Corrupt Academic Practices: A Tragedy in Nigerian Educational System.

The purpose of this article is to x-ray corrupt academic practices which, advertently or inadvertently, has plunged Nigerian educational system into a tragic situation of endemicity of examination malpractices and other examination vices. The paper pointed out the neglect of the use of continuous assessment and total dependence on terminal examination which has been seen as the stigma to corrupt academic practices in Nigeria. This work alarmed that if nothing is done to correct the menace of academic corruption the educational system will continue to produce weak primary and secondary education, half baked grandaunts, poor tertiary education, decline of roles of universities, especially in the area of scientific research development, mass failure, examination as source of income through given cost intensive examination (e.g. UME, PUME, WAEC and NECO). The authors, therefore, suggest urgent steps to be taken which includes amendment of section 1, sub-section 9 (g) of the National Policy on Education that gives room for academic corruption with a focus to abolish terminal examinations and promotion examination and rather accommodate fully the use of well developed uniform standard of continuous assessment. It is a high time we need an adequate means to evaluate and assess our pupils/ students who are the leaders of tomorrow. Key words: academic corruption, examination malpractice, continuous assessment, National Policy on Education (NPE), Terminal examination.

First results of the SOAP project. Open access publishing in 2010

The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project has compiled data on the present offer for open access publishing in online peer-reviewed journals. Starting from the Directory of Open Access Journals, several sources of data are considered, including inspection of journal web site and direct inquiries within the publishing industry. Several results are derived and discussed, together with their correlations: the number of open access journals and articles; their subject area; the starting date of open access journals; the size and business models of open access publishers; the licensing models; the presence of an impact factor; the uptake of hybrid open access.Comment: Submitted to PLoS ON

IHE cross-enterprise document sharing for imaging: interoperability testing software

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>With the deployments of Electronic Health Records (EHR), interoperability testing in healthcare is becoming crucial. EHR enables access to prior diagnostic information in order to assist in health decisions. It is a virtual system that results from the cooperation of several heterogeneous distributed systems. Interoperability between peers is therefore essential. Achieving interoperability requires various types of testing. Implementations need to be tested using software that simulates communication partners, and that provides test data and test plans.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper we describe a software that is used to test systems that are involved in sharing medical images within the EHR. Our software is used as part of the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) testing process to test the Cross Enterprise Document Sharing for imaging (XDS-I) integration profile. We describe its architecture and functionalities; we also expose the challenges encountered and discuss the elected design solutions.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>EHR is being deployed in several countries. The EHR infrastructure will be continuously evolving to embrace advances in the information technology domain. Our software is built on a web framework to allow for an easy evolution with web technology. The testing software is publicly available; it can be used by system implementers to test their implementations. It can also be used by site integrators to verify and test the interoperability of systems, or by developers to understand specifications ambiguities, or to resolve implementations difficulties.</p

Comparison of European ICU patients in 2012 (ICON) versus 2002 (SOAP)

Purpose: To evaluate differences in the characteristics and outcomes of intensive care unit (ICU) patients over time. Methods: We reviewed all epidemiological data, including comorbidities, types and severity of organ failure, interventions, lengths of stay and outcome, for patients from the Sepsis Occurrence in Acutely ill Patients (SOAP) study, an observational study conducted in European intensive care units in 2002, and the Intensive Care Over Nations (ICON) audit, a survey of intensive care unit patients conducted in 2012. Results: We compared the 3147 patients from the SOAP study with the 4852 patients from the ICON audit admitted to intensive care units in the same countries as those in the SOAP study. The ICON patients were older (62.5 +/- 17.0 vs. 60.6 +/- 17.4 years) and had higher severity scores than the SOAP patients. The proportion of patients with sepsis at any time during the intensive care unit stay was slightly higher in the ICON study (31.9 vs. 29.6%, p = 0.03). In multilevel analysis, the adjusted odds of ICU mortality were significantly lower for ICON patients than for SOAP patients, particularly in patients with sepsis [OR 0.45 (0.35-0.59), p < 0.001]. Conclusions: Over the 10-year period between 2002 and 2012, the proportion of patients with sepsis admitted to European ICUs remained relatively stable, but the severity of disease increased. In multilevel analysis, the odds of ICU mortality were lower in our 2012 cohort compared to our 2002 cohort, particularly in patients with sepsis

Optimizing bulk data transfers using network measurements: a practical case

SUMMARY The quality of the connectivity provided by the network infrastructure of a Grid is a crucial factor to guarantee the accessibility of Grid services, schedulate efficiently processing and data transfer activity on the Grid and meet QoS expectations. Yet most Grid application do not take into consideration the expected performance of the network resources they plan to use. In this paper we describe the effective use of a Grid Monitoring framework, whose measurements are used to introduce network aware features in a legacy application. We use GlueDomains, a network monitoring framework oriented to Grid infrastructures that measures a small (although possibly extensible) set of network parameters. Such framework works off the shelf with minimal administrative effort, is reliable, and has a negligible impact on system operation. The deployment covers a Metropolitan Grid infrastructure, aimed at supporting a data intensive eScience application. We describe a real use case consisting of bulk data trasfers during the operation of the Grid for the Virgo experiment

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