The Legacy Project: Lessons Learned About Conducting Community-Based Research

Collaborative partnerships between community based organizations (CBOs) and university-based researchers can successfully conduct useful HIV prevention research. Collaboratively conducted research contributes to good programs and good science.The Legacy Project is an evaluation of 18 such partnerships. The evaluation found 6 essential elements for successful collaborative community-based research:Thoughtful selection of interventions for evaluationSecondary or alternative research questions incorporated into the research project from the beginningFlexibility to modify or change primary research question mid-studyAppropriate, stable CBO staffingHigh level of university-researcher involvement with both intervention and evaluationAdequate funding for intervention, evaluation and participant tim

Effective hydrodynamic boundary conditions for microtextured surfaces

We report measurements of the hydrodynamic drag force acting on a smooth sphere falling down under gravity to a plane decorated with microscopic periodic grooves. Both surfaces are lyophilic, so that a liquid (silicone oil) invades the surface texture being in the Wenzel state. A significant decrease in the hydrodynamic resistance force as compared with that predicted for two smooth surfaces is observed. To quantify the effect of roughness we use the effective no-slip boundary condition, which is applied at the imaginary smooth homogeneous isotropic surface located at an intermediate position between top and bottom of grooves. Such an effective condition fully characterizes the force reduction measured with the real surface, and the location of this effective plane is related to geometric parameters of the texture by a simple analytical formula.Comment: 4 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Common Sense or World Knowledge? Investigating Adapter-Based Knowledge Injection into Pretrained Transformers

Following the major success of neural language models (LMs) such as BERT or GPT-2 on a variety of language understanding tasks, recent work focused on injecting (structured) knowledge from external resources into these models. While on the one hand, joint pretraining (i.e., training from scratch, adding objectives based on external knowledge to the primary LM objective) may be prohibitively computationally expensive, post-hoc fine-tuning on external knowledge, on the other hand, may lead to the catastrophic forgetting of distributional knowledge. In this work, we investigate models for complementing the distributional knowledge of BERT with conceptual knowledge from ConceptNet and its corresponding Open Mind Common Sense (OMCS) corpus, respectively, using adapter training. While overall results on the GLUE benchmark paint an inconclusive picture, a deeper analysis reveals that our adapter-based models substantially outperform BERT (up to 15-20 performance points) on inference tasks that require the type of conceptual knowledge explicitly present in ConceptNet and OMCS

Effect of Frequency on Droplet Characteristics in Ultrasonic Atomization Process

The study of ultrasonic atomization is one of the important factors for fuel spray process in the diesel engine combustion chamber. The droplet characteristics are influenced by liquid properties and vibration frequency. In this study, the phenomenon of droplet formation and droplet size were studied at different frequencies of the ultrasonic atomization processes for water liquid. The ultrasonic atomizer was used for the atomization process to generate droplets. CFD- 2D with the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model was used to study the process of droplet size and droplet formation at different frequencies. Water with constant film thickness and bending vibration at constant vibration amplitude were used in this model. The variation of vibration frequencies is applied from 50 kHz to 200 kHz with 50 kHz increment. The results showed that the number of droplets and the area of droplet formation increases with the increases in the vibration frequency. Effect of vibration frequency to the size of the droplet, time for droplet formation, velocity, and several droplets is more significant at vibration frequency 50 kHz to 100 kHz than vibration frequency from 100 kHz to 200 kHz

Comparative Efficiency Assessment of Primary Care Models Using Data Envelopment Analysis

This paper compares the productive efficiencies of four models of primary care service delivery in Ontario, Canada, using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. Particular care is taken to include quality of service as part of our output measure. The influence of the delivery model on productive efficiency is disentangled from patient characteristics using regression analysis. Significant differences are found in the efficiency scores across models and within each model. In general, the fee-for-service arrangement ranks the highest and the community-health-centre model the lowest in efficiency scoring. The reliance of our input measures on costs and number of patients, clearly favours the fee-for-service model. Patient characteristics contribute little to explaining differences in the efficiency ranking across the models.Productive Efficiency; DEA; Primary Health Care

