Merits Of Projects Research Articles

ВИРТУАЛЬНАЯ ВЫСТАВКА "СЕСТРЫ МИЛОСЕРДИЯ" И ЕЕ РОЛЬ В АТРИБУЦИИ МУЗЕЙНЫХ ПРЕДМЕТОВ (ИЗ ОПЫТА РАБОТЫ МУЗЕЯ-ЗАПОВЕДНИКА "КУЗНЕЦКАЯ КРЕПОСТЬ")

The article considers a problem of digital exhibitions at museum website. Their popularity was growing along with application of new techniques and became an essential part of museum practice. The article provides the merits of such projects. The author analyzes the degree of importance of the response of an interested visitor to the exhibition on the site. Information held in family archives helps to date and describe museum items. The author characterizes the amount of scientific work on the exhibits carried out by the staff, the main problems identified in the process. The article contains a fragment of the informational block of the exhibition dedicated to the sisters of mercy (history of the Tobolsk Nikolaevskaya community, its employees and activities). The author describes the informant’s assistance in identifying one of the community sisters, depicted in the photographs from the museum’s funds. A visitor to the site had a copy of one of the photographs with signatures, which helped to establish the truth. The article concludes that the availability of the Internet made it possible to accurately describe the exhibit, which makes the value of virtual exhibitions obvious. Keywords: virtual exhibition, Tobolsk, sisters ofmercy, community, photography, exhibit

Rationale, Theoretical Underpinnings, and Design of HEAR-aware: Providing Adults With Hearing Loss With Tailored Support to Self-Manage Their Hearing Problems via a Smartphone App, as an Alternative to Hearing Aids.

Purpose An alarming two thirds of adults aged 50 years or over with hearing impairment who could benefit from hearing aids do not own any, leaving these adults with no support to self-manage their hearing problems. In the HEAR-aware project, it is hypothesized that self-management can be facilitated via a smartphone app if its educational content is tailored to a person's dynamic stage of readiness to take action on their hearing (stage of change) and to a person's dynamic acoustical situations (as measured via a wearable microphone) and associated challenges (as captured via ecological momentary assessment). As such, the HEAR-aware app would be an ecological momentary intervention. This research note describes the rationale and theoretical underpinnings of the app, as well as the rationale for planning a series of studies to develop and evaluate it. Study Designs After a preparatory phase, Study 1 includes qualitative group interviews to assess user needs. Next, a creative session will be held, in which all stakeholders involved will work toward a specified version of the app. Subsequently, prototypes of the app will be developed and pilot-tested (Pilot Studies 2A and 2B). Users' usage and ratings (usability and quality indicators) of the app's elements will be examined and processed in the app. Lastly, the effectiveness of the app's final version will be examined in a randomized controlled trial (Study 3). Discussion The project's merits and challenges will be discussed.

Merits of capstone projects in an online graduate program for working professionals

ABSTRACT Capstones in professional masters-level programs serve a unique nexus of developing professional, industry-specific competencies within a graduate-level academic setting. Universities offering such degree programs must demonstrate the benefits of an academic approach to working professionals, while focusing on the development or enhancement of a wide range of hard and soft skills required by industries and employers in the field of study. In this paper we highlight the capstone project model used in an online geospatial professional program in which students apply a wide range of technical skills as well as enhance their soft skills through problem-based projects. These projects include advisement from graduate faculty, rigorous project planning to ensure the work is integrated with and builds upon the leading edge of applied research, and include numerous cycles of revision based on feedback from faculty, fellow students, and peers in the industry. We examined completed capstone projects and surveyed past students to evaluate how relevant the capstone experience was in developing geospatial competencies. The learning model presented here is flexible and highly applicable for enhancing industry competencies for working professional students not only by providing students with the opportunity to develop research-led projects, but also for the educational institution to adjust to changing demands.

