The Need For Participation In Open And Distance Education: The Open University Malaysia Experience

This paper provides an overview of adult learner participation in open and distance education by focusing participation needs based on selected socio-demographic variables such as age, years of working experience and monthly income. The related study involved a sample of 454 Open University Malaysia students from a number of learning centres located in different parts of the country. The study found that adult learners are generally below the age of 39, relatively not affluent, have less than 20 years of work experience and have a high need for participation. The highest need is professional advancement, followed closely by cognitive interest, and communication improvement while the lowest reported need is escapism/social stimulation. Age and work experience exhibited negative regression coefficients, indicating inverse associations with participation need. These results are comparable to the findings of previous research on the role of age, work experience and monthly income as factors determining participation in adult higher education

Spectral Continiuty : (p, k) - Quasihyponormal and Totally p-(a,b) normal operators

An operator T  B(H) is said to be P-  normal operators for  . In this paper, we prove that continuity of the set theoretic functions spectrum, Weyl spectrum, Browder spectrum and essential surjectivity spectrum on the classes consisting of (p, k)- quasihyponormal operators and totally P- operators

Progressive Faster Residual Convolutional Neural Network for Improving Osteoarthritis of the Temporomandibular Joint Detection

Osteoarthritis of the Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ-OA) is a chronic condition that affects the TMJ and is characterized by the progressive degeneration of the internal surfaces of the joint. Several deep learning models were adopted for identifying the TMJ-OA from the panoramic dental X-ray scans. Amongst, an Optimized Generative Adversarial Network (OGAN) with Faster Residual Convolutional Neural Network (FRCNN) produces more synthetic images to train the FRCNN for recognizing TMJ-OA cases. But, its accuracy was comparatively low while recognizing Region-of-Interest (RoI) from the panoramic scans that have analogous objects. Hence in this paper, an OGAN with a Progressive FRCNN (OGAN-PFRCNN) model is proposed, which enhances the FRCNN by integrating the Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) and RoI-grid attention strategy for TMJ-OA identification. First, the training images are fed to the ResNet101 for feature mining, which provides Multi-Scale Feature Map (MSFM) from the dental panoramic scans. Those features are then passed to the FPN with the RoI-grid attention strategy, which encodes richer characteristics by considering standard attention and graph-based point functions into a combined formulation. Then, those characteristics are fused at various levels to get a useful MSFM, which increases the network efficiency significantly. Moreover, such a Feature Map (FMap) is used to train the PFRCNN model, which is later applied to recognize the test scans into either healthy or TMJ-OA. At last, the testing outcomes show that the OGAN-PFRCNN attains 96.2% accuracy on the panoramic dental X-ray database compared to the FRCNN model

Ultrasonic and Spectral Studies on Hydrogen Bonded Complexes of Aromatic Aldehydes and N-Methylaniline in n-Hexane

Ultrasonic and UV-spectral studies have been carried out for three ternary systems containing N-methylaniline (NMANI) and three structurally different aromatic aldehydes, benzaldehyde (BA), cinnamaldehyde (CA) and salicylaldehyde(SA) in n-hexane medium at 303.15 K and at atmospheric pressure. Acoustical parameters are computed from the measured values of ultrasonic velocity, density and dynamic viscosity. The variation of acoustical parameters in the concentration range investigated establishes complex formation through intermolecular hydrogen bonding between aldehyde and N-methylaniline. The existence of strong aldehyde-amine interaction is also confirmed through the recorded UV-Visible absorption spectra with Benesi-Hildebrand theory at 303.15 K. The formation constants of the hydrogen bonded complexes are determined by spectroscopic and ultrasonic methods and compared. These values computed by two different methods are comparable and follow similar trend. The trend in the formation constants is discussed based on structures of the component molecules and correlate with computed molecular propertie

Effectiveness of Vestibular Stimulation on Weight Gain in Preterm Infants

Premature infants undergo a lot of stressful procedures during care and treatment procedure, which may lead to weight changes. Vestibular stimulation is an intervention designed to improve the developmental and physiological outcomes of preterm infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of vestibular stimuli on weight gain in preterm infants admitted to the NICU. Quasi experimental study design was used in this study; Total 10 Preterm infants admitted to the NICU who met the inclusion criteria were selected. All 10 preterm infants under went weight monitoring as a pre-test measurement. The intervention method was a vestibular stimulation program which was performed by the researcher for 30 minutes twice daily for 2 weeks. End of 1st week and second week weight measurement was taken as a post test intervention.  All the data’s were tabulated and statistically analyzed. Post intervention weight gain was significant in the group compared to the pre-intervention (p ˂ 0.005). This indicates that the vestibular intervention improves weight gain in premature infants. Since premature infants are usually hospitalized in the NICU for a long time due to their low weight and poor physical condition. Hence, considering its positive outcomes, besides specialized care, this effective and very low cost method could be used by physiotherapist to promote weight gain and early discharge of preterm infants

A service based approach for future internet architectures

Doktorgradsavhandling i informasjons- og kommunikasjonsteknologi, Universitetet i Agder, Grimstad, 201

Socio-economic patterning of cardiometabolic risk factors in rural and peri-urban India: Andhra Pradesh children and parents study (APCAPS).

