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This study investigated teachers' views of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The sample consisted of 30 teachers recruited from different cities of Turkey using criteria sampling. Phenomenology was the research method of choice. Data were collected using a semi-structured interview form and analyzed using content analysis. Participants use MOOCs because they are free of charge and have good content and high quality. MOOCs help them learn science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, gain professional knowledge, and develop skills, and positive attitudes and values. Most participants are interested in integrating MOOCs in their classes; however, they face various problems during MOOCs, such as loss of motivation and Internet connection issues. It is recommended that MOOCs be designed in such a way that they increase participants' motivation and allow for feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a philosophical analysis of a putative right of the child to have their expressed views considered in matters that affect them. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 is an influential and interesting statement of that right. The article shows that the child's 'right to a voice' is complex. Its complexity lies in the problem of contrasting an adult's normative power of choice with a child's weighted views, in the various senses in which we might consider the child's views, and in the questions of how to weight those views and how their weighting makes a practical difference in coming to a decision. In so doing we criticise other accounts that simply regard a child's views as having consultative value. We also make better sense of how we might weight a child's views. The philosophical issues addressed in the article carry implications for how we might understand Article 12 that are not satisfactorily identified and addressed in the voluminous literature on Article 12 within childhood studies. These issues also have implications for how we might understand the distinction between adults and children in respect of powers of personal choice. We conclude by emphasising the importance and value of the right that Article 12 seeks to formally identify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to determine the feelings, thoughts, perceptions and cultural standpoint of nursing students concerning patient privacy. This study was conducted as a qualitative descriptive design. The homogeneous sampling method, purposive sampling method for qualitative research samples, was used to determine the study group. Data were collected from 17 nursing students at a state university in Turkey. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted, and content analysis was used to analyze data. Three main themes emerged from the data: perception of privacy, factors affecting patient privacy and suggested solutions. Four sub-categories emerged: religion, gender, culture and reassuring communication. The perceptions of many of the students relating to the concept of privacy coincided with the concepts of confidentiality and all kinds of information concerning the patient. It was seen that the most effective intervention among the students' solution proposals to ensure privacy was the necessity to make physical improvements in hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Complementary medicines are a popular healthcare choice among patients/consumers, and most pharmacies sell these products. Pharmacists are well-placed to advise on complementary medicines, but their training and practices for these products are not optimal. Pharmacists' professional practices for complementary medicines ought to be influenced by professional codes of ethics and standards. Objective To examine community pharmacists' perspectives on complementary medicines in New Zealand, including motivations and justifications for selling these products, and professional and ethical issues complementary medicines raise for pharmacists. Setting Community pharmacists in New Zealand. Method Qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 27 New Zealand practising community pharmacists identified through purposive and convenience sampling. Main outcome measure Participants' views, experiences, and professional practices for complementary medicines. Results Participants struggled to clearly describe products they considered complementary medicines. Perspectives towards these products ranged from strongly supportive to somewhat sceptical; none was strongly opposed. Participants had several motivations for selling complementary medicines, particularly consumer demand and profits. Participants acknowledged ethical issues concerning complementary medicines, including lack of evidence of efficacy and pharmacists' limited training/knowledge. Few referred explicitly to complementary-medicines-related statements in the Pharmacy Council of New Zealand's Code of Ethics, or indicated these guided their practice. Conclusion Participants sold complementary medicines despite having limited knowledge on these products and concerns about efficacy; participants justified this as they believe they are providing an holistic option for patients, and/or ensuring complementary medicines do no harm. Participants were mindful of ethical/professional issues regarding complementary medicines, but were not necessarily aware of, or guided by, explicit statements in the Pharmacy Council of New Zealand's Code of Ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When engineering complex systems, models are typically used to represent various systems aspects. These models are often heterogeneous in terms of modeling languages, provenance, number or scale. As a result, the information actually relevant to engineers is usually split into different kinds of interrelated models. To be useful in practice, these models need to be properly integrated to provide global views over the system. This has to be made possible even when those models are serialized or stored in different formats adapted to their respective nature and scalability needs. Model view approaches have been proposed to tackle this issue. They provide unification mechanisms to combine and query various different models in a transparent way. These views usually target specific engineering tasks such as system design, monitoring and evolution. In an industrial context, there can be many large-scale use cases where model views can be beneficial, in order to trace runtime and