Thermal stability, crystallization, and magnetic properties of FeNiBCuNb alloys**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51731003), the Program for the Top Young Academic Leaders of Higher Learning Institutions of Shanxi Province, China (2014), the “131” Leading Talents Project of Higher Education Institutions in Shanxi Province, China (2015), the Overseas Students Science and Technology Activities Project

Amorphous (Fe40Ni40B19Cu1)100−xNbx (x = 1, 3, 5, 7) ribbons are prepared by using the melt-spinning method. We find that the glass forming ability (GFA) of the as-melt spun ribbons is significantly improved by adding Nb element. In addition, the thermal stability evaluated in steps of effectively increases from 16 K to 75 K with Nb content increasing. The as-melt spun (Fe40Ni40B19Cu1)97Nb3 ribbon exhibits a lowest coercivity of 2 A/m and relatively large saturation magnetization of and thus it can be further treated by being annealed at 809 K. The crystallization behavior is confirmed to be determined by two individual crystallization processes corresponding to the precipitation of (Fe,Ni)23B6 phase and γ-(Fe,Ni) phase. With increasing annealing time, the single (Fe,Ni)23B6 phase can be transformed into a mixture of (Fe,Ni)23B6 and γ-(Fe,Ni) phase, and the grain size of γ-(Fe, Ni) phase increases from 5 nm to 80 nm while the grain size of (Fe,Ni)23B6 remains almost unchanged. Finally, we find that the grain growth in each of (Fe,Ni)23B6 and γ-(Fe, Ni) deteriorates the overall magnetic properties.

Skill-Based Educational Video Creation in Gambia: a Participatory Video Project Review

Videos continue to be useful educational tools for low-literacy adults in rural developing areas. This article outlines a project that combined applied cognitive science and participatory video methodology to design and create high-quality skill-learning videos for adults in The Gambia, West Africa. First, it provides an overview of the collaboration involved in the project design and development. Then, it reviews the characteristics of the videos created. We examine the project merits through interviews with villagers. These interviews revealed that village women valued video education because learning was easily accessible and the skills presented had benefits for their lives. Project reflections and recommendations are provided at the end in order to support participatory video projects in similar settings.

Shock Therapy and Entrepreneurial Flare #Brexit

PurposeMuch has been written about trade deal opportunities after Brexit (e.g. Minford et al., 2017; Singham and Tylecote, 2018) but much less about envisaged “supply side mechanisms” that would translate a Brexit shock into improved UK competitive performance. Indications as to the supply side mechanisms involved can be found in some pro-Brexit writings and speeches and revolve around cutting regulation and reducing taxation, to spur innovation entrepreneurship. The authors contend that these measures align to a broad set of policy measures associated with Economic Shock Therapy, the Laffer Curve and the associated “Washington Consensus” (Williamson, 2005). The authors are looking to stimulate a conversation around whether these measures are most likely to stimulate entrepreneurial innovation and growth. The authors open by contrasting these concepts to growth equilibrium dynamics drawn from Wicksell, Keynes and Schumpeter – and by implication dynamic Walrasian General Equilibrium – to pose the question, is entrepreneur-led growth best led via slashing regulations and taxes or by focussing on correcting existing market failures? The purpose of this paper is to promote controversy and debate as to which “supply side measures” are most effective in enabling entrepreneurial growth.Design/methodology/approachThe authors briefly review the pro-Brexiteer economic framework and relate this to broader Economic Shock Therapy and Laffer Curve concepts; how these have been applied and how some argue they can become “supply side” enablers in a positive Brexit innovation and entrepreneurship transformation. By drawing upon fundamental economic relationships such as Wicksell’s (1898) “Natural Rate of Interest”, the authors highlight the importance of information asymmetry and regulatory distortion in financial markets, resulting in some entrepreneurs (and associated innovations) failing to receive the capital their project merit. The authors pose the question, whether Shock Therapy, Laffer Curve type tax cuts and any Brexit “bonfire of regulation” will raise entrepreneurial growth and success.FindingsBoth Shock Therapy and Laffer Curve inspired tax cuts have a patchy record of success, despite notable achievements in post-1991 Poland. The authors stress entrepreneurs drive innovation and growth, and a key support to them requires correcting “access to finance” market failures. It is questionable if Economic Shocks contribute anything to resolving this fundamental problem.Originality/valueThe authors open the supply side debate on anticipated “Brexit Transformation” in the context of long standing (some maybe long forgotten) theoretical understandings, thereby posing the question as to whether potential Brexit-related deregulation, tax cuts and “Economic Shock” therapy are likely to raise entrepreneurial competitive advantage and success rates. Market failure in financial market support for small firm growth and innovation needs are highlighted. Arguably, economic growth and innovation would be better sustained by addressing these failures, than introducing the “unknowns” and risks associated with a substantial Economic Shock.

