„Eesti riiklik arengukava Euroopa Liidu struktuurifondide kasutuselevõtuks – ühtne programmdokument 2004–2006“ 1. prioriteedi hindamine

Käesoleva hindamise eesmärgiks on hinnata kahe dokumendi, „Eesti riiklik arengukava Euroopa Liidu struktuurifondide kasutuselevõtuks – ühtne programmdokument 2004–2006” (edaspidi RAK) 1. prioriteedi ja „Eesti majanduskasvu ja tööhõive tegevuskava aastateks 2005–2007” (edaspidi tegevuskava), ühilduvust ja tegevuskava kaetust RAK 1. prioriteedi raames rahastatud projektidega. Käesoleva hindamise tulemusena leiti, et vaatamata mõningatele erinevustele, on RAK 1. prioriteet kooskõlas tegevuskava eesmärkidega. Kahe dokumendi erinevused tulenesid eelkõige nende käsitlusvaldkondadest: kui tegevuskava on selgelt kontsentreeritud otseselt majandusarengut soodustavatele eesmärkidele ja tegevustele, siis RAK 1. prioriteet hõlmab ka majandusarenguga kaudsemalt seotud valdkondi

Õpetajate tööaja kasutuse ja töö lisatasustamise praktikate uuring

Uuringu eesmärgiks oli koguda infot õpetajate tööaja kasutuse ja tööaja tasustamise kohta. Tegemist oli eelkõige praktikaid kaardistava uuringuga, mis hõlmas üldhariduskoolide õpetajaid ja kutseõppeasutuste üldharidusainete õpetajaid ning õppeasutuste juhte. Uuring viidi läbi ajavahemikus aprillist kuni oktoobrini 2016 nii veebiküsitlusena (analüüsiks koguti 1202 vastust õpetajatelt ja 251 koolijuhtidelt) kui fookusgrupi intervjuude abil. Lisaks mõõdeti väikses rühmas kahe näidisnädala alusel ka reaalselt õpetajate tööaega. Uuring näitas, et koolijuhtide ja õpetajate arusaam töökoormuse ja -tasu arvestuses toimunud muudatustest on erinev nii nagu ka sellealased praktikad (nt esineb harva diferentseeritud töötasu maksmist, tööaeg ja lisatööaeg on erinevalt kokku lepitud ja mõistetud, õpetajate tööülesannete jaotus on varieeruv jne). Õpetajate tööaja kasutuse osas ilmnes, et keskmiselt moodustab sellest u 1/3 õppetundide andmine; see tegevus koos õppetundide ettevalmistamise ja tööde hindamisega moodustab õpetajate tööajast kokku u 60%

Machine Learning Techniques for Differential Diagnosis of Vertigo and Dizziness: A Review.

Vertigo is a sensation of movement that results from disorders of the inner ear balance organs and their central connections, with aetiologies that are often benign and sometimes serious. An individual who develops vertigo can be effectively treated only after a correct diagnosis of the underlying vestibular disorder is reached. Recent advances in artificial intelligence promise novel strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with this common symptom. Human analysts may experience difficulties manually extracting patterns from large clinical datasets. Machine learning techniques can be used to visualize, understand, and classify clinical data to create a computerized, faster, and more accurate evaluation of vertiginous disorders. Practitioners can also use them as a teaching tool to gain knowledge and valuable insights from medical data. This paper provides a review of the literatures from 1999 to 2021 using various feature extraction and machine learning techniques to diagnose vertigo disorders. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the work done thus far and to provide future directions for research into the use of machine learning in vertigo diagnosis

Development of a generic activities model of command and control

This paper reports on five different models of command and control. Four different models are reviewed: a process model, a contextual control model, a decision ladder model and a functional model. Further to this, command and control activities are analysed in three distinct domains: armed forces, emergency services and civilian services. From this analysis, taxonomies of command and control activities are developed that give rise to an activities model of command and control. This model will be used to guide further research into technological support of command and control activities

