitudinal FAD study but also includes data from ‘Insight 46’ in an attempt to broaden the scope of these investigations to other ‘at-risk’ cohorts. The overarching aim of the thesis is to study the early subtle cognitive changes (with a particular focus on visual short-term memory but also subjective cognitive decline) and the symptomatic presentations (both cognitive and clinical) that accompany disease progression in AD. The key findings were that over time, presymptomatic mutation carriers (PMCs) had a faster rate of decline in visual short-term memory (VSTM) function, specifically in the ability to remember the location and the target identity. This relational binding deficit was strongest in the most challenging task condition: 3-items, 4s delay (high load, longest delay), and is clinically relevant as it shows sensitivity in tracking individuals during preclinical AD stages. Consequent eye movement investigations of VSTM function, revealed a stronger cognitive effort for PMCs compared to controls during encoding, a finding which may increase the diagnostic value of relational binding tasks. Other important findings were: the higher incidence of subjective cognitive decline symptoms in two otherwise different populations “at-risk” of AD: PMCs carriers and amyloid-positive ~70-year-old participants and the ineffective VSTM function and much smaller influence of mutation specificity on survival time variance in comparison to variance in age at onset for symptomatic FAD individuals. Together, this work has implications for the interpretation of cognitive and clinical data, the understanding of heterogeneity in FAD and may help detect and track subtle cognitive decline of potential value to clinical practice

    The Future of Information Sciences : INFuture2015 : e-Institutions – Openness, Accessibility, and Preservation

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