Towards a Political Economy of Communication in Development?

AbstractIn thedevelopment communicationequation, whether more theoretical, empirical and analytical attention is given to ‘development’ or to ‘communication’ makes a difference: where the emphasis is on development, it is at the expense of communication. Since communication and media arguably play an increasingly pervasive role in the everyday life of citizens and in the politics, economies and governance of most societies, the characteristics and role of specific forms of applied communication strategies in the context of the neoliberal project merit critical scrutiny. Given a complex global scenario, what can a political economy approach bring into an agenda for the future of development communication as a field of study, a practice and an institutional project? This article outlines ways in which a focus on political economy dimensions may contribute to understanding the obstacles and limits to a transformative practice of international development communication.

Development of the CASH assessment tool to address existential concerns in patients with serious illness.

Existential suffering in patients with serious illness significantly impacts quality of life, yet it remains a challenge to define, assess, and manage adequately. Improving upon understanding and practice in the existential domain is a topic of interest for palliative care providers. As a quality improvement project, our palliative care team created an existential assessment tool utilizing a dialogue-oriented approach with four questions designed to identify sources of existential distress as well as strengths and challenges in coping with this distress. The tool utilized the mnemonic CASH, with each letter representing the core objective of the question. Providers who requested the palliative care consult were asked to evaluate the CASH assessment. On completion of the project, palliative care consultants evaluated the appropriateness of the CASH assessment tool. Patient responses to the CASH questions were insightful and reflected their beliefs, priorities, and concerns. Eight of nine providers found that the assessment enabled understanding of their patient. Seven noted a positive impact on their practice, and five reported an improvement in patient care after the assessment. The palliative care consultants who used the tool enjoyed using it, and half of them suggested changes to patient care based on their assessment. The most common reasons for not using the CASH assessment were inappropriateness to the consult, lack of perceived patient/caregiver receptiveness, or consultation service too busy. Our quality improvement project demonstrated that the CASH assessment tool is useful in ascertaining existential concerns of patients with serious illness. It enhances patient care by the primary team as well as the palliative care team. As a brief set of questions with an easy-to-remember mnemonic, the CASH assessment tool is feasible for a busy palliative consult service. Furthermore, the positive results of this project merit more rigorous evaluation of the CASH assessment tool in the future.

PPP projects in transport: evidence from light rail projects in Spain

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) have been extensively used in Spain for the procurement of light rail systems. This paper analyses five projects that have been in operation for more than five years. The authors examine the reasoning behind the selection of the PPP projects, risk-sharing mechanisms, competition among private providers, and overall cost-effectiveness. The paper demonstrates a need for more rigorous assessments of the merits of PPP projects before they are initiated.

High-Speed Rail in California: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

Very high speed rail may be a competitive mode of trans­ portation for California's future. This article presents an evaluation of the economic and comprehensive benefits and costs associated with such an endeavor. The results indicate competitive comprehensive rates of return and a potential for project self-financing, suggesting that such a project merits serious consideration by the State.

Sketch-Level Feasibility Analysis of Commuter Rail Service between Kannapolis and Charlotte, North Carolina

This paper presents a sketch-level feasibility study for a proposed 28-mi commuter rail line connecting downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, to its fast-growing suburbs. Full-scale feasibility studies can be expensive, especially for cash-strapped local government agencies. A sketch analysis, such as the one presented here, is a low-cost means of determining whether a project merits further study. Ridership for the line is conservatively estimated at 2,010 in 2015 and 2,574 in 2035. Higher-speed service and a greater frequency of midday trains are shown to significantly increase these numbers. Cost-effectiveness depends largely on the actual cost per mile, but conservative estimates place the proposed route in the middle of the pack of new-start commuter rail lines: more cost-effective than the routes of Minneapolis, Minnesota, or Austin, Texas, but slightly less cost-effective than those of Albuquerque, New Mexico, or Nashville, Tennessee. In view of these results, a more comprehensive study appears to be merited.

