Instant Class Polling Using Mobile Devices: An Interactive and Effective Pedagogical Tool

Available methods of instant class feedback had been limited to technology associated with clickers purchased by students, or tied to responses from laptops, which professors have begun banning from the classroom due to distraction. However, obtaining real-time feedback on students’ comprehension of complex concepts remains a critical pedagogical goal, particularly in rule-based courses such as Professional Responsibility.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/btp_expo/1035/thumbnail.jp

SurveyMan: Programming and Automatically Debugging Surveys

Surveys can be viewed as programs, complete with logic, control flow, and bugs. Word choice or the order in which questions are asked can unintentionally bias responses. Vague, confusing, or intrusive questions can cause respondents to abandon a survey. Surveys can also have runtime errors: inattentive respondents can taint results. This effect is especially problematic when deploying surveys in uncontrolled settings, such as on the web or via crowdsourcing platforms. Because the results of surveys drive business decisions and inform scientific conclusions, it is crucial to make sure they are correct. We present SurveyMan, a system for designing, deploying, and automatically debugging surveys. Survey authors write their surveys in a lightweight domain-specific language aimed at end users. SurveyMan statically analyzes the survey to provide feedback to survey authors before deployment. It then compiles the survey into JavaScript and deploys it either to the web or a crowdsourcing platform. SurveyMan's dynamic analyses automatically find survey bugs, and control for the quality of responses. We evaluate SurveyMan's algorithms analytically and empirically, demonstrating its effectiveness with case studies of social science surveys conducted via Amazon's Mechanical Turk.Comment: Submitted version; accepted to OOPSLA 201

Performance evaluation of an open distributed platform for realistic traffic generation

Network researchers have dedicated a notable part of their efforts to the area of modeling traffic and to the implementation of efficient traffic generators. We feel that there is a strong demand for traffic generators capable to reproduce realistic traffic patterns according to theoretical models and at the same time with high performance. This work presents an open distributed platform for traffic generation that we called distributed internet traffic generator (D-ITG), capable of producing traffic (network, transport and application layer) at packet level and of accurately replicating appropriate stochastic processes for both inter departure time (IDT) and packet size (PS) random variables. We implemented two different versions of our distributed generator. In the first one, a log server is in charge of recording the information transmitted by senders and receivers and these communications are based either on TCP or UDP. In the other one, senders and receivers make use of the MPI library. In this work a complete performance comparison among the centralized version and the two distributed versions of D-ITG is presented

Vegetation restoration plan, New Plymouth Fitzroy to Bell Block coastal walkway extension

In 1999, the New Plymouth District Council began construction of its award winning coastal walkway. Along with providing an area for recreation, this new walk and cycle path serves as an alternate route for commuting along the city away from arterial roads. The New Plymouth District Council is in the process of extending this walkway a further three kilometres from Fitzroy Motor Camp to Ellesmere Avenue, Bell Block. This will encompass Peringa Park, Hickford Park and the Mangati Walkway, with completion expected by mid 2010. As part of this $4.2 million project, the District Council aims to restore the surrounding native duneland vegetation. The Centre for Biodiversity and Ecology Research (University of Waikato) was contracted by the New Plymouth District Council to provide a vegetation restoration plan for the Fitzroy to Bell Block section of the coastal walkway. This report considers the current vegetation of this three km section of the walkway, based on a rapid qualitative assessment undertaken in June, 2010. The target ecosytems Spinifex sandfield, flax-taupata shrubland and coastal forest vegetation types once dominant in the area are described in detail. Restoration recommendations are included to assist in the recreation of these ecosystems, including planting zones, weed control strategies and ongoing monitoring objectives

Pension Reform in Mexico: The Evolution of Pension Fund Management Fees and their Effect on Pension Balances

In 1997 Mexico introduced Personal Retirement Accounts (PRAs) which, after a transition phase, will completely replace the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system. We give a detailed overview of the relevant institutional framework, the market of PRA providers and how it has evolved since the 1997 reform. We use administrative data obtained from CONSAR, the regulatory agency of the PRA system to assess how pension fund management fees affect pension accumulations. We find that fees can drain up to a quarter of individuals’ pension savings.

Evaluation of dental therapists undertaking dental examinations in a school setting in Scotland

Objective: To measure agreement between dental therapists and the Scottish gold-standard dentist undertaking National Dental Inspection Programme (NDIP) examinations. Methods: A study of interexaminer agreement between 19 dental therapists and the national gold-standard dentist was carried out. Pre-calibration training used the caries diagnostic criteria and examination techniques agreed by the British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry (BASCD). Twenty-three 5-year-old children (Primary 1) and 17 11-year-old children (Primary 7) children were examined. Agreement was assessed using kappa statistics on d 3 mft and D 3 MFT for P1 and P7 children, sensitivity and specificity values, and kappa statistics on d 3 t/D 3 T and ft/FT. Calibration data on P1 and P7 children from 2009–2012 involving dentists as examiners were used for comparison. Economic evaluation was undertaken using a cost minimization analysis approach. Results: The mean kappa score was 0.84 (SD 0.07) ranging from 0.69 to 0.94. All dental therapists scored good or very good agreement with the gold-standard dentist. This compares with historic NDIP calibration data with dentists, against the same gold-standard dentist, where the mean kappa value was 0.68 (SD 0.22) with a range of 0.35-1.00. The mean sensitivity score was 0.98 (SD 0.04) (range 0.88-1.0) and mean specificity score was 0.90 (SD 0.06) (range 0.78-0.96). Health economic analysis estimated that salary costs would be 33.6% lower if dental therapists were substituted for dentists in the year 2013, with an estimated saving of approximately £103 646 per annum on the national budget. Conclusion: We conclude that dental therapists show a high level of interexaminer agreement, and with the appropriate annual training and calibration, they could undertake dental examinations as part of the NDIP programme

Through the eyes of others - The social experiences of people with dementia: A systematic literature review and synthesis

Psychosocial models suggest that the lived experience of dementia is affected by interpersonal factors such as the ways in which others view, talk about, and behave toward the person with dementia. This review aimed to illuminate how informal, everyday interpersonal relationships are experienced by people with dementia within their social contexts. A systematic review of qualitative literature published between 1989 and May 2016 was conducted, utilizing the electronic databases PsycINFO, MEDLINE, and CINAHL-Complete. This was followed by a critical interpretative synthesis to understand how people with dementia perceive the attitudes, views, and reactions of other people toward them, and the subjective impact that these have. Four major themes were derived from the findings of the 23 included studies: being treated as an “other” rather than “one of us”; being treated as “lesser” rather than a full, valued member of society; the impact of others’ responses; and strategies to manage the responses of others. Thus, people with dementia can feel outcast and relegated, or indeed feel included and valued by others. These experiences impact upon emotional and psychological well-being, and are actively interpreted and managed by people with dementia. Experiences such as loss and diminishing identity have previously been understood as a direct result of dementia, with little consideration of interpersonal influences. This review notes that people with dementia actively engage with others, whose responses can foster or undermine social well-being. This dynamic relational aspect may contribute to emerging understandings of social health in dementia