design-time data, for example. However, existing model view solutions are generally designed to work on top of one single modeling technology (even though model import/export capabilities are sometimes provided). Moreover, they mostly rely on in-memory constructs and low-level modeling APIs that have not been designed to scale in the context of large models stored in different kinds of data sources. This paper presents a general solution to efficiently support scalable model views over heterogeneous modeling resources possibly handled via different modeling technologies. To this intent, it describes our integration approach between a model view framework and various modeling technologies providing access to multiple types of modeling resources (e.g., in XML/XMI, CSV, databases). It also presents how queries on such model views can be executed efficiently by benefiting from the optimization of the different model technologies and underlying persistence backends. Our solution has been evaluated on a practical large-scale use case provided by the industry-driven European MegaM@Rt2 project that aims at implementing a runtime ↔ design time feedback loop. The corresponding EMF-based tooling support, modeling artifacts and reproducible benchmarks are all available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, a number of approaches have been proposed on the description of systems and software in terms of multiple views represented by models. This modelling branch, so-called multi-view software and system modelling, praises a differentiated and complex scientific body of knowledge. With this study, we aimed at identifying, classifying, and evaluating existing solutions for multi-view modelling of software and systems. To this end, we conducted a systematic literature review of the existing state of the art related to the topic. More specifically, we selected and analysed 40 research studies among over 8600 entries. We defined a taxonomy for characterising solutions for multi-view modelling and applied it to the selected studies. Lastly, we analysed and discussed the data extracted from the studies. From the analysed data, we made several observations, among which: (i) there is no uniformity nor agreement in the terminology when it comes to multi-view artefact types, (ii) multi-view approaches have not been evaluated in industrial settings and (iii) there is a lack of support for semantic consistency management and the community does not appear to consider this as a priority. The study results provide an exhaustive overview of the state of the art for multi-view software and systems modelling useful for both researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving query performance remains one of the most interesting and challenging goals for both the academic and industrial communities. Indeed, cloud computing has complicated the traditional process of query optimization since many new challenges must be considered. Great efforts have been made to address this problem in the context of cloud computing. The present article aims to provide a complete view of query optimization in cloud computing. It provides a systematic survey on query processing in cloud environment through three main phases. It first identifies the specific cloud challenges facing query processing techniques. Then, it reviews and classifies the current query optimization techniques based on a proposed taxonomy. Finally, it compares and discusses the surveyed techniques based on the specific challenges related to the cloud environment. This paper provides readers with some recommendations which must be considered in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modeling all aspects of a complex system within a single model is a difficult, if not impossible, task. Multi-view modeling is a methodology where different aspects of the system are captured by different models, or views. A key question then is consistency: if different views of a system have some degree of overlap, how can we guarantee that they are consistent, i.e., that they do not contradict each other? In this paper we formulate this and other basic problems in multi-view modeling within an abstract formal framework. We then instantiate this framework onto several discrete system settings: languages and automata over finite and infinite words, and symbolic transition systems; and study how checking view consistency and other problems can be solved in these settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long term investors typically base their allocation decisions on a combination of expert knowledge and forecasting models. The forecasting models combine historical data with forward-looking market assumptions to produce a multivariate density forecast for the relevant asset classes. The investor's allocation decisions, however, can be sensitive to small adjustments in these density forecasts. In this paper, we present a framework for adjusting density forecasts and, in particular, the forecast's correlation structure. For this, we use the computational approach to Meucci's entropy pooling method. When the density forecast is represented by sample points, the computational approach adjusts the density forecast by assigning weights to the sample points. This paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, we show how to apply the computational approach in a time-dependent setting with sample paths, called scenarios, instead of sample points. Second, to ease the method's use in practice, we present a heuristic that forces the resulting weights to be discrete. With this, the adjusted density forecast can be represented by a finite number of equally weighted scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the standard version of the counterfactual comparative account of harm, an event is overall harmful for an individual if and only if she would have been on balance better off if it had not occurred. This view faces the "preemption problem." In the recent literature, there are various ingenious attempts to deal with this problem, some of which involve slight additions to, or modifications of, the counterfactual comparative account. We argue, however, that none of these attempts work, and that the preemption problem continues to haunt the counterfactual comparative account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is it for something to be essential to an item? For some time, it was standard to think that the concept of necessity alone can provide an answer: for something to be essential to an item