Age differences in graduate employment across Europe

The report is based on the results of a major international study of graduate employment some five years after graduation. The report examines differences between European and UK graduates' patterns of employment and characteristics of their current work when age differences are taken into account. Overall UK graduates were both younger and older at entry to higher education compared with Europe as a whole. Such differences, when aligned with the longer duration of courses elsewhere in Europe, results in UK graduates being much younger on graduation than European graduates generally. Regardless of age on graduation, UK graduates were more likely to have been faced with changes in their workplaces; were much more likely to supervise staff; and to have responsibility for assessing others' work. In fact, many of the overall similarities and differences in employment experiences of UK and European graduates reported in other reports in this series remained, even when age on graduation was taken into account

FACILITATING EFFECTIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS IN A DEVELOPMENT BANK IN MYANMAR

This research investigates to identify the successful intervention of change management in Myanmar's semi-government bank for systemic organizational change. The research has been done in ‘C’ Bank, Myanmar and employs the 41 respondents including different managerial levels from all departments including General Manager, Manager and staffs. This action research employs structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews in two phases: pre-ODI and post-ODI. The Pair sample T-test and the contents analysis of the interview passages translated from Myanmar to English for coding are included in data analysis and treatments. The results revel that there is a significant difference between the pre- ODI and the post-ODI of motivating change, creating a vision, developing political support and effective change management. Finding of this study suggest that the analysis on how to sustain the momentum of change in establishing the new organization structure, the impact of organizational structure change on branches, and the employees' satisfaction with a new structure should study in the future

Construction of the THEME System of Myanmar

The main purpose of this paper is to construct the THEME system of Myanmar following the system network for Theme in English proposed by Halliday 1985 1994 Halliday and Matthiessen 2004 2014 within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics It is found that the THEME system of Myanmar consists of two sub-systems Theme status and Theme composition For the former there are two major types unmarked and enhanced Themes while for the latter Theme can be presented in two ways simple and multiple Themes Unmarked Themes in Myanmar clauses are Subject Complement Adjunct hypotactic clause Predicator only in imperative and Ba-element only in interrogative The enhanced Theme in Myanmar contains two major types equative or preposed attribute Multiple Theme includes textual interpersonal and topical Themes which can be chosen as a point of departure of the clause The findings may shed light on the realization of the textual metafunction of Myanmar languag

The Effect of Food Delivery Applications Attributes on Consumer Perceived Value and Attitude in Yangon

The purposes of this study are to explore the influence of food delivery applications attributes on consumer perceived value, to examine the effect of consumer perceived value on consumer attitude, and to investigate the effect of consumer attitude on consumer re-use intention on food delivery services in Yangon. To achieve these objectives, both primary and secondary data are used. Descriptive and analytical methods are applied in this study. There are eight food delivery service providers in Yangon. This study chooses four food delivery services which have largest number of riders among eight food delivery services operated in Yangon. Systemic random sampling method is applied to select every 5th customers who are ordering food through the food delivery services. Seven day survey is conducted to collect the primary data. Total 296 respondents are participated in this study. This study found that the food delivery applications attributes such as convenience, ease of use, trustworthiness, price, time saving orientation and various food choices have positively influenced on consumer perceived value. Furthermore, there has positive effect of consumer perceived value on consumer attitude, and the consumer attitude has positively influenced on re-use intention towards food delivery services. Based on the results, the study recommends that food delivery service providers should focus and enhance these attributes to increase consumer perceived value and benefit to consumer attitude that will enhance to re-use intention

Competences possessed and required by European graduates. REFLEX Report to HEFCE No 4

The report is based on the results of a major international study of graduate employment some five years after graduation. It presents an analysis of graduates' perceptions of what competences they need to do their current jobs and whether they possess these competences

Caregiver experience and perceived acceptability of a novel near point-of-care early infant HIV diagnostic test among caregivers enrolled in the PMTCT program, Myanmar: A qualitative study

Background: The majority of HIV infection among children occurs through mother-to-child transmission. HIV exposed infants are recommended to have virological testing at birth or 4–6 weeks of age but challenges with centralized laboratory-based testing in Myanmar result in low test- ing rates and delays in result communication and treatment initiation. Decentralized point- of-care (POC) testing when integrated in prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) services, can be an alternative to increase coverage of early infant diagnosis (EID) and timely engagement in HIV treatment and care. Aim: This paper aims to explore experiences of caregivers of HIV-exposed infants enrolled in the PMTCT program in Myanmar and the perceived acceptability of point-of-care EID testing compared to conventional centralised laboratory-based testing. Methods: This is a sub-study of the cluster randomised controlled stepped-wedge trial (Trial registra- tion number: ACTRN12616000734460) that assessed the impact of near POC EID testing using Xpert HIV-1 Qual assay in four public hospitals in Myanmar. Caregivers of infants who were enrolled in the intervention phase of the main study, had been tested with both Xpert and standard of care tests and had received the results were eligible for this qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 caregivers. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated into English. Thematic data analysis was undertaken using NVivo 12 Software (QSR International). Results: The majority of caregivers were satisfied with the quality of care provided by PMTCT ser- vices. However, they encountered social and financial access barriers to attend the PMTCT clinic regularly. Mothers had concerns about community stigma from the disclosure of their HIV status and the potential consequences for their infants. While medical care at the PMTCT clinics was free, caregivers sometimes experienced financial difficulties associated with out-of-pocket expenses for childbirth and transportation. Some caregivers had to choose not to attend work (impacting their income) or the adult antiretroviral clinic in order to attend the paediatric PMTCT clinic appointment. The acceptability of the Xpert testing pro- cess was high among the caregiver participants and more than half received the Xpert result on the same day as testing. Short turnaround time of the near POC EID testing enabled the caregivers to find out their infants’ HIV status quicker, thereby shortening the stressful wait- ing time for results. Conclusion: Our study identified important access challenges facing caregivers of HIV exposed infants and high acceptability of near POC EID testing. Improving the retention rate in the PMTCT and EID programs necessitates careful attention of program managers and policy makers to these challenges, and POC EID represents a potential solution