AIM: To assess the prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors by socio-economic position (SEP) in rural and peri-urban Indian population. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Cross-sectional survey of 3,948 adults (1,154 households) from Telangana (2010-2012) was conducted to collect questionnaire-based data, physical measurements and fasting blood samples. We compared the prevalence of risk factors and their clustering by SEP adjusting for age using the Mantel Hansel test. RESULTS: Men and women with no education had higher prevalence of increased waist circumference (men: 8 vs. 6.4 %, P < 0.001; women: 20.9 vs. 12.0 %, P = 0.01), waist-hip ratio (men: 46.5 vs. 25.8 %, P = 0.003; women: 58.8 vs. 29.2 %, P = 0.04) and regular alcohol intake (61.7 vs. 32.5 %, P < 0.001; women: 25.7 vs. 3.8 %, P < 0.001) than educated participants. Unskilled participants had higher prevalence of regular alcohol intake (men: 57.7 vs. 38.7 %, P = 0.001; women: 28.3 vs. 7.3 %, P < 0.001). In contrast, participants with a higher standard of living index had higher prevalence of diabetes (top third vs. bottom third: men 5.2 vs. 3.5 %, P = 0.004; women 5.5 vs. 2.4 %, P = 0.003), hyperinsulinemia (men 29.5 vs. 16.3 %, P = 0.002; women 31.1 vs. 14.3 %, P < 0.001), obesity (men 23.3 vs. 10.6 %, P < 0.001; women 25.9 vs. 12.8 %, P < 0.001), and raised LDL (men 16.8 vs. 11.4 %, P = 0.001; women 21.3 vs. 14.0 %, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Cardiometabolic risk factors are common in rural India but do not show a consistent association with SEP except for higher prevalence of smoking and regular alcohol intake in lower SEP group. Strategies to address the growing burden of cardiometabolic diseases in urbanizing rural India should be assessed for their potential impact on social inequalities in health

Cohort profile: Andhra Pradesh Children and Parents Study (APCAPS).

The Andhra Pradesh Children and Parents Study (APCAPS) was originally established to study the long-term effects of early-life undernutrition on risk of cardiovascular disease. Its aims were subsequently expanded to include trans-generational influences of other environmental and genetic factors on chronic diseases in rural India. It builds on the Hyderabad Nutrition Trial (HNT) conducted in 1987-90 to compare the effects on birthweight of a protein-calorie supplement for pregnant women and children. The index children of HNT and their mothers were retraced and examined in 2003-05, and the children re-examined as young adults aged 18-21 years in 2009-10. The cohort was expanded to include both parents and siblings of the index children in a recently completed follow-up conducted in 2010-12 (N=∼6225 out of 10,213 participants). Recruitment of the remaining residents of these 29 villages (N=∼55,000) in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh is now under way. Extensive data on socio-demographic, lifestyle, medical, anthropometric, physiological, vascular and body composition measures, DNA, stored plasma, and assays of lipids and inflammatory markers on APCAPS participants are available. Details of how to access these data are available from the corresponding author

Role of knowledge management initiatives in organizational innovativeness: Empirical findings from the IT industry

This paper addresses the relationship between knowledge management initiatives in Indian IT organizations and their innovativeness at the organization level by using the survey research methodology. Knowledge management initiatives were measured in the context of cultural, structural, and technological interventions. Innovation was measured in terms of organizational behaviour related to sensitivity, learning, newness, trialability, communicability, risk-readiness, and absorption. A conceptual model was developed to assess the relationship between knowledge management initiatives and innovativeness. A hypothesis that knowledge management initiatives (KMI) influence the innovativeness of the organization was propounded. The questionnaire developed to assess knowledge management initiatives had 60 items, while an already available questionnaire consisting of 65 items was used to measure innovativeness. Eventually, the number of items in the knowledge management initiatives and innovativeness questionnaires was bought down to 45 and 34 respectively. Items were measured on a fivepoint Likert type rating scale, ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The reliability of the questionnaires was checked using Cronbach Alpha. The study was carried out on 84 professionals from 20 Bangalore-based IT organizations that had implemented knowledge management initiatives and had SEI CMM level 5. Means and standard deviations of the variables were computed. The variables were subjected to correlation analysis and factor analysis. A multiple regression analysis was done to identify the influence of knowledge management initiatives on organizational innovativeness. An organizational innovativeness score, was used as the dependent variable and the variables of knowledge management initiatives were used as the independent variables. The results of data analysis showed that the initiatives taken by companies to enhance their knowledge assets fall into the culture, structure, and technology subsystems and that all the three are highly correlated: • Technology and culture are more strongly associated with each other, as compared to their association with structure. • All the three KMI variables strongly influence organizational innovativeness, with &apos;culture&apos; being the most important. • &apos;Learning climate,&apos; a variable of culture, is found to be the most significant of the variables to influence innovativeness. Hence, organizations that lay emphasis on learning and provide excellent training facilities can foster a more innovative environment. • Interestingly, &apos;risk readiness&apos; is not a factor contributing to innovativeness and is not significantly associated with the other variables. • The variables like leadership, networking, reward and recognition, structure and technology do not significantly influence innovativeness

A Study to Examine the Factors Contributing Towards Financial Management Behavior Among Non-Finance Students in AIMST University, Kedah

This paper aims to examine the factors contributing to financial management behavior among non-finance students at AIMST University, Kedah. The dependent variable is financial management behavior while the independent variables are financial literacy, family’s social status, and financial self-efficacy. The data for this study was collected through the distribution of self-administered questionnaires. The population for this research is undergraduate non-finance students at AIMST University. The data collected were analysed using descriptive analysis, reliability analysis, Multiple Linear Regression Analysis, and Pearson Correlation Coefficient Analysis. The findings of this research revealed that financial literacy, family social status, and financial self-efficacy have significant relationships with financial management behaviour