Admissible Evidence in the Court of Development Evaluation? The Impact of CARE's SHOUHARDO Project on Child Stunting in Bangladesh

SummaryAlong with the rise of the development effectiveness movement of the last few decades, experimental impact evaluation methods – randomised controlled trials and quasi‐experimental techniques – have emerged as a dominant force. While the increased use of these methods has contributed to improved understanding of what works and whether specific projects have been successful, their ‘gold standard’ status threatens to exclude a large body of evidence from the development effectiveness dialogue.In this paper we conduct an evaluation of the impact on child stunting of CARE's SHOUHARDO project in Bangladesh, the first large‐scale project to use the rights‐based, livelihoods approach to address malnutrition. In line with calls for a more balanced view of what constitutes rigor and scientific evidence, and for the use of more diversified and holistic methods in impact evaluations, we employ a mixed‐methods approach. The results from multiple data sources and methods, including both non‐experimental and quasi‐experimental, are triangulated to arrive at the conclusions. We find that the project had an extraordinarily large impact on stunting among children 6–24 months old – on the order of a 4.5 percentage point reduction per year. We demonstrate that one reason the project reduced stunting by so much was because, consistent with the rights‐based, livelihoods approach, it relied on both direct nutrition interventions and those that addressed underlying structural causes including poor sanitation, poverty, and deeply‐entrenched inequalities in power between women and men. These findings have important policy implications given the slow progress in reducing malnutrition globally and that the widely‐supported Scaling Up Nutrition initiative aimed at stepping up efforts to do so is in urgent need of guidance on how to integrate structural cause interventions with the direct nutrition interventions that are the initiative's main focus. The evaluation also adds to the evidence that targeting the poor, rather than employing universal coverage, can help to accelerate reductions in child malnutrition. The paper concludes that, given the valuable policy lessons generated, the experience of the SHOUHARDO project merits solid standing in the knowledge bank of development effectiveness. More broadly, it illustrates how rigorous and informative evaluation of complex, multi‐intervention projects can be undertaken even in the absence of the randomisation, non‐project control groups and/or panel data required by the experimental methods.

Clinical Practice Guidelines For Early Mobilization Hours After Surgery

This clinical practice guideline (CPG) is the product of cohesive interdisciplinary collaboration. The impact of this project merits more than routine attention given the lack of published nursing literature. The Department of Nursing acted as the catalyst to improve the quality of patient care. This initiative resulted in a pivotal change in the standard of care, updating outmoded orthopaedic nursing practices. The most significant change improved the time patients began their first postoperative activity. Dangling the patient on the day of surgery enhanced the benefits of early activity and reduced the time from 16.8 to 6 hr with no adverse patient consequences. The CPG also demonstrated excellent postoperative pain management, realizing pain scores below 4 (0-10 scale) at multiple time points. In addition, the length of stay improved from 4.3 to 2.8 days. The results support the value of implementing a CPG.

Economic appraisal of universal design in transport: Experiences from Norway

Economic assessment of universally designed transport projects has not been studied in depth in the transport planning literature. Universal Design (UD) refers to the design of transport systems in a way that they are accessible to all users, irrespective of the users’ abilities. This definition of UD has not yet gained roots in the transport economic literature. The conventional thinking is that UD is for the few, i.e., the impaired, and given that they are few in numbers, UD projects will generally be unprofitable from a socioeconomic point of view because benefits will be low while investment costs will be too high. The objective of this paper is to prove the opposite: UD projects benefit all users of the facility, whether impaired or not, and the additional costs of implementing them are generally low; hence, their net present values are high and positive. We build on collaborative work between the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) and the Institute of Transport Economics (TOI) aimed at creating guidelines for assessing the economic merits of UD projects. Therefore, in this paper, we: (1) define how UD is to be understood in the context of road and public transport; (2) describe the types of benefits and costs that accrue to users if UD projects are implemented; (3) address how the benefits and cost can be valued in monetary terms; and (4) using three different types of projects, demonstrate that UD projects are surprisingly profitable from a socioeconomic point of view. Finally, we address the implications of our findings and explain why governments need to be concerned with UD of transport systems.

AN EXCEL-BASED DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR SCORING AND RANKING PROPOSED R&D PROJECTS

One of the most challenging aspects of technology management is the selection of research and development (R&D) projects from among a group of proposals. This paper introduces an interactive, user-friendly decision support system for evaluating and ranking R&D projects and demonstrates its application on an example R&D program. It employs the scoring methodology developed by Henriksen and Traynor to provide a practical technique that considers both project merit and project cost in the evaluation process, while explicitly accounting for trade-offs among multiple decision criteria.1 The framework of the Excel-based system, PScore, is presented with an emphasis on the potential benefits of using this methodology with computer-automated extensions that facilitate and enhance managerial review and decision-making capabilities.

