CREATING ACCOUNTABILITY AND INCREASING EFFICIENCY BY IMPLEMENTING AN IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

Creating a culture that values accountability and efficiency is a difficult task for any organization. Without metrics or systems in place to help with these problems, the task becomes nearly impossible. The focus shifts from accountability to covering your tracks and decreased efficiency are usually blamed on external factors. In higher education, the problem is far more severe. Management leadership and staff are accountable to the stakeholders of higher education, such as the students, community, and faculty. A lack of accountability and a decrease in efficiency, in the Education Department, have led to a need for a technological solution that can help mitigate these problems. IT Service Management solutions are typically used by IT departments. However, the standards and principles that are followed by ITSM, can be beneficial to non-IT departments. “ITSM bridges the gap between university IT and non-IT departments by extending IT Service Management Practices across campus” (Sankaran, p.7, n.d.). This project implements an ITSM solution into the Education Department to increase accountability and efficiency. The tools offered by the ITSM solution are intended to help increase efficiency, communication, and transparency within the department, thus providing excellent service to the department’s stakeholders. This project focuses on the importance of accountability and efficiency in service provisioning. The project investigates the best practices used by leaders in higher education, the importance of IT Service Management, compares four ITSM solutions, and finally explains the implementation and customization of the solution. The motivation for this project highlights the significance of the problem and the need to solve it. It is also important to understand the workflow of the department prior to the implementation of the ITSM solution and why it needed to be improved. The customization and configuration of the chosen ITSM solution demonstrates the benefits that it can bring to the department. Overall, the project will show how the ITSM software increases efficiency and accountability. The implementation of the ITSM solution allowed for more accountability due to the records and metrics created within the software. The Education department team can see who is doing what and where others are lacking. It also increased efficiency by providing a resource where all relevant information is in one area. Notes, comments, and activities regarding service requests are kept in the software and it is accessible by everyone on the team. This allows for everyone to spend less time looking for information and more time focusing on resolving the service requests in a timely manner. Thereby, improving the quality of the service provided

Influence of statin use on clinicopathological characteristics of localized prostate cancer and outcomes obtained after radical prostatectomy: a single center study

To assess the impact of statin use on biochemical recurrence (BCR) of prostate cancer after radical prostatectomy (RP)

Gratitud y felicidad en estudiantes del segundo al quinto año de una universidad privada de Lima este, 2016

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo estudiar la relación entre las variables gratitud y felicidad en los estudiantes de una universidad privada de Lima Este. El diseño de investigación fue no experimental, de corte trasversal y de alcance correlacional. Los participantes fueron 404 estudiantes de ambos sexos entre las edades de 20 a 30 años. El instrumento empleado para la medición de la gratitud fue la Escala de Gratitud, elaborada por Alarcón (2014) en Lima, Perú. Para medir la felicidad se utilizó la Escala de Felicidad, elaborada por Alarcón (2006) en Lima, Perú, conformada por cuatro dimensiones: sentido positivo de la vida, satisfacción con la vida, realización personal y alegría de vivir. Los resultados indicaron que gratitud se relaciona significativamente con felicidad (rho=,324; p<0.01), y con cada una de sus dimensiones. Por lo tanto, se concluyó que las personas que presentaron un nivel elevado de gratitud tuvieron más probabilidad de experimentar la felicidad plena.TesisT02088TPS 2 L46 201

Gratitud y felicidad en estudiantes del segundo al quinto año de una universidad privada de Lima este, 2016

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo estudiar la relación entre las variables gratitud y felicidad en los estudiantes de una universidad privada de Lima Este. El diseño de investigación fue no experimental, de corte trasversal y de alcance correlacional. Los participantes fueron 404 estudiantes de ambos sexos entre las edades de 20 a 30 años. El instrumento empleado para la medición de la gratitud fue la Escala de Gratitud, elaborada por Alarcón (2014) en Lima, Perú. Para medir la felicidad se utilizó la Escala de Felicidad, elaborada por Alarcón (2006) en Lima, Perú, conformada por cuatro dimensiones: sentido positivo de la vida, satisfacción con la vida, realización personal y alegría de vivir. Los resultados indicaron que gratitud se relaciona significativamente con felicidad (rho=,324; p<0.01), y con cada una de sus dimensiones. Por lo tanto, se concluyó que las personas que presentaron un nivel elevado de gratitud tuvieron más probabilidad de experimentar la felicidad plena.TesisT02088TPS 2 L46 201

Estudio de prefactibilidad para la instalación de una planta de producción de carbón activado a partir de cáscara de cacao

