Research psychographics of the nurse professoriate in a Philippine comprehensive University

This two-pronged study seeks to ascertain the research psychographic characteristics of a select group of nurse professoriate (n=37) in a comprehensive university in the Philippines. The quantitative part of the study had an adapted survey questionnaire, which profiled the demographic and psychographic characteristics of the respondents. Defining the qualitative aspect of the inquiry was an in-depth interview with five (5) of the respondents chosen purposively to triangulate the data yielded by the questionnaire. Data were treated statistically and interpretively to describe the phenomenon under inquiry. It is interesting to note that while the nurse professoriate had shown a positive attitude towards research, variables such as time constraints, lack of research knowledge, research support structure and motivation hinder them from doing research activities. Implications of the study to reculturing, restructuring and reformulating efforts in research are also discussed.     

Catch-up growth assessment in long-term physically neglected and emotionally abused preschool age male children

OBJECTIVE: To assess the catch-up growth of long-term physically neglected and emotionally abused preschool male children who have entered foster residential care and remained 1 year after initial placement. METHOD: Longitudinal study over a 7-year period (1994-2001). So that a child was eligible for the study, three selection criteria were included: (1) aged between 24 and 48 months at the time of entry into residential facility, (2) having suffered both long-term (more than 6 months) physically neglected and emotionally abused, and (3) having stayed in foster care for 1 year after initial placement. Weight, height, and head circumference were established upon entry and re-assessed 1 year after initial placement, calculating the annual growth velocity. Results were compared with normal regional longitudinal standards of reference (Z score). Student's t test was used to assess statistically significant differences. RESULTS: During the study period, 87 children aged between 24 and 48 months (54 male/33 female) were admitted to residential facility after having suffered both long-term physical neglect and emotional abuse. Nevertheless, only 20 children (23% of the total admissions) met the third selection criteria (having remained 1 year after initial placement). Of these children, all were males and at placement they were between the ages of 30 and 42 months, with an average age of 36 months (1.9 SD). At placement, the analyzed parameters were below the normal standards, showing a statistically significant difference for height (Z score = -1.29; p = .008) and weight (Z score = -.75; p = .038). The annual growth velocity for all parameters was above the normal standards showing a statistically significant difference for height (Z score = +1.43; p = .009). One year after initial placement, the significant differences for height (Z score = -.68; p = .102) and weight (Z score = -.31; p = .435) with respect to the normal standards disappeared, though still remained below, showing a significant catch-up growth for height (improvement height Z = +.61 SD). CONCLUSIONS: At placement, the both long-term physically neglected and emotionally abused preschool age male children showed a mild form of chronic malnutrition with growth failure. Growth failure was reversible after the first year of stay, which demonstrates that this delay in growth was secondary to nutritional and psychosocial factors. Placement in foster residential care was beneficial for the catch-up growth of these patients.     

Understanding patterns of political dynamics in the context of state universities in the CALABARZON region, Philippines

State Universities and Colleges (SUC’s) in the Philippines are usually established by converting technical/vocational high schools into a full-blown university through legislative fiat to satisfy political agenda. Political influence appears to be inevitable particularly in the areas of jurisdiction and governance. Three (3) state universities in the CALABARZON Region were purposively selected as subjects of the study, namely: Cavite State University (CvSU), Batangas State University (BSU) and University of RizalSystems-Rizal State College (URS-RSC). Though conversion requires political backings, the quality of delivery of educational services to different clientele was maintained. Organizational change poses a specific agenda requiring quality of leadership—not only at the top of the organization but also among all constituents. Understanding the political dynamics will bring school administrators and stakeholders together in the pursuit for excellence.     

Native plant naming by high-school students of different socioeconomic status: implications for botany education

People’s diminished awareness of plants, affected by anthropogenic environmental deterioration, has challenged science education to overcome the obstacles impeding a better understanding of their meaning and value. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the socioeconomic status of high-school students, as indicated by their attendance at private or state schools, on their knowledge of native plants. In total, 321 students aged 15–18 were asked to write down 10 plants native to Córdoba, Argentina, in a freelist questionnaire. Students listed a mean of 6.8 species of a total of 165 different categories of plant names. The majority of the species named were exotic to Córdoba (63%) or Argentina (50.6%, of which 33.8% were adventitious), indicating an ‘adventitious-to-native’ effect by which all spontaneously reproducing plants were presumed to be native species. However, the 20 most frequently named plants were mainly native, with ‘Algarrobo’ (Prosopis spp.) and ‘Espinillo’ (Vachellia caven) being the most mentioned. Students’ socioeconomic status had a significant effect on the number of species named, with the students of state schools (where the less well-off sectors of the society attend) mentioning more species and, among these, more native ones than the students from private schools. Furthermore, we defined size, colour and scent as being conspicuous traits of plant flowers that are relevant for human perception, and found that the most frequently named adventitious species, unlike the native ones, were those exhibiting big brightly-coloured flowers which ranged from being inodorous to having medium intensity scents.     

