ACTORS AND NETWORKING ON TVET QA SYSTEM OF THAILAND: A STUDY ON THE IMPLEMENTATION AND ITS PROBLEMS

This research was conducted to study the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Quality Assurance (QA) system in Thailand, its implementation, and its problems from 2000-2015 focusing primarily on the actors and their networking. Interviews were conducted with a purposeful sampling of participants who were from both the Office of the Vocational Education Commission (OVEC) and the colleges located in different regions of Thailand. Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework was used as a theoretical reference. The research found that internal TVET QA board committee of the OVEC and the external TVET QA board committee of the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA) were the main policy actors. All actions and contributions of the OVEC and the ONESQA officials and staff, including internal and external assessors, were recognized as a minor role comparing to those board committees of the OVEC and the ONESQA and people at the colleges. At the colleges, administrators and teachers were expected to implement TVET QA. However, their exact roles and duties were not well defined. Networking among the OVEC, the ONESQA, the colleges, and other supporting personnel was limited and focused solely on the assessment. Implementation of the TVET QA system was accepted as a viable means of quality development. However, there was speculation that the cost of implementing the system outweighed the benefits of it. There was concern over the absence of individual or institutional benefits. However, these concerns were not perceived as obstructive or problematic to the implementation of the TVET QA system. The implementation of the TVET QA system could have been greatly improved if the mechanisms by which information was shared, communication, and networking between actors were made more efficient

Bandwidth allocation and pricing problem for a duopoly market

This research discusses the Internet service provider (ISP) bandwidth allocation and pricing problems for a duopoly bandwidth market with two competitive ISPs. According to the contracts between Internet subscribers and ISPs, Internet subscribers can enjoy their services up to their contracted bandwidth limits. However, in reality, many subscribers may experience the facts that their on-line requests are denied or their connection speeds are far below their contracted speed limits. One of the reasons is that ISPs accept too many subscribers as their subscribers. To avoid this problem, ISPs can set limits for their subscribers to enhance their service qualities. This paper develops constrained nonlinear programming to deal with this problem for two competitive ISPs. The condition for reaching the equilibrium between the two competitive firms is derived. The market equilibrium price and bandwidth resource allocations are derived as closed form solutions

Antimicrobial susceptibility and clinical outcomes of Candida parapsilosis bloodstream infections in a tertiary teaching hospital in Northern Taiwan

BackgroundCandida parapsilosis is an emerging non-albicans Candida that is associated with central line-associated infection. C. parapsilosis has higher minimal inhibitory concentration to echinocandin than Candida albicans, and the effects of echinocandin on C. parapsilosis are ambiguous. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to investigate the susceptibility and the correlation between incidence and drug consumption.MethodsThis retrospective study was conducted in a tertiary teaching hospital in northern Taiwan between 2008 and 2012. The Candida species distribution, the correlation between the use of antifungal agents and the incidence of C. parapsilosis bloodstream infection, demographic information, clinical characteristics, mortality rate, and in vitro susceptibility of C. parapsilosis were analyzed.ResultsA total of 77 episodes from 77 patients were included for analysis. The overall 90-day mortality rate was 41.6%. The incidence of C. parapsilosis bloodstream infection showed a moderate positive correlation with the increased defined daily dose of echinocandin. The risk factors associated with mortality included malignancy or a metastatic tumor. Multivariate logistical regression analysis showed that patients with malignancy had higher odds ratios in terms of mortality. The rate of C. parapsilosis resistance to fluconazole was 3%, whereas the susceptibility rate was 95.5%.ConclusionUnderlying comorbidity and malignancy were factors leading to death in patients with C. parapsilosis bloodstream infection. Catheter removal did not influence the mortality rate. The survival rate of patients receiving echinocandin was lower than the group receiving fluconazole. Fluconazole remains the drug of choice to treat C. parapsilosis bloodstream infections

Multicriteria Resource Brokering in Cloud Computing for Streaming Service

By leveraging cloud computing such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), the outsourcing of computing resources used to support operations, including servers, storage, and networking components, is quite beneficial for various providers of Internet application. With this increasing trend, resource allocation that both assures QoS via Service Level Agreement (SLA) and avoids overprovisioning in order to reduce cost becomes a crucial priority and challenge in the design and operation of complex service-based platforms such as streaming service. On the other hand, providers of IaaS also concern their profit performance and energy consumption while offering these virtualized resources. In this paper, considering both service-oriented and infrastructure-oriented criteria, we regard this resource allocation problem as Multicriteria Decision Making problem and propose an effective trade-off approach based on goal programming model. To validate its effectiveness, a cloud architecture for streaming application is addressed and extensive analysis is performed for related criteria. The results of numerical simulations show that the proposed approach strikes a balance between these conflicting criteria commendably and achieves high cost efficiency

Urothelial carcinoma in a remnant ureter after a radical nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma: A case report

AbstractUrothelial carcinoma of a ureteral stump after a radical nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma is rare. We present the case of a 76-year-old man with painless gross hematuria. The patient had undergone a right nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma 30 months previously. Cystoscopy showed a blood clot in the right ureteral orifice, and ureteroscopy revealed a papillary mass in the right ureter. The patient underwent a right ureterectomy and bladder cuff resection. The pathology examination showed a high-grade urothelial carcinoma. However, a superficial bladder tumor was discovered postoperatively, and a transurethral resection of the bladder tumor was performed. At 8 months postoperatively, the patient was alive with no evidence of recurrence. A ureteral stump evaluation must be performed when painless hematuria is noted in patients after a nephrectomy

Hot Cracking Susceptibility of 800H and 825 Nickel-Base Superalloys during Welding via Spot Varestraint Test

Hot cracking susceptibility of fillers 52 and 82 in 800H and 825 nickel-base superalloys was discussed using the Spot Varestraint test. The fillers of 52 and 82 were added into nickel-base superalloys via a gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW).Experimental results showed that the hot cracking sensitivity of the nickel-base superalloys with filler at high temperature was lower than that without filler. The hot cracking sensitivity had a slight effect when the filler 82 was added. The total length of crack was increased, the liquid-solid (L-S) two-phase range is higher so that the hot cracking susceptibility will be raised. The morphologies of cracks included the intergranular crack in the molten pool, molten pool of solidification cracking, heat-affected zone of intergranular cracks, and transgranular crack in the heat-affected zone

Evolution of Microstructure and Residual Stress under Various Vibration Modes in 304 Stainless Steel Welds

Simultaneous vibration welding of 304 stainless steel was carried out with an eccentric circulating vibrator and a magnetic telescopic vibrator at subresonant (362 Hz and 59.3 Hz) and resonant (376 Hz and 60.9 Hz) frequencies. The experimental results indicate that the temperature gradient can be increased, accelerating nucleation and causing grain refinement during this process. During simultaneous vibration welding primary δ-ferrite can be refined and the morphologies of retained δ-ferrite become discontinuous so that δ-ferrite contents decrease. The smallest content of δ-ferrite (5.5%) occurred using the eccentric circulating vibrator. The diffraction intensities decreased and the FWHM widened with both vibration and no vibration. A residual stress can obviously be increased, producing an excellent effect on stress relief at a resonant frequency. The stress relief effect with an eccentric circulating vibrator was better than that obtained using a magnetic telescopic vibrator