Factors Influencing Employer Attitudes towards Vocational Education

This study tested a conceptual model to determine the strengths and directions of relationshzps between selected predictor variables and the attitude of employers about vocational education. Personal characteristics of employers and characteristics of the firm served as predictor variables. Variables significantly related with employer attitude were type of business, employee educational level, years in business, sex and age. The set of varaibles of personal characteristics and the firm each uniquely. explained a portion of the variance in employer attitudes. Whether or not the employer operated a service type of business and the sex of the employer were the two variables which best predicted employer attitude toward vocational education. Service employers and male employers possessed the more positive attitude

Motivational Factors that Influence Student Work Attitude

Employers look for employees who have positive work attitudes besides technical knowledge and related skills. Students, therefore, should have positive work attitudes to be successful in the workplace. This study is an attempt to identify the motivational factors that may be associated with work attitudes of students at Universiti Pertanian Malaysia. The motivational factors include: (1) educational aspirations, (2) occupational aspirations, (3) reason for entering the programme, (4) religiosity, and (5) student perception of parental work values. A cluster random sampling was used to determine the sample of respondents. The sample consisted of686 diploma programme students. The results indicated that the reason for entering the programme, religiosity and student perception of parental work values were related to work attitude. These variables were further analyzed to determine the semi-partial multiple regression coefficients. The findings showed that reason for entering the programme did not account for a significant unique proportion of the variance in work attitude. However, religiosity and student perceptions of parental work values accounted for a significant unique proportion of the variance in work attitude. These two variables were used in the stepwise multiple regression analysis. It was found that the two variables were the best predictors of the work attitude of diploma programme students at the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia

Polarization observables in the longitudinal basis for pseudo-scalar meson photoproduction using a density matrix approach

The complete expression for the intensity in pseudo-scalar meson photoproduction with a polarized beam, target, and recoil baryon is derived using a density matrix approach that offers great economy of notation. A Cartesian basis with spins for all particles quantized along a single direction, the longitudinal beam direction, is used for consistency and clarity in interpretation. A single spin-quantization axis for all particles enables the amplitudes to be written in a manifestly covariant fashion with simple relations to those of the well-known CGLN formalism. Possible sign discrepancies between theoretical amplitude-level expressions and experimentally measurable intensity profiles are dealt with carefully. Our motivation is to provide a coherent framework for coupled-channel partial-wave analysis of several meson photoproduction reactions, incorporating recently published and forthcoming polarization data from Jefferson Lab.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Modal Noise Mitigation through Fiber Agitation for Fiber-fed Radial Velocity Spectrographs

Optical fiber modal noise is a limiting factor for high precision spectroscopy signal-to-noise in the near-infrared and visible. Unabated, especially when using highly coherent light sources for wavelength calibration, modal noise can induce radial velocity (RV) errors that hinder the discovery of low-mass (and potentially Earth-like) planets. Previous research in this field has found sufficient modal noise mitigation through the use of an integrating sphere, but this requires extremely bright light sources, a luxury not necessarily afforded by the next generation of high-resolution optical spectrographs. Otherwise, mechanical agitation, which "mixes" the fiber's modal patterns and allows the noise to be averaged over minutes-long exposures, provides some noise reduction but the exact mechanism behind improvement in signal-to-noise and RV drift has not been fully explored or optimized by the community. Therefore, we have filled out the parameter space of modal noise agitation techniques in order to better understand agitation's contribution to mitigating modal noise and to discover a better method for agitating fibers. We find that modal noise is best suppressed by the quasi-chaotic motion of two high-amplitude agitators oscillating with varying phase for fibers with large core diameters and low azimuthal symmetry. This work has subsequently influenced the design of a fiber agitator, to be installed with the EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph, that we estimate will reduce modal-noise-induced RV error to less than 3.2 cm/s.Comment: Accepted by The Astrophysical Journa

Cost effective, experimentally robust differential-expression analysis for human/mammalian, pathogen and dual-species transcriptomics.