is for it to be strictly implied by the existence of that item. We now tend to think that this view fails because its analysans is insufficient for its analysandum. In response, some argue that we can supplement the analysis in terms of necessity with a further condition. In this paper I argue that this view is untenable in its current form. I then provide a glimmer of hope to those who think that essence is at least partially analyzable in terms of necessity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined adult perceptions of dyslexia among US adults. Participants (n = 623) answered survey questions pertaining to characteristics, views, and possible causes of DYS. Exploratory factor analysis revealed five distinct factors: (1) psychosocial causes, (2) external causes, (3) biological causes, (4) consequences, and (5) controllability. Three-way ANOVA's were conducted to determine the effects of ethnicity, gender, and parental status on how DYS was perceived. The results revealed ethnic, gender, and parental status differences. Males endorsed psychosocial causes and external causes more often than females. Those who self-identified as Asian viewed DYS as more controllable in comparison to Whites. Results also revealed a three-way interaction regarding controllability. Understanding the public's perceptions about developmental disorders helps distinguish true from erroneous beliefs, and understanding differences that may exist in particular groups can help implement targeted actions to improve awareness, care, and interventions for families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The benefits of professional pharmacy services in improving patient outcomes and reducing health expenditure are well documented. To a large extent, these services are not implemented in many developing countries. Objective To explore pharmacists' perceptions of and willingness to provide professional services in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the perceived barriers and facilitators. The current provision of pharmacy-based services and capacity for service delivery were also explored. Setting Community pharmacies in Sharjah and Dubai in the UAE. Methods A 34-item cross-sectional survey was conducted. It assessed community pharmacists' perceptions of and willingness to provide professional services in the future, current service provision and capacity to deliver professional services. A descriptive analysis of responses was undertaken. Main outcome measure Community pharmacists' perceptions of and willingness to provide pharmacy-based professional services in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and associated barriers and facilitators. Results Overall, 200 community pharmacists completed the survey. Ninety-two percent of participants thought that it is time for community pharmacists to engage in extended services (screening, medication use reviews, and chronic disease management) provided that adequate training and regulatory approvals are given. The current restrictive legislations and negative public perception were perceived as major barriers to providing extended services, but lack of time and support staff were also considered barriers. Conclusions Community pharmacists held strong positive views regarding future engagement in professional services. Given the compelling public health case for expansion of affordable care, it is timely to expand health services in the UAE by using the untapped clinical skills of pharmacists. Transition towards professional pharmacy services requires support from key stakeholders including medical and regulatory organizations, and public acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a framework to support the development of architectural descriptions that have DM2-compliance data and are constructed and integrated under considering of the consistency between views as components of the viewpoints with different perspectives of the system. To do so, we developed two heavy-weight ontologies: DM2 Data Dictionary ontology containing whole things of DoDAF DM2 terms such as the definitions, aliases, and mapping relations to DoDAF Models and architectural description ontology expresses all outcomes of efforts to develop the architectural descriptions in a case structure. Based on the ontologies, our framework implements a fuzzy-semantic similarity measure to identify the appropriate views using case-based reasoning to meet the goal as a solution of the architecture to solve a problem. Furthermore, we performed data validation to check the DM2 compliance based on DM2 Data Dictionary ontology. To verify the superiority of our framework, we perform the three kinds of evaluations. First, we evaluate the effectiveness of the fuzzy-semantic similarity measure. Second, we verify the completeness of relationships of the data entities and attributes required to develop the architectural descriptions. Finally, we show the performance of the DM2 Data Dictionary ontology from a DM2 compliance. As a result, the experimental results verified the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the view-based query determinacy problem over graph databases for queries defined as unions of path queries. These queries select pairs of nodes in a graph that are connected through a path whose length falls in a given set. A view specification is a set of such queries. We say that a view specification V determines a query Q if, for all databases D, the answers to V on D contain enough information to answer Q. Our main result states that, given a view V, there exists an explicit bound that depends on V such that we can decide the determinacy problem for all queries that ask for a path longer than this bound, and provide first-order rewritings for the queries that are determined. We call this notion asymptotic determinacy. As a corollary, we can also compute the set of almost all path queries that are determined by V. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dealing with multiple representations and their connections plays a key role for learners to build up conceptual knowledge in the mathematics classroom. Hence, professional knowledge and views of mathematics teachers regarding the use of multiple representations certainly merit attention. In particular, investigating such views of preservice teachers affords identifying corresponding needs for teacher education. However, specific empirical research is scarce. Taking into account the possible role of culture, this study consequently focuses on views about using multiple representations held by more than 100 English and more than 200 German preservice teachers. The results indicate that there are culture-dependent aspects of preservice teachers' views, but also that there are common needs for professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative analysis of the views of 20-year-olds (first generation, born and raised in post-Soviet years) about the cities where they live was conducted based on surveys of students in three neighboring largest cities on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea: Kaliningrad, Klaipėda, and Gdańsk. The most important aspects of urban life for young people were identified. The needs of Kaliningrad students were compared with the forecast scenarios of city development. It was shown that young people request improvement of public spaces and development of historical memory policy, while the city administration is more concerned with solving quotidian tangible problems and searching for large investments. It is concluded that the lack of consideration for young people's interests in the project for development of Kaliningrad hampers improvement in living standards in the city in general and human capital accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper describes principles and application of a novel routine that enables the quantitative analysis of the photochemical O-J phase of the variable fluorescence F associated with the reversible photo-reduction of the secondary electron acceptor Q of photosystem II (PSII) in algae and intact leaves. The kinetic parameters that determine the variable fluorescence F( t) associated with the release of photochemical quenching are estimated from 10 µs time-resolved light-on and light-off responses of F induced by two subsequent light pulses of 0.25 (default) and 1000 ms duration, respectively. Application of these pulses allows estimations of (i) the actual value of the rate constants k and k of the light excitation (photoreduction of Q) and of the dark re-oxidation of photoreduced Q ( $${\text{Q}}_{\text{A}}^{ - }$$ ), respectively, (ii) the actual maximal normalized variable fluorescence [ nF] associated with 100 % photoreduction of Q of open RCs, and (iii) the actual size β of RCs in which the re-oxidation of $${\text{Q}}_{\text{A}}^{ - }$$ is largely suppressed (Q-nonreducing RC with k ~ 0). The rate constants of the dark reversion of Fv associated with the release of photo-electrochemical quenching F and photo-electric stimulation F in the successive J-I and I-P parts of the thermal phase are in the range of (100 ms) and (1 s), respectively. The kinetics of fluorescence changes during and after the I-P phase are given special attention in relation to the hypothesis on the involvement of a Δ µ-dependent effect during this phase and thereafter. Paper closes with author's personal view on the demands that should be fulfilled for chlorophyll fluorescence methods being a correct and unchallenged signature of photosynthesis in algae and plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Morphine is widely used in cancer care, and understanding the concerns and perceptions of patients, family and friends is vital to managing pain and distress effectively. The 'myths of morphine' have frequently been discussed in medical literature, yet the extent to which such views are held is not clear. This qualitative project explores the perceptions and attitudes of the wider community towards morphine use in cancer care, to understand this 'mythology' according to those who in the future may themselves require its use. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were held with patients presenting to a metropolitan general practice clinic in Melbourne, Australia. A grounded theory framework underpinned the data collection and thematic analysis undertaken. Results: Interviewees (15) were aged 24-81, with a variety of experiences with cancer care and previous morphine use. Interviewees were highly supportive of morphine use in cancer care, with this attitude founded on the perceived severity of cancer pain and the powerful nature of morphine. They described a number of reasons morphine may be used in cancer care: to treat pain, to enable peace and also as a treatment for cancer. Conclusion: The public view of morphine to emerge from this study is markedly different from that discussed in the myths of morphine. It is viewed as a medication that has the ability to provide peace and control both pain and the course of cancer. The participants in this study described a wish for greater involvement in pain control decisions, perceiving morphine as a facilitator rather than a barrier to good cancer care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constraints that may be obtained by composition from simpler constraints are present, in some way or another, in almost every constraint program. The decomposition of such constraints is a standard technique for obtaining an adequate propagation algorithm from a combination of propagators designed for simpler constraints. The decomposition approach is appealing in several ways. Firstly because creating a specific propagator for every constraint is clearly infeasible since the number of constraints is infinite. Secondly, because designing a propagation algorithm for complex constraints can be very challenging. Finally, reusing existing propagators allows to reduce the size of code to be developed and maintained. Traditionally, constraint solvers automatically decompose constraints into simpler ones using additional auxiliary variables and propagators, or expect the users to perform such decomposition themselves, eventually leading to the same propagation model. In this paper we explore views, an alternative way to create efficient propagators for such constraints in a modular, simple and correct way, which avoids the introduction of auxiliary variables and propagators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2001, Healthy Start was required to screen for maternal depression. To support this mandate, technical assistance (TA) consultations were provided to eleven programs. Participant evaluations assessed TA recipients' views, a foundational level of program evaluation. Staff evaluated TA presentations immediately; and directors assessed its helpfulness in a 6-month and a 5-year follow-up. Staff believed their knowledge increased significantly; the majority rated TA presentations as 'useful' to 'very useful.' Most directors rated TA as 'useful' or 'very useful' in achieving TA