Temporal dynamics of interpersonal trust during the transition to parenthood

Theories and laboratory research in social psychology associate parenthood with increased vigilance and distrust. Yet, longitudinal studies examining whether the transition to parenthood affects trust in real life are lacking. We examined the temporal dynamics of trust surrounding the transition to parenthood in a sample of adults followed for up to 12 years. We used discontinuous change models and propensity score matching to compare first-time parents with matched childless individuals. Parenthood predicted a gradual trust increase following childbirth. The effect of the transition was unidirectional: Baseline trust level did not predict the likelihood of parenthood in the follow-up years. These findings contribute to the literature on how major life events, such as the transition to parenthood, shape interpersonal trust

Social identity and leadership in the Basque Region: a study of leadership development programmes

The purpose of the study is to explore how social identity influences the construction of leadership development programmes in the Basque Region. The Basque region is recognised as having a strong social and national identity (Kaufmann and Tödtling, 2000; McNeill, 2000). Historically leadership development has been focused on practising leaders and managers and delivered by universities, consultants and other intermediaries. A recent study undertaken by Olga Rivera has shown managerial dissatisfaction with current provision in the Basque Region and has illustrated a need for provision to focus on 'skills' for 'leadership'. What is meant by 'skills' and 'leadership' is, however, embedded within the Spanish language and identity of the region; as illustrated by the influence of the co-operative movement (Kasmir, 1996; Whyte, 1999). The paper introduces theories of social identity as they are applied to the study of leadership and it explores how theories of social identity can help explain perceptions of leadership in the Basque region

Multiple facets of self-rated digital competencies of pre-service teachers: A pilot study on the nomological network, empirical structure, and gender differences

Introduction: Self-efficacy is an important predictor of teaching behavior. Within several research traditions (TPACK framework, school achievement tests), different ICT self-efficacy scales have been developed. The empirical structure of existing questionnaires has frequently been researched and discussed within the TPACK framework. However, for teacher ICT self-efficacy, non-instructional aspects as well as alternative instruments have rarely been investigated and compared to standard TPACK self-report scales. Methods: In this study, we administer two sets of non-subject-specific ICT scales to a group of pre-service teachers (N = 165). We investigate the empirical structure using structural equation modeling. Results: For both scales, the results show that instructional ICT self-efficacy forms a separate factor. For the remaining items, item difficulty and content drive further divisions. Further, more specific item formulations resulted in a higher range of scale means. Additionally, we find gender differences only on some non-instructional scales. Discussion: Results confirm that the distinction between instructional vs. non-instructional ICT self-efficacy is important when developing or using questionnaires for pre-service teachers. Results also indicate that the usage of more specific task-related items is a promising alternative to general TPACK items

Sustainability of the Biowaste Utilization for Energy Production

This article presents strategies for the development and practical modelling of biogas processes under economy market conditions. Herewith, anaerobic digestion results out of practical tests in different scales (lab to pilot) and different substrate mixtures were taken into account. Two lab-scale reactors on the one hand and pilot-scale examinations of chosen substrate mixtures on the other hand led to workable conclusions such as mixture suitability for biogas production, gas amounts and technical demands for full-scale implementation under market economy conditions. A comparison of both laboratory and pilot system performance with a full-scale biogas system has been done; herewith, the suitability of the corresponding practical process upscaling simulation has been proven. On the basis of the results, calculations regarding the necessary full-scale fermenter sizes and the required substrate amounts as well as the disposable (reusable) fermentation residues were made. The conclusion of outputs on biogas technology particularly with regard to the demand-driven production of electricity (500 + 250 kW flexible) as a special request for energy from renewable sources is given. As a further result, a general outlook and estimation for the economical implementation on a common Baltic Sea region country basis have been developed

The Influence of Hedonic Motives on Online Impulse Buying through Shopping Lifestyle for Career Women

This research aims to know the influence of hedonic motives on impulse buying, shopping lifestyle on impulse buying, and hedonic motives on shopping lifestyle. The data are collected from questionnaires distributed to 130 respondents. The respondents are obtained from judgmental sampling or non-random sampling. The data are processed with a SmartPLS software as the analytical tool. The results of this research show that hedonic motives and shopping lifestyle have a significant influence on impulse buying