Expanding Hope in Payatas

Informal settlements, also known as slums or squatter settlements, are a way of life for millions around the world, especially within urban centers. The challenge is to provide a better quality of life, both physically and socially. This thesis provides a critical look into the conditions, limitations, strengths, and hopes of the community of Payatas in Metro Manila, Philippines, with recommendations of measures to support and strengthen the community, by building upon the community’s positive elements to develop social impact

Communication and Socialization Skills at Ages 2 and 3 in Late-Talking Young Children

Twenty-one apparently normal children between 18 and 34 months of age with slow expressive language acquisition were compared to a group of normally speaking children matched for age, SES, and sex ratio, on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (Sparrow, Balla, & Cicchetti, 1984). The late talkers (LTs) scored significantly lower not only in expressive communication, but also in receptive communication and socialization. A follow-up study of the same subjects, seen at age 3, showed nearly half the 3-year-olds with a history of LT remained delayed in expressive communication and socialization, while one third remained behind in receptive language. The data suggest that social skills are particularly vulnerable to disruption in children with late expressive language development, even after communication skills have moved into the normal range. They suggest, further, that receptive deficits do not seem, in themselves, to increase the risk of continued language delay. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed

ANALISIS PREFERENSI KONSUMEN TERHADAP TEMPAT KURSUS BAHASA INGGRIS DI BANDUNG

Bahasa Inggris saat ini merupakan bahasa Internasional karena digunakan hampir di seluruh negara di dunia dan bahasa Inggris semakin dianggap penting oleh masyarakat Indonesia, agar mereka dapat bersaing dalam era globalisasi saat ini. Berdasarkan survey mengenai perilaku konsumen didapatkan hasil bahwa alasan terbanyak siswa/siswi SMA masih memilih mengikuti kursus Bahasa Inggris tambahan adalah karena belajar di sekolah kurang efektif. Berdasarkan permasalahan tersebut maka tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui preferensi konsumen terhadap tempat kursus Bahasa Inggris dan untuk mengetahui faktor apakah yang paling penting dalam pemilihan tempat kursus Bahasa Inggris di Bandung. Objek penelitian ini adalah tempat kursus Bahasa Inggris yang ada di Bandung dengan atribut metode pengajaran, lokasi, jumlah siswa, dan jenis program. Jenis penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian deskriptif dengan menggunakan metode kuantitatif. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah siswa/siswi tingkat SMA di Kota Bandung dengan sampel yang diambil sebanyak 100 orang responden dengan menggunakan teknik purposive sampling. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah analisis konjoin untuk memperoleh skor kegunaan (utility) dan skor kepentingan (importance) sehingga dari skor tersebut dapat ditarik kesimpulan tentang apa saja yang paling dipertimbangkan konsumen dalam memilih sebuah produk. Berdasarkan hasil dari analisis konjoin diperoleh skor kepentingan dari taraf yang mempengaruhi preferensi konsumen terhadap tempat kursus yang ada di Bandung. Atribut tertinggi adalah indikator jenis program yang ditawarkan dengan persentase nilai sebesar 50,65% dan jenis program yang diinginkan oleh murid SMA adalah program Conversation Class dengan nilai utilitas sebesar 0.162. Kedua adalah atribut jumlah siswa dengan persentase nilai sebesar 23,49%, dan jumlah siswa yang diinginkan oleh murid SMA per kelasnya yaitu 10-20 orang per kelas dengan nilai utilitas sebesar 0.092. Ketiga adalah atribut lokasi dengan persentase nilai sebesar 14,60% dan lokasi yang diinginkan oleh murid SMA yaitu tempat kursus yang dekat dengan sekolah dengan nilai utilitas sebesar 0.054. Atribut terakhir adalah metode pengajaran dengan persentase nilai sebesar 11,26% dan metode pengajaran yang diinginkan oleh murid SMA yaitu tenaga pengajar ahli dengan nilai utilitas sebesar 0.051. Berdasarkan hasil analisis konjoin dapat disimpulkan bahwa tempat kursus yang diinginkan oleh murid SMA yaitu program Conversation Class dengan jumlah siswa 10-20 orang per kelas yang lokasinya dekat dengan sekolah dan menggunakan tenaga pengajar yang ahli yang selain berkompeten di bidangnya tetapi juga bisa membuat suasana belajar menjadi menyenangkan. Faktor terpenting dalam pemilihan tempat kursus di Bandung yang diurutkan berdasarkan nilai tertinggi yaitu jenis program, jumlah siswa, lokasi, dan metode pengajaran. Kata kunci : analisis konjoin, perilaku konsumen, preferensi konsume

Exploiting the Synergy Between Gossiping and Structured Overlays

In this position paper we argue for exploiting the synergy between gossip-based algorithms and structured overlay networks (SON). These two strands of research have both aimed at building fault-tolerant, dynamic, self-managing, and large-scale distributed systems. Despite the common goals, the two areas have, however, been relatively isolated. We focus on three problem domains where there is an untapped potential of using gossiping combined with SONs. We argue for applying gossip-based membership for ring-based SONs---such as Chord and Bamboo---to make them handle partition mergers and loopy networks. We argue that small world SONs---such as Accordion and Mercury---are specifically well-suited for gossip-based membership management. The benefits would be better graph-theoretic properties. Finally, we argue that gossip-based algorithms could use the overlay constructed by SONs. For example, many unreliable broadcast algorithms for SONs could be augmented with anti-entropy protocols. Similarly, gossip-based aggregation could be used in SONs for network size estimation and load-balancing purposes

