Limited Skill Research Articles

Bricolage, Hybridity, Circularity: Crafting Production Strategies in Critical and Conceptual Design

ABSTRACTAttending to production and appropriating the handmade has been a persistent thread in critical and conceptual design practice from its origins in 1970s Italian radicalism and reemergence in Dutch conceptualism, to its current fashionability among designers today. Practitioners such as Tejo Remy and Thomas Thwaites are among those to envisage the designer as a maker, reimagining the environment with the limited materials, tools, and skill at hand in order to make objects informed by the productive methods of bricolage, hybridity, and circularity. Their motivations for adopting these methods vary according to cultural and historical context; these range from issues of alienation, sustainability, and post-apocalyptic survival, to the liberatory potential of having less. Through examining this multi-faceted preeminence of manual production, this article aims to contribute to the discourse on critical and conceptual design past and present and advance its speculative potential.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Factors Affecting Patient Engagement in Diabetes Self-Management: Perspectives of a Certified Diabetes Educator

Patients with diabetes are responsible for the vast majority of management requirements of their condition. However, their ability and motivation to engage in required self-management behaviors may be mitigated by multiple intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsic barriers include attitudes and health beliefs, limited diabetes knowledge and technical skill, reduced functional health literacy, and inadequate self-efficacy to promote positive behavior change. Extrinsic barriers include financial considerations, inadequate family and community support systems, ineffective clinical relationships, and limited access to effective diabetes health care delivery. Diabetes providers have opportunities for enhancing patient engagement with clinical recommendations and diabetes self-management through effective communication, including efforts to contextually assess patients' perceptions of diabetes and how the condition fits within the context of their changing lives. This article provides a conceptual framework for establishing and building an effective clinical alliance with patients with the goal of empowering them to take more control of their diabetes and reduce their risks for poor diabetes outcomes.

The Invisibility of Covert Bullying Among Students: Challenges for School Intervention

Covert bullying behaviours are at least as distressing for young people as overt forms of bullying, but often remain unnoticed or unacknowledged by adults. Thisinvisibilityis increased in schools by inattention to covert bullying in policy and practice, and limited staff understanding and skill to address covert behaviours. These factors can lead to a school culture that appears to tolerate and thus inadvertently encourages covert bullying. This study explores these dynamics in Australian primary and secondary schools, including the attitudes of over 400 staff towards covert bullying, their understanding of covert bullying behaviours, and their perceived capacity to address these behaviours both individually and at a whole-school level. While most respondents felt a responsibility to intervene in bullying situations, nearly 70% strongly agreed with statements that staff need more training to address covert bullying. Only 10% of respondents described their current whole-school strategies as very effective in reducing covert bullying, and fewer than 40% reported their school had a bullying policy that explicitly referred to covert bullying. These results suggest an urgent need for sustainable professional development to enhance school staff understanding, skills and self-efficacy to address covert bullying through school policy and practice, and the need to identify and consolidate effective strategies to better address these behaviours.

An investigation into the Knowledge, Attitude, and Performance of the Students in Birjand University of Medical Science about Computer and Internet Use

Background: Computers and Internet play an ever- increasing and important role in medical education.This research was performed to determine the rate of knowledge, attitude, and performance of the students of Birjand University of Medical Science in the case of computer and Internet use. Methods: This descriptive – analytical study was performed on 425 students of Birjand University of Medical Science selected by random systematic classification sampling. Knowledge , attitude, and performance of the students were evaluated by using a self – structured questionnaire that had already been completed by faculty members of Birjand University of Medical Sciences and its reliability was confirmed. The data entered into SPSS software and was analyzed by using the Chi- Square test in level ( ). Findings: Of 425 Students studied , 227 (53.4%) were female. In the field of measuring computer knowledge of the students, 56.9% had minimal computer knowledge. In the field of attitude, 69.4% had a good attitude and 30.1% had an average one. In the area of skill , 49.6% did not have enogh skills in using software and 38.8% in using internet facilities. The students were mostly skilled in using Word (54.6%) and Power point (52.7%). There was a statistical significant relationship between performance (Using internet Services) and gender and between awareness and education level of the students (P< 0/05). Conclusion: Considering the limited knowledge and skill and the positive attitude of the students regarding computer and Internet, designing and compiling the training programs related to the computer in the form of scheduled workshops with repeatability and preparing the computer centers of the university are suggested.

How well do state-of-the-art atmosphere-ocean general circulation models reproduce atmospheric teleconnection patterns?