goals, reported having 'few' or 'no' obstacles in screening, and rated staff as 'willing' or 'very willing' to screen. A range of educational programs have been developed to assist the implementation of maternal depression screening. The current evaluation indicates that diverse types of programs held positive views of TA consultation and believed it was effective. The success of the method argues for further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is a high-level, object-oriented language for contractual system specifications. Despite its expressivity, OCL does not provide primitives for a compact specification of invariability. In this paper, problems with invariability specification are listed and some weaknesses of existing solutions are pointed out. The question of invariability specification is addressed and a simple but expressive extension of OCL is proposed. It allows a view-oriented specification of invariability constraints, whereby we restrict the notion of view to reducts based on order-sorted algebras. The semantics of this extension is defined in terms of standard OCL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intents to present the overall state of the local government and attention has been drowned particularly on the new commence Upazila in Bangladesh. Attempts have been made to address sensitive issue of debate whether the MPs should have the role in the local government or not as a public representative, whether a democratic Upazila Parishad in Bangladesh enhances its responsive role to the people who elected themselves and the consciousness of the mass people about the elected representatives and their functions and also the expectations of the local people to their elected representatives. The study carried out on the selected eight Upazilas from the prevailing seven divisions in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing number of prenatal diagnostic tests in prenatal screening strategies, raises the question what tests to offer and why. This qualitative study investigated the views and preferences of professionals and potential users regarding four diagnostic test options for women at increased risk for common aneuploidies. Seven focus group sessions were conducted in The Netherlands between October 2009 and June 2010, with various categories of participants ( n = 55): professionals engaged in prenatal testing and potential users of this testing (meaning pregnant women and parents of young children). Participants were invited to mention all pros and cons and their preferences regarding four hypothetical diagnostic test options, presented on vignettes: a standard offer of rapid aneuploidy detection, karyotyping or array comparative genomic hybridization, representing a narrow, traditional and broad test, respectively, and the option of individualised choice. Then, a semi-structured group interview was conducted. The data were analysed by the constant comparative method. Participants identified similar test-specific pros and cons but showed different preferences. Users' opinion on what test to offer as a general policy differed from what they would choose themselves. All participants agreed that in theory, users should be enabled to make an informed choice about what test to apply, but they disagreed about the feasibility of this ideal. Standard narrow testing was favoured for its limiting effects on emotional and organisational burdens; individualised choice was preferred for assuring women's decisive influence. The varying opinions reflect different views on what autonomy in the prenatal screening context means, suggest that a single standard test offer is inadequate and that differentiation will be needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In process-driven, service-oriented architectures (SOAs), process activities can perform service operations, data transformations, or human tasks. Unfortunately, the process activities are usually tightly coupled. Thus, when the number of activities in the process grows, focusing on particular activities of the flow such as the service operations reading or writing persistent data is a time-consuming task. In particular, in order to solve structural problems concerning persistent data access such as deadlocks in data-intensive business processes, stakeholders need to understand the underlying persistent data access details of the activities i.e. physical storage schemes, and database connections. With our view-based model-driven approach, we provide a solution to generate flows of persistent data access activities (which we refer to as persistent data access flows). To the best of our knowledge these persistent data access flows are not used to solve structural problems in process-driven SOAs, yet. Moreover, our persistent data access flows can be flattened by diverse filer criteria e.g. by filtering all activities reading or writing from a specific database or table. Using our approach, we can enhance traceability and documentation of persistent data access in business processes. In a series of motivating scenarios from an industrial case study we present how our persistent data access flow concept can contribute to enhance productivity in service-oriented, process-driven environments. We qualitatively evaluate our concepts and prototypes, and finally, discuss the correctness and the complexity of the underlying algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When implementing a propagator for a constraint, one must decide about variants: When implementing min, should one also implement max? Should one implement linear constraints both with unit and non-unit coefficients? Constraint variants are ubiquitous: implementing them requires considerable (if not prohibitive) effort and decreases maintainability, but will deliver better performance than resorting to constraint decomposition. This paper shows how to use views to derive propagator variants, combining the efficiency of dedicated propagator implementations with the simplicity and effortlessness of decomposition. A model for views and derived propagators is introduced. Derived propagators are proved to be perfect in that they inherit essential properties such as correctness and domain and bounds consistency. Techniques for systematically deriving propagators such as transformation, generalization, specialization, and type conversion are developed. The paper introduces an implementation architecture for views that is independent of the underlying constraint programming system. A detailed evaluation of views