The Outer Stellar Halos of Galaxies: how Radial Merger Mass Deposition, Shells and Streams depend on Infall-Orbit Configurations

Galaxy mergers are a fundamental part of galaxy evolution. To study the resulting mass distributions of different kinds of galaxy mergers, we present a simulation suite of 36 high-resolution isolated merger simulations, exploring a wide range of parameter space in terms of mass ratios (mu = 1:5, 1:10, 1:50, 1:100) and orbital parameters. We find that mini mergers deposit a higher fraction of their mass in the outer halo compared to minor mergers, while their contribution to the central mass distribution is highly dependent on the orbital impact parameter: for larger pericentric distances we find that the centre of the host galaxy is almost not contaminated by merger particles. We also find that the median of the resulting radial mass distribution for mini mergers differs significantly from the predictions of simple theoretical tidal-force models. Furthermore, we find that mini mergers can increase the size of the host disc significantly without changing the global shape of the galaxy, if the impact occurs in the disc plane, thus providing a possible explanation for extended low-surface brightness disks reported in observations. Finally, we find clear evidence that streams are a strong indication of nearly circular infall of a satellite (with large angular momentum), whereas the appearance of shells clearly points to (nearly) radial satellite infall.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures, published by MNRAS doi: 10.1093/mnras/stz125

Brief Screening of Vascular Cognitive Impairment in Patients With Cerebral Autosomal-Dominant Arteriopathy With Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy Without Dementia.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Cerebral autosomal-dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is a monogenic form of cerebral small vessel disease leading to early-onset stroke and dementia, with younger patients frequently showing subclinical deficits in cognition. At present, there are no targeted cognitive screening measures for this population. However, the Brief Memory and Executive Test (BMET) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) have shown utility in detecting cognitive impairment in sporadic small vessel disease. This study assesses the BMET and the MoCA as clinical tools for detecting mild cognitive deficits in CADASIL. METHODS: Sixty-six prospectively recruited patients with CADASIL, and 66 matched controls completed the BMET, with a subset of these also completing the MoCA. Receiver operating characteristic curves were calculated to examine the sensitivity and specificity of clinical cutoffs for the detection of vascular cognitive impairment and reduced activities of daily living. RESULTS: Patients with CADASIL showed more cognitive impairment overall and were poorer on both executive/processing and memory indices of the BMET relative to controls. The BMET showed good accuracy in predicting vascular cognitive impairment (85% sensitivity and 84% specificity) and impaired instrumental activities of daily living (92% sensitivity and 77% specificity). The MoCA also showed good predictive validity for vascular cognitive impairment (80% sensitivity and 78% specificity) and instrumental activities of daily living (75% sensitivity and 76% specificity). The most important background predictor of vascular cognitive impairment was a history of stroke. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that the BMET and the MoCA are clinically useful and sensitive screening measures for early cognitive impairment in patients with CADASIL.Stroke Association (Grant ID: TSA2008/10), British Heart Foundation (Grant ID: PG/13/30/30005), Stroke Association/British Heart Foundation (Grant ID: TSA BHF 2010/01), Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, National Institute for Health Research (Senior Investigator award), Cambridge University Hospital Comprehensive National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research UnitThis is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Wolters Kluwer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.116.01376

Distributed Management of Massive Data: an Efficient Fine-Grain Data Access Scheme

This paper addresses the problem of efficiently storing and accessing massive data blocks in a large-scale distributed environment, while providing efficient fine-grain access to data subsets. This issue is crucial in the context of applications in the field of databases, data mining and multimedia. We propose a data sharing service based on distributed, RAM-based storage of data, while leveraging a DHT-based, natively parallel metadata management scheme. As opposed to the most commonly used grid storage infrastructures that provide mechanisms for explicit data localization and transfer, we provide a transparent access model, where data are accessed through global identifiers. Our proposal has been validated through a prototype implementation whose preliminary evaluation provides promising results

Encephalopathy in a Large Cohort of British Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy With Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy Patients.

Background and Purpose- Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is the most common monogenic form of stroke usually presenting with migraine with aura, lacunar infarcts, and cognitive impairment. Acute encephalopathy is a less recognized presentation of the disease. Methods- Data collected prospectively from 340 consecutively recruited symptomatic patients with diagnosis of CADASIL seen in a British National CADASIL clinic was retrospectively reviewed and original clinical records and imaging obtained. An encephalopathic event was defined as an acute event of an altered state of consciousness in a patient with CADASIL, manifesting with signs of brain dysfunction, which warranted hospital admission in the absence of any other cause. Clinical characteristics, risk factors, and outcome of encephalopathic presentations were studied. Results- A total of 35 of 340 (10.3%) participants had a history of 50 encephalopathic events which was the first hospital presentation of CADASIL in 33 (94.3%) patients. Most commonly reported features during episodes were visual hallucinations (44%), seizures (22%), and focal neurological deficits (60%).Complete recovery within 3 months was reported in 48(96%) episodes. In 62% of episodes, there was a history of migraine or migraine aura directly preceding the encephalopathy. In 2 out of 15 cases where magnetic resonance imaging during episodes was available, unilateral focal cortical swelling was seen. A past history of migraine was independently associated with encephalopathy (odds ratio=12.3 [95% CI, 1.6-93.7]; P=0.015). Conclusions- In up to 10% of CADASIL patients, a reversible encephalopathy is the first presentation leading to diagnosis. The strong association with migraine suggests a shared pathogenesis. Focal cortical swelling may be seen on magnetic resonance imaging during the acute episode