Reliability of adjustment instrument in grade three

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

The impact of the CAP reforms on the efficiency of the COP sector in Spain

The arable crop sector (COP) occupies a prominent position within the European Union’s agricultural sector. Within Spain, the COP sector accounts for almost a third of total Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund expenses, and a half of the utilised agricultural area. The COP sector is not only relevant because of its physical and economic magnitude, but also because of the political attention it receives. The Common Agricultural Policy reforms that occurred during the 1990s paid special attention to this sector. This paper aims at determining the impacts of Agenda 2000 on a sample of Spanish COP farmers’ production decisions by using an output-oriented stochastic distance function. The distance function allows assessing the reform-motivated changes on total output, input used, input composition and crop mix. It also permits to assess the impacts of the reform on farms’ technical efficiency. Results show that the reform has shifted outwards the production frontier and changed output composition in favour of voluntary set aside land. With respect to input composition, Agenda 2000 has induced a decrease in land, fertilizers and other inputs in favour of labour. In addition, Agenda 2000 had a negative impact on technical efficiency.Agenda 2000, efficiency, Spanish COP sector, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,

Reliability Improvement of a Radial Feeder Using Multiple Fault Passage Indicators

AbstractFor a fixed number of customers, reliability of a distribution network can be improved by reducing the duration of interruptions by faster restoration techniques. After occurrence of a fault, the average restoration time of a load point depends on average fault location identification time and repair time or switching time. The Fault Passage Indicator is a device that helps the utility to restore the supplies more quickly by reducing the time that an operating crew needs to travel around the network in search of a fault. To achieve a high degree of reliability for a given number of FPIs, it is necessary to decide the best locations of FPIs in a distribution network. In this paper, the effect of installing multiple FPIs on the reliability of a radial feeder is discussed and is implemented on an 11 kV, 2 MVA Indian utility radial feeder for five different configurations

Construction and Initial Structure of Sexual Dysfunctions Tendencies Measure

Disclosure of sexual dysfunctions is difficult due to shame and social stigma. The instruments to measure sexual dysfunctions so far were quite backdated and lengthy. Moreover, there was no specific instrument available that could evaluate all the sexual dysfunctions on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ criteria in a single scale; separate for men and women. The objective to develop the scale was to provide the non-clinical population with a short and straight-forward measure in English which could help them in deciding about seeking professional help. The constructed scale comprised of 7 items for males and 7 for females and employed 6-points Likert scale for responses. The study involved 79 men and 105 women (N=184; Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sample Adequacy=0.682 for males and 0.618 for females). The inclusion criteria were the practical involvement of the participants in sexual practices and ability to respond to a questionnaire in English. Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted to measure the reliability and validity of the scale. While employing Principal Component Analysis for extraction and Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization as Rotation, Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted on 7 items for males and 7 items for females separately. Sampling adequacy was found good and the adequacy of correlations between items and was found highly significant. The Cronbach’s Alpha reliability was satisfactory. 4 factors were extracted for males with 78.65% variance explained. 3 factors were extracted for females with 66.57% variance explained. The communalities for all the 14 items ranged between 0.554 to 0.937. The study established that Sexual Dysfunctions Tendencies Measure is a valid and reliable tool to measure sexual dysfunctions with the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Diagnostic and modeling of elderly flow in a French healthcare institution

One of the highest priorities in the French health care system is to deal with the continuous growth of the percentage population older than 65 years, expected to reach 31% in 2030. This development poses enormous challenges to the operations of the health care system, especially, related to elder patients. The elderly flow in the hospital services is typically uncertain and subject to variations on the length of stay in each stage and on the path or sequence of stages followed by the patient. For that reason, we propose to model the patient flow in a hospital as a continuous-time Markov chain with an absorbing state representing the elderly discharge from the hospital. Three Markov chains are provided with different levels of details and computation complexity. The first model called aggregated provides a prediction of the length of stay per service, the second model called Coxian provides a reliable prediction of the total length of stay, and the third model called detailed provides a prediction of the length of stay per class of elderly. A classification of elderly based on multiple correspondence technique is considered before the application of the third model. Our models are fitted with the data collected from Roanne Hospital, a typical French health care structure