implemented in Gecode shows that derived propagators are efficient and that views often incur no overhead. Views have proven essential for implementing Gecode, substantially reducing the amount of code that needs to be written and maintained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric conditions induced by suspended particles, such as fog and haze, severely alter the scene appearance. Restoring the true scene appearance from a single observation made in such bad weather conditions remains a challenging task due to the inherent ambiguity that arises in the image formation process. In this paper, we introduce a novel Bayesian probabilistic method that jointly estimates the scene albedo and depth from a single foggy image by fully leveraging their latent statistical structures. Our key idea is to model the image with a factorial Markov random field in which the scene albedo and depth are two statistically independent latent layers and to jointly estimate them. We show that we may exploit natural image and depth statistics as priors on these hidden layers and estimate the scene albedo and depth with a canonical expectation maximization algorithm with alternating minimization. We experimentally evaluate the effectiveness of our method on a number of synthetic and real foggy images. The results demonstrate that the method achieves accurate factorization even on challenging scenes for past methods that only constrain and estimate one of the latent variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Listening Visits (LV), an empirically supported depression treatment delivered by non mental health specialists, were implemented into two distinctly structured programs. The relative importance of providers' views and organizational context on implementation were examined. Thirty-seven home visitors completed pre- and post-LV training surveys assessing their views toward implementing LV. Implementation rates markedly differed in the two organizations (73.9% vs. 35.7%). Logistic regression results showed that when predicting the implementation rate, the impact of the organizational setting outweighed home visitors' personal views. These results underscore the importance of organizational context in the implementation of empirically supported treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many scenarios a dynamic scene is filmed by multiple video cameras located at different viewing positions. Visualizing such multi-view data on a single display raises an immediate question-which cameras capture better views of the scene? Typically, (e.g. in TV broadcasts) a human producer manually selects the best view. In this paper we wish to automate this process by evaluating the quality of a view, captured by every single camera. We regard human actions as three-dimensional shapes induced by their silhouettes in the space-time volume. The quality of a view is then evaluated based on features of the space-time shape, which correspond with limb visibility. Resting on these features, two view quality approaches are proposed. One is generic while the other can be trained to fit any preferred action recognition method. Our experiments show that the proposed view selection provide intuitive results which match common conventions. We further show that it improves action recognition results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parfit (Reasons and persons, Clarendon Press, Oxford, ) posed a challenge: provide a satisfying normative account that solves the non-identity problem, avoids the repugnant and absurd conclusions, and solves the mere-addition paradox. In response, some have suggested that we look toward person-affecting views of morality for a solution. But the person-affecting views that have been offered so far have been unable to satisfy Parfit's four requirements, and these views have been subject to a number of independent complaints. This paper describes a person-affecting account which meets Parfit's challenge. The account satisfies Parfit's four requirements, and avoids many of the criticisms that have been raised against person-affecting views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing visual correspondences is a critical step in many computer vision tasks involving multiple views of a scene. In a dynamic environment and when cameras are mobile, visual correspondences need to be updated on a recurring basis. At the same time, the use of wireless links between camera motes imposes tight rate constraints. This combination of issues motivates us to consider the problem of establishing visual correspondences in a distributed fashion between cameras operating under rate constraints. We propose a solution based on constructing distance preserving hashes using binarized random projections. By exploiting the fact that descriptors of regions in correspondence are highly correlated, we propose a novel use of distributed source coding via linear codes on the binary hashes to more efficiently exchange feature descriptors for establishing correspondences across multiple camera views. A systematic approach is used to evaluate rate vs visual correspondences retrieval performance; under a stringent matching criterion, our proposed methods demonstrate superior performance to a baseline scheme employing transform coding of descriptors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global enterprise-wide approaches help organizations to model and understand the enterprise key components and their relationships and manage the organizations' transformations and change. However, many of these approaches lack of insights into how to manage complexities related to the multitude of applications developed in silos such as the various systems in health organizations that were designed independently from each other. This paper contributes to the solutions addressing this issue by proposing a methodology and tools to create foundations based on key components to help develop the information architecture at the heart of the enterprise architecture that can guarantee the evolution of the organization. These core components are a set of reusable Field Actions representing the non-contextual persistent information, a common canonical Corporate Conceptual Data Model capturing all the vital data in the organization, and Views or sub-schema of this global data model that represent information for different stakeholders in the organization. To show the effectiveness of the proposed approach and to gain more insights into its practical value, the architecturing