1,076 research outputs found

    Referencing and borrowing from other systems: the Hong Kong education reforms

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    BACKGROUND: This paper analyses the role of, and approach to, policy referencing and borrowing in Hong Kong’s recent reforms that culminated in the creation of its New Academic Structure and the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education. MAIN ARGUMENT: It argues that Hong Kong has gone further than most jurisdictions not just in responding to global influences on education reform, but in taking explicit steps to internationally benchmark its curriculum and assessment, and in involving the global community at multiple levels in the process of education policy planning and implementation. SOURCES OF EVIDENCE AND METHOD: The paper is based on the documentary analysis of policy documents in Hong Kong, and 23 interviews with key stakeholders in the policy network, including policy-makers, practitioners and community leaders. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: While policy referencing and borrowing in the Hong Kong context can, in part, be traced to a colonial legacy, the Special Administrative Region of China demonstrates a collaborative approach to education reform involving local and international engagement that may be relevant to other systems. Its approach was informed by a measured use of policy referencing that involved ‘horizon scanning’ of other systems’ policies and practices; international benchmarking; and engaging international expertise to facilitate implementation

    Comparison of optical sensors discrimination ability using spectral libraries

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    In remote sensing, the ability to discriminate different land covers or material types is directly linked with the spectral resolution and sampling provided by the optical sensor. Previous studies showed that the spectral resolution is a critical issue, especially in complex environment. In spite of the increasing availability of hyperspectral data, multispectral optical sensors onboard various satellites are acquiring everyday a massive amount of data with a relatively poor spectral resolution (i.e. usually about 4 to 7 spectral bands). These remotely sensed data are intensively used for Earth observation regardless of their limited spectral resolution. In this paper, we studied seven of these optical sensors: Pleiades, QuickBird, SPOT5, Ikonos, Landsat TM, Formosat and Meris. This study focuses on the ability of each sensor to discriminate different materials according to its spectral resolution. We used four different spectral libraries which contains around 2500 spectra of materials and land covers with a fine spectral resolution. These spectra were convolved with the Relative Spectral Responses (RSR) of each sensor to create spectra at the sensors’ resolutions. Then, these reduced spectra were compared using separability indexes (Divergence, Transformed divergence, Bhattacharyya, Jeffreys-Matusita) and machine learning tools. In the experiments, we highlighted that the spectral bands configuration could lead to important differences in classification accuracy according to the context of application (e.g. urban area)

    Les outils au service de la sylviculture : les données de l'Inventaire forestier national (I.F.N.) et leurs applications

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    Comprend les comptes rendus des débats du thÚme de Foresterranée'87 "Caractéristiques de la sylviculture méditerranéenne", une présentation de l'IFN et la carte départementale des types de peuplements forestiers de l'IFN

    Iterated Moire Maps and Braiding of Chiral Polymer Crystals

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    In the hexagonal columnar phase of chiral polymers a bias towards cholesteric twist competes with braiding along an average direction. When the chirality is strong, screw dislocations proliferate, leading to either a tilt grain boundary phase or a new "moire state" with twisted bond order. Polymer trajectories in the plane perpendicular to their average direction are described by iterated moire maps of remarkable complexity.Comment: 10 pages (plain tex) 3 figures uufiled and appende

    Crowdsourcing of Histological Image Labeling and Object Delineation by Medical Students

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    Crowdsourcing in pathology has been performed on tasks that are assumed to be manageable by nonexperts. Demand remains high for annotations of more complex elements in digital microscopic images, such as anatomical structures. Therefore, this work investigates conditions to enable crowdsourced annotations of high-level image objects, a complex task considered to require expert knowledge. 76 medical students without specific domain knowledge who voluntarily participated in three experiments solved two relevant annotation tasks on histopathological images: (1) Labeling of images showing tissue regions, and (2) delineation of morphologically defined image objects. We focus on methods to ensure sufficient annotation quality including several tests on the required number of participants and on the correlation of participants' performance between tasks. In a set up simulating annotation of images with limited ground truth, we validated the feasibility of a confidence score using full ground truth. For this, we computed a majority vote using weighting factors based on individual assessment of contributors against scattered gold standard annotated by pathologists. In conclusion, we provide guidance for task design and quality control to enable a crowdsourced approach to obtain accurate annotations required in the era of digital pathology
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