The impact of a supportive supervision intervention on health workers in Niassa, Mozambique: a cluster-controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Regular supportive supervision is critical to retaining and motivating staff in resource-constrained settings. Previous studies have shown the particular contribution that supportive supervision can make to improving job satisfaction amongst over-stretched health workers in such settings. METHODS: The Support, Train and Empower Managers (STEM) study designed and implemented a supportive supervision intervention and measured its' impact on health workers using a controlled trial design with a three-arm pre- and post-study in Niassa Province in Mozambique. Post-intervention interviews with a small sample of health workers were also conducted. RESULTS: The quantitative measurements of job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion and work engagement showed no statistically significant differences between end-line and baseline. The qualitative data collected from health workers post the intervention showed many positive impacts on health workers not captured by this quantitative survey. CONCLUSIONS: Health workers perceived an improvement in their performance and attributed this to the supportive supervision they had received from their supervisors following the intervention. Reports of increased motivation were also common. An unexpected, yet important consequence of the intervention, which participants directly attributed to the supervision intervention, was the increase in participation and voice amongst health workers in intervention facilities

Modelling Urban Dynamics with Multi-Modal Graph Convolutional Networks

Modelling the dynamics of urban venues is a challenging task as it is multifaceted in nature. Demand is a function of many complex and nonlinear features such as neighborhood composition, real-time events, and seasonality. Recent advances in Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) have had promising results as they build a graphical representation of a system and harness the potential of deep learning architectures. However, there has been limited work using GCNs in a temporal setting to model dynamic dependencies of the network. Further, within the context of urban environments, there has been no prior work using dynamic GCNs to support venue demand analysis and prediction. In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning framework which aims to better model the popularity and growth of urban venues. Using a longitudinal dataset from location technology platform Foursquare, we model individual venues and venue types across London and Paris. First, representing cities as connected networks of venues, we quantify their structure and note a strong community structure in these retail networks, an observation that highlights the interplay of cooperative and competitive forces that emerge in local ecosystems of retail businesses. Next, we present our deep learning architecture which integrates both spatial and topological features into a temporal model which predicts the demand of a venue at the subsequent time-step. Our experiments demonstrate that our model can learn spatio-temporal trends of venue demand and consistently outperform baseline models. Relative to state-of-the-art deep learning models, our model reduces the RSME by ~ 28% in London and ~ 13% in Paris. Our approach highlights the power of complex network measures and GCNs in building prediction models for urban environments. The model could have numerous applications within the retail sector to better model venue demand and growth

Level of awareness of selected junior and senior high school students on radiologic technology as an allied health profession

This study used descriptive method employing the survey technique. A total of 542 junior and senior high school students were selected using stratified random sampling as respondents. The research instrument used was a self-made questionnaire. Frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were the statistical tools used to analyze the data. The study concluded that, 1) Majority of the respondents were female senior students, enrolled in school C and had a monthly family income of P10,000-P30,000; 2) Radiologic Technology course ranked 6th among the preferred allied health profession; 3) The respondents’ level of awareness on Radiologic Technology as an allied health profession was highly aware; 4) The respondents’ level of awareness on Radiologic Technology as an allied health profession had no significant difference when they were grouped according to the year level and monthly family income but there were significant differences when they were grouped according to gender and school

Flux dependence of carbon chemical erosion by deuterium ions

The chemical erosion of carbon in interaction with a hydrogen plasma has been studied in detail in ion beam experiments, and erosion yield values are available as a function of ion energy and surface temperature. However, the conditions in the ITER divertor cannot be simulated by ion beam experiments, especially as far as ion flux is concerned. Therefore

De l\u2019espace \ue0 l\u2019\ue9tendue. L\u2019\ue9volution de l\u2019imaginaire spatial dans l\u2019\u153uvre de Saint-Exup\ue9ry

L\u2019espace chez Saint-Exup\ue9ry refuse la d\ue9finition de \uab d\ue9cor \ubb et plus encore celle de \uab paysage \ubb, tout en gardant un lien fort avec les lieux concrets qui sont des rep\ue8res pour l\u2019homme. L\u2019espace parcouru, connu dans sa mati\ue8re, se r\ue9v\ue8le surtout \ue0 travers le dynamisme de l\u2019imaginaire de l\u2019auteur. D\u2019apr\ue8s Bachelard, l\u2019int\ue9r\ueat pour Saint-Exup\ue9ry \uab r\ue9sidait dans la po\ue9tique des mati\ue8res et des dynamismes \ubb. L\u2019espace devient le leitmotiv de son \u153uvre enti\ue8re, ce qui nous a guid\ue9s dans la tentative d\u2019illustrer l\u2019\ue9volution que celui-ci subit. Il s\u2019agit d\u2019un parcours pour ainsi dire \uab en spirale \ubb, soutenu par un tissu d\u2019images qui s\u2019alimente du contact avec les \ue9l\ue9ments du r\ue9el et au m\ueame temps qui tend vers une dimension transcendante, voire symbolique