2,802 research outputs found
Most importantly, I hope God keeps illness away from us : The context and challenges surrounding access to health care for Syrian refugees in Lebanon
The influx of 1.5 million Syrians into Lebanon has created an increased demand for health services, which is largely unmet, due to cost, a highly fragmented and privatised system, and crises around legal documentation and refugee status. The aim of this study was to use a constant comparison analysis of qualitative data to explore how Syrian refugees living in Lebanon describe their experiences accessing healthcare (Nâ=â351 individuals within 46 families). Pervasive fear, lack of confidence in the medical system, and high costs all hinder access to healthcare for Syrians in Lebanon. Findings demonstrate the need for attention to the costs and accessibility of care, and for stronger coordination of care within a centrally led comprehensive emergency plan. While we attend to understanding and alleviating the barriers surrounding refugee healthcare, we must also address the underlying cause of health crisis: the brutal realities caused by armed conflict
Most importantly, I hope God keeps illness away from us : The context and challenges surrounding access to health care for Syrian refugees in Lebanon
The influx of 1.5 million Syrians into Lebanon has created an increased demand for health services, which is largely unmet, due to cost, a highly fragmented and privatised system, and crises around legal documentation and refugee status. The aim of this study was to use a constant comparison analysis of qualitative data to explore how Syrian refugees living in Lebanon describe their experiences accessing healthcare (Nâ=â351 individuals within 46 families). Pervasive fear, lack of confidence in the medical system, and high costs all hinder access to healthcare for Syrians in Lebanon. Findings demonstrate the need for attention to the costs and accessibility of care, and for stronger coordination of care within a centrally led comprehensive emergency plan. While we attend to understanding and alleviating the barriers surrounding refugee healthcare, we must also address the underlying cause of health crisis: the brutal realities caused by armed conflict
Estimating the Energy Consumption of Applications in the Computing Continuum with <i>iFogSim</i>
Digital services - applications that often span the entire computing continuum - have become an essential part of our daily lives, but they can have a significant energy cost, raising sustainability concerns. The computing continuum features multiple distributed layers (edge, fog, and cloud) with specific computing infrastructure and scheduling decisions at each layer, which impact the overall quality of service and energy consumption of digital services. Measuring the energy consumption of such applications is challenging due to the distributed nature of the system and the application. As such, simulation techniques are promising solutions to estimate energy consumption, and several simulators are available for modeling the cloud and fog computing environment.In this paper, we investigate iFogSimâs effectiveness in analyzing the end-to-end energy consumption of applications in the computing continuum through two case studies. We design different scenarios for each case study to map application modules to devices along the continuum, including the Edge-Cloud collaboration architecture, and compare them with the two placement policies native to iFogSim: Cloud-only and Edge-ward policies. We observe iFogSimâs limitations in reporting energy consumption, and improve its ability to report energy consumption from an applicationâs perspective; this enables additional insight into an applicationâs energy consumption, thus enhancing the usability of iFogSim in evaluating the end-to-end energy consumption of digital services.</p
Inclusive early childhood education : an analysis of 32 European examples
This report is part of the three-year Inclusive Early Childhood Education (IECE)
project run by the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (the
Agency) from 2015 to 2017. The project aims to identify, analyse and subsequently
promote the main characteristics of quality inclusive pre-primary education for all
children from three years of age to the start of primary education.
This report presents the results of a qualitative analysis of 32 descriptions of
examples of IECE provisions across Europe. The descriptions were submitted to the
project in August 2015. The findings represent European practitionersâ perceptions
of and practices for IECE.
An inductive thematic data analysis method was used, in that themes or issues were
initially derived from reading the descriptions. This inductive process was, however,
also intertwined with relevant theory, particularly the Agencyâs âultimate vision for
inclusive education systemsâ that:
... ensure that all learners of any age are provided with meaningful, highâquality
educational opportunities in their local community, alongside their friends and
peers(European Agency, 2015, p. 1).
In total, 25 subthemes were identified. These were organised into a new Ecosystem
Model of Inclusive Early Childhood Education, which is also presented in a
comprehensive diagram (Figure 1). Two major perspectives previously used in
describing the quality of ECE settings inspired this new model. These are the
Outcome-Process-Structure model and the Ecological Systems model. The
subthemes were subsequently grouped into five main themes:
âą Theme 1: The first main and central theme is âChild belongingness, engagement
and learningâ, often generally understood as active participation. This
participation is regarded as both the main outcome and process of IECE.