ABSTRACTThis article evaluates the ability of state-of-the-art climate models to reproduce the low-frequency variability of the mid-tropospheric winter flow of the Northern Hemisphere in terms of atmospheric teleconnection patterns. Therefore, multi-model simulations for present-day conditions, performed for the 4th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have been analysed and compared with re-analysis data sets. The spatial patterns of atmospheric teleconnections are reproduced reasonably by most of the models. The comparison of coupled with atmosphere-only runs confirmed that a better representation of the forcing by sea surface temperatures has the potential to slightly improve the representation of only wave train-like patterns. Due to internally generated climate variability, the models are not able to reproduce the observed temporal behaviour. Insights into the dynamical reasons for the limited skill of climate models in reproducing teleconnections have been obtained by studying the relation between major teleconnections and zonal wind variability patterns. About half of the models are able to reproduce the observed relationship. For these cases, the quality of simulated teleconnection patterns is largely determined by the quality of zonal wind variability patterns. Therefore, improvements of simulated eddy-mean flow interaction have the potential to improve the atmospheric teleconnections.

Does Occupational Training by the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program Really Help Reemployment? Success Measured as Occupation Matching

AbstractThe Trade Adjustment Assistance Program provides various retraining opportunities to workers displaced due to import competition. This paper investigates whether successful skill acquisition through training—as opposed to general exposure to federal assistance—improves the post‐participation outcomes using the Trade Act Participant Report. Success in skill acquisition is indicated by a match between occupations of training and entered employment. The average matching rate for the sample is 37.53%. Trainees with a match display wage replacement rates that are 2 to 3 percentage points higher than those without one, while they display very similar post‐participation earnings that are inferior to that of non‐trainees. This generally indicates that participants with limited skill sets with lower pre‐participation earnings select into training, and successful skill acquisition offsets the negative impacts of their lack of marketable skills. Matching itself does not improve the retention at the job. However, participation in various training programs improves retention.

Limitations of a coupled regional climate model in the reproduction of the observed Arctic sea-ice retreat

Abstract. The effects of internal model variability on the simulation of Arctic sea-ice extent and volume have been examined with the aid of a seven-member ensemble with a coupled regional climate model for the period 1948–2008. Beyond general weaknesses related to insufficient representation of feedback processes, it is found that the model's ability to reproduce observed summer sea-ice retreat depends mainly on two factors: the correct simulation of the atmospheric circulation during the summer months and the sea-ice volume at the beginning of the melting period. Since internal model variability shows its maximum during the summer months, the ability to reproduce the observed atmospheric summer circulation is limited. In addition, the atmospheric circulation during summer also significantly affects the sea-ice volume over the years leading to a limited ability to start with reasonable sea-ice volume into the melting period. Furthermore, the sea-ice volume pathway shows notable decadal variability that varies in amplitude among the ensemble members. The scatter is particularly large in periods when the ice volume increases, indicating limited skill in reproducing high-ice years.

Downscaling large-scale climate variability using a regional climate model: the case of ENSO over Southern Africa

This study documents methodological issues arising when downscaling modes of large-scale atmospheric variability with a regional climate model, over a remote region that is yet under their influence. The retained case study is El Nino Southern Oscillation and its impacts on Southern Africa and the South West Indian Ocean. Regional simulations are performed with WRF model, driven laterally by ERA40 reanalyses over the 1971–1998 period. We document the sensitivity of simulated climate variability to the model physics, the constraint of relaxing the model solutions towards reanalyses, the size of the relaxation buffer zone towards the lateral forcings and the forcing fields through ERA-Interim driven simulations. The model’s internal variability is quantified using 15-member ensemble simulations for seasons of interest, single 30-year integrations appearing as inappropriate to investigate the simulated interannual variability properly. The incidence of SST prescription is also assessed through additional integrations using a simple ocean mixed-layer model. Results show a limited skill of the model to reproduce the seasonal droughts associated with El Nino conditions. The model deficiencies are found to result from biased atmospheric forcings and/or biased response to these forcings, whatever the physical package retained. In contrast, regional SST forcing over adjacent oceans favor realistic rainfall anomalies over the continent, although their amplitude remains too weak. These results confirm the significant contribution of nearby ocean SST to the regional effects of ENSO, but also illustrate that regionalizing large-scale climate variability can be a demanding exercise.

