Designing for Technology Enhanced Activity to Support Learning

One of the perennial challenges in implementing and designing educational technologies is adapting to local contexts. Activity theory has the potential to address this challenge but has not seen widespread adoption due to its complexity. To address this, I suggest a simplified design heuristic for using activity theory to attend to contextual issues when implementing educational technologies. I then present two examples of this heuristic in use. First, I describe the BeeSign software, which was created to help early elementary students engage in complex systems thinking. Second, I describe the design of an online forum intended to foster authentic problem solving at the graduate level. Together, these examples illustrate the wide-ranging applicability of activity theory for designing and implementing educational technologies

Prevalence and predictors of medication non-adherence in some common non-communicable chronic diseases and cancers: a comparative study

Background: Adherence is a key factor in the success of all pharmacological therapies. Medication non-adherence is an extremely common barrier to achieve positive health outcomes. The present study aims to compare medication non-adherence in some common chronic diseases and cancers and also to assess various factors influencing it.Methods: Pre-validated questionnaires based on general medication adherence scale (GMAS) were equally distributed among 300 patients suffering from chronic illnesses and cancers. 270 patients returned completely filled questionnaires.Results: The study population consists of 53.33% men and 46.66% women.55.55% patients were literate. 70.37% of patients were from rural areas. 61.48% were taking 2-4 drugs. As compared to 14.81% males 18.51% of females had poor or low adherence. Only 0.74% of young patients (<30 years) had poor/low adherence as compared to 16.29% each in other age groups. Rural patients had poor adherence as compared to patients from urban areas. As compared to 31.85% illiterate patients, only 16.29% of literate patients had poor or low adherence. Adherence was better in patients taking more than one drug. Statistically, a significant correlation was found between gender, age, level of education, and area of residence. Duration of treatment, the number of drugs, and the frequency of dosage were not found significantly correlated with adherence. Patients suffering from malignancies had higher medication adherence as compared to chronic illnesses.Conclusions: Medication non-adherence is common in patients with chronic diseases and cancers that are treated with unsupervised oral antineoplastic drugs. The complex problem of non-adherence calls for interventions at various levels

Impact of Asymmetric Information in Islamic Financial contract: An Empirical Analysis

A primary source of asymmetric information arises from banks’ uncertainty about borrowers’Creditworthiness. This can generate two types of barriers to efficient credit allocation in the loan market: ad-verse selection in the likelihood of repayment and moral hazard in the riskiness of firms’ business decisions, also affecting repayment. This study investigated the consequences of asymmetric information on Islamic financial contracts in the Pakistani market for small and medium enterprise (SME) business lines of credit. Islamic bank’s main financial contracts were discuss the two of them which are Istisna and Murabah .The methods of’ T test’ was conducted to ascertain the difference in means of both forms of financing, whereas Multiple Regression Analysis using panel data to assess the relationship of critical variables with Disbursed amount, profit rate, spread, tenor. Data of three year i.e. from 2016 to2018 of 35 firms, with 105 number of observations having istisna and murabah contract, were taken. The results suggested that both the means of murabah and istisna financing are significantly different in major performance indicators, implicating companies that have taken these two financing have performed differently. Secondly, in most of the ratio that mattered like efficiency and profitability, murabah based financing have yielded more efficient results and better performed as compared to istisna

Who is More Free? A Comparison of the Decision-Making of Private and Public School Principals

While an abundance of school choice literature focuses on student achievement outcomes, little has been done to determine the mechanisms involved in producing such outcomes. We present a comparative analysis of private and public school principals using data from the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) 2011-2012. We add to the literature by examining the differences in private and public school principals’ abilities to influence important decisions at their schools. We conclude that private schooling may have a systematic advantage over public schooling since private school leadership exhibits more autonomy in influencing relevant decisions

Private Schooling Promotes Political and Economic Freedom? An International Fixed Effects Instrumental Variables Analysis

Additional private schooling within a nation-state may increase citizens’ political and economic freedom through increased educational quality, balanced power relationships, and increased civic engagement. We employ a two-stage-least-squares time and country-level fixed-effects analytical technique to examine how private schooling could affect political rights, civil liberties and economic freedom indices. We also use a new instrumental variable, short-run fluctuations in the demand for schooling, to predict private schooling. We examine 174 different nations across the globe from 1999 to 2014, and find significant evidence to suggest that private schooling leads to enhanced political and economic freedom. In particular, our preferred model finds that a ten percentage point increase in private share of schooling enrollment within a nation, over time, is associated with a 7.4% of a standard deviation increase in the Political Rights Index and an 8% of a standard deviation increase in the Economic Freedom of the World Index

Validation of a Novel Collection Device for Non-Invasive Urine Sampling from Free-Ranging Animals.