El presente estudio tiene como objetivo principal determinar la viabilidad técnica, económica, financiera, social y de mercado para la instalación de una planta peruana de carbón activado a partir de la cáscara de cacao. El producto para comercializar es el carbón activado, en presentación granular, que se ofrecerá a las empresas mineras en sacos de polipropileno con una capacidad para 100 kg y 500 kg de producto. La materia prima es la cáscara del cacao, la cual se considera como un residuo orgánico y por tal motivo, la propuesta del proyecto presenta el diseño de una planta de producción en la cual este desecho se puede reutilizar para generar un producto con una disposición final en el mercado. La planta estará ubicada en el distrito de Lurín, en la provincia de Lima y se determinó mediante el análisis de macro y micro localización. En cuanto a la tecnología requerida para la elaboración del carbón activado es factible, en términos de adquisición y empleo ya que el proceso no requiere de maquinaria especializada. Con respecto a la inversión, los activos totales ascienden a S/. 1,428,144.02 y el capital de trabajo a S/. 127,763.32. Por lo tanto, el total de la inversión para el proyecto es de S/. 1,556,481.77. Se consideró un financiamiento del 40%, con un horizonte de 5 años a una tasa de 10.43%. La evaluación económica da como resultado S/. 653,368.57 como valor actual neto (VAN), 53.30% de tasa de retorno, 1.42 de relación beneficio costo y un periodo de recupero de 3 años y 4 meses. La evaluación financiera establece S/. 937,276.16 de valor actual neto, 70.68% de tasa interna de retorno, 2.00 de beneficio costo y un periodo de recupero de 2 años y 7 meses. Se refuerza la viabilidad del proyecto con los indicadores financieros positivos.The main objective of the present study is determine the technical, economic and market viability of a manufacturing plant of carbon activated from cocoa shell. The product to market is the activated charcoal, in two presentations according to the type of coal (to granulate), which will offer to the market in polypropylene bags with a capacity of 100 kg and 500 kg. The matter prevails it is the husk of the cocoa, which at the moment an organic residual is considered in the country and, for this reason, the project proposal presents the design of a production plant in which it can be re-use to generate a product with final disposition in the market. The production plant will settle in the district of Lurín, located in the province of Lima. It was determined by macro and micro location analysis. On the other hand, the technology required for the manufacture of the product it is feasible to get and use. With regard to the investment, the total assets ascend S/. 1,428,144.02 and the work capital to S/. 127,763.32. Therefore, the total of the investment for the project is of S/. 1,556,481.77. It was considered a financing of 40%, with a 5 years of horizon to a rate of 10.43%. The economic evaluation gives as a result S/. 653,368.57 as net present value, 53.30% of return rate, 1.42 of relationship benefit-cost and one period of recover of 3 years and 4 months. The financial evaluation establishes S/. 937,276.16 of net present value, 70.68% of internal rate of return, 2.00 of benefit-cost and one period of recover of 2 years and 7 months. The viability of the project is reinforced with positive financial indicators

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Height and body-mass index trajectories of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries and territories: a pooled analysis of 2181 population-based studies with 65 million participants

Summary Background Comparable global data on health and nutrition of school-aged children and adolescents are scarce. We aimed to estimate age trajectories and time trends in mean height and mean body-mass index (BMI), which measures weight gain beyond what is expected from height gain, for school-aged children and adolescents. Methods For this pooled analysis, we used a database of cardiometabolic risk factors collated by the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. We applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends from 1985 to 2019 in mean height and mean BMI in 1-year age groups for ages 5–19 years. The model allowed for non-linear changes over time in mean height and mean BMI and for non-linear changes with age of children and adolescents, including periods of rapid growth during adolescence. Findings We pooled data from 2181 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories. In 2019, we estimated a difference of 20 cm or higher in mean height of 19-year-old adolescents between countries with the tallest populations (the Netherlands, Montenegro, Estonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina for boys; and the Netherlands, Montenegro, Denmark, and Iceland for girls) and those with the shortest populations (Timor-Leste, Laos, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea for boys; and Guatemala, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Timor-Leste for girls). In the same year, the difference between the highest mean BMI (in Pacific island countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Bahamas, Chile, the USA, and New Zealand for both boys and girls and in South Africa for girls) and lowest mean BMI (in India, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, and Chad for boys and girls; and in Japan and Romania for girls) was approximately 9–10 kg/m2. In some countries, children aged 5 years started with healthier height or BMI than the global median and, in some cases, as healthy as the best performing countries, but they became progressively less healthy compared with their comparators as they grew older by not growing as tall (eg, boys in Austria and Barbados, and girls in Belgium and Puerto Rico) or gaining too much weight for their height (eg, girls and boys in Kuwait, Bahrain, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mexico; and girls in South Africa and New Zealand). In other countries, growing children overtook the height of their comparators (eg, Latvia, Czech Republic, Morocco, and Iran) or curbed their weight gain (eg, Italy, France, and Croatia) in late childhood and adolescence. When changes in both height and BMI were considered, girls in South Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some central Asian countries (eg, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and boys in central and western Europe (eg, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, and Montenegro) had the healthiest changes in anthropometric status over the past 3·5 decades because, compared with children and adolescents in other countries, they had a much larger gain in height than they did in BMI. The unhealthiest changes—gaining too little height, too much weight for their height compared with children in other countries, or both—occurred in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, and the USA for boys and girls; in Malaysia and some Pacific island nations for boys; and in Mexico for girls. Interpretation The height and BMI trajectories over age and time of school-aged children and adolescents are highly variable across countries, which indicates heterogeneous nutritional quality and lifelong health advantages and risks

Global variation in diabetes diagnosis and prevalence based on fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1c

Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) are both used to diagnose diabetes, but these measurements can identify different people as having diabetes. We used data from 117 population-based studies and quantified, in different world regions, the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes, and whether those who were previously undiagnosed and detected as having diabetes in survey screening, had elevated FPG, HbA1c or both. We developed prediction equations for estimating the probability that a person without previously diagnosed diabetes, and at a specific level of FPG, had elevated HbA1c, and vice versa. The age-standardized proportion of diabetes that was previously undiagnosed and detected in survey screening ranged from 30% in the high-income western region to 66% in south Asia. Among those with screen-detected diabetes with either test, the age-standardized proportion who had elevated levels of both FPG and HbA1c was 29-39% across regions; the remainder had discordant elevation of FPG or HbA1c. In most low- and middle-income regions, isolated elevated HbA1c was more common than isolated elevated FPG. In these regions, the use of FPG alone may delay diabetes diagnosis and underestimate diabetes prevalence. Our prediction equations help allocate finite resources for measuring HbA1c to reduce the global shortfall in diabetes diagnosis and surveillance