âą Theme 2: Five major processesinvolving the childâs direct experience in the IECE
setting enable this central outcome and process. These processes are:
â Positive interaction with adults and peers
â Involvement in play and other daily activities
â A child-centred approach
â Personalised assessment for learning
â Accommodations, adaptations and support.
âą Theme 3: These processes are in turn supported by structural factors, consisting
of the physical, social, cultural and educational environment. These factors may operate at different ecological levels. Some operate within the ECE setting and
include:
â A warm welcome for every child and family
â Family involvement within the ECE setting.
â A holistic curriculum designed for all childrenâs needs
â An environment designed for all children
â Staff who are appropriately qualified for IECE
â A culturally-responsive social and physical environment
â Inclusive leadership committed to respect and engagement for all
individuals
â Collaboration and shared responsibility among all stakeholders.
âą Theme 4: Inclusive processes experienced by the child are also influenced by
more distant structural factors in the community surrounding the ECE setting.
These include:
â Collaboration between the ECE setting and the childrenâs families
â Relevant in-service training for ECE staff
â Wider community commitment and support for serving all children
â Inter-disciplinary and inter-agency co-operation of services from outside
the ECE setting that serve the children in the pre-school
â Organising smooth transitions between home and the ECE setting.
âą Theme 5: Finally, the analysis found a number of structural factors operating at
the macro-system level. These factors were not in direct contact with the ECE
setting. However, they still influenced inclusive processes in the setting. They
are:
â A rights-based approach to ECE
â Provision of mainstream ECE access for all
â Setting up regional/national standards for a holistic IECE curriculum
â Availability of initial education for teachers and other staff for IECE
â Good governance and funding systems for IECE
â Procedures for regular monitoring and evaluation.
This overview of the ecosystem of outcomes, processes and structures for IECE is
presented in the Results chapter. Five evidence-based chapters, dedicated to each of the five main themes, follow this. Each chapter presents a brief description of
each of the outcome, process or structural factors within each main theme. These
are accompanied by one to five quotations from each of the 32 example
descriptions. The quotations illustrate and provide concrete evidence of what
constitutes quality outcomes, processes and structures that are prevalent across
Europe.
The quotations were chosen both to reflect the different types of IECE concepts and
practices, and to reflect the variety of countries and cultures where they occur. They
are intended to stimulate inclusive developments in research, policy and practice in
Europe and internationally.
Finally, the Conclusion highlights the added value that this analysis contributes to
IECE research, policy and practice. Four new insights are addressed:
1. The development of the new Ecosystem Model of IECE, inspired by two
previous major models, should clarify the understanding of the issues related
to quality ECE.
2. The analysis shows how, within an inclusive perspective, IECEâs primary goal is
best conceived as that of ensuring quality outcomes for all children in terms of
participation. This is described here as belongingness, engagement and
learning.
3. The analysis shines a new light on the major processes in which children are
directly involved and which mostinfluence each childâs participation and
learning. These need to be a major focus of any intervention to improve ECE
quality.
4. The analysis clarifies the structural factors needed to support the development
of more inclusive ECE settings. It also shows how these factors are related to
local and national policies and practices. Situating the structures at the ECE
setting, community and regional/national levels isimportant in levering them
to bring about the changes needed to enable each child to participate and
learn.peer-reviewe
Cardiovascular and cancer mortality in relation to dietary polychlorinated biphenyls and marine polyunsaturated fatty acids: A nutritional-toxicological aspect of fish consumption
Background. Co-exposure to environmental contaminants
present in fish could mitigate the beneficial
effects of fish consumption and possibly explain
the lack of association observed for mortality in
some geographical regions.
Objective. To assess the independent associations of
dietary exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls
(PCBs) and long-chain omega-3 fish fatty acids
intake with cardiovascular and cancer mortality.
Methods. We used the prospective population-based
Swedish Mammography Cohort and the Cohort of
Swedish Men comprising 32 952 women and 36 545
men, free from cancer, cardiovascular disease and
diabetes at baseline in 1998. Validated estimates of
dietary PCBs and long-chain omega-3 fish fatty acids
[i.e. eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic
acid (DHA)] intake were obtained via a food
frequency questionnaire at baseline. Information on
death was ascertained through register linkage.