Protecting Human Research Participants, IRBs, and Political Science Redux: Editor's Introduction

In the 1990s I testified before a National Science Foundation (NSF) panel headed by Cora Marrett, then assistant director for the NSF Directorate for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. The subject of the panel's inquiry, and this issue's symposium, was social science research and the federally mandated but decentralized human subjects protection program and its principal actors, institutional review boards (IRBs). My testimony addressed the ways in which the regulatory system ill-fit and ill-served political science research. IRBs had expanded their mission to include all research, not just research funded by the federal government, enhancing their scope of authority while slowing the timeliness of reviews. Similarly, and with the same result, IRBs were evaluating secondary research as well as primary research. Although the federal legislation provided for a nuanced assessment of risk, the distinction between potentially risk-laden research necessitating a full IRB review and research posing minimal or no risk that could be either exempted or given expedited review was disappearing. The length of the review process threatened the beginning or completion of course work and degree programs. IRBs were judging the merits of research projects rather than the risks involved. This trend was especially problematic because representation on many IRBs was skewed toward biological and behavioral scientists often unfamiliar with the methods and fields of political science and the other social sciences. And the list went on.

Performance comparison of the LCG2 and gLite file catalogues

When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) begins operation at CERN in 2007 it will produce data in volumes never before seen. The LHC Computing Grid will provide the middleware necessary to distribute and analyse petabytes of this data. One of the critical factors in the smooth running of this system is the performance of the file catalogues which translate logical filenames into physical locations. We present a detailed study comparing the LCG project's catalogue with the gLite FiReMan catalogue developed in the EGEE project, covering performance and respective merits and shortcomings.

Why ROI and similar financial tools are not advisable for evaluating the merits of security projects

During the last 30 years, the period in which information security has become a widespread concern, many people have attempted to evaluate information security projects with traditional financial analysis tools (ROI, NPV, IRR, Payback, etc.). The results have been unsatisfying because information security does not lend itself to the same type of analysis, as for example could be readily performed on the upgrade of a server used for production processing. In this article, we discuss some of the reasons why this is the case, as well as several other evaluation methods that can instead be used to make justifiable and relevant decisions about information projects.

The Development and Consequences of Trust in Student Project Groups

Student project groups are a popular teaching tool used by marketing and business instructors. Despite the merits of group projects, trust often breaks down, and a valuable opportunity for learning may deteriorate into disharmony and personal frustration. Using literature on teamwork, student project groups, and trust, as well as qualitative data gathered from 135 undergraduate business school students, the authors develop a model of the determinants and consequences of a climate of trust within student project groups. In particular, they consider the attributes and behaviors students consider when judging the trustworthiness of fellow group members, the perceived consequences of distrust within groups, and facilitating tools or activities that help foser group trust. Findings provide a number of interesting insights for instructors.

Project MERIT and the Formation of the International Earth Rotation Service

AbstractProject MERIT was an international programme to Monitor Earth Rotation and Intercompare the Techniques of observation and analysis. It was conceived by a working group that was set up by the International Astronomical Union in 1978 and was carried through with additional support from the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. The first objective was to encourage the development of the use of new techniques, such as laser ranging and radio interferometry, for the regular determination of universal time and polar motion. A successful ‘short campaign’ of observations by six techniques was carried out during the period 1980 August to October. Operational and analysis centres were set up for each technique and a coordinating centre was established at the Bureau International de l’Heure (BIH). The results were reported and discussed at the first MERIT Workshop in 1981.The preparations for the ‘main campaign’, which was held from 1983 September 1 to 1984 October 31, and the plans for the activities that were to follow it were reviewed at the second MERIT Workshop in 1983. Important additional features of the campaign included the use of ‘MERIT Standards’ for the reduction and analysis of the data, the use of electronic techniques for the distribution of data, the comparison of the results with the changes in the angular momentum of the atmosphere and special emphasis on the improvement of the terrestrial reference frame. Proposals for a new International Earth Rotation Service were prepared at the third MERIT Workshop in 1986. The MERIT programme was continued from 1984 until the new service formally started on 1988 January 1. Over the decade the accuracy of the Earth-rotation parameters improved considerably.