Getting Back on Track: Effects of a Community College Program for Probationary Students

Rates of graduation and degree completion at community colleges remain distressingly low. This report evaluates two versions of a program designed to help probationary students at community college succeed in school. One version increased the average number of credits earned, the proportion of students who earned a grade point average of "C" or higher, and the proportion who moved off probation

Paying for College Success: An Introduction to the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration

This policy brief describes a demonstration launched by MDRC in four states in 2008 to evaluate whether performance-based scholarships -- paid contingent on attaining academic benchmarks -- are an effective way to improve persistence and academic success among low-income college students. The demonstration builds on positive results from an earlier MDRC study in Louisiana

A Good Start: Two-Year Effects of a Freshmen Learning Community Program at Kingsborough Community College

Freshmen in a "learning community" at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY, moved more quickly through developmental English requirements, took and passed more courses, and earned more credits in their first semester than students in a control group. Two years later, they were also somewhat more likely to be enrolled in college

Extending RSS to meet central bank needs.

The Federal Reserve wanted to use RSS to represent not only news, such as press releases, but also data, such as exchange rates. The Fed hoped to use one set of feeds to accommodate two different audiences for RSS; human readers (at one remove) and self-contained automated processes. While the different RSS specifications provide elements for traditional news items, they require extensions to handle data. Since central banks all tend to report the same sorts of information, the Fed joined with other central banks to create an extended specification that met their needs. This specification extends RSS 1.0, which is the more readily extended RSS specification. The extension uses elements from established metadata standards wherever it can, such as for language and audience, and adds elements when subjects are not found in those standards or are more particular to central banks, such as (monetary) currency. Although the central banks intend these new elements to be used primarily by machine processes, the element names have sufficient semantic transparency so that they can be understood by human readers

Development and Rapid Sensory Descriptive Characterization of Cereal Bars Made with Brazilian Licuri Nut (Syagrus coronata)

Licuri (Syagrus coronata) is an oilseed fruit common in the Brazilian caatinga and cerrado biomes. This fruit has high socioeconomic importance in the regions where it grows, being incorporated into exported animal feed and also into gastronomic preparations. Cereal bars are ready-to-eat highly consumed products with increased demand, commonly made with cereals and oilseeds such as licuri. In this sense, the incorporation of licuri in cereal bars may increase its socioeconomic value and expand its potential use. Thus, the objective of the study was to analyze acceptance and describe the sensory characteristics of cereal bars incorporated with licuri nuts. This study was conducted in four stages: (1) development of samples; (2) chemical composition analysis; (3) sensory analysis; and (4) statistical analysis. Cereal bars with licuri presented proportionally lower carbohydrate and protein content as the incorporation of licuri nut increased. However, the dietary fiber content increased. Further, 122 untrained panelists participated in the analysis. The results showed that samples with all proportions of incorporation of licuri nuts were acceptable. Furthermore, the sensory descriptors related to the presence of licuri were positively associated with product acceptance. In this way, this study demonstrates yet another possibility for use of the fruit, increasing its socioeconomic potential.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

HHT-based Analysis of ECG Signals of Patients with Borderline Mental Disorders

This paper describes a solution for borderline mental disorders detection. This approach is based on the ECG processing by Hilbert-Huang Transformation. The described approach allows to develop an additional module for mental disorders diagnostic systems. The research is based on the fact that in the conditions of borderline mental disorders there are changes in patients' heart function. Detection of significant ECG informative parameters is based on the effective and accurate measurement of amplitude, time, frequency and energy parameters of the ECG signal. A verified and registered database of 780 ECG signals of patients with borderline mental disorders and healthy people is used. The proposed method is described and the results are shown. The errors of the method with current sampling do not exceed 4%. The developed approach using volumetric spectral surfaces has showed a high probability of determining the period of occurrence of psycho-traumatic situations in various patients using the ECG