Prevención de riesgos laborales en personas con discapacidad intelectual en centros especiales de empleo

This article summarizes the working process and some of the main results of the research entitled “Training Needs in Occupational Risk Prevention for Intellectually Disabled Persons in Special Employment Centers.” The main interest is to analyze the importance of occupational risk prevention in protected work environments. Thus, we developed and implemented a cross-sectional study in three special employment centers of a non-profit Pro- Intellectually Disabled Persons Association in Madrid. The methodology included analysis of secondary sources, direct observation and non-structured interviews (with various stakeholders: directors, psychologists, work trainers, risk-prevention technicians, managers and disabled employees). The results show that occupational risk prevention training is graded as unsatisfactory by the workers, who also agree on their perception of the occupational risk as being low, which they attribute and correlate to the limited skill level required for their tasks. In some cases, interviewees indicate that it is the organization itself of the center where these disabled people provide their services which prevents the correct application of their knowledge of occupational risk prevention. The need for commitment on the part of those concerned in the process of labor integration of this group is emphasized, in order to tie in adaptive training with the overall organization of the work.

Semantic colorization with internet images

Colorization of a grayscale photograph often requires considerable effort from the user, either by placing numerous color scribbles over the image to initialize a color propagation algorithm, or by looking for a suitable reference image from which color information can be transferred. Even with this user supplied data, colorized images may appear unnatural as a result of limited user skill or inaccurate transfer of colors. To address these problems, we propose a colorization system that leverages the rich image content on the internet. As input, the user needs only to provide a semantic text label and segmentation cues for major foreground objects in the scene. With this information, images are downloaded from photo sharing websites and filtered to obtain suitable reference images that are reliable for color transfer to the given grayscale photo. Different image colorizations are generated from the various reference images, and a graphical user interface is provided to easily select the desired result. Our experiments and user study demonstrate the greater effectiveness of this system in comparison to previous techniques.

An introduction to systematic reviews and meta-analysis: A workshop report on promoting evidence based medical practice through capacity building in research synthesis

The increasing urgency for evidence based practice, especially in resource limited settings has inspired many initiatives to this effect. In Africa there is limited skill in research synthesis and the production of systematic reviews. The Centre for the Development of Best Practices in Health, together with the South African Cochrane Centre organised a workshop to train Cameroonian researchers on how to initiate and complete systematic reviews. Five facilitators and fifteen participants met over a period of four days. At the end of the workshop the participants expressed high levels of satisfaction and motivation to conduct systematic reviews, but expressed the need for additional support. Facilitators of future systematic review courses should address challenges related to internet access, adult education and realistic expectations from the participants.

Does Occupational Training by the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program Really Help Reemployment?: Success Measured as Matching

The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program is a dislocated worker program established by the U.S. Department of Labor to reduce the adjustment cost of workers displaced due to import competition. The program offers occupational skills training and reemployment services. This paper investigates the impacts of successful skill acquisition through occupational skills training on post-participation labor market outcomes such as wage replacement rates, post-participation earnings, and retention rates. I use matching between the occupations of training and entered employment as an indicator of successful skill acquisition through training. The data set used in this study is the Trade Act Participant Report (TAPR) and is acquired through the Freedom Of Information Act. The data set shows a 37.53% of matching rates among occupational skills trainees. Matching is important in improving wage replacement rates. Trainees with a match display wage replacement rates that are 2 to 3 percentage points higher than trainees without a match. Trainees without a match display lower wage replacement rates than non-trainees. This is potentially due to their more limited skill sets that led them into training enrollment in the first place. Successful skill acquisition – indicated by a match – more than compensates this disadvantage of trainees. Trainees with and without a match display the same post-participation earnings. The results from wage replacement rates and post-participation earnings together suggest that although the trainees with a match displayed lower earnings prior to participation given individual characteristics, successful skill acquisition through training put these two groups of trainees on par with each other. These results suggest that the occupational choices matter and the training provision of the TAA program can be more fruitful if more resources are allocated to thorough worker assessment/counseling and good usage of local labor market information.

