The Effect of Education Decentralization on School Leadership in the Vocational Schools: A Comparative Study between the German and the Egyptian Practice

Gershberg (1999) defines education decentralization as the transfer of some of the political, administrative, and/or financial authorities and responsibilities from the central government to the local governments, local units or the schools themselves. In this qualitative study the effect of education decentralization on vocational school leadership is explored. Through conducting structural interviews with 30 school principals in Germany and Egypt, the study was able to reach at three main conclusions. 1- Political decentralization encourages the adoption of participatory leadership by involving the stakeholders in the decision-making process and allowing the schools to set their goals and objectives discretionally. 2- Administrative decentralization encourages the adoption of shared instructional leadership by devolving authorities of teacher selection, evaluation, training and team-building to the schools. And 3- financial decentralization encourages the adoption of entrepreneurial leadership by encouraging the schools to raise funds and deploy the available resources discretionally

Islamismus bei Jugendlichen in empirischen Studien. Ein narratives Review

Der Begriff Islamismus verweist auf eines der schillerndsten und emotional aufgeladensten Themenfelder der letzten zehn bis fünfzehn Jahre. Derzeit ließe sich vermutlich kein zweites finden, dem ein ähnlich großes Interesse seitens der Medien, Politik und Wissenschaft gleichermaßen zukommt. So ist in Deutschland die Rede von jungen Islamisten allgegenwärtig. Doch was genau verbirgt sich überhaupt hinter dem Begriff Islamismus und sind die Hinweise auf junge Islamisten wissenschaftlich fundiert? Der Autor der vorliegenden Untersuchung widmet sich diesen Fragen aus religionswissenschaftlicher Perspektive. Er nimmt hierzu unterschiedliche Verwendungen des Begriffes Islamismus in den Blick und analysiert empirische Studien, die sich mit Islamismus bei Jugendlichen in Deutschland beschäftigen

Fourteen sequence variants that associate with multiple sclerosis discovered by meta-analysis informed by genetic correlations

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked FilesA meta-analysis of publicly available summary statistics on multiple sclerosis combined with three Nordic multiple sclerosis cohorts (21,079 cases, 371,198 controls) revealed seven sequence variants associating with multiple sclerosis, not reported previously. Using polygenic risk scores based on public summary statistics of variants outside the major histocompatibility complex region we quantified genetic overlap between common autoimmune diseases in Icelanders and identified disease clusters characterized by autoantibody presence/absence. As multiple sclerosis-polygenic risk scores captures the risk of primary biliary cirrhosis and vice versa (P = 1.6 x 10(-7), 4.3 x 10(-9)) we used primary biliary cirrhosis as a proxy-phenotype for multiple sclerosis, the idea being that variants conferring risk of primary biliary cirrhosis have a prior probability of conferring risk of multiple sclerosis. We tested 255 variants forming the primary biliary cirrhosis-polygenic risk score and found seven multiple sclerosis-associating variants not correlated with any previously established multiple sclerosis variants. Most of the variants discovered are close to or within immune-related genes. One is a low-frequency missense variant in TYK2, another is a missense variant in MTHFR that reduces the function of the encoded enzyme affecting methionine metabolism, reported to be dysregulated in multiple sclerosis brain.Swedish Research Council Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation AFA Foundation Swedish Brain Foundatio

Cohesin-dependent globules and heterochromatin shape 3D genome architecture in S. pombe

Eukaryotic genomes are folded into three-dimensional structures, such as self-associating topological domains, the borders of which are enriched in cohesin and CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) required for long-range interactions1-7. How local chromatin interactions govern higher-order folding of chromatin fibers and the function of cohesin in this process remain poorly understood. Here we perform genome-wide chromatin conformation capture (Hi-C) analysis8 to explore the high-resolution organization of the Schizosaccharomyces pombe genome, which despite its small size exhibits fundamental features found in other eukaryotes9. Our analyses of wild type and mutant strains reveal key elements of chromosome architecture and genome organization. On chromosome arms, small regions of chromatin locally interact to form “globules”. This feature requires a function of cohesin distinct from its role in sister chromatid cohesion. Cohesin is enriched at globule boundaries and its loss causes disruption of local globule structures and global chromosome territories. By contrast, heterochromatin, which loads cohesin at specific sites including pericentromeric and subtelomeric domains9-11, is dispensable for globule formation but nevertheless affects genome organization. We show that heterochromatin mediates chromatin fiber compaction at centromeres and promotes prominent interarm interactions within centromere-proximal regions, providing structural constraints crucial for proper genome organization. Loss of heterochromatin relaxes constraints on chromosomes, causing an increase in intra- and inter-chromosomal interactions. Together, our analyses uncover fundamental genome folding principles that drive higher-order chromosome organization crucial for coordinating nuclear functions

Dissecting the Shared Genetic Architecture of Suicide Attempt, Psychiatric Disorders, and Known Risk Factors