Results. During a mean follow-up of 15.5 years, we
ascertained 16 776 deaths. We observed for cardiovascular
mortality, comparing extreme quintiles
in multivariable models mutually adjusted for
PCBs and EPA-DHA, dose-dependent associations
for dietary PCB exposure, hazard ratio (HR) 1.31
(CI 95%: 1.08 to 1.57; P-trend 0.005) and for
dietary EPA-DHA intake, HR 0.79 (CI 95%: 0.66 to
0.95; P-trend 0.041). For cancer mortality, no clear
associations were discerned.
Conclusion. The beneficial effect of fish consumption
on the cardiovascular system seems compromised
by co-exposure to PCBs â one likely explanation for
the inconsistent associations observed between
fish consumption and mortalityThe Swedish Research Council under the grant no 2017-00822 and 2017-00644 (SIMPLER) supported the stud
Control Performance Optimization for Application Integration on Automotive Architectures
Automotive software implements different functionalities as multiple control applications sharing common platform resources. Although such applications are often developed independently, the control performance of the resulting system depends on how these applications are integrated. A key integration challenge is to efficiently schedule these applications on shared resources with minimal control performance degradation. We formulate this problem as that of scheduling multiple distributed periodic control tasks that communicate via messages with non-zero jitter. The optimization criterion used is a piecewise linear representation of the control performance degradation as a function of the end-to-end latency of the application. The three main contributions of this article are: 1) a constraint programming (CP) formulation to solve this integration problem optimally on time-triggered architectures; 2) an efficient heuristic called Flexi ; and 3) an experimental evaluation of the scalability and efficiency of the proposed approaches. In contrast to the CP formulation, which for many real-life problems might have unacceptably long running times, Flexireturns nearly optimal results (0.5 percent loss in control performance compared to optimal) for most problems with more acceptable running times
Transverse Momentum Spectra of Pions in Particle and Nuclear Collisions and Some Ratio-Behaviours: Towards A Combinational Approach
The nature of transverse momentum dependence of the inclusive cross-sections
for secondary pions produced in high energy hadronic(), hadronuclear()
and nuclear() collisions has here been exhaustively investigated for a
varied range of interactions in a unified way with the help of a master
formula. This formula evolved from a new combination of the basic Hagedorn's
model for particle(pion) production in PP scattering at ISR range of energies,
a phenomenological approach proposed by Peitzmann for converting the results of
reactions to those for either or collisions, and a specific
form of parametrization for mass number-dependence of the nuclear cross
sections. This grand combination of models(GCM) is then applied to analyse the
assorted extensive data on various high energy collisions. The nature of
qualitative agreement between measurements and calculations on both the
inclusive cross-sections for production of pions, and some ratios of them as
well, is quite satisfactory. The modest successes that we achieve here in
dealing with the massive data-sets are somewhat encouraging in view of the
diversity of the reactions and the very wide range of interaction energies.Comment: 19 pages, 19 figure
Measuring Double Parton Distributions in Nucleons at Proton-Nucleus Colliders
We predict a strong enhancement of multijet production in proton-nucleus
collisions at collider energies, as compared to a naive expectation of a cross
section . The study of the process would allow to measure, for the
first time, the double parton distribution functions in a nucleon in a model
independent way and hence to study both the longitudinal and the transverse
correlations of partons.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure
QCD corrections to the t-->H+b decay within the minimal supersymmetric standard model
I present the contribution of gluinos and scalar quarks to the decay rate of
the top quark into a charged Higgs boson and a bottom quark within the minimal
supersymmetric standard model, including the mixing of the scalar partners of
the left- and right-handed top quark. I show that for certain values of the
supersymmetric parameters the standard QCD loop corrections to this decay mode
are diminished or enhanced by several 10 per cent. I show that not only a small
value of 3 GeV for the gluino mass (small mass window) but also much larger
values of several hundreds of GeV's have a non-neglible effect on this decay
rate, against general belief. Last but not least, if the ratio of the vacuum
expectation values of the Higgs bosons are taken in the limit of I
obtain a drastic enhancement due to a \ dependence in the couplings.Comment: UQAM-PHE-94/01, 6 pages, plain tex, 4 figures not included, available
under request via mail or fa
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