Friends without Benefits: How States Systematically Shortchange Teachers' Retirement and Threaten Their Retirement Security

Americans are often reminded that it's never too soon to start saving for retirement. Many of the nation's public school teachers are doing just that -- buying into their state pension system with plans to retire comfortably. However, this new study estimates that nearly 50 percent of all public school teachers will not qualify for even a minimal pension benefit, and less than 20 percent will stay in the profession long enough to earn a normal retirement benefit.This Joyce-funded report demonstrates the consequences of poorly structured state and city policies that can exacerbate retirement insecurity for our nation's teachers. For example, an individual teacher could forfeit up to 6.5 percent of her annual salary for one year, or, due to compound interest, 22.6 percent of her annual salary after three years according to Bellwether's analysis. To put these penalties in dollar terms, a hypothetical teacher earning $40,000 a year could face a savings penalty of$2,601 for teaching only one year and $9,035 if she left after three years. This money stays with the pension funds and is used to supplement the pensions of the remaining teachers.Tackling the pension system is critical for reducing teacher turnover and retaining the profession's most talented educators. Several policy solutions are offered

Better Benefits: Reforming Teacher Pensions for a Changing Work Force

Explains how defined-benefit pension plans create barriers to attracting, retaining, and distributing effective teachers equitably. Proposes reforms including changing the benefit formula or structure, limiting political pressure, and phasing in changes

Reforms of the Colombian Electoral System and their impact on the distribution of seats in the Congress of the Republic (2002, 2006 and 2014)

Las reformas al Sistema Electoral colombiano que se han realizado a través del tiempo han planteado el debate sobre las oportunidades que tienen los movimientos o partidos políticos de ganar una curul en el Congreso de la República. Dichas transformaciones exigieron a las organizaciones políticas una constante innovación y adaptación para mantenerse activos dentro del propio sistema. Este artículo ofrece un análisis del impacto de esas reformas al Sistema Electoral, ejemplificando con resultados del año 2014 los partidos políticos que se mantuvieron con la nueva reglamentación.Índices de tablas v Introducción - 1 - Capítulo 1. Bipartidismos y multipartidismo en colombia. - 4 - Capítulo ii. Transformaciones del sistema electoral colombiano 2001 – 2014 - 9 - 2.1 Acto Legislativo 01 de 2003 - 9 - 2.2. Acto Legislativo 02 de 2004 - 13 - 2.3. Acto Legislativo 01 de 2009 - 13 - 2.4. Ley 892 de 2004 - 16 - 2.5 Ley 974 de 2005 - 17 - 2.6 Ley 996 de 2005 - 17 - 2.7 Ley 1475 de 2011 - 18 - Capítulo iii. El actual sistema electoral colombiano 22 3.1 Criterios elementales del sistema electoral colombiano 22 3.2 La asignación de curules en el Congreso de Colombia 26 3.2.1 La asignación de curules en la Cámara de Representantes 26 3.2.2 La asignación de curules en el Senado de la República 28 Capítulo iv. Impacto de las reformas del sistema electoral colombiano en la asignación de curules en el congreso de la república 31 4.1 Impacto en la Cámara de Representantes 31 4.2 Impacto en el Senado de la República 37 Conclusiones 42 Referencias bibliográficas 46MaestríaThe reforms to the Colombian Electoral System that have been carried out over time have raised the debate on the opportunities that political movements or parties have to win a seat in the Congress of the Republic. These transformations demanded constant innovation and adaptation from political organizations in order to remain active within the system itself. This article offers an analysis of the impact of these reforms to the Electoral System, exemplifying with results from 2014 the political parties that were maintained with the new regulation.Modalidad Presencia

Classification of glomerular hypercellularity using convolutional features and support vector machine

Glomeruli are histological structures of the kidney cortex formed by interwoven blood capillaries, and are responsible for blood filtration. Glomerular lesions impair kidney filtration capability, leading to protein loss and metabolic waste retention. An example of lesion is the glomerular hypercellularity, which is characterized by an increase in the number of cell nuclei in different areas of the glomeruli. Glomerular hypercellularity is a frequent lesion present in different kidney diseases. Automatic detection of glomerular hypercellularity would accelerate the screening of scanned histological slides for the lesion, enhancing clinical diagnosis. Having this in mind, we propose a new approach for classification of hypercellularity in human kidney images. Our proposed method introduces a novel architecture of a convolutional neural network (CNN) along with a support vector machine, achieving near perfect average results with the FIOCRUZ data set in a binary classification (lesion or normal). Our deep-based classifier outperformed the state-of-the-art results on the same data set. Additionally, classification of hypercellularity sub-lesions was also performed, considering mesangial, endocapilar and both lesions; in this multi-classification task, our proposed method just failed in 4\% of the cases. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on deep learning over a data set of glomerular hypercellularity images of human kidney.Comment: 26 page

Evaluation of the Appropriateness of Thyroid Fine-Needle Aspiration

This study aims to perform an integrative literature review on FNAB of the thyroid and its current contributions facing thyroid nodules, as an important diagnostic tool to eliminate early thyroid cancer, a recurrent pathology in offices. Regarding the methods, because this is an integrative review of literature, through a descriptive study, we used databases such as Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (Medline/PubMed), Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) and Virtual Health Library (VHL). The query was performed using the controlled descriptors from DeCS/MeSH: "thyroid nodule", "fine needle biopsy", "thyroid", "liquid-based cytology", "molecular test". Moreover, as a result we obtained a general review about the appropriateness of FNAB of the thyroid, an efficient and reliable diagnostic method in the decision and selection of patients who will need surgery. However, this method presents some limitations, such as the need for improvement in the quality of the sample collection or in its interpretation, limitations that can be reduced, decreasing the cases of false positives and negatives, when collected by experienced professionals, guided by ultrasound, and can be combined with color Doppler, as well as, seek opinions from other specialists. The present study also addressed the new diagnostic methods for thyroid nodules, such as liquid-based cytology, used as a technique in conjunction with conventional smears when ancillary techniques are applied, and molecular tests, which have given professionals the opportunity to provide a more accurate evaluation in cases of indeterminate nodules. With this, we reiterate the importance of identifying the best individualized strategy for the patient, preventing unnecessary procedures and offering improved quality of life

Banner News

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/banner_news/1053/thumbnail.jp

Does Local Television News Coverage Cultivate Fatalistic Beliefs About Cancer Prevention?

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79095/1/j.1460-2466.2009.01474.x.pd

A hybrid of deep and textural features to differentiate glomerulosclerosis and minimal change disease from glomerulus biopsy images

The minimal change disease (MCD) and glomerulosclerosis (GS) are two common kidney diseases. Unless adequately treated, these diseases leads to chronic kidney diseases. Accurate differentiation of these two diseases is of paramount importance as their methods of treatment and prognoses are different. Thus, this article propose a method capable of differentiating MCD from GS in glomerulus biopsies images based on a new hybrid deep and texture feature space. We conducted an extensive study to determine the best set of features for image representation. Our feature extraction methodology, which includes Haraliks and geostatistics texture descriptors and pre-trained CNNs, resulted in 13,476 characteristics. We then used mutual information to order the elements by importance and select the best set for differentiating MCD from GS using the random forest classifier. The proposed method achieved an accuracy of 90.3% and a Kappa index of 80.5%. Representation of glomerulus biopsy images with a hybrid of deep and textural features facilitates the accurate differentiation of GS and MCD