Perceived Parental Monitoring on Adolescence Premarital Sexual Behavior in Pontianak City, Indonesia

Inadaquate parental monitoring is widely recognized as a risk factor for the development of child and adolescent conduct problems, including early premarital sexual behavior. Previous studies examining parental monitoring have largely effect to adolescents premarital sexual behavior. Parental monitoring is the most important and effective factor to prevent early adolescents sexual activity. This paper examines the role of perceived parental monitoring in adolescent\u27s premarital sexual behavior (study on Adolescent\u27s Junior High School in Pontianak). A cross-sectional study and proportionated random sampling was conducted among 402 adolescents of junior high school at six subdistricts in Pontianak. SEM analyses was conducted using SMART-PLS. Result of path analysis revealed that parental knowledge (r = 0.389) and parental-adolescence relationship (r = 0.334) had a strong influence on parental monitoring. Then, parental monitoring had a significant indirect relationship with adolescent premarital sexual behavior through attitudes about premarital sexual (path coefficient = 0.063), and attitudes about premarital sexual and intention to sexual behaviour (path coefficient = 0.03). Parental monitoring can act as protective factor in early adolescent premarital sexual behavior. Therefore, risk reduction interventions with adolescents should include their parents to learn about monitoring skill and develop skill that will allow them to buffer negative influences

Risk-adjusted performance, selectivity, timing ability and performance persistence of Hong Kong mutual funds

This paper examines the performance of thirty Hong Kong mutual funds during the period from August 1995 to July 2005. The issues of risk-adjusted performance, selectivity, timing ability and performance persistence are addressed. We employ the signal-factor model, three-factor models and the measurements of Jensen’s alpha and Treynor ratio to evaluate the weekly returns on the sample funds relative to the performance of the Hong Kong market benchmark. Treynor and Mazuy (1966)’s quadratic model is used for assessing selectivity and timing ability of fund managers. Performance persistence of Hong Kong mutual funds is assessed at successive two-year intervals based on their ranking according to both Jensen measure and Treynor measure. Evidence of underperformance of Hong Kong mutual funds relative to the market is found. No significant selectivity and timing ability are shown in the results of the actively managed mutual funds. Persistence is identified for the performance of both winners and losers in the short run

Simulating Auxiliary Inputs, Revisited

For any pair $(X,Z)$ of correlated random variables we can think of $Z$ as a randomized function of $X$. Provided that $Z$ is short, one can make this function computationally efficient by allowing it to be only approximately correct. In folklore this problem is known as \emph{simulating auxiliary inputs}. This idea of simulating auxiliary information turns out to be a powerful tool in computer science, finding applications in complexity theory, cryptography, pseudorandomness and zero-knowledge. In this paper we revisit this problem, achieving the following results: \begin{enumerate}[(a)] We discuss and compare efficiency of known results, finding the flaw in the best known bound claimed in the TCC'14 paper "How to Fake Auxiliary Inputs". We present a novel boosting algorithm for constructing the simulator. Our technique essentially fixes the flaw. This boosting proof is of independent interest, as it shows how to handle "negative mass" issues when constructing probability measures in descent algorithms. Our bounds are much better than bounds known so far. To make the simulator $(s,\epsilon)$-indistinguishable we need the complexity $O\left(s\cdot 2^{5\ell}\epsilon^{-2}\right)$ in time/circuit size, which is better by a factor $\epsilon^{-2}$ compared to previous bounds. In particular, with our technique we (finally) get meaningful provable security for the EUROCRYPT'09 leakage-resilient stream cipher instantiated with a standard 256-bit block cipher, like $\mathsf{AES256}$.Comment: Some typos present in the previous version have been correcte

Juvenile Dermatomyositis in a Nigerian Girl: a Case Report.

A case of Juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) in a 10 year old Nigerian girl is herein reported to discuss some of the features of the disease and challenges in management of such a rare but crippling autoimmune vasculopathy of childhood. She was referred to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) with an eight-month history of recur rent fever, abdominal pain, and a four-month history of body rash and inability to walk or sit. Muscle biopsy and clinical findings consistent with JDM were found. Her condition improved with steroids, cytotoxic therapy and physiotherapy. Some invest igat ion and t reatment modalities could not be accessed for the benefit of the patient. Although, the outcome of patients with JDM has improved with the discovery of steroids, the disease is shown to have a variable course, with attendant social and financial implications especially to the immediate family

Digit-only sauropod pes trackways from China - evidence of swimming or a preservational phenomenon?