As sequencing read length has increased, researchers have quickly adopted longer reads for their experiments. Here, we examine 14 pathogen or host-pathogen differential gene expression data sets to assess whether using longer reads is warranted. A variety of data sets was used to assess what genomic attributes might affect the outcome of differential gene expression analysis including: gene density, operons, gene length, number of introns/exons and intron length. No genome attribute was found to influence the data in principal components analysis, hierarchical clustering with bootstrap support, or regression analyses of pairwise comparisons that were undertaken on the same reads, looking at all combinations of paired and unpaired reads trimmed to 36, 54, 72 and 101 bp. Read pairing had the greatest effect when there was little variation in the samples from different conditions or in their replicates (e.g. little differential gene expression). But overall, 54 and 72 bp reads were typically most similar. Given differences in costs and mapping percentages, we recommend 54 bp reads for organisms with no or few introns and 72 bp reads for all others. In a third of the data sets, read pairing had absolutely no effect, despite paired reads having twice as much data. Therefore, single-end reads seem robust for differential-expression analyses, but in eukaryotes paired-end reads are likely desired to analyse splice variants and should be preferred for data sets that are acquired with the intent to be community resources that might be used in secondary data analyses

Longitudinal Relationship between Personal CO and Personal PM2.5PM_{2.5} among Women Cooking with Woodfired Cookstoves in Guatemala

Household air pollution (HAP) due to solid fuel use is a major public health threat in low-income countries. Most health effects are thought to be related to exposure to the fine particulate matter (PM) component of HAP, but it is currently impractical to measure personal exposure to PM in large studies. Carbon monoxide (CO) has been shown in cross-sectional analyses to be a reliable surrogate for particles<2.5 µm in diameter ($PM_{2.5}$) in kitchens where wood-burning cookfires are a dominant source, but it is unknown whether a similar $PM_{2.5}$-CO relationship exists for personal exposures longitudinally. We repeatedly measured (216 measures, 116 women) 24-hour personal $PM_{2.5}$ (median [IQR] = 0.11 [0.05, 0.21] mg/$m^3$) and CO (median [IQR] = 1.18 [0.50, 2.37] mg/$m^3$) among women cooking over open woodfires or chimney woodstoves in Guatemala. Pollution measures were natural-log transformed for analyses. In linear mixed effects models with random subject intercepts, we found that personal CO explained 78% of between-subject variance in personal $PM_{2.5}$. We did not see a difference in slope by stove type. This work provides evidence that in settings where there is a dominant source of biomass combustion, repeated measures of personal CO can be used as a reliable surrogate for an individual's $PM_{2.5}$ exposure. This finding has important implications for the feasibility of reliably estimating long-term (months to years) $PM_{2.5}$ exposure in large-scale epidemiological and intervention studies of HAP

A multinational, multi-institutional study of assessment of programming skills of first-year CS students

In computer science, an expected outcome of a student's education is programming skill. This working group investigated the programming competency students have as they complete their first one or two courses in computer science. In order to explore options for assessing students, the working group developed a trial assessment of whether students can program. The underlying goal of this work was to initiate dialog in the Computer Science community on how to develop these types of assessments. Several universities participated in our trial assessment and the disappointing results suggest that many students do not know how to program at the conclusion of their introductory courses. For a combined sample of 216 students from four universities, the average score was 22.89 out of 110 points on the general evaluation criteria developed for this study. From this trial assessment we developed a framework of expectations for first-year courses and suggestions for further work to develop more comprehensive assessments

Intervention to Lower Household Wood Smoke Exposure in Guatemala Reduces ST-Segment Depression on Electrocardiograms

Background: A large body of evidence suggests that fine particulate matter (PM) air pollution is a cause of cardiovascular disease, but little is known in particular about the cardiovascular effects of indoor air pollution from household use of solid fuels in developing countries. RESPIRE (Randomized Exposure Study of Pollution Indoors and Respiratory Effects) was a randomized trial of a chimney woodstove that reduces wood smoke exposure. Objectives: We tested the hypotheses that the stove intervention, compared with open fire use, would reduce ST-segment depression and increase heart rate variability (HRV). Methods: We used two complementary study designs: a) between-groups comparisons based on randomized stove assignment, and b) before-and-after comparisons within control subjects who used open fires during the trial and received chimney stoves after the trial. Electrocardiogram sessions that lasted 20 hr were repeated up to three times among 49 intervention and 70 control women 38–84 years of age, and 55 control subjects were also assessed after receiving stoves. HRV and ST-segment values were assessed for each 30-min period. ST-segment depression was defined as an average value below –1.00 mm. Personal fine PM [aerodynamic diameter ≤ 2.5 μm (PM$_{2.5}$)] exposures were measured for 24 hr before each electrocardiogram. Results: PM$_{2.5}$ exposure means were 266 and 102 μg/m$^3$ during the trial period in the control and intervention groups, respectively. During the trial, the stove intervention was associated with an odds ratio of 0.26 (95% confidence interval, 0.08–0.90) for ST-segment depression. We found similar associations with the before-and-after comparison. The intervention was not significantly associated with HRV. Conclusions: The stove intervention was associated with reduced occurrence of nonspecific ST-segment depression, suggesting that household wood smoke exposures affect ventricular repolarization and potentially cardiovascular health