5324 research outputs found
Sort by
Palestine—New Media, Same Old Political Agenda
No full textThe Palestinian media represent an exceptional case in the Middle East, and the Arab world in particular. Because Palestine is still under Israeli occupation, media tend to focus on macro issues such as politics, the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, and restrictions that cause suffering to Palestinians in their daily lives. Focusing on major political issues means that other issues, such as housing, food, petrol prices, education, individual freedom, and social and family violence, are less frequently covered
Progressive income taxes and Macroeconomic Instability
No full textThis paper aims to study the stability properties of a two-period over-lapping generations model with a progressive labor-income taxation rule. In this case, wage income tax rates are increasing with agent’s income. Each representative agent lives two periods: youth and adulthood. In the first period, agents choose labor supply and allocate their after-tax income between consumptions and savings (capital accumulations). In the second period, agents are retired and consume entirely their savings returns. It is shown that progressive labor-income taxation policy acts as a destabilizing factor in the sense that a higher progressivity makes the emergence of indeterminacy and endogenous fluctuations more likely. These fluctuations appear if the elasticity of capital-labor substitution is sufficiently low. Moreover, we show that saving rate widens the range of
parameters giving rise to endogenous fluctuations. The analytical findings are completed by a numerical example
Detailed clinical modelling approach to data extraction from heterogeneous data sources for clinical research
No full textThe reuse of routinely collected clinical data for clinical research is being explored as part of the drive to reduce duplicate data entry and to start making full use of the big data potential in the healthcare domain. Clinical researchers often need to extract data from patient registries and other patient record datasets for data analysis as part of clinical studies. In the TRANSFoRm project, researchers define their study requirements via a Query Formulation Workbench. We use a standardised approach to data extraction to retrieve relevant information from heterogeneous data sources, using semantic interoperability enabled via detailed clinical modelling. This approach is used for data extraction from data sources for analysis and for pre-population of electronic Case Report Forms from electronic health records in primary care clinical system
Multi-agent system for recruiting patients for clinical trials
No full textClinical trials are widely adopted for the purpose of evaluating medical research. In particular, they are used to study various aspects of medical science, as well as being a vital stage in the deployment of new drug treatments. However, a review of the UK Medical Research Council found that only 31% of trials actually recruited to their planned target, with 30–40% of costs arising during the recruitment
phase alone. This is mainly due to the challenges that are involved in designing the clinical trial, and recruiting the required number of patients for this trial within a certain time-frame. Both tasks create significant overhead as they are slow and costly. In response, we propose a multi-agent architecture that helps ease the process of recruiting patients for clinical trials. This paper presents a results from a deployment of the architecture, showing that it succeeds in recruiting a sufficient number of patients for multiple clinical trials. The results also show that recruitment is better for some trials than for others, due to the differing trial requirements and recruitment processe
Acoustic model selection using limited data for accent robust speech recognition
No full textThis paper investigates techniques to compensate for the effects of regional accents of British English on automatic speech recognition (ASR) performance. Given a small amount of speech from a new speaker, is it better to apply speaker adaptation, or to use accent identification (AID) to identify the speaker’s accent followed by accent-dependent ASR? Three approaches to accent-dependent
modelling are investigated: using the ‘correct’ accent model, choosing a model using supervised (ACCDIST-based) accent identifi- cation (AID), and building a model using data from neighbouring
speakers in ‘AID space’. All of the methods outperform the accentindependent model, with relative reductions in ASR error rate of up to 44%. Using on average 43s of speech to identify an appropriate
accent-dependent model outperforms using it for supervised speaker-adaptation, by 7%
Enter and be welcome doorways in the old city of Bethlehem, Palestine
No full textThe contribution of doorways to our understanding of the history and function of a building and its historical context cannot be overstated. For this study, the doorways of Bethlehem were examined. This city has played an important role in the history of Palestine and has the distinction of being the birthplace of Jesus. The identification and protection of its unique doorways is imperative to preserving its cultural identity and historical authenticity. Consequently, the main objective here was to study the Old City of Bethlehem; document and analyze the condition, form, types, and characteristics of its doorways; and assess their value as historic forms that might be considered within a process
of safeguarding and adapted us