Depression among Students with Congenital and Adventitious Vision Loss

The key purpose of this study was to investigate the depression in students with congenital and adventitious vision loss. The purposive sampling technique was used to select sample. A sample of 81 students with visual impairment (51 with congenital and 30 with adventitious) was selected from different educational institutions of Punjab, Pakistan. An Instrument was developed and validated through expert opinion and piloting on 30 students. The value of Cronbach Alpha was found .88. Data was analyzed by using independent t test and ANOVA on SPSS. Independent sample t-test was used to see the significant difference in depression of students with congenital and adventitious vision loss. Results of t-test showed high significant difference (t= -2.285*) of depression between students with congenital and adventitious vision loss. Adventitiously Visually Impaired students (mean, 65.70) were more depressive than congenitally visually impaired (mean, 58.37). Results also showed no significant difference (-.856) between male and female students with vision loss. But females had high mean of depression (63.31) than males (60.25), it showed females were more depressive than males. To know about the difference of depression among age groups, ANOVA was applied. It showed there is no significant difference (F, .113) of depression among three age groups. As result revealed adventitiously visually impaired are more depressive because of their late onset so they should be needed psychological counseling to cope their depression

Inclusive Education Facilities in Secondary Schools of Pakistan: A Gender Based Comparison

Man is the most civilized and enlightened creation of Allah. Man and women formulate the basic unit of civilization. A comparison about provision of rights and facilities in every field of life has been going on since their creation. Nowadays inclusive education has proved a successful educational system for persons with disabilities. In this study, researchers have tried to explore difference between inclusive education facilities in male and female secondary schools of the province of Punjab, Pakistan. In order to attain this goal the survey technique was used to collect the data from 196 male and female secondary school teachers working in rural and urban secondary schools conveniently selected from five districts viz Okara, Sahiwal, Lahore, Pakpattan and Kasur by a self developed and validated questionnaire i.e. Research Questionnaire about the Condition of Available Inclusive Education Facilities and Opportunities in Secondary Schools of Punjab. For cross validation of data, interview schedule was used to collect data from 17 secondary school students with disabilities. Both the descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the collected data. This study describes that there is no significant difference in inclusive education facilities between male and female secondary schools. Moreover special students denied provision of inclusive education facilities as claimed by the teachers. Conclusions were drawn and recommendations were made

Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, A Perturbing Trigger to Infertility: A Systematic Review

Introduction: Pelvic inflammatory disease is the term used comprehensively for cervicitis, endometritis, salpingitis, pelvic peritonitis, and tubo-ovarian abscess. Diagnosis is initially by clinical assessment, confirmed by laboratory investigations and imaging modalities. PID is usually ignored by patients and clinicians eventually leading to infertility.  Purpose: The goal of this systematic review is to evaluate co relation of PID with infertility and role of   imaging modalities for diagnosis.   Method: During October 2020 we searched Google scholar, pub med, Medscape research articles from 2010 -2020. Conclusion: Pelvic inflammatory disease is second most common cause of infertility while diagnostic ultrasonography plays a limited role to diagnose. Keywords: Pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, endometritis, hydro salpinx, Tubal factor infertility and Sonographic evaluation. DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/82-08 Publication date: November 30th 202

Dislocation Dynamics in an Anisotropic Stripe Pattern

The dynamics of dislocations confined to grain boundaries in a striped system are studied using electroconvection in the nematic liquid crystal N4. In electroconvection, a striped pattern of convection rolls forms for sufficiently high driving voltages. We consider the case of a rapid change in the voltage that takes the system from a uniform state to a state consisting of striped domains with two different wavevectors. The domains are separated by domain walls along one axis and a grain boundary of dislocations in the perpendicular direction. The pattern evolves through dislocation motion parallel to the domain walls. We report on features of the dislocation dynamics. The kinetics of the domain motion are quantified using three measures: dislocation density, average domain wall length, and the total domain wall length per area. All three quantities exhibit behavior consistent with power law evolution in time, with the defect density decaying as $t^{-1/3}$, the average domain wall length growing as $t^{1/3}$, and the total domain wall length decaying as $t^{-1/5}$. The two different exponents are indicative of the anisotropic growth of domains in the system.Comment: 8 figures: 7 jpeg and 1 pd