Pretest-Posttest Measure of Introductory Computer Students\u27 Attitudes toward Computers

An exploratory study was conducted in multiple sections of an introductory computer course to determine whether an introductory computer course changed computer attitudes. A sample of 329 individuals were given a computer attitude measurement (ATCUS) the first and last day of an introductory computer class. We have strong evidence to conclude that those enrolled in the class had worse attitudes after the class than before

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF BROILER PRODUCTION AT MIANGO PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA

This paper evaluate the economics of broiler production at Miango, Plateau State, Nigeria using a – 9 years record (1992 – 2000). During the period, 76 batches of broilers were reared to point of slaughter. The results shows that the enterprise incurred an average total variable cost of N620,6333.31 out of which feeding cost, day old chicks (stock) and mortality cost represents 58.13%, 19.13% and of 9.64% of the total cost of production, respectively. Total revenue within the period was estimated to be N763,969.44 which was mainly generated from the sales of broiler birds. The gross margin was found to be N143,334.13 with N0.23 as the returns per naira invested in the enterprise. Thus the broiler production is a profitable venture in the study area.Broilers, Income, Investment & Profitability, Livestock Production/Industries,

Tidal sedimentary dynamics of the Early Pleistocene Messina Strait (Calabria, southern Italy) based on its modern analogue

The Messina Strait excursion opens a series of geological field trips associated with the 10th International Congress of Tidal Sedimentology (Tidalites), Matera, Italy, 5-7 October 2021. This guide aims at documenting a number of selected outcrops located along the eastern margin of the modern Messina Strait, in order to illustrate the sedimentary dynamics of the Early Pleistocene tide-dominated Messina Strait. Since the Pliocene, this extensional basin separated Sicily from Calabria, forming a wide non-tidal seaway. Successively, this basin turned into a ca. 10-15 km-wide and 40 km-long, tide-dominated strait during the Early Pleistocene, prior to its definitive closure following a Middle Pleistocene phase of tectonic uplift. As for today in its modern analogue, the ancient strait acted as a major conduit for marine water exchanges between the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian seas. Semi-diurnal, reverse bidirectional tidal currents flowed in phase opposition parallel to the strait margins, being subject to tidal amplification due to bathymetric restriction across the shallower strait-centre zone. This oceanographic setting partitioned the strait into specific environments. Nowadays, their sedimentary record is exposed in a series of outcrops across the western (Sicily) and eastern (Calabria) margins of the modern strait. A series of stops along a south-to-north transect covers a total distance of ca. 20 km. Outcrops of the first day show coarse-grained deposits lying adjacent to a block-faulted central horst and transgressively overlain by cross-stratified, mixed bioclastic-siliciclastic arenites. These strata record bypass and residual sedimentation in the strait-centre zone of the ancient system. The second day, large- and medium-scale cross-stratification exhibiting a variety of tidal sedimentary indicators are observed, interpreted as the ancient northern tidal dune field. The third day focuses on one major section representing the north-eastern flank of the ancient strait, where subaqueous canyon-fill strata, mass-wasting deposits and tide-influenced delta front-facies are exposed

Neonatal pain detection in videos using the iCOPEvid dataset and an ensemble of descriptors extracted from Gaussian of Local Descriptors

Diagnosing pain in neonates is difficult but critical. Although approximately thirty manual pain instruments have been developed for neonatal pain diagnosis, most are complex, multifactorial, and geared toward research. The goals of this work are twofold: 1) to develop a new video dataset for automatic neonatal pain detection called iCOPEvid (infant Classification Of Pain Expressions videos), and 2) to present a classification system that sets a challenging comparison performance on this dataset. The iCOPEvid dataset contains 234 videos of 49 neonates experiencing a set of noxious stimuli, a period of rest, and an acute pain stimulus. From these videos 20 s segments are extracted and grouped into two classes: pain (49) and nopain (185), with the nopain video segments handpicked to produce a highly challenging dataset. An ensemble of twelve global and local descriptors with a Bag-of-Features approach is utilized to improve the performance of some new descriptors based on Gaussian of Local Descriptors (GOLD). The basic classifier used in the ensembles is the Support Vector Machine, and decisions are combined by sum rule. These results are compared with standard methods, some deep learning approaches, and 185 human assessments. Our best machine learning methods are shown to outperform the human judges

Going to the exclusive show : exhibition strategies and moviegoing memories of Disneys animated feature films in Ghent (1937-1982)

This is a case study of the exploitation and experience of Disney's animated feature films from the 1930s to the 1980s in Ghent (Belgium). It is a historical study of programming practices and financial strategies which constructed childhood memories on watching Disney. The study is a contribution to a historical understanding of the implications of global distribution of film as cultural products and the counter pull of localism. Using a multi-method approach, the argument is made that the scarce screenings were strategically programmed to uplift the moviegoing experience into something out of the ordinary in everyday life. Programming and revenue data characterize the screenings as exclusive and generating high intakes. Consequently, the remembered screenings did not exhale an easy accessible social status nor an image of pervasiveness of popular childhood film, contradictory to conventional accounts of Disney's ubiquity in popular culture

Consensus Pathways Implicated in Prognosis of Colorectal Cancer Identified Through Systematic Enrichment Analysis of Gene Expression Profiling Studies

Background: A large number of gene expression profiling (GEP) studies on prognosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) has been performed, but no reliable gene signature for prediction of CRC prognosis has been found. Bioinformatic enrichment tools are a powerful approach to identify biological processes in high-throughput data analysis. Principal Findings: We have for the first time collected the results from the 23 so far published independent GEP studies on CRC prognosis. In these 23 studies, 1475 unique, mapped genes were identified, from which 124 (8.4%) were reported in at least two studies, with 54 of them showing consisting direction in expression change between the single studies. Using these data, we attempted to overcome the lack of reproducibility observed in the genes reported in individual GEP studies by carrying out a pathway-based enrichment analysis. We used up to ten tools for overrepresentation analysis of Gene Ontology (GO) categories or Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways in each of the three gene lists (1475, 124 and 54 genes). This strategy, based on testing multiple tools, allowed us to identify the oxidative phosphorylation chain and the extracellular matrix receptor interaction categories, as well as a general category related to cell proliferation and apoptosis, as the only significantly and consistently overrepresented pathways in the three gene lists, which were reported by several enrichment tools. Conclusions: Our pathway-based enrichment analysis of 23 independent gene expression profiling studies on prognosis of CRC identified significantly and consistently overrepresented prognostic categories for CRC. These overrepresented categories have been functionally clearly related with cancer progression, and deserve further investigation