Statistical downscaling of historical monthly mean winds over a coastal region of complex terrain. I. Predicting wind speed

Surface wind speed is a key climatic variable of interest in many applications, including assessments of storm-related infrastructure damage and feasibility studies of wind power generation. In this work and a companion paper (van der Kamp et al. 2011), the relationship between local surface wind and large-scale climate variables was studied using multiple regression analysis. The analysis was performed using monthly mean station data from British Columbia, Canada and large-scale climate variables (predictors) from the NCEP-2 reanalysis over the period 1979–2006. Two regression-based methodologies were compared. The first relates the annual cycle of station wind speed to that of the large-scale predictors at the closest grid box to the station. It is shown that the relatively high correlation coefficients obtained with this method are attributable to the dominant influence of region-wide seasonality, and thus contain minimal information about local wind behaviour at the stations. The second method uses interannually varying data for individual months, aggregated into seasons, and is demonstrated to contain intrinsically local information about the surface winds. The dependence of local wind speed upon large-scale predictors over a much larger region surrounding the station was also explored, resulting in 2D maps of spatial correlations. The cross-validated explained variance using the interannual method was highest in autumn and winter, ranging from 30 to 70% at about a dozen stations in the region. Reasons for the limited predictive skill of the regressions and directions for future progress are reviewed.

Foreign Direct Investments in Business Services: Transforming the Visegrád Four Region into a Knowledge-based Economy?

Foreign direct investments (FDIs) in the service sector are widely attributed an important role in bringing more skill-intensive activities into the Visegrád Four (V4). This region—comprising Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia—relied heavily on FDIs in manufacturing, which was often found to generate activities with limited skill content. This contribution deconstructs the chaotic concept of “business services” by analysing the actual nature of service sector activities outsourced and offshored to the V4. Using the knowledge-based economy (KBE) as a benchmark, the paper assesses the potential of service sector outsourcing in contributing to regional competitiveness by increasing the innovative capacity. It also discusses the role of state policies towards service sector FDI (SFDI). The analysis combines data obtained from case studies undertaken in service sector outsourcing projects in V4 countries. Moreover, it draws on interviews with senior employees of investment promotion agencies and publicly available data and statistics on activities within the service sector in the region. It argues that the recent inward investments in business services in the V4 mainly utilize existing local human-capital resources, and their contribution to the development of the KBE is limited to employment creation and demand for skilled labour.

A first look at Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2) for hydrological seasonal prediction

[1] NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) has transitioned to operationally use the second generation of their coupled ocean-atmosphere-land model, the Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2), with advanced physics, increased resolution and refined initialization to improve the seasonal climate forecasts. We present a first look at the capability of CFSv2 on surface air temperature and precipitation predictions based on analyzing the 28-year (1982–2009) reforecasts. These variables are primary inputs to hydrological seasonal forecast procedures. Averaged globally, the CFSv2 increases the predictive skill for month-1 land surface air temperature and precipitation from the CFSv1 by 37% and 29%, respectively. The CFSv2 has comparable performance to the latest ECMWF model, the best among the current European seasonal forecast models. The soil moisture produced by CFSv2 also provides useful information in identifying several major drought events, especially over tropical regions. Though there is limited skill beyond month-1, the CFSv2 does show promising features for advancing hydrological forecast and application studies.

The architecture of MEG simulation and analysis software

MEG (Mu to Electron Gamma) is an experiment dedicated to search for the $\mu^+ \rightarrow e^+\gamma$ decay that is strongly suppressed in the Standard Model but predicted in several Super Symmetric extensions of it at an accessible rate. MEG is a small-size experiment ($\approx 50-60$ physicists at any time) with a life span of about 10 years. The limited human resource available, in particular in the core offline group, emphasized the importance of reusing software and exploiting existing expertise. Great care has been devoted to provide a simple system that hides implementation details to the average programmer. That allowed many members of the collaboration to contribute to the development of the software of the experiment with limited programming skill. The offline software is based on two frameworks: {\bf REM} in FORTRAN 77 used for the event generation and detector simulation package {\bf GEM}, based on GEANT 3, and {\bf ROME} in C++ used in the readout simulation {\bf Bartender} and in the reconstruction and analysis program {\bf Analyzer}. Event display in the simulation is based on GEANT 3 graphic libraries and in the reconstruction on ROOT graphic libraries. Data are stored in different formats in various stage of the processing. The frameworks include utilities for input/output, database handling and format conversion transparent to the user.

The Effect of Fast Food Advertisement on Malay Childrens’ Preferences

The objective of this research is to determine the effect of fast food advertisement on Malay children’s preferences, aged between 4 to 6 years old. Previous literature suggested that children could be influenced by fast food advertisement. Therefore, we would like to investigate if Malay Children could also been influenced by Fast Food Advertisement. Two methods have been conducted in this research. The interview has been conducted to identify Fast Food eating behavior and awareness of among the children in terms of logo and symbol of the Fast Food Company. Experiment has been conducted to determine the effects of Fast Food advertisement over Malay Children’s preference. Eighty six (86) respondents have participated in this study. The finding has shown that the advertisement of Fast Food is the key to influence young children in their preference and most of them are aware about the logo of Fast Food easily despite of their limited cognitive skill.