Recent advances in non-invasively collected samples have opened up new and exciting opportunities for wildlife research. Different types of samples, however, involve different limitations and certain physiological markers (e.g., C-peptide, oxytocin) can only be reliably measured from urine. Common collection methods for urine to date work best for arboreal animals and large volumes of urine. Sufficient recovery of urine is thus still difficult for wildlife biologists, particularly for terrestrial and small bodied animals. We tested three collection devices (two commercially available saliva swabs, Salivette synthetic and cotton, and cotton First aid swabs) against a control to permit the collection of small volumes of urine from the ground. We collected urine samples from captive and wild macaques, and humans, measured volume recovery, and analyzed concentrates of selected physiological markers (creatinine, C-peptide, and neopterin). The Salivette synthetic device was superior to the two alternative devices. Concentrations of creatinine, absolute C-peptide, C-peptide per creatinine, absolute neopterin, and neopterin per creatinine measured in samples collected with this device did not differ significantly from the control and were also strongly correlated to it. Fluid recovery was also best for this device. The least suitable device is the First aid collection device; we found that while absolute C-peptide and C-peptide per creatinine concentrations did not differ significantly from the control, creatinine concentrations were significantly lower than the control. In addition, these concentrations were either not or weakly correlated to the control. The Salivette cotton device provided intermediate results, although these concentrations were strongly correlated to the control. Salivette synthetic swabs seem to be useful devices for the collection of small amounts of urine from the ground destined for the assessment of physiological parameters. They thus provide new opportunities for field studies to incorporate physiological markers, particularly on smaller bodied and terrestrial animals and where urine collection is difficult

Distribution of surface sediments off Indus delta on the continental shelf of Pakistan

Surface sediments from the continental shelf area off Indus delta were analysed for their textural characteristics and carbonate content. The sediments are largely silt, silty clay and clayey silty sand. Sandy fraction is dominant in the outer region with relatively high carbonate content. The study shows that distribution of carbonate in sediments off Indus delta continental shelf is controlled by the dilution of terrigenous material and its distance from source area

Perceived Organizational Politics and Employee Morale: Mediating Role of Social Exchange Perceptions in Pakistani Organizations

Politics in organizations is an important aspect of organizational life which has been an interesting research area since last four decades. However, it is still deprived of practical approach due to its inconclusive studies and fragmented arguments. In politicized organizations, morale and motivation of employees depend mostly on their type of exchange relationships. The study in hand is another effort to view these exchange perceptions as intervening between the relationship of perceptions of organizational politics and morale of employees. As a part of larger study, data was collected through self administered questionnaire distributed among master of business administration students who were completing their management degree as part time along with their jobs during day time. All the Pakistani business schools were included in this study and surveys were distributed to 2000 employees during their classes and participation was voluntary ensuring anonymity and compliance with ethical considerations. Overall, 2000 questionnaires were distributed among which 1163 useable surveys were returned after screening and cleaning for unengaged response, left over pages and missing critical information. Thus response rate was 58%. Results of regression analysis indicated that social exchange perceptions was partial mediators in the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and employee morale  and about 70% of the total effect was mediated by these perceptions which was an important indicator for understanding organizational life. Practical policy implications have also been discussed in discussion sections along with limitation of the study and guidelines for future research

Compensation of nonlinear fibre impairments in coherent systems employing spectrally efficient modulation formats

We investigate electronic mitigation of linear and non-linear fibre impairments and compare various digital signal processing techniques, including electronic dispersion compensation (EDC), single-channel back-propagation (SC-BP) and back-propagation with multiple channel processing (MC-BP) in a nine-channel 112 Gb/s PM-mQAM (m=4,16) WDM system, for reaches up to 6,320 km. We show that, for a sufficiently high local dispersion, SC-BP is sufficient to provide a significant performance enhancement when compared to EDC, and is adequate to achieve BER below FEC threshold. For these conditions we report that a sampling rate of two samples per symbol is sufficient for practical SC-BP, without significant penalties