Colorectal cancer linkage on chromosomes 4q21, 8q13, 12q24, and 15q22

A substantial proportion of familial colorectal cancer (CRC) is not a consequence of known susceptibility loci, such as mismatch repair (MMR) genes, supporting the existence of additional loci. To identify novel CRC loci, we conducted a genome-wide linkage scan in 356 white families with no evidence of defective MMR (i.e., no loss of tumor expression of MMR proteins, no microsatellite instability (MSI)-high tumors, or no evidence of linkage to MMR genes). Families were ascertained via the Colon Cancer Family Registry multi-site NCI-supported consortium (Colon CFR), the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. A total of 1,612 individuals (average 5.0 per family including 2.2 affected) were genotyped using genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism linkage arrays; parametric and non-parametric linkage analysis used MERLIN in a priori-defined family groups. Five lod scores greater than 3.0 were observed assuming heterogeneity. The greatest were among families with mean age of diagnosis less than 50 years at 4q21.1 (dominant HLOD = 4.51, α = 0.84, 145.40 cM, rs10518142) and among all families at 12q24.32 (dominant HLOD = 3.60, α = 0.48, 285.15 cM, rs952093). Among families with four or more affected individuals and among clinic-based families, a common peak was observed at 15q22.31 (101.40 cM, rs1477798; dominant HLOD = 3.07, α = 0.29; dominant HLOD = 3.03, α = 0.32, respectively). Analysis of families with only two affected individuals yielded a peak at 8q13.2 (recessive HLOD = 3.02, α = 0.51, 132.52 cM, rs1319036). These previously unreported linkage peaks demonstrate the continued utility of family-based data in complex traits and suggest that new CRC risk alleles remain to be elucidated. © 2012 Cicek et al

Automated measurement of anteroposterior diameter and foraminal widths in MRI images for lumbar spinal stenosis diagnosis

Lumbar Spinal Stenosis causes low back pain through pressures exerted on the spinal nerves. This can be verified by measuring the anteroposterior diameter and foraminal widths of the patient’s lumbar spine. Our goal is to develop a novel strategy for assessing the extent of Lumbar Spinal Stenosis by automatically calculating these distances from the patient’s lumbar spine MRI. Our method starts with a semantic segmentation of T1- and T2-weighted composite axial MRI images using SegNet that partitions the image into six regions of interest. They consist of three main regions-of-interest, namely the Intervertebral Disc, Posterior Element, and Thecal Sac, and three auxiliary regions-of-interest that includes the Area between Anterior and Posterior elements. A novel contour evolution algorithm is then applied to improve the accuracy of the segmentation results along important region boundaries. Nine anatomical landmarks on the image are located by delineating the region boundaries found in the segmented image before the anteroposterior diameter and foraminal widths can be measured. The performance of the proposed algorithm was evaluated through a set of experiments on the Lumbar Spine MRI dataset containing MRI studies of 515 patients. These experiments compare the performance of our contour evolution algorithm with the Geodesic Active Contour and Chan-Vese methods over 22 different setups. We found that our method works best when our contour evolution algorithm is applied to improve the accuracy of both the label images used to train the SegNet model and the automatically segmented image. The average error of the calculated right and left foraminal distances relative to their expert-measured distances are 0.28 mm (p = 0.92) and 0.29 mm (p = 0.97), respectively. The average error of the calculated anteroposterior diameter relative to their expert-measured diameter is 0.90 mm (p = 0.92). The method also achieves 96.7% agreement with an expert opinion on determining the severity of the Intervertebral Disc herniations

Spin chirality on a two-dimensional frustrated lattice

The collective behavior of interacting magnetic moments can be strongly influenced by the topology of the underlying lattice. In geometrically frustrated spin systems, interesting chiral correlations may develop that are related to the spin arrangement on triangular plaquettes. We report a study of the spin chirality on a two-dimensional geometrically frustrated lattice. Our new chemical synthesis methods allow us to produce large single crystal samples of KFe3(OH)6(SO4)2, an ideal Kagome lattice antiferromagnet. Combined thermodynamic and neutron scattering measurements reveal that the phase transition to the ordered ground-state is unusual. At low temperatures, application of a magnetic field induces a transition between states with different non-trivial spin-textures.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure