The effect of grade retention on secondary school dropout::Evidence from a natural experiment

This paper analyses the effects of grade retention on secondary school dropout by evaluating a retention policy reform introduced in 2010 in Colombia. The reform ended the restriction that the annual number of retained students at a school couldnot exceed 5 percent of the total school population. Using administrative data at the school level, we estimate a difference-in-differences model that exploits variation in schools’ retention rates before and after the reform. We distinguish dropout ratesby grade (grade 6 to 11). Moreover, we distinguish between retained students who dropped out of school by the end of the year of their retention and the dropout effect on all students enrolled in school the year after retention. Our robust estimatesreveal that higher retention increases the rate of students dropping out of school the same year of their retention, that means not enrolling to repeat the failed grade.However, there is little, if any, causal effect of grade retention on the dropout rates of all other students enrolled in the school one year after retention. We find that the latter effect is stronger when retention takes place at the earlier grades whereas theeffect for retained students is strongest when retention occurs at grade 9 and grade 11, when students would be entitled to receive the lower secondary school certificate and the high-school diploma respectively

Constitute: The world’s constitutions to read, search, and compare

Constitutional design and redesign is constant. Over the last 200 years, countries have replaced their constitutions an average of every 19 years and some have amended them almost yearly. A basic problem in the drafting of these documents is the search and analysis of model text deployed in other jurisdictions. Traditionally, this process has been ad hoc and the results suboptimal. As a result, drafters generally lack systematic information about the institutional options and choices available to them. In order to address this informational need, the investigators developed a web application, Constitute [online at http://www.constituteproject.org], with the use of semantic technologies. Constitute provides searchable access to the world’s constitutions using the conceptualization, texts, and data developed by the Comparative Constitutions Project. An OWL ontology represents 330 ‘‘topics’’ – e.g. right to health – with which the investigators have tagged relevant provisions of nearly all constitutions in force as of September of 2013. The tagged texts were then converted to an RDF representation using R2RML mappings and Capsenta’s Ultrawrap. The portal implements semantic search features to allow constitutional drafters to read, search, and compare the world’s constitutions. The goal of the project is to improve the efficiency and systemization of constitutional design and, thus, to support the independence and self-reliance of constitutional drafters.Governmen

The morphology of the cellular precipitation reaction in a Pb-3.0 wt% Sn alloy

The complete development of the cellular precipitation structure at selected grain boundaries in a Pb-3.0 wt% Sn alloy during aging at 34°C and 23°C was investigated by light microscopy. The cellular structure in this alloy consists of lamellae of solute depleted lead solid solution and lamellae of ß tin precipitate. The cellular precipitation reaction begins by local migration of a grain boundary with concomitant grain boundary precipitation of ß tin. The grain boundary bows around the ß tin grain boundary precipitates which then begin to lengthen in the direction of boundary migration thus forming the precipitate lamellae of the cell. The α\u27 lamellae always preceed the ß tin lamellae. At early stages of cell development, the lamellae may grow cooperatively and an orientation and habit plane relationship between the lamellae forms as the cell structure stabilizes. Since the coherence between the lamellae is weak, the direction of cell growth is not confined to the initial habit plane of the ß tin lamellae --Abstract, page iii

Linked Stream Data: A Position Paper

The amount of sensors publishing data on the Web is increasing as a result of the online availability of Sensor Web platforms that provide support for this task. With such increase in sensor data publication, new challenges arise for the identification, discovery and access to this data. Following the set of best practices to publish and link structured data on the web proposed by the Linked Data community, in this paper we introduce the concept of Linked Stream Data, a way in which the Linked Data principles can be applied to stream data and be part of the Web of Linked Data

1020 steel coated with Ti/TiN by Cathodic Arc and Ion Implantation

TiN coatings have been widely studied in order to improve mechanical properties of steels. In this work, thin Ti/TiN films were prepared by plasma based immersion ion implantation and deposition (PBII&D) with a cathodic arc on AISI 1020 steel substrates. Substrates were exposed to the discharge during 1 min in vacuum for the deposition of a Tiunderlayer with the aim of improving the adhesion to the substrate. Then, a TiN layer was deposited during 6 min in a nitrogen environment at a pressure of 3xl0-4 mbar. Samples were obtained at room temperature and at 300 °C, and with or without ion implantation in order to analyze differences between the effects of each treatment on the tribological properties. The mechanical and tribological properties of the films were characterized. The coatings deposited by PBII&D at 300 °C presented the highest hardness and young modulus, the best wear resistance and corrosion performance.Fil: Bermeo, Diego Fernando. Universidad Santiago de Cali; ColombiaFil: Quintana, Juan Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física del Plasma. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física del Plasma; ArgentinaFil: Kleiman, Ariel Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física del Plasma. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física del Plasma; ArgentinaFil: Sequeda, F.. Universidad del Valle; ColombiaFil: Márquez, A.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física del Plasma. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física del Plasma; Argentin

A Benchmark to Understand the Role of Knowledge Graphs on Large Language Model's Accuracy for Question Answering on Enterprise SQL Databases

Enterprise applications of Large Language Models (LLMs) hold promise for question answering on enterprise SQL databases. However, the extent to which LLMs can accurately respond to enterprise questions in such databases remains unclear, given the absence of suitable Text-to-SQL benchmarks tailored to enterprise settings. Additionally, the potential of Knowledge Graphs (KGs) to enhance LLM-based question answering by providing business context is not well understood. This study aims to evaluate the accuracy of LLM-powered question answering systems in the context of enterprise questions and SQL databases, while also exploring the role of knowledge graphs in improving accuracy. To achieve this, we introduce a benchmark comprising an enterprise SQL schema in the insurance domain, a range of enterprise queries encompassing reporting to metrics, and a contextual layer incorporating an ontology and mappings that define a knowledge graph. Our primary finding reveals that question answering using GPT-4, with zero-shot prompts directly on SQL databases, achieves an accuracy of 16%. Notably, this accuracy increases to 54% when questions are posed over a Knowledge Graph representation of the enterprise SQL database. Therefore, investing in Knowledge Graph provides higher accuracy for LLM powered question answering systems.Comment: 34 page

Formalisation and experiences of R2RML-based SPARQL to SQL query translation using Morph

R2RML is used to specify transformations of data available in relational databases into materialised or virtual RDF datasets. SPARQL queries evaluated against virtual datasets are translated into SQL queries according to the R2RML mappings, so that they can be evaluated over the underlying relational database engines. In this paper we describe an extension of a well-known algorithm for SPARQL to SQL translation, originally formalised for RDBMS-backed triple stores, that takes into account R2RML mappings. We present the result of our implementation using queries from a synthetic benchmark and from three real use cases, and show that SPARQL queries can be in general evaluated as fast as the SQL queries that would have been generated by SQL experts if no R2RML mappings had been used