Sociocultural Variables That Impact High School Students’ Perceptions of Native Fauna: a Study on the Species Component of the Biodiversity Concept

This study investigates the influence of school sector (private versus state schools) and student gender on knowledge of native fauna. Our main objectives were (a) to describe the knowledge of high school students from the province of Cordoba, Argentina with respect to native animal species, (b) to determine if any exotic species (introduced or domestic) are considered native, and (c) to analyze the effects of school sector and gender on the students’ knowledge of the native fauna. In total, 321 students aged 15–18 from 14 urban schools (8 state and 6 private schools) were asked to write down ten animals native to Córdoba, Argentina, in a free-list questionnaire. Relative frequencies and Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMM) were used to analyze the categorized (animal names) and continuous answers (quantity of responses, number of native animals, etc.), with the 25 most frequently mentioned species showing a predominance of native ones, of which “Puma” (Puma concolor) and “Andean condor” (Vultur gryphus) were the most prominent. An overrepresentation of mammalian species compared to other classes of chordates was also found, with high school students mentioning native and domestic species higher on the free-list. Using GLMM, we found that school sector had a significant effect on the number of native animals mentioned at both national and local levels, and on domestic and mixed species. Finally, male students mentioned more species and more native animals than their female counterparts. These findings were interpreted and discussed in light of sociocultural and traditional ecological knowledge theories, from which several implications arose related to research and practice.     

Using structural contexts to compress semistructured text collections

We describe a compression model for semistructured documents, called Structural Contexts Model (SCM), which takes advantage of the context information usually implicit in the structure of the text. The idea is to use a separate model to compress the text that lies inside each different structure type (e.g., different XML tag). The intuition behind SCM is that the distribution of all the texts that belong to a given structure type should be similar, and different from that of other structure types.     

Optimal control in unobservable integral Volterra systems

This paper presents solution of the optimal linear-quadratic controller problem for unobservable integral Volterra systems with continuous/discontinuous states under deterministic uncertainties, over continuous/discontinuous observations. Due to the separation principle for integral systems, the initial continuous problem is split into the optimal minmax filtering problem for integral Volterra systems with deterministic uncertainties over continuous/discontinuous observations and the optimal linear-quadratic control (regulator) problem for observable deterministic integral Volterra systems with continuous/discontinuous states. As a result, the system of the optimal controller equations are obtained, including the linear equation for the optimally controlled minmax estimate and two Riccati equations for its ellipsoid matrix (optimal gain matrix of the filter) and the optimal regulator gain matrix. Then, in the discontinuous problems, the equation for the optimal controller and the equations for the optimal filter and regulator gain matrices are obtained using the filtering procedure for deriving the filtering equations over discontinuous observations proceeding from the known filtering equations over continuous ones and the dual results in the optimal control problem for integral systems. The technical example illustrating application of the obtained results is finally given.     

Development of an efficient search filter to retrieve systematic reviews from PubMed

Objective:Locating systematic reviews is essential for clinicians and researchers when creating or updating reviews and for decision-making in health care. This study aimed to develop a search filter for retrieving systematic reviews that improves upon the performance of the PubMed systematic review search filter.Methods:Search terms were identified from abstracts of reviews published in Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and the titles of articles indexed as systematic reviews in PubMed. Both the precision of the candidate terms and the number of systematic reviews retrieved from PubMed were evaluated after excluding the subset of articles retrieved by the PubMed systematic review filter. Terms that achieved a precision greater than 70% and relevant publication types indexed with MeSH terms were included in the filter search strategy.Results:The search strategy used in our filter added specific terms not included in PubMed''s systematic review filter and achieved a 61.3% increase in the number of retrieved articles that are potential systematic reviews. Moreover, it achieved an average precision that is likely greater than 80%.Conclusions:The developed search filter will enable users to identify more systematic reviews from PubMed than the PubMed systematic review filter with high precision.     

Educational Planning and Social Responsibility: Eleven Years of Mega Planning at the Sonora Institute of Technology (ITSON)

ABSTRACT The Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora (ITSON), a public and autonomous university in Cuidad Obregon, Sonora in Mexico has, since its inception, maintained a commitment to society and public service. To transform this commitment into valued results, it has used Mega Planning as its framework over the last eleven years. This article illustrates the impact an educational institution can have through a strategic planning and implementation approach that is focused on measurable objectives, the appropriate processes and activities, and the required resources for the development of its region (i.e., students and their environment). The article will begin with a brief background of the institution, its strategic approach, the subsequent curriculum and organization reform, and finally four key strategic programs that have had a positive social impact in the region: The Integrated Community Development Program; ITSON‐Consulting; Masters in Agribusiness; and the Software Factory.     

Robust stability analysis of formation control in local frames under time-varying delays and actuator faults

This paper investigates the robust stability of a multiagent system moving to a desired rigid formation in presence of unknown time-varying communication delays and actuator faults. Each agent uses relative position measurements to implement the proposed control method, which does not require common coordinate references. However, the presence of time delays in the measurements, which is inherent to the communication links between agents, has a negative impact in the control system performance leading, in some cases, to instability. Furthermore, the robust stability analysis becomes more complex if failures on actuators are taken into account. In addition, delays may be subject to time variations, depending on network load, availability of communication resources, dynamic routing protocols, or other environmental conditions. To cope with these problems, a sufficient condition based on Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI) is provided to ensure the robust asymptotic convergence of the agents to the desired formation. This condition is valid for any arbitrarily fast time-varying delays and actuator faults, given a worst-case point-to-point delay. Finally, simulation results show the performance of the proposed approach.