Parametric Optimization of NACA 4412 Airfoil in Ground Effect Using Full Factorial Design of Experiment

This investigation emphasizes the changes of the lift-to-drag ratio of an airfoil with the variation of ground clearance and angles of attack. Various ground clearances and angles of attack with a fixed speed of 30 m/s are applied to the NACA 4412 airfoil. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to calculate the aerodynamic coefficients acting on it. To study the influence of these two factors on the lift-to-drag ratio, 32 factorial design based on Design of Experiments (DOE) is utilized. A total of 9 numerical experiments were carried out with Ansys Fluent. When the angle of attack decreases, lift coefficient increases and drag coefficient decreases resulting in a high lift-to-drag ratio: also, the lower the ground clearance, the higher the lift-to-drag ratio. It shows the effectiveness of ground clearance and angle of attack. The analysis shows that either increasing ground clearance or using a higher angle of attack gives a decrement in the lift-to-drag ratio, but there is no interaction between them

Operational experiences associated with the implementation of near point-of-care early infant diagnosis of HIV in Myanmar: a qualitative study

Background: Timely diagnosis and early initiation of life-saving antiretroviral therapy are critical factors in preventing mortality among HIV-infected infants. However, resource-limited settings experience numerous challenges associated with centralised laboratory-based testing, including low rates of testing, complex sample referral pathways and unacceptably long turnaround times for results. Point-of-care (POC) HIV testing for HIVexposed infants can enable same-day communication of results and early treatment initiation for HIV-infected infants. However, complex operational issues and service integration can limit utility and must be well understood prior to implementation. We explored and documented the challenges and enabling factors in implementing the POC Xpert® HIV-1 Qual test (Cepheid, Sunnyvale, CA, USA) for early infant diagnosis (EID) as part of routine services in four public hospitals in Myanmar. Methods: This sub-study was part of a randomised controlled stepped-wedge trial (Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, number 12616000734460) designed to investigate the impact of POC testing for EID in Myanmar and Papua New Guinea. Infants recruited during the intervention phase underwent POC testing at the participating hospitals as part of routine care. Semi-structured interviews with 23 caregivers, 12 healthcare providers and 10 key informants were used to explore experiences of POC-EID testing. The research team and hospital staff documented and discussed implementation challenges throughout the study. Results: Overall, caregivers and healthcare workers were satisfied with the short turnaround time of the POC test. Occasional delays in POC testing were mostly attributable to late receipt of samples by laboratory technicians and communication constraints among healthcare staff. Hospital staff valued technical assistance from the research group and the National Health Laboratory. Despite staff shortages and infrastructure challenges such as unreliable electricity supply and cramped space, healthcare workers and caregivers found the implementation of the POC test to be feasible at pilot sites. Conclusions: As plans for national scale-up evolve, there needs to be a continual focus on staff training, communication pathways and infrastructure. Other models of care, such as allowing non-laboratory-trained personnel to perform POC testing, and cost effectiveness should also be evaluated

Lane Detection System based on Hough Transform with Retinex Algorithm

Nowadays, automotive system becomes a great innovation in the world and lane detection system is important to control automobile vehicles. This paper has developed an efficient lane detection system to deal with different types of lighting conditions. Six types of edge detection techniques: canny, sobel, prewitt, Roberts, Laplacian of Gaussian (LOG) and zero-cross methods are analyzed. Line detection based on canny operator is developed. Moreover, Retinex algorithm is employed to normalize input images for all types of illumination. And Hough Transform with Retinex algorithm is developed to solve lighting problem. The proposed method is compared to Hough Transform with Otsu’s threshold method. The experimental results show that the proposed method can reduce computation time and improve accuracy for lane detection system

Subject differences in graduate employment across Europe REFLEX Report to HEFCE No 3 (uses data gathered for a major international study of graduate employment five years after graduation)

This report examines differences in UK and European graduate employment when subject differences are taken into account. There are a number of distinctive features in the experiences of UK graduates and these are reflected in some of the differences in the ways that the subject of study or programme type influences employment. The study found that there is a much looser relationship between the content and level of the course studied and the subsequent employment experiences, especially concerning the first job after graduation. Many graduates have experienced periods of unemployment (though less prevalent among UK graduates) or non-relevant jobs (more prevalent for UK graduates), but five years on most graduates appeared to be in jobs characterised by considerable autonomy, security and the opportunity to continue learning. And these are all things highly rated by the graduates themselves. When considering the lives of these graduates five years after their graduation, one is perhaps more struck by the similarities between them and differences, where they exist, may be more attributable to the characteristics of different national labour markets and economies. Thus, the most important conclusion to draw from this report is that the subject differences are not responsible for the differences in employment experiences between UK graduates and graduates elsewhere in Europe