The Perceived Discrepancy between the Teaching of Christian Religious Education and Inculcation of Moral Values amongst Secondary Schools Students in Kisumu East District, Kenya.

Previous research and document evidence obtainable in popular media has consistently reported that Kenyan students’ moral standing and general conduct in the wider society does not reflect acquisition and practice of values learnt through the teaching or Christian Religious Education (CRE) at the form four level. This has caused complaints among those stakeholders in education who are concerned that the moral well being of the youth is on a downward trend. This suggests that either the teaching of CRE is defective or the Kenyan education system as a whole does not contain relevant elements that could enable students acquire relevant moral skills. Another possibility could be the existence of a discrepancy between the CRE program objectives and the instructional practices meant to achieve them. From the literature that was reviewed, it was evident that the nature of this discrepancy had not yet been established for effective intervention strategies to be put in place. The purpose of this study was to determine possible reasons for the assumed discrepancy between the stated objectives of teaching CRE in Kenyan secondary schools and current moral standings that does not reflect acquisition of moral skills. Specifically, the study determined whether the methods of instruction employed by the teachers of C.R.E in Kisumu East district secondary schools enabled learners to identify and acquire morals in societal context. Four instruments used in collecting data included: A graphic observation rating scale, a learner’s test, an in-depth interview schedule and documents analysis guides. The study population comprised 3225 students and 48 teachers. Out of the population, 16 teachers and the 343 learners were selected using stratified random sampling technique. The obtained results suggested that teachers rarely used the valuing methods in inculcating moral skills in their students. Another notable finding was that while the CRE syllabus contained relevant elements that could assist students acquire moral skills, it was the implementation of the skills through the teaching methods adopted that was likely responsible for limited valuing skill acquisition. Key words: Objectives, valuing methods and learner identification, acquisition of moral values.

An inverse relationship between aggregate northern hemisphere tropical cyclone activity and subsequent winter climate

Our understanding of the climate role of tropical cyclones (TCs) remains incomplete despite increasing efforts to quantify it. TCs cool the sea surface over a large area, transport heat vertically and meridionally, and dry the tropical atmosphere. Following an anomalous TC season, when TCs have done an anomalous share of energy transport, there may be alterations of other climate mechanisms. Accordingly, a robust inverse relationship between northern hemisphere (NH) TC activity and NH winter climate is explored here. Specifically, aggregate power dissipation index for NH Pacific recurving TCs is the current optimal predictor (r = −0.57; p < 0.01) of NH winter stationary meridional temperature flux. TC-winter climate causality would not only argue for an elevated climate role of TCs, but would present an autumn predictability barrier given the limited skill in forecasting seasonal TC activity details. A proxy relationship would suggest undiagnosed coupled climate mechanisms that have control over both the tropics and extratropics.

Projected changes of precipitation extremes in river basins over China

Based on daily precipitation data derived from observations and three Coupled General Circulation Model (CGCM)’s outputs (CSIRO_MK3_5, MPI_ECHAM5 and NCAR_CCSM3), some extreme precipitation indices are calculated. Initially, the models’ skills in simulating extreme precipitation during 1961–2000 were assessed. Projected changes before 2050 under the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) emission scenario A1B were also analyzed. Results show that although there are some biases in the model results, the three models capture well the geographic distribution of extreme precipitation observed in the last half of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the models tend to show limited skill in reproducing the observed inter-annual variations of such extreme precipitation events, including the dominant patterns and trends. Under SRES A1B, for the period of 2011–2050, the simple daily precipitation intensity (SDII) and the fraction of extreme precipitation in total annual precipitation (R95T) will increase significantly in all the river basins in China, while changes in other indices are different. The periodic changes in consecutive dry days (CDD), consecutive wet days (CWD) and the number of days with precipitation ≥ 10 mm/day (R10) are expected to be more pronounced in the Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin. In the South River Basin, such periodic changes maintain similar or slightly weakened magnitudes. From 2001 to 2050 in the Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin, extreme precipitation in spring shows no significant changes. In the South River Basin, R95T, SDII and the maximum 5-days precipitation amount (R5D) in summer show an increasing tendency, but in winter a weak decreasing trend is projected. The changes in precipitation-based indices indicate a higher probability of heavy rainfall or flood occurrence, particularly in the river basins in East China.