For more than 70 years unusual sauropod trackways have played a pivotal role in debates about the swimming ability of sauropods. Most claims that sauropods could swim have been based on manus-only or manus-dominated trackways. However none of these incomplete trackways has been entirely convincing, and most have proved to be taphonomic artifacts, either undertracks or the result of differential depth of penetration of manus and pes tracks, but otherwise showed the typical pattern of normal walking trackways. Here we report an assemblage of unusual sauropod tracks from the Lower Cretaceous Hekou Group of Gansu Province, northern China, characterized by the preservation of only the pes claw traces, that we interpret as having been left by walking, not buoyant or swimming, individuals. They are interpreted as the result of animals moving on a soft mud-silt substrate, projecting their claws deeply to register their traces on an underlying sand layer where they gained more grip during progression. Other sauropod walking trackways on the same surface with both pes and manus traces preserved, were probably left earlier on relatively firm substrates that predated the deposition of soft mud and silt . Presently, there is no convincing evidence of swimming sauropods from their trackways, which is not to say that sauropods did not swim at all

Simulation of PV array characteristics and fabrication of microcontroller based MPPT

In photovoltaic (PV) systems, the PV array represents about 57% of the total cost of the system, so it is very desirable to operate the PV panel at the maximum power point (MPP). The output characteristics of the solar array are nonlinear and vitally affected by solar radiation, temperature, and load conditions. In this respect simulation analysis of PV array is essential to understand the output characteristics of PV array such that it can operate at the maximum power producing point for a given atmospheric condition. This paper explores the output characteristics of a PV array in MATLAB environment and the fabrication of a microcontroller based simple maximum power point tracker (MPPT). The fabricated MMPT has the capability to track the MPP and the use of the MPPT enhances the output power by 20%. ©2010 IEEE

Variogram estimation in the presence of trend

Estimation of covariance function parameters of the error process in the presence of an unknown smooth trend is an important problem because solving it allows one to estimate the trend nonparametrically using a smoother corrected for dependence in the errors. Our work is motivated by spatial statistics but is applicable to other contexts where the dimension of the index set can exceed one. We obtain an estimator of the covariance function parameters by regressing squared differences of the response on their expectations, which equal the variogram plus an offset term induced by the trend. Existing estimators that ignore the trend produce bias in the estimates of the variogram parameters, which our procedure corrects for. Our estimator can be justified asymptotically under the increasing domain framework. Simulation studies suggest that our estimator compares favorably with those in the current literature while making less restrictive assumptions. We use our method to estimate the variogram parameters of the short-range spatial process in a U.S. precipitation data set

On the S-wave piD-scattering length in the relativistic field theory model of the deuteron

The S-wave scattering length of the strong pion-deuteron (pi D) scattering is calculated in the relativistic field theory model of the deuteron suggested in [1,2].The theoretical result agrees well with the experimental data. The important role of the Delta-resonance contribution to the elastic pi D-scattering is confirmed.Comment: 7 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in Z. Phys.

Global Ultrasound Elastography Using Convolutional Neural Network

Displacement estimation is very important in ultrasound elastography and failing to estimate displacement correctly results in failure in generating strain images. As conventional ultrasound elastography techniques suffer from decorrelation noise, they are prone to fail in estimating displacement between echo signals obtained during tissue distortions. This study proposes a novel elastography technique which addresses the decorrelation in estimating displacement field. We call our method GLUENet (GLobal Ultrasound Elastography Network) which uses deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to get a coarse time-delay estimation between two ultrasound images. This displacement is later used for formulating a nonlinear cost function which incorporates similarity of RF data intensity and prior information of estimated displacement. By optimizing this cost function, we calculate the finer displacement by exploiting all the information of all the samples of RF data simultaneously. The Contrast to Noise Ratio (CNR) and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the strain images from our technique is very much close to that of strain images from GLUE. While most elastography algorithms are sensitive to parameter tuning, our robust algorithm is substantially less sensitive to parameter tuning.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; added acknowledgment section, submission type late