approach is applied in the healthcare domain to create the information architecture and the enterprise architecture for the Quebec healthcare network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To evaluate the Malaysian community pharmacists' views on generic medicines. Setting A sample of 1419 Malaysian community pharmacies with resident pharmacists. Method A cross-sectional nationwide survey using a self-completed mailing questionnaire. Main outcome measure Pharmacists' views on generic medicines including issues surrounding efficacy, safety, quality and bioequivalence. Results Responses were received from 219 pharmacies (response rate 15.4%). Only 50.2% of the surveyed pharmacists agreed that all products that are approved as generic equivalents can be considered therapeutically equivalent with the innovator medicines. Around 76% of respondents indicated that generic substitution of narrow therapeutic index medicines is inappropriate. The majority of the pharmacists understood that a generic medicine must contain the same amount of active ingredient (84.5%) and must be in the same dosage form as the innovator brand (71.7%). About 21% of respondents though that generic medicines are of inferior quality compared to innovator medicines. Most of the pharmacists (61.6%) disagreed that generic medicines produce more side-effects than innovator brand. Pharmacists graduated from Malaysian universities, twinning program and overseas universities were not differed significantly in their views on generic medicines. Additionally, the respondents appeared to have difficulty in ascertaining the bioequivalent status of the marketed generic products in Malaysia. Conclusion The Malaysian pharmacists' have lack of information and/or trust in the generic manufacturing and/or approval system in Malaysia. This issue should be addressed by pharmacy educators and relevant government agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the views of people involved in mathematics education regarding the commonly stated goal of using mathematics learning to develop deductive reasoning that is usable outside of mathematical contexts. The data source includes 21 individual semi-structured interviews. The findings of the study show that the interviewees ascribed different meanings to the above-stated goal. Moreover, none of them said that it is possible to develop formal logic-based reasoning useful outside of mathematics, but for different reasons. Three distinct views were identified: the intervention-argumentation view, the reservation-deductive view, and the spontaneity-systematic view. Each interviewee's view was interrelated with the interviewee's approach to deductive reasoning and its nature in mathematics and outside it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

lthough there has been much work in recent years on answering queries using views, there has been less work on deriving answers from partial databases. That is given a partial database state D, materialized via the view V, what queries can be asked over D that can be answered with certainty using only the instance of the partial database and standard query evaluation mechanisms. We define these as the derivable answers and show several special cases in which we can compute and intensionally describe them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It’s natural to say that when it’s rational for me to φ, I have reasons to φ. That is, there are reasons for φ-ing, and moreover, I have some of them. Mark Schroeder calls this view The Factoring Account of the having reasons relation. He thinks The Factoring Account is false. In this paper, I defend The Factoring Account. Not only do I provide intuitive support for the view, but I also defend it against Schroeder’s criticisms. Moreover, I show that it helps us understand the requirements of substantive rationality, or what we are rationally required to do when responding to reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To explore the experiences and views of community pharmacists and parents participating in a prospective paediatric pharmacovigilance study. Method Twenty-five pharmacists and 32 parents were approached for telephone interview. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically to identify recurring issues and themes. Results Seventeen pharmacists and 22 parents were interviewed. Parents and pharmacists agreed that more information about the side effects of medicines in children was required. Both groups reported willingness to participate in future prospective pharmacovigilance studies, although pharmacists expressed concerns about the lack of financial incentives. Pharmacists reported that parents had concerns regarding the confidentiality of their child’s ADR data and the study data collection process. Conclusion This study highlighted positive and negative opinions of parents and pharmacists regarding their experiences in this research project. Maintaining confidentiality in relation to indication and medicines prescribed were important issues for parents whereas time constraints and lack of financial incentives were key issues influencing participation by community pharmacists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Action recognition from video is a problem that has many important applications to humanmotion analysis. In real-world settings, the viewpoint of the camera cannot always be fixed relative to the subject, so view-invariant action recognition methods are needed. Previous view-invariant methods use multiple cameras in both the training and testing phases of action recognition or require storing many examples of a single action from multiple viewpoints. In this paper, we present a framework for learning a compact representation of primitive actions (e.g., walk, punch, kick, sit) that can be used for video obtained from a single camera for simultaneous action recognition and viewpoint estimation. Using our method, which models the low-dimensional structure of these actions relative to viewpoint, we show recognition rates on a publicly available dataset previously only achieved using multiple simultaneous views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have to deal with different data formats whenever data formats evolve or data must be integrated from heterogeneous systems. These data when implemented in XML for data exchange cannot be shared freely among applications without data transformation. A common approach to solve this problem is to convert the entire XML data from their source format