Background Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, and nonfatal suicide attempts, which occur far more frequently, are a major source of disability and social and economic burden. Both have substantial genetic etiology, which is partially shared and partially distinct from that of related psychiatric disorders. Methods We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 29,782 suicide attempt (SA) cases and 519,961 controls in the International Suicide Genetics Consortium (ISGC). The GWAS of SA was conditioned on psychiatric disorders using GWAS summary statistics via multitrait-based conditional and joint analysis, to remove genetic effects on SA mediated by psychiatric disorders. We investigated the shared and divergent genetic architectures of SA, psychiatric disorders, and other known risk factors. Results Two loci reached genome-wide significance for SA: the major histocompatibility complex and an intergenic locus on chromosome 7, the latter of which remained associated with SA after conditioning on psychiatric disorders and replicated in an independent cohort from the Million Veteran Program. This locus has been implicated in risk-taking behavior, smoking, and insomnia. SA showed strong genetic correlation with psychiatric disorders, particularly major depression, and also with smoking, pain, risk-taking behavior, sleep disturbances, lower educational attainment, reproductive traits, lower socioeconomic status, and poorer general health. After conditioning on psychiatric disorders, the genetic correlations between SA and psychiatric disorders decreased, whereas those with nonpsychiatric traits remained largely unchanged. Conclusions Our results identify a risk locus that contributes more strongly to SA than other phenotypes and suggest a shared underlying biology between SA and known risk factors that is not mediated by psychiatric disorders.Peer reviewe

Kretskortskonstruktion av system med parallella A/D omvandlare : För höghastighetssampling och korrigering av tidsfel.

The goals for most of today’s receiver system are sampling at high-speed, with high resolution and with as few errors as possible. This master thesis describes the design of a high-speed sampling system with"state-of-the-art"components available on the market. The system is designed with a parallel Analog-to-digital converter (ADC) architecture, also called time interleaving. It aims to increase the sampling speed of the system. The system described in this report uses four 12-bits ADCs in parallel. Each ADC can sample at 125 MHz and the total sampling speed will then theoretically become 500 Ms/s. The system has been implemented and manufactured on a printed circuit board (PCB). Up to four boards can be connected in parallel to get 2 Gs/s theoretically. In an approach to increase the systems performance even further, a timing error estimation algorithm will be used on the sampled data. This algorithm estimates the timing errors that occur when sampling with non-uniform time interval between samples. After the estimations, the sampling clocks can be adjusted to correct the errors. This thesis is concerning some ADC theory, system design and PCB implementation. It also describes how to test and measure the system’s performance. No measurement results are presented in this thesis because measurements will be done after this project. The last part of the thesis discusses future improvementsto achieve even higher performance

The problem of Polyomino tilings number

Darbā ir atrisināta n-salikumu problēma vienkāršākajiem polimino: domino, trimino, tetramino, kā arī doti daži vispārinājumi.The n-tilings problem for simplest polyominoes: domino, tromino, tetromino has been solved in this Bachelor thesis. Some generalizations have been given

D-latch for Subthreshold Floating-Gate Circuits Exploiting Threshold Elements

When power supply for circuits is reduced the performance will also drop accordingly and to keep up the performance while lowering power supply is an important issue. Floating-gate circuits (FGMOS) have previously been simulated with low power supply and basic digital gates and circuits have already been designed and studied to determine speed and power performance. In this paper we try to expand the circuit library for subthreshold power supply FGMOS circuits by including a floating-gate memory element in terms of a D-latch. Our simulations at 250 mV power supply of a FGMOS D-latch are compared with other D-latches based on static CMOS and mirrored gate elements. The simulations we have performed shows that static CMOS has an advantage in performance of several orders of magnitude in terms of power consumption, while PDP and EDP performance are also better than for FGMOS. When it comes to speed performance, we show that the FGMOS D-latch can be up to 18 times faster than CMOS at the expense of up to three orders of magnitude higher power consumption.STC - Sensible Things that Communicat

Trade-offs for high yield in 90 nm subthreshold floating-gate circuits by Monte Carlo simulations

The work described in this paper is performed toestimate the influence of statistical process variations andtransistor mismatch that occurs in fabrication and affectfloating-gate digital circuits. These effects will affect and reduce“yield” (percentage of fully functional circuits). Monte Carlosimulations have been performed in a 90 nm to estimate theyield for manufactured floating-gate circuits running withsubthreshold power supply. The power supply, floating-gatecharge voltage (VFGP and VFGN) and transistor sizes have beenvaried during the simulations and the yield has been observed.The simulation results shows that by doubling the minimumsize transistors (length and width) the yield can be much betterthan for minimum size version. A yield of 100% can though notbe expected if the power supply is scaled down below 250 mV.  STC - Sensible Things that Communicat

Basic Speed and Power Properties of Digital Floating-gate Circuits Operating in Subthreshold

For digital circuits with ultra-low power consumption,floating-gate circuits have been considered to be a techniquepotentially better than standard static CMOS circuits.By having a DC offset on the floating gates, theeffective threshold voltage of the floating-gate transistoris adjusted and the speed and power performance can bealtered. In this paper the basic performance related propertiessuch as power, delay, power-delay product (PDP),and energy-delay product (EDP) for floating-gate circuitsoperating in subthreshold are investigated. Based on circuitsimulations in a 120nm process technology, it isshown that for the best case, the power can be reducedapproximately by one order of magnitude at the expenseof increased delay, while the PDP is more or less constantin comparison to static CMOS. The EDP can be reducedby two orders of magnitude at the expense of reducednoise margins.STC - Sensible Things that Communicat