to the applications’ target formats using the transformations rules specified in XSLT stylesheets. However, in many cases, not all XML data are required to be transformed except for a smaller part described by a user’s query (application). In this paper, we present an approach that optimizes the execution time of an XSLT stylesheet for answering a given XPath query by modifying the XSLT stylesheet in such a way that it would (a) capture only the parts in the XML data that are relevant to the query and (b) process only those XSLT instructions that are relevant to the query. We prove the correctness of our optimization approach, analyze its complexity and present experimental results. The experimental results show that our approach performs the best in terms of execution time, especially when many cost-intensive XSLT instructions can be excluded in the XSLT stylesheet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the effectiveness of mammography for women under the age of 50 years with a family history of breast cancer (FHBC) has not yet been proven, annual screening is being offered to these women to manage breast cancer risk. This study investigates women's awareness and interpretation of their familial risk and knowledge and views about mammographic screening. A total of 2231 women from 21 familial/breast/genetics centres who were assessed as moderate risk (17-30% lifetime risk) or high risk (>30% lifetime risk) completed a questionnaire before their mammographic screening appointment. Most women (70%) believed they were likely, very likely or definitely going to develop breast cancer in their lifetime. Almost all women (97%) understood that the purpose of mammographic screening was to allow the early detection of breast cancer. However, 20% believed that a normal mammogram result meant there was definitely no breast cancer present, and only 4% understood that screening has not been proven to save lives in women under the age of 50 years. Women held positive views on mammography but did not appear to be well informed about the potential disadvantages. These findings suggest that further attention should be paid to improving information provision to women with an FHBC being offered routine screening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spence (1952) postulated that under some conditions, responding in simple discriminations is controlled by compounds or patterns consisting of the nominal discriminative cue, plus its spatial position. Stimulus control by such compounds was said to develop when no single cue or element was systematically reinforced more than any other. This analysis has been applied to good effect in understanding some peculiar accuracy results obtained from pigeons performing Simon discrimination tasks. This article describes how Spence's cue-position analysis provides a better account of pigeons' performance in this task than do nominal cue-only and configurational views of the functional discriminative stimuli. Adding a value transfer assumption improves the ability of the cue-position hypothesis to account for the accuracy data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we consider how elementary education students’ views of mathematics changed during their mathematics methods course. We focus on four female students: two started the course with mainly positive views of mathematics and a task orientation, two with negative views of the subject and an ego-defensive orientation. The biggest change observed was that the trainees’ views of teaching and learning mathematics became more positive. Moreover, what had been an ego-defensive orientation changed towards a social-dependence orientation. The crucial facilitators of change seemed to be (1) handling of and reflection on one’s experiences of learning and teaching mathematics, (2) exploring content with concrete materials, and (3) collaboration with a partner or working as a tutor of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Descartes held the view that a subject has infallible beliefs about the contents of her thoughts. Here, I first examine a popular contermporary defense of this claim, given by Burge, and find it lacking. I then offer my own defense appealing to a minimal thesis about the compositionality of thoughts. The argument has the virtue of refraining from claims about whether thoughts are “in the head;” thus, it is congenial to both internalists and externalists. The considerations here also illuminate how a subject may have epistemicially priviledged and a priori beliefs about her own thoughts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have brought relativistic accounts of knowledge, first-person belief, and future contingents to prominence. I discuss these views, distinguish non-trivial from trivial forms of relativism, and then argue against relativism in all of its substantive varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I give the label “ethical pluralism” to the meta-ethical view that competing moral views are valid. I assume that validity is conferred on a moral view by its satisfying the relevant meta-ethical criteria in a maximally satisfactory way. If the relevant meta-ethical criteria are based on something roughly like the wide reflective equilibrium model, then ethical pluralism is likely to be correct. Traditional moral views do not grant exemptions from their own binding rules or principles to agents – should any exist – who adhere to a competing valid moral view. Given the usual conception of accepting a moral view, an ethical pluralist cannot honestly accept a traditional moral view. Consequently, I argue, an ethical pluralist is committed to the view that all traditional moral views are invalid. Given the likelihood of ethical pluralism, this conclusion is alarming. I set forth a weak conception of accepting a moral view that is designed to allow an ethical pluralist honestly to accept a traditional moral view. In particular, my conception is designed to explain how someone can (a) be guided by the view that she accepts; (b) accept her own moral view while rationally not accepting competing views that she thinks are equally valid; and (c) not be prepared to prescribe morally to those who are following other valid views. Central to my formulation are what I call a stance of modest respectful disapproval toward other people’s wrong behavior, together with acceptance of decisive moral reasons for oneself